Live Oak History Walk around Schwan Lake

Last Tuesday evening (August 6, 2019) at 6:00 pm sharp, Jim, Paul and I joined about 30 people gathered at Simpkins Family Swim Center to start our nature walk toward Schwan Lake, headed by Norman Poitevin and members from Live Oak Neighbors (LON).

It is the first time I had seen the hill side, instead of the ocean side of Schwan Lake, named after Jacob Schwan, a German grain farmer and land owner. There are two well-trodden paths leading to the lake. Around the water's edge, it is unusually quiet and green, not unlike some lakes in New York, such as the Teatown Lake.

One LON member presented her talk on the development of Live Oak's Mobile Home Parks. According to her, there were over 50 mobile homes parks then, half of which were constructed in Live Oak then. No wonder the City of Santa Cruz did not want to annex trashy Live Oak.

We stopped at various spots to listen to Norman talking about the Skyview Drive-In, the Antonelli Family Begonia Gardens, Live Oak Plaza, the Old Cork Oak, and the county's first Farm Advisor, Henry Washburn, director of the University of California agricultural extension service in Santa Cruz County. Norman could not help but admire at the annual journals and corresponding photo albums Washburn had kept for more than 30 years. As luck has it, Washburn's granddaughter was one of the visitors on site. She told the crowd that she was now struggling with a houseful of Washburn's historical stuff. Accidentally, she demystified his orderly bookkeeping, to meet the requirements of Washington's funding application.

Elizabeth Schilling, president of Live Oak Grange, concentrated sorely on the Santa Cruz Live Oak Grange #503. Chartered on August 5, 1932 with 30 members increasing to 150 members in 1936, the construction of the Grange hall was completed in March 1957 at a cost of $11,000.  After the talk, Paul and I asked her about the community garden across the Grange, especially its water usage. She told us that it once belonged to the Methodist Church for a new church 15 years previously. For some reason, it did not pan out. So the Grange is taking over and leasing out at an annual fee of $30 per lot, including water. She also told us that every 4th Sunday, there is a trade/barter fair in the Grange. On hearing that we grew tomatoes, lemons and limes, She encouraged us to trade our citrus fruits. What a great idea! 

The walk ended on time as scheduled. Three of us all felt happily tired and intellectually nourished. We are one step closer to where we live and soon where we work by understanding a little bit more about its past, mute but beckoning at us from time to time.

A Venetian Elder Abuse

Unto us a son is given is Donna Leon's newest book, published in March, 2019. Unlike her previous 27 installments of Guido Brunetti mysteries, it concentrates on solving a case of financial elder abuse turning into murders (image courtesy Penguin UK).

Eighty-five-year-old Gonzalo Rodriguez de Tejada is a naturalized Italian. He is Brunetti's parents-in-law's best friend, his wife's godfather and unofficial uncle. As a successful art collector and dealer, he has accumulated a vast fortune and expensive Venetian apartments in his lifetime. With his rapid decline in health, Gonzalo, a childless bachelor, decides to leave everything to his newly-adopted son Attilio Circetti, Marchese di Torrebardo, instead of sharing it with his three living siblings. He lives under the illusion that young Attilio is the only one willing to learn his art business, able to love him in his old age, and appreciate his beautiful collections after he is gone. Once the adoption is made, Gonzalo drops dead while walking on the street with his sister. His funeral, conducted back home in Spain, is immediately followed by the deaths of his two oldest friends when they return to Venice for his memorial service.

With the unparalleled phenomenon of an aging population, law suits over inheritances are rising worldwide. Santa Cruz County is no exception. The Santa Cruz Sentinel calls its readers to Act as guardians to prevent elder abuse. The Grey Bears, a local organization to improve the health and well-being of seniors of Santa Cruz County, is not far behind, with a flyer provided by the Santa Cruz District Attorney, distributed far and wide among its "Brown Bag" members on July 26, 2019. (Flyer courtesy Grey Bears)

The phenomenon is such that Donna Leon, who normally creates mysteries in education, finance, medicine, or music, has dived into financial elder abuse law. For the first time, she zooms in on a new crop of predators feasting on wealthy, but vulnerable, elderly Venetians. As long as there is uneven distribution of wealth, there will be greed and abuses of many kinds. Sometimes it is straightforward, other times it needs the expertise of Commissario Guido Brunetti to untangle a disturbing and sobering mystery for the financially abused elders. 

In Memory of Flora B. Curtice Hansen

Right after 4th of July, I read from Sentinel an obituary of Flora B. Curtice Hansen, our old family therapist at the turn of the Millennium.  

Both Paul and I are saddened at Flora's passing. Flora was one of the most professional and compassionate people in our new life in Santa Cruz more than two decades ago. Unlike some stern therapists, she was kind and warm, encouraging and fostering. As a result of her great work, we, as a family, did not take any drastic measures, but have learned how to communicate with each other, and resolve problems. With her lemon tree laden with fruit outside, and friendly golden retriever sleeping inside, she taught us how to take care of plants and animals too. Before long, we adopted a white runt kitten who has grown into a beautiful calendar girl. 

Our connection with Flora did not stop with the end of therapy sessions, but has been remaining a lifelong success story. We always admire Flora's serenity and curiosity about the world, and especially her eagerness to keep abreast with the progress of her patients. We are forever grateful to her human and innovative approach.

The following is an obituary published in July 5, 2019 in Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Flora B. Curtice Hansen

Oct 5, 1930 - June 6, 2019 Santa Cruz
 

Flora B. Curtice Hansen, a psychotherapist and artist who lived in Santa Cruz since 1985, died peacefully at Sunshine Villa on June 6, 2019, at the age of 88. She had no children. Her husband, Craig Hansen, also an artist, preceded her in death several years ago. Originally from New York, she lived and worked in Berkeley for several decades before moving to Santa Cruz. Flora was a devoted friend, animal lover, delighted in her garden and life in Santa Cruz. No public memorial is planned.

Flags, Libraries, & Parks in Youngstown

Paul gave me a thorough tour of his hometown, Youngstown, Ohio right after Nasig 2019 ended last Saturday in Pittsburgh. He showed me his family house at Glenwood and Mistletoe, his elementary school, middle school and high school.

Since the closure of steel mills starting on Black Monday, 9/19/1977 through mid-80’s, Youngstown has had a hard time recovering from the deep economic recession, after losing its main economy, echoing a national trend of deindustrialization. With the exception of big brick or stone houses along Mill Creek Park and those in Boardman, many houses are in the dilapidated condition, or simply torn down to turn into empty lots between houses, just like a mouth of poorly maintained human teeth, with gaps and holes.

Despite such a depressing appearance, there are undercurrents of resilience. Most notably, there are more American flags flying than anyway else in residential areas, streets, government offices, and schools. Maybe depression make people more appreciate government welfare.

The second outstanding feature is people’s bursting pride in their public libraries. Before departing to airport, we visited Poland Library of Youngstown and Mohoning County, at the high recommendation of our friend Robert. It is airy, bright, and comfortable, built around an old seminary dormitory.With an areas of approximately 36,000 square feet, it has three floors, housing friends of library store and meeting room, library, and staff area.

Last but not least is renaissance of parks and recreation and educational centers. With private funds, Rose Garden (Fellows Riverside Gardens), Mill Creek Park and Youngstown State University all have been given a partial or whole or partial makeover. They not only provide people with beauty, but more importantly, hope and aspirations for a better future.

When driving out of Youngstown to go to Pittsburgh along I-680 S to I-76 E, we were periodically slowed down by roadwork. A series of road repair and lane expansions were under construction with all the signs and big machines up and standby. Apparently the way to Youngstown will be more smooth and pleasant. It is a sign of the beginning of recovery, hopefully.

World Book Club Interviews Donna Leon

Last week, Paul recommended me an interview with Donna Leon by BBC World Book Club. I did not jump on it as I should. As a reader and selector, I thought that I had known enough about the author through her Venetian detective series. Ever since nearly two decades ago when our Austrian friend Robert introduced her to Paul and me, I have begun to read her until her last two books, the Temptation of Forgiveness (2018) and Unto Us a Son is Given (2019). For some reason, I was distracted by other writers, and projects.

The 53-minute interview conducted by Harriet at BBC has enabled me to look deeper and further at Donna Leon as a writer and person. Donna Leon's Death at La Fenice (1992), the first of her 28 detective novels, has laid down a consistent foundation for her characters, place and ethic sense. 

