Hawk Seeks Shelter In Hurricane

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Reminds us that there are other living things that are threatened by this severe weather and there are people there to lend a helping hand. Great story in The New Yorker about people coming to the rescue of stranded people with private boats, The Cajun Navy. In this New Yorker post there was a story about “nursing home residents in chest high water,” that was very upsetting. I saw today that there was a group of Assisted Living Residents who were rescued and I am thinking it was them. Let everyone be rescued.

AARP will match donations for victims of Hurricane Harvey up to $1 million.

 

 

When It Rains It Pours

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“When it rains, it pours” is a common expression that refers to when a series of bad things happen all together. On the way to a job I got a flat tire. I pulled over to the curb and put on my emergency signal light so the oncoming traffic would see my car and not run into it. After getting my tire changed by the tow truck driver, I went to start my car and the battery was dead. So I had to wait for another tow truck to bring a new battery. Similar to Murphy’s Law that says, “whatever can go wrong will go wrong.” The historic slogan for Morton Salt is “When it rains, it pours,” referring to the image of salt pouring freely out of the container.This image of the Morton Salt girl with the umbrella is over 100 years old.

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Morton Salt

Hope the people in the path of Hurricane Harvey stay safe.

giphy

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda G Hill. Prompt for today is “when”, start the post with the word “when.” Image of Morton Salt by downing.amanda on Flickr and image of Rain via giphy.com

 

 

Art Is Essential

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Art is a way that people can express and process their experience of life. It allows them to express emotions, perceptions, and provides a way for their spirit to be free of the limits of the physical or psychological environment. This post was inspired by a two posts on Hyperallergic “Seeking Escape in Painting,” and “A Painter’s Dreams Go Up In Smoke,”  about an artist, Brandi Twilley, who paints a picture of her bleak childhood surroundings yet includes a window with a beautiful blue sky.

“The paintings, which mainly feature the home Twilley grew up in until it burnt to the ground when she was 16, depict windows in a subtly astute manner. They function as portals in curious ways: they indicate the painter’s glimpse of spaces beyond the bleak circumstances of that house, and in seeing the significance of these spaces through Twilley’s hand, I identify with her and wish for that slim chance of escape.”-Seph Rodney Hyperallergic

This brings home to me how powerful and essential art is to our lives. It may be the only way for some people to express themselves, it is their language and best or only way of communicating.  Supporting art in schools and the community is as important as supporting language arts, math and science.

Matt D’Arrigo who started the nonprofit ARTS ( A Reason To Survive) in San Diego says,

“Having the arts taken out of schools is a form of identity theft,” ….. “There are lots of creative, artistic youth who are being told to fit into certain boxes. They are being told that what they do is nice, but it’s not important. That’s saying they are not important.”

To eliminate the opportunity for people to develop their artistic gifts is wrong. Here’s the article about ARTS.

“ARTS started with a single success story: D’Arrigo’s. He was unclear about his own identity and purpose when his sister and mother were simultaneously stricken with cancer. He left college his freshman year to care for them, and, in the process, found solace in painting and music.”-James Chute San Diego Union Tribune

A recent article about what ARTS is doing to help lift up a whole community.

 

Brandi Twilley Where The Fire Started exhibition at Sargent’s Daughters.

This post is part of We Are The World Blogfest #WATWB hosted by Damyanti Biswas and cohosted by  Simon Falk, Roshan Radhakrishnan, Inderpreet Uppal, Lynn Hallbrooks, Eric Lahti, and Mary J Giese

Featured image of Art Class Cathedral Senior High School New Ulm, Minnesota via US National Archives by photographer Abul Haque

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The Flat

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“In life, a person will come and go from many homes. We may leave a house, a town, a room, but that does not mean those places leave us. Once entered, we never entirely depart the homes we make for ourselves in the world. They follow us, like shadows, until we come upon them again, waiting for us in the mist.”
― Ari Berk

The last flat¹ we lived in in San Francisco had a little room off the kitchen where there was a sink with a window over it, and there were counters and shelves on each side of the sink. I thought of it as a pantry but it was probably more like a scullery, “since the scullery was the room with running water, it had a sink…”². Scullery³ sounds like a place to store sculls, catacombs. There were no skulls in our pantry.

800px-DJJ_1_Catacombes_de_Paris by djtox on Wikipedia.

