It's Been A Year!

Pumpkins, Paintings, Ballots, and a Book Birthday!

October ushered in a slide into everything cozy! Pumpkin patches and pumpkin spice. Apple Hill and apple cake. Soup recipes—butternut squash and hearty minestrone. Puffy sweaters and fuzzy socks. Leaves the color of sunshine, fire, and warm leather. Mounds of fallen acorns—an omen for a “hard winter” ahead. And Hallowe’en. This year’s trick-or-treating monsters don’t frighten me as much as next week’s election.

October also marked the One Year Birthday of Force of Nature!

How can that be? Our babies grow up so fast! A year has zipped by since I opened that big box and held the first copy of my book in my hands! I cried that day I was so excited! A year ago, I hosted two big launch parties and sold my very first copy of Force of Nature! A year!

Please watch for more information about my plans for a fun celebration—a Birthday Party for Force of Nature and your invite to a Zoom party! Save the date: December 1.

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Heart Full of Gratitude - Readers of Force of Nature

Who are my readers? Who is the audience for Force of Nature? Who are the people reading and listening to my book? I want to thank every single one of you!

There are hikers, backpackers, and adventurers, of course. And women of all ages—young women, middle-aged women, women like me “of a certain age.” And a number of men, too. Many readers are armchair adventurers. A surprising number write to say, “I’ve never gone camping before…” or “My adventuring days are behind me…”

Readers tell me, “I’ve started hiking because your book inspired me,” or “Your story reminded me of when I was hiking in the Sierra” last summer or thirty years ago. Readers ask questions about the missing tent and do I know where Zoe is now? They tell me they laughed and cried. It’s all so very overwhelming—in an absolutely wonderful way! Sending out deep bows of gratitude to everyone! Thank you!

Question: Do you read paper books? ebooks? listen to audiobooks? And you’re all invited to my Force of Nature Birthday Celebration on December 1!

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Are You My Mother? - The Adoption Lottery

October is Family History Month, and last week was National Adoption Week.

September 1954, shortly after I was turned over to my new parents at almost 3 months of age. My name was changed from Patricia to Joan Margaret Griffin.

Did you know I was adopted? I was one of a million babies adopted in the 1950s. My mom and dad, Louise and Wally Griffin, adopted me and another baby who became my younger sister. And I was lucky—I most definitely won the “adoption lottery.”

Did you know that, as an adult, I have now met most of my living birth-family members—my birth-mother and her family and my birth-father’s family? The first meeting came about through a private investigator hired by my birth-mother. He found me in only 48 hours back in the early 1990s. More recently, AncestryDNA connected me with my half-siblings on my birth-father’s side just before the pandemic began. Exactly 5 years ago TODAY!

I’m slowly working on my second book—which I jokingly call “Are You My Mother?” after the children’s book of that title. It will be filled with lots of my interesting stories of growing up adopted. When you’re adopted, those people closest to you, your family, share none of your genes or traits. When you meet your birth-family, you are confronted with complete strangers who resemble you, even act and sound more like you than your own family. It’s strange and fascinating, even surreal. I hope to share those stories with you in this still-in-the-early-stages book. Is this interesting to you?

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Field Trip - Legion of Honor - Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco

This month’s Artist’s Way-inspired field trip again took me westward. I met up with longtime friends Russ & Irene to take in the amazing exhibit of American Impressionist Mary Cassatt’s vast work at the grand Legion of Honor museum.

The Legion of Honor is located in Lincoln Park, at the Western Terminus of the original coast-to-coast road, the Lincoln Highway, right next to spots named Deadman’s Point and Land’s End. You can’t go much farther west before you hit the water! From the front steps, looking the other way, you can see the Golden Gate Bridge and much of the Bay. It’s a striking building, a replica of the French pavilion at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

Mary Cassatt, like so many women artists, was overshadowed by her male competitors. She focused much of her attention and her exquisite painting skills on women and children, subjects often ignored by men, who tended to focus on “important” male and/or wealthy subjects. Both she and her works were dismissed as womenly. Today, her work is recognized as the very best of the best of the Impressionists. I love this story: Cassatt was a strong proponent of women’s suffrage. She hosted a large exhibit to benefit those efforts. She included a few paintings by her friend Degas in her show, to make sure there would be a large audience and a large profit, even though Degas was strongly against the idea of women voting!

The women’s vote in 2024 is central to the election efforts by both parties, and there are some radicals who in 2024 are saying the 19th Amendment was a mistake. Some things never change. But we are not going back!

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October’s Books

I read six books this past month—a real variety this time. Five novels—one set in the future, three set in the past, and one in the present day. And one interesting nonfiction. All good reads I recommend to you!

Stitching A Life is an historical novel based on author Mary Helen Fein’s family history. I interviewed Fein in October as a part of my monthly OLLI at Sierra College “Spotlight on Authors” interview series. Fein’s grandmother Helen sailed alone to America from Lithuania in 1900 at the age of sixteen. Eventually, her whole family arrived, settled in New York City, and built a life in the bustling garment district. Hers is the classic immigrant’s American Dream adventure and a well-told story. 4****

Richard Powers has a new novel out—Playground. Where his book Overstory focused on trees, Playground is all about the ocean. Set in the recent past and the near future, and sprinkled with a bit of magical realism, Playground submerges us into the rising and warming oceans and introduces us to magnificent, but disappearing species. There are brilliant techies, billionaires, sinking islands, aquanautic deepsea scientists, and a dramatic ending. 5*****

Agatha Christie is the fictionalized main character in Lindsay Jane Ashford’s The Woman on the Orient Express. This is a fun period piece that would make a great BBC cozy mystery movie, with lots of quirky British folks riding the train and then hanging out in the Middle East digging up and squirreling away treasures and holding everyone to strict standards of dress and comportment. Oh, and there’s a murder! 4****

My favorite literary guilty pleasure is detective novels, especially those by Michael Connelly. I just gobble them up! His latest, The Waiting, like all his titles, is set in Los Angeles, in my old stomping grounds. Detective Renee Ballard, with help from crusty old Harry Bosch, solves forgotten murders in the Open-Unsolved Unit and prevents a new mass casualty event. 5*****

I reread Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter so I could facilitate an OLLI Book Discussion class as a part of our Water & Wetlands Series. Author Ben Goldfarb has a way of infusing humor and great storytelling into this nonfiction book stuffed with fascinating information about this very important keystone species, the ecosystem construction engineers and downright cute beavers. 5*****

Mockingbird Summer by Lynda Rutledge (author of West With Giraffes) masquerades as a YA novel, but it’s very appropriate for older readers like myself. It’s 1964, the summer of that very eventful year, in a tiny Southern town, where two young teens—one White and one Black—from opposite sides of the tracks, become unlikely friends. They read To Kill A Mockingbird, play in the Baptist Church’s girls’ softball game, and… much more. 5*****

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Flashback - A Sacred Duty - Casting My First Vote

I climbed the sweeping broad steps, passed between the towering columns of the grand old building, walked through a pair of heavy oaken doors, and entered the hushed antechamber. The familiar place, the auditorium of San Fernando Junior High (nee San Fernando High School), had been transformed into a secular temple for the day. People spoke in whispers. American flags draped the walls.

Over fifty years ago, on November 7, 1972, I voted for the very first time. I was a member of the first class of eighteen-year-olds voting for US President after the ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution in July 1971. The Vietnam War was in full tilt. President Richard Nixon was running for a second term against Senator George McGovern. The buzz around the election was deafening.

The auspiciousness of the occasion was a bit intimidating. The pride I felt in being a “real adult” with the rights and responsibilities of a full citizen pