Seventeen years ago I launched this blog which I had been publishing as a newspaper column. For now it’s time to close the curtain on Sparsely Sage & Timely. In the past two to three months, a bout of Parkinson’s disease has substantially crippled me. My lack of balance when standing and walking pretty much confines me to one floor at home. I can’t drive, and just the walk down to where we park cars is so exhausting I rarely leave home.
I’m increasingly forgetful re basic matters. Just last week I had to tell my youngest stepdaughter that for the moment I couldn’t remember how many times I’ve been married. (Her mother in Guatemala was my fourth wife.) Lynn, my fifth wife, and I are about to start our fourteenth year together.
I knew nothing about Parkinson’s disease until I was diagnosed. Here’s how Google defines it: “Parkinson’s disease is a brain disorder that causes unintended or uncontrollable movements, such as shaking, stiffness, and difficulty with balance and coordination. Symptoms usually begin gradually and worsen over time. As the disease progresses, people may have difficulty walking and talking.”
However I’ve just started a course of a dopamine-producing medicine. Parkinson’s is associated with lower dopamine production in the brain, so I’m hoping the new med will be as effective as it’s been described by optimists and medical personnel.
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For the second time in a row a posting is really late coming online. This time the problem was with Safari plus a myriad of troubles upgrading the operating system in my computer. My wife Lynn spent several hours on the phone for four days this past week, talking with computer techies to straighten it all out. This posting was actually written last week.
It’s been a week of surprising observations. I was downtown a week ago ago when I thought I spotted my wife Lynn’s parked car. I walked over to it and was about to open the passenger’s door when I realized the woman inside was not Lynn. Moreover, the woman had her skirt raised above her waist and was adjusting the crotch of her panties. When I subsequently told Lynn, who was parked nearby, what my mistake had revealed, she sarcastically quipped, “Well, at least your timing was good.”
Lynn herself made a fascinating observation this week. She spotted a bobcat walking toward a doe in the field downhill from Mitchell cabin.
To Lynn’s surprise, the deer didn’t flee. Instead, the doe rose on her hind legs facing the bobcat and kicked at it with her front feet. The bobcat lumbered off.
We see several deer around Mitchell cabin every day, but bobcats only occasionally. This one, however, left a calling card: a small pile of scat by our front steps.
Lynn and I scatter birdseed morning and evening on our front deck’s railings and benches.
The birds enthusiastically consume most of the seed, but inevitably leave a bit behind.
Roof rats just as inevitably show up to finish off the leftovers. Here four rats gobble down what the birds left behind.
When rats show up before all the birds have left, the two manage to get along fairly well.
They’re called “roof rats” because the species likes to hang out near the tops of buildings. Our roof rats never get higher than the basement, and we’ve killed off those that got that far.
However, they also crawl inside Lynn’s car where they’ve gnawned through wiring and even gnawed their way into her glove compartment where they chew on road maps and other papers. In an effort to keeps them out of the car she sprays peppermint oil around their entry points. To some degree that helps, but it leaves the car smelling like a candy bar.
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“It was the best of times; it was the worstof times,” wrote Charles Dickens in ATale of Two Cities. He could have been describing my past week. On the good side…
I’m now in my 80th year. Wednesday was my 79th birthday, and my wife Lynn arranged for a birthday party at Rancho Nicasio. What fun!
From left: Maddy Sobel, Austin King, the birthday boy and Lynn. (Photo by Kathy Runnion)
Our lunch was held on a deck under sunny skies, and our food, which ranged from fish and chips to bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches, was tasty and plentiful.
The next day would be Thanksgiving, and Lynn would be roasting a turkey, so Lynn and I invited Austin to join us. Austin, who had been living in Point Reyes Station, has now found an attractive apartment in Larkspur. However, since he doesn’t have a car, we suggested he spend the night at Mitchell cabin.
Which he did, along with his loveable dog Gypsy. I’ve seen few dogs more obedient to their master than Gypsy is to Austin. His command, “Stop Gypsy! Come here!” was usually enough to get her to turn around and return to him, even when she was starting to chase deer or raccoons.
Austin and Gypsy on the deck at Mitchell cabin.
