Category Archives: News
Christmas 2023 Whalefall
Hiked Spring Lake with the Sole Sisters, see me in the Santa Hat above. Afterwards, when the main hike was over, I led four of the ladies to see the warm sulfur spring that feeds Spring Lake.
Came home and finished Whalefall by Daniel Kraus, a very fast read because it was so absorbing. I hated Finnegan’s Wake because it was word salad, but as the main character, Jay, dissolves into nitrogen narcosis inside the diving whale, the jumbled words make sense. Whether he survives, how he survives is the “McGuffin” that drives the book. On the framework of the McGuffin that keeps us turning the pages, author Daniel Kraus hangs the story of a teen boy bedeviled by his attentive but abusive father and his loving but powerless mother and two older sisters. Jay is flashing back to when he was 15 and the pressure from his father became unbearable in the aftermath of the loss of the boat after poor-maintenance caused two paying passengers to fall overboard. The father’s descent, and his mistreatment of Jay, drive the boy to risky behavior that leads to his becoming entangled in a giant squid which is the prey of a large sperm whale hunting in the Monterey Canyon. As you can see from the Google Earth image below, Monastery Beach features ditches that slide into the depths. My PADI Open Water diving certification took place in the water off Monastery Beach. I had to enter the surf (backwards) in full wetsuit and tank gear, swim out past the surf line, sit on the bottom with my regulator in my mouth, take off my mask and my air tank and put them back on, underwater with my eyes closed. I passed and went on to dive the Great Barrier Reef off Australia.
I went back to the area to dive several times including Monterey Bay itself, and have paddled the nearby Elkhorn Slough. The writing really captures the thrill and fear of diving and being on the water on that part of the coast. The marine biology in the book was a treat making it a trifecta of science-fiction, skillful writing and engrossing information. A delicious Christmas overall.
Not Too Old To Cut The Mustard
On the morning of my birthday I found a package from Peggy on my doorstep that contained a deluxe bluetooth sport headset I can use while jogging. This morning, I was delighted to discover more birthday presents on my front porch. I love my wonderful, generous sisters!
Mary Rose sent me FOUR jars of Dijon mustard from the East of France, not far from Lyon and the Rhone River. A taste of mustard always reminds me of Germany. The lemon drops are from Siracusa in Sicily. Yum-yum.
Birthday 2023
Enjoying birthday celebrations this year even though winter COVID resurgence has tapped a few of my friends. Linda H. treated me to a yummy, festive, and expensive lunch at Willi’s Wine Bar and today Joyce is taking me out for dim sum. My kayak buddies celebrated with tacos in downtown Santa Rosa — Justin snapped this picture.
Los Olivos and High School Friends
Left home at 4:30 on a Wednesday morning to bypass SF and San Jose rush hour traffic on my way south on 101 to Los Olivos, just beyond Santa Maria. Highway 101 is so much easier on my 1994 Volvo than Highway 5 (in gray) because on the travel speed is a temperate 65, not the 85 mph demanded on the 5.
As I approached Salinas, daylight was just cresting above the Gabilan mountains to the east, a silver ribbon outlining the gray ridge, then trimmed by overhead rows of gray clouds of varying stripes. The Coastal mountains on the right grew brighter as the sun rose and I pulled into Salinas to enjoy breakfast at Dudley’s.
After breakfast I walked around for a few blocks and admired the creativity of the Hallowe’en decorations in a downtown alley.
At 10 am there was no one in my lane for as far and the eye could see, forward or backward. The drive was beautiful and meditative, and around noon I stopped in Santa Margarita, high in the mountains and still shrouded in fog, even though it is just 10 miles straight uphill from San Luis Obispo. At about 3 pm I met up with my friends at the VRBO in Los Olivos and we visited some of the shops and wine tasting rooms.
I cooked up a quiche for our first night, and on our second and final night we visited restaurant Bar le Côté.
We hadn’t seen each other in ten years, since the 50th high school reunion that we organized. It was such a pleasure to catch up and to fill in the blanks about how we got to where we were. They spoke about what they felt when they visited my house when we were in high school.
Jane: your mother seemed like a child.
Regina: your father was handsome but very scary. Manipulative.
It was such a relief to feel seen and understood. Because I departed at 10 am, the Friday afternoon trip took seven and a half hours but I enjoyed digesting all the insights and camaraderie.
Great trip.
Tv Show “Bad Sisters”
I subscribed to AppleTV+ to watch the new season of “Morning Show” and the premiere of “Lessons in Chemistry,” but the big find was “Bad Sisters,” originally titled “Emerald.” Brilliant writing, bang-on characterization of four Dublin sisters trying to help the fifth sister who is trapped in an emotionally-abusive marriage. And it’s funny!
