Thursday 11/12/2026

First thing I walked up to Dr. Chu’s office. This was for a 6-month checkup. We talked about my various complaints, and agreed none were serious enough to warrant treatment. Except my persistent runny nose. He gave me info on how to use the steroidal nasal sprays.

Met up with Joanne to fix some minor technical issues she has. Then spent a couple of hours working over the pictures. I’ve worked my way through 2019, 2020 and most of 2021. Deleting lots of pictures. Remembering some things: Pandemic days, I had pictures of people in masks and the meals we were served in our rooms, and so on.

Chorus rehearsal at 4pm went well. Dinner less well, I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and got something that was, firstly, late, ten minutes after the rest of the table was served, but also inedible. Not only was the cheese not melted but the whole thing had an odd chemical aroma. First time I’ve sent food back, but I did. Instead of waiting for something else I excused myself and made a PBJ in my room.

Wednesday 11/11/2026

Wednesday morning is hike day. We had 4 people, Joanne, me, Marilyn and Erika. We walked around the Baylands on a foggy day, foggy enough that it was hard to figure which trail to follow because we couldn’t see far enough ahead. On return Joanne said, let’s go get coffee so the two of us walked another half mile to a coffee shop for a chat.

After lunch I spent 2 hours going through those old pictures from my phone. I have now worked through 2019 and 2020, the latter including my trip to the Greek Islands and my trip to London. It’s mentally hard work, but good to have it done. Another couple of weeks should do it 🤪

In the evening I did the AV for a lecture by Prof. Matthew Morrison, an expert on early American Music, about the lasting black influence on popular culture. He stopped at 45 minutes and hadn’t yet gotten to jazz! There’s a lot to say about the early history of American culture.

Tuesday 11/10/2026

Took an early walk. Then tidied the apartment, and did several small items at the computer, like making a contribution to Stanford Jazz, renewing my AAA membership, and such.

Writers meeting was unusually short; the prompt had not produced very many contributions.

At 1:30 I went down expecting to join the Line Dance class, only to find out it had been canceled. Well fine, I have other things to do.

Joanne was out with our car on an errand, but we have a second car this month. Our friend Prue is away on a long trip and asked us to exercise her Prius. So I hopped in Prue’s Prius and drove to FOPAL where I completed processing all pending books, and prepared my shelves for the sale this weekend. Back home around 4.

On the way home I made a sentimental side-trip. Back in April, 2019 (Day 0.139, check the picture there) a group of us planted a tree in Marian’s memory. This was sponsored and organized by Canopy, a volunteer tree-planting organization that Marian had given many hours of volunteer time.

A couple of days ago I was reviewing old pictures, and there were pictures from that tree-planting, which made me wonder, how is that tree doing, seven years along? So I detoured around to the place and checked.

Answer, not very well. It has hardly grown, and the leaves are mostly brown. It has some green, so it isn’t actually dead, but it looks pretty sad. I am going to blame Canopy; either it was the wrong kind of tree for the location, or something was wrong with our planting technique. Whatever; it is not very nice. Too bad.

Monday 11/09/2026

First thing was the monthly Resident Association meeting. No special news there, but a great deal of Q&A about the still-unpopular staff decision to not allow the daily calendar to be posted in the new elevators. Whatever.

Joanne and I left right at 10am, while the meeting was still going, because she had planned for us to attend a Masterclass session at the Bing auditorium on the campus. The deal is that three piano students (in this case, I guess they instruct other instruments other days) each play a piece and get ten minutes of personal instruction from a master. The three students were freshmen and sophomores, two women and a man, all sounding very skilled playing classical pieces. The instructor was Isata Kanneh-Mason, whom I had never heard of but who seemed very nice. The sound system wasn’t great, so you couldn’t actually hear what she was telling each student, but it was fun anyway listening to them try different passages over and over.

Left that as 12. Dropped Joanne at CH and continued on to FOPAL where I processed 6 or 7 boxes, but had to leave before I was done. Going back tomorrow.

Back home for a quick nap and then at 4pm, Chorus practice. Then supper, and after I will attend another concert here in the auditorium, a wind ensemble, five women playing different kinds of wind instruments. Report tomorrow.

