The Life in My Years

Lens-Artists Challenge 113 – Labors of Love

Paul

September 6, 2020

In honor of Labor Day, guest host Rusha Sams challenges us to describe examples of labors of love in pictures.

Labors of love are often those physically demanding, difficult, repetitive jobs done by people who we often depend on for the returns their labor produces. Fishermen have a bond with their boats and with the sea, working from before the sun rises and long into the day. Farmers and ranchers connect with the soil, sun and seasons.

Labors of love are the hours spent learning to paint, sculpt, create music, to write and to craft.

Fruits of labors of love satisfy our needs, inspire us, sadden us, satiate us, bring us joy and moments of reflection.

Labors of love yield rewards that tickle our senses.
Foods from the ground and the sea nourish us and excite our sense of taste.

Colorful peppers at the San Francisco Farmers Market

Fresh catch at Half Moon Bay Fish Market

Manning the grill at the Fort Bragg Salmon Fest

The Fear Factor

Paul

4 comments

September 3, 2020

For the four days of the Republican National Convention, ending on a White House lawn festooned with American flags, the American people were warned that failure to re-elect Donald Trump to a second term will result in nothing short of an American Armageddon. The American people will lose their basic freedoms and have their guns confiscated only to be melted down and molded into statues of Lenin as Joe Biden turns the Constitution on its head while turning mobs of anarchists and undesirables loose on city streets and suburban lanes,

This Republican vision of a Biden led collapse of law and order was to be expected even after Trump promised that the Republicans would deliver a positive message of hope. Trump denounced the Democratic Party’s Convention as the “darkest” and “gloomiest” in history, an opinion seconded by Republican Party Chair Ronna McDaniel who called the Democrats event a “depressing, doom-and-gloom convention.”

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Commercial Buildings or Store fronts

Paul

9 comments

September 1, 2020

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge for this first week of September is Commercial Buildings and Store Fronts.

One of my favorite places in San Francisco is Chinatown. There are two major streets through Chinatown. Grant Ave. which I try to avoid, is where the souvenir shops peddle threadbare t-shirts, postcards and plastic Buddhas. Stockton Street is where the local residents shop for baked goods, meats, produce, groceries and medicinals. Along with Chinatown’s alleys, Stockton Street is the place to go when you’re in the area.

Hing Lung Company is a tiny hole in the wall that puts out the best duck & Chinese BBQ pork

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #112 – Pick a Word…

Paul

20 comments

August 29, 2020

This week’s Len-Artists Photo Challenge is hosted by Leya who challenges us to pick one or more words from the list below and illustrate that word (or words) with a photo.

Comfortable
Growing
Tangled
Crowded
Exuberant

Exuberant
“To be full of being is to live as a body-soul. One name for the experience of full being is joy.”
― J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals

Lexi having a romp in the park

“I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance.” ~ Bob Black

Exuberant in victory

Farewell To A Friend

Paul

9 comments

August 27, 2020

It’s 2020. This month marks four years since we put our Rainey to sleep. I wrote this four years ago. This is the last in a series of posts from a now defunct blog. I started the series in July of that year as it seemed that we were on the verge of losing our girl. I published this on September 20th, one month after she was gone. When I wrote these posts I knew that the end was coming but I didn’t know that it would be less than a month. Still there was hope.

I revive the series every now and then. I was relatively new to blogging then. The original left something to be desired in some ways and this posting includes some edits. While the words and punctuation, the nuts and bolts so to speak may have been changed, the story and the lingering heartache remain.

Sometimes decisions make themselves. You mull over options and without realizing it you’ve discarded all but one; good or bad, right or wrong the decision just turns up. Just turns up, sometimes uninvited, often unwanted – but there it is. It’s at times like this that you put yourself on an unemotional autopilot and do what you have to do with or without the realization that when it’s done you’ll drown in a wave of hurt. I did that some 20 years ago when my mom suddenly died. Nobody but me to plan a funeral, keep my dad on some sort of even keel and tend to the visiting relatives. You just do and when it’s done you allow the collapse into exhaustion and grief.

