Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Title, We Don't Need No Steenkin' Titles......

Well, at least tonight we don't, as I cannot think of one. Funny, I notice that as always I did too long a 'title' for my blog, so that it shows up on my dashboard page as "Through a Tall Wind" -- not a bad title for SF at least. The wind is often so bad in our wind-tunnel of a driveway that small people have a problem getting into the yard. At any rate, neither the rather long title I did for my blog, nor the above 'lack of' is as long as one I did for a poem recently, it was around 8-10 lines long...about a silly woman who said she was switching her vote to McCain (from Hillary) because he was a 'feminist' -- she could tell because after all, he had chosen a 'woman' as his VP! (or perhaps because he dropped a wife who was no longer beautiful and married a pretty young one with money?) That's even worse than the Russian woman who told me she was voting for McCain because "THEY (ye gods, I thought that kind of talk had gone out of our country looong ago) are all stoopid." So, I said in return, "Gee, did you graduate Harvard with a magna cum laude? If not, don't bother talking to me again." Be that as it may (a favorite expression of Jessie's):

For me it is still Tuesday ("Tuuesday, dear, NOT Toosday"), so, let me see, day before yesterday (Sunday, as I could simply have said) I had a great day. Went with Pat Jones (no relation to Uncle Collie, kids, but she's from England, and with a name like Jones, obviously another Welsh type) to the Yerba Buena Gardens Theatre/Music Festival, which was a day of fun out in the sun, dominated by big time acts like Beach Blanket Babylon, but also had room for some very interesting little theatre groups and solo acts, some of whom will be seen at the Fringe Festival, which I do plan to try to attend.

Actually, I may even work up an act myself for next year's Fringe. That should shut some of the people who keep asking when I am going to 'be in something' up for a bit at least. If I do, I will have Pat and Elvira appearing with me...they have said they would love to, and I must ask Collie if he would like to dance in as the waiter in what I plan to call, "My Dinner With Peggy" (or should I call it "My Dinner With Pat?") We, Elvira and I, got hysterical talking about it...well, we also had a few laughs about her calling the jello she had made and then hidden behind a bunch of stuff, so that I had neglected to eat it, 'yello' and then saying gelatin quite properly. Interesting, I wonder if all Hispanic people say 'y' for 'j'.....but can say the 'j' sound when it is spelled with "g' as in 'gelatin?' Pat was after me on what accents I can do as we walked the MILES it takes to get through the Metreon to the outside doors. "Can you do Cockney?" (I can even do the rhyming Cockney, 'so oi tikes the apples 'n pears to 'er sea shore...') "Can you do French? ('Ah, mais oui, ah am gooing to 'eight street to z' baak-ary...'), etc. See, I can even write in accents. I have lots of people to study...my darling little El-vee-ra (NOT El-vi-ra, please!) for S.&Central America (they do NOT have 'Spanish' accents, as they do NOT lispe), my Parisian friend Michele (NEVER Michelle for a woman, she says), and of course, I can do Russians beautifully.....my building is full of them. I do the little martinet who lives on the second floor best....the one who prances into our manager's office and says, "Yuuh, I need mon come my a-pat-munt, NOW!" Isabelle: "I am busy talking to someone else at the moment...and I don't have 'mon' here today. What do you need?" Martinet: "I need shen-da-leerr poot up NOW, bot rrooms!" Isabelle: Well, sorry, but as I said, I am busy talking to someone else, and my MAN won't be back until tomorrow. I'll write up a request and he'll get up to see you when he has finished all the other jobs written up for him. Martinet stomps out and she turns to me and says, "He may get the damned chandeliers put up some time after next Christmas if he's lucky!!" I love having him come down to see her, as I am often there to hear all the dialogue, which I will use in an act someday. Friends who have heard my stories about him and another Russian I see often have begged me to go to a comedy club and do them....I'm considering it. As I have said often, everything is grist for my mill, particularly lovely accents. I even have a native SF one that always ends with, "Thank you for sharing that with me....." The 'native' S.F. person doesn't really have an accent, but most are so sweet and kind...I love them.

Now I got off track again, where was I? Ah, yes, the perfect Sunday....Pat and I walked through ALL of the Metreon building and out onto Mission, where she went over to Market St and I went across Fourth to the Mission bus stop and sat down next to a charming Russian lady who told me we had JUST missed the bus, so we sat and chatted a bit, and a very attractive lady sat down on my left. She was just coming from the Theatre Festival also, and was from Bombay...she had wanted to stay to see the rest of the performances her daughter, who lives here, didn't want to see, so she sent them off and said she'd take the bus home. Now the three of us chatted about SF, about the Festival, about ourselves and had a jolly time waiting for the Mission bus. We all were going to almost the same spot, so I pulled out my card (and lost my change purse...damn!) and gave it to her, so she would have my email address. She went me one better, and seeing how close to her daughter I lived, said she would call me when her husband goes back to India and come and see me. She is staying on for a month after he leaves.....he has to get back to work. So now I have a lovely friend from Bombay, and will undoubtedly meet her daughter and family, who live a couple of blocks from me.

