Weekend in the City - June 19-20

We took a break this weekend and made an expedition into San Francisco and Oakland.  On Saturday, we went to the North Beach Street Festival and wandered around the Fisherman's Wharf, Chinatown and North Beach areas.  It was quite a lively scene, and we saw lots of booths and heard music all over the area.  We walked through Chinatown to my favorite French bookstore/cafe, the Cafe de la Presse.  I picked up a cinema magazine in French featuring Luc Besson, a very important contemporary film producer and director.  And we had lunch at a very nice Italian restaurant in the middle of the festival.  We had some antipasti and Ivy went for the lobster ravioli, while I gobbled down the gnocchi with Calabrese sausage and an very nice cheese sauce.

Then we headed over to Oakland, where we spent the night with old friends.  We spent the evening catching up and reminiscing, and enjoyed their cheese enchilada recipe.  A big day for food!!  That trend continued in the morning, when we took them out to the Royal Cafe in Piedmont, a very popular Sunday brunch spot.   It opens on Sunday at 8:00 AM, and we arrived at 8:01 AM, which got us a spot at a table.  Lines form rapidly on Sunday AM, and it was Father's Day as well.  

I went to visit an old friend who was in the hospital with some fairly minor foot surgery, and then Ivy and I went to the City Museum of Oakland - a real treat!   I hadn't heard of it before, but was beautifully laid out and had some excellent exhibits in history and art.  There were some very elaborate roof gardens all over the site, including some koi ponds.  The ponds had apparently attracted a Black Crowned Night Heron, a bird that you rarely see during the day, but a real treat.

After that, we had a father's day dinner with my friend and his children. I got phone calls, which were deeply appreciated.  And we were treated to a new recipe, popular in the Bay Area, called Beer Can Chicken.  It seems that you take a whole chicken, rub it in spices, shove an opened can of beer into the body cavity, and then put it on the barbecue grill to cook for about an hour.  If you look closely, you can see that it is a Northwest beer that has been abused in this way.  But the chicken turned out quite delicious.  Who knew?

This coming week, we are headed out to the California coast for a couple of days of RV camping with my sister.  Then back to Healdsburg until after the fourth of July.  I have added a new page to the blog, which contains a map of our planned travels.  We're starting to work things out, so take a look.  It is, of course, subject to change constantly.

Farewell to Chris - a memorial ceremony on Sunday

We had a lovely memorial service for my brother Chris on Sunday the 13th.  It was held at the Healdsburg Senior Center, where Chris had attended meetings of his AA group for over twenty-five years.  He was very active in that group and was well known for mentoring many people new to the program and helping them with their recoveries.  His sister Maggie and I organized the ceremony and several relatives attended, including his daughter Loreen and his nieces Vanessa and April.  There was a lively crowd of around a hundred people, many of whom shared memories and stories about Chris. 

Chris was famous for his outrageous Hawaiian shirts, which he wore everywhere when he was not working.  People in Healdsburg took pleasure in buying them for him when they went to Hawaii, and he had gradually built up a huge collection.  Maggie took them all to the ceremony and we gave them away to all of his friends and neighbors who attended.  People really enjoyed that and snapped them up.   It was quite amazing seeing all of his shirts worn at once in the same room.  


So now we are gradually returning to closing out the house that he lived in and re-planning our trip.  We expect to be back on the road after the fourth of July weekend.  We'll be working on an itinerary over the next few weeks and will post it as soon as we know more. 

Chris Graham 1943-2010

My brother Chris died on Tuesday, June 1, after several days of rapidly deteriorating condition.  Apparently the cancer made rapid progress in that last week - he stopped eating and drinking and sank into a coma.  He died peacefully in the afternoon with our family present.  We will all miss him very very much, but I am really glad that we had all of that time together during his last few weeks.  He was a wonderful man and a great brother to me. 

We are setting up a memorial service for this coming Sunday, June 13th, and are collecting photos and memorabilia for the event.  Ivy and I expect to be here for about another month, and then head out on our RV expedition again.  More later.