Count Down --- Days 8/266 & 267

Walk: 1. Hood 2. Same
Distance: 1. 4 miles, private training  2. 4.5 miles, yoga

Times Square, New York - Four More Hours to Go back there as Ciwt writes.  Many of these revelers have been in their spots in the 65 viewing 'pens' since 11 a.m.  That's when the NYPD completed their shut down of the entire Times Square area between 38th and 56th streets and celebrators were allowed to enter.  Once in, they lose their spots if they leave.  Somehow every year millions of people handle food, bathroom, freezing cold, snow, rain, whatever nature brings and party hardy as they watch the famous ball drop.

Ciwt simply can't imagine and feels even more fortunate than ever to be letting 2019 go and ushering in 2020 in the comfort of her wonderful SF 'pen' with cats. 

Firsts Continue --- Day 8/264 & 265

Walk: 1. Presidio  2. No, Home Reading in the Rain
Distance: 1. 4 miles   2. Yoga

So, Ciwt firsts continue.  First time for Little Women, Adam Sandler  movie and now a Toni Morrison book (although she may have read Beloved years ago).

In The Bluest Eye, Morrison's first novel, her voice is too strong for her depressing subject.  It becomes a weapon, bludgeoning the heartstrings of her reader.  Unnecessarily.  We get the entirety of where she is going in some of her first sentences, but then she follows up with pages of explicit detail after explicit detail.  Crushing.  Finally, as if reality isn't sad enough, she jumps to some fantasy place where she can really rain down the darkness.  Luckily it is a very short book, and Ciwt can go now to her yoga mat to leave this bleak and disspiriting work behind her.

Should Have Been Cut --- Day 8/263

Walk: PGCC, Vogue Theater (Uncut Gems)
Distance: 3.5 miles, Private Training

                          Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems

Well, now Ciwt has been to an Adam Sandler movie.  Uncut Gems is lowlife, vulgar, distasteful,
anxious, frantic, violant, off-putting.  In short, it should have remained on the cutting room floor

Absolutely not Ciwt recommended, but, if you go, you'll see why Sandler will contunue to be nominated for multiple Best Actor awards this year.  Adam Sandler?!  Yes.

Women At Last --- Day 8/262

Walk: AMC Kabuki (Little Women)
Distance:  4 miles, Yoga

11:00 a.m.

So, today Ciwt will (force) march herself to Little Women, the movie.  It's a work she's been avoiding since her childhood and Little Women was a book.  Just the title still sets her teeth on edge.  She did not and does not identify with being a 'little woman."

Happily she just read that Louisa May Alcott, the author, didn't identify either and didn't like either Little Women, its sequels or any of the characters particularly.  It seems she (who was already publishing suspense stories - her favorite! - under the name A.M. Bernard) was more or less blackmailed into writing light juvenile fiction.  Her editor agreed to publish a book by Louisa May's father, the radical teacher and reformer, Branson Alcott, on the (tacit) condition that she write a novel about girls.

Alcott did so, was bored to tears and the rest (including two more: Little Men and Jo's Boys) is literary history. One note in Alcott's journal pretty much sums up her girls' books years: “Mr. N wants a girls’ story, and I begin ‘Little Women.’ … I plod away, though I don’t enjoy this sort of thing. Never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters; but our queer plays and experiences may prove interesting, though I doubt it.”  

After writing and being set economically free by them, Alcott returned to her true passion "blood and thunder tales."  And of writing those she wrote: "Enjoyed doing it, having tired of providing moral pap for the young."

Knowing these things about Alcott's relationship to Little Women should help keep Ciwt from running out of the theater in a few hours.  Maybe....  Please stay tuned to see if she stayed and what she thought.


2:50 p.m.

Well.....Enchanting. Personally and predictably Ciwt was pretty much disengaged throughout. But the enchantment factor became her way of staying, like she she does when she (very rarely!) finds herself at a Renaissance music recital.  (The sound track is harp music from beginning to end).

Judging from the audience at Ciwt's showing, Little Women is much better - perhaps perfect -for those who have read  and love Little Women - or those who had sisters growing up or maybe those who are still growing up and can relate to Alcott/Gerwig's portrayal of adolescence and early womanhood.  Or just those who buy Gerwig's sweetly scattered, ever-so-slight, Me Too touch on Alcott's ever-so-light girlie story.

The cast though is superb, especially Saoirse Ronan, Timothee Chalamet and Meryl Streep of course, but really everybody.  That said, Ciwt felt a bit like one of those teenagers forced to come of age when she watched Bob Odenkirk on the screen.  She's been re-bingeing on Breaking Bad this holiday season and is not ready for him to be anyone other than Saul.  Also, Ciwt's Christmas Day movie was Marriage Story on Netflix.  Laura Dern is a major character in it, so when Ciwt saw her the very next day as a major character in Little Women, it triggered her creeping sense that Dern is being overdone these days.  Always excellent, but maybe seen too often.

Christmas 2019 --- Day 8/261

Walk: No
Distance: 0, Yoga

Christmas Greetings from San Francisco

           

Do I Pass? --- Day 8/260

Walk: Hood
Distance: 1.5 darkish, coldish therefore seasonal miles

One of Ciwt's gifts to herself this holiday season is a new password notebook to replace her falling-apart old one. She just transcribes the symbols before her  - which might as well be in ancient hieroglyphics - and hopes they actually apply to something if she needs to use them.

Oh, and Tra la. Really. It's Christmas Eve.  🎅🎄

Top Time --- Day 8/259

Walk: Private Training, Hood
Distance: 1 hr. training, 3.5 miles

Reviewers are issuing their Top 2019  Movies Lists, so Ciwt will join in.

Best Animated Movie          Toy Story 4

Best Screenplay                   Bong Joon Ho (Parasite)

Best Supporting Actress      Cho Yeo-jeong  (Parasite)

                                     
Best Supporting Actor         Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)

Best Actress                           Renee Zellweger (Judy)

Best Actor                             Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes)

Best Director                         Bong Joon Ho (Parasite)

Best Picture                                            Parasite

And, special new category.....

Most Entertaining           Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

               

Solstices --- Day 8/258

Walk: No, Sunday Rain
Distance: 0, Yoga

Ooops, missed it by a day (almost).  Some time last evening depending on your time zone in the Northern Hemisphere, you passed through the shortest day of the year.  

Then tonight the sun will set for you a minute later than it did yesterday and daylight will continue to increase until the longest day of the year, Saturday, June 20.

Thus ends all that Ciwt knows about the Solstices....

Language, Language --- Day 8/257

Walk: Hood pre-rain errands
Distance: 5 Miles, Yoga

So, what do these distinguished actors have in common: 

Ray Milland

Richard Burton

Matthew Rhys

Shape Shifting Christian Bale

And, of course,

Sir Anthony Hopkins

and

Jonathan Pryce

 Give up?  They are Welsh.

As she watched Sir Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce in The Two Popes. Ciwt started to think about the Welsh acting tradition and training and wondering if there are aspects of them that sets them apart. Hopkins, as always utterly inhabited, just owned, the role of Pope Benedict.XVI.  He was completely grounded, not one false flicker, riveting.  But it was Pryce who transfixed Ciwt.

Not three months ago Ciwt saw Jonathan Pryce on Broadway in The Height of the Storm. He played an aging literary lion in some stage of dementia and was as English as unimaginably dressed, homebody, garden-loving English can be.  Naturally, Ciwt had him filed in her brain as quintessentially English.

Then, there he was at the beginning of  The Two Popes in the streets of Buenos Aires wearing ecclesiastical garb and orating in Spanish! to a large, public assemblage. Clearly an Argentinian and just a completely different man from that Englishman in Ciwt's mental filing.  So different that Ciwt kept waiting for Jonathan Pryce to enter the movie - until she finally realized this was Jonathan Pryce in the role of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (who is now the current Pope Frances).  

Bergoglio/Pryce soon went to Rome to join the College of Cardinals in electing a new Pope.  In Rome, he spoke Latin! (really) and Italian (fluently!). Again, long, fluid conversations.  When he returned years later for an audience with the then Pope (Anthony Hopkins), he spoke English with a perfect Spanish accent.  Never, for one moment, would you doubt that he was a Spaniard.  

Except for English, all of these languages Pryce conversed in were new to him. Apparently he mastered them in a matter of months.   Now, to Ciwt, This is acting.  And this gift (and probably love and respect) for language seems to Ciwt to set Welsh actors apart.  What's it all about?  

It may have to do with Eisteddfods, Welsh festivals of literature, music and performance dating back to at least the 12th century. Still today, the most important festival of competitive music and poetry in Europe is the National Eisteddfod of Wales, eight days in August of competitions and performances entirely in the Welsh language.  Competitors typically number 6,000 or more and overall attendance generally exceeds 150,000.  There is also a large annual youth festival, Eisteddfod Yr Urdd, which involves Welsh children from nursery age to 25 in a week of competition in singing, recitation, dancing, acting and musicianship.

Other smaller festivals exixt, and, while they do not explain the talent of the actors pictured above or the many Welsh actors in leading roles of such series as Masters of Sex, Game of Thrones, it does suggest a unique national premium on language and acting.  Meanwhile, Ciwt will not be surprised if Jonathan Pryce receives nominations for both a Tony and an Oscar this year.  

Two Chapels --- Day 8/256

Walk: Opera Plaza Cinema
Distance: 3.8 Miles

Don't be like Ciwt and get so turned off by the title of The Two Popes that you decide not to go.  You would miss some of the best acting offered on stage or screen in our century.  Luckily Ciwt knows because a cinema (and theater and opera) buff friend was sort of (rightly) appalled that she hadn't seen it - so she went.

You would also miss the Sistine Chapel:

In this case, not Michaelangelo's Renaissance masterpiece but production designer Mark Tildesley

reproduction of it.  In the company of an art historian Tildesley was granted a close examination of the ceiling and also a glance inside the adjoining Room of Tears.  After that, since photos are strictly forbidden in the famous chapel, Tildesley had to be resourceful,  Relying on memory and a variety of quick artistic and technical inventions he and his team created a near life size reproduction inside an old studio in Rome so accurate that a group of Vatican Historians were astounded when they were invited to the set.

Since no non-documentary film production has been permitted on the holy premises, it is anybody's guess (including Tildesley's) what the rest of the Pope's rooms look like.  But, Ciwt is sure, they are very close to the magnificent resplendence of The Two Popes sets - and a reason in themselves to see The Two Popes.

Bad Fraud --- Day 8/255

Walk: PGCC (x2)
Distance: Exercise Class, A Few Blocks

You think you know the Theranos story, but there is so much more and it is so well reported by WSJ writer, John Carreyrou.  

Can You Say --- Saint? --- Day 8/254

Walk: AMC Kabuki (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood)
Distance:  2 Miles

Just imagine panning a movie with Tom Hanks portraying Fred (Mr) Rogers?!

Can't be done, and shouldn't be.  Though imperfect and based mostly on a 1998 Esquire article and 'truthiness,' it's a lovely, thoughtful and heart- and spirit-provoking movie, and you should go.  If the theater you're in when you do is anything like the one Ciwt was in, you will hear many deep sniffles from the audience, probably have some of your own.

Downtown Holiday Spirit: Just Right for Ciwt --- Day 8/253

Walk: Pickleball Courts, PGCC (x2), SF Playhouse (Groundhog Day, the Musical), St. Francis Hotel            Christmas Decorations
Distance: 1 hr. pickle, private training, 1.5 miles

Ciwt wasn't that big a fan of Groundhog Day, the movie 1993, but she quite enjoyed the imaginatively staged zaniness of The Musical.

St. Francis Hotel 'Roof' above Registration Desk

After seeing it, she walked across the street with her season ticket friends to look at the way the St. Francis had decorated the overhang above its registration desk and other areas.

Finally, on the way to the garage, she and her friends checked out Saks 5th's 'holiday' windows.  They are filled with male and female models all dressed in black sequined, velvet and satin evening attrire, all in haughty or nonchalant, 'so what?' poses.  No one knew quite what Saks had in mind but we all agreed some window display pro probably had the time of his/her life.

Some say Groundhog Day is a modern day A Christmas Carol with the weatherman lead standing in for Ebeneezer Scrooge.  Ciwt says Great because The Musical, Santa on the St. Francis's 'roof,' and the Saks fashionista holiday snobs hit her Christmas Spirit spot perfectly.

White Sale Anybody? --- Day 8/252

Walk: Pickleball courts
Distance: 1 Hr (only, very careful) Pickleball, 2 miles, small yoga 

Ciwt is happy to report that Owner (Ciwt) and Cat Groomer are doing fine after nail clipping day today.  Restraining towel is shredded.

