Having last week off gave me a chance to add some pages to my altered book The Art of Happiness and to put the pages on my web site. I really like the way this particular page turned out. The blue woman came about in a happy accident. I had applied blue acrylic paint with a sponge to a stencil to make the little squares in the background. Then I used a baby wipe to clean the plastic stencil. I noticed all the blue paint on the wipe and swiped some of across paint across a piece of scratch paper. I loved the way the paper was tinted with color, similar to when I use acrylic inks. The color is deep and intense but transparent at the same time. So I just proceeded to rub the wipe across the image of the woman. I didn’t think about it until afterwards, but the tinted woman reminds me of one of Joseph Cornell’s pieces — The Medici Princess. Cornell liked to use a lot of blue in his work — something about purity, ocean, sky. I guess he’s entering my subconscious and influencing my art work now.

The Medici Princess
from the University of Illinois

And now for some exciting news for all you S.F. Bay Area people. Daniel Merriam is going to be signing his new book The Art of Daniel Merriam: The Eye of the Dreamer at The Booksmith at 1644 Haight Street on December 6, at 7:00 p.m. He’ll be giving a talk too! His new book is listed on Amazon. (apparently it came out in September), but it’s currently unavailable. You can get more information on Daniel Merriam’s book signing by calling the bookstore at 415.863.8688. I’m going to see if my sister will go with me. I am a tad reluctant to go into the city on a work night, but I might have to make an exception for this. Maybe I’ll run into some of my blog readers there!

The Eye of the Dreamer
from Daniel Merriam’s Web Site

As I wandered through the exhibit, I wrote down notes (in pencil - no pens allowed in the museum) about what I saw into my notebook. What follows are those musings.

I started by watching a short film by Larry Jordan who lived and worked with Cornell for a while in his house in Flushing, New York.

Cornell’s House in Queens
from Freeshell.org

The film, entitled Cornell 1965 contains the only film footage of Cornell, and if you blink, you’d miss it. It’s not that Cornell was reclusive, as is sometimes implied, but that he wanted his work, not himself, to be recorded. Jordan was in the attic filming Cornell’s art work, when his camera happened to look out the window to find Cornell in his backyard, rummaging through boxes and trying to piece parts together, presumably for another one of his “object boxes” as he liked to call them. Towards the end of the film, there’s another glimpse of Cornell, standing inside his garage, hands on his hips, looking towards his yard. The camera lingers there, watching him lovingly, and you get this sense of a fleeting stolen moment, which was obviously very precious to the filmmaker.

Jordan narrates the film and gives us some insights into Cornell: Proust was his favorite writer. Debussey was his favorite composer. Lorca, a favorite poet.

Jordan said that Cornell “. . . believed that there were moments crystallized in feelings from the past . . .” He said that Cornell used the term “epiphanies” more than once to describe what he was striving for in his art and that “. . . his working concern was only to bring certain threads of reminiscence together.” Jordan also said that Cornell “preferred working with humble materials,” and that his simple little nine minute film was a sort of homage to that vision.

One of my favorite things from the exhibit was a huge blown-up photograph of one of the set of shelves from Cornell’s basement where he stored all his stuff and made his art. Rows and rows of boxes are stacked precariously on top of each other. The boxes are all different sizes and shapes and have handwritten labels on the front with descriptions such as “cornials,” “plastic shells,” “tinfoil,” and “tinted cordial glasses.” Apparently, Cornell liked to collect ephemera as a way to relax and break the tedium of his job as a textile salesman. It wasn’t until 1931 that he shifted from the hobby of collecting to making art from his collections.
He started in 1929 with collage and later moved on to boxes, which he called “poetic theaters.” And in 1953, he returned to making collages again.

Untitled (Tamara Toumanova) c. 1940
from Friday Prize

But it’s Cornell’s “cabinets of curiosity” for which he best know. The exhibit commentary says, “Cornell also absorbed his family’s Victorian sensibility of gathering and recycling things as talismans of ‘what else were scattered and lost.’ ”

Untitled (Paul and Virginia) c. 1946 - 48
from the WebMuseum

Paul and Virginia is one of my favorite boxes. Although I had seen Cornell’s work before, I had never seen this piece. I love the light blue color throughout and the way every little edge of the box is covered with text or illustration from old books and magazines. It reminds me of the piece I did for my mom The Gift. Apparently, Cornell did not feel any compunction against using original source material in his work.

