Every now and then, instead of all the suffering, problems, irritations and frustrations of life, I see some things that fill me with wonder. I hear a story about something amazing or inspirational or beautiful. I marvel at the creativity and determination and sheer joyous spirit some people have. I’d like to share a few of my more recent discoveries in this post.

An anonymous someone has left a number of intricate paper sculptures carved from books at various libraries, museums and festivals in Scotland, beginning with the Scottish Poetry Library. (Click here for the whole story and photos of the amazing pieces.) Each piece was accompanied by a tag with a short message. Here is the wording of the one found at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, of a dragon in a nest: “A gift in support of libraries, books, works, ideas…. Once upon a time there was a book and in the book was a nest and in the nest was an egg and in the egg was a dragon and in the dragon was a story….” I would go to Scotland just to see these wonder-full creations!

This inspiring video (thanks to my husband who sent the link to me) demonstrates the power of belief and persistence. It’s also a pretty good advertisement for yoga!

Imagine that you’re blind. You’ve created a system using elastic bands, to enable yourself to write in longhand the novel that’s brewing in your brain. You complete 26 pages and begin to think about finding a publisher. Then your son comes to visit and breaks the bad news: your pen had run out of ink. Your pages are blank. What happens next is the wonder-full part: using a special police technique that involved shining light on the paper from various angles to reveal the indentations made by the pen, Dorset County (England) forensic service expert Kerry Savage was able to recover the entire manuscript except for one line. Ms. Savage spent five months of lunch breaks working on the project, in addition to her regular job helping to solve cases of murder, fraud or arson. Click here for the whole story.

Scientists in a new field known as “soundscape ecology” are using radio telescopes to record extended stretches of audio in wilderness areas. They’re studying the sounds found in entire ecosystems, and the effects humans’ sounds have on nature, among other things. While this is interesting, what I found wonder-full in this article was the links to short recordings of sounds found at Denali National Park and Preserve, such as “Alpine stream feeding into an ice cave,” or “Bear with cubs.” Sitting here in Florida, I can listen to nature sounds from Alaska!

I hope you’ve enjoyed these stories—and I’d love to hear from you if you have wonder-full stories of your own. Have a wonder-full weekend!

“If your everyday life seems poor to you, do not accuse it; accuse yourself, tell yourself you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; since for the creator there is not poverty and no poor or unimportant place.”

—Rainer Maria Rilke

I had not seen it before, but I see by the cover it’s celebrating its fifth anniversary! I don’t know who thought of it, but apparently someone felt that gardens and guns were a nifty combination. And many other someones must agree, or it wouldn’t still be in print.

I should have flipped through it, but I was in a hurry to finish shopping. Next time I see it, I’m going to take a peek.

What interesting combinations have you seen lately?

Ready for a return to San Francisco?

Here are a few more highlights:

Mission Dolores is the oldest building in San Francisco. It was the sixth mission established by Father Junipero Serra (in late 1776) and the building was completed in 1791. The Mission was built with adobe walls four feet thick, and original redwood logs lashed together with rawhide strips still support the roof. The Mission survived the 1906 earthquake, but the parish church next door did not. The current basilica dates from 1918. A small museum, cemetery and gift shop complete the Mission Dolores complex.

 Sunday we woke to fog, cold temperatures and wind—and wouldn’t you know, that was the day we planned to go to Crissy Field and the Golden Gate Promenade, all on the water. It was chilly, but we equipped ourselves with jackets and scarves—and this outing turned into one of our favorites. Crissy Field is restored coastal habitat, with tidal marshes, dunes and historic military structures (Fort Mason and Fort Point). We took our time strolling down the path, snapping photos of happy dogs, birds, flowers, sand dunes and a fog-shrouded Golden Gate Bridge. We fortified ourselves with a stop at the aptly-named Warming Hut, the park store and small restaurant/coffee shop. 

