Tag: San Francisco

America Collection/General interest
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Hope is the Thing With Heart

by Fran Johns

STRANGERS AT A DEMONSTRATION SHARE THEIR HOPEFULNESS

(Politics alert: Though I usually try to stay apolitical on this site, a Substack follower actually emailed that he, a Republican who also checks out this site from time to time, thought I should share it on WordPress. What can I say? An actual Reader Request. Thanks, Al, and enjoy, anyone else.)

“Not much,” said one young man when asked what gave him hope. “I mean, I don’t have much hope for today, or next week. But I have a lot of hope for the future. We just have to get things back on track.”

An indomitable group of strangers gathers regularly at the corner of Van Ness and Geary Blvd in San Francisco to hoist signs, wave at passing cars and cheer for democracy. It’s always a different group but with occasional familiar faces. At a recent “Trump Takedown” protest I asked a dozen or so of those gathered what gives them hope. They had a lot to say.

“People like you and me,” said one tall, grizzled Black man with whom I would appear to share little in common except, perhaps, old age. “We’re here, and not giving up.” 

A lovely woman named Nacha (“like Nachos”) answered my question with a smile as she rested her sign to reach for something in her pocket. It was a small plastic envelope containing her U.S. passport and a copy of the Constitution. “I’m an American by choice,” she said. “I came here years ago because I had to leave Peru; I love this country. But I carry my passport with me always now, just in case.”  I did not share with Nacha the brief feeling of hopelessness that spread through me on hearing this last sentence. Still, she smiled broadly and how could that not give everyone hope?

The demonstrators come partly just for the shared community fun. There’s a constant honking of horns, there are waves from passing cars and trucks, shouts of encouragement. One participant said to me, “I know this is San Francisco — but I also know these demonstrations are happening all over the country and won’t stop until we get our democracy back.” That gave me another shot of hope.

A young man named Tylor (“With an ‘O’ — nobody gets that right”) said he has a meditation practice that keeps him “hopeful, and on track.” Tylor also had a rainbow cape, an inclination to dance in the median strip and a Cheshire Cat smile. “Evolution,” he said while dancing (on the sidewalk,) “is a path. It may be bumpy, but the universe is taking us forward toward love and peace.” It is possible to pick up gems of philosophical wisdom at sidewalk protests.

A teenaged couple who are classmates at Washington High School gave my question serious thought before responding. “Trump’s approval ratings keep going down,” he said; “that gives me hope.” She gave a broader assessment: “When I see all sorts of people coming together with positive values . . .” she said, before turning away to smile at a white SUV with passengers waving from every window.

I came home with Tylor’s words in my head. “I’m really just paraphrasing Martin Luther King Jr here,” he said after going on for a while about the evolutionary path toward love. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” 

May hope continue to be the thing with feathers, and heart.

America Collection/General interest
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The Violent Radicals and Me

by Fran Johns

ON BEING ALMOST-IN-LAWS WITH THE BLACK PANTHERS, AND TRACING THE HISTORY OF THE HOUSE WHERE IT ALL WENT DOWN

Photo by JD Doyle on Unsplash

(Heading into a short week that nonetheless promises long days of news both dark and discouraging, here’s another diversionary tale of people and politics in bygone days. You can’t make any of this stuff up.) 

My husband-to-be, then a young bachelor newsguy named Bud, was looking out the window, talking to his friend Tom while waiting for a woman who had answered his house-for-rent ad.

“Interesting,” he said, as he spotted her crossing the street. “It’s Kathleen Cleaver.”

“What are you going to do?” Tom asked?

“If she wants, it,” Bud said, “I’m going to rent the place to her.” Which he did. Bud settled into the garage apartment, renting the two main floors of a dilapidated San Francisco Victorian he’d recently purchased to newlyweds Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver. Its location, at 2777 Pine Street a dozen or so blocks west of Fillmore, could have been generously described, at the time, as sketchy.

This was in 1967. It was shortly after Eldridge was paroled from Folsom and San Quentin prisons where he’d been incarcerated for eight years after being convicted of rape and assault with intent to murder. His official position with the Panthers was minister of information.

Many of the houses in the vicinity were in disrepair; others were occupied by citizens of questionable repute. “Aren’t you a little nervous about living there?” Bud was regularly asked by friends who did not come over for tea. “Why?” he regularly replied. “Either the police or the Black Panthers are here at any given time, usually both.”

In little more than a year Eldrige would win fame with publication of his prison memoir Soul on Ice, and subsequently become a fugitive after leading an ambush on Oakland police officers that left two officers wounded. Eldridge was also wounded in that dust-up and his friend and fellow Black Panther Bobby Hutton was killed.

All of which pretty much terminated the lease. Undaunted, Bud went to Black Panther headquarters in Oakland and asked for the remaining rent, which they paid.