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But then came Friday. Lynn and I drove Austin and Gypsy back to Larkspur. After admiring his new apartment, we headed home. Within five minutes, I was driving through San Anselmo where we decided to stop for coffee.
Finding a parking spot on a narrow street was difficult. When we did, Lynn got out to give me directions into it. Unfortunately there was a utility pole immediately next to the curb, and the right-side mirror of my Lexus clipped the pole. With my mangled mirror hanging down, I attempted to drive forward and stop, but my foot missed the brake pedal and hit the accelerator.
The resulting debacle shocked me. My car shot across the narrow street and slammed into an unoccupied parked car. The parked car suffered a badly dented left side behind the driver’s door but remained driveable. My car was not, for my left front tire was pushed back against its wheel well.
Nor would the debacles end there. After a taxi brought Lynn and me home, I felt mighty glum, so I decided to try cheering myself up with an ice cream sandwich.
Unfortunately when I took a bite out of the sandwich, I heard a dull pop. Feeling something hard in my mouth, I spit out two front teeth.
Could anything else go wrong that day, I worried until I fell asleep.
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Birthday lunch. Maddy Sobel of Point Reyes Station (standing) took my wife Lynn and me out for lunch at the Station House Cafe Tuesday to celebrate my 78th birthday.
Because of Covid restrictions, the cafe’s only seating was outdoors in the garden, which was attractive but chilly enough to warrant my wearing a hood while eating.
Now in my 79th year, I’m enjoying myself but have problems walking and remembering things. In short, I am definitely slowing down.
When I was born on Nov. 23, 1943, the US was about halfway through our involvement in World War II. My parents and I were living in the Marina District of San Francisco, and though I was too young to understand what I was seeing, my parents later told of freight trains chugging past the Marina Green carrying tanks and other military vehicles to ships heading off for the war in the Pacific.
The one thing I do remember of the war was the Japanese surrender on Sept. 2, 1945. China had been our ally against Japan, and the surrender prompted a massive celebration in Chinatown. Hearing about it, my mother loaded great aunt Amy and me into our family’s Pontiac and drove across town so we could see it first hand. The merriment no doubt was exciting, but as a two year old, I found it terrifying. Firecrackers were exploding everywhere, and as we headed up Grant Avenue, they started raining down on our car from overhead balconies. The traffic was so heavy, mom couldn’t immediately drive away, and for the next couple of years, loud noises — even from kids’ cap guns — frightened me.
Merely growing up in the United States has meant my lifetime’s been filled with warfare: World War II (1941-45); the Korean War (1950-53); the Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian Wars (1956-75); two wars in Iraq (1990-91 and 2014-17); and the Afghan War (2001-present). I never fought in any of these wars, but I did witness a couple of others. In 1984, while working as a reporter for The San Francisco Examiner, I was sent to Central America to cover the wars then being fought in El Salvador and Guatemala. All this left me with a sense that the world is never going to be peaceful, at least not in my lifetime.
Just keeping happy is enough for me these days. I spend afternoons carrying armloads of firewood into the living room and spend evenings sitting by the fireplace, smoking, listening to jazz from an earlier era, and chatting with Lynn when she’s not in the bedroom watching British murder mysteries on the TV. Keep calm and carry on, she says.
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A Cal Fire helicopter on Thursday crosses Inverness Ridge to drop water on a containment line for the Woodward Fire in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Smoke from back-burns rises through the forest.
The Woodward Fire, which was started by a lightning strike Aug. 18, was 85 percent contained by this evening after having grown to more than 4,800 acres. Part of the containment has included setting back-burns along Limantour Road. Full containment is expected by Tuesday.
Smoke from the fire has at times made the air in much of West Marin unhealthy, and smoke from hot spots may last for months, the Park Service has warned.
Vidas Negras Importan
The Black Lives Matter movement is sometimes getting overshadowed by the chaos at just a very few of the hundreds of protests around the country. In these isolated cases, looters and vandals have taken advantage of there being crowds in downtown areas. On at least one occasion, however, a covert white supremacist damaged property during a protest to discredit the protesters. Despite all this, only 7 percent of all the protests nationwide have had such problems, The Washington Post reported this past week.
