The Ladder Herald

Water balloons & wagons in Paradise

Yay!

Beautiful boy.

Bombs away!!!!!!!!!!

Boys in a wagon!

Goodbye to the Booty

Every day when we dropped him off at Buen Dia, Jonah made us do the booty dance in the window to say goodbye.

This was his last day at Buen Dia—Gabe was up on it.

Shell Hand

One last beach one—

Water Child

Does the healthy baby, learning to walk, learning to talk, does he erase the one who died between my two perfect boys? He does not. Though his laugh intoxicates me, and his older brother delights me, there was another: one I just learned that the Japanese call mizuko, water child. A miscarriage that knocked me out with grief, for a time.

There is a ritual in Japan for miscarriage and for abortion (they don't seem to consider them all that different, and I can see why). There are temples, statues, specific prayers and offerings. In America, we have silence and shame to deal with these things that happen to so many women, and to our families. Why is our culture so empty and ugly sometimes? I hate even the word we used "miscarriage", as if the fault is in the "carrying"—the mother's action.

I just finished reading Peggy Orenstein's memoir Waiting for Daisy Peggy Orenstein. It was lovely, insightful and painfully honest, especially about the strains on her marriage (which I really appreciate when someone tells the truth about) but I am stopped in the short section on Jizo, her time in Japan when she got to make offerings to her miscarried zygotes and complete a strange ritual. I wanted that so much when I miscarried and I could not raise my spirit up out of depression at the time to invent it for myself. I would have had to invent it. If only I had been in Japan!

My midwife's apprentice told me about a buddhist ritual at Goat in the Road G-i-t-R Ceremony for Children Who Have Died that I suddenly feel the strength to check out. Funny how it comes to me now, almost three years later: the will to mark the grief. I guess we just have to take it when it comes. Maybe I will see you there in October.

Getting Some Nature on Them

Justine is sending back all these amazing photos of our boys living it up on Kid Island. What lucky kids.

Boys with jellyfish.

Jonah and jellies. So matter-of-fact!

The beautiful Max.

Swim!

Yes.

Menu Haiku

I went to NOPA for the first time the other night for dinner with some lovely ladies. We had sooooooooo many different dishes, including these little fish, smelts, fried like french fries. Anne says the foodies always called them fries with eyes. Plus bubbly rose champagne, and three kinds of dessert wine with three kinds of dessert. Bliss.

I loved this: haiku created from words on their seasonal menus (haiku is traditionally written with reference to season).

warm sweet summer sun
gold california country
small wild baby

Dispatch From Jonah's Vacation to Kid Island

A lot of nights when Jonah helps us tell him a story, the story is about Kid Island, where the kids drive and the parents are strapped into car seats in the back and it just goes on and on like that. But Kid Island does exist in real life and it's Aunt Boo and Aunt Justine's Fire Island pad where Jonah is maxing and relaxing with cousin Max, as we speak (we are joining him in seven days). We've never been away from him like this, except to leave him with one or another of his own parents solo. I feel a strange pulling on me, like I've forgotten something, or like I have a phantom limb. It is so weird for him to be 3,000 miles away.

Justine, the mind-blowing-ly sweet auntie, sent us an email update today, for Day #1, complete with color photos to prove without a doubt that he is alive. In fact, he seems to be having the time of his life (naturalment). Did I mention there are no cars on Fire island?? Did I mention that on Fire Island instead of the only-one-treat-per-day rule that we all know is universal and must be observed, there is an auntie-only TWO-treat-a-day rule?? Yes. Take a breath.

Aunt Boo and boys on bicycles

Jonah and Max in the Bay with noodles

Ok. Ok, ok, ok. I am so proud of all of us! The boys, most of all, for being so adventurous. The aunties, next, for taking on such a massive project. And then us, the parents, for trying not to be totally overbearing about it.

His First Baby Burrito!

Brought to him by Aunt Cake.

Eight-legged dreams

The octopus is in me, lately...

I made this little guy in a gocco printing class at the Center for the Book. Which is the coolest place ever.

SFCB

Dream

The octopus, black-green and fixed in the cold
water like a fossil in a stone chip. The miracles
of all those legs, or perhaps they are arms?
My boat is floating over this monster, my Mother
standing by the dock, warning me not to go.
Her fear arrows into me directly and my excitement
to go recedes a bit. I could be devoured, I think.
The mass beneath the surface lingers. It is indifferent
to me. It's tentacles look like the tender white shoots
of springtime plants. I stand with one foot in the boat,
one on earth. I am not even in the water yet.
I am just an octopus, I hear it say.