So, Who Asked? --- Day 8/251

Walk: Presidio, Cinema Club (Incitement)
Distance: 6.8 miles, small yoga

Ciwt's Cinema Club chose to end its Fall 'semester' with Incitement, a long, political movie about the man who assassinated Prime Minister Rabin in 1995.  While it was well acted, gripping  and technically well done, Ciwt found it to be a 'so, who asked?'  bully pulpit for a director having his say.
She also felt mildly irritated her Cinema Club put members throught another downer and more (mid-East) politics (after last week's Clemency about death row) going into the holidays.

Neat Skyway --- Day 8/250

Walk: Presidio and Pickleball
Distance: 2 miles, 1 Hour ( careful) Pickle (it's just such an upper)

                  Oculus Skyway at SFMOMA

Do I Call You Mr. T or Just ET? --- Day 8/249

Walk:  Union Square
Distance:  Maybe a mile, small yoga

Commercial tourism, long-term human habitation in space, shaking hands (or whatever) with other species.  These things have been on public, private, artist, engineer and just ordinary people's minds since Apollo 11 landed on the moon fifty years ago.  Now, Outer Space is in the Inner Space of art museums, at least our SFMOMA out here.

Who knows what the future will bring, but Ciwt found it interesting to see vestiges of the pioneering achievements.

Photographs from NASA's Apollo 11, the First Manned Moon Landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin,
July 20, 1969, Chromogenic prints

Far Out: Suits, Habs and Labs for Outer Space, SFMOMA, July 20, 2019-January 20, 2020 

White Lounger --- Day 8/248

Walk: Hood Errands
Distance:  Drizzly/Rainy 2.8 miles, Yoga

A single white lounger in the midst of San Francisco construction caught Ciwt's attention at SFMOMA the other day.

Hint

Crown Jewels --- Day 8/247

Walk: Hood Errands
Distance: 3.4 miles, Yoga

Wayne Thiebaud working on etching plate at Crown Point Press

So Ciwt reported on giving her favorite SFMOMA tour ever, but she saved the best for last.

The best being one of the Crown Jewels of the San Francisco art world: Crown Point Press which was kind enough to say yes to Ciwt's request for a private tour of its working space for her and her clients yesterday.

Founded by still owner and Partner, Kathan Brown in the East Bay, Crown Point Press has done the nearly impossible. Given the vissitudes of the art world, just staying in existence for almost 60 years would be enough.  Actually owning its building in prime San Francisco real estate across from SFMOMA would also enough.  But the true wonder is Crown Point's professionalism, the talent and dedication and wide-ranging proficiancies of its print technicians and the quality of the etchings it produces year after year.

But, don't take Ciwt's word for it.  Take Wayne Thiebaud's, another Northern California Crown Jewel.  The world famous and beloved Thiebaud was one of Crown Point Press's first artists, working directly with Kathan Brown as his printer in 1965.  He has returned (by invitation which is how Crown Point works) many times since then, and had just completed a new series of etchings a few days before Ciwt and her group arrived.  He is 99!

That meant we were among the very first to see Thiebaud's new prints.  This was Huge for Ciwt! And, actually in a different way, for Kathan's ownership partner, Valerie Wade, who gave our tour. She'd just returned from the annual Miami Art Fair a few hours before we arrived when she saw the prints.  One of them (sneak preview) is of cars on a highway, and, since Thiebaud is still remarkably active and productive, Wade's first thought was "Oh, my gosh, did Wayne go to Burning Man?!"

Maybe....

Here's a great You Tube video of Wayne Thiebaud at Crown Point Press in 2017 narrated by Kathan Brown

Where's That Lobby 'Art?' --- Days 8/245 & 246

Walk: 1. Hood 2. SFMOMA and Crown Point Press Art Tour
Distance: 1. 3 miles  2. 2 miles

SFMOMA Lobby and Stairway

Yippee!!  Yesterday Ciwt gave her best and most enjoyable SFMOMA tour ever! Tons of prep work in anticipation of 10 High Tech touring techies and then off we went.  Seven floors, bottom to top of the museum*.  It's a Lot of art to take in if you're a viewer and to explain if you are Ciwt.  But each tour member was right with Ciwt - and interested! (Ciwt particularly worked on that) - all the way.  Lots of great reviews at the end.  What a treat.