It won a 2022 Peabody award and four nominations for Primetime Emmys and I am thrilled to learn that it has been renewed for a second season. Set in Dublin and shot on location in Ireland, it is based on the Flemish series “Clan” and was developed by Sharon Horgan who plays Eva, the eldest. Deeply Irish in the way it deals with the bad husband, it never considers divorce or trying therapy to get the physically-enormous-but emotionally-stunted man to grow up. The photo reflects that there is wine in nearly every shot as they are harried by an insurance firm run by two brothers who are secretly in deep financial trouble. It moves at a brisk pace and I loved that I could not figure out how it was going to end until we got there. Very satisfying.
Ferritin Update
I donated blood between my trip to Lyon, France and my trip to Morocco, and took a Ferritin test when I returned from Morocco.
In 2020 I learned that I carry the mutations of Hereditary Hemochromatosis. My first report flagged anything outside a range of 15-150 so I squeaked by with 150. I started taking milk thistle and cutting back on iron and I drove the Ferritin down to 26 by July of 2021 but I felt awful. I could feel that I went too low. I created this graphic that guessed at the ideal ferritin level.
The NYTimes just published an article explaining that hemoglobin measures anemia but ferritin measures iron-deficiency and that ferrutin levels should be between 30 and 50 icrograms per liter. They described iron-deficiency symptoms as:
Symptoms are often nonspecific and vague, like fatigue, brain fog, lightheadedness, sleep disturbances and a reduced ability to exercise.
When I got back from Morocco, my doctor commented on the new score of 116 and recommended a target level of 50, suggesting two blood donations before March 2024. The NYTimes article says tea and coffee with meals are absorption blockers. The problem with cutting back on meat is my effort to battle scarcopenia.
RDS Visits Chateau d’Anet
I laughed out loud when I got to the end of the photos sent by Bob DeStefano, who I worked with at Grey Advertising in the 1960s.
Bob and his wife love to travel in “places where we don’t need inoculations or health insurance” referring to my recent visit to Morocco. He said:
We drove west from CDG airport and our very first stop on our first day was the très charmant village of . . . (drumroll) . . . Anet! Yes, a real typically French charmer about 45 miles due west of Paris. And it’s even pronunced with the “t” . . . Ah-Net. It has all the small village amenities . . . cafés, boulangeries, restaurants, quaint houses, hôtels, and a street-level, mostly-ruined château.
We planned for it to be our first stop and we were immensely pleased when we saw it. We stayed over in the hotel shown on the road sign. Needless to say, you MUST go there. Attached are some of the reasons why. You’ll love the last photo.
Chateau d’Anet was the location for the opening sequence in “Thunderball” and Bob and I had a lively Email exchange about Diane being a pistol. I shared that, about six weeks earlier, when I was in Aix-en-Provençe, I discovered this portrait of her, donated in 1860 as part of a private collection from Bourguignon de Fabregoules. It is of Diane as an “allegory of peace” and shows her holding the dove of peace in one hand and an olive branch in the other. Notice the shadows that the nipples create… The name of the painter is unknown.
Bob said, “There is a small museum across the street from the château where we got the full lowdown on Diane & Henri.”
OLLI Art – Artistic Couples
I’m so glad I made the effort to get to the class taught by Linda Loveland Reid on artistic couples, even though it was less than 24 hrs from my return. Jet-lagged and with guts grumbling from careless snacking in Morocco, I loved the class. This was my favorite quote:
By learning the stories of the two artists together, I finally have some context for Georgia’s disturbingly sexual images. I learned that Georgia couldn’t tolerate live-model class in art school (with undraped models) and yet she not only allowed Stieglitz, a married man, to take hundreds of nude photos of her and she allowed him to exhibit a selection in New York City, laying the groundwork of her name being connected with sexual exhibitionism and promiscuity. Did Stieglitz make money from this show?
The teacher also touched on their contemporary artist, Arthur Dove. But who became famous: O’Keeffe or Dove? The recipe continues to be that sexual favors pay for the marketing expertise that few artists can manage. [Exceptions: Koons, Rauschenberg] I look forward to the day we can tell the truth about what works, about how humans really are…
My favorite photo that the instructor showed showed was of Georgia, in the desert, with her arm around the woman who taught her to drive — a woman who maybe was for her, what Georgia was for Stieglitz — someone who could see her and could help her get what she needed.
Abstract Art by Women – SVMA
The OLLI Art Club visited Sonoma Valley Museum of Art today for a docent-let talk on women abstractionists in the Whitney collection, and photographs by Judy Dater. Lunch afterwards at the Red Grape. Fun day let by Nan Garner, center front in photo.