Had a great weekend when my daughter visited from where she currently lives in Florida. It’s much nicer to hang out in person than just on Zoom. She knows I’ll always lobby for her to move back to the Bay Area though.
Here we are jointly saying hello to our family members in Italy:
Yes there are giraffes!
This was my first chance to show my daughter the damage from the fire in January. Only Snoopy joined us because Bonnie was convalescing after surgery.
Wonderful art of local students here in Vallejo on display at the Vallejo Art Walk last Friday.
How amazing is Teena, who gifted me the exact Barbra Streisand doll in a sailor suit that I had inches from where the fire started in my home? Just like the one I had for twenty years, this one was still in the box! We had to guess a number from the waiter and I lost, so she ended up getting our amazing lunch for us at Provisions in Vallejo with her husband, J.D. I had to hold back tears at the perfection of this gift, just a few weeks before my birthday.
You can only imagine the number of sailor suits I made sure that my daughter, Alexandra, wore. Below is a picture of Alex when she is two (thirty years ago) wearing one of those sailor suits in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. I remember her walking in public for one of the first times in this photo and she was such a sight to behold that an entire busload of tourists were fixated on her.
My daughter, Alexandra Hayden, whose pen name is Alex Wolf, was featured several years ago on Forbes’ “30 under 30” list of people to watch out for, which was wonderful as she was listed with Lin-Manuel Miranda, among others. Now, after having just become 31 last April, she made the Black Enterprise “40 under 40” list of people to watch out for!
The United Democrats of Southern Solano had a great chat with Jackie Elward. Among other things, this was a very personal dialog where I shared a very personal story of my own that Jackie and I have dealt with — namely our biracial children being teased.
She starts talking about her son’s ideation from being bullied around 9:20 into the video and I get to respond to a few things that she said around the 30 minute mark.
In the dark and in the light…
My daughter’s recent video about Black inventors brought to you by Cadillac.
Enjoy!
Alexandra and her boyfriend Davy visited us for the first time since the start of the Covid era. We drove around to the Bolinas area and stopped in a very cool wooded park downtown nearby, then went on to Mount Tam’s lookout. Eventually, we went to the beach and enjoyed a beautiful evening with our two younger dogs and our guest dog Fluffly. We stopped for a snack in town as well. It was a lovely day with sightseeing in some of the corners of California many rarely venture to.
