Dana's Harp

Nancy and I met in music programs at our synagogue. We both sang, as service leaders, and for fun. We also both enjoyed reading, and we explored the Jewish novels of Chaim Potok.

His book Davita's Harp featured a female leading character, which appealed to both of us. The title harp was not a Celtic lap harp or a tall orchestral harp. Instead, it was a door harp, which is a musical instrument that plays itself. A wooden box with tuned metal strings stretched across a sound hole, a door harp has metal balls that hang next to the strings. The balls hit the strings when the door is opened and closed, making them sound. It's kinda like a wind chime for indoors.

Some months later, Nancy gave me a door harp for my birthday. Its sound hole was in the shape of a Star of David, the six-pointed star of Judaism. I greeted it with glad cries and mounted it on my front door as soon as I could. It hangs there, sounding its major triad when I open the door, to this very day.

Sealed with a Stamp

I left Berkeley towards the end of my tenth grade school year, because my father had suddenly died. Even though close friends had offered to keep my brother and me until the end of the school year, our mother decided that we needed to move down to live with her in Santa Monica immediately. So move we did, and started a new life in a city we only knew as a vacation spot.

At first, letters from my Berkeley friends were my lifeline. I drank in each letter over and over, for the bittersweet pleasure of the familiar past viewed from my barren new present.

I sent letters back sharing my new circumstances -- my new classes and teachers, the indignity of sharing an English class with my older brother, my lungs' painful adjustment to the smoggy air.

I decorated my letters with sealing wax in various colors. One seal featured my initial; another was a pattern of some sort, maybe a flower.

I put effort into my missives and appreciated every word I received. Gradually, though, the events of my friends' lives became increasingly distant, I dug into my own concerns, and we drifted apart.

My Book/s

My Book/s

I couldn’t possibly choose just one book I will always remember. I have always been a reader, first and foremost. I was reading so well by the first grade that I was skipped into second grade in the middle of the year.

Reading was the core of my education and career. I read pretty challenging stuff in law school, as a judicial research attorney, and as a writer, editor, and publication manager of legal tomes.

So when I read for pleasure, it’s usually mind candy. Unlike candy, though, books are talismans essential to my well-being. When I’m alone with myself, I’m in very bad company. Often anxious, I have at least once spiraled into a full-on panic attack when out alone without a book. Nowadays, I never leave the house without a library in my pocket.

When I was in elementary school, I inhaled Nancy Drew mysteries, Hardy Boys mysteries, Tom Swift adventures, and Robert Heinlein juvenile science fiction.

I lived with my father in my junior high years, and raided his library. The science fiction, James Bond thrillers, and Peanuts comics were the most accessible of his books. Every now and then I’d tackle something different, like Gunter Grass’s novel The Tin Drum. I managed to reach the end, but had no idea what the book was about. I had more success with Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy, which was the scientific version of his best-selling book Games People Play. His division of our interior mindscape into parent, adult, and child has lingered with me – as well as the game he entitled: “Why don’t you …” “Yes, but ...”

My mother got me hooked on British murder mysteries written by women: from Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh through Josephine Tey and  P.D. James. Her A.A. literature didn’t appeal to me.

While in college, I got into children’s literature and Christian authors, especially The Chronicles of Narnia, where the two genres intersect. I also loved Wind in the Willows, the Little House on the Prairie and Little Women series’, and anything written by John Stott.

In San Francisco I explored the Jewish side of my heritage by reading Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and the Chaim Potok novels. Later I got into Buddhist books by Sylvia Boorstein and Pema Chodren.

I occasionally read non-fiction, mostly self-help and popular science. But my pleasure reading consists mostly of novels with women protagonists (preferably by women authors, since I’m a devout female chauvinist): cozy mysteries, science fiction, and fantasy. I made an exception for the Harry Potter series, since the author is a woman and she is so good. I loved the Sookie Stackhouse vampire series and the Kitty Norville werewolf series. Knowing that a book I enjoyed is part of a series makes me feel warm and wealthy, since that means I can spend more time in that world, with those characters.

If I were forced to choose a single book I would always remember, it would be Aunt Dimity’s Death, by Nancy Atherton, because I love it so much that I reread it every several years. The book is charming and easy reading, and it combines several of my favorite types of stories: rags-to-riches, fish-out-of-water, cozy mystery, ghost story, and romance. It also presents a mother/daughter relationship that I wish I’d had. The book is the start of a series, so new adventures with my friends are published every few years.

OK, I read to escape reality. You gotta problem with that?

Parade Button

I still have the parade button from my first gay pride march. Against the background of a brick wall, black letters say "1979 Gay Freedom Day Parade and Celebration." That was 39 years ago, before the alphabet soup of LGBTQI and before the term "pride" was used.

The parade commemorated the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots, and the goal of the parade and movement was freedom, first from the laws against homosexual conduct that allowed police to arrest and beat up gay men and lesbians for daring to simply exist in public. And second from the concept of homosexuality as sin and disease, which justified shunning and medicalized torture in attempts to change the way God made us.

We who marched in the parade were angry about this mistreatment, but afraid that marching might make things worse. Coming out in public could lose us our jobs, friends, or family. Coming out is less risky nowadays, but still can be hazardous to one's livelihood or health.

Looking at the button makes me proud of how far the gay rights movement has come. But I'm afraid of the hatred and bigotry that have been unleashed by the 2016 election. We've come so far, but our boat is so small and the seas are rising.

