The Long Day Closes October 11, 2021

I was heavy into binge-watching on Wednesday night when Julie called me with the startling news that the music director of the Marin Oratorio had died of a heart attack that evening, just as he was preparing for rehearsal. We knew that Boyd had a few health issues, but we weren’t prepared for this. Boyd Jarrell was a man of energy and enthusiasm, generosity and kindness. We were all enriched by knowing him. 

In Chamber Singers, with Boyd at the music stand, I had learned The Long Day Closes by Arthur Sullivan. It is a beautiful and haunting elegy that I cannot sing without the sting of tears. And though we sing it for others, we are made aware of the finiteness of our own lives and how our own day will close soon enough. 

And so it is those words and that beautiful tune that have been consuming me this past week, as I reflect on Boyd and his legacy – the Oratorio and the deep friendships made because of it. 

No star is o'er the lake 

Its pale watch keeping 

The moon is half awake 

Through gray mist creeping 

The last red leaves fall round 

The porch of roses 

The clock hath ceased to sound 

The long day closes 

Sit by the silent hearth 

In calm endeavour 

To count the sounds of mirth 

Now dumb forever 

Heed not how hope believes 

And fate disposes: 

Shadow is round the eaves 

The long day closes 

The lighted windows dim 

Are fading slowly 

The fire that was so trim 

Now quivers lowly 

Go to the dreamless bed 

Where grief reposes; 

Thy book of toil is read 

The long day closes

Finding One's Formant August 14, 2021

One of the few reliable pleasures of my pandemic experience is the semi-weekly vocal workout offered by San Francisco voice teacher Julia Nielsen. On Mondays and Wednesdays at 6 pm, I and other home-bound singers join Julia for a thirty-minute journey through imaginative exercises designed to improve our range, control, flexibility, and consonant production. 

Last week Julia introduced “vocal formants,” a concept that was new to me. The idea is that parts of our vocal tract – the mouth, the pharynx – resonate at certain frequencies depending on the vowel we are trying to form, because the formation of the vowel itself determines the size and shape of the cavities. When the chambers’ resonant frequency matches the pitch being produced by the vocal folds, we generate a richer and more focused sound. 

It occurred to me that the formant could serve as a metaphor for success in many of life’s endeavors. It is as though we are each producing our own pitch, but in order to really be successful, we need to find a formant that supports and amplifies our effort. Perhaps the formant lies in a parent or a partner, who is a receptive to our needs and ambitions and who supports our growth. Perhaps it rests in our education, where a certain teacher or class inspires and challenges us, or in a job that matches our abilities and propels us to a new level of expertise. 

In many aspects of life, our success is supported by another type of formant – as the old saw says, “being at the right place at the right time.” Knowing this encourages us to raise our antennae, to be aware of what is working for us, to look elsewhere if it isn’t, and to seize wholeheartedly on the gift that occasionally comes our way. 

A young person strides through school and college, meeting an enormous number of people along the way. Job opportunities are myriad for the youth, energy is high, the world lies like a smorgasbord of opportunity for the younger person. 

But in my experience, as we get older, formants are inherently harder to find. There is no NSF program for “old” scientists, no “way-past-emerging” artists program at the art school. And so I’m struggling to find my formant, especially during COVID. Like all of you, I’m dipping my toe in many waters, looking for that vessel that will support my needs, resonate with my values, and nurture my abilities. Oh formant, where art thou?

This changes everything July 16, 2021

I got the job. The one teaching at a local high school. Not just any local high school, but the one my daughter attended. The only school in the US to be located in a National Park, and a school with Buddhist precepts, at that. 

Kindly, the associate head of school reached out to me the day before my decision was due to address any concerns I might have. My biggest issue: I wanted to work part-time, specifically, I wanted to teach only Bio 2. I knew that it would be a challenge to adjust to high school teaching, especially at a progressive school, and I wanted to do a good job while still having some freedom. After all, I’ve just turned 68, for God’s sake! 

You could have knocked my socks off (if I wore any), but she found someone to teach the two sections of regular Bio. She asked if I’d like to be the sponsor for the Science Club – are you kidding me? Of course.

What a turn-around this job offer has given me. I feel as though I have a structure and a challenge going forward; I might even have a purpose. I will make some new friends. 

The spillover to the rest of my life has been remarkable. I don’t think it’s just being vaccinated against COVID or seeing my daughter more often that has put a spring in my step. I think it’s knowing there is something that needs me in the near future. 

Max Cowan, the late and exacting vice-president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, seemed to have a fondness for me, possibly because he knew my late husband. He once told me that in life one needs someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to. I am still missing the partner, but I suddenly feel less lonely because I feel less despair. I have something to do and something to look forward to. Two out of three ain’t bad.

The home stretch June 20, 2021

Last August I wrote about my 101 Books Project, and I am now on the home stretch. It looks like I will have completed my goal of reading Yann Martel’s 101 recommendations to a Prime Minister within the year. Excepting those books that I couldn’t find at a local library or cheaply online - about a dozen - or those that I had already read and chose not to re-read - another dozen or so -, I will have polished off the remaining few within the week. They are pretty short, and I have nothing else to do. 

I am already sad that this journey is ending. Just within the last few weeks, the books I’ve devoured are explosions of creativity and meaning: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn, Chess Story by Stefan Zweig, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Added to that were three captivating plays, Caligula by Camus, Six Characters in Search of an Author by Pirandello, and Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad, and one quirky “novel in verse”, Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. 

Yet, how I wish that another person would have been game for this literary adventure and savored these books with me. Somewhat understandably, my friends and family pooh-poohed the idea of plowing through someone else’s list of recommendations, but for me, during COVID especially, Martel’s guidance was a godsend. 

