Ruminations on Winter in California

The dead of winter where I live, is the time the gates of heaven open and water comes down every few days to bring life and green the land. There is nothing dead about winter here.

Only a few hours’ drive, the deepest snow in the United States can strand travelers even today, just as it did the Donner Party over a hundred and seventy years ago. You can certainly think of that swatch of California as being in the dead of winter. The story of the Breen and Donner families is taught in fourth grade of every California school. DH was told he’s descended from the same Breens, and so we’ve earned the right to reside over those lethal hills and past the freezer zone, on the beautiful always spring-like coast.

I don’t write this to make you jealous. ‘All y’all,’ seized by cabin fever and thinking just about now that you’ve had enough winter, take heart and some hot chocolate. Sunny is not all it seems.

“A sunny place for some shady people.” This saying by a clever writer, made me think how vivid writing works. It’s about delineating. It’s about marking contradictions, pointing differences, making a line that pops.

California is all about lines. It’s a land of extreme if adjacent climates. A state that shines in exploration even as it cultivates a shady subculture of folks running away from this that and the other, including norms of decency held onto by older cultures in older states. It’s a tantalizing contradiction from which great human dramas are born, told, written, filmed,  and like all life— eventually evaporate.

Reminding the creative self to cherish these lines, and raising a glass of soymilk to the sunshine.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A’ CHANGIN

Having *just* gone onto Daylight Savings Time, (after our country's ever decreasing sojourns on standard time) those who’ve read my posts of yore know that makes me cranky.

In November 2018 the citizens of the great state of California voted to stay on Daylight Savings Time permanently. The state that champions change doesn’t enjoy it as much as you’d think. I know I don’t.

Proposition 7 passed by sixty percent of the voters. But no matter, because the Federal Uniform Time Act prevents this from happening. Yup. We can stay on standard time year round, but not on Daylight Savings. So while I personally do not care which one we stay on, (staying is the operative word for me) seems we can’t stay on DST.

Kvetch, kvetch. There are worse things than twice a year adjustments. Get over it.

But then, how would I get to experience the ground shifting discomfort that my fictional characters endure? And what would I have to complain about on a beautiful California morning?

In the words of my grandmother, (and maybe yours) “You have to have clouds. Because if every day was sunshine, how would you know how good it is?”

Adjusting over here.

Remember to BRE---ATHE~~~

When I was a wee one, one of my teachers used to say, and often, “Remember to breathe.”

This struck me as funny. Who forgets to breathe?

I grew up, and with more breathing lessons under my belt, I understood better what she meant.

Many eastern meditation techniques involve focus on one’s breath. But this expression in western context means do something that takes you off the treadmill and allows your mind to clear before you get on again.

Feeling creatively stuck?

Breathe.

Got bad news?

Breathe.

A dear one is in crisis?

Breathe. Help them. Then breathe again.

For some, to breathe means eating chocolate or sipping a glass of Merlot. (And I do mean sipping, not to be confused with gulping.) For others, to breathe means making contact with a close friend and talking.

For me, it has come to mean go for a walk. Not just a leisurely stroll, but one that involves some hill climbing, which necessitates deep breathing. Yup.

The air quality where I live has been seriously unhealthy for almost two weeks. Devastating fires burning almost two hundred miles away have ushered a layer of dense smoke that wouldn’t quit.

Folks are warned to stay indoors and whatever they do, not do anything that requires physical exertion. In other words: Do Not Breathe.

Under such cautions, I re-discovered my childhood “breathing” activity. I didn’t even know back then that it was a form of breathing.

I lie down and read a great book.

I’m getting some fantastic reading done, and my soul is full of oxygen. On this Thanksgiving week, I am thankful for all the wonderful writers who ever lived and the publishing professionals who had the insight to usher their works into the world so we can breathe.

Remember to breathe, everyone.

Gift from a Beggar

We’d arrived in Berkeley in the late fall of 1978. Little did we know this would be a historically significant time in the San Francisco Bay area. In only a week, the mass murder-suicide in Jonestown (of a cult whose roots were in the East Bay) would permeate the air. That foreshock lasted but nine days, when a supervisor in San Francisco’s city hall would shoot the mayor and the first openly gay supervisor, and the bay area ground would be rattled not by a physical, but an emotional quake.

