Visiting --- Day 6/114

Walk: Around SF

Distance: 2.5 miles

Ciwt is busy with a visiting friend.  Catch you tomorrow.

Flower Power --- Day 6/113

Walk: Monday Errands
Distance: 3.5 miles, Home Yoga

Summer of Love Flower in her Hair for Warriors 

Ciwt is rooting for NBA finals to be over tonight.  Warriors will be winners, and the Bay Area will be on to something else. Go W's!!!

Doc Thoughts --- Day 6/112

Walk: Presidio, Vogue Theater DocFest
Distance: 5 miles, small yoga

One reason why Ciwt lives in San Francisco: year round, quality film festivals.  The current one is DocFest in its 17th season of pre-release (if they are picked up by distributors and released at all) excellent documentaries.

Today she was able to walk a couple of blocks to the Vogue Theater for two of the 100 in the festival. The first, Surrounding Game, is about the game gi (Go) - begun long, long ago in China and one of the four arts that were required of the aristocratic ancient Chinese scholar-gentleman caste.  The other three are gin (Stringed Instrument), shu (Chinese calligraphy), and hua (Chinese calligraphy).

Go is multiple degrees more difficult than chess and to call it esoteric would be a vast understatement.  It's also bamboozling for the observor if they are not Go players themselves, so, even though the filmmakers have done an outstanding job capturing viewers' attention, Ciwt wonders whether it would attract a big enough audience to warrant a distributor's investment.  Ciwt (who actually used to play (at) Go around the family game table growing up) hopes so.  It is a deeply fascinating game and highly interesting movie.

The second doc, Spettacolo, will definitely be picked up because it concerns one of Italy's most favored travel destinations, Tuscany.  Specifically the tiny village in that region, Monticchiello, population 136, which has been producing a village play for over 50 years.  The countryside and medeval architecture are gorgeous enough to make you want to live - or at least go - there, which many tourists and a few very rich second-homers do.  But, unfortunately, that urge - along with Italian bureaucratic corruption and modernity - is exactly what is killing the traditional way of life.

It's bittersweet, beautifully filmed, thought-provoking - and Ciwt is quite sure it will be in (an art house) theater near you relatively soon.

The Amazing Succulent --- Day 6/111

Walk: No.  Was going walk downtown to ACT's "A Night With Janis Joplin," but decided no and took in a few of Joplin's real concerts on You Tube instead..  Maybe a future CIWT on that. 
Distance: Home Yoga

Remember the limp dilapidated Ciwt found on the sidewalk and just randomly stuck in the dirt of one of her flower boxes?  (The most exposed to the elements one, at that).  Just to see if it could possibly survive?  Ciwt was highly doubtful.

 Well, what does Ciwt know?  Today, less than a month later, here it is: maybe 5" taller

And with a whole new flower growing. She thinks its name might be Echeveria Green Prince.

Reading Rooms --- Day 6/110

Walk: Kabuki Theater (Wonder Woman)
Distance: 2 miles, small yoga

Architecturally, what is more beautiful than a beautiful library?  At least to book people?  A friend of Ciwt's sent these pictures along with the dates the libraries were established:

Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Salle Labrouste, Paris, 1868 

 Trinity College Library, Dublin 1732

Biblioteca Joanina, Coimbra University (Portugal), 1728

Here are more captured by Paris-based photographer Thibaud Poirer....
And here's Poirer's website

Lacemaker Perfection --- Day 6/109

Walk: Marin Driving Day, PGCC Book Club
Distance: A Few Blocks

Johannes Vermeer, The Lacemaker, ca 1669-70, oil on canvas, 9.6" x 8.3"

A rare rainy day in San Francisco June put Ciwt in mind of the indoors and the smallest of Vermeer's paintings.

Rather Boggy Myself --- Day 6/108

Walk: Golf Club for Bridge
Distance: 1 mile, small home yoga

To tell you the truth, Ciwt is feeling a bit Eeyore-ish today.

"Perhaps Insane..." ---Day 6/107

Walk: Union Square, Last Straw  & Hook Fish Co on Irving Street at the Ocean
Distance: 1 mile, Home Yoga

Here is the iconic El Capitan in Yosemite:

Here is Alex Honnold free soloing* up El Capitan three days ago:

Here is a professional climber's explanation of free soloing:

To free solo is to climb without ropes or support of any kind. It is the purest, and most dangerous, form of climbing. It is you and the rock. To put it more viscerally: If you slip, or miss a handhold, or cramp up and lose your grip, you will fall for a very long time and then you will die. 

Here is that same writer's headline about Alex's feat:

Alex Honnold’s free solo climb of El Capitan was dangerous, perhaps insane, and the athletic feat of the century

And, finally, here is the writer/climber's thoughtful and hard cheese article about Honnold's essentially impossible feat:  (click underlined)