The Pull of a Pet January 10, 2023

In January 2022, as part of my new-year musings, I resolved to get a dog. The year came and went, and still I have no dog. 

I had made this resolution mainly to boost my spirits. After my tuxedo cat Pogo had died in 2021 (on my birthday, as a matter of fact), my loneliness became more acute. Bringing a dog into my life, I reasoned, would augment my health, well-being, and circle of friends, not to mention provide a good home for a rescue animal. 

More than a decade before that resolution, when Annie was still in high school, she and I had adopted a five-month old puppy with curly black fur, floppy white paws, and a sweet pink tongue. Her name was Daisy, and we were both thrilled. 

I had only a week with Daisy, though, before I faced the agonizing decision to return her to the SPCA. On the plus side, she was smart, well-trained, and agreeable. We enjoyed our walks, and I got to know my neighbors. Daisy was good on-leash and off-leash at Crissy Field, running into the Bay and returning to me when I called her. And she sat patiently outside the window of a coffee shop when I met friends. 

But, as puppies do, she had a bit of a chewing problem. Day 2 she chewed a shoe. Day 3 she chewed a table leg. Day 5 she chewed the window shades. All of that was to be expected. But on Day 6, she chewed Pogo. 

Well, maybe not “chewed” exactly – and here I will give her the benefit of the doubt – maybe she just wanted to play. Pogo and Daisy tumbled down the stairs in a chaotic and noisy embrace, and as soon as he got the chance, Pogo ran out the back door and didn’t come home till the next day. It seemed that this relationship was doomed, so back to the SPCA I went, with Daisy and Annie. I was in full-scale bawling mode when I told the staff that I had to return her, but they gently replied that a man in Oakland had been calling every day to see whether Daisy had been returned. As so, sadly I relinquished my little friend, and I’ve been remorseful about this decision ever since. I was already in love with her. 

So, what’s it going to be for 2023? Will a little pet enter my life again? I surf the humane society websites, I even visit them in person now that COVID conditions are relaxed. But still, how can I make this leap. I have every excuse, and no excuse. It is a leap of faith, and I’m going to need someone to push me.

A Matter of Trust December 12, 2022

This year, I have been thinking a lot about trust. My musings began when I endeavored to process an unsettling trend in one of my relationships. My jaw literally dropped when it hit me: I can no longer fully trust this person. It wasn’t a willful or malicious act on the other’s part, perhaps just thoughtlessness or a side-effect of aging, but the realization was a punch in the gut even so. 

Last May, my trust was also betrayed by the school I was working for, when I discovered I was to be replaced by a new hire on the very last day of the spring semester. I felt exploited, and devastated. 

Trust is an essential element to the health of our lives, both personal and societal. It is the security blanket that allows us to function, to love, and to explore. We take it for granted that clean water will flow from the tap, that our husband will be there when we come home, and that our COVID vaccine will work. Is it any wonder that our society is shredded, when our leaders say anything to ensure political advantage, yet say something different when that advantage disintegrates? 

I started to realize how important trust is to me and how I had taken trust in others for granted. As a girl, I trusted my parents completely. I trusted “the system” to be fair, that if one worked hard, one would be rewarded with a good education, a decent job, a safe place to live. I also found myself thinking about relationships that were beneficial for me and fostered trust, specifically those with my teachers. Yes, even at my advanced age, I rely on teachers to stimulate me, on an almost daily basis. 

Take my online voice teacher, Julia Nielsen, whom I’ve been tuning into on a weekly basis for two and half years. She is extremely knowledgeable. She is non-judgmental. She endlessly encouraging. And she shows up, twice a week and then some, prepared and engaged. I trust her with my voice, without question. 

Then there is my online mindfulness guru, Rick Hanson, whom I’ve been tuning into for more than a year. I trust Rick. I know that there will be a jewel in his weekly JOT (Just One Thing) as well as comfort and inspiration in his Wednesday meditations. I know that each time I come away from his writing or talk, I will feel refreshed and have another little nugget to chew on. 

Finally I come to my current art professor, Jason Dunn, who teachers ceramics at College of Marin. I had been aware of Jason for some, and though ceramics wasn’t high on my list of art disciplines to delve into, I knew he was one of the best art teachers at COM. Now, I’m just emerging from three months of clay building and glazing, and yes, I trust Jason completely. He is there for us everyday, cheerful, knowledgeable, experienced, and supportive. 