Kathleen was the one who handled business affairs at their Pine Street domicile. She was mostly working to advance the causes of the Black Panthers, but helped the family finances by writing for Ramparts Magazine.

Landlord and tenants got along fine though they weren’t exactly close personal friends. My favorite memento of those days is a letter neatly typed on Ramparts letterhead which reads:

“Mr. Johns:

“Please excuse the delay but I have been so god damned busy with these pigs and courts and chaos that I completely forgot to pay the rent. You are very sweet to be so unobtrusive and gentle with me, I think you ar a perfect landlord and I would just like to warn you that you should prepare yourself for any day now some time of assault on this house. I think it is beautiful, I love it, I won’t go away, but the local, federal, international, secret and off duty pigs as well as reagon (sic) . . . wallace . . . alioto et all (sic) want to do us in, Eldridge first, then me. Here’s the rent.

“Peace. – (signed in ink) Mrs. Cleaver”

The Cleavers divorced in 1981 after two children and a life that must never have been dull. Kathleen followed her fugitive husband around the globe before coming back to the U.S. and laying the groundwork for him to come home too. She did post-grad work (law, etc) at Yale and elsewhere, eventually becoming a distinguished lecturer and law professor. He eventually became a Mormon and a conservative Republican. Eldridge died, at 62, in 1998. Kathleen is, as far as I know, alive and well and I would give almost anything to know if she remembers her Pine Street landlord.

Or, for that matter, 2777 Pine Street. Bud sold it not long after the Cleavers left, to help raise the down payment on another Victorian a mile or so farther west that I would later happily call home.

I suspect he sold it for something under $20,000. You could pick it up today — if it were on the market, which it is not — for three or four million. Gentrification has been kind to Pine Street property values.

I sometimes reflect on it all as I walk by the former home of my good husband, who is now, in all likelihood, on some celestial cloud trading stories with Black Panthers and other interesting friends. I try not to take offense at the plaque testifying to the nineteenth century origins of the house and proclaiming it to be the former home of Eldridge Cleaver, “Black Panther and Republican leader.”

Not a word about the former landlord.

America Collection/General interest
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Finding Calm Amidst the Chaos

by Fran Johns

TERROR. DISTRESS. EXUBERANCE. STRENGTH. HOPE. HOW TO DEAL WITH THE RELENTLESS EMOTIONAL TURMOIL OF THESE DAYS

Scene at edge of Lafayette Park (Author photo)

Anxiety? Through the roof.

For anyone who’s been paying attention, recent days and weeks have been more discouraging, and borderline frightening, than the days and weeks preceding. Those of us who hoisted protest signs got a little temporary relief.

I was out with my KAKISTOCRACY sign (It’s in the dictionary: Government by the worst. The least efficient. The most corrupt.) But I feel almost as strongly about the message on its flip side:

With my second-favorite marching-sign message (Author photo)

Because sometimes kindness seems the only response to the firehose of brutally bad news: political violence, discouraging court decisions, indiscriminate ICE raids, the cruelty and inhumanity a majority of the country wants to see end. The pressure is already beginning to build again. That may be a good thing for the country, since it seems nothing but public outcry will save our democracy. But what about us cogs in the juddering wheel of justice? We, the little people who need to gather strength?

Many recover with the help of music and art, visits with friends, immersion in a good book. I use all of the above. But I find solace, plus instantaneous comfort and joy, in the urban landscape. Mother Nature busies herself in the midst of the busiest built environments, the American city.

Most U.S. cities, with the help of local conservation groups or non-profits like the excellent Trust for Public Land, have pockets of open space where Mother Nature does her tranquilizing thing. In San Francisco, our cup of wonder overflows, including hilltops for viewing the world:

View of the Bay on a foggy day, seen from a hilltop porch garden. (Author photo)

Whether it’s outdoor walks in the country, where green fields or sparkling lakes serve as gateways to the calmer soul, small-town gardens or city parks, Mother Nature has a way of saying, “Breathe. Look around. Look up.”

Sometimes, she even throws in a hummingbird.

Keep the faith.

America Collection/General interest
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Stop — Listen — Heal

by Fran Johns
Man playing flute on street

SERENDIPITOUS STREET MUSIC CAN CHANGE YOUR DAY

I don’t know his name. I’m not even sure of his instrument —  although I think it’s a shakuhachi.

What I do know is when I’m walking through Peace Plaza in San Francisco’s Japantown, the notes float wistfully above street noises and conversations of passersby. Bringing peace indeed.

In those melodies is a cure for all weariness, anxiety or woe.

Sometimes instead of the flautist there is, across the street, an instrumentalist. He’s tried to tell me the name of his instrument. It’s not quite as peaceful as the flute, but close.

It’s easy to pass them by, these gentle buskers whose music is a universal language. Most people do.

But I keep a supply of dollar bills in my pocket for whenever one is there. Because if you stop, and listen for the sweetness? 

