A Little Getaway

 At Paul’s Memorial, Bob had a long conversation with a long lost “pseudo-cousin”.  Maryann is the granddaughter of the Mrs. Johnson, the woman who looked after Bob’s Grandpa Stokstad for many years.  She and her whole family were like his family.  MaryAnn had Grandpa Stokstad’s Chinese Bible and wondered if Bob wanted it.  He decided after some thought he did want it.  So a time was arranged to go down to Salinas where she lives to get the Bible.  And so our trip began to take shape.  If I went, I didn’t want to do it in one day (too much highway for me) so we thought it would be nice to go to Monterey and spend the night then go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium the next morning.  I contacted Andy and Susan, friends from my teaching days at College Prep who we hadn’t seen for years and years, to join us for dinner since they now live in Pacific Grove.  They invited us to stay with them which we accepted but only if we could take them out to dinner.  That morphed into to taking them out to breakfast.  Then I contacted Nikki and Mark who live just south Almaden on a farm where I stayed when I was first a minister and arranged a visit.  So our trip was planned.  

It was the first long trip for our Toots, our new Tesla.  Bob had the car on the “self-driving mode” which made me very nervous on the way down to Salinas.  I didn’t fully trust the software to be safe.  But the car did a good job and we arrived just in time for lunch.  Maryann had all her Grandpa Chris (as she called Grandpa Stokstad) out.  She and her husband Rey showed us around and shared about their lives over homemade tortilla soup and sandwiches.  It was a warm and cozy time.  It was important to her especially that she and Bob connect.  And now Bob has a Bible written in Chinese that his Grandpa used in China when he was a Missionary there.  

We left around 2:30, with Bob showing off how the car drives itself once it knows where it is going.  We got to Pacific Grove in around a half hour and drove directly to the charging station where we “topped off” the charge in Toots.  We got to Andy and Susan’s house soon after and after warm greetings, we went on a walk on the Asilomar-Pebble Beach beach.  It was a low tide and the wet beach was so very beautiful in the golden light of the approaching sunset.  Annie and her friend CoCo, their dog and their renter’s dog, are best friends and amused us with the racing around and digging in the sand.  Back at the beautiful light-filled home, we enjoyed wine and cheese and good conversation.  It seemed like we had seen them just last month instead of so many years ago as we told stories about our families and our adventures.  Susan made a delicious dinner and the conversation continued.  In the morning, she treated us to glasses of fresh orange juice before we drove along the scenic coast road to Cannery Row where we went into the fanciest hotel in the area to have breakfast.  It was our pleasure to take them to breakfast.

And then we headed into the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  We enjoyed the Aquarium very much perhaps because it wasn’t crowded.  We’re Charter Members and have enjoyed going there for 40 years!  I wore my “nudibrach” shirt I got for Christmas and it was especially appreciated by all the docents who told me how much they liked my shirt.   I enjoyed the fantastic exhibits seeing sea pens, octopi, sheepshead fish, Moon jellies, penguins and of course nudibrachs.  After seeing enough, we headed north to Schillingsburg Road in San Jose to see Nikki and Mark.  We send Christmas cards every year but haven’t seen each other for many years.  We sat outside by her barn and she brought out all the chickens and the two goats who enjoyed roaming the barnyard as we chatted and had tea.  There’s nothing like the comfortable conversation among friends while eating chocolate cupcakes in the sunshine.  Mark showed Bob his workshop and the large collection of what looked to me as junk but were his treasures.  After a wonderful time there we said fond farewells with promises to see each other more often and hit the road.

We left 30 minutes too late in my opinion and had a 2 1/2 hour trip home in the afternoon traffic.  The car did a great job of driving us.  I felt safer on this part of the trip as Toots merged in and out changing lanes in the traffic.  It is amazing to me how the car can drive itself.  Bob sat there with his hands on his knees the whole time, ready to grab the steering wheel if he needed to, but only did so a couple of times.  He said for him it was a relief to have the car drive itself and us back up to Berkeley.  I think maybe this will be safer for us in the long run.  It was a perfect 36 hours away that seemed like a week.  We were refreshed and tired after the trip but heart warmed with the memories of seeing old friends.  

One Rock at a Time

The other morning nearly 9 tons of moss rock was delivered to our house.  Each ton is in a round wire form sitting on a wooden palate.  It’s for our garden project in the west facing garden.  I’ve always thought of that space as “the back forty.”  We’ve had attempts to tame it from its natural wildness over the years.  First, Arne built four raised beds.  I planted boysenberries in one of them.  Two were planted with flowers over the years.  My attempts to tame the sloped part were thwarted over and over by gophers.  Hence, I called that part of our yard “the gopher barrens.”  We tried again about 5 years ago to seriously tame the wilderness in our back yard.  We hired a fellow who had worked down the street for a neighbor.  Together we made a simple sketch for two large beds framed in by big 6” x 6’ pressured treated wood all stacked together and then they were filled with new soil.  I planted vegetables in one of them.  With all that  soil, everything  thrived.  In the rest I planted Salvias of all sizes and shapes.  I didn’t really know what I was doing so I put in some plants that grew way too big.  After 5 years, both beds were terribly overgrown.  