Surely we can all name moments when we’ve been stunned by a personal betrayal. How does one regain trust after that kind of insult? Is it even possible? It is a “one-foot-in-front-of-the-other” kind of thing, a slowly knitting of a wound. The process will always leave a scar, but perhaps we can function with it anyway.

What if... August 10, 2022

It’s said that as we get older we spend more time looking backward than forward. We reflect on people we’ve loved, happy times we’ve shared, places we’ve been, but with all that sweetness comes also the bitterness of loss, injury, or disappointment. 

From time to time I look back upon the choices I’ve made, not necessarily to applaud or disparage them, but to understand them, and maybe, if it’s not too late, to learn from them. Sometimes I even drift into “what if…”. 

This all came to mind again when I read a New Yorker article entitled “In Another Life” by Joshua Rothman, who takes us on a literary “what if” through Henry James, Tolstoy, Sartre, and a variety of poets. 

For me, most of life has just been following the scent that led me, and there were very few decisions of seemingly deep consequence to be made. Of course I would go to graduate school, even though I recall having a very attractive job offer from IBM. Of course I would marry the man I loved. Of course I would move to California, why not have an adventure? 

But there was one decision that I have come to regret, or at least to question many times: When Annie was still young, I was offered the position as head of an Institute, indeed an entire research enterprise, in Melbourne, Australia. It was an incredible opportunity, but it came with financial repercussions, as an American, and familial challenges, as my parents were aging. I made the decision to stay – to keep a good and stable job and to not abandon my sister with the full responsibility to care for our parents. 

I can’t say that I would have been “happier” in Melbourne, but I can imagine that Annie might have better weathered her adolescence there. And for that reason alone, knowing what I now know and what she and I have experienced, I can’t help but think life could have been so much better if I had chosen a different path.

The January Resolution July 6, 2022

As I’ve mentioned before, since I retired I have had the luxury in early January of a break in the action. This has given me the benefit of a little time to rest, to reflect, and to redirect. In past Januarys, I’ve joined Al-Anon, committed to making a boundary with a someone I cared about deeply, Marie Kondo-ed my papers, clothes, and kitchen, taken a happiness course, and weaned myself off an anti-depressant. This January, I decided to take this anti-depression idea one step further: to vow to never again fall into that black abyss. 

I have never had a depression serious enough to plunge me into a hospital, but I have suffered four times in my life in what I refer to as “situational depression” – something happens in life that poses a great challenge and great sadness, leading to the debilitating mood disorder of depression. In a depression, for those of you who haven’t really experienced it, it is almost impossible to feel joy. Now think of spending maybe 15% of your life this way. What a complete waste of a perfectly good life!

(Just for the record, my low points were in graduate school, which seemed interminable, when my first husband decided he no longer wanted to be in our relationship, when my second husband died, and when my daughter was in the throes of addiction.) 

In January, I vowed to end this cycle. My friend Jeannette referred me to an online lecture by Zindel Segal, a Canadian Clinical Psychologist who, with two partners, developed a mindfulness-based cognitive therapy approach to preventing depression, based on the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn. Segal describes how having once had an episode of depression, the neurological pathways are primed to transform sadness to depression once again. And so the task of the patient is to be more in touch with the pathways and to develop strategies to divert or blockade them. 

Segal’s ideas resonated for me. They are a variant on the old Buddhist saw “pain is everywhere, the suffering is up to you”. Yes, sadness is everywhere, but maybe the depression part is optional. How could I develop the mental attitude and skill set to deal with this monkey on my back? 

I bought the group’s book and workbook, enthusiastically plunged into the daunting daily commitment to meditations of varying types and durations and less daunting tasks of reflections. Segal et al. argue that we ruminate to try to intellectually pull ourselves out of depression – wow how true! – but instead we should just relax into the pain, recognize it as pain, but learn to absorb it through awareness and practice. They refer to it as “being brain” rather than “doing brain”. 

