This time it was a belated 80th birthday celebration for my wonderful friend and neighbor Larry. Larry and Carol have been so wonderful to me since the fire. It feels like home when I’m in their house, which is the same layout as mine.
Shea joined me in a celebration of local success in saving lives from tobacco in Oakland. Advocates with our coalition led by LGBTQ Minus Tobacco were instrumental in a new ordinance for smoke-free bar patios there. Hopefully, San Francisco will soon follow so that more lives can be saved from Big Tobacco. Now patrons and staff at bars can safely traverse the open spaces without being subjected to toxic smoke as is the case in restaurants already.
I love the mosaic art in this community center on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland where we gathered.
Most people know that I’m a second-generation Californian and most of my rearing when we were not in NYC, Spain, and Italy was in the East Bay, so the same county as Oakland. Oakland has long been a leading large city in the effort to reduce death by tobacco, even though this is the area we were living in when my father died from his tobacco addiction. He only lived to be 50 years old, as did his mom who also died of tobacco-related illness.
This is why I want Calvin and Hobbes adopted together.
Another gorgeous January day was a good excuse to use our easy access from the Glen Cove Neighborhood to hike through Benicia State Park, which is one of the perks of living here. It’s great to have such good friends call us up for a spontaneous nature walk/hike.
The foster dogs didn’t know what to make of the journey. Hobbes was extremely nervous to get into the car. Unfortunately, the last few times he was in the car it was to get vaccinations or surgery, so we need to give them more positive experiences with car drives so he isn’t like this forever.
All four dogs got lots of exercise with a bunch of great smells. I keep reminding myself, especially with a blind dog in my life again, that dogs SMELL IN COLOR. When Shea was walking in front of me with the foster dogs, Calvin especially kept looking back to check on me and basically did a bunch of the hike walking backwards, which was endearing but worrisome. It kept getting him tangled in the tandem leash. Eventually I walked in front of them so at least Calvin was looking forward when looking for me. When the foster dogs were left on tandem and off-leash they were trying to stay so close to me that they kept wrapping around my ankles and almost knocked me over a few times.
Bonnie was terrific even off-leash for part of it. When she was on leash I even inspired her to run to catch up with the others for a while. For a blind dog, this is quite a feat, because she basically never runs for fear of running into something, especially in an unfamiliar location. She has to really trust me to keep up that pace. I intentionally ran with a heavy foot so that she could hear me better. Snoopy was also terrific when he was off-leash for part of the hike. He’s a perfect dog.
The views were terrific and I am so glad that we are so quickly moving to longer days, since it was just over a month ago that we had the winter solstice.
We DID see a seal, but the picture I got was just as the seal went underwater. You can barely make it out in the middle of the photo.
We had a nice big loop over to Crockett/C&H Sugar Factory area and then under the bridge and back.
The few things that survived the fire, even if they were in the backyard , often had lots of paint damage to them. A fresh coat of paint helps a bit, although I might redo some of the colors. The red is a little too bright for some of these objects.