In an effort to refocus public attention on what the movement is really all about stopping the unwarranted killing of Black people by overly aggressive police officers in several cities, I came up with a sign in Spanish. Its intent is to show that criticism of the killings transcends the Black and Anglo Saxon communities.
Maddy Sobel, who often sell jams and jellies in front of the Point Reyes Station post office, is also an artist, and she illustrated one of my signs. Her thought is that if I make some copies of her illustration, she can give them to kids to color with crayons. Sounds good to me. I gave another copy to Toby’s Coffee Bar, and you can see it displayed there without illustration.
Bumping elbows but not shaking hands. From left: Phil Jennings, yours truly, and Gordon Jones
Before the pandemic and sheltering in place, I went to the No Name Bar in Sausalito to listen to live jazz every Friday night. Sunday afternoon, two friends from the No Name dropped by for an outdoor visit. I gave them both copies of the sign, and Jones was so enthusiastic he said he may have it imprinted on t-shirts.
My own family’s efforts to get justice for Black people date from before the Civil War. My great-grandfather Luke Parsons was a member of John Brown’s Army but did not take part in the debacle at Harper’s Ferry. Instead he went on to command a Union Army company of Native Americans fighting in the Oklahoma Territory.
My late father was a Republican who supported the NAACP. I formally joined the movement in the spring of 1968 while I was teaching high school in Leesburg, Florida. At the time, Willis V. McCall was the sheriff of Lake County, Florida, where Leesburg is located. He had come to be called the worst sheriff in the US and in private bragged he’d “killed more n-ggers” than any other man.
When McCall came up for reelection in 1968, a well-regarded Leesburg police officer ran against him, and I signed up to canvass voters in Black neighborhoods for the challenger. Unfortunately, McCall again won but was defeated four years later after yet another cruelty: a mentally impaired Black man was kicked to death in the Lake County jail.
Civil rights activist Julian Bond (center) in 1970 with members of an Upper Iowa University group, the Brotherhood, who had invited him to speak on campus. While he was studying at Morehouse College in the early 1960s, Bond had established the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a.k.a. SNCC (pronounced “Snick”).
In the fall of 1968 I began teaching English and journalism at Upper Iowa University and the next semester became a faculty advisor to the new Black student union. As the group explained in a flyer: “The Brotherhood was founded and chartered in February 1969. It is an organized group open to anyone interested in furthering their knowledge of Black culture…
“Under the able leadership of our past president, Rick Weber, and the helpful assistance of our advisors, Mr. Mitchell and Mr. [Robert] Schenck, the Brotherhood has enriched campus life by promoting various social functions, such as the annual Black Night.” Besides that variety show, the Brotherhood has sponsored “an inter-racial forum, and a play, A Raisin in the Sun. Our biggest accomplishment was, of course, acquisition of a Black Cultural House.”
Half a century later, I still recall advising the Brotherhood as one of my most informative experiences.
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I turned 76 today, and my portrait is now hanging in a place of honor, just outside the restroom door in Sausalito’s No Name Bar. The drawing was done without my knowledge by a prolific artist, Georgina Stout, apparently while I was sitting on the back patio where folks go to smoke, but what a kick.
The Michael Aragon Quartet performing at the No Name.
Drummer Michael Aragon, the bandleader, has had the Friday Night gig at the bar for 36 years. Sax player Rob Roth has played with him for 25 of them. Keyboardist KC Filson and bass player Pierre Archain have been with him for the past 10. Alas, Michael, 75, will retire after this coming Friday’s performance.
At the No Name. (From left): my wife Lynn, poet Paul LeClerc of Sausalito, and Inverness architect Jon Fernandez wait for the music to start.
Jon Fernandez and I, sometimes accompanied by Lynn, drive from Point Reyes Station to Sausalito and back every Friday for the music, as regular readers of this blog know. Last night, Aragon ushered in my birthday an hour early by having the band perform Happy Birthday to You.
That was almost as much of an honor as having my picture hanging opposite the restroom door. Lynn says that’s actually a good location. There’s only one restroom for customers, so lines can be long, and people will have plenty of time to look over the portrait, she says. I fear, however, that anyone recognizing me from the picture will immediately be reminded of having a full bladder.