I LOVE San Francisco -- where else does everyone talk to everyone else.....at theatres during the intermission, at the symphony before a performance, on the bus....and the cab drivers are the most fascinating characters anywhere. They are from all over the world and darling. I've gotten recipes from Brazilian drivers, been sung to by an Italian one, and the Venezuealan (sp?) driver who drove me to the Sunday Festival loved one of my poems I read to him, and when I told him I have three or four novels in my desk drawer, wanted to be my agent....I had a hard time getting out of the cab, he wanted to finish our conversation. I told him I'd see him at the cab barn, as I have an idea for a book about cab drivers in SF, and he insisted that the next time I called for a cab to ask for him. What a day.....and what a great city I have come 'home' to, for this has been my Spiritual Home ever since Ned started telling me about it when I was around sixteen years old. I never could understand why my kids don't feel exactly as I do about it, particularly when Whitney spent her fifth birthday here, and even got to 'help the drivers turn a cable car around.' She walked between two of them, pushing the car at the turn-around, yelling, "Look at me, mommy -- I'm helping," while they chuckled at her pleasure. Such a funny, darling child! And Mark spent part of his fifth year here, running into the water with Joe Bullock at Ocean Beach, and riding on his shoulders in the park during the 'summer of love.' Mark didn't want to leave -- he had Jenny and Joe to entertain him -- and neither did I. I should have stayed, sent for my money and bought a house, as I wanted to. Shoulda, coulda, woulda means nothing..... perhaps that is the weird break in the life-line of my LEFT hand. The lifeline on my right hand goes on forever up around my thumb--God! I am another 'Mama' without the miserable temper. She'd have lived forever had it not been for that blod clot they didn't catch in time which killed her at 100. I have a better doctor (the best dr. in SF, Liz is!) so who knows!!! However, I find I am suddenly getting the stigmata on right hand that I used to get when I was a kid and the left hand itches miserably in the same spot...terrible! If anyone thinks this will get me back to church....think again!! Oh, well, maybe a short visit to Father Mickey in the old Mission across the street will help. Naw, he'd just laugh at me and tell me about how the graveyard our building was built on was for the pagan Indians and the Episcopalians. (I love that man, he reminds me of the dear priest we had at school, Father Pauley who was a nut like Mickey.)

So, fun and weirdness aside.....life is pretty great! And it is definitely TIME for BED! 'Nite all, it is way, way past tomorrow.....Ah, well................

Friday, July 24, 2009

Saving our History

I found a very interesting article in the New York Times (I'm late reading everything) about plans of the last admin that have been scotched by the present one, THANK GOODNESS, as we thank so many of the changes that have been made lately. This one about the Grand Canyon & surroundings:

Ban Set on Mining Claims Adjacent to Grand Canyon
By FELICITY BARRINGER Published: BY NYTIMES, July 20, 2009

In a modest victory for environmentalists, the Obama administration said Monday that it was designating nearly one million acres of Arizona land near the Grand Canyon off limits to new uranium mining claims for two years.

In a statement, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was acting “to ensure we are developing our nation’s resources in a way that protects local communities, treasured landscapes and our watersheds.”

Environmental groups like the nonprofit Grand Canyon Trust in Flagstaff, Ariz., have argued that extensive mining operations could contaminate the watershed around the canyon, particularly streams that flow directly into the canyon or into the Colorado River.

Last year the House Natural Resources Committee voted to put the acreage off limits to new mining claims. But the Bush administration disputed the committee’s authority and said it would continue to leave the lands open to new claims.

Mr. Salazar’s decision will not block development of mines whose claims have already been validated.

Some of the 10,600 existing claims within the acreage could thus end up as mining operations if the ore can be profitably extracted. Many of the current claims were filed when the price of uranium soared in 2006 and 2007.

In 2007 the price reached $130 a pound; today uranium is selling for about $50 a pound. From 2005 through 2008, about 3,000 new mining claims were filed in areas near the Grand Canyon.

New mining claims will be barred in three sections of land: one to the north of the canyon, stretching near the Utah border; another bordering a Navajo reservation and Vermilion Cliffs National Monument; and a third south of the canyon in the Kaibab National Forest.

