When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that’s the best
When I lay me down to die
Goin’ up to the Lizard in the sky

…. (apologies to Norman Greenbaum)

Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storms but to give colour to my sunset sky. – Rabindranath Tagore.

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
- Percy Shelley

When I was in the garden, this small plane flew overhead, reminding me of a sad anniversary. My father used to fly over our house when we were kids in his little Cessna. He loved to take us up with him but mostly so he could scare us into never wanting to go up with him again. He would have been 100 years old on January 15, 2024. I’m absolutely positive he would not have wanted to turn 100 but we miss him none-the-less. Hi Dad!

I wish children didn’t die. I wish they would be temporarily elevated to the skies until the wars end. Then they would return home safe, and when their parents ask them; where were you? They’d say “We were playing with the clouds.” Ghassan Fayiz Kanafani

I wrote about this place back in 2015. These are the ruins of a hospital that treated small pox patients back in the 1800s. Today, they’re known as Resnick* Ruins.

The Ruins are located on an island off Manhattan that, these days, is reachable by subway and gondola. However, when the hospital was in operation, the island was only reachable by boat thus the patients could look across the East River and see the glittering lights of Manhattan, but until they were healthy they were basically entombed.

We visited on our way back to Brooklyn from Manhattan and stopped only long enough to take a look around. It was a cloudy, moonless night and we were the only people around. The only living, breathing people that is. A slight breeze carried the moans of those long gone … whose suffering still remains.

In 2018 a group of people decided to try to save the Ruins. They removed the ceilings and interior walls and fortified the exterior walls. They planned to transform what remained into a walled garden. A memorial for all those folks who never made it off the island, many of whom had only just arrived in the United States. Then came the Covid. Now it will be a memorial for all pandemic victims. Their plans look lovely indeed, however, would I want to go back there even during the day? Nooooo.

Is there anyplace so frightening that you wouldn’t go into it, even during the day? And I don’t mean the dentist’s office or the IRS.

*Resnick is the name of the unfortunate architect (James Resnick, Jr)who will forever have his name associated with death and despair.

This time of year is always difficult for me, although I love the weather we generally have here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Mornings … always chilly; afternoons … warm and sunny; evenings filled with golden light. It really is magical.

For some reason, many of the stories I’ve written over the many, many years have been set in autumn: So say the Winos, The Graduation Present, and even Flipka.

The other day I found a watercolor done by my friend Connemoira many, many years ago. It shows a woman peeping out from what appears to be a tattered curtain, her eyes reflecting what could be a bomb blast. When we were teens we knew for certain that all wars would end during our lifetimes. They just had to, otherwise why else were we here?

Toward the end of her life, Connemoira’s work became deeply disturbing, as though what she viewed through that tattered curtain became too much to witness. But I promised her that I would “protect my novel” and so, after some revisions to the Oncle Boob story, I am ready for an editor. Do you have any recommendations? Synopsis here.

My friend Carol, who I’ve written about many times, fought for over twenty years to preserve a piece of the Richmond California shoreline known as Point Molate. From this bit of relatively undeveloped and little known shoreline you can see Marin County.

When she first began the fight, both Chevron (which has refineries near by) and the Indian gaming industry were interested in developing the area and the cash-strapped city of Richmond could hardly refuse their offers. So you can imagine what a struggle it was to convince city leaders that both industries would do irreparable damage to what could be an asset for the community.

Yesterday the city decided to finally honor Carol’s contribution (she died in 2021) with a bench reveal. It was a grey day, portending rain, but a couple of dozen folks showed up to speak about their friend and sit on her bench. Lots of tears, as you can imagine.

I live too far from Point Molate to have been active in the cause but I was invited to the unveiling. And welcomed warmly by an amazing group of people. Read here about their work.

Anyway, if you’re ever in the area, check out Point Molate and have a rest on Carol’s bench. She did so love to laugh so tell her a funny story!