By the way, writer Paul Liberatore had an excellent piece about Aragon in Friday’s Marin Independent Journal (click here). Among jazz aficionados, his drumming is legendary.
I’ve noticed that when friends my age get together, the conversation often becomes an organ recital: “I’m seeing the doctor Monday about problems with my eye….” Or, “My foot’s been bothering me, so I’ll probably have to have it examined….” Or, “I hear aging also affects our memories, but I can’t remember how.”
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PG&E vs. LSD. Overheard outside the Point Reyes Station post office during the blackout a week ago, one Sonoma County evacuee grimly commenting to another: “Reality is like acid! It’s intense!”
At Mitchell cabin, thankfully, the absurdity was far more gentle. In time, we got used to leaving a candle burning in the bathroom all evening. (For safety, we placed it in a corner of the acrylic shower stall.) We briefly stopped using the woodstove because of a red-flag alert and couldn’t use our large, electric space heater. I therefore had to turn our propane furnace on for the first time in 15 years.
All that, just because of earlier wildfires elsewhere, which the President says are all state government’s fault.
President Trump expressed his contempt for California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a tweet, “Get your act together, Governor.” The President claims that California’s failure to “rake” its forests has been causing its wildfires, and now says he’s going to withhold emergency wildfire aid from the state.
The President holds Russian President Vladimir Putin in higher regard, calling him “smart,” and saying that Putin “has done an amazing job.” So four months ago he offered Russia aid in its battle against wildfires in Siberia. Putin hasn’t yet decided whether the aid is needed. No wonder House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month observed, “All roads seem to lead to Putin with the President.
Lynn with our cornucopia. The decoration is a harvest-season tradition in Mitchell cabin. Having worked for several days on the Point Reyes Disaster Council’s response to the blackout, she’s now hoping to get some rest and forget about the disaster in Washington.
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On a normal evening, this is how Mitchell cabin’s sitting area, dining area, and kitchen look. A journalism student once described the scene as a collection of “mismatched furniture.”
But for three evenings this week, here is how it looked as seen from the other end of the room (thanks to an oil lamp and 11 candles) as a result of PG&E’s turning off power to West Marin, along with many other communities. It was a precaution against high winds that might knock down power lines and spark wildfires in this dry weather.
Although most of West Marin was spared unusually high winds, the blackout cost Mitchell cabin not only its lights but also its water pressure. During the blackout, water coming from our faucets was barely more than a trickle. The cabin’s elevation is close to that of the North Marin Water District tanks on Tank Road in Point Reyes Station. As a result, gravity alone doesn’t provide much of a flow in our household water system, so we rely on an electric pressure pump to have strong streams of water in faucets, hoses, and in the shower.
Nor were showers much of an option during the blackout for any townsperson with an electric hot water heater. With the power back, I finally got to take a shower this morning. If the blackout had gone on for too many more days, Point Reyes Station might have developed a stinky population.
As I write at 6 p.m. Wednesday, power is still off in parts of Dillon Beach, Fairfax, Kentfield, Marshall, Mill Valley, Muir Beach, San Anselmo, Sausalito, Stinson Beach, and Tomales, the Marin Sheriff’s Office has reported. Better wear a face mask when you visit folks there.
But even before the blackout began life here was seeming strange. I looked up from my living-room chair a few evenings ago and was startled to see this damsel outside peering in the window.
Once I thought about it, however, the explanation was obvious. I was seeing a reflection from part of a plant holder hanging inside near the window.
Canada geese heading west to Drakes Estero for the night one evening last week. I get to see them most evenings if I listen for their honking around sunset.
Memories of spring: a kestrel on the railing of our deck.
Dealing with the blackout has been tiring, so I’ll stop here and take a snooze. Goodnight. I’ll sleep tight. And I won’t have any bedbugs bite; after all, Mitchell cabin is not a Trump hotel.
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Holding my step-granddaughter Cristina in Toby’s Coffee Bar. Last week was the first time we’d met, and we quickly hit it off.