 After lunch, we drove to Ocean Beach and then down Hwy 1 in search of photogenic beaches. The sun peeked out, but the fog still rolled over the hills like water. We spied swimmers, surfers and wind-surfers braving the cold Pacific:

 On our last day, Susan, a college friend of mine, made her way into the city to meet up with us. She gamely tagged along as we crisscrossed the city trying to see things we’d missed, and returning to the Golden Gate Bridge to get photos without fog while Laure gamely put up with our chatter as we caught up on each other’s lives.

One of our destinations was the Hyde Street Pier, part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. Built for automobile ferries between San Francisco and Sausalito, the pier now houses a number of historical vessels, including the ferry Eureka, the square-rigger Balclutha, the steam-powered tugboat Hercules, and a number of smaller craft.

A quick stop for Irish coffee at “the” place to get it, the Buena Vista, and we were off for the Golden Gate Bridge again to try to get some shots of the bridge without all the fog of the previous day. This time, nature cooperated.

We ended the day with dinner at the Cliff House. Unfortunately, it was too cloudy to see the sunset, but apparently this is a great place to do so.

I’ve left out descriptions of some of the places we visited, such as Japantown and the “Painted Ladies” (Victorian houses) near Alamo Square. Even though we packed our days full of sight seeing, we still missed so many places of interest: the Conservancy of Flowers and other attractions at Golden Gate Park, several fine museums, the Yerba Buena Gardens, Alcatraz and the whole of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, to name only a few. We didn’t even ride a cable car—though we did ride everything else! And we didn’t get out of the city to explore at all. I feel like I’ve just had a taste of what San Francisco has to offer.

Guess we’ll just have to go back.

David Wagoner, who lives in Washington state, is one of our country’s most distinguished poets and the author of many wonderful books. He is also one of our best at writing about nature, from which we learn so much. Here is a recent poem by Wagoner that speaks to perseverance. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

The Cherry Tree

Out of the nursery and into the garden   

where it rooted and survived its first hard winter,   

then a few years of freedom while it blossomed,   

put out its first tentative branches, withstood   

the insects and the poisons for insects,   

developed strange ideas about its height   

and suffered the pruning of its quirks and clutters,   

its self-indulgent thrusts   

and the infighting of stems at cross purposes   

year after year.  Each April it forgot   

why it couldn’t do what it had to do,   

and always after blossoms, fruit, and leaf-fall,   

was shown once more what simply couldn’t happen.   

Its oldest branches now, the survivors carved   

by knife blades, rain, and wind, are sending shoots   

straight up, blood red, into the light again.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by David Wagoner, whose most recent book of poetry is Good Morning and Good Night, University of Illinois Press, 2005. Reprinted from Crazyhorse, No. 73, Spring 2008, by permission of David Wagoner. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

At this time last week, I was eating breakfast at Tyger’s (the California Scramble: eggs, avocado, mushrooms, cheese and tomatoes—yum!) and reluctantly planning our final day in San Francisco. Laure Ferlita and I made the trek cross country to gather material for articles and scout subjects for a new online art class. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it!

Even though I was born and raised in California, I’d never been to San Francisco for longer than an overnight stay with my sister-in-law about 15 years ago. I remember nothing about the city, except that we ate at an amazing restaurant where the chef cooked up some French fries (not on the menu) for my 2-year-old son so he’d have something to eat while the rest of us indulged in more grown-up cuisine.

I did some research beforehand, trying to make sense of the different neighborhoods (Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill, Haight-Ashbury, etc.) and how they fit together. The online travel boards agreed that having a car wasn’t necessary, that public transportation was readily available and reasonably priced, while parking and driving were headaches.

Well, yes and no. And yes. Public transport was available, but the size of the city made it difficult to get from location to location quickly—and while there is plenty of public transport, sometimes it’s a bit confusing to figure out which method will get you where you want to go (street car, cable car, bus or metro?) and how many hills you’ll have to climb in the meantime. (Being from flat Florida, we found even those hills described as having “gentle inclines” taxing to the cardiovascular system.)