Uniforms

Uniforms

I’m a sucker for a man in uniform. But not in the way you might think.

I was a big fan of the TV show JAG. It was an action and courtroom drama about military lawyers. The male lead was a Navy Commander and the female lead a Marine Colonel.

My favorite part of the show was studying their various uniforms. They were blue or white or khaki, short-sleeved or long, with T-shirts showing at the neck or stupid bowties for the women’s uniforms. Once in a while, one of the men would wear a sweater.

I tried to figure out the rules for when each uniform would be worn. Was it all the wearer’s duty station or activity? How much did the weather matter? What were the options when one was too hot or too cold? And what about dress uniforms? The Navy officer had spiffy dress whites, but our lady marine had to wear an evening dress at fancy events.

I was just fascinated by having a rule book to consult that took the decisions away from dressing. I’m told that Emily Dickinson wore a white dress every day to spare herself having to choose what to wear. She saved her brain power for her poetry.

I’m no Emily Dickinson, but I wear a sort of uniform to simplify my life.  Choosing clothes does not rank high in my priorities.

My criteria for clothing are comfort, variable warmth, pockets, and, finally, color coordination. My uniform is blue or black jeans, T-shirts under long-sleeved cotton or flannel shirts, and corduroy overshirts. The various shirts come in shades of blue, purple, and pink, so nearly everything matches. Each morning I choose the next clean shirt, match it with a T-shirt and a corduroy shirt, match socks to my pants, and I’m done.

Happy Pride!

I celebrated LGBT Pride season fully this year.

I perused my catalog to the Frameline Film Festival and bought tickets to six programs: two documentaries, two groups of shorts, and two feature films. I arranged to sit with a friend at five of the six shows, and had lunch with that friend before one of them. The films were absorbing, informative, and thought-provoking. I also caught some LGBT films for free on TV.

I was watching films at the time of the Dyke March, so I missed that this year. But I went to Dolores Park the day before for a youth/senior lunch, and battled my introversion enough to have a few conversations with some of the young'uns there.

On Gay Day itself, I donned a "GEN OUT" T-shirt and rode in a trolley with other elders at the front of the parade; Openhouse LGBT senior services organization was contingent number 5. I really enjoyed waving a rainbow flag out the open window and yelling "Happy Pride!" to the onlookers (some of whom responded in kind) until my voice gave way. Best of all was hearing my name called by a friend in the crowd and remembering his name in time to call it back to him.

After leaving the trolley, I saw some wonderful Pride T-shirts on sale on Market Street, and am kicking myself for not buying one or two. Maybe they're on the web somewhere . . .

Earlier that week, I did buy and wear a rainbow decorated leather bracelet and a rainbow bowtie. And got a rainbow-dyed fluffy foxtail keychain that's decorating my shooting stick/cane seat.

Seriously, though, we're going through hard political times where we need to celebrate our freedoms while we have them. And we need to nourish coalitions with all other groups who are under threat, and do all we can to preserve those freedoms.

My Neighborhood Cat

My cat Misty is an indoor-outdoor cat. She came to me that way, and I have experienced how unhappy she is when I have to confine her indoors for medical reasons. She gets in and out through a cat door I had installed next to my back door.

The cat door is locked, so I don't get visits from other cats or raccoons or rats. It unlocks when Misty touches it while wearing a key fob on her collar. When she loses her collar, I need to find it if I don't want to replace the collar, the key fob, and her ID tag.

These items being troublesome and costly to replace, I have accompanied them with a tracking tile that I can locate with an app on my phone. When the tile is close enough (its range is 50-100 feet), the app notifies me and the tile itself starts to play a musical tune. I use it most often to locate Misty while she's wearing the collar and I need to take her to the vet.

Twice in the past three months she has come knocking on her cat door without her collar and I have had to let her in the back door (and out again, and in again . . . ). The first time this happened, the tracking tile didn't work. In addition to a limited range, it has a limited life. It needs to be replaced every year or so, and I had heedlessly ignored a warning of its imminent expiration when it crossed my screen. I looked for the first collar in my back yard and asked my tenants to look for it. No dice.

So I bought her a new collar, adorned it with a backup cat door fob and the ID tag from my previous cat, and ordered new tracker tiles and cat door fobs. When the new tracker tiles appeared, I put one on her lovely new collar.

It was only another month or so before she came a-knocking at the cat door without the new collar. Grrrr. I fired up the tracking app on my phone and walked around the backyard. No luck.

Every so often, one of my neighbors stops me on the street to report seeing Misty in their backyard, or that she came into their home for a visit. So I figured she must have dropped the collar in one of their backyards. With the limited range of the tracker, though, I would not be able to find it from the sidewalk.

So I crossed my fingers and headed up my street towards neighbors who knew Misty. A few houses up the hill, I saw a vaguely familiar neighbor talking with someone else. When their conversation was over, I hailed the woman. Told her that my cat might have lost her collar in her backyard, and could I come and scan for it. She led me into her yard, the tracker went off, and we could hear the tile's music playing from the backyard next door. My neighbor, being taller than me, looked over the fence and saw the collar on a table in the yard. So we went next door and asked the ladies to retrieve the collar from their backyard. They did so, and we had a nice chat about how cats dislike wearing collars and how some have figured out how to use bushes to pull them off.

I rejoiced in having neighbors to help me take care of my pet, and made a mental note to promptly replace the tracker tile when I am warned that it may be  it running out of juice.