And then Ozzie came into our lives.  He works for a friend of Bob’s and we asked if he could do some work for us.  As we toured my gardens, I was very impressed by his knowledge and respect of the plants.  He’s not a chop and blow gardener.  So I hired him to clean up three grossly overgrown vines:  a Roger’s Red grape vine that had taken over the front fence after 30 years; a jasmine that had overwhelmed the upper south side garden and a most vigorous trumpet vine that covered the southwest fence in the back garden.  In three days, he and his two workers completely cut back the vines.  Inspired by his excellent work, I began to dream of my back garden being improved.  We sat with Ozzie at our dining room table and dreamed what could be.

Ozzie made a couple of simple plans.  Naively, I think, I decided with him on a plan.  I truly had no idea how much work was involved.  With trepidation because I hate to spend money, especially on myself, I set a limit of cost at $25,000.  And we began.  After the New Year, Miguel-Angel and Chris came and began.  They spent two weeks transplanting all the plants in the raised beds and large west facing beds and cleaning up the yard.  They broke down the raised beds, the irrigation system and assorted junk.  It took the first two weeks.  Then they began to dig out the dirt in the part of the yard nearest the house.  It took two of them 8 days to dig out 9 inches of the dirt and take it up the hill in a wheelbarrow.  So much hard back breaking work.  I had no idea.  We all got discouraged.  And we hadn’t seen very much of Ozzie.  What was happening? Then together with Ozzie they began to put in the forms of the new garden and paths.  The curving lines are very pleasing.  The whole area was covered with hardware cloth to prevent gopher incursions under the area.  Slowly Bob and I have gotten used to the slow pace of this hard work.  

Then Bob and I went to American Soil and Rock down by the Bay to pick out the gravel we want to cover the paths.  It was like going to a salad bar with little metal tubs of all the kinds of gravel and sand available.  Prices are by the cubic yard.  Luckily, we liked the modest cost gravel nicely named Tuscan Gold round.  When I think of all those rocks, I remember the way they will be used is one rock at a time,  like in life, one thing at a time.   It’s such a lot of work but I am excited to see it coming into form and can’t wait to invite my friends over to see the new garden and have tea sitting there.  I am looking forward to its completion, I hope in another month.    

Remember What Hate Can Do!

 Yesterday morning at the Botanical Garden tending my propagation section, Janine walked by.  We often get into a conversation with the other volunteers and horticulturists which is one of the most fun parts of doing this volunteering.  She asked how I was, “Fine today,” I answered and asked her how she was doing?  She answered, “Not so well today.”  So what’s up, I wondered. And she told me how this very morning, her two undocumented Mexican house cleaners told her what is happening now in their community.   They both had come to the US across the deserts where snakes and coyotes and cactuses threatened them.  They told her that now ICE agents are working hard in the East Bay.  They are getting on buses and then arresting immigrants there.  They are driving up to Home Depot’s and taking the guys in their cars like they are offering a job but instead arresting them.  They are even going to schools where mothers come to walk their children home.  There, in front of the children, they are arresting the undocumented mothers and fathers.  Janine said that the TERROR that is felt by the whole community is intolerable.  It is so hard that some immigrants are going back home (just what Trump wanted) just because they can’t deal with the fear and terror of being apprehended and humiliated as they are sent back home.  What is so horrible is the way these arrests are being made with little or no respect for the humanity of the immigrants.  They are bullied and humiliated and taken away in cuffs and chains.  I was horrified and like Janine I feel there is nothing I can do.  

Last night on the BBC news and PBS news, I learned yesterday was 80th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.  On a trip to Krakow many years ago, I visited Auschwitz where 1.1 million human beings were murdered there including 275,000 children.  I felt the evil still staining the soil and buildings there. I have been told of the terror that Jews felt in Europe after Hitler began going after them and sending them to extermination camps by my dear friend Sharona who has told me about her family, many of whom we killed in the Holocaust.  She has letters from that time.  Some like her mother who was sent to the camp yet survived.  As I watched the memorials today in Europe, I couldn’t help but wonder what we are doing here.  The terror, no doubt, is similar even though the immigrants aren’t being sent to extermination camps.  The hate that is being acted out here is similar and chilling.  Can we not have mercy as Episcopal Bishop Budde asked Trump?  We must remember the evil that hate and fear can lead to and never ever let it happen again.  

A Strange Confluence

 Monday has a strange confluence, the celebration on the same day of two very different events:  Martin Luther King Jr National holiday and Trump’s Inauguration.  The two men couldn’t be more different yet both evoke very strong feelings among their supporters and their detractors.  Martin Luther King Jr was a black preacher, working his whole life working for racial and economic justice for all people.  He is honored for using non-violent methods and is remembered as a moral leader calling our nation to accountability.  He wasn’t a perfect man but to me he is a hero living his calling from God, believing there is good is all people.  He was a charismatic orator and the most important leader in the civil rights struggles of the 1960’s.  And he was assassinated, shot down by a racist man who hated what King stood for.  His memory is a force for good, calling us to be better human beings, caring for those who need help, working for justice for all people.  

Trump, on the other hand, is a force for evil. And now Trump has been inaugurated as President of the United States for the second time.  He has lived his whole life cheating everyone he dealt with and spouting more lies than could be counted.  As a narcissist par excellence, he has lived for his own pleasure and power serving only himself.  Everyone who comes close to him becomes tainted and eventually is thrown aside to the trash heap.  As a white entertainer and failed businessman, he learned how to manipulate people, using fear, threats and lies while promoting himself as the only one who can fix all our problems.  He sows chaos everywhere he goes.  He stands against every value I hold.   Today is a face-off of the forces of light and good against the dark forces of evil. 

I have deeply dreaded this day since he won the election.  I won’t watch tv or read anything about him.  I guess I’m in a state of protective denial.  It fills me with deep sadness and existential terror.  Still, I refuse to let this horrible man and his actions change who I am.  I refuse to have my inner light dimmed by a sense of hopelessness and fear of him and his actions.  As a minister, I have been trying for years to stop hating him so much.  I haven’t made much progress and that somehow that makes me hate him more.  Yet I still believe there is good in all people and that the God I know loves all people, even DT or the Orange Man as my sister calls him.  We don’t know what is going to happen in the next four years.  I fear it won’t be good.  It will be especially bad for the vulnerable, for those people who need help and for those people living in poverty.  It feels very important that I stand true to what I believe, true to my values.  It is a challenge and so easy to make a wrong political move.  In these highly politicized times, everything is political from what we eat to what car we drive.  We have received push back from friends, family and neighbors for buying a Tesla.  How could you support the enemy, people say to me?  One neighbor told me I had stepped over a line and now I was going to have to live with that for the rest of my life.   Maybe we did.  It is so complicated and hard to know what to do and how to stand against Trump and his cronies.  I pray that in the days ahead, I will be able to stand firm against actions that go against what I believe and not be passive or corrupted.  Here in my own life, close to home, I want to stand strong for what I believe taking one day at a time.  Together with friends, family and neighbors we will grow stronger, taking care of each other and being a force for good in our world.  

Firestorms in LA

 This last week, the horrific fires in Los Angeles have made me very shaky and very very sad.  The Eaton fire is close to where I grew up and not that far from CalTech where Bob went to Grad School.  I have deep roots in the LA area.  My Grandmother Mama Rolfe’s father founded the first bank in Pasadena.  She was born and grew up in early Pasadena.  My mother’s father, Papa Joe, and my dad’s grandfather, Daddy Ben, worked together to bring electricity to Los Angeles.  My mother was born in Los Angeles, as I was.  My father was raised there.  No doubt now, if there ever was any, that climate change is here.  I can’t write words that adequately describe the armeggedon burning up the City of Angels.  One NYT columnist compared it with Pompeii.  Who ever heard of Santa Ana winds and fires in January?   It’s the rainy season.  But an enormous high pressure system came to sit over the mountains east of the Southland and hurricane force winds blew and blew.  One experienced fire fighter said to a news person, “ It was like being in a hurricane with the winds blowing so hard, 100 mph, except instead of rain, it was fire and burning embers pouring down on us.” The  embers were wildly blown from house to house igniting them and distant areas.  The water ran out.  The helicopters and airplanes couldn’t fly to dump water and retardant on the fire because of the fierce winds.  

I feel so badly for the thousand of people who lost their homes, for those under mandatory evacuation who’ve been displaced and others, who had to leave their homes because there was no electricity.  And the smoky air filled with toxic fumes has filled the LA Basin making being outside impossible.  I don’t know very many people in the LA area anymore but those I do know are ok and have not lost their homes.  Miriam, my sister in law, who lives in N. Hollywood said that she had no electricity for three days and has her suitcase packed in case she has to evacuate.  The other day she went down to the courtyard of her apartment building and found a group of people boiling water over a barbecue.  They offered her a cup of hot instant coffee.  Nothing had tasted that good in a long time.  In little and big ways people are reaching out to help each other and those who have lost everything.  Miriam said that the helping agencies told people to stop bringing clothes and food, they are overwhelmed and money is what is needed.  The firefighters are the real heroes of this conflagration.  They are still working, together with firefighters from the rest of the state, from other states and even from Canada and Mexico.  It’s not over yet, the winds are expected to continue until at least Wednesday.  As I lit my gas stove this morning, I thought about how a single flame like the match I held or a buried ember could ignite such a big fire.  So much is not yet known:  how the fires started, how much property is lost, what the insurance costs will be for everyone in California, if we can even get it or what the cost of all this loss is, in terms of dollars and untold human suffering.  

