A salamander to die for.

The weekend’s rains have led to the start of an annual migration across my fields. California newts have begun the long trek from the Giacomini family’s stockpond just east of my pasture to Tomasini Creek a third of a mile to the west.

Newts travel so slowly they’re easy to catch, but if you do, wash you’re hands afterward. This salamander’s skin secretes a neurotoxin, tetrodotoxin, that is “hundreds of times more toxic than cyanide,” Wikipedia reports. It’s the same toxin found in the internal organs of Puffer fish, the one that each year kills a few daring diners in Japan who eat incorrectly prepared chiri (puffer-fish soup) or sashimi fugo (raw puffer fish).

California newts, which are found mainly along the coast and in the Sierra, have a mating season that runs from December to May. For their aquatic courtship, adult newts return to the pool where they hatched. It’s an eye-nose-and-throat foreplay. After they swim in a mating dance, the San Diego Natural History Museum notes, “the male will mount the female and rub his chin over the female’s nose.”

Occasionally, several males try to mate with a female at once and end up in a ball, rolling around in the water. Although newts are amphibians, females have been known to suffocate in these orgies.

A guineafowl surprised motorists and pedestrians late Sunday afternoon by wandering around the south end of Point Reyes Station’s main street. When I first spotted the Helmeted guineafowl, it was pecking on the sidewalk and in the grass between the Coastal Marin Real Estate and West Marin Medical Center buildings.

The bird subsequently stopped traffic by standing on the main street for a while. It later paused to reconnoiter while in the middle of the intersection in front of Whale of a Deli. Intrigued by the non-native species, Highway 1 motorists patiently waited until the guineafowl decided which way to go next. One merchant tried to herd it (flock it?) off the roadway but was only temporarily successful.

Guineafowl “eat lice, worms, ants, spiders, weeds, ticks etc.,” Wikipedia notes, so having one roaming around town was probably all to the good.

The partridge-like bird is native to Africa, so I contacted Jack Long, who raises exotic fowl at Creekside Birds along the levee road not far away. From my photo, Jack was able to confirm the bird is indeed a guineafowl but said it does not belong to him. Jack noted I was the second person to ask whether it was his bird but added that he’d stopped raising guineafowl long ago because they’re so noisy (his birdcages are next to his house). Jack told me he doesn’t know of anyone in town now raising guineafowl.

Update as of Tuesday: Neighbor George Stamoulis told me yesterday that he’d just seen a guineafowl at Millerton Point. Neighbor Skip Shannon, a hunter and field-trial competitor, added that hunters sometimes use guineafowl in training their dogs although he doesn’t. And biologist Russell Ridge of Inverness Ridge (“no relation”) told me that anyone who hunts guineafowl better like dark meat.

A motorist turns around just before sunset Saturday upon discovering the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road barricaded at Highway 1. The road was closed all day after a car crash brought down powerlines.

Two power outages in and around Point Reyes Station blacked out the town for approximately an hour and a half Friday evening and caused chaos on the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road Saturday.

The first blackout began around 6:30 p.m. when PG&E shut off power to the town in order to repair a broken arm on a Third Street utility pole. The arm had been broken earlier in the day.

Before shutting the power off Friday, PG&E warned Point Reyes Station merchants, and nightspots such as the Old Western Saloon and the Station House Café remained open using candles and lanterns. Neighboring towns were not affected.

The second outage which blacked out only a few homes beside Nicasio Reservoir, resulted from a car crash around 1 a.m. Saturday. “Somebody knocked out a pole right at Graffiti Bridge,” Chuck Gompertz, who lives on nearby Laurel Canyon Road, told me. Gompertz said he learned from a neighbor that after the crash, the driver “jumped out of the car and ran away.” Point Reyes Station firefighters confirmed the driver had fled the scene.

When the car, a white Ford Bronco, broke the utility pole, powerlines fell across Platform Bridge (AKA Graffiti Bridge), forcing closure of both Platform Bridge Road and the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road.

Both remained closed Saturday morning and afternoon, with the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road barricaded at Highway 1 in Point Reyes Station and at Four Corners (the intersection with Nicasio Valley Road).

Saturday morning, “it was chaos, just chaos” at the unattended barricade at Four Corners, Gompertz said. “You have no idea how many people are heading to Point Reyes, Olema… on a Saturday morning.”