I wish I could report that I have transformed my approach or attitude or capacity or something like that, but the truth is that I have no idea. Several times, I have certainly caught myself dipping into that black ink, but managed to pull myself back out fairly quickly. I’m half-way through the year and a bit frustrated that I haven’t had the epiphany I expected. Maybe I’m a little sad, too, but I’m trying to be much kinder to myself. Maybe when the next challenge in life meets me, I’ll be able to ride the tsunami with a better perspective and a little more equanimity.

The end of school June 29, 2022

As excited as I was to take on a teaching job in the fall, I’m now that bummed that the job no longer exits. I was delighted to be offered an opportunity to work half-time teaching advanced biology at a private high school in San Francisco this year. Though the experience had its issues, for the most part it was pretty wonderful. It checked all my boxes: community, intellectual challenge, purpose, and structure. I had a feeling I would also fall in love with the kids, and this I did, in spades.

Perhaps, I thought, after all this struggling and questing and COVID, I had actually found a path that would sustain me for the foreseeable future. I was ready to repeat for at least a second year. After all, they say the first year of teaching is the most challenging, especially when one has to develop the entire curriculum. But that was not to be. The administration decided to replace me with a full-time teacher.

I found out that I would not be renewed on the last day of school. I have a lot to say about this experience, the highs and the lows. But for now, I’ll focus on two things:

First, what an incredible opportunity to delve more deeply into a topic that underlies all of life: evolution. Indeed, I invoked evolution as the lens for the entire year. I guided the students through elements in the periodic table, through water and small organic molecules, through amino acids, lipids, carbohydrates, and DNA. We went from spontaneously formed lipid layers with bits of RNA in hot vents in the deep sea, to extremophiles on our planet and the search for astrobiology on others. We considered how the remarkable advent of photosynthesis led to increase oxygenation in the atmosphere and the consequent burst in more complicated life forms dependent on mitochondrial respiration. We went through Darwin’s (and Wallace’s) argument for evolution, from the geological observations that preceded them through selective breeding of domesticated plants and animals. We discussed how science and creation stories rooted in religion should not be co-mingled. We looked at protein structure and gene structure and how the two-fold process of gene duplication and mutation gives rise to the vast repertoire of RNA and protein molecules and ultimately to the diversity of life on earth. We watched the evolution of the coronavirus in real time. We learned about human genetics and diversity through our own experience and analysis.

Second, the students themselves were amazing. I had juniors and seniors who had lost 1/3 of their high school experience to COVID. They were behind on their social development, some desperate to be with others, some afraid to. They were behind in their academic benchmarks from a year of zoom and a general droop in learning goals. As days turned to weeks and weeks to months, we got to know each other and to trust one another. They learned that I had a pretty high bar, but also that with some effort they could clearly surpass it. They built up not just knowledge, but learning skills and confidence. As masks came off in the spring, I saw smiles on even the most withdrawn students. We had undergone our own little evolution together.

Which makes it so much tougher to let go, to accept it as just one experience in a lifetime of many.

Like Picasso and Braque June 27, 2022

I met my puzzle partner Mike while singing with Marin Oratorio when I first retired, now nine years ago. In any chorus, I try to sidle up to the basses, who often sit adjacent to the sopranos, so that I can bask in our counterpoint. This cross-fertilization was a habit I developed in high school, when my buddy John Beck and I harmonized together in the back row, occasionally getting a stern look from Mr. O’Neill, our director, for perhaps harmonizing a bit too much.

During Oratorio practice, my black music folder routinely secreted a New York Times crossword puzzle in its left-hand pocket and a Pilot Precise V7 black-ink pen in its handy holder, both waiting for employment during any lull in the musical action. Mike started to look over my shoulder, curious about what was going on, and eventually he whispered a word or two for a clue that had escaped me. Ink out, solution in. Repeat.

It turns out Mike that was also a puzzler, with a wider practice than mere crosswords. He started bringing in other daily word puzzles he had saved up for me, as well as other types of brainteasers. I came to look forward to our puzzle exchange almost as much as singing. By the winter of 2015-16, we attempted – and completed – our magnum opus: solution to the GCHQ Puzzle, which I recounted in a contemporaneous post.

With time I had to end my tenure with Marin Oratorio to devote myself to architecture school, and my puzzling drifted into new dimensions. I moved on to cryptic crosswords, somehow latching onto those constructed by Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto in The Nation. I remained solo in this weekly endeavor, until Josh and Henri, abandoned by The Nation, portaged their puzzles to Patreon in 2020, just at the start of COVID isolation. I lured Mike into them at around this point. After all, what better way to endure a pandemic lockdown? 

My sister had also introduced me to the Saturday Variety Puzzle in the Wall Street Journal (which, despite its disturbing right-wing conviction, has some great free puzzles) and I then roped Mike into that, too. Mike quickly reciprocated with another weekly WSJ adventure – killer Sudoku – a Sudoku variant in which sums are provided for small pockets of squares rather than the numbers themselves.

Soon we craved even harder puzzles and discovered the National Puzzle League cryptics, many of which have some particular theme, pattern, or “meta” that must be conjured up, and some of which simply could not be completed by either one of us independently. Take the one written for a Boston convention, in which the trick was to discover that all the “T’s” had to be thrown overboard (but only in certain quadrants), or the one where an extra unused letter in some clues gave rise to phrase which then spelled out the title of a work, which can then be used to answer the clues themselves!

Lately, Mike became enamored of another puzzle that uses this meta strategy, the WSJ Friday “contest” crossword, though he confesses that his real motivation is the puzzler’s grail: a mug awarded to a randomly selected solver. The crossword itself is very straightforward, but the “answer” often requires several additional levels of calculus – literally each level is a derivative of the preceding one. My initial attempt at the contest was a failure, and like the  discouraged child, I threw down my metaphorical crayon in frustration. But recently I gave the contest crossword a second chance, and now that I’ve had a little success, I’m hooked, too.

These two types of meta puzzles have a certain quality that really benefits from a pair of solvers. For each level, at least one of us needs to have an insight, and then we can continue on until another insight is required. 

And now, at last, I come to relevance of the title for this post. Many years ago I grudgingly read a tome on Picasso, but there was a nugget in there I loved: At the end of each day, after working individually, Picasso and Braque had the habit of visiting each other’s studio to see what progress had been made. In this way, they developed cubism, and perhaps neither would have done it without the other. Picasso said, and I paraphrase, “We were like a pair of mountain climbers, each one talking the lead alternately, and that way, together, we reached the mountaintop.”

Carmina Burana April 24, 2022

I had already made the decision to forego my choir’s spring production of the Brahms Requiem. I had sung it in both German and English many times, and the choir had rehearsed most of it in spring 2021 before having to abort for COVID. Besides, as lovely as it is, the work is about death, and two years into the pandemic, I had had it. 

Up popped a different opportunity – singing Carmina Burana with the Marin Symphony Chorus. Carmina was not a work that I had ever aspired to sing. It is relentlessly blaring, tonal, and bawdy, not my usual cup of tea. But this year I needed something completely different. I needed the rhythmic jolt of singing my guts out!

I contacted my friend Abigail who sings with the Chorus and she encouraged me to audition. So I did, I was accepted, and we’re off. In a surprisingly small number of masked rehearsals, we learned the music, which was pretty easy, and the words, which were not. As our performances drew near, the masks came off and we joined the orchestra on the stage of the Marin County Civic Center Complex, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

O Fortuna! In this spin of the wheel, how lucky am I!

The Holiday Echo January 20, 2022

We all know the feeling of the holiday whoosh, from the fourth week of November to the first week in January, that predictable tsunami of celebrations from Thanksgiving to Hanukkah, Christmas to Kwanza, and then the New Year. 

Now we are on the heels of the holiday season, digesting calories and conversations. As we take down our greenery and candles, carefully replacing decorations in their boxes for another year, I gather up all the lovely cards and notes I’ve been sent with best wishes for the season and the year upcoming. I pause to look at them each again. I think about the friend or relative who has taken the time to write to me. Many share photos of their family, printed into a holiday background from Shutterfly, Minted, or Snapfish. And while selfies may seem self-absorbed, I enjoy them so much that for the past 10 years or so, I have done the same. I love seeing shots of a growing family, or an aging one, of happy times - a graduation perhaps, a new home, an engagement, or a college acceptance. Sometimes the annual note bears news of life struggles – the loss of a parent or a pet, perhaps an illness. It is a reminder of the ups and downs we all face, sooner or later. If last year was rough, the next may be much better, and if it was a good year, a reminder to never take it for granted.

My mailbox filled with artists’ renderings of persimmons and pomegranates, or cardinals in the snow. There were pretty cards from various organizations I support – an old photo of KQED headquarters, a sunny snowman from the California State Parks, a sheep from West Marin, a snazzy hot-pink design from Docomomo. Some cards are handmade – a watercolor, a woodland photograph, a lino block print – and all the more cherished.

The season is over now and I will have to wait another year to hear from some friends. Yet it will be as though no time has gone by at all.

The Daily Reflection January 10, 2022

I spent the first year of the pandemic in a mental bunker, just trying to survive without sinking into a major depression by filling my otherwise isolated life with art projects, word puzzles, books, and hikes. It was very lonely. 

The second year, post-vaccination, was a bit perkier. I started to teach high school. The opera and the symphony, restaurants and art museums - all have come back to life. Even our choir is singing in person.

And yet, I’m not fully “there” (who is?). I have a system in place, but I fritter away vast expanses of time in the effort to simply keep calm and hold depression at bay. “Just do something to get through this,” I say to myself, anesthetizing myself with the expansiveness of cryptic crosswords or the abyss of the internet.

Now, as we approach Covid’s second anniversary, I’m thinking it is time to get back on track, to make myself accountable on a daily basis. My friend Carl once told me that when he has a goal in mind, he asks himself everyday what he might do on that very day, however small, to move the plot forward. It strikes me as a noble practice, if one can develop the discipline to do it. 

Some goals may have a defined end-point, like knitting a sweater, while others may simply be to not lose ground, like exercising to keep the body in working order. And so I have been thinking about what is important to me and what would be the ingredients of a good day.

What have I done today to move the planet forward? This is my very strong Athena Goddess poking at my heels with her spear. Have I done something today that supports the greater good, like teaching, or writing about science, or making a financial contribution?

What have I done today to bask in nature? There is wonder and sustenance in Mother Earth. The moon, sun, smell of grass, ocean, rain – what have I done today to appreciate our amazing planet?

What have I done today that increased my joy? Did I laugh? Did I have a nice conversation? Did I see artwork? Did I make artwork? Did I eat something delicious? Did I listen to music? Did I dance? 

What have I done today to advance my own skills? Golfing? Tennis? Artwork? Singing? Writing? The list goes on and on.

What have I done today to increase my connection? Call a friend, write a letter, meet someone for coffee. 

This is aspirational. And by tomorrow, I fear, I will have forgotten I ever made these intentions.

The Fortieth Anniversary October 15, 2021

It has now been four decades since I first set foot in San Francisco. I moved here from Cambridge with my first husband who embarked on a fellowship at UCSF. I had no job and no prospects. That quickly changed when I landed a post-doc at the fledgling company Genentech. But that is another story for another day. 

The city seemed fresh and exciting with so many hills to climb and so many cheap restaurants to try. Even Chez Panisse was affordable for a special occasion. One of my first stops was San Francisco Opera. Birgit Nielsen was singing in Die Walkure. I spent what seemed to me a fortune, $35, on an orchestra ticket. Cars stopped for pedestrians. With a little perseverance, I could find a free parking spot almost anywhere. And then there was the Bridge – ah, what an experience! 

My plan was to get in and to get out before a big earthquake, but my husband and I both had succeeded in our work and were offered faculty jobs in the Bay Area in 1985.  Even then San Francisco was known for its exorbitant housing prices, but my Genentech stock had escalated and we could roll that into a down payment. We decided to stay. 

In the 36 years since then, I’ve retraced so many steps. I’ve owned three houses and five cars. I’ve been divorced, remarried, and widowed. I’ve adopted one child and three cats. I’ve worked my way from the lowliest assistant professor to professor emeritus. I’ve received two additional degrees, sung with a dozen different musical groups, and completed most of the Bay Area Ridge Trail. I’ve lost both parents and almost lost my daughter. And I’ve seen almost every production at the Opera house in all of these years. 

I can’t ever be a native, but so much of me is woven into San Francisco, and California in general. As long as I might live in the US, this will be my home.