Priceless. 

America Collection/General interest
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Moving Day, Millionaire Style

by Fran Johns
Crane hauling loading box to 5th floor apartment

PUTTING THE NEW PLACE IN ORDER, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

Home delivery underway on the fifth floor (Author photo)

Oh well, folks have got to get settled in somehow.

Newcomers in my neighborhood are slowly getting their Stuff in place. (When I say ‘my neighborhood’ I mean six blocks and quite a few million dollars uphill from my place; but still . . .) As is demonstrated by the silhouetted dog-walker, everything is downhill, and steeply so, from here; sweeping views of Alcatraz, San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge etc come with the pricey territory of this apartment. 

When you buy a fifth floor residence in a posh, historic building on Washington Street you then face the issue of how to get everything settled into its new surroundings. For a century or so, hefty moving guys presumably hauled stuff up the freight elevator. Today, though, the solution is to hire a giant truck with a crane, several other giant trucks and (by my count) upwards of a dozen workers to load, supervise and direct traffic.

For openers you take out the fair-sized corner window. Three sturdy guys could be seen stationed in its gaping hole to guide stuff inwards — a job I would not find wonderful. But then, watching the whole work crew for 15 or 20 minutes made me grateful for this desk job.

The mystery object rises to its destination (Author photo)

Once the new load is wrestled (cautiously, I might add) into the traveling container, it swings slowly upward. Crane operators, I guess, factor for things like the wind that was swirling around the park across the street, but if they were as nervous as I about the thing crashing into the wrong window it did not show.

On-time delivery (Author photo)

I watched as the loading box descended from one delivery to pick up the next item (rising above.) It was just one giant, bulky something wrapped in layers of felted cloth. When I inquired of the workers about the cargo, I got a deadpanned reply, “They have a lot of statues.” 

Presumably, if you can afford a home-with-a-view in San Francisco, your art collection might as well include a few works by Rodin or Ai Weiwei for the family room. That, at least, was my imagined package being hauled aloft. It helped to look up at another noise and spot a helicopter hovering above which I further imagined to be a few private eyes keeping an eye on the transaction below.

(I am only reporting what I see here. Details have not been verified.)

Seen overhead (Author photo)

Back on planet earth, there was more than a little irony in finding, parked in the small courtyard of my building, a couple of trucks ushering in one of my actual neighbors. The old-fashioned way, with hand-propelled dollies moving from truck to garage entry to elevators hung with padded cloths.

Not a single helicopter could be spotted overhead.

America Collection/General interest
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Leaving, on a Jet Plane

by Fran Johns
Washington DC

SOME TARMACS OFFER BETTER DEPARTURE VIEWS THAN OTHERS

The capitol from the tarmac, seen from Alaska Flight 7 (Author photo)

Departures, when heading home after a good trip, are always bittersweet. But few offer a farewell equal to DCA:

The capitol alit across the Potomac (above) and tilting downhill (below) as the plane gathered speed, amount to a salute to democracy and a farewell metaphor for at least one westbound passenger. 

The city making a metaphor (Author photo)

But the sparkling Northern Virginia landscape (below) on take-off serves as postscript: we’re all still in this beautiful world together.

On to San Francisco.

Leaving the Potomac, and DC, behind (Author photo)

America Collection/General interest
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Walking the Streets, After the Rain

by Fran Johns

AN URBAN PALETTE WORTHY OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS

The atmospheric river just washed over California. San Francisco was spared the worst, but a few torrential interludes kept us aware.

Good news? Fire season is officially over. Bad news? Flooding, downed limbs and trees, plenty of disruptions. Standing in the spot above I had just walked past the scene below.

The skies were still gray, a slight drizzle reminding everyone of the downpours just past.

But it was hard to stand on the quiet sidewalk and not admire the palette Mother Nature had dipped into to create a scene Camille Pissarro might have wanted to paint.

America Collection/General interest
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Diwali: Ancient Festival We Need Today

by Fran Johns

CELEBRATING LIGHT, PEACE AND LOVE

I was invited to join some friends for the San Francisco Brahma Kumaris’ Diwali celebration, and to light a candle for peace.

It strikes me we can use a dose of Diwali in the USA today. The ancient Hindu festival of lights is celebrated by many religions — and my lovely Brahma Kumaris friends always welcome this Presbyterian.

So we listened to songs and soft music on the harp (Sr Kyoko is a spectacular harpist) and we exchanged Om’s and Om Shanti’s (gentle expressions of peace) and shared delicious vegetarian food and a great deal of friendship and hope.

The graceful Victorian home of Brahma Kumaris SF was ablaze in light for the season and the celebration. 

Briefly, Diwali is a reminder that peace is possible, that love wins, and that light will always overcome darkness. Sometimes, notably in times of political upheaval, it’s easy to forget these truths.

Om shanti.

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