As I was standing in front of this piece, and man and his daughter stood next to me. The girl was about ten years old. She said something like, “Why did he use those bird’s eggs?”

The dad replied, “You need to think about what they represent.”

The girl wondered, “The beginning of life?”

Even at her young age, she got it.

Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall c. 1945

Apparently, Cornell loved to create works that would incorporate and pay tribute to the artistic gifts of people he admired, as he did with the piece for Tamara Toumanova, and in the one above for Lauren Bacall. He was inspred by her movie To Have and Have Not and the song she sings in the movie “How Little We Know.” In his notes for this “dream machine” he writes about wanting to create “. . . a machine that can capture over and over what one rememers from the film, more of the romantic ‘afterglow’ than literal scenes such as a musical composition which evokes and prolongs the pleasure and mood of an experience without being merely descriptive.” from Revised Notes on April 1945. You can definitely get a sense of the nostalgia that pervades Cornell’s work. There’s an interesting article at the Tate Research Center that talks about how Cornell’s passions for entertainers — ballerinas, opera stars, and actresses, to name a few — influenced his work.

Untitled (Soap Bubble Set) 1946
from WebMuseum

Cornell like to use antique star maps in his work. He was an avid stargazer, and as the museum commentary notes “. . . celestial navigation became his primary metaphor for extended travel across time and space and between the natural and spiritual world.” He used Dutch clay pipes used for blowing bubbles in his work as possible reference to “pipe dreams” He wrote in his notes regarding a collection of images around the theme of air travel that “. . . the beautiful fantasy involved the early ideas of conquering the air, and some of the more fantastic continuations of such dreams.”

One interesting thing that I learned about Cornell’s work, is that he would create portfolios of magazine and news clippings, postcards, advertisements, and other printed material that he could find all relating to a particular person or theme that he was interested in. He was inspired to create a case of papers and ephemera referred to as GC 44 after working at the Garden Center Nursery in Bayside, New York in 1944. In his notes he wrote about the collection “. . . all this manner of thing are gathered to convey this fleeting glory the sunlight filling the kitchen to recreate the House on the Hill . . . the calm enjoyment vs. the former feverish wanderlust to be away forgetting the besetting reaction of physical and mental fatigue (which resulted, however, in endless experiences of unexpected beauty, precious moments of the commonplace transformed by a kind of magic producing the deepest and warmest kind of love for each humblest aspect of landscape and person encountered — in this territory where one felt so much a stranger and but a ‘few blocks from home.’ ”

Crystal Cage: Portrait of Berenice ca. 1934 - 67
from The Warhol

Between 1934 and 1967, Cornell collected all sorts of material for a photomontage publication about a little girl named Berenice who would do experiments in a tower, or Crystal Cage. He eventually published this series in View magazine which you can see online at Bibliopolis. In his notes for this piece, dated November 14, 1942 and labeled “Appearance of Berenice” Cornell wrote about the sudden inspiration he had after seeing, through an elevated train window, a brief glimpse of three girls as they rode by. “. . . that little arm held a key that was now unlocking dreams. For in another flash and with overwhelming emotion came the realization that Berenice had been encountered, leaving a scattering of star-dust in her train.”

Some other random observations about Cornell:

I almost didn’t leave the house today. I had to convince myself to get outside. I haven’t been out by myself on a solitary adventure in such a long time that I feel a little out of practice. There’s a slight butterflies in the stomach effect going on. That’s excitement for what lies ahead. I have to remind myself that we all should remember how to be happy alone.

After shoving myself into the car, the next hurdle was buying my train ticket. Figuring out how to use the latest ticket machine at the BART station could have been an all day ordeal, but the kindly station man, in his tan trenchcoat and black beret, stepped right in to assist, making my life so much easier.

I’m just coming out of the Caldecott tunnel and into the light of Berkeley. How lucky I am to live in the Bay Area. I know there are lots of other wonderful places to live — San Diego; Portland, Oregon; or Barcelona, Spain; or Prague, Czech Republic. But since I don’t live in any of those places I’m glad that I live here. We citizens deserve to live in a place that we can say wholeheartedly “I love this place.” And clean windows. We deserve clean windows on all our mass transit– ferries, busses, trains. If we are making the sacrifice of foresaking a ride on our horse — I mean car — over the open range — I mean freeway — at least we should be able to expect see-through windows that let us admire the view.