The Soul of Cities

Karlinsky is kicking ass again. This quote is from her article in SPUR's newsletter, the Urbanist (07.08) entitled, "The Long Road Home". Here, Sarah looks at some of the lessons learned from working on "community planning" in San Francisco. She is SPUR's Policy Director:

"In San Francisco, we often make the mistake of asking, too simply, what people currently living in a neighborhood would 'like' and seeing what the number adds up to. Because this is essentially what every neighborhood in Northern California does, we have ended up with the kind of development patterns that are destroying the land, air and water of our region. We do not ask neighborhood plans to help solve the problem of regional growth. This ends up skewing the process to focus only on the smaller issues particular to the neighborhood."

SPUR-The Long Road Home

As for me, the community planning projects I have been involved with in San Francisco have astounded me with the ability of neighbors to put their selfish parochial interests ahead of what's good for our kids and our earth—our common lives. I've watched San Francisco neighbors on Potrero Street fight traffic safety improvements at an intersection where a four-year-old girl was killed by a speeding car, because it would mean the loss of a few on-street parking spaces. I've watched neighbors in the Castro fight services for homeless gay teens because the kids might create mess or disturbance if the community program went in. And I've seen neighbors band together to fight housing designated for public school teachers, because they didn't want "public housing" around their homes. Neighbors here feel justified in bitterly fighting bike lanes, parks and community centers—all in the name of "preserving neighborhood character".

I often get enraged at their narrow-mindedness, but I comfort myself with the same thought that makes me feel better about the people who hate my gays—they are mostly older and will die soon.

I think change is in the nature of a healthy city—and it's what makes it amazing, even as we mourn the loss of some things we love (like Osento!). It makes sense to preserve some things—but it also makes sense to allow for the new: personally I adore the new Hayes Green where the freeway used to be—it's now a playground and outdoor art gallery. People practice hula-hooping there, and sit around talking. I love all the new actually-good coffee places roasting in the city. I love the new Jewish Museum, and the Bi Rite Creamery (maybe a little too much). Cheers to change in San Francisco! There is SO MUCH room for improvement!

Poetry from Poetry

The new issue of Poetry just came. There is a lot good in it. Here are a few short ones—

The Play of Light and Shadow

We want to give ourselves away utterly
but afterwards we resent it, it is the same
with the sparrows, their eyes burn so coldly
under the dusty pines, their small chests swell
as they dispute a crumb, or the empty place
where a seed was once: this is our law too,
to peck and peck at the Self, to take turns
being I, to die in a fierce sidelong glance,
then to hold the entire forest in one tilt
of a tufted head, to take flight suddenly
and fuck in midair, tumbling upward.

—D. Nurske

*

Thistles

stands as clocks fully struck
in fields of fading flowers—
when the fires of summer come
they will gather up the hours
of rains past, frost endured

and famished stalks in full gale
that begin their telling once
all forms of telling fail

—Heidy Steidlmayer

*

Poetry magazine

Opinionated

I loved this article in the Chronicle today about the Op Ed Project. Catherine Orenstein is the founder of what she calls, "an initiative to expand public debate." They are targeting and training women experts across the U.S. to join the discourse on the nation's opinion pages.

"In June, Bob Sommer, Rutgers University public policy researcher and Observer Media Group president, and Rutgers public policy graduate student John R. Maycroft published a report in Policy and Politics Journal on academic contributions to the opinion pages of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Newark Star-Ledger in 2006. Men wrote 78 percent of academics' opinion pieces in the Star-Ledger, 82 percent in the Times and 97 percent in the Journal. "Gender was not one of the questions we looked at initially," Sommer said in a phone interview. "But as we were talking about the op-eds, something struck me as odd: There are not too many by women."

Added Sommer: "There are more women, as a percentage, in the U.S. Senate than published in the op-ed pages. I can't use a better word than astonishing." Chronicle Deputy Editorial Page Editor Lois Kazakoff found, in an unscientific survey, that during a weeklong period in June, 8 out of 25 publishable submissions came from women, or 32 percent. In general, she said The Chronicle is in line with the lower percentages of published pieces by women in the Rutgers study."

Chron article: Op Ed Project

Sweet City Neighborhood and Self-Portrait From Jamie

From Should We Flee the City—

Jamie—Potrero del Sol

Overheard

From the backseat of the car after leaving Mitchell's Ice Cream, Jonah: "Cool! ...sprinkles in my belly button!"

Dreaming My Dreams With You

I'm taking a dream interpretation class this summer that is fascinating me. We're reading lots of Jung, and keeping journals of our dreams. But it is so hard to remember my own dreams when my kid hollers me awake at 4:30 (this morning) or 5. He is a peach, but he wakes up too early. The trick for remembering dreams is to have an intention about it, and to wake up slowly, searching around to recall images.

