Monday 10/26/2026

I went for an abbreviated walk early, back by 8:30. (Still got 3.7 miles for the day.) Then into the car and off to FOPAL. There I worked through 5 boxes. Back in time for lunch.

While there, Joanne texted to ask, was I going to the memorial for the Fienes at 2pm? I had not meant to, but called her to discuss. We both had the feeling that we should go, there would be a bunch of our neighbors there. So we agreed to do that together.

Tom and Nancy Fiene (pronounced “feeney”) were prominent residents of Channing House from well before I moved there. Tom was a well-known and well-liked pediatrician and family doc at PAMF for many years. Nancy was a music teacher, member of a bunch of local clubs and organizations. I didn’t really know them except that I was on a committee with Nancy for a while. They were both born in 1934, so both 92 or so when they passed this year. During the service, the minister remarked that in the last week of his life, Tom had said he was holding on for Nancy’s sake. They died on the same day, so I guess he succeeded.

Joanne had her first HIIT session today, so she was still sweating when we headed out at 1:30. Short drive to First Congregational, a church that we have been in quite often the last couple of years, mostly for concerts (including just last Friday). It was jammed. Parking lot was full of course, we ended up parking 4 blocks away. Sat toward the back. There must have been over 300 people. There were music by the daughters, two of whom play cello (Nancy’s instrument), and speeches by various relatives. The only non-relative to speak was Joan Baez, who had Tom as her family doctor for many years.

We ended up in a pew next to fellow residents Lou and Alice, who invited us to share dinner, so we joined them in the dining room for dinner this evening.

Joan Baez read the famous poem Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep by Clare Harner,

Do not stand by my grave, and weep.
I am not there,
I do not sleep—
I am the thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints in snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain.
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
Do not stand
By my grave, and cry—
I am not there,
I did not die.

Sunday 10/25/2026

Yes, for the sixth afternoon in a row, we attended some kind of entertainment, a movie or a concert. This time it was at the Bing concert hall on campus at 2:30. We walked there and back, starting at 1:30. Thus 3.5 miles for the day. For me; I believe Joanne said she had been out for a walk in the morning as well. Not me, I just loafed around all morning.

The concert was Rob Kapilow: What Makes It Great: Music of Lerner and Lowe. Kapilow’s thing is these lecture/concert presentations on various kinds of music. He is a musicologist who likes to explain stuff. He teams up with professional musicians. He talks about the music, his partners perform it. This talk, about the musicals of Lerner and Lowe, covered five songs, two from Brigadoon, one from Camelot, two from My Fair Lady. The performers, a soprano and a baritone, were of very professional calibre, terrific singers. Kapilow’s lecture style is entertaining. So it was a nice two hours.

There’s a full moon rising outside my balcony. Everybody go take a look.

Saturday 10/24/2026

Lazy morning. At 1pm I drove to the Museum and led the 2pm public tour. Got a nice hand at the end.

Helped Dr. Margaret with her backup drive, and had tea and a chat with her and Caroline.

At 7:30 I will attend a concert downstairs, local group Trio de Garth who have played here often before, doing “Jazz Standards of the 60s”. Should be good.

Friday 10/23/2026

We took our traditional Friday morning walk, for Joanne to obtain a bran muffin from the pop-up stall so she could share it with her breakfast buddies on Saturday. On to Town & Country to visit Trader Joe’s. And back home. On the way back she remembered that we had meant to consult with Rickie, the manager of the garage where she gets Fred serviced, about the problem with Fred’s control panel. And I remembered that I had meant to visit Ace hardware to get some super glue.

So we agreed to go for a second walk in the afternoon. Which we did, after lunch. Back all the way to TJ’s, with a stop at the garage on the way up and Ace on the way back.So 3.8 miles for the day.

At 6:30 we will meet again and drive a mile to First Cong church for a concert. Second concert, and third entertainment thing, in three days. Such a social whirlwind we live.

Thursday 10/22/2026

Spent the whole day indoors, mostly in my apartment. Reading, doing a little computer stuff.

At 3:30 I went downstairs and met with Joanne and Peter, and we drove to the Aquarius theater to watch You Can See Everything. Since it is a 3-hour movie, we didn’t get back until 6:59 and the dining room was closed. Fortunately I had made up some protein shakes for breakfast and so I had a nice supper of a protein shake and some crackers and peanut butter.

I’m not going to try to explain that movie; it is extremely complex. It starts out as a simple documentary but then gets into multiple layers of re-created scenes, as the director, and the audience, try to figure out if Ms. Holmes is honest and self-deluded, or a master manipulator.

Wednesday 10/21/2026

In the morning early(ish) I took a standard walk, and bought a pound of coffee at the local Peet’s. I’m not sure what-all I did for the rest of the day. Oh, did some tech support for Dr. Margaret. No reading, though.

At 4:30 I went down and set up the microphone for use by the entertainers at the monthly Birthday dinner. Then hung around the lobby for my party, Richard and Roberta and Joanne. Richard and Joanne are October birthdays, and Roberta came with her husband and I was Joanne’s guest. So we had a nice party, joined by Ian to fill out the table which had five seats. Very pleasant group.

At 7 Joanne and I went to the Bing concert hall on campus to hear Julian Lang, a guitarist. Excellent concert. Lang plays jazz, but jazz you can follow, that makes sense. Very satisfying music. (Here’s a sample)

Tuesday 10/20/2026

This is the alternate Tuesday when I do my laundry. I got it all done by 10:30. While the washer was running, I met with Lou in the auditorium to show him how to put his computer screen on the projector. This so he can show slides to the Car Free group on Thursday.

