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.
Downtown Santa Rosa December 2023
Shonda Rhimes was a guest on Andrew Ross Sorkin’s annual DealBook Summit and I was intrigued by her intelligence so I read her 2015 book “Year of Yes” when she forced herself out of her writing shell by accepting speaking and social invitations, learning to stand up for what she really wanted, and how to gracefully accept a compliment.
I knew about “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Private Practice,” and “Scandal” all being in production at the same time but Andrew Ross Sorkin pointed out that she had shed 150 pounds. Knowing, as I do, that the five food groups for writers are caffeine, sugar, nicotine, alcohol and fat, I wanted to learn more. I loved how she captured the nuttiness of TV production but the first three-fourths of the book has almost no self-disclosure. The photos start on page 233 and the good stuff follows.
She was the youngest of six to academic parents with a very strong marriage. Her older siblings are insightful and supportive and Delorse muttered, one Thanksgiving, “You never say yes to anything.” Shonda chewed on that as she realized that, as successful as she was, she wasn’t really happy. It’s nearly at the end of the book when we learn that she was engaged to a wonderful man that she didn’t want to marry and that’s when her weight started to really go up. By saying “yes” to telling the truth, she broke off the engagement and broke her pattern of suppressing her feelings with food.
Over the course of the year she discovered that healthy, kind people find each other and that some of her friends did not like how she was changing and growing. She realized they were not really on her side and she had to let them go. She explained, brilliantly, why it is SUCH a problem when people interrupt a writer who is in flow with dialog and story.
She describes “five miles filled with chocolate cakes, good wine, books I want to read, emails that have to be answered” and she has to get past this five miles every times she sits down to her computer to write. In the beginning it takes a day, or an hour, but it never takes less than 20 minutes to get past the five miles of distractions and get back into the flow. Even if the interruption is a well-intended, “would you like some coffee or water?” breaks the flow and she has start running again to get past the five miles.
At the end, Shonda explains to big sister Delorse how much the muttered phrase “you never say yes to anything” changed her life — saved her life. Delorse shrugged.
You did all the work, but it’s like you needed permission. I’m your big sister. I gave you permission and I’m extremely proud of you. You were joyless. All you ever did was sleep. Now you have completely transformed. You’re alive. Some people never do that. You are this happy because you said yes to not getting married.
Shonda explains that having it “all” is no guarantee of happiness, especially if what you want doesn’t conform. We spend our lives punishing ourselves for not living up to some standard we think applies across the board to all of us. The book is a plea to recognize that happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to.
Pathological Overconsumption of Food was Cured by Telling the Truth
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.
Salinas at Daybreak
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.
Rocking my Moroccan Bag in Downtown Los Olivos Which is Three Blocks Long
I cooked up a quiche for our first night, and on our second and final night we visited restaurant Bar le Côté.
At Bar Le Côté: Regina, Jane, and Moi
Shopping at Garden Supply in Los Olivos
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.
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!
Bibi, Grace, Eva, Ursula, Becka
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.
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.
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.
RDS visits Anet, France, Home of Diane de Poitiers
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.
Diane de Poitiers in Aix en Provence
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.”
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:
“I’m Frightened All The Time, But I Never Let It Stop Me.”
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?
Mabel Dodge Luhan and O’Keeffe
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.
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.
OLLI Art Club at SVMA in the city of Sonoma
by S. Levitsky & D. Ziblatt
David McCuen recommended “How Democracies Die” in the class on Terrorism he taught at Sonoma State University in the Spring of 2023 in the Osher Livelong Learning Program. The book was published in 2018 and details how Donald Trump was preparing, in 2016, to deny the results of the 2018 election if he did not win. On the day that Jack Smith indicted Trump in D.C. Federal Court for Conspiracy and Obstruction of Government Process, I read the authors’ four key indicators of authoritarian behavior.
In an opinion piece in today’s NYTimes, Randall Eliason says, “The charging decisions in the indictment reflect smart lawyering by the special counsel Jack Smith and his team.” Trump is not charged with sedition or insurrection, which (if convicted) would disqualify him from holding future office. It does not charge the six unnamed co-conspirators. Trump is also facing federal charges before a judge that he appointed in Florida, for document mishandling.
Proceeding against Mr. Trump alone streamlines the case and gives Mr. Smith the best chance for a trial to be held and concluded before the 2024 presidential election.
Authors Levitsky and Ziblatt were alarmed that the primary process had failed in its gatekeeping role to weed out unqualified or dangerous candidates. Trump had never held elective office, was not a lawyer, has no mare than a bachelors degree in business. Only once in the past 100 years did a never-before-elected man reach the presidency — Dwight D. Eisenhower.
When gatekeeping institutions fail, mainstream politicians must do everything possible to keep dangerous figures away from the centers of power.
The indictment, a short 45 pages double-spaced, makes clear that leading Republicans in the targeted states, and the Vice-President himself, stood up to Trump and said No. In this moment, I have hope.
Brent put together a MeetUp paddled for Saturday the 29th of July at Yorty Creek. Lake Sonoma was full again after being dangerously low six months ago. Eleven paddlers showed up.
Yorty Creek Inlet Buzzing with Dragonflies and Happy Ecosystem
Wayne and I were the most experienced paddlers so we checked out the side inlets while the beginning paddlers moved toward the center of Lake Sonoma. After about two hours in over-90° sunshine, five of us returned to the boat ramp for lunch. Brent and Wayne accompanied the rest of the boaters across the power boat channel to a large island for lunch.