2012

Greetings!

Running late--my apologies! Only partially a printer problem. The underlying reason--I’m simply late in composing the letter!

To dispense the health news first, I was hit with “hip bursitis” while in San Francisco in March--extreme pain that made standing and walking incredibly difficult. I had to buy a cane. And I had to continue on schedule and get down to Palo Alto the next day on the commuter train for my annualtax prep appointment with the accountant. Then after lunch with a few friends, one ferried me to the Palo Alto Clinic’s “Urgent Care” department. I must sing the praises of this place--a model for efficiency. It’s like a mini-hospital within their building, and the exam, X-ray (eith extra CD copy for me to bring home to my own orthopedist), diagnosis, cortisone shot, ice bag, and pain prescription filled in their own basement pharmacy--all finished in only two hours! If you’re ever in trouble when in Silicon Valley area, that’s the place to go.

That evening, I arrived back in SF on the commuter train and then the Muni bus, still in pain, (the cortisone for this joint is slow-acting). It was dark and absolutely pouring rain. I hobbled slowly the one long block from the bus to my motel, hunched over almost double, limping with the cane in one hand and clutching my handbag and tote bag full of tax papers in the other. A grizzled old black man leaning against a wall along the sidewalk greeted me jovially. “That’s what you get for living so long!” I had to admire his sense of humor, even in my miserable state.

On return home, despite another cortisone shot from my orthopedist, I was still in pain, and further testing showed me an additional problem had developed--an arthritic lumbar vertebra and disk impinging on a nerve root. I was then sent to a ‘rehab” specialist for nerve and muscle testing, and he in turn referred me for extensive physical therapy sessions including spinal traction. By the latter part of August I had regained strength and could again walk without a cane, but I have to continue doing the PT exercises “forever.”

A few random brighter points about this experience: During that March trip, when meeting a friend at the Asian Museum in SF for lunch and an exhibit showing the lavish life of Indian Maharajas in their heyday. I spun around the show in style--the museum lends you a wheelchair! And the railroad employees on the commuter trains to Palo Alto are very helpful--when they see one’s cane, they pop out of nowhere and arrange for mechanical platforms to hoist you up into the train and then lower you down again when you arrive, so you don’t have to struggle to climb and descend the steps. Pretty cool.

Now on to more pleasant news of the year. The major event was a trip to Yosemite National Park. An old family friend was so appalled that I had been literally around the world and had never seen this famous attraction right here in California, that he took me for four days at his guest, June 1st.(“This is your Christmas present!”

Heading there from Berkeley, we went through a bit of the old Gold Rush area (and a reconstructed village of that era) in hot weather--about 103º at one point--but the temp was quite comfortable at Yosemite itself. It is a place heavily frequented by vigorously outdoorsy people--hikers, bikers, rock climbers, campers, etc, and not many, er, “mature” ladies slogging around on canes. Nevertheless, thanks to my friend taking me on a one-person tour, and lodged in the wooden cabins of “Curry Village.” I saw all the famous views of massive rock formations, waterfalls, lakes and meadows, and was duly impressed by the sheer magnitude of everything. I was startled each time I looked up and was faced with a huge granite rock wall. Felt very small.

I thought about what this place must have been like zillions of years ago, when it was filled with a gigantic glacier. I kept remembering the eerie sensations I’d felt on a long-ago trip when hiking across the glacier at Mt. Cook in New Zealand. There the hotel fitted us out with boots, alpenstocks and a human guide, and we gingerly trudged among the rough, chunky surface, listening to the moving ice crunching and the slow drip, drip, drip of its water as it melted underneath us.

I loved seeing all the tame deer browsing around the meadows--even the tiniest little patch of meadow near the cafeteria-style restaurant had a few of these gentle creatures munching grass, mindless of the tourists, who were a sight in themselves, gazing in awe and wonder.

The LeConte Memorial Lodge, a small museum built by the Sierra Club in 1903, was a special treat, honoring the early geological work of Prof Joseph LeConte (Univ. of Calif. Berkeley). Dining at the famous Ahwahnee Hotel (1926. pseudo-Indian style decor) was a pleasure, as was lunching not far away at the Wawona Hotel (1879. Anglo-American). I was fascinated by a tour of giant Sequoia redwood trees at the Mariposa Grove with its small museum. One learned how rugged trees can survive partial burning and how two young trees too close together can join their trunks and become one.

Mono Lake has an eerie, lunar-landscape appearance, bristling with an array of “tufa” - tapering stalagmite-like pillars, spiking up out of the water. These are formed by calcium carbonate bubbling up from underwater springs. I wondered if something like that had occured in Biblical times, when someone thought that a certain disobedient wife had been punished by being turned into a pillar of salt. But when I was “swimming” (i.e. floating uncontrollably) in the Dead Sea in Jordan years ago, emerging and drying in the sun to find myself coated with salt, I had mulled over another theory.

We left the area via high-altitude roads, (c.6000-8000 ft.) and found ourselves suddenly engulfed in a snowstorm - - JUNE 4, mind you! It grew heavier and heavier, piling up on the road, and became quite alarming as we passed two cars that had spun out of control in circles and gotten stuck along the roadside. We crept slowly along in the tracks created by two vehicles up ahead, apprehensive at the road conditions, yet awestruck at the beauty of masses of snow-covered trees all along the side of the road--like perfectly-shaped Christmas trees in every size, from baby ones to giants. So one could say this trip was indeed a “Christmas present.” When we reached lower altitudes, the snow turned to rain and then stopped, so we got safely back to Berkeley by evening.