My nuclear family (back row): Kristeli Zappa, Shaili Zappa, and Anika Pinelo with her two daughters, Lucia and Cristina; (front row): my wife Lynn and me. The young ladies all showed up last week for an end-of-summer visit.
Despite five marriages, I’ve never sired any children of my own; however, my fourth wife, a Guatemalan named Ana Carolina Monterroso, arrived with three daughters in tow. Although our marriage ended after a few months, I have remained close with those three stepdaughters. At least one of them visits me almost every year.
Kristeli, 30, Shaili, 26, and Anika, 32, all have dual US-Guatemalan citizenship since their natural father is an American. Shaili works for a finance company in Mexico City. Kristeli lives in New York, where she’s a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) providing mental-health therapy. Anika lives in Minnesota and before becoming a mother worked for a manufacturer that periodically sent her to South America to sell tanks. Those tanks, by the way, were not military but rather industrial vats.
My step-granddaughters, Cristina (four months) and Lucia (two years) turned out to be delightful young ladies.
I still have many of my childhood storybooks, and while she was here, Anika accepted them as gifts for her daughters. Although she can read only a few words, Lucia (at left) has already developed a fascination with books.
All three stepdaughters have led adventurous lives. Kristeli studied in France and then Taiwan before getting her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in New York. Shaili studied for several months in Kenya before graduating from the University of Minnesota. Anika, who also graduated from the University of Minnesota, took up skydiving before giving birth to two children.
At the kitchen door after dark.
Also getting together here last week were two other families; a mother raccoon and a mother skunk, both showed up with their kits. The skunks muscled in on the raccoons’ clumps of kibble, but they didn’t spray, and neither creature seemed afraid of the other.
Shaili leaned out a window to photograph them although she naturally worried about getting sprayed. She wasn’t, and the whole end-of-summer visit had a most pleasant air to it.
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Separated mother and kit find each other after a day apart.
Two or three families of raccoons show up on our deck each evening, hoping we’ll reward them with some kibble, which we usually do. The families range in size, and the kit seen here with its mother is one of four siblings.
Last Sunday around 6:30 a.m., Lynn heard a kit’s usual gurgling calls sounding more like screeches. This was a bit past the time raccoons begin heading to their dens unless they’re still searching for a last bit of food. Lynn watched the kit for a while as it circled Mitchell cabin, calling for its mother and sniffing the deck where the family had been the night before. The call became increasingly shrill and prolonged as early morning turned into bright day. At some point, Lynn took pity on the kit and set out water and sliced grapes. The kit soon popped out from its temporary shelter in the dark under our lower deck and gobbled up the grapes. Then came more circling and calls until the tired youngster went silent under the lower deck for more than an hour.
Around sunset Sunday, Lynn noticed the kit was on the upper deck peering out between the rail posts. Shortly thereafter, the mother showed up. After they thoroughly sniffed each other to confirm identities, the kit became increasingly excited, even crawling under the mother and trying to suckle. She not only nursed it but gave her little one a good overall licking as it stretched out underneath her. The kit’s suckling may have been as much for emotional reattachment as milk, for it’s probably close to fully weaned.
Blue Fish Cove Resort at Clear Lake consists of a cluster of cottages on the shore of the lake. I first discovered this well-worn gem of a resort back in the 1990s while researching an article for The Coastal Traveler, which was then a supplement of The Point Reyes Light. What I found were unpretentious rooms looking out into glorious scenery, so when Lynn and I a few weeks ago started discussing our taking a short trip, Blue Fish Cove immediately came to mind.
Our cottage came with a cozy deck where I could escape the 100-degree weather thanks to cooling breezes off the water.
The view from our deck as well as from the decks of several other cottages was so beguiling we briefly discussed staying an extra day. We didn’t, but Blue Fish Cove is only a 2+ hour drive from Point Reyes Station, so we’ll probably go back again before long.
In its joy at having its mother back, a kit nuzzles her, and she returns the affection.
Wednesday night after we had returned to Mitchell cabin, Lynn anxiously watched to see if the traumatized kit and its mother were still together. Yes, they were! In fact all four tiny kits were on hand. It was the perfect ending to our trip.
