San Francisco Joys
In mid-April, Lilli had business in Berkeley CA while Violet was on school break; she invited Steve and me to join them for a visit to Joe Simmons. It had been eight years since we had seen Joe in Novato and he had moved to a beautiful place in San Rafael. Joe’s son, Hayden, his wife Melissa, and their 3-year-old son, Hayes, also live in San Rafael, but they were off to Phoenix for the weekend. They invited Lilli and Violet to sleep at their house and use their car. My friend, Cathie Bridwell, had moved from Delray Beach to San Rafael just last year. On April 18, she and her husband, Ken, and their son, Craig, served six of us a delicious brunch that got our adventure off to a great start.
There are 82,000 acres in the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy in the Bay Area. The first of three that we saw was the dreaded prison, Alcatraz Island! Despite the lovely short cruise from the harbor to the island, I was at first repelled. Then I realized we had an opportunity to face squarely the mistakes of the past and learn the advantages of rehabilitation and therapy over incarceration and isolation. I felt that lesson soaking in as I made and edited these photos.
On Easter Sunday, we attended Joe’s church, St. Paul’s Episcopal, in San Rafael. After lunch we walked three glorious miles amid the ancient redwoods in Muir Woods National Monument. Here are my favorite photos from that day.
Easter Monday took us to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. There we lunched with long-time friend Gussie Stewart, immersed ourselves in the art by Olafur Eliasson and Yayoi Kusama, and viewed two amazing exhibits of works by Ruth Asawa and Anselm Kiefer. What a day! On the way home, Joe took us to Presidio National Park. Then Lilli and Violet walked all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge before packing up at Hayes and Melissa’s house. Lilli got to her meeting in Berkeley and Violet joined us at Joe’s house.
On Tuesday, Steve returned to Florida, while Joe took Violet and me to Palo Alto for a tour Violet had arranged to see Stanford University. We really enjoyed seeing the beautiful campus and hearing about student life. Violet liked what she saw and heard, but thought it a bit too far from home. Just a 15-minute drive from Stanford was the home of Alyce and Dave Boster, friends from Rice. Alyce had worked in the English Department at Stanford for twenty years. They served us a lovely lunch while we caught up with their two daughters and four grandchildren. I even picked oranges from the tree in their backyard to take with me a few days later to Washington, DC.
A huge THANK YOU to our California friends–Joe, Laurie, Hayden, Melissa, Hayes, Cathie, Ken, Craig, Gussie, Alyce and Dave–for bringing us so much JOY!
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