As it happened, a resident along the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road between Four Corners and Platform Bridge was having a party Saturday morning and asked another Nicasio resident, Pete Casartelli, to go down to the barricade and let guests through.

What Pete found, Gompertz said, was an endless stream of tourists frustrated and confused at finding their route to the coast blocked. Pete then took over directing traffic, added Gompertz, who temporarily joined him. “Pete was there for quite a while. He was wonderful.” Eventually Pete’s father-in-law, Spike Drady of the Nicasio Volunteer Fire Department, took over traffic control in his NVFD jacket. As a retired Highway Patrol officer, Spike knew the drill.

It seems that a fair number of coyotes are conducting their mating-season romances around Point Reyes Station this year. In the past three weeks, I’ve heard them howling almost every night right outside my cabin, typically with another coyote howling back. (This one along Limantour Road near the Sky Trailhead is the third coyote my houseguest Linda Petersen has recently seen and the second she has photographed.)

For some people, the influx of coyotes is bad news. Sheepmen, of course, hate the critters, and Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park three weeks ago wrote this blog that people had seen two coyotes grab a chicken in her neighborhood. Tony Ragona, owner of Windsong Cottage B&B on the north edge of Point Reyes Station, last week told me that the coyotes have taken to howling so loud and long outside his home that they sometimes keep him awake. When it goes on too long, Tony said, he shines a flashlight on them so they leave.

Paradoxically, the influx of coyotes is good news for birds that roost in scrub brush. Biologist Jules Evens of Point Reyes Station told me last week that when coyotes move in, the number of mesopredators goes down. By mesopredators, Jules said, he was referring locally to raccoons, opossums, skunks, and foxes. He might have added feral cats. In any case, they are all smaller predators that eat birds or birds’ eggs.

So what’s the connection with coyotes? Coyotes eat fox cubs, and they compete with foxes and cats for field rodents. In the main, however, coyotes reduce the number of mesopredators merely by their presence, Jules said. Foxes, raccoons, opossums, skunks etc. don’t like to be around coyotes and stay away from their territory.

Raccoons perform a pas de deux outside my dining room.

When the coyotes first started howling nightly three weeks ago, this hill’s performing raccoons stopped touring for a couple of days. By now, their traveling troupe has resumed making its rounds, but showtime is earlier in the evening, well before the coyotes start howling.

On more than a few mornings recently, there have been numerous freshly dug holes in my pasture. They are usually only two and three inches wide through grass and a short ways into the soil. Unable to figure out what critter was causing them, I asked Jules, who immediately knew the answer: “Wild turkeys.”

That made sense. This hill has recently seen an influx of not only coyotes but also wild turkeys. Notice the holes in the grass downhill from this flock. I’ve had 25 turkeys in my pasture at a time, and neighbor Carol Horick last week spotted more than 50 outside her home.

Another neighbor, George Stamoulis, today told me that in the last day or two, he had seen the first wild turkeys on his property.

But the sighting that George really relished was of a bobcat hunting outside his window last week. The bobcat soon tired of hunting, George said, and it lay down to take a nap, spending altogether an hour or more just outside his door.

Last week I read in The West Marin Citizen that at this time of year, female blacktail deer form “clans” while the males are “solitary.” Apparently, the word hasn’t reached this buck yet because in recent weeks, he’s been grazing with the fawns and females on my property. Or maybe he considers himself above the law of nature.

“O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible/ As a nose on a man’s face or a weathercock on a steeple!” Shakespeare

The cast of Winter Moon Fireside Tales (from left): Susan Santiago, Eileen Puppo, Christina Lucas, Marta Zanovollo, Norma Schliftman, Laura Alderdice (who is also musical director), and Nina Howard. The director (not pictured) is Tina Taylor of Inverness.

Winter Moon Fireside Tales has to be the most underrated dramatic performance Point Reyes Station has staged in years. The show that opened tonight, Saturday evening, in the Dance Palace was wonderful theater, but it drew an audience half as large as its cast. Four ticketholders!

What a missed opportunity to see a highly enjoyable musical production complete with fabulous storytelling. Puppeteer Norma Schliftman, the mother of Point Reyes Station physical therapist Amy Schliftman, is alone enough to make the show worth attending. Performing with a puppet on each hand, Schliftman masterfully sings a duet with herself of Wouldn’t It Be Loverly? from My Fair Lady.