I walked over to Cora who knew by now where this was all going and she tried desperately to steer us away from the inevitable. Cora is that person who will spend hour upon hour scouring the internet and for weeks she’d done just that, hoping for an answer to jump off the computer screen at her. I sat down next to her and listened while she told me that she’d read articles explaining that sometimes it can take months for dogs to get used to three legs. “She’s still weak. She has to gain her strength.”
“Yeah but she has to start chemo for the cancer,” I reminded.
Cora responded, “Rainey can’t do the chemo until she’s strong.”
“Then the cancer takes over.”
And that’s when even Cora who’d tried to hold out for that further out end was coming to a realization. She realized that it was circular logic. She just stared blankly ahead; a thousand yard stare focusing on the gameboard with no moves left – checkmate.

Having a swim at dog beach in San Diego

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: All About Buildings: Modern homes and apartments

Paul

8 comments

August 25, 2020

In keeping with the current architectural theme, this week Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge focuses on modern homes and apartments.

This colorful apartment building sits just on the fringe of Chinatown in San Francisco.

Maaaaay-be there’s an apartment in there somewhere. The most prominent building in the photo below is the Salesforce Tower. I’d be willing to bet that someone in one of those buildings is staying overnight to meet some kind of deadline. Does that make it an apartment?

The building below is called MIRA, a 39 story, 422 foot gnarled looking residential monolith designed by Studio Gang Architects. (I did piece on this building a few months ago).

MIRA is located just two blocks from the San Francisco bayfront promenade, The Embarcadero. A condo on the east side will afford a panorama of the bay, the Bay Bridge, the East Bay Hills and spectacular sunrises. One has to wonder if a warped building will get you a warped view. My daughter once remarked that looking at it gave her a headache. I know I got a headache just looking at the cost to live in Mira.

For the unwashed masses a 614 square foot junior one-bedroom condo will run just under $900,000. High rollers can get into a 2,176 square foot three-bedroom, upper-floor unit for a paltry $3 million.

Given its unique look, Mira invites a little editing fun.

To view Cee’s contribution follow the link to her site. You can scroll to the comments on Cee’s site to view the work of other contributors.

It’s Not My Time Yet

Paul

6 comments

August 22, 2020

It’s 2020. This month marks four years since we put our Rainey to sleep. I wrote this four years ago. This is the third in a series of posts from a now defunct blog. I started the series in July of that year as it seemed that we were on the verge of losing our girl. I published this on August 10th. When I wrote these posts I knew that the end was coming but I didn’t know that it would be less than a month. Still there was hope.

I’ve never been overly religious. Oh, I’ve had my pious periods but they were mostly short lived; religion never stuck. I pray on occasion but you couldn’t say that I do it religiously. When it comes to spirituality I couldn’t hold a votive candle to Cora, nor one of those candles in the tall glass jars decorated with the Virgin Mary. I guess we have our places in life the two of us. I run, she genuflects. She lifts Our Fathers, I drop “F” bombs. Maybe we just balance each other out that way. In my own spiritual defense, when I do pray it’s for things substantial and worthy of prayer and not just a timely base hit in the bottom of the ninth or for all my lottery ticket numbers to be on. And while my devotion is often fleeting there are those times when I’m given pause to consider that there may be some sort of providence at work. That said providence does have to hit me in the face – hard.

Saturday was a hanging out at the house day, but it wasn’t a pleasant day. I’d made the appointment to have our dog Rainey put to sleep. For months she’s been fighting an infection in her front paw complicated by cancer in the same paw. The pain has been off and on but in recent days it’s been more on than off. She’s been in misery, moping, not wanting to eat, spending the days lying down, moving only to find a comfortable position. We literally had to coax her to stand, sometimes physically helping her. The vet offered an option of having her leg amputated followed by chemo. Our girl was devoid of the gaiety that we’d known for the past 12 years and so we rejected that option.

Rainey liked to use my running shoes as pillows.

Boundless Love

Paul

9 comments

August 20, 2020

It’s 2020. This week marks four years since we put our Rainey to sleep. I wrote this four years ago. This is the second of a series of posts from a now defunct blog. I started the series in July of that year as it seemed that we were on the verge of losing our girl. I published this on July 27th. When I wrote this I felt that the end was coming but I didn’t know that it would be less than a month. Still there was hope.
I revive the series every now and then. I was relatively new to blogging then. The original left something to be desired in some ways and this posting includes some edits. While the words and punctuation, the nuts and bolts so to speak may have been changed, the story and the lingering heartache remain.

Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. ~ Roger Caras

She’s trying gamely to walk around the house, albeit awkwardly with the pink bandage on her lower front leg. She’s eating again. She hobbles over to the couch and hits me with her nose, her way of saying, “Hey old man get me some head scratching.” There’s no moping in a crate, or raising a painful paw in supplication. It’s starting to feel like I have my dog back.

She’s alert again – pissed off when someone has the effrontery to ring the bell on HER door. She goes back near the open kitchen window to stick her nose up. The nose twitches discerning everything that her day blind eyes can’t. I feel like I have my dog, my best friend, back again.

She’s not totally whole yet. She struggles to get to her feet because that one paw is still weak and doesn’t give her the leverage to lift her up. It’s certainly still sore but she isn’t afraid to put some pressure on it. The stairs are supposed to be off limits but Rainey saw an opportunity when the gate was left down and she bolted up and went to one of her favorite sleeping haunts.

The other night she asked to go out on the back patio. So the two of us sat quietly in the warmth of a summer evening. She stuck her nose up and looked into the dark fields beyond the wire fence. Something out there, a deer or a coyote, irritated her and she barked into the darkness. I’m getting my dog back.

Peeking from under the table at a restaurant. Any scraps yet?

Old Dogs

Paul

14 comments

August 19, 2020

It’s 2020. This week marks four years since we put our Rainey to sleep. I wrote this four years ago, the first of a series of posts in a now defunct blog. I started the series in July of that year as it seemed that we were on the verge of losing our girl. I revive the series every now and then. I was relatively new to blogging then. The original left something to be desired in some ways and this posting includes some edits. While the words and punctuation, the nuts and bolts so to speak may have been changed, the sentiments and the lingering heartache, the actual structure, has not changed.

She has a beautiful feathered tail that would flip back and forth like a metronome when we went for our morning run. Her trot graceful and effortless as she led out, looking back every now and then as if to reassure herself that I was on the other end of the leash. After the run we sat outside Starbucks. I drank coffee and she lounged like a princess as she took in the compliments, “Such a beautiful dog.”

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge is All about buildings: Old buildings, Barns, Sheds, Houses.

Paul

13 comments

August 19, 2020

This week Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge is All about buildings: Old buildings, Barns, Sheds, Houses.

I like photographing old things; old buildings, old boats, old bridges. Seems like almost everyone with a camera likes to photograph old barns, especially if there are rusty old tools and implements in the scene. Add an old horse and you’re really in business.

I ran across some old buildings right here in Hercules, California where I live. Most of Hercules’ old buildings sit atop a hill near the shore of San Pablo Bay on a small tract of empty land. The fronts look out on a residential neighborhood. These buildings date from the days when the major employer in the area was the Hercules Powder Works which manufactured explosive powder.

My favorite of the old buildings is the Masonic Lodge, which sits across the street from a sleek, new restaurant with a chic glass enclosed patio that overlooks the old building and the bay beyond. It’s quite a contrast to the restaurant a few steps away.

Street view of the Masonic Lodge

The old building is giving way to creeping vines. Nature is in the process of reclamation.

Doorway of the Masonic Lodge

What’s really cool about this building is that from the street it’s just a long squat building but if you look at it from the recreation trail in the rear, you see that the Masonic Lodge is actually multiple stories built into the side of the hill.

Masonic Lodge – rear view

Masonic Lodge – rear view taken on a foggy morning

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