Oakland is approaching. I heard on the news today that Oakland is now listed as the 4th most dangerous city in the United States. Should I clutch my purse when the Oakland station doors open?? It doesn’t look too bad from here, although I have to admit, it’s hard to judge from this speed and distance. There are some dilapidated Victorian style houses, trees, streets. Yards are overgrown with grass. Junky cars are in the front yard. Doesn’t look too scary. However, I would hate to live in a place where I had to unfurl miles of barbed wire and string it across my backyard fence for protection. No citizen should have to do that. And the windows . . . they can’t even be cleaned because of the bars on the outside. That’s no way to live. I wonder how many citizens of Oakland can say wholeheartedly “I love this place”?

It occurs to me as I write this that if I were a daily commuter, and had a smidgen of discipline, I might be able to write The Great American Novel during my commute hours. I wonder if anyone has tried it.

We’re out of another tunnel and into the light again. There’s a lot of graffiti out there. A sure sign of boredom or lack of art supplies. Or a checking account. If a person had a checking account with some money in it, he or she probably wouldn’t feel compelled to spray a signature across the side of a building. The person could just sign checks instead. But maybe the graffiti is a territory thing. Like a dog who lifts its leg a little on every bush in its neighborhood just to let every other dog know it’s been there.

We’re going under the bay now. It would have been sweet if they had designed the transbay tube with windows so we could look out of the train and see the ocean world. But it probably would be too dark and murky to see anything. How deep below the water are we traveling right now? It’s an amazing thought. Up above us is the Bay Bridge and maybe an oil tanker trying to dodge a bridge support. What the hell?? They still don’t require tankers to have double hulls?? How can we teach our children to learn from their mistakes if we don’t do it ourselves? Weren’t they talking about the need for double-hulled ships after the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989?

We’re pulling into the Powell Street station now, so it’s time for me to pack up. I am almost at my destination — the Joseph Cornell exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. More on that tomorrow!

Yesterday I was trying to organize some of my books which are sitting in piles all over my living room. (Too many books and not enough book shelves!) I came across a journal that was empty except for the first eight pages. I have to admit, I have a lot of half-filled notebooks scattered around my life. In fact, I suspect, if I perused each one, I’d find a lot more un-finished rather than finished journals. Actually, I knew myself so well when I started this particular one, that my first paragraph of writing ends with this line: “. . . I found this perfect notebook last night, and I bought it. So let’s see how much writing I actually do.” Not much, I’m afraid. But these eight pages are gems, if I do say so myself. They are not really about me (although what I chose to write about is definitely a reflection of who I am), but are a series of four little stories that were told to me about people from the town of Molivos, Greece.

Looking through the castle window at the harbor

Molivos is a tiny town on the island of Lesvos, Greece. It is in this town where my husband was born and raised. It’s the town I visited while on vacation when we were both in our mid-twenties. It’s where I met him and where we fell in love. I not only fell in love with him, but also with his home. The stories I am going to relate were written from my last visit there in 2001. I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I do.

Last night was very nice. We [Michael and I] went to the home of Nikko and his wife, Yota. Nikko and Michael were childhood friends. I really liked Yota a lot. Maybe it’s becasue she talked to me in English and asked me questions about my job, which I could actually answer back in a comprehensible way since I didn’t have to speak Greek.

Yota is a vegetarian and a veterinarian. I suspect those two things are related somethow. She lived in Australia as a child which explains why her English is so good. She has beautiful big brown eyes and a prefect white simile — she must have the best teeth in Molivos. Michael tells me that her family is rich, so maybe she could afford to go to the dentist.

I don’t know how the conversation came to this, but she told me this story about her dog of sixteen years.

Her dog was pretty old and was ill and dying. Yota was going to be going to Athens for three weeks. She would be leaving in two days. She knew her dog was dying and should be put to sleep, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Yet she didn’t want the dog to die without her while she was gone.

One evening she was reading a story to Nikko and her sister, It was about a yogi who had been given a sick deer to heal. The yogi had become attached to the deer, and when its health had improved, he did not want the deer to leave. So the deer stayed. Somehow the yogi came to the understanding that he could not keep the deer because it was a wild thing and had to be set free. So the yogi told the deer that it could go, and it did.

After listening to the story, Nikko went out to the patio where Yota’s dog was lying. He stroked the dog’s fur and told him that it was all right, that Yota would be okay and that he was free to go. At the very moemnt he said those words, the dog died.

Yota believes that her dog was holding on to life because she couldn’t let him go, but that Nikko had the strength to set him free.