The second performance will be this Sunday, Dec. 9, at 4 p.m., and I hope some of you Sunday-morning blog readers will try to see it. Bring a Spanish-speaking friend. Marta Zanovollo, a native of Argentina, tells her tale entirely in Spanish.

Framing the drama, seven actresses repeatedly fight their way through blizzards, warm themselves by the fire, and sing bridges between the tales. One of their songs is Rosemary Clooney’s 1951 hit Here Comes Suzy Snowflake, and the cast (with Christina Lucas featured as Suzy) does a great job with it.

Unfortunately, publicity for the show featured the song’s name rather than Winter Moon Fireside Tales, and apparently Here Comes Suzy Snowflake sounds so insipid for an evening of theater that people stayed away in droves on opening night.

Please do yourself and the Dance Palace Theatre Group a favor: see the second performance at 4 p.m. this Sunday of Winter Moon Fireside Tales and let your friends know the show is far more sophisticated that they might think from the publicity.

Epilogue: Sunday’s attendance was approximately 700 percent of Saturday’s. Sounds like word of Saturday’s fine performance was beginning to get around before curtain time.

The power of the word: A friend in Point Reyes Station called me Friday afternoon to ask if I’d heard the word going ’round town that there’d be striptease at the Old Western Saloon that night

Of course, it would be comic, and the women wouldn’t really take all their clothes off, he said, but it might be fun to see.

He was right in all respects. When I went downtown about 5 p.m. to check my mailbox, townspeople were talking about the upcoming act, and when the two of us went down to the Old Western around 9 p.m., the place was packed. There were lots of men, of course, but lots of women too.

The all-woman rock band Pink Sabbath with lead singer/guitarist Adrienne Pfieffer was playing, and not long after we arrived the “strippers” in clown costumes pranced onto the small dance floor in front of the band.

The two ecdystiasts, as predicted, did a comic bump-and-grind routine but kept a lot of epidermis hidden. The crowd in the Western loved it all the same. In the style of vaudeville, a male clown periodically wandered up to the women as they peeled, ogling them but getting a brushoff.

Because the act was so innocent, no one minded a couple of us photographing it. The photography, however, reminded me of the one time I was able to photograph an actual strip show in progress.

The occasion was a gala opening at the O’Farrell Theater for a comic sex film, The Grafenberg Spot. Former West Marin resident John Grissim wrote the screenplay, so I was on the guest list when the press was invited. During the event, which is described in Posting 12, the dancers and strippers performed as usual on various stages within the theater, and I, along with the rest of the press, was able to photograph their acts.

Of all the shots I took, however, the one I like best was not of someone performing but of three high-fashion women in the audience because of their expressions. I also like the position of the woman at left because she reminds me of Aunt Fritzi whose head leaning into the room, but never a depiction of her full body, was a mainstay of the old Nancy comic strip. I’ve dubbed the shot: Four Women at a Strip Show.

Striptease, of course, has been around in one form or another for millennia. My father, who came from a very proper Methodist family in Salina, Kansas, once admitted to me that in his youth almost a century ago now, he had seen a striptease act. As it happened, the circus came to town and hired local boys to pass out promotional fliers.

My dad and his cousin were distributing circus come-ons when his grandfather came upon them and took a look at the fliers. Seeing that they were promotions for a female “artiste,” grandfather took the two boys to see the show, figuring it was high time they learned a little more about life. It was the only time, as far as I know, that my father ever saw any striptease, and Dad never told me what thought of it.

My only clue to his possible reaction is a poem titled Adults Only, which was written by the respected American poet William Stafford (1914-1993):

“Animals own a fur world./ People own worlds that are variously, pleasingly bare./ And the way these worlds are once arrived for us kids with a jolt/ That night when the wild woman danced/ In the giant cage we found we were all in/ At the state fair.

“Better women exist, no doubt, than that one,/ And occasions more edifying, too, I suppose./ But we have to witness for ourselves what comes for us,/ Nor be distracted by barkers of irrelevant ware;/ And a pretty good world, I say, arrived that night/ When that woman came farming right out of her clothes, by God/ At the state fair.”

You’ve been a wonderful audience, and have a safe drive home!

Back in 2004 when West Marin Citizen editor Jim Kravets was news editor of The Point Reyes Light, he wrote in an editorial that The Light was “reluctantly” endorsing Carole Migden for the State Senate. “Voters,” he wrote, “like their legislators to be leaders, have good judgment, and act decisively… Carole Migden does all of this.”

However, Jim also noted, “voters would like their state senators to be approachable, receptive, or at least slow down as they drive past constituents. Carole Migden does none of the above.” This second observation has now turned out to be remarkably prescient.

Trinka Marris of Inverness Park (standing beside the state senator) heads the Save the White Deer campaign, and she invited many of us who also oppose the Point Reyes National Seashore’s slaughter of fallow and axis deer to come to her house last Saturday for a party to meet Migden.

Unfortunately, the majority of guests had little chance to spend much time discussing their concerns with Migden. Instead they mostly had to content themselves with listening to a loud, brash, sometimes-witty, and sometimes-abrasive performance by their state senator.

Addressing the party, State Senator Migden, who is openly lesbian, told the guests right off that she is also Jewish, from New York, and represents, along with Marin, “east San Francisco, the part you enjoy.” That part, she added, includes the Mission District and the Embarcadero but “not the Avenues” (the Sunset and Richmond districts). Coming from a legislator, her bluntness seemed both refreshing and gratuitous.

The local press was represented at the party by The Point Reyes Light, The West Marin Citizen, and this blog. Midgen playfully posed for pictures riding a rocking horse and later used a West Marin Citizen photo of this on her website — but said she didn’t want the stuff she was saying quoted in the press.

While she clearly didn’t mind being photographed, Migden (at left) said news articles too often make her look bad by getting her comments wrong or presenting them out of context. Whether press reports on Migden have been right or wrong, it is perfectly understandable why the state senator has been uncomfortable with them.

One reason The Light three years ago endorsed Migden only “reluctantly” was her behavior in October 2004 during a candidates’ debate with Republican opponent Andrew Felder. Sponsoring the debate was the San Rafael Chamber of Commerce. As San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross wrote at the time:

“It started when Migden’s staff asked that the debate schedule be reshuffled because she had to leave early. Organizers did so, only to have Migden show up late. When she finally did arrive, Migden stayed outside in the hall and sent word that she wouldn’t join the proceedings until Felder was done.

“Upon taking the stage, the ever-blunt Migden informed moderator Dick Spotswood that she had come a long way, so forget about the time limit on answers. The capper came at the end when she chose to ignore the extended hand of her opponent. Not once, but twice.

“The audience was just aghast,” said chamber president and CEO Elissa Gambastiani. “You could have heard a pin drop,” said Marin Association of Realtors vice president Edward Segal, a fellow Democrat and former press secretary for the notoriously gruff John Burton.

“‘Was she this arrogant in San Francisco?’ Gambastiani asked. To be honest, yes. Migden has long been known as hell on high heels. The New York native cut her teeth in the-rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco politics, then spent eight years as one of the most-aggressive liberal legislators in the state.”

As a motorist, Migden can likewise be hell on wheels. This past Aug. 10, the state senator pled no contest to reckless driving charges, stemming from a three-vehicle collision on Interstate 80 in Fairfield last May. The accident sent a Vallejo motorist’s three-year-old daughter to the hospital.

The day after Migden was fined $710 and put on two years’ probation, CBS 5 and the Associated Press reported that “State Senator Carole Migden [had] caused a panic among fellow drivers last May when she drove out of control in her state-issued SUV for 30 miles on Interstate 80, according to [just-then-released] 911 tapes.

“A series of callers between Berkeley and Fairfield, where Migden’s wild ride finally ended… described her as coming perilously close to hitting other vehicles, weaving back and forth across multiple lanes of traffic, and careening repeatedly off the center median barrier.

“One caller described motorists putting on their vehicles’ hazard lights in an apparent attempt to warn others away from Migden’s Toyota Highlander hybrid. Another caller feared she was drunk.” One woman thinking Migden’s car was being driven by a man, frantically told a 911 dispatcher, “He’s like, he’s been weaving in and out of lanes. He almost hit the back of our car, and then he sped up and almost hit another car. He’s driving real fast right now and, oh, my God, he’s about to hit another car.”

Another caller to 911 told the dispatcher, “I’ve witnessed her hit the center divide already once. She’s been crossing three lanes at a time, wandering back and forth. She’s been on the phone, reading a book. She’s doing about 80. She’s really scary, watch out!” In all, the 911 dispatcher in 27 minutes received nine such calls from five motorists.