                                

Finding Joy

On Sunday January 5th,  I attended at Berkeley Community Chorus Concert in Hertz Hall on the Cal campus.  A friend sings in this chorus so I like to go when I can to support her.  The chorus is huge, perhaps 130-140 singers and anyone who wants to join can without even an audition though I hear there’s now a waiting list.  I invited my friend Marta to join me as the program looked particularly good.  We agreed to meet outside the entrance at 2:30 for the 3:00 performance.  No tickets are needed any more, one just comes and donates in the red boxes all around the lobby.  My friend in the chorus texted me on Sunday morning to get there early to get a good seat because the previous two performances had been SRO.  When I got to Hertz Hall at 2:00, there was a huge crowd gathered already and formed a line that went around the plaza and past the University building nearby. No Marta.  They opened the doors and the huge crowd filed in.  Still no Marta.  At 2:30, she came.  She had gotten lost on the campus.  We went in and found the place totally filled.  The ushers said to look for single seats.  Marta spotted a couple of empty seats in the middle.  We lucked out.  I’d not heard a crowd so excited in a long time.  The place was vibrating with excitement and anticipation.  Word had gotten out this was a concert not to miss.

When the Chorus filed out, the chatter stopped and the hall grew quiet.  The orchestra began and with the first notes played by the wonderful organ, my eyes filled with tears of joy and sadness.  Joy for the music and sadness because it was so poignant a goodbye for our friend Richard who had recently died.  How he would have loved this Berkeley performance!  The music was beautiful, amazing.  The big sound surrounded me and filled me.  I do love the Faune Requium.  Next, with very few changes in the orchestra, the four vocal soloists walked out, then the conductor and the pianist and the conductor raised his baton and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy began with the pianist bursting forth the theme of the piece.  It was fantastic.  The orchestra and piano played back and forth.  The conductor danced as he directed the music.  I could watch his feet by looking under the piano. He was incredibly energetic and so was the piece.  I wondered if the Chorus could match this.  When, their part came at the end, I was not disappointed.  I was astonished that this big chorus could be so very together, so very joyful and just really knock me over with their music.  I was crying again from the very power of the music.  So much joy!   And as I remember this joy, I realize that hearing this joyful music is an act of political resistance.  To be so inspired with joyful music, so powerfully positive reminds me of what is truly important.  After riotous cheering after the performance, the pianist came out at least four times and at the end, he played a Gershwin encore.  It was truly a gift as is our life and the joy we experience in it.

A week later walking in the hills of Berkeley, I struck up a conversation with a friendly woman sweeping her stairs and we eventually realized we’d both been at that concert.  The joy had not diminished for either of us.  It’s there inside me inspired to life again by hearing such an amazing concert!!!

New Year’s Ruminations

 January 1st, 2025.  A New Year has dawned and for the first time ever, I look ahead with fear and trepidation.  All around me, so many people I know are also saying they are concerned and afraid for what might come in this coming year.  Waking up early to see the Rose Parade on TV, I learned of the terrible truck attack on pedestrians on Bourbon Street in the City of Joy, New Orleans.  Fifteen people were mowed down and killed and so many others injured in this intentional act of terror.  It’s not just Trump and his politics dominating the news and the country that bring fear, it’s the crush of overpopulation, it’s my concern climate change overwhelming vulnerable areas like coral reefs and rain forests, it’s the extinction of plants and animals.  I mourn the inevitable change and the lack of will of strong countries to look ahead for the long term, not just to the next election cycle.  

January 2nd.  With my big concern over the future, I wanted to come up with some ways to stay positive, countering the negative events that I fear will come.  A list of 10 questions from Time Magazine came up on my phone.  I list them here for you to consider:

1.  What brought me joy last year?  What took it away?

2.  Which relationships felt nurturing and which depleted me?

3. Did I get enough rest?

4.  What should I say no to?  What would I like to say yes to?

5.  What positive qualities did I notice in myself in 2024?

6.  What am I most proud of and grateful for in 2024?

7.  How can I make peace with last year’s problems?

8.  Are my goals specific and attainable?

9.  Am I being kind to myself?

10.  What would I do in 2025 if I weren’t afraid?