Roger Clark, a land-use expert with the Grand Canyon Trust, called Monday’s decision “a good first step” and said he hoped the moratorium would become permanent. That is the goal of legislation pending in Congress called the Grand Canyon Protection Act.

A House subcommittee hearing on the bill is scheduled on Tuesday.

Mr. Clark also called on the government to take a second look at the environmental reviews that justify existing claims, some of which he said were years out of date.

Ron F. Hochstein, the president of the Denison Mines Corporation, a Canadian company that is about to start three mining operations in the excluded areas, said the decision would have no immediate practical effect on its operations. “We are planning to move forward,” Mr. Hochstein said.

He said the impact of the decision on the mining industry was “more psychological,” reinforcing what he called “an absolutely incorrect impression” of the environmental impact of uranium mining.

Board Approves Drilling Leases

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A federal appeals board has cleared the way for oil and gas drilling around prehistoric ruins in southern Utah.

Rejecting an appeal filed by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Interior Board of Land Appeals ruled that the federal Bureau of Land Management had taken appropriate safeguards in granting leases in 2006 for drilling in the Monticello area.

The area is near crumbling cliff houses, eroded pit houses and cave sites with prehistoric storage boxes made of stone slabs.

WE MUST ALL GO TO TEMPLE TOMORROW AND CHURCH ON SUNDAY TO BLESS THE ADMINISTRATION THAT HAS ENOUGH SENSE TO SAVE OUR TREASURES, AND NOT GIVE THEM AWAY TO THE AVARICIOUS, ROTTEN, ALREADY TOO WEALTHY OF OUR COUNTRY. (Also to pray AGAINST the drillers.) WHAT IF MCCAIN HAD WON????? THERE GO THE NATIVE-AMERICAN RUINS...WHO NEEDS THEM? CERTAINLY NOT CINDY.....McC or their whole crew.

And, speaking of avariciousness, has everyone heard the latest on the 'Octomom?' She's (of course) going to be on a reality show on TV, with separate salaries for each of the fourteen kids she has birthed. Lordy -- I almost died having two! No one could have paid me enough to have three or four, let alone FOURTEEN! MADNESS!

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Exhaustion creepeth in w/the cold......

Yikes, yikes and double yikes......first I couldn't find this 'page'....I seem to spend half my life getting into the wrong place online...and getting myself on strange 'pages' that don't have much to do with me, and failing to use the 'right password'.....and getting lost reading all the fascinating stuff online..... why this evening alone I learned that Gidget, the Taco Bell Chiuahuahua or however it is spelled... died today of a massive stroke at the tender age of 15. How can I get through the evening!!

My friend Connie Fillippelli (remember: all double consonants) (my spelling gets worse!) insisted that I go on Facebook and I have spent the better part of two days either trying to figure out what I am doing, or finding and writing to people I haven't seen or heard from in ages. I guess all the notes got through....although I am still looking desperately for Mildred Schmertz or any of the Schmertzes and cannot seem to find Ginger Wiles anywhere! Are you out there in the atmosphere? I have one friend who is everywhere, is adorable one minute and despises me the next...STOP that! I don't think he reads this tripe though, although he blogs, boy, does he blog.

I am exhausted....partly because of all the people crushing in on me so suddenly...and all the info doing much the same.......and also because we of my poetry group had our big reading in Yerba Buena Gardens...with quite a large crowd in the audience in spite of the fact that it was COLD, WINDY and rather miserable.....first time that has happened in a long, loooong time. We are usually too warm. I had three in the audience cheering me on....dare I say, well, at least three, as the applause was quite good as I finished reading my silly 'nursery rhymes.' Someday perhaps I shall be allowed to read something serious.....maybe in August when we read again in the Yerba Gardens Festival. Wow, Facebook is as exhausting as reading one's poetry.

We went to a Mexican restaurant after the reading, in spite of one large vote against, and all had not only good lunches, but also a good time. Gina, the gal who made the documentary movie i was in, managed to come and came over to lunch with us also. She and Nancy are old, old friends....both look like teenagers....so unfair! I talked about the 'sex film' back in a June post... well we got the DVDs of the film, and I was surprised.....I didn't look that Terrible! I should figure some way to put it online......no, I don't think so.....children can read this! But it was fun, and not too bad. Pat Jones of my poetry group, and I went to see the 'screening' of all the films, and this was one of the better ones. The others were all G rated, of course....things like boats in the SF harbour, and cable car bell ringers, with no mention of s*x. There were only two 'stars' in our film.....an Ooooooold man and me. And the way he talked, he isn't really getting much. Oh, I am so mean! I have been having so much fun lately....and most of it from listening to friends who have a LOT to say....and laughing and joking with my friends.....particularly my "San Francisco Family'....the TODCO Poets, whom I love dearly, one and all. Thank you NANCY!