After the Yosemite sojourn I spent a few days in San Francisco, which included a Wagner Society lecture meeting and a big party to wind up SF Opera’s Ring cycle. (I had hated its Rheingold production earlier, so I avoided the other three.)

For the Labor Day weekend I went to Santa Barbara for the Pacific Coast Open Final polo match. It was a particularly exciting game--the two teams of top-rated players, running so close, tied at the end. Then the team that had been behind earlier on made the winning goal with a long, spectacular dash by the world-famous Argentine player, Adolfo Cambiaso. The audience was going wild with excitement jumping about and screaming their heads off. Me too.

Stanford invited my class year’s alumni to attend the four-day October reunion/homecoming of the class three years ahead of ours--to keep them company, presumably because of the dwindling number of ancient beings--and to  “celebrate” their entering what the University calls the “Cardinal Society” (class years with so few members still alive or well enough to attend that they’re all lumped together). I booked up all the lunches, although you only had to book one in order to attend everything else on the program. The regular lunches are in “class tents” (canopies, actually) with picnic tables and folding chairs on all the lawns, and they consist of cold box lunches and plastic. The Cardinal Society affair on the other hand was indoors in the handsome Alumni Building with real furniture, linen, china, silver and glassware, place cards, and waiters serving an elegant hot meal with wine.Very nice!

Of the “classes without quizzes” I attend, one of my favorites was “Mark Twain and the World” (Prof. Shelley Fisher Fishkin), examining this very American writer who had become a global citizen, what he learned from his travels, and what readers and writers around the world learned from him. (I was pleased to hear that he was an early ardent animal welfare advocate, and I bought a copy of the Prof’s compilation book, Mark Twain’s Book of Animals.

The class on “The Science of Happiness” (Prof. Fred Luskin) drew a huge auditorium crowd, focusing on what makes people happy and why, with “strategies for finding the good, becoming more peaceful, and improving relationships.” This included turning to the person seated next to you and saying “May you be happy!” It did put us all in a good mood.

In “Walt Whitman’s Body Language,” Prof. Gavin Jones showed lots of photos of the poet (even a few in the nude, and he was no Greek statue) with which Whitman publicized himself. He was an avid self-promoter, yet because his type of poetry was ahead of its time, he never achieved the esteem in his own day that he has now.

The University Roundtable, “Gray Matters: Your Brain, Your Life, and Brain Science in the 21st Century,” (held in the basketball pavillion, and taped for television), was another high point. The speakers were Dr. Frank Longo (Chair of Neurology & Neuroscience). Prof Carla Shatz (Biology & Neurobiology), Bob Woodruff (ABC News, Bob Woodruff Foundation, survivor of brain trauma in war), and  Jill Bolte Taylor (Neuroanatomist and author of My Stroke ofInsight; a Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey - re her own recovery from a stroke). One salient point they all stressed: the particular importance of PHYSICAL EXERCISE in keeping one’s brain in shape!

Just as at our own class reunion a couple of years ago, I was able to walk to most of the campus venues, and enjoyed the fun of sailing around in golf carts for longer routes. I also enjoyed riding the commuter trains between SF & PA each day, where I’m amused, but not surprised, to find myself almost the only person reading an actual print book or newspaper and not glued to an electronic device.

I went back to San Francisco later in October for a Wagner Society symposium on Lohengrin, and I ventured a standing-room ticket for the opening of the opera that night. But I loathed the production (Medieval royalty costumed and behaving like 1956 Iron Curtain-era Hungarian functionaries!) So I walked out early in the second act

In my local area, I saw an excellent production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. PCPA theatre, Santa Maria). I toldone of the lead performers I’d seen the Moscow Arts Theatre perform this in London years ago, and I vigorously complimented him on his performance, which I think madehis day! Another wonderful production (Pewter Plough community theater, Cambria) of Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks was thoroughly delightful. Odd title, but excellent piece of writing and performing--moving, yet fully laced with humor

We’re fortunate to have most of the Met live in HD opera simulcasts and “encores” (reruns) from the Metropolitan Opera, New York, shown in San Luis Obispo atthe theatre on Cal Poly’s campus. I did like the Met’sproduction of Wagner’s Ring cycle--very much!

Can’t stay away from SF! Went again in early December for the Wagner Society’s “Cosima Party” (a Christmas party so-named since Wagner’s wife Cosima was born on Christmas). We were entertained by a pianist, and lots of members won gift-wrapped “prizes” (via the drawing of numbered tickets). I won one of these which I didn’t open till Christmas. It’s a DVD of a production of Lohengrin done in Baden-Baden, Germany, and by serendipity the Music Director was Kent Nagano--world-famous conductor who grew up here in little Morro Bay! I haven’t viewed this as yet.

NATURE NOTES: No frogs here again this year! I missthem and their songs! The cats, Jazz and BB, are doing well--still frisky at their “advanced age” of eleven. BB had been soill last year (two hospitalizations) but he made an excellent recovery and is still a good gopher-hunter. I let them both out early in the mornings to reconnoiter their territory and hunt any available prey. Jazz likes high places. A woman I don’t know but who seemed to know where I live, seeing me at the hairdresser’s, told me that one morning before dawn when she was out for an exercise run in my neighborhood, she paused to admire a full moon. She saw my cat Jazz up on the roof-- and he was also gazing at the moon! A pity she didn’t have a camera on her--that would have made a terrific picture!

Whew--after all this typing, it seems this was a busier year than I thought. Hope all is well with you and yours. Ilove hearing your news. And I hope I can get these cardsmailed at least within the Twelve Days of Christmas! Herewith my best wishes for the rest of the Christmas Seasonand a Happy New Year!