After the collision, Migden told CBS 5 she had been diagnosed with leukemia 10 years ago and that her daily medication may have been to blame for her bad driving. I personally was certainly sorry to learn about the state senator’s leukemia, but would her medicine really cause her to drive 80 mph in traffic while intermittently reading and talking on the phone? After all, Migden was a leader of the movement in the Legislature to outlaw the use of cell phones while driving. How easily does one forget?

While Migden didn’t want her comments to some members of the public on Saturday to be reported to other members of the public later, I will reveal that when she addressed guests at the party, she: 1) told a couple of concerned women she’ll look into a state plan that would allow the labeling of pasteurized almonds as “fresh”; 2) told four of us who raised the issue that she would sit in on the Bay Area congressional delegation’s discussions of the park’s deer-eradication program, but do little else, saying that probably nothing will change until 2009 when our Republican president and governor are out of office; 3) listened for a while to Marshall activist Donna Sheehan’s concerns about chemical pollution of the environment, and then faded out on her.

Although Donna seemed pleased to at least momentarily get the state senator’s ear, this ending to Migden’s performance became too embarrassing for me to watch. I went outside to smoke my pipe and talk with Mark Dowie of Inverness (just back from Africa) and Richard Kirschman of Dogtown (who said Save the White Deer has already lined up different influential people to champion its cause).

When the party was over, I left longing for those happy days of yore when West Marin was represented by the genteel State Senator Peter Behr. Somehow Behr managed to remain a class act while pushing major bills (e.g. his Wild and Scenic Rivers Act) through the Legislature. Alas, those days are apparently gone in Sacramento.

Stefanie Pisarczyk, CMT, and I had scheduled a massage for 2 p.m. Sunday in her office above the Old Western Saloon. The 39-year-old therapist was to spend the better part of an hour stretching muscles, particularly in my shoulders, to improve my posture.

Stefanie’s office is cozy, and its views are striking. Outside one window, a stiff wind was making fronds wave like pompons on the 50-foot-high palm behind the Grandi Building.

But before the massage began, I took a few minutes to interview her about the world of Stafanie Keys (“rock star,” she said with a laugh). In that world, Stefanie just returned from a tour of the Seattle area as the featured artist with a band called 420 Funk Mob. She also just released a bluesy CD titled Say You Will.
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Stefanie is a funky, bluesy, soulful singer/guitarist with a “ballady side” (her term). Her style of singing has often been compared with Janis Joplin’s. Indeed, the only song on the Say You Will album Stefanie didn’t write is a Janis Joplin standard, Try (Just a Little Bit Harder).

Stefanie acknowledged having been also influenced by such singers as Ricki Lee Jones, Bonnie Raitt, Aretha Franklin, and Carole King, but her main influence, she added, was her “family of musicians,” especially aunts and uncles and her brother Peter “Keys” Pisarczyk.

Peter is an accomplished keyboardist, hence his nickname “Peter Keys.” Stefanie said a backup singer in Peter’s band one day commented to her, “You must be Stefanie Keys.” Bemused by the moniker, Stephanie adopted it as her stage name.

Along with being a musician, her brother Peter is an owner of a recording studio back east, and its location beside the railroad tracks proved to be fortuitous when Stefanie was recording the hardest-driving song on the album, Freight Train.

The cut makes use of a variety of train sounds recorded just outside the studio, and what amazed her, Stefanie said, was that “the sound of the brakes and everything was in the right key.” Which happened to be E.

Stefanie told me she enjoys living in two very different worlds. In the world of Stefanie Pisarcyzk, CMT, she can be found at 415 328-2609 (or stefaniep3@comcast.net). In the world of Stefanie Keys, rock star, her new CD Say You Will can be found in Point Reyes Station at Point Reyes Books and Toby’s Feed Barn.

To listen to some of Stefanie’s music and see a schedule of her upcoming performances check http://www.myspace.com/stefaniekeys although the version of Freight Train on the site lacks the train sounds. As it happens, the album contains two versions of the song, and the version on the site is the simpler, funkier reprise.

Point Reyes Station merchants held their 10th annual Path of Lights Friday, culminating in the lighting of the town Christmas tree. The tree is on the main street between the parking lots of the Bank of Petaluma and the Palace Market.

Sponsoring the event were the West Marin Chamber of Commerce, Point Reyes Books, Rotary Club of West Marin, Point Reyes Surf Shop, and Bank of Petaluma.

Most retail merchants in Point Reyes Station took part and as always placed luminaria in front of their businesses.