Somehow, bedtime is getting earlier and earlier. I used to sit up until 2...or 3.....or even more (what is that song?), yet here I am yawning and wiping my eyes....the droopy "Cartwright" left eyelid is making it hard for me to see.....golly, K had the same problem....I miss him too. So, Daddy with the droopy left eyelid....and Jessie, whom I am suddenly beginning to resemble, and K, wherever you are......goodnight, I shall dream of you....and perhaps have a nice conversation that I can relay here next time...........ah, well......... (one never knows, do one....Fats Waller)

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Utter Confusion.....

I think I am losing it. First, I did something that screwed up my gmail page...well, gmail no longer shows up on my Firefox start page....and Firefox unfortunately gave me THE LATEST...which just screws me up further. Now I have to sign out to get back to where I was every time I do some foolish thing like enlarging a photo.....there is no longer a 'back' button up in the left hand corner of my 'page'...only an arrow in a circle, an X, and a house.....none of which will let me go BACK. Oh, good lord....am I going to have to shut myself away for a week and read all the stuff about Firefox and Mozilla and even Google and gmail? It was all so easy before they started upgrading me all the time....I don't want to be upgraded......I just want to do all the nice simple things like hitting an arrow facing left and going BACK. I finally caught on to the menu bar where they show me where I am and discovered how to hit that to get rid of a page....but it doesn't show anything for when I do something like enlarge a photo.....or a couple of other things....so I have to go out of the damned program and start all over again. It was very annoying when I was online writing to friends and had to do all that....disappearing for quite a time with everyone wondering what happened to me. Well, I didn't tell them....let them thing what they will. Now I MUST go to bed.....I'm a Mac person, we don't like to read manuals....Ah, well......

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Nic Kristof's wisdom...

Well, folksies, one of my favorite NYTimes op-ed guys wrote something recently that explains a lot of things, so I felt I would add it here. See if it applies to you, y'all......now before you all start yelling, "Not to me, it doesn't..." think about it. When it comes to snakes, I know it applies to me.

New York Times - Op-Ed Columnist
When Our Brains Short-Circuit By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF July 1, 2009

Our political system sometimes produces such skewed results that it’s difficult not to blame bloviating politicians. But maybe the deeper problem lies in our brains.

Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert for snakes and enemies with clubs, but we aren’t well prepared to respond to dangers that require forethought.

If you come across a garter snake, nearly all of your brain will light up with activity as you process the “threat.” Yet if somebody tells you that carbon emissions will eventually destroy Earth as we know it, only the small part of the brain that focuses on the future — a portion of the prefrontal cortex — will glimmer.

“We humans do strange things, perhaps because vestiges of our ancient brain still guide us in the modern world,” notes Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon and author of a book on how our minds assess risks.

Consider America’s political response to these two recent challenges:

1. President Obama proposes moving some inmates from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to supermax prisons from which no one has ever escaped. This is the “enemy with club” threat that we have evolved to be alert to, so Democrats and Republicans alike erupt in outrage and kill the plan.

2. The climate warms, ice sheets melt and seas rise. The House scrounges a narrow majority to pass a feeble cap-and-trade system, but Senate passage is uncertain. The issue is complex, full of trade-offs and more cerebral than visceral — and so it doesn’t activate our warning systems.

“What’s important is the threats that were dominant in our evolutionary history,” notes Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University. In contrast, he says, the kinds of dangers that are most serious today — such as climate change — sneak in under the brain’s radar.

Professor Gilbert argues that the threats that get our attention tend to have four features. First, they are personalized and intentional. The human brain is highly evolved for social behavior (“that’s why we see faces in clouds, not clouds in faces,” says Mr. Gilbert), and, like gazelles, we are instinctively and obsessively on the lookout for predators and enemies.

Second, we respond to threats that we deem disgusting or immoral — characteristics more associated with sex, betrayal or spoiled food than with atmospheric chemistry.

“That’s why people are incensed about flag burning, or about what kind of sex people have in private, even though that doesn’t really affect the rest of us,” Professor Gilbert said. “Yet where we have a real threat to our well-being, like global warming, it doesn’t ring alarm bells.”

Third, threats get our attention when they are imminent, while our brain circuitry is often cavalier about the future. That’s why we are so bad at saving for retirement. Economists tear their hair out at a puzzlingly irrational behavior called hyperbolic discounting: people’s preference for money now rather than much larger payments later.