*Not to blow her horn too loudly, Ciwt is quite sure she is the only person in the Bay Area - other than possibly SFMOMA curators - who can and does give such a tour.

Okay, so much for self-accolades and promotion.  She does need to report that one of the first questions from a group member as we walked up the main stairway was "Who is the artist who did the stairway painting?"  Looking at the picture above, you, dear reader, can see the painting he was referring to as clearly as he did.  It's Very obvious.

Except to Ciwt.  Her answer: "I don't know.  It is a woman artist, I know that.  The painting is relatively new and got quite a bit of publicity when it was installed, but I don't recall her name."

He was cool with that answer, so Ciwt dared to go ahead.  "It always strikes me as decoration, and I walk right by."  He seemed cool with that as well, and it is true.  The colors and overall style of the two part painting blend so perfectly with the colors and feeling of everything around it they come across (to Ciwt) as wallpaper.

Maybe anything you hang there would do the same because most people (including Ciwt)  are so busy arriving and climbing the jagged stairway they don't particularly notice there's art around them.  The young man on Ciwt's tour was the first person who has ever asked her about the stairway art (or she would have been ready with an answer).

But Ciwt considers this particular art choice to be peculiar, and it prompts questions for her.  Did the artist just paint without knowing what the colors at the site looked like? Did she know her work was going into a lobby and would be hung miles high?  Does she, too, feel her work blends in too well?  Is she disappointed?  Hasn't SFMOMA noticed this 'wallpaper' effect? If so, why isn't there more prominent/attention getting signage?

Anyway, now Ciwt has the young man's answer: The artist is Julie Mehretu, an artist currently in international demand.  It's actually two paintings, each 27' x 32.' And, since Ciwt also learned Mehretu was paid $5M by Goldman Sacks for a similarly sized lobby work, she assumes SFMOMA must have come in with something around that for this work. The paintings are titled  “HOWL eon (I and II)” which suggests Mehretu's somehow equating her paintings to the famous, wildly controversial  Beat poem "Howl." (Allen Ginsberg wrote it in 1955 while living on Montgomery Street in San Francisco).* 

Howl, the poem, is ferocious, moves at breakneck speed, penetrates, stuns. If that type of impact was Mehretu's intention for her SFMOMA paintings, and if she actually succeeds,  how could anybody know it?  The location and surroundings suck out all energy the paintings might contain, and we are left with 'lobby art.'  Or, as Ciwt told her client 'decoration.'

* Ciwt suggests press this link and (re)read Howl; it is so good/bad.

Choices --- 8/243 &244

Walk: 1. No, Big Storm  2. Cinema Club (Clemency)
Distance:  1. 0, small yoga, fingers tired from tour prep  2. 2 miles, Yoga

Alfre Woodare in Clemency

One of the choices Ciwt's Cinema Club asks audience members to evaluate is who if anyone you would recommend the movie to?  Top choices are: 1. I'd recommend to everyone.  2. I'd recommend it to certain people.

Ciwt went for choice #2 today after seeing an advance showing of Clemency.   It was the Best Drama winner at Sundance last January and is an  Excellent movie all the way around.  But watching it is challenging because it is so exacting and realistic.  Death Row executions and their effect on all involved is the topic.  So, Ciwt says Your Choice.  (It will be released December 27 and is NOT a holiday movie).

Deck Gloom --- Day 8/242

Walk: No, Storm Brewing
Distance: Yoga

And this is before the storm in a few hours.  Oh well, good weather for art tour prep.

Stairway to 5 --- Day 8/241

Walk: SFMOMA
Distance: 1.8 miles

From Floor 4 5o 5, Looking Up at Stairs to 6

One of Ciwt's favorite works of art at SFMOMA are the staircases in the Fisher Addition.
The story goes they are modeled on the many little, unexpected stairways throughout San Francisco
the architects began noticing on their frequent visits as they were conceiving their plans.

                    

Waiting for Carpet to Dry --- Day 8/240

Walk: No,Stairs and Other Carpets too wet
Distance: 0

Annual Carpet Cleaning prevents office (and other rooms) access.  Catch you another, dry day around
Ciwt's place.