Catacombs of Paris by Djtox

The kitchen had a built in breakfast nook with a vinyl covered U-shaped banquette, like a booth in a diner. My mother loved the nook. Flats are like large apartments. Ours had a kitchen, den, two bedrooms, living room, 1¼ bath. I say ¼ bath because there was a small room in the hall with a second toilet. The rooms of the flat were bigger than a typical modern apartment in the US. Our flat was on the top floor. You had to walk up a flight of stairs to get to the front door and another flight once you got inside. My mother did not lock the front door. You were not afraid living in The City in those days. Flats seem more like homes than apartments.

10754345204_a0846b68e7_zThe Mission District by Ken Lund on Flickr

Mission District by Ken Lund

This (above) looks something like the flat we lived in, only nicer. Below image is not too far from my old neighborhood.

800px-CastroAnd20thStreetInSanFranciscosCastroDistrict via wikimedia

2oth and Castro Street

footnotes:

1.flat: A set of rooms forming an individual residence, typically on one floor and within a larger building containing a number of such residences.-Oxford Living Dictionaries

2.Pantry-Wikipedia.

3. Etymololgy of scullery: Middle English squilerie, sculerie department of household in charge of dishes, from Anglo-French esquilerie, from escuele, eskel bowl, from Latin scutella drinking bowl-Merriam-Webster Dictionary online.

One Liner Wednesday is hosted by Linda G Hill. Featured image The Scullery Maid  painting by Giuseppe Maria Crespi via Wikimedia

 

Panther P55

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Panther, Puma, Cougar, Mountain Lion, P55 is what they named you, beautiful cat. You were fitted with a tracking device and crossed the freeway at night. They want to build you a bridge not too far from where I live so you and other Mountain Lions can cross the freeway safely and so your species can survive here in Southern California.

“Los Angeles is one of only two megacities in the world (the other is Mumbai) that have big cats living within the city limits. In a place more often associated with freeways and traffic, the fact that the city can support such large-ranging animals is a testament to the quality of open space and the habitat connectivity that still remains.”-National Park Service

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Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda G Hill. Prompt for today is “pant.” Photo of P55 ( captured to outfit him with a tracking device) by the National Park Service Santa Monica Mountains.  California Mountain Lions info. Slideshow photos from National Park Service.

No Wasted Words

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“No writing is wasted: the words you can’t put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.”-Erin Bow

“No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can’t put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.”
― Erin Bow

I was born and grew up part the way in San Francisco. You could buy fresh San Francisco sourdough bread all over The City.  I really love dark crust sourdough bread with some dry Italian salami and a good cheese, a semi-soft cheese like teleme or Red Hawk from Cowgirl Creamery, Point Reyes Station, Ca. Seems like the only place you can get the original sourdough dark crust bread by Boudin Bakery is at Tadish Grill Restaurant. Both Boudin and Tadish Grill have been around since SF Gold Rush days (1849).

Red Hawk cheese
Columbus salami San Francisco by Kent Wang
Humboldt Fog cheese by Sharona Gott

 

 

One Liner Wednesday is hosted by Linda G Hill. Featured image of San Francisco sourdough bread and beer by Jon Sullivan on wikimedia, Image of Red Hawk cheese by Frank Schulenburg on wikimedia, Image of Columbus salami by Kent Wang on Flickr. Had to throw in the Image of Humboldt Fog cheese via Sharona Gott on Flickr.

weds

 

Guess What

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A couple of random things for today’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday post. Today’s prompt word is “guess.”

You’ll never guess what I did today. You might think it is something exciting or extraordinary. It is something I would have not thought I would be doing. I am not into scrubbing, dusting, and polishing a lot around my house. But today I cleaned almost all the grout of our tile flooring throughout the house. Pretty exciting huh. I used this steamer cleaner and it works pretty well but I can feel that I was using muscles. I am tired and almost skipped writing.

You’ll never guess what else, I started drinking beer instead of wine. I have developed a taste for beer lately. We have some really good breweries in California. One that I am into now is Lagunitas IPA India Pale Ale from Lagunitas Brewing Company in Petaluma, California. Oh yeah, I just said ale not beer didn’t I? This one makes me happy because it’s hoppy. I really like the stronger taste, hoppy-ness.  My son told me that in the old sailing ships they would add extra hops to the ale to preserve it on the long voyages to India. It turned out it gave the ale a great flavor. So this afternoon, after I finished my grout cleaning, and before I started making dinner, I decided to have a nice cold Lagunitas IPA India Pale Ale.

Now I am ready to go watch a good English mystery on Amazon. Lately, it’s been Inspector Gently.

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday hosted by Linda G Hill. The prompt today is “guess.” Image of Lagunitas India Pale Ale by Matteo Doni on Flickr.