Pablo Picasso
Here in Berkeley while I am waiting for “the clouds” to pass, I have made a few new friends. This has been possible without visiting bars because my new friends are birds. I’ve gotten to know them by putting out treats on the top railing of my deck. I don’t do this just to be nice — there is plenty to eat year-round in Berkeley’s moderate climate. I do it for a little entertainment and hoping to learn something. Continue reading
Dark Cake, Wayne Thiebaud
Somebody has been compared to Marie Antoinette recently for announcing she would remodel the White House Rose Garden during a national crisis. And that reminds me of cakes….
Except for San Francisco, my current hometown of Berkeley is probably the northern hemisphere’s coldest place on July mornings. The wet fog crawls through the Golden Gate and finds a convenient resting place in the Berkeley hills. Three miles south, Oakland is sunny and warm.
Photo of an exhibit at the Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA.
Last month in Mexico, my friend, Pepe, who has four kids, lost his job when his gringo employers decided to abruptly leave Mexico. Closer to home, two of my nieces are working from home with toddlers who insist on acting as personal assistants. We all have stories like this, some tender, some tragic.
My own story changed on March 14 when I boarded one of the last flights out of Morocco a few days after my sisters told me, wisely and somewhat *emphatically*, to come home. If a global crisis hadn’t intervened, I would be in Portugal walking the Camino de Santiago after two months in Central Asia and the Middle East, before heading to who-knows-where.
Starry Night Over the Rhone, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888. Musee d’Orsay, Paris, France.
We can always count on music to enrich us and connect us to each other, no matter who we are or where we are from. Some songs are especially good at making us feel better, no matter how we are feeling. Here are a few favorites from my very long list. They bring up different moods and they are all mixed up, so don’t expect any kind of emotional theme or evolution. And please share some of your own!
Lake Merritt, Oakland, California
I used to think the title of the Beatles’ song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” meant Lucy was taking diamonds into the sky. But now I think it means Lucy is going into a sky that already has diamonds. I changed my mind about this after I realized why the air in my Bay Area home feels different. It has sparkles in it! The natural beauty here is covered in a light that our proximity to the ocean makes glittery.
Camino Milagro 