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.
SOME OF THE LATE SENATOR’S FAVORITE THINGS GO UP FOR AUCTION
“You really need to come see this,” texted a friend. She was right.
Dianne Feinstein’s jewelry — presumably just a selection of it — and a few paintings, sculptures and pieces of memorabilia will be auctioned on October 8 by Bonham’s in Los Angeles. You might want to bid on something.
I met the late senator several times around town, but we didn’t exactly move in the same circles. When I arrived in San Francisco in 1992, though, some of the earliest tales I was told were of the horrific day in 1978 when Mayor George Moscone was assassinated at City Hall, along with Supervisor Harvey Milk. Feinstein, then President of the Board of Supervisors, made the announcement to the world.
She quickly became San Francisco’s first female Mayor, and was reportedly a very popular one. Despite losing a race for governor in 1990, she soon afterwards (in 1992) became California’s first female senator — and kept that spot, through five re-elections, until her death last year.
Feinstein had an eye for art, and a particular fondness for scenes of the American west. You can pick up one or two on October 8:
(The Hetch Hetchy Valley by Frank Henry Shapleigh; this & all other photos by the Author)
There are also some pretty spectacular jewels in this auction. In 2003, according to her Wikipedia page, Feinstein was ranked the fifth-wealthiest senator, with an estimated net worth of $26 million. The daughter of a prominent surgeon, she was married to neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein until his death in 1978; two years later she married investment banker Richard Blum.
So I suspect it wasn’t hard for her to afford a few baubles.
Personally, I lean more toward lighter-weight accessorizing, which is probably just as well. I checked out a few prices in the auction catalog; not for the flea market shopper (which I am.) It’s fascinating, though, to see the assortment of jewels the always impeccably dressed senator had at her disposal.
Or to wonder how and where the very rich keep their jewelry. Diamonds in one vault, rubies in another? Pearl earrings in drawer A, necklaces in drawers B and C according to length or number of strands? Emeralds and sapphires below the color-coordination chart perhaps. Turquoise in a separate cabinet set aside for western-wear occasions. Jaw-dropping values aside, it would take the organizational know-how of a true stateswoman — which Feinstein unquestionably was — to keep a collection this vast at the ready for the week ahead.
If I were going to be bidding, however (don’t worry) the bit of memorabilia I might want to take home is this one:
A calligraphic manuscript by Mark Alynn Kokott (#717, hand-lettered) dated October 5, 1984. Est $200-$300.
__________ … __________
Share a thought! While I always love to write, and hope you enjoy the read, it’s often the conversation that’s the best. I hope you’ll scroll down a ways and leave a comment.
Could you be descended from a rock? Rather than, say, an ape? Or, to put it another way: first the rock, then the ape. (No scissors/paper here.)
Personally, I’m drawn to rock molecules as forebears.
Bear with me on this. It’s not my idea; it came from an article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine that came from a new book titled Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life. Just the same way as perhaps we came from microbes in rocks before we came from apes — no offense to Mr. Darwin. Or to the Creator by whatever name.
For the record, I understand absolutely none of this. I began a less than stellar college career long ago with a D- in Human Biology, after which I switched my major to Art. A form of educational evolution, you could say. I will probably, as this story progresses, be typing a lot of questions into the search bar like, “What’s the difference between a microbe and a molecule?” Still trying to wrap my head around that one.
But how can you not love the idea that Planet Earth — our Mother Earth which itself came from somewhere, but that’s another story — germinated her little bits of dirt into creatures that beccame you and me?
Further, if we all evolved from little specks of dirt in rocks, doesn’t that more easily make us all pretty close kin, give or take a minor detail or two?
Consider this: “At some point not long after our planet’s genesis,” writes the distinguished scientist/journalist Ferris Jabr, who inspired this essay and whose web photo looks like he’s about 18, “in some warm, wet pocket with the right chemistry and an adequate flow of free energy . . . bits of Earth rearranged themselves into the first self-replicating entities, which eventually evolved into cells.” (Jabr rhymes with neighbor; you might want to remember the name.)
Fast forward a few eons. “Species best able to cope with changes in their particular habitat leave behind the most descendants, whereas those that fail to adapt die out.” Voila. Early pre-humanoids are beginning to pop up.
Annother few billion years, Oxygen and the ozone layer ooze out and, Hello blue skies!