"Since dreams exist at the boundary between consciousness and the unconscious, once we record and interact with our dreams, a bridge begins to form between those two regions." —Robertson, Beginner's Guide to Jungian Psychology

It seems like, for people trying to be less-crazy, dreams are this free gift that you get handed each night. Private material to glean meaning from—a direct message from your unconscious.

Henry Reed's book is great, too: Henry Reed Dream Medicine

Cheers!

18 Reasons: If You Like Red Wine

Sam from BiRite helped take over the old Blue Space Gallery, and they are up to such groovy stuff now! They are combining celebration and education about art, food, wine and local-osity on the 18th Street corridor (the gallery is actually at 593 Guerrero next to Claudia Kussano).

Anyway, I am bumming out that we will miss this event—their Grand Opening, because Sammy's gonna cook. We'll be on the plane to New York to see the gay aunties.

18 Reasons Grand Opening Weekend, Fri, Jul 11, 7pm – 9pm: 18th Hour featuring a rare public tasting with Greg Brown from T-Vine Cellars and cooking by Sam Mogannam. New Releases, good food. Greg Brown at T-Vine makes some extraordinary red wine--small production, handcrafted red wines from fine vineyards in Napa. If you like red wine, you'll want to be here.

The 18th Hour occurs every Friday from 7-9 pm. $5-10 suggested donation to benefit the gallery.

18 Reasons

If you're going to be in the Mish, you should head over.

The Apartment

We're searching for an apartment in the Mission where we can walk to the things we use (BART, Dolores Park, El Toro Taqueria, the Elbo Room, the kid's nursery school) with two bedrooms, no carpet, and a way to store all our bikes and the stroller. Of course we wish for someplace sweet, with soul, and uniqueness, and great neighbors.

But it is hard people, real hard.

We've looked at 12 places in 6 days, and there are only two that would be ok to raise the offspring in, so far. One is $300 more a month than what we are paying, and the other is $700 more.

I am confounded and boggled. I am dejected and crestfallen.

What happens if we can't stay? Will we be banished to the frozen tundra of no-transit Maternal Heights? Forced to trek blocks and scale the legendary hills of Noe Valley in our Christiana workbike? By all that is holy, please, no.

**To the guy renting the dim first-floor 2 bedroom on Capp Street for $3,700? I know you will succeed in your endeavors, but you are pestilent.

The Time of The Women on Valencia Street

Kate had us take Summer Kraml, the founder and owner of Osento (now going out of business boo hoo), out to dinner at Blue Plate the other night, to thank her for providing Osento to the community for all these years.

She told lots of amazing stories that I think she probably wants to save for her own book, but one thing that was so haunting was the number of women-run, women-only businesses and projects she referred to, up and down Valencia Street. They are all gone now. Old Wives' Tales bookstore, a woman-only bar where the Elbo Room is now (only a block from here!). A women-only restaurant where Radio Valencia used to be. A women's newspaper.

I wish it all could have survived. I wish I understood what it would have taken for them to still be here.

Still Reading Crime & Punishment with Daily Lit

This is from installment 100 of 241. The writing is amazing but I am finding this book so anxiety-provoking. I am tempted every day to turn it off and get another book going. But I really want to know what it's all about, I feel like it is an early psychological portrait and since my absolute favorite is Anna Karenina...

Here is a passage I love:

"Blood! What blood?" Pulcheria Alexandrovna asked in alarm.

"Oh, nothing--don't be uneasy. It was when I was wandering about yesterday, rather delirious, I chanced upon a man who had been run over... a clerk..."

"Delirious? But you remember everything!" Razumihin interrupted.

"That's true," Raskolnikov answered with special carefulness. "I remember everything even to the slightest detail, and yet--why I did that and went there and said that, I can't clearly explain now."

"A familiar phenomenon," interposed Zossimov, "actions are sometimes performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of the actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions--it's like a dream."

"Perhaps it's a good thing really that he should think me almost a madman," thought Raskolnikov.

"Why, people in perfect health act in the same way too," observed Dounia, looking uneasily at Zossimov.

"There is some truth in your observation," the latter replied. "In that sense we are certainly all not infrequently like madmen, but with the slight difference that the deranged are somewhat madder, for we must draw a line. A normal man, it is true, hardly exists. Among dozens--perhaps hundreds of thousands--hardly one is to be met with."

Saul Bellow

"In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by mid-life it is overgrown... But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves."