Birthday Blog 2026
I was born on October 17, 1949 at St. Luke’s Hospital in San Francisco at 6:33 AM, a half-hour before sunrise. I know next to nothing about astrology, but I was told by two earnest astrologers who studied my birth chart decades ago that I am preternaturally optimistic and predisposed to be an entertainer.
And speaking of entertaining, I thought it would be fun and entertaining to take pictures throughout the day of my 77th birthday and see what words wanted to come out to accompany the photographs.
My birthday dawns sunny and cher. Wake up, get out of bed, take a quick shower, and drag a brush across my head. Put the kettle on for Marcia’s coffee, grind the beans, and do some bouncing on the mini-trampoline to loosen up the old joints.
Loosening up before undertaking anything is highly recommended.
I place my clothes for the day on the piano bench but remain naked as is my habit for the first several minutes of being up and about every morning, unless we have overnight guests and then I dress before dancing forth.
While the coffee brews, I give my jars of sprouts their first rinses of the day. I’ve gotten back into sprouting in my old age and like to keep four to six quart jars of mung beans, lentils, broccoli, and alfalfa sprouting all the time. I’ll soon be sprouting radish seeds, fenugreek, and peas, too. Eating fresh sprouts every day is highly recommended.
Marcia’s coffee ready, I venture outside still in my birthday suit to see how everyone growing around the deck is doing. I do not drink coffee, though I love the taste of coffee. Alas, coffee is not my body’s friend. I still enjoy making coffee for Marcia, but I no longer even take a sip lest the fabulous bitter flavor tempt me to renew my habit of suffering the unhappy long term consequences for a few minutes of pleasure every morning.
I have written several songs about coffee and applaud those who can drink coffee without ill effects. However, I adhere to the Buddhist idea of the freedom of restraint as elucidated by Joseph Goldstein.
“We should be careful not to confuse restraint with repression or avoidance. Restraint of mind does not mean pushing something away and denying its presence. It does not mean being judgmental or having an aversion toward certain aspects of our experience. With wisdom and awareness we can see that there are skillful activities that are conducive to greater happiness and understanding, and there are unskillful ones that lead to further suffering and conflict. Restraint is the capacity we have to discriminate one from the other, and the strength and composure of mind to pursue the skillful course.”
One of our tubs is currently providing us with radishes and arugula. Had I known the fall days were going to be so continuously warm this year I would have planted lots more of the cool weather crops that grow so well here just a mile from the coast.
Another of our tubs is the permanent home of a hearty stand of thyme and persistent nasturtiums beloved of hummingbirds. Along with the nasturtiums and thyme, I planted in that tub a packet of flowers reputed to be attractive to hummingbirds, and those plants are so lush and pretty now I’ll plant them again next year.
Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards.
Before going inside to get dressed, I commune for a while with Ganesh who is enjoying a respite from the gray mold that covers him during the winter and is blessedly burned away by the summer sun. Our statue was carved out of a single block of stone in Bali and weighs so much we had to hire three strong men to move him into place.
Ganesh is said to be The Remover of Obstacles and the patron of writers and artists. Thus I pray to him every morning. What could it hurt?
Dressed for the day, I sit down with a bowl of homemade granola and peruse the three birthday cards I got in the actual mail: one from our friend Deb Kvaka, quilter extraordinaire and cellist, one from my sister Kathy, professor of biology at the College of San Mateo, and one from Wendy Mull who has been my friend since we were in First Grade together seventy-one years ago! Seems like only yesterday I was chasing her around the playground.
Wendy’s card features a quote from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web: You have been my friend, that in itself is a tremendous thing.
Meanwhile Marcia started her day making the pumpkin pie I requested for my birthday, and what a fabulous egg-free, gluten-free pie it is!
In the early afternoon, the day sunny and warm, we drive down to Big River Beach and get our feet in the deliciously cold waters where Big River meets the sea, the beach crowded with visitors from inland who have come to the coast to escape the excessive inland heat.
On the sand bar across the wide river are many pelicans enjoying the sun and availing themselves of the good fishing in Mendocino Bay. To quote from my song ‘Really Really You’: I like Pelicans, too. In fact I’d like to be one.
Home from the beach, I start cooking the pinto beans I soaked overnight for my birthday supper. I’m cooking two pots of beans, one pot with garlic and onions and olive oil and salt and various spices, the other with just olive oil and salt for our friend Bill who cannot tolerate onions and garlic.
I’ve recently started making beans from scratch after watching several videos of people making beans from scratch, including a Mexican woman, a Norwegian man, a man from Missouri, an Irish woman, and a German couple. They all claimed to know The Best Way to cook beans. I took their words to heart and invented a composite method resulting in good results.
While the beans are cooking I go outside and peruse the site of what will be a little brick terrace just down the slope from the little brick terrace I completed a week or so ago.
I was a landscaper in my late twenties and before that I was the assistant of a bricklayer. Making little brick terraces is definitely a way to follow my bliss, as Jung would say, and working with dirt and slopes and rocks and bricks is emotionally and spiritually refreshing for me.
Our property abounds in beautiful big stones brought in by the truckload in the 1970s by the previous owners of our two acres, so there is no end of rocks to work with. The Stone People, as Fool’s Crow teaches, are incredibly wise people.
Coming in from futzing around with the new terrace site, I take a nap in the living room to revive me for making supper with Marcia, she the maestra of salads and tortillas, I the chef of pinto beans with mushrooms and zucchini.
Our supper guests are Bill and Sally Fletcher who have lived in Mendocino exactly as long as I have: twenty-years. Marcia has lived here since the 1970s. Bill and Sally are two of the nicest people I’ve ever known and I feel blessed to have them as my friends. Sally thinks I’m really funny, which to my way of thinking proves she’s a genius.
After supper and much good talk, we retire to the living room where a fire is burning in the woodstove. We have tea and big pieces of the highly anticipated pumpkin pie that exceeds all expectations and is the perfect climax to my birthday.
The anti-climax is doing the dishes after Sally and Bill depart. Yet even doing the dishes is fun because I’ve had such a splendid birthday.
As we drift off to sleep I say to Marcia, “Let’s take it easy tomorrow.”
To which she replies, “Good idea.”
fin
Happy Birthday, Darling from Todd’s album Lounge Act In Heaven