“As I studied the interdependence of Earth and life,” Jabr writes, “I continually returned to an ancient and controversial idea: that Earth itself is alive.” This is, as many of us are dimly aware, the Gaia Hypothesis. Sort of a ‘We’re all in this Life together’ thing: dirt, creatures, skies, planet. (This article is not to be quoted for anything scientifically verifiable.)
Despite being clearly out of my depths, I cannot get over a compelling fascination with this idea: Mother Earth begets a clump of dirt which, after an eon or two or three or four begets you and me. Life is good, brothers and sisters.
Recently, walking up Webster Street in San Francisco I drew near a car that had just parked. The driver, a tall Black man with an air of distinction and broad smile, walked toward me a few steps ahead of a gray-haired Black woman I presumed to be his wife. We three paused in greeting, it being a sunshiny day with a jazz festival underway a block west on Fillmore Street.
“You remind me of my mother,” he said. No preamble, no irony, just a pleasant remark that might well have been, “Hello, how’s it going?”
“I think,” I replied as I quickly recovered, “that I’m the generic mother. I hope yours was a good one.”
“The best,” he said. “She was very beautiful.”
Well, if that won’t make your day I don’t know what will. We three kept walking in our different directions. Hopefully, their day was as festive as mine was from then on.
Which brings me back to Mr. Jabr’s book. Since it seems a little heavy for my right-brained self I am ordering the audio version (9 hours, 27 minutes.) This way I can listen in small snippets while walking in the sunshine, reflecting on the probability that my bypasser friend’s beautiful bronze skin is only a microbe or two away from my own wrinkly white.
I was privileged — and it was a giant privilege — to know Asawa in the decades before her death. Whenever she visited her hands were busy, usually leaving a small pile of origami doves on the table.
In the recent “Bouquets to Art” show at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, Ikebana artist Yoko Tahara, assisted by Nora Dowley and Beth Ross, designed the above tribute to Asawa’s wire sculptures.
(And another, by Soho Ikebana Art Studio, Soho Sakai, Riji; Neuza Lake, Veronica Leung & Dorcas Walton, assistants. Author photo)
Today’s news is an overdose of wars and politics, protests and suffering that can color the heart gray. But I have these photos on my bulletin board.
WHEN THE FULL MOON POSITIONS ITSELF JUST SO FOR A PHOTO OP
(Photo by Lisa Schilbe)
I am a hopeless moon freak. Friends and relations are used to finding moon shots in their Instagram feeds or on Facebook pages. Usually they are taken at 3 AM from my west window:
(Author photo)
Through the trees when I’m walking the nighttime streets . . .
(Author photo)
Or occasionally looking east from the rooftop of my building when the rising moon’s temptation is great:
(Author photo)
But a recent full moon directly across from my south-facing balcony offered a prizewinner: the urban sky over St Mary’s Cathedral. I whipped out my trusty cellphone and was pleased with this one –
(Author photo)
That is, until I spotted the shot at the top of this mini-essay showing the same moon over the same cathedral taken by my friend Lisa Schilbe. She posted it on Facebook with this advice: Pause. Take a breath. Enjoy the beauty.
THERE’S ALWAYS BEAUTY IN THE SKIES, SEEN FROM THE ROOFTOP
“Get as far away from lights as possible . . .”
Still, I so wanted to see the Northern Lights, and there were reports that the rare spectacle was visible in San Francisco. So up to the roof of my building I went, about midnight.
If you squint, you can see a smidge of green through the fog above.
Mesmerized, I stared north. Possibly I just imagined it all, but for about ten minutes, while I watched in wonder, rosy wisps or shimmers of pale green floated briefly into view just above the urban horizon. Could that be the moon (just above the two-eyed building) or are my eyes seriously playing tricks on me?
I think it mattered not. The universe was simply doing its universal thing, throwing a solar storm of a party, everyone’s invited.
THE 2024 SEASON? A BUNCH OF CHALLENGES, A SPRIG OF HOPE
Cherry blossoms framing the Washington Monument (Author photo)
Springtime. Season of rebirth and renewal. Season of hope.
This year, in addition to the cherry blossoms and sunlit fountains and melting ice cream cones, Spring brought us a rare new gift.
(Author photo, taken just before dipping the toes)
(Author photo, taken hastily)
We got to watch the sun and moon do their planetary dance. It brought a reminder of one more possibility: reunity.