For example, in studies, most Americans prefer $50 now to $100 in six months, even though that represents a 100 percent return.

Fourth, we’re far more sensitive to changes that are instantaneous than those that are gradual. We yawn at a slow melting of the glaciers, while if they shrank overnight we might take to the streets.

In short, we’re brilliantly programmed to act on the risks that confronted us in the Pleistocene Age. We’re less adept with 21st-century challenges.

At the University of Virginia, Professor Jonathan Haidt shows his Psychology 101 students how evolution has prepared us to fear some things: He asks how many students would be afraid to stand within 10 feet of a friend carrying a pet boa constrictor. Many hands go up, although almost none of the students have been bitten by a snake.

“The objects of our phobias, and the things that are actually dangerous to us, are almost unrelated in the modern world, but they were related in our ancient environment,” Mr. Haidt said. “We have no ‘preparedness’ to fear a gradual rise in the Earth’s temperature.”

This short-circuitry in our brains explains many of our policy priorities. We Americans spend nearly $700 billion a year on the military and less than $3 billion on the F.D.A., even though food-poisoning kills more Americans than foreign armies and terrorists. We’re just lucky we don’t have a cabinet-level Department of Snake Extermination.

Still, all is not lost, particularly if we understand and acknowledge our neurological shortcomings — and try to compensate with rational analysis. When we work at it, we are indeed capable of foresight: If we can floss today to prevent tooth decay in later years, then perhaps we can also drive less to save the planet. Thank you, Nic!!.....P.C.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

So Much More to Learn...

Well, I did learn ONE more thing about following a blog, and managed to do it. But the blogger found me somehow on Twitter (there's another thing to learn about!). I must and will learn how to do all these things, otherwise how can I criticize the old Russians in my building who will not learn how to speak English. Genya says it's because they are too old -- and they are all younger than I. Just because they look older is no excuse. I know people have read this, my blog...but I have NO followers, in spite of the fact that I have urged them to 'follow.' Even Whitney, my own child does not 'follow' me....but then, when did she ever? (I didn't mean it Whit |-}. That's me making a mean smile with eyes scrunched up.) I think I shall go back to (grin), I'm not real good at cute. Pardon me while I take a very large foot pill.

To get back to the person who made the Twitter contact...he is a local jazz musician and I loved his blog on Suzuki and the teaching of music to children. I do wish my kidlets (grandchildren) were taking some kind of music lessons. There are no 'natural' musicians in my family, or in my daughter-in-laws, but I get the feeling that Bella (the right brained one) might just like having some kind of music lessons. I wanted so to learn to play the piano, but Jessie wouldn't let me, as I couldn't raise my ring fingers alone (Jessie, the classical pianist...I take it back, she WAS a musician, although she could NOT sing...we all sing off-key.) Jess stuck me with trying desperately to learn to play the violin...I was TERRIBLE. I have two lovely poems, one about the violin disaster and one about that darling Arlo Guthrie. I will try to find them and put them on here. They explain a lot. God this is rambling....I seem to have wandered off point again...I am becoming my mother.

So....after I checked into Twitter, gladly 'followed' the sax player, I went on to read his blog about the musical children, then on to a jazz musician in London and a photo of a man with a bass sax, which reminded me of Ernie Caseres (Caceres?) OK...remember I am old and I haven't seen or written his name in years! He played clarinet and any sax that no one else was playing...a very versatile musician, but it must have been difficult to carry all those cases to every gig. he was also such a cute little guy you wanted to hug him on sight. Sometimes I miss NYC and the whole Condon crowd...Muggsy, Pee Wee, Ed Hall, Hackett, crazy George Brunies, Big Sid Catlett, the best drummer of all times...all gone and some of the names are dropping out of my mind, sad to say, but I can hunt for the Condon CDs or dig out the LPs and listen. I still don't have anything with my favorite person on it...I miss old Red MacKenzie...after all, Ned Travis sent me to him to hear the others, and he was the one who introduced me to them. Then Smitty, Scrib and I hung out at Nicks and Julius' and breathed in the music, so it is still in there in my soul. Sometimes late at night I can still see and hear old Brunies up on the bar, waving his trombone around in the air....."You so ugly, you so ugly, you some ugly chile....now the clothes that you wear are not in style/ you look like an ape every time that you smile....yo' hair is nappy, who's yo' pappy...... you some ugly chile. None of them ever grew up...sometimes I wish I hadn't...maybe I didn't.


Am I blue....am I blue....ain't these tears in these eyes tellin' you?