One never knows the impact one might have on another, so thank you, Yann Martel for reaching out from Saskatoon to Point Reyes Station. You may not have made a dent on the Prime Minister, but you’ve led me on a book odyssey, and I’m all the better for it.

To Teach June 16, 2021

Following the ordeal of architecture school, I intended to take off six months to recover my energy and to chart a course for my future, presumably one that involved an actual job in architecture. But the advent of COVID and its staying power edged me into a suspended state of inaction. 

I used the lull to reflect on the arc of my life and how I might best and productively employ whatever time I have left. I started to notice that my intellectual interest still lay in science, not architecture. I came to appreciate what a uniquely good fit science was for me and considered how I might exploit my expertise. More and more, teaching high school science or math emerged as a path forward, and I applied for a few positions in private schools (as public schools require a teaching credential). 

I was drawn to high-school teaching as a job worthy of my diminishing time. I remember one of my daughter’s elementary school teachers passing away (after 23 years on the job) and thinking to myself, “That was a life worth living.” During my stint as an interviews editor, I noticed a recurring theme of my interviewees, namely, the influence of a high school science teacher. I, too, had been strongly supported by two outstanding math teachers. 

Luckily, this spring I was offered the chance to help out with the science curriculum in a local high school, and I grabbed it. It was indeed as good as I had hoped for, with friendly and encouraging colleagues, students alert and ready for business, and my own mind stimulated. Coincidentally, one of the biology teachers opted not to return for the fall, and suddenly there was a real possibility of joining the faculty, including the opportunity to develop my own curriculum in advanced biology. Stay tuned.

Blind on one side, deaf on the other April 12, 2021

Yesterday I made it to the front of the serpentine, single-file line at the neighborhood Whole Foods when the man behind me started yelling and gesticulating. “The cashier up there is waiting for you!” he vented in a Scottish accent. “What, where?” I asked, ashamed that I had missed whatever visual or acoustic signals the clerk had sent. Even though I was on alert, I simply didn’t catch on. 

It was an old-lady mistake, one I pride myself in not making, but the aging body is starting to let me down. My vision is cloudy as a cataract obscures my right eye, and my hearing is impaired from repeated damage to the left ear. I’m just not ready to commit to lens replacement or a hearing aide, but I see it is folly to ignore the problems. 

The experience was yet another sign that I am not as equipped for even the little things in life as I once was. My decline has been haunting me for the past few weeks as I have been helping out at a local high-school, where diffident students struggle to communicate with me, their masks muffling their sound and depriving me of the visual backup of lip-reading. 

I have become my father, in fact. He was blind in one eye and deaf in the opposite ear. I can see now how these deteriorations, though neither painful nor life-threatening, can erode self-confidence and eat away at connection.

One year out March 7, 2021

On the Friday evening of March 6, 2020, I went to hear Mahler’s 6th at the San Francisco Symphony. I sat in my usual Terrace perch, peering down upon our conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, feeling almost like a part of the orchestra. But this was no ordinary night out - it was the last night out. 

By the time I came home, an email was waiting for me: the Symphony would be shuttered for the remainder of the season and their tour was cancelled.  A similar notice from the San Francisco Ballet arrived, too. Within a day or two, everyone over 65 was advised to stay home. And so it began, this year of isolation and tragedy. 

None of us could have imagined that COVID would drag on for so long, and yet it has. When the “new normal” began, I really had only one goal in mind, and it wasn’t the one you’d think. Sure, I didn’t want to get COVID; like everyone else in San Francisco, I wore a mask and hunkered down, limited myself to lonely walks, lunch in the backyard, and the occasional visit to the grocery store. Given my precautions and my privilege (good health, a stable home, food security, and a major medical center just up the street), it seemed unlikely that I might die of the disease. 

No, my big concern was how I would survive the months ahead without falling into a major depression. Depression has engulfed me at least four times in my life, and it can take years to climb back out. So it was no small worry on my part. And yet, by letting go of any expectations, by slowing down to a lazy retired woman’s pace, by just putting one foot before another each day, I somehow made it. And though I was incredibly lonely, I didn’t make it all on my own. It really did take a village. 

So thank you Annie and Jordan for our holidays together. Thank you Laura and Kathy for our weekly walks. Thank you Sue for our art projects 6000 miles apart, and thank you Gail for those closer by. Thank you Jeannette and Yang and Kevin for weekends together, yet at a distance. Thank you Caroline and Ari and Cypress for short visits to Pi. Thank you ZOOM for book clubs and conversations, and thank you family and friends for keeping in touch. Thank you Pogo for trusting me with the last few months of your life. Thank you Trader Joes for your efficient and thoughtful service. Thank you supporters of trails and parks for allowing me to dip into nature. Thank you puzzle makers at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and “Out of Left Field”, and thank you Mike for our thrice-weekly puzzle discussions. Thank you Yann Martel for your inspirational book on reading and the many authors I’ve explored this year. Thank you Point Reyes Yoga – Amanda and Nick, Katie, Devi, Mary, Maile, and Maya –  (and Wendy, too) for our daily practice. Thank you Marin County Library and local librarians for delivering book upon book upon book upon book. Thank you Netflix and Amazon for binge watching. Thank you Coursera for free online courses.  Thank you PBS Newshour for proffering hope that rational minds still inhabit our country. Thank you UCSF for weekly Grand Rounds and vaccine delivery. Thank you first responders of all sorts for fire control and medical assistance. Thank you New York Times delivery person. Thank you John and Anna and Juana for looking after my home in San Francisco. Thank you Spirit Rock and Zen Center for wisdom and resources. Thank you Bovine Bakery for bear claws. Thank you San Francisco Bach Choir for our weekly rehearsals and outreach. Thank you Julia Nielsen and delightful Co-Vo sessions. Together, you have made it possible for me to survive this year.