The next day they buried their beloved dog, and the day after that, Yota left for Athens.

Looking down towards Eftalou

When Nikko was a young boy, his father owned a huge garden on the outskirts of Molivos. One day as a joke, a neighbor lady told Nikko that he could help his father’s watermelons grown better if he stuck a hole in them and turned them upside down.

So one evening, hoping to help his father, Nikko took a stick and punched a hole through every single watermelon rind and then turned the fruit over.

Of course, when Nikko’s father found out he was furious — but not with Nikko. The angry farmer went over and yelled at the neighbor woman who had lied to his son.

Looking down along the coast

Michael often mentions a school teacher that he had here in Molivos who was feared by all the students because he was so mean.

One day Michael was at school and he hadn’t done his lesson from the day before. His excuse was that the class had been on a field trip, and he hadn’t had time to get the assignment finished.

The teacher was going over the lesson while Michael sat in his seat nervously chewing on a pencil, afraid that he was going to be called on. Of course, he was.

The teacher asked Michael to go to the front of the room to give an answer for a problem they were reviewing. Unfortunately, Michael still had a big chunk of chewed-off pencil in his mouth. In an attempt to get rid of it on his way up to the front of the class, he spit it out. It landed right on his teacher’s arm. The angry teacher grabbed Michael by the skin right in front of his ears and dragged him to the back of the room with Michael howling the entire way.

Nikko also told us how once this same evil teacher hung Nikko upside down in the classroom [I was not clear on how this was accomplished], and then started paddling him to punish him for some purported crime.

A few minutes into this endeavor, another teacher came into the room and said, “Take him down! You have the wrong kid!” Apparently, Nikko had a cousin at the school with the exact same name, and he was the one who had commited the offense and was supposed to be punished.

Looking down at the town beach

There is an old man named Costas who lives a few houses down from the place where Michael grew up. Costas does not really live in a house — it is more like a hovel, with a corrugated tin roof and small square windows that are always covered. He has two or three junky cars in his yard that he can’t drive since he lost one of his legs a few years ago. They say he hurt himself, although they don’t say how, that the leg developed gangrene and had to be removed.

When we first arrived in Molivos, Costas asked Michael to drive him to a cafe so they could watch the women walk by.

Michael says Costas was married to a nice woman, but after she died, Costas started to go a bit crazy. He used to be one of the biggest land owners in Molivos. He owned most of the land at the top of the hill below the castle. Then he started dividing it and selling off the peices. He would spend all the money or sometimes give it away. It seems that his daughter and her husband, didn’t apreciate Costas selling off their future inheritance, so one night they snuck up to Costas’ house and beat him up while he was sleeping. He alsmost died. I don’t know whether this caused him to stop selling his land.

Nikkos told us another story about Costas. Once there was a foreign woman who came to Molivos. She met Nikko and asked thim to introduce her to a real traditional Greek man, so Nikko took her to meet Costas.

The foreign lady and Costas were up in his yard, sitting under a tree talking and drinking coffee. There was a goat nearby in the yard. It was bleating and making a lot of noise. Costas threw a couple of stones at the goat to get it to shut up, but it contined to bellow. So Costas pulled out a long switch blade that he had in his pocket, snapped it open, walked past the foreign woman, and slit the goat’s throat from ear to ear. Then he wiped the blookd from his knife on the dead goat’s coat, closed it up, put it back in his pocket, and sat down to finish his coffee. The foreign woman left rather quickly after that.

Molivos at sunset

Things were going along nicely as I made my PowerPoint presentation, although the process of enhancing and cropping each image and putting it in the slide show was extremely time consuming. When I was about 7/8’s of the way through I thought to myself, “You know, self, I’ve never put PowerPoint on a DVD to view on the TV. I wonder how one does that.” Much to my horror, my Google search turned up nothing but discouraging news. “It can’t be done,” they said on all the best forumns. “Use product X.” Oops, not made for a Mac. “Turn each slide into an image and put it into iMovie.” Crappy resolution, and I don’t know how to use iMove. Besides, I had just done all my image work– I didn’t want to have to do it again. When I tried to learn about iMovie, I got conflicting and convoluted advice about some mysterious Ken Burns process and the “jaggies” which, surprisingly enough, has nothing to do with the PBS special about the Civil War. I tried to use iDVD. How the heck do I switch to a template that doesn’t play circus music ad naseaum? I went to bed at three a.m., no closer to my goal.