Rocket Art --- Day 8/239

Walk: PGCC, Hood
Distance: 3 miles, exercise class, private training

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and David Clark Company
Space Shuttle Advanced Crew, 114, refabricated 2018
Nomex, nylon, Gore-Tex, neoprene, aluminium, steel, Teflon, and Velcro

So now modern art is so advanced it's become rocket science.  Good luck to (non-techie) Ciwt when she presents SFMOMA's latest exhibition, Far Out*, to her art tour group next week.

* Far Out: Suits, Habs, and Labs for Outer Space

   SFMOMA July 20, 2019 - January 20, 2020

Work at Last --- Day 8/238

Walk: No, Rain, Cold, Monday Computer Stuff
Distance: 0, Yoga

Roy Lichtenstein, print based on a frame from Girls' Romances comic book, 1994

It's been a while since anyone wanted one of Ciwt's art tours 😕.  But now she's preparing for a big one at SFMOMA and beyond 😎.

Change Happens; Ciwt Notices --- Day 8/238

Walk: AMC Kubiki (Knives Out)
Distance: 2 miles, yoga stretch

Yippee a Traffic Jam!  Throngs of families and dogs in town for the Union Square Tree Lighting Ceremony, Terrific!  Broken elevators, non-working stoplights, fire trucks, Bring It On!!

This is how Ciwt was feeling when she needed to go downtown immediately after getting off the plane from Palm Springs.  Her attitude was a bit startling because encounters like those above usually trigger thoughts of moving to some sort of bucolic place, if one still exists.  Well, it does - in the desert, an hour south by Alaska Airlines and oh boy, does Ciwt find it dull apparently.

After years and years (read decades and decades) of training, turns out Ciwt resonates more deeply to chaos, challenge, a vast variety of people all making their own ways on the planet than to the calm beauty of swaying palm trees, green golf courses and agreeably similar people congregating at their country club homes.  Barely making it through the Broadway mobs in New York with eyes glued to her friend leading her into the underground maze that is the subway system is now Ciwt's preferred lifestyle.  This from a girl who grew up in the midst of those golf courses and well-heeled, like minded people - and loved it.

The change in values or what interests her (or something) was barely perceptible.  And the fact that now the shift is quite pronounced wasn't something she noticed until just this Friday when she made - and Relished - that impossible trip downtown.  Her best guess is it began in earnest when she felt done with and decided to leave the totally innocent, gorgeous, utterly protected Sun Valley.  There her biggest decisions were what blue jeans to wear all day, which wax to use for the snow that day, what runs to take when she took the private bus over to the ski hill.  That was pretty much it, and it worked for her like a charm for 4.5 out of 5 years.

Then, one day (literally), it was completely over.  All the high fives, 'how ya hittin them's,' waves of bliss as she took in the perfectly clear air, gazed at the majestic (and protective) peaks, marvelled at her luck to be able to live in the sports and beauty wonderland of the world.  It was all gone; overnight it was just 'meh.' This was unexpected, utterly unsettling and scary actually.

For six months she tried to the very best of her ability to fall in love with place again.  But the spell - the drug or something - that was bucolic wilderness had worn off.  For lack of anything else to do and with no particular goal except just leaving her now ex love, she came to San Francisco.  The thought was maybe she'd 'find herself' and locate that next bucolic place.  Perhaps Paris, she'd heard Paris was nice, and people loved European skiing.  So, she sort of stumbled into buying her small home for relative peanuts (but a stretch her) and figured it would be fine for the two years or so until she figured out her next move.

Come this January, that will have been 40 years ago.  She is still in the 'temporary' home and would probably stand at the door with a shotgun if anyone forced her to move.  Every inch of it  is her history.  Every inch a memory, a decision, visiting friends, pairs of cats that became one cat, then none, then another pair.

Staying has NOT been easy.  San Francisco's growing pains over the many years have been those of Ciwt and all who have stayed - or just arrived for that matter.  The Bay Area has it all for us, but it is NOT an easy place to live.  (It was once).  Ciwt - and all of us probably - fought all the changes we encounter(ed) on a daily basis, but at some point they became the very fabric of our lives.  Wrestling with homeless, housing, traffic, income disparity and other exceedingly challenging issues is just who we are now.  Or who Ciwt is as she finally learned after returning from her bucolic weekend in the desert.

And on last Friday afternoon, Ciwt actually said "Okay, Bring It On!"  (sort of)