Skip to main content

Wakes

Search This Blog

Fog

on April 26, 2021

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. Carl Sandberg, 1916. Chicago Poems.

1916 details fog interstitial interweavings San Francisco

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Orphaned By the Flu

My grandmother was orphaned in 1918, when she was 9 years old. Between July and December she lost her father, her mother, and her older sister. This was the Flu Epidemic of 1918. San Francisco was a city of immigrants then, as it is now. My great-grandmother, Annie, came from Ireland with her sister and brother and settled in San Francisco's Mission District. She married an Austrian man and they had four children. Her sister Mae married an Irish man--he was killed in a car accident on the day of their child's baptism in 1914. Mae was left a single mother, but she had her sister to rely on. They shared a pair of flats on Bartlett Street. Then in July of 1918 Annie's husband, Fred, came down with the flu. He died five days later. Her daughter Louise was next, and then Annie herself in late December of the same year. My grandmother, Kathryn, was left alone with her younger sister and brother, with only their Aunt Mae to care for them. Imagine three girls. Their p...

Hide and Seek

Rafa is teaching Louis how to play hide-and-seek. It's a good thing that Rafa has more patience than I do, because Louis only wants to do what Rafa does, not what Rafa says. Case in point: Rafa wants to play hide and seek, so he explains to Louis that he, Rafa, is going to stand in the kitchen doorway and count to 10, and Louis is supposed to go hide somewhere and wait for Rafa to find him. So Louis nods and says, awethome! and Rafa commences the counting. Louis looks up at Rafa, goes over to the other side of the kitchen door, and starts counting too. One, touw, free, fow, fiy. No, Louis, Rafa says. Go somewhere. Don't stand here with me. Go hide. Then I'll come find you. So Louis goes over to the other doorway, still in the kitchen mind you, but a little further away, and starts to count again. One, touw... Okay, Louis. I'll hide, then, if you want to count. You stay here and start to count. One, says Rafa. Touw, says Louis. Rafa runs down the hall to hi...

Secondary Injuries

Have you ever counted how many times in the course of a day you can be mildly injured by little boys? If it isn't someone banging his head into the corner of your glasses or dropping a train on your kneecap, it's someone else stepping on your little toe with a sneaker or running up the back of your heel with a big wheels. Sometimes it's stepping on a lego in the middle of the hall or sitting on a tow truck under a blanket on the sofa. Little raggedy fingernails scratch your face in the middle of a hug, and little teeth bite your finger because they're so excited about oatmeal cookies.

Powered by Blogger