The only glimmer of clairty I had found was from this website from Mr. Daniel Slagle: Importing a Powerpoint Presentation. But when I tried to follow his suggestions, I created a movie that stayed on my first slide until the one minute and twenty-three second midi file was done playing. Clearly not what I had in mind. So using Mr. Slagle’s advice as my starting point, I waded through the muck and finally produced a PowerPoint movie that plays music and can be seen on my DVD player. The steps I went through to make this masterpiece go from PowerPoint to DVD are given below. In addition, if you save things regularly as you go along, you’ll end up with a PowerPoint Presentation, a QuickTime movie, and a DVD movie. Remember, since a TV has a screen with a lower resolution than a computer monitor, you won’t see the same crisp images on your TV that you have on your computer. However, I think you’ll be very happy the results. This process worked for me. Hopefully it will work for you as well.

Software Used:

I worked on an iMac G5, so all the software is for OS X. I’m sure you can use other versions of some of these software products to produce similar results in order to get your PowerPoint presentation to a DVD.

1. Set-up the PowerPoint Presentation [PowerPoint 2004]

Suggestions:

2. Prepare Photos [Photoshop Elements 4]

3. Add text to PowerPoint

Suggestions:

5. Create wav file of your music [QuickTime Pro]

I tried to use the .mov soundtrack file in my presentation, but it didn’t work. I don’t know why. Also, a .wav file is smaller, but the quality of sound is still great, so my final product was smaller using a .wav file v.s. a .mov file for my soundtrack.

6. Make a Movie in PowerPoint

7. Create the file for your DVD

8. Burn your PowerPoint to DVD [Toast Titanium]

List of Links that Helped Me:

As many of you may know, I am in love with the artwork of Daniel Merriam. If you haven’t seen his amazing paintings yet, then please visit is web site (but be sure to come back!)

A while ago I received an email from a woman who has a giclee by Mr. Merriam that she is desperate to sell because of a “precipitous financial situation.” She asked me to help her out, and so I’m going to try to do what I can to help her find a good home for “Serenade,” shown above.

Of course, Gail has an interesting story to go along with her painting. It seems that she had been following Daniel Merriam’s work for several years in the ads in Art & Antiques magazine. Finally, they did a feature article on Daniel in the December 2003 edition. Gail took the article to Dan Fiorini, a gallery owner and friend and told him how much she wished she could get a print of “Serenade” - her favorite of all Merriam’s pictures. Dan vowed that, if there was a way to find one, he would do it.

After some correspondence, Mr. Fiorini found a colleague at another gallery who was a personal friend of Merriam’s, and she volunteered to contact him and see if he might have kept back a print that he would be willing to sell. (The original limited edition had been sold out long ago.) Merriam responded that, while he had not retained a copy for himself, he had never issued a print numbered “13″ (13/100). So, it was arranged that he would issue a #13, add a remarque, and ship it to Fiorini Gallery & Frame, in St. Petersburg, Florida. A couple of months later, in early 2004, Gail brought her “monnkee” home.

The Certificate of Authenticity is from Monarch Editions, Daniel Merriam’s publisher. It is signed and numbered by the artist, as is the giclee itself. Gail says, “I suppose you could say that I bought it from the artist, since it really did not come from one of the galleries that sell his work.” She goes on to say, “It was my first adventure in buying ‘real art,’ and I had adored this particular work from the first time I saw it. I’ve always referred to it as me monnkee (think Jamaican accent) and it is breaking my heart to let him go - you should see his lips! The background is filled with faces - some easy to make out, some not. There are penciled-in lyrics to the ‘Garden Song’ that Merriam has him singing while he plays his ornate piano. Every time you gaze awhile, you see more in the scene. Wonderful!”
Gail is asking $3200 or best offer for this artwork.

You can contact Gail by sending an email to dibblegail at yahoo.com.

During the day, little bunches of family clustered in different spots around the house, talking, laughing, eating. There on the porch was my niece with her newly magenta-colored hair and my oldest son, both twenty-one, sitting with their grandpa and my sister. In the living room the sixteen year old boys sat with the their thirteen year old cousin watching TV. I was in the kitchen helping my husband make our late lunch– skewers of chicken and lamb and vegetables to be grilled.

I was washing the red, green, and yellow peppers, cutting them in half and pulling out the thick pale ribbings and the tiny seeds, and then rinsing them underneath the water. My dad came up along side me.

“Just think,” he said, “it’s almost been a year since your mom died.”

“I was just thinking about how much she liked this time of year, with all the iris and poppies starting to bloom,” I said quietly.

“And the roses. She loved the garden so much.”

I seem to notice that all this past year has been full of firsts: the first Thanksgiving without Mom. The first Christmas without Mom. This first Easter without Mom. I can’t even imagine what it felt like for my father last month on what would have been their fifty-first wedding anniversary — his first one without Mom. Soon I’ll have my first Mother’s Day without my mom.

I’m writing in the darkness, except for the glow of the monitor light. It casts a pinkish-blue cast of color onto my hands and makes them look old and wrinkly. Then veins on the back of my hands seem more prominent than usual.

As the Easter holiday ended, the family groups started going back to their homes, and gradually it was just my husband and our two boys and myself there with Dad. Yesterday the house was much quieter. We were sitting around the table, talking.

Suddenly there was a loud thump. I looked through the glass out the back door to see a flutter of feathers floating through the air. A bird had flown into the window. I looked outside and saw a dove, wings spread, neck twisted awkwardly, lying on the the door mat.

“Oh my gosh, Michael,” I said to my husband. “I bet that’s one of the doves that we saw under the peach tree this morning. Remember we saw the two of them together on the grass?” They had been walking side-by-side. “I wonder if the mate is around here somewhere. I think this one’s neck must be broken.”

But it was still alive. The tiny lids of its eyes flickered, and I expected the bird to die as I watched it. But instead it folded its wings beneath its body, and straightened it’s head and neck until it was sitting unsteadily on the mat.

My father wanted to move it out to the grass, but I talked him out of it, afraid that any further trauma would kill it for sure.

“It’s just stunned,” Michael said. “It will be better.”

We sat down to lunch. Every few minutes someone would go slowly by the door and peak out the window to see if the bird was okay.

One day, when I was a little girl, my mom, dad, and sisters were driving along Highway 37 during the summer. It’s a narrow stretch of road with water on either side. At that time, there was barely a shoulder to pull off onto in case of an emergency. There were so many accidents on the road, that it was known as “Blood Alley.” We were riding in our sleek, aged red Oldmobile station wagon. I loved that car because it had a rear facing seat in the back and a back window that rolled down.

Suddenly the traffic ahead of us slowed down to an agonizing crawl.

“Must be an accident ahead,” said my dad.

My mom was in the front passenger seat with her red pouffy hair and her white green tinted cats eye sunglasses.

“I hope nobody got hurt,” she said.

Finally we came to the cause of the traffic jam. A pheasant had been hit by a car on the road and been killed. Its bereft mate was standing over the body in the middle of our lane and wouldn’t move. Drivers were trying to edge their cars around the bird without hurting it, cautiously crossing the double yellow line and move into the oncoming lane because there was no shoulder to speak of on our side of the road.

I watched the birds as we crept past. I watched them the whole length of the side windows, and as we passed, I moved to the back seat and watched them out the rear window. Watched the cars slowing down; watched them make their wide arcs across the the lanes. Hoping that no one would hit that second bird.

As we sat there eating lunch, I told my dad that story and asked him if he remembered. It didn’t surprise me that he didn’t.

A few minutes later, my dad got up to check on the dove. As he moved closer to the window, the dove rose up and flew away into a nearby tree.

I wonder what it’s like for my dad when we all leave his house, and he’s left alone in the quiet again.

Every winter break, my sister, Kris and I, take our kids on a day trip to San Francisco. We’ve been doing it for years. Sometimes the hubbies are able to go. This was the first year my other sister, Kathy, and her kids went along with us. Having just gotten a cute little digital camera for Christmas, I decided to take it along and make a photo journal of our day. So come along with us as we travel through one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

We catch the Vallejo ferry at 10:00, coffee in hand.The boat is crowded, but the nine of us all manage to get seats together. The weather is cold, breezy, and crisp, and the sky is impossibly blue. On our hour long ride, we pass San Quentin Prison and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Alcatraz

The Golden Gate Bridge

As we approach the city, I can see the Transamerica building, with its distinctive pyramid shape, rising into the sky. And to the west, is the lovely silhouette of Coit Tower with its collection of colorful houses resting below it.

Transamerica Pyramid Building

Coit Tower

After arriving at the pier, we go into the Ferry Building which is filled with wonderful shops. There’s a bakery, olive oil stores, candy stores, cheese market, flower shops, all open onto a main walk way. There are restaurants and coffee shops and other little stores. At this point, the kids usually complain about being hungry, so we grab a couple of freshly baked baquettes to nibble on as we walk.

Candy Shop

A Decorative Tile Outside the Olive Oil Shop

Dishes of Exquisite Chocolates

Flower and Plant Shop

Sightseeing Tours

Eventually we leave the Ferry Building and walk across the street to the Hyatt Regency Hotel. If we do our little trip before Christmas, we always enjoy the elaborate, minature Santa’s Village that they set up in the hotel lobby. But since we this trip is after the holiday, the village display has been taken down in preparation for the New Year’s Eve party. It’s always fun to ride up seventeen floors inside the hotel’s glass elevator. Sometimes we go to the very top where they have a rotating restaurant called the Equinox.

Sculpture in the Lobby of the Hyatt Regency Hotel

Right outside of hotel, at the corner of Market and California streets, we catch the cable car for our ride to Chinatown. The office buildings along California Street still have most of their Christmas decorations up.

Our Cable Car Ride

Decorations on California Street

After the slow climb to the top of the hill, we jump off the cable car at Grant Street and start our descent through Chinatown. My sister and I always enjoy going into a little religious gift shop next to St. Mary’s Church. The church has been there since before the 1906 earthquake.

Carved Wooden Angel

Chinatown in so much fun; it’s a feast for the senses. The street is narrow and the sidewalks crowded. Shop’s wares spill out into the sidewalk. The kids usually buy sparklers and smoke bombs for New Years, and I love looking at the silks and pottery and ivory carvings. Kris and I always buy boxes of chewy rice candy. Exotic smells come out of the herb shops and there seems to be a different Chinese restaurant at every other door.

A View Down Grant Street

Gold Ornaments and Tiles Decorate a Bank

Oriental Store

Dragon Mural

At the end of Grant Street, I see this street sign. I’ve never noticed it before. It leads into a tiny alley that’s closed off for construction.

Jack Keroac Street

We head down Columbus Street, backtracking a bit, as we make our way to our favorite Chinese restaurant. Everyone goes ahead while I take some more pictures. I pass City Lights Bookstore, where the Beat Poets (like Jack) used to hang out. There’s a colorful collage mural on the side of wall of a local bar. The letters were spelled out using wine bottle labels. The Transamerica building looms overhead, and so does the green building which is shaped like a giant ornate wedge of cheese.

Famous City Lights Bookstore

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Transamerica Building

The Green Building

I finally reach the restaurant, and everyone is waiting at our favorite table — a huge round one with a lazy susan in the middle. We devore garlicky string beans, sizzling rice soup, honey walnut prawns, potsickers, and cashew chicken. At the end of the meal, they bring us a little dish with quarters of ice cold oranges and fortune cookies. We read our fortune cookies aloud, and then I make everyone give me the little strips of paper. I don’t know the name of this restaurant; it’s a little hole in the wall. But we’ve been going here for years and the meal is always fabulous.

Usually this is the time when the kids start complaining that their feet are tired, be we still have a lot of walking to do before we reach our final destination. A hot fudge sundae at Ghiradelli Square is always a good motivator, so soon we’re back on Columbus and walking up the hill through North Beach to Fisherman’s Wharf. It’s a nice long trek, and there’s always lots to see.

Bridal Boutique

Mural on the Side of a Building

St. Peters and St. Pauls Cathedral at Washington Square

Wig Shop Window

Bimbo’s Comedy Club

Since I’m taking so long with all this photography stuff, everyone else goes on ahead. Eventually I reach The Cannery, a collection of shops and restaurants in an old brick building across from Fisherman’s Wharf. Inside is the Basic Brown Bear Factory, where you can pick out and dress your own stuffed bear or other animal. And across the street is a cute little Italian restaurant. We also pass Hyde Street Pier which has a very cool submarine and two old ships that you can tour.

The Cannery

The Basic Brown Bear Factory

Ciopinno and Pasta

Hyde Street Pier

Another Old Ship

I’m almost to my destination, and I know I’ll find everyone there at Ghiradelli’s Square. From the bottom of the hill below the cable car turn-around, I look over the San Francisco Bay to the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin Headlands. Over me is the huge Ghiradelli sign

Golden Gate Bridge and Marin Headlands

Ghiradelli Square

Ghiradelli Chocolate Shop

I find everyone waiting in line to get ice cream. This place is always packed, but people move in and out pretty fast, so we usually don’t have trouble getting a seat. They bring a huge, gooey, made-to-order banana split to our table and Kris and I dive in (we always share.) Afterwards, I go into the candy store and stock up on Peppermint Bark.