Sunday 11/08/2026

Usual Sunday morning, except that I did two large crossword puzzles. When I stopped taking the daily Merc, that cut me off from the LA Times crossword that I have been doing every morning for many years. So I started doing it instead online, on my laptop. Well, I get the physical Sunday paper and from it, get the NYT big puzzle, which the Merc carries on Sundaays instead of the LA Times. So I did that one. But now I have sitting on my laptop, the LA Times Sunday puzzle, just daring me to do it also. So I did.

At 11, off to the Museum to lead the noon tour. Nice little group of 15 or so. Back by 2:30 for a lazy afternoon.

Saturday 11/07/2026

Back on October 1, we went to a concert at SFJazz, and there I lost my hat. It was one of my favorites, Mein Deutsche Hutt, that I bought in Munich. Just walked away from it. So the next day I emailed various different people at SFJazz (since they didn’t any any clue about “lost and found” on their website) and — nothing. No answer for about 3 weeks. Then early this week I got an email from a person there, with a picture of my hat, “Is this it?” So I arranged to come by this weekend and get it. I told Joanne I had found something fun to do on Saturday: go get my hat.

This was a weekend when 101 was closed for repaving, so we drove in on 280 and 19th avenue and then all the way across town on Oak street. At Franklin, hooked around and pulled up at SFJazz on Fell. As directed I buzzed at the security door in the parking garage, and the security guy let me in and dug around and gave me my hat, yay!

Then we drove across some more of the city to a parking garage on The Embarcadero, and walked to the Ferry building. I had heard there was a farmers marke there on Saturdays, and anyway the building is full of restaurants.

It was a lovely day, about 70 degrees, bright sun, and just throngs of people, shopping and eating and also coming on and off the ferry boats that were coming and going at 5 minute intervals. So many and varied types of clothing styles and body adornments. It was an exciting scene. We picked a mexican restaurant at random and had very nice tacos. Drove on home.

This evening we are running a Dolly Parton concert video, her 2009 appearance in London. I have to go do that now.

Friday 11/06/2026

Started the day with our usual muffin walk, and on up to Town&Counry for coffee and to shop Trader Joe’s.

The bulk of the day I set about getting control of my photos. Yesterday I went to try to find a certain picture that I remembered taking um, two years ago? Or was it three? And started scrolling through Photos, and scrolling and scrolling… and noticed that I over 2,500 pictures on the phone.

I probably have that many in my official picture folders on the desktop machine, but those are all organized and especially, they have keywords assigned so I can search for all pictures with keyword “Marian” or “Sculpture” or whatnot. The ones on the phone are not so, just a stack of pictures that the phone organizes by date taken, which is better than nothing, but — 2500?

So today I synced the phone with iCloud (should have done that long ago) and then synced the desktop machine with iCloud also, and after a little while, I could review all 2500 on my big 27″ monitor with a full keyboard and mouse, which makes it so much simpler than working on the phone. So I started through them. Oh my is that going to be a big job. But I took a bite of it. I got partway through the last trip we took together, in 2017 to Lake Como and Milan.

At 3:30 there was a sudden announcement on the building-wide PA system. “A slight odor of gas has been detected on the third floor. All residents please report to the lobby.” So all 180 of us trooped down to the lobby, and eventually to the auditorium for seating. At 4:15 it was announced that the gas leak had been found, in the basement, and was under control. OK to return to your rooms.

Talked about it over dinner: what they did made sense. The usual rule when a fire alarm goes off, is to “shelter in place”, stay in your room. That’s because a fire, if there is one, is localized and likely confined to a single floor. It’s safer to have everyone in their rooms than trying to get down the stairs, especially since the elevators are automatically disabled by a fire alarm.

But in this case, the danger was a potential explosion. Until they found the gas leak, the potential was for a sudden explosion somewhere, but where? Better to get everyone down, because in this case the elevators could remain in service.

So that was the amusement this afternoon.

Thursday 11/05/2026

Went for an early walk to cash a check and have a coffee. Frittered away some time until 10:15, then went down to find Joanne and we walked off to visit the Cantor Museum on the campus. Looked at two exhibits of works by California artists. And an exhibit of relics of Jane Stanford. I hadn’t known that she died somewhat prematurely and probably from poison, in Honolulu. Nobody was ever charged or convicted and her actual cause of death is still a mystery.

We had planned to have lunch in the museum cafe, but there was a long line, and all the shady tables on the patio were taken. So we walked across the campus to the Tressider Union and got a sandwich there. Took the Marguerite bus partway home. (The campus bus system is named the Marguerite because that was the name of Jane Stanford’s horse that pulled her carriage.)