For a few minutes or a few hours on April 8, millions of Americans didn’t care what the politics, peculiarities or skin color of their neighbors happened to be. We all simply turned into specks inhabiting the same little planet in one vast universe.
Partial eclipse as seen from a San Francisco balcony (Author Photo)
Perhaps, some day, there will be a season of peace.
A REFLECTION ON BEING A WIDOW . . . WHO ONCE MARRIED A WIDOWER . . .
Google photo from several realtor sites
I had a tenuous relationship at best with the woman whose widower I happily married.
Judith Clancy was a hard act to follow. Before she died, of pancreatic cancer at just 56, she had been an artist’s model for Moses Soyer and other noted New York painters, briefly a ballet dancer, an illustrator for The New Yorker and for Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence and Toujours Provence. A celebrated artist in her own right, with exhibitions in San Francisco and Paris.
She was tall and glamorous, a gourmet cook, widely admired teacher and raconteur. Fluent in several languages. Mensa, forheavenssakes. What can I say?
My beloved Bud had been her beloved for nearly two decades and her caregiver throughout an agonizing two years of relentless cancer. He was also her sole survivor and artistic executor, and the man redefined loyalty. Judith (whom I never met in real life) and I were born the same year. Had she not died young, I would never have reconnected with my long-ago romance and enjoyed an extraordinary, life-changing 26-year marriage. You’d think I could have been gracious about it all.
I was not. Moving to San Francisco where I knew exactly one person and he was in-house, I resisted, with a tight smile, the urge to punch out the lovely new friends who barely (though warmly!) greeted me before launching into a story about “our dear Judith.”
Despite the fact that I got exactly the same amount of loyalty Bud steadfastly gave her — plus daily assurances that I was the most wonderful gorgeous extraordinary thing that had ever happened to him — I gritted my teeth at every “Judith-and-I” that slipped into conversations with dinner guests and random daily discourse. In short, I did not love my predecessor. But we managed to cohabit: Bud & I & the ghost of Judith Clancy.
In my defense, I eventually grew supportive to some teeny tiny degree. I threw parties for posthumous exhibitions of her work at galleries and museums. I pitched in with the monumental task of cataloguing her work. I sought out (and came to love) the two nieces who had been her only, and distant kin. At one point I read through stacks of her sketchbook/diaries before they were exhibited at the Fine Arts Museums of SF and became part of their archives. It was both enlightening and therapeutic; I learned she had been human after all.
After more than a decade of tumultuous coexistence Judith and I reached a sort of peace. It followed several intense conversations at the oak-shaded gravesite where I would later spread half of our husband’s ashes. The book I wrote about it all remains unpublished, though I did have a story or two about the marrying-a-widower thing in national magazines.
The time arrived, some years ago, that we needed to sell the lovely old Victorian that Bud had bought before their marriage, and resettle in a senior-living condo. Whether all three of us would make the move was an open question.
Downszing was not easy: four floors of wall-to-wall art and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves had to be condensed into 1600 square feet. You’ve heard those horror stories? They are true. I wound up with shingles.
But our new apartment, filled with the familiar art and books and Stuff, quickly felt like home. Interestingly, though a few of her drawings are on the new walls and copies of her books made the move, I didn’t feel Judith had followed me into this new home.
Then — a week or so after Bud and I had resettled — more or less — into the new place I had an early morning phone call from my former across-the-street neighbor.
“You need to call your realtor,” she said. “Last night we noticed that all the lights in the house were on. It looks like they still are.”
I called my realtor. She had not yet put a lockbox on the door. She hadn’t been to the house in over a week. The last of the ‘staging’ contractors had long since finished up and moved on. I drove back to the house.
Every light was blazing. Those early-20th-century homes featured single bulbs in closets, and a few stray lights in weird spots like basement corners. They were all on. Two ceiling fixtures I would’ve sworn had long since burned out were proudly aglow.
I made my way carefully from the basement to the top floor and back down the stairs, my fingers tracing the carved wooden banister railings one last time. Sunlight now was streaming through the stained-glass panels that framed the sturdy front door, lending a warm familiarity to the transitioning interior.
Slowly I flipped the last switch, and closed the door of the stately old Victorian. Behind me I thought I heard a whispered goodbye.
# # #
Thanks to Medium writer Double Rainbow for the inspiration for this remembrance
