Oakland, California July 8, 2019 Warm and sunny A Giraffe’s Eye View On the morning of July 4, I was standing on a corner in Piedmont, watching the yearly ritual of the Fourth of July parade go by. The beautifully restored, old cars were just turning onto the main street, when a small, antique Volkswagon …
Open Windows: Living with Energy, Meaning and Purpose Oakland, California Cool and Sunny, November 29, 2017 The way we live opens windows and calls in a secret voice to anything still missing.” Too Many Habits? “I have too many habits!” said my friend as we drove to a practice group meeting for people learning to …
Yesterday at noon, as I was walking to Trader Joe’s to buy groceries, I noticed that the oxalis was blooming in the apartment buildings’ front gardens. Their bright yellow faces were standing straight up on their tender, green stalks. Later in the afternoon, when I was again walking down the street, I noticed that they …
“Someone discovered the giraffe hums at a harmonic rate of 92 Hertz, voice thrumming the tower of spine and trachea once thought to be silent….” ”Ode to This Small Joy”- Maria Calabretta Cancio-Bello After reviewing almost 1000 hours of sound recordings in three European zoos, Angela Stöger at the University of Vienna, Austria… picked up a weird …
This morning I set out to try a new coffee shop five blocks away from my apartment at the intersection of a freeway entrance and a main thoroughfare. The coffee was good. The constant din of speeding cars and accelerating engines was not! To feel Silence, we have to subtract what is not silence from …
“The Barn”, high in the Oakland, CA hills is a home for horses like no other. It is perched between two vistas, Oakland and San Francisco Bay to the west and the coastal mountains and Mt. Diablo State Park to the east. It is spring in California, and after the rains, the hills are vibrantly …
Two weeks ago I went to the Oakland Zoo with my son and granddaughter. Oakland has done its best to make the animals feel at home. After taking the train through the prairies where buffalo were roaming and past the miniature jungle where the lonely tiger stalked, we stopped at the giraffes’ enclosure. The three …
2019 is a year in which Jupiter in Sagittarius will be bringing us opportunities to grow, expand, and evolve (see Yol Swan’s blog, Main Astrology & Numerology for 2019). Is our evolution due to our DNA, our gifts to us from our ancestors, or is it directed by some other force? Is our Destiny going …
“Judge not lest ye be judged”. What does this mean? Who is the judge? Yesterday I was walking along Lakeshore Avenue in Oakland, my neighborhood shopping area, when I met Robert, a man in his seventies, limping along with a huge, built-up shoe for his club foot and weighted to one side by a heavy …
To my dear Readers: I apologize for this long hiatus between issues of Open Windows. This period of rest and recovery is coming to an end, and I am feeling the spur to get back to writing. A few weeks ago, I was driving with my son, Jerry, across Marin County, on the opposite side …
Open Windows Oakland Heights Rehabilitation June 2018 Sunny, but cool Yesterday evening a small, wiry Hispanic gentleman came to my hospital room to take a blood sample. He may have been small, but he walked with an energetic step and his eyes flashed with enthusiasm. “I love my work”, he said, as he readied my …
Open Windows May 2018 Oakland, CA “The Way we live opens windows….” – Hafiz Hang On to the Threads We may carefully construct our morning routines, and it may work well for getting our days started on the right track. But what happens when through some accident or emergency, we are unable to take even …