By now, we are really worn out, so we catch the J line bus back to the Ferry Building. If we rushed, we could catch the next boat, but we decide to take our time. We go back inside and get bread, cheese, olives, and a bottle of wine for the ride back home. I know it sounds like all we do is eat, and you are absolutely right! We get back on the ferry boat. The sun is just beginning to slink down, and the lights on the Bay Bridge are just starting to twinkle. I sit on the deck of the boat, and take some last photographs of our City by the Bay.

Ferry Boat

The Bay Bridge

The Port of San Francisco

Night Skyline

Just When You Thought You Had Everything . . .

There was one thing I wanted more than anything else on my computer, and that was the set of pictures I had taken of my mom’s “nature” art work that she created around her home as her Alzheimer’s worsened. Every time I went to visit, I had secretly taken pictures of the beautiful designs she made on table tops, chairs, pathways, dirt patches — all over the yard.

When I got off the phone and realized that all these images were gone, I lay my head on the table and sobbed. I felt like my mom had been taken from me again. I felt like this was the last little gift of artistic beauty that she was able to share with us, and I was devastated that it was gone.

My husband and son tried to console me, but it was no use. I felt stupid, careless, thoughtless. How could I not have backed-up my pictures and documents? I went into the shower and cried some more as the water washed over me. I felt heartbroken. Yet, these were just inanimate objects. Just memories. Everyone was healthy. No one had gotten hurt. The house hadn’t burned down. As I drove to the computer place, I cried some more. All my public domain scans, photos of all my old art work, the email addresses of all my students’ parents, all those bookmarks and blog spots I’d collected over the years. But it wasn’t that I’d lost email addresses or music, all of which could be replaced over time; I had allowed my computer to become the repository of my artistic endeavors for the past five years, and now there was nothing left.

I composed myself in the car before walking into the computer shop. I approached the receptionist, and she said she was sorry that they hadn’t been able to recover the data.

“Do you have a grief counselor?” I asked facetiously.

“Why, as a matter of fact we do,” she replied. Apparently all those feelings I was experiencing are very common, and they actually have a counselor (formerly a suicide-hotline volunteer) to listen to anguished customers vent their frustrations about the loss of their computer hard drives and data.

The receptionist asked me to have a seat in their waiting room — the “Museum of Bizarre Disk-asters.” All over the place were examples of miraculous data recovery missions. Here was a CPU that had been charred and melted during a house fire. “Data Recovered!” said the sign next to it. There was a lap top that had been run over by a semi-truck. “Data Recovered!” Here was a story of a woman who had been working as a juggler on a cruise ship — which sank. She rented scuba diving equipment, dived into the murky waters, and retrieved her laptop. “Data Recovered!” Autographed pictures of Sting, Barbara Mandrell, Isaac Hayes, the writers of the Simpson’s and other famous people lined the walls. They had all had their “Data Recovered!” But not little old me.

I read an article about the counselor. In an interview she said that her clients usually felt angry with themselves for not having backed-up their computers [check], confused over their feelings of sorrow about the loss of an inanimate object [check], and depressed because of the loss of information which had been the result of years of creative expression [check]. She said that losing the information often fit the definition of a traumatic event because the total loss of control involved. I could totally relate.

“May I have a tissue?” I had to ask the lady at the front desk as my weeping resumed.

Driving back home, I wondered what life lessons I could learn from this dismal experience, beyond the most obvious one about backing-up the hard drive. Maybe I trust technology too much. Maybe I rely on it more than I should. But things happen, and we make the best of it and go on. After all, tomorrow is another day.

My hard drive was replaced by Apple (thank goodness for extended warranties!!), and today I started reinstalling software, setting up my email accounts, and adding in some of my more important bookmarks. As I was going through my CD’s, I found one in a case that said - Back-Up Disk, 8/23/05. My heart started pumping as I place it in the drive. I saw the iPhotos folder. I tried not to get my hopes up as I previewed a jpeg, but there they were — all of the pictures I had taken of my mother’s nature designs! I had backed them up after all. What a miracle! What a treasure recovered! Oh what a lucky girl I am!

Sticks and Stones