So Much Rain

I’m not the only person that likes to talk about the weather!  That’s why there are two, not one but two weathermen on the ABC evening news.  We’ve been having serious weather events here in N. California this winter.  Bob’s friends has recorded 42 inches of rain not far from us in Berkeley, this winter, since December!  Tuesday we experienced the twelfth atmospheric river of rain.  It was an angry serious storm here that resulted in our power being out for nearly 24 hours and intermittent Internet for several days.  The wind gusts blew the trees out the window parallel to the ground!  It felt like hurricane wind gusts. There were 70 miles per hour winds recorded throughout the Bay Area.  Driving down the hill on Marin Avenue yesterday, street signs were bent over.  I am depressed about how slowly our propagated plants are growing at the Garden.  They look like peak-ed little sprouts just barely holding on.  I know the climatologists told us this could happen.  But now it is happening here.  The whole state is soggy.  

 

A Day to Celebrate

 Yesterday was a day of celebration for me.  Early in the morning, my co-interim interim pastor and I met with a small sub-group from the church council that had been given the task to come up with compensation for the work we have been and are doing at the church.  This came about because we wrote a strong letter to the church council saying that we needed to be paid for the work we’ve been doing leading worship, preaching and generally being ministers at the church since the former pastor left at the end of January.  For me, it was the first time in my life, I’ve demanded to be paid for what I am worth.  Happily the council agreed to pay us a generous amount (for a church) and retroactively!  I rejoice that at 81 I finally stood up for myself instead of meekly taking what was offered to me.  I took my friend Sharona out to dinner to celebrate!  We raised our mugs of rice tea high and clicked them at the Japanese restaurant.  Then we went to CPS, the school where I taught so many years ago.  I hardly recognized the place.  It has gotten very fancy, clearly an up-scale school.  We went to see her grandson in the school’s spring musical, “The Pirates of Penzance.”   The music was loud, the musical fast paced and I could hardly understand a word the students were saying, but the energy of the students hasn’t changed.  In fact, I kept seeing students who reminded me of one’s I taught.  But many years have passed.  One of the best actors was a daughter of a former student of mine.  I remembered how Erik and Paul were in musicals when they attended the school and what big deals it was for them to do that.  I was a fun night out.  I’m happy to still be learning to do things right, especially at my age.

Astounding Greatness

 Somehow, it still astounds me when I go to a museum or to a musical performance and they are world class experiences.  Sunday afternoon, we went to such a performance at the Lake Temescal boathouse.  Audrey Vardanega on the Steinway with Tanya Tompkins on cello was a truly dynamic duo.  The program of Chopin and Schumann was inspired by the featured art of Celia Liberace, a friend of Audrey’s from New York City.  The event was intimate, very classy with this amazing music.  

Earlier in the week, my brother’s widow, Miriam came for a 4 day visit.  Thursday we went to SFMOMA to see the Joan Brown exhibit.  We met our friend’s Al and Zina and Zina’s dad Zac there.  I’d never heard of Joan Brown.  She was a local artist, even a member of Zina’s open water swim club and a contemporary of ours.  The exhibit was large with probably a hundred of her paintings gathered from all over and displayed in decades of her work.  I liked her art.  It was big and bold with bright colors.  Miriam and I enjoyed seeing the dogs and cats in popping up in nearly each of her paintings.  Afterward we’d seen it all, we went to an Israeli restaurant nearby.  It was clean, with good reasonably priced food and not crowded.  A perfect place. 

Two Cups of Tea

 Yesterday morning I went to the Botanical Garden to do my propagation work.  It was cold, really cold, about 40 degrees.  We agreed to come in at 9:30, later than usual on the hope it would warm up a bit.  Around 10, Lew, the Director of the Garden came by to chat, as he often does.  We agreed it was really cold and we chatted about Erik’s latest article in Science (it was about plants and Lew was a Botany Prof at Cal for years and years) and about how the cold affected the plants.  A bit later, he appeared with a cardboard box with a carafe full of boiling water, some paper cups and tea bags.  We could hardly believe it, the Director brought us a cup of tea on a freezing cold morning.  It made my day, this gift of kindness.  

Later in the day, I went for a walk with my friend Sharona.  We haven’t walked much in the last six months as she’s been suffering from extreme muscle pain.  It has finally eased.  We walked three miles through her neighborhood.  And best, we ended at her house and had a cup of tea.  It is one of my favorite things to do.  She has really big ceramic mugs and always has a cookie or two and with tea in hand, we sit and chat about what’s going on, what we’ve read, what we’ve been thinking and doing.  Our friendship is a treasure and goes back 43 years since we met teaching at CPS.  A cup of tea with an old friend is a special pleasure.

Two cups of tea, each one so special are what make me very glad to be