For the benefit of readers elsewhere around the world, here’s how The American Heritage Dictionary defines luminaria: A “Southwestern US” custom that consists of “a votive candle set into a small… paper bag weighed with sand and placed in a row with others along a walkway…”

Playing her guitar in front of the Bank of Petaluma, singer Harmony Grisman of Inverness led caroling at the West Marin Senior Services tree-lighting ceremony.

Breezes were light enough that candles could be kept lit by the crowd gathered in front of the Point Reyes Emporium Building across the street from the carolers and the town Christmas tree.

Other events Friday evening included Santa Claus’ arriving to a yuletide gala at Toby’s Feed Barn and the annual Dance Palace Craft Fair, which continued on Saturday and Sunday. In addition, numerous merchants held a scavenger hunt and drawing.

Friday’s events encouraged West Marin residents to buy their Yuletide gifts from local craftsmen and merchants. In an advertisement in The West Marin Citizen, sponsors told residents: “Studies have shown that independent retailers provide substantial benefits to the local economy by contributing $68 of every $100 back into the community…. supporting economic and social growth.”

The moon was full Saturday night, and in the Giacomini family’s pasture next to my cabin, a coyote howled off and on from 12:30 to 3:30 a.m. Sometimes I could hear a second coyote answering from the Point Reyes Station Mesa.

During the past five winters, I’ve seen a coyote in my backyard stalking fawns, which bounded away while the coyote was squeezing under a barbed-wire fence; I’ve seen a coyote on Highway 1 downhill from the cabin; and I’ve found coyote tracks in frost on my steps. I’ve also seen coyotes twice on Limantour Road and once beside Nicasio Reservoir. Twice recently, my houseguest Linda Peterson has seen coyotes along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard near the Mount Vision Overlook turnoff, where she shot this photo. [Update: Since this posting went online, Linda has spotted (and photographed) yet another coyote.] In short, coyotes are again common throughout West Marin.

Coyotes were once so common here that the town of Olema took its name from the Miwok Indian word for coyote. But in the 1940s, sheep ranchers using poisoned bait were able to eliminate coyotes in West Marin and southwestern Sonoma County, and there were none here for 40 years.

In 1972, however, the Nixon Administration banned use of the poison 10-80, primarily because it was non-specific and killed many other animals too. Coyotes, which had never disappeared from northern Sonoma County, then began spreading south. Since they began showing up here again in 1983, they have put more than half the sheep ranches around Marshall, Tomales, Dillon Beach, and Valley Ford out of business.

In West Marin these nights, they can be heard howling as far inland as the San Geronimo Valley, and for listeners who aren’t sheepmen, the high-pitched, barking howls are a beguiling reminder of life on the western frontier.

Frontiersman Davy Crockett (1786-1836) liked to claim his reputation as a hunter preceded him into the forest. As Crockett told the story, he once treed a raccoon that resignedly cried out: “Don’t shoot, Colonel! I’ll come down! I know I’m a gone ‘coon.” This here raccoon was lucky to merely be shot with my camera.

An old friend, Joy Adam, who has been living in Germany for 20 years, dropped by my cabin Saturday night and cooked some spicy dishes from India as a birthday dinner.

Here one of the guests, Gabriela Melano of Nicasio, has a through-the-glass encounter with one of this hill’s roaming raccoons.

On Friday, I had turned 64, and my former wife Ana Carolina in Guatemala had emailed me the lyrics to the Beatles’ song When I’m 64. During Saturday’s birthday dinner, Nina Howard of Inverness, Joy, and Linda used a printout of the lyrics to serenade me with; “When I get older, losing my hair/ Many years from now/ Will you still be sending me a valentine/ Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?/ If I’d been out till quarter to three/ Would you lock the door?/ Will you still need me/ Will you still feed me/ When I’m 64?”

I’d already had a earlier birthday dinner Friday at the Station House Café with my houseguest Linda plus Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park, her partner Terry, her daughter Seeva, and our mutual friend Cheryl Keltner of Point Reyes Station.

Sixty-four didn’t sound that old when all of them sang Happy Birthday to You on Friday, but on Saturday after paying attention to the words to the Beatles’ song, I found myself wondering about my Social Security.

As it happened, I was sitting at my dining-room table when I spotted Ms. Raccoon looking over my shoulder, so I asked her what she thought about someone turning 64. Using my camera, Nina snapped this photo as Ms. Raccoon stuck out her tongue in reply.