 Courtesy of www.bbc.co.uk

During the interview, Leon has confirmed her identification with the character of police commissario Guido Brunetti, instead of his wife, Paula, who is an academic in English literature, a filed more akin to Leon's own. However, she prefers him as a gentle family man, loving good meals, and enjoying operas and singers, a passion Leon shares and has been involved in. Meanwhile he is a thorough and competent commanding investigator who peruses justice, or rather ethical equality/sense.

When asked by book club readers why she chooses Venice as her setting, Leon thinks that Venice is good for crime novels, because the conventional wisdom believes that beautiful people do good things, so do beautiful places where ugly things are not supposed to happen. The choice of Venice is more attention grabbing.

In addition, Venice is the only place she has lived for more than 30 years, with her previous wandering life and English teaching profession. Thirty years ago, it was a serene city populated with about 100,000 residents, with September as a tourist season. Today, the local population has been reduced to 54,000, with 30 million tourists all year around. With the changing Venice, Leon calls Switzerland her home where she owns a house and is closer to her publisher and agent. She likes the people there too, for being civil-minded, and unwilling to be a parasite milking or working for a governmental system for over 40 years. Such a loss of serenity in Venice might have darkened the overall mood in Leon's later works, characterized by a sense of gloom and pessimism, even though her personal life is happy.

The interview of Donna Leon ends with a few tips from the author,

1) Writing as fun. By average, she writes about one book per year, with no specific timelines. Sometimes, it will take up to 8 months to complete a book. What matters most to Leon is authenticity and wise remarks;
2) Deciding on a voice, he or I. More often than not, he is easier. It is easier to be a man than a woman; and
3) Creating at least one character readers can like and be identifiable with. It is the same experience Louise Penny has agreed upon with her main character Armand Gamache.

The interview also ends with clarifying a mystery Robert told us years ago, i.e., Leon does not publish her novels in Italian in her lifetime, for she does not want the local fame. Things might change once she departs from this life. 

Remembering My Mother Jindi

Jindi Tian

July 22, 1932-March 11, 2019 

My mother Jindi Tian passed peacefully on March 11, 2019. She was 86. A private memorial service was held on March 16, at Chun Fook Funeral Services in Flushing, New York.

Jindi started her life with a tragic bang. At age three, she lost her mother who died from a difficult childbirth. To seek a better future in Shanghai, her father Ruixin Tian left her in his mother’s care in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province. After her grandmother died, Jindi joined her father who by then had established himself in both family and career: he was remarried, and promoted to a head foreman in the Yufeng Textile Mill (later changed to the Shanghai #17 Textile Mill). At age ten, Jindi began working in the same textile mill to help support her new family.

Despite her calamitous beginning, Jindi lived a full life by taking charge of her own destiny. She managed to receive an alternative education by attending the Textile Mill’s Evening School. It was there that Jindi met her future husband Rushan Huang. They married in 1953, and had three daughters (the firstborn died in infancy), and one son. In her mid-thirties, Jindi became a director, managing thousands of workers and technical personnel. However, her professional life was not entirely smooth sailing. During the Cultural Revolution, she was thrown out of power and bodily injured, as she did not kowtow to unjustified accusations.  

Jindi was a firm believer in education and lifelong learning. From 1989 to 1997, she and Rushan were fulltime caregivers of their grandson Nick, while his mother was in the States for her graduate degrees. Seeing her second son-in-law doing his postdoctoral work at Johns Hopkins University, she succeeded in encouraging her second daughter, to study and obtain her Master’s in biotechnology. Inspired by Jindi, her three children all graduated from prestigious universities, such as Fudan, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Stanford. Her five grandchildren have followed in their parents’ footsteps by also graduating from top universities on both coasts.

Jindi considered herself a lifetime worker. By her retirement in 1988, her three children had all departed for America. She reorganized the remaining four family members: she and her husband, her 91-year-old father-in-law, and 4-year-old grandson. After the passing of the grandfather and then of her husband, she immigrated to this country in 2003. In 2012, following a hip replacement and diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer’s, she was transferred to Cedar Manor Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Ossining, New York. There she would help the staff with activities in the dayroom, under the supervision of Helena O’Brien, a staff member who incredibly shared the same birth year as Jindi. When asked, Jindi would tell people that she worked there, still not retired.