We’d planned to rent a car for part of the visit anyway, hoping to get out of the city to Muir Woods or Point Reyes, and by the time we picked it up, we were ready to brave the traffic of San Francisco in order to see more in less time. The traffic was indeed headache-inducing and so was parking, but we managed. And no, we did not drive Lombard Street (known as the world’s crookedest street) but we did take pictures of the foolhardy brave folks who did. I did the driving and Laure the navigating, and I could not have done it without her. She also made a fine coach through what seemed to be constant parallel parking.

Even with the car, we still averaged around 10,000 steps a day, logging more than 16,000 on our busiest day. Some of the things we saw included (click to enlarge photos):

Chinatown:

Fortune cookies being made at the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company:

You can bring your own fortunes to be inserted into the cookies. We just bought a bag of already-assembled cookies. My fortune said, “Opportunity awaits you next Tuesday.” That was last Tuesday. I'm still waiting.

Brown velvet sea lions at Pier 39:

Japanese Tea Garden (located in Golden Gate Park):

This garden has a real aura of peace and tranquility even if it’s busy with visitors. I'd come back here.

San Francisco Botanical Gardens (also located in Golden Gate Park), beautiful flowers and friendly squirrels:

Coit Tower/Fillbert Steps:

For some reason, the murals at Coit Tower, located on Telegraph Hill, charmed me. They were part of the Public Works of Art Project (under the New Deal) and are mostly done in fresco, according to Wikipedia.

Views from the hill are pretty spectacular:

Just steps away from Coit Tower, a hidden walkway and set of stairs winds between homes perched on the hill, giving us peeks into backyards and more beautiful views of the water (these are either the Filbert Steps or the Greenwich Street Stairs--I'm not sure which):

Hope you’ll return Friday for part two of the San Francisco travelogue! We felt like we barely scratched the surface of what there was to see in the city. Have you ever been to San Francisco? What are your favorite memories?

*Not really—the battery just wore out!

1. Tell everyone something about yourself that nobody else knows.

2. Link to a post you think fits the following categories: Most Beautiful Piece, Most Helpful Piece, Most Popular Piece, Most Controversial Piece, Most Surprisingly Successful Piece, Most Underrated Piece, Most Pride-worthy Piece.

3. Pass this on to seven fellow bloggers.

1. Most of the bloggers are skipping this one, and there’s not much that nobody else knows (that I care to reveal, anyway!), but let me think… how about: though I don’t know if my shoulder tendonitis would permit it, I would like to learn how to fence—en garde!

2. Posts for the following categories:

Most Beautiful Piece: Personally, I like the dreamy feel of After the Rain.

Most Helpful Piece: The Good Enough Blog Post.

Most Popular Piece: Judging by number of comments, I’d say So Much More has been the most popular. 

Most Controversial Piece: I don’t “do” controversial—but maybe this one comes close? 

Most Surprisingly Successful Piece: The reading challenge posts last year here and here seemed to attract a lot of interest and comments.

Most Underrated Piece: Life Lessons from a Panda.  Not everyone likes to take their life lessons from cartoons…

Most Pride-worthy Piece: Discovery: Ellen Glasgow. I loved reading Barren Ground and researching Glasgow, and was proud of how this piece turned out.

I had fun reviewing nearly two and a half years of posts. Do you agree with my choices?

The seven bloggers I tag are:

Laure at Painted Thoughts

Elizabeth at More to Love

Kathy at Oregon Gifts of Comfort and Joy

Michelle at A Reader’s Footprints

Sage at The Path of Possibility

Kelly at Red and the Peanut

Elizabeth at A Nature Art Journal

Don’t worry if you don’t want to play, and if you’re not mentioned and this meme sounds fun to you, consider yourself tagged also!