My then boyfriend and I knew about the danger of earthquakes, and chose to move to the area anyway. We knew about San Francisco and Berkeley’s reputation as a social vanguard. If that included the sort of madness that engulfed and thickened the air everyone breathed, we had to take the good with the bad. We were new, and chucked it to The California Experience.

But that was not what we noticed most. From the very first day, what struck us  was how many people lived on the streets and how many were begging for spare change. We had lived in Ithaca, New York, for four years. We never saw street people there. The climate and the town’s people were inhospitable to such. I had seen beggars before, not only in movies but also in Jerusalem, where I grew up. These were blind, old, broken bodied people. They had their corner in downtown Jerusalem, and anyone could see they could not support themselves any other way. We never passed them without putting change into their tins. 

But Berkeley was full of young seemingly healthy and energetic beggars. This, more than the maddening news, struck us as peculiar. We assumed every one of them was in real need, for who in their right mind would spend their days asking for money if they could work?

And so we gave. And gave. And whenever asked, which was often, we gave again. If we didn’t have spare pocket change, we gave bills from our wallets.

A couple of months later, we had become jaded. New acquaintances informed us that most of the local beggars were drug addicts, and that our giving only perpetuated their habit. We stopped giving. In addition, our own funds were running low. It would be a few more months before we found jobs, and we had rent to pay.

Until one day, when a young beggar approached us on Telegraph Avenue, right by the intersection of Dwight Way, asking for spare change.

“Sorry, Man. We’re broke,” my boyfriend said. That was not literally true, but felt like it was in our near future.

The beggar stuck his hand into his deep pants’ pocket and doled a fistful of change. “Please take that,” he said. “You’re more broke. I had a good day.”

We tried to refuse, but he tried harder. He would not let us leave without taking some of his “spare.”

I don’t know what the answer is. But, forty years later, even as I continue to mostly pass local beggars by without giving, once in a while I see that beggar’s face and pull my pocket change out.

It’s Always Spring

When my kids were at the junction of navigating college/conservatory applications, I found a site that helped me understand this process, so different now from the time when we were at that stage.

College Confidential has its trolls and plenty of mis-informants. But for the most part, it is tremendously helpful. Recommended!

One of the things that struck me when young participates wrote about their hopes and wishes for higher education was the criteria they listed. I related to top quality academics and seeking particular teachers. I resonated to the matters of costs, funding, and scholarship offers most of all. I was on the paying side, after all. I understood wanting a happy social life and nice living conditions. But from my dowdy perch, I found one particular mention that struck me as funny and a bit “off.”

They wrote about the weather. They wanted good weather. They wanted excellent weather. Weather trumped all. It loomed on the top of so many wish lists that I wondered if young’uns have totally lost their sense of purpose or maybe, as one parent on the site put it, imagined they were going to a resort to major in beer.

Until the other day, when it occurred to me that when I moved to the bay area one of the considerations, and the one that keeps me firmly anchored here to this day, was and is---

The weather.

Whether you believe in global warming, global change, or no change, it’s July, and as it is in January, here it’s always spring.

See why I’m smiling?

It’s the weather.

Welcome, SUMMER*

*...almost

{June 21^st 9:07 AM, PDT}

So, we are just about to enter official summer.

I was never fond of Summer, until I moved to the SF bay area.

Growing up in Jerusalem, Summer was HOT. I mean, too hot.

Later, in upstate New York, it was hot and muggy, thank you very much.

Growing up, Summer meant a long school-break. It was also a long time of missing my classmates and my home-away-from-home, which is what school was for me. Not a happy thing.

Swimming pool weather meant sunburns. Later, in adolescence, it entailed being self-conscious about my figure and the growing attention it got. I never felt all right about having someone look at my body who didn't bother to look at my face first, or make conversation. This happened a lot more in summer.

So Summer and I were not friends.

Now we made peace, Summer and I. I’ve passed the point of others gawking and I live where the Summers are gentle. I've grown up, and Summer has definitely matured into a mellow fellow. 

©Shelagh Duffett

Welcome, Summer. Happy to be with you again.