Jindi visited Santa Cruz for the first time in July 1997. She came back several more times on her way to New York or Shanghai. When those visits coincided with the Independence Day, she thoroughly enjoyed the “Shortest Parade in the World” in Aptos, and the Fourth of July parade in La Selva Beach. Jindi loved to pamper her daughter’s cat Chippy with treats. They spent many mornings listening to tapes together, as she did her Tai Chi. Chippy was concerned whenever the sound of the tape stopped; and she truly worried when Jindi suffered from one of her Alzheimer’s episodes, and remained outside for hours.

Jindi is preceded in death by her parents, Ruixin Tian and Aibao Shao, and, stepmother Qianmei Luo, her first daughter Jian Huang, and her husband Rushan Huang. She is survived by her daughters Hui-Lan (Paul) Titangos of Santa Cruz, Hui Huang (Baolin Wang) of Croton-on-Hudson, NY, and son Ying (Sue) Huang of Yorktown Heights, NY. She is also survived by five grandchildren, Nicolas C. (Lee Anne) Titangos, Wendy Wang (Peter Lubell-Doughtie), Stephanie Wang, Eric and Emily Huang, and two great grandchildren, Elena Lee and Paul George Titangos. Back in Shanghai, Jindi left behind her stepbrother Cunmin Luo (Rongxie Yao), two half sisters, Rongdi Tian (Youxin Ma) and Xindi Tian (Youmin Song), plus six nephews; and one niece in Cupertino, CA.

My family would like to take this opportunity to express our heartfelt gratitude to Cedar Manor and it’s nursing staff for their professional loving care. We would like to thank her roommate’s daughter, Mariam Walker, for her highly skilled nursing advice, and help. We would also like to thank Doris, Lisa and Bob’s family, and colleagues and management of Regeneron for coming to the memorial service, and for feeding Jindi last year. The caring feeding team includes Na, Li Pan, Shirley Jiang, Amy, etc. In Santa Cruz, and Santa Cruz Public Libraries in particular, we are equally grateful to the many colleagues and friends who have expressed their deepest condolences and sympathy for the passing of Jindi.

Reading Joyce Kilmer

I was deeply moved by Trees, one of the poems by Joyce Kilmer (December 6, 1886 – July 30, 1918). Criticized as being too sentimental and simple, it has nonetheless withstood the test of time, since its first publication in 1913. It demonstrates how beautiful the natural world is, and its close connection with us.

Unfamiliar with many poets of WWI, I made my unexpected acquaintance with Trees through  W. - The Killer of Flanders Fields, a 2014 Skyline Entertainment production. Despite its gruesome murder scenes, and unfortunate victims, the poem shines through the layers of ugliness, to give both characters and audience, courage, hope, and simplicity in pursuing the real truth to the very end. Just listen:

Trees

By Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

Celebrating Chinese New Year

My sister sent me her Chinese New Year celebration performance for 2019. Every year her company honors important festivals in both China and India, as well as major holidays in this country. What a commitment! Here is her Taichi Showcase.

Viewing ISS: Short but Bright

Paul and I dashed out right after our dinner to view the passing ISS (International Space Station) over Santa Cruz at 7:00pm this evening.

Three minutes before the time, we situated ourselves at our usual lookout point nearby the 36th Avenue beach. As it predicted, the ISS appeared just after 6:59pm above a giant cypress tree. It went straight according to its charted route towards us. It was right above us for about a couple of seconds, bright and proud. I was on the point of wondering why it was predicted to be a short view this time, since it was right on top of the sky, and ready to proceed eastward, when suddenly the ISS was gone and seen no more.

Later, we realized that the ISS abruptly disappeared because, right after reaching it's zenith in the sky, the Earth's shadow interceded, and cast the ISS into darkness. Otherwise, We would have seen it continuing  eastward, and followed it's usual gradual dimming as it got further and further away, until it blinked out of sight at around 900 miles distant.

The abrupt behavior of ISS departure is interesting.  It shows the accuracy of its ISS Tracker App schedule. It also displays the unpredictability of everything. Not everything has a beginning, middle/peak, and ending. Sometimes, the middle/peak is the ending. We need to look at our world with flexibility and accept people as they are. Sometimes short but bright is equally excellent.