At 4pm was the second rehearsal of the chorus. I am fumbling here. Most of the other members have been doing chorus singing for multiple seasons. Fortunately I sit next to Jerry and he knows the drill and prompts me.

Wednesday 11/04/2026

First thing we went for a hike: Joanne’s usual Wednesday morning hike, with me, Marilyn, Joanne The Other One, and her partner Erika. We went to Arastradero preserve for a nice walk in beautiful weather. No, I didn’t take a picture. We needed to be back before 12, so we kept it short, at 3.4 miles.

We did get back at quarter-to. I got my break and PB and ran up to Joanne’s place, we made our lunches quickly and sa down to watch the Sanford Grand Rounds webcast at 12. This was another talk by nutrition specialist Chris Gardiner. I had finished reading his book, Joanne has it now. Anyway he did a nice job of summarizing the book I’d just read, so nothing new.

Later in the afternoon I sat down to finish editing the video I didn’t finish yesterday. This was a talk on a visit to some places in Australia by CH residents Dean and Ellen. Actually pretty interesting (see link). But they had so many pictures, and every picture needed to be cropped differently it seemed. So it took about 4 hours of work to finish the one-hour video.

Tuesday 11/03/2026

Laundry day. I had it all done by10:30. While the wash was running, I wrote something for the writers group. I’ll post it below.

After that and lunch, I edited one video, the book talk by Prof. Gould (see yesterday). And I started editing a second, but it was a much more complex job and I didn’t finish.

After supper I went to the movie of the month, Double Indemnity, the classic film-noir movie. It was OK. I think Joanne liked it better than I did.

Neighbor Rob had set up this web site to display election results of interest to us (Palo Alto offices, local measures, state offices and so forth). So right after the movie we swapped that in to show on the big projector. But it wasn’t fully baked yet, and after an hour we gave up and shut down.

The writers prompt this time was, Assume there is a next life and you have some control over it. Who will you be, what will you do?” I thought I would play around with that. I told Joanne I had “a ghost of an idea.” Which I did, presenting this under the title, Ghost Life.

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I could write a treatise on the physics of ectoplasm. Well, no, I couldn’t, as there is no way to write, or to do anything with a physical consequence. That’s the thing about ectoplasm: it doesn’t interact with solid stuff. So no pencil-pushing for me now, nor keyboard tappy-taps. Point one: Ectoplasm is the congealed essence of futility.

This I quickly discovered as I drifted away from the wretched hulk of the body that I had occupied so long. What? I thought in astonishment; I’m a ghost? Arms and legs and, it feels like, a thorax with a head on top. I can kind of see my translucent appendages and wave them about, and vaguely feel them waving, but where they intersect anything, they pass through. Including each other; hand-wringing is out because my hands don’t grip; they just wave through each other.

Yet I can walk, sort of. At least, I can turn, by casting my attention to a different angle, and when I form the intention “walk”, I progress that direction.

Quickly I noticed the crowds around me. So many, many semi-transparent people, walking around in all directions, passing through walls, through the bed and the nurse who was straightening my late habitation, and through each other.
“Hey!” I said, or tried to say, as a chubby chap strode through me, and onward without any reaction. There were people walking upside down on the ceiling, and people half-submerged in the floor, people progressing at all angles through the space.

I quickly learned that physical surfaces were merely suggestions to ectoplasmic humans, or ghosts. I could walk along on any surface, or I could imagine a surface, curved or flat, at any orientation, and walk along it.
But there are always crowds. Perhaps an hour along I sank in on me: Oh, duh! Of course there are so many! If every human who ever lived is still here as an ectoplasmic body, why the earth must be miles deep with us!

As days passed I learned that amusements among the ectoplasmic hordes are few. Voyeurism quickly palls, when you can’t take part in the fun.There’s Doubling, which is where you try to occupy exactly the same volume as another person, and move as they move, until they get annoyed and run away.There’s exploration, where you walk around Everest or into the Marianas Trench or wherever. Or you can imagine a path into the earth and walk down to check out the core, but there’s no light, and few ever go more than a few miles in.

Eventually all these meager amusements pall, and you begin the Long Walk. That’s why the Earth is not miles deep in ghosts after all. Once you’ve walked every continent, escape lies only that-a-way, for pretty much any way you care to point. You imagine a line that points toward Saturn, or toward Betelgeuse. And you start walking.