Then I wanted to write something for the writers group, to the cue “Family Stories”. I couldn’t come up with anything so I talked to Dennis and then to Laurel and Laurel came up with a skunk story. Looking to check it in my mother’s autbiography I found another skunk story from the old ranch, and some confirmation for Laurel’s story. I combined the two stories. See below.

This evening the Movie committee showed The Talented Mr. Ripley and I went down and watched it. I had heard a lot about this movie, and a couple of people said they had liked it. I stayed through the whole thing but didn’t like it. Although, you got Gwyneth Paltrow and Cate Blanchett in the same movie, something has to be good, right? Anyway, I agreed with Joanne that the ending was disappointing.

Second-hand family stories

I consulted with my (slightly) younger relatives because I couldn’t come up with any family lore. Both remembered skunk lore. I followed up by searching for “skunk” in my mother’s autobiography which I digitized 15 years ago and sits conveniently on my hard drive. Combining all three sources, there are two stories.

First is the tale of the Momma Skunk with three babies, who made a practice of feeding from the cat bowls on the back porch. Mamma Skunk would come down a twilight from the tree-lined ridge behind the house, around the barn, up to the back porch. The cats would move away, pretending that they didn’t care about that old food anyway.

Mamma Skunk always ate first, then supervised the baby skunks as they fed, one at a time, at the cat bowls. Then the family would walk away in line, back toward the woods.

Skunk tale number two happened after I had gone off to college, but a younger relative who lived with my parents for a few years more remembers this tale. One weekend their Pentecostal church held a weekend prayer service and family day at a local lake resort. During the prayer service, the kids were allowed to play outside around the lakeside facility. Exploring, they found a family of baby skunks sheltering in a culvert under a road. Determined to save these “lost” baby critters, they worked hard with sticks and coat-hanger wire to extract the babies. And they got thoroughly anointed with skunk smell, causing consternation when the kids rejoined the congregation after the prayer service was over. Legend has it that the pastor’s kids kept at least some of the baby skunks, had their odor glands removed and kept them as pets for a year or so after.

Monday 10/19/2026

Took an early morning walk. Then did an hour of proof-reading for Scribble & Sketch.

At 10:30, I attended the monthly Event Coordinators meeting. Much talk about where notices may be posted in the future, given the changes coming to the elevators.

Then off to FOPAL where I found five boxes of donations waiting. Processed them in good time and back home by 2.

Fred the Subaru Forester has developed a problem with its nav screen. This has been happening intermittently for some time but now is getting worse. I did some searching and it seems we are seeing symptoms that are common to 2016 Foresters. Also that the Navigation Head Unit, he box of electronics with the map screen on its face, is replaceable and in fact not difficult to replace. So maybe it can be done by our local shop, without going to the Subaru dealer.

At 4pm was Rhonda’s monthly open meeting. This month, it was entirely devoted to the fallout, the pushback, the hundreds of emails, that have been happening since, a couple weeks back, staff announced that when the elevators are rebuilt (work in progress now), there would be no more posting flyers and notices on the elevator walls. Today’s news was: that idea stills stands, but new, larger bulletin boards would be installed on every floor between the elevators. Grudging acceptance.

Sunday 10/18/2026

Sunday morning ritual. Oops, I failed to complete the NYT crossword. Had to refer to the answers for a couple of words. Then at 9:30 I joined Joanne and we drove first to the Cal. Ave. farmers market. This because the food writer, Chris Gardner, who we heard speak Tuesday (7.316), had said that he gets a variety of fermented foods from a vendor at that market. So we walked the market, picked up a small bouquet of flowers as a hostess gift, and found the vendor.

Side note, Joanne has been pushing me to try some fermented foods for the sake of my microbiome. I tried Kefir. That was an instant No. Even worse than the Kombucha I sampled last year (6.069). So this time I bought a jar of sauerkraut. I would say how it tastes, but I can’t get the lid off the damn jar.

Anyway, from there we drove to Cousin Darlene’s place in Oakland. Darlene and her partner Jessea bought the Prius off me a couple years ago. The main reason to visit them was just to stay in social touch. But also, they had never plugged the Prius in! They had been waiting to do that when I could be there. So we did. They have a nice grounded outlet outside the house near where they park, so it was just a matter of plugging the charge cable in to the house and the other end into the car, and show them how a little plug icon lights up.

Then we all got in the Prius and Darlene drove us to a restaurant, the Grand Lake Kitchen in downtown Oakland. It was a fun place, jammed with the Sunday Brunch crowd but we had reservations. Various things were ordered and eaten, and I have a bag of leftovers in my fridge now. Big servings. Lots of conversation.

Darlene’s mother was a contemporary of Marian and Jean, child of one of their aunts or uncles. So Darlene is to me a cousin by marriage once removed? Something like that. Anyway she is just a delightful person to talk to. She was a nun for 15 years, then left the order and spent most of her career as an elementary school teacher.

We drove back after lunch, getting in at 3:30. At 4pm I went and set the auditorium up for a Sunday@Home talk. Residents Dean and Ellen told about a trip they took to the Northern Territories of Australia, including a visit to an isolated island. Good talk.

Saturday 10/17/2026

Two main activities today. I led the noon public tour at the museum. Attentive crowd and I was on, got some laughs, congrats afterward. Exchanged a phone call and later emails with Cousin Darlene about our visit to them tomorrow. Then at 7pm I sat next to Joanne in the auditorium as our movie committee screened Hail Caesar, a very silly movie. It wasn’t bad enough to leave in the middle, but nearly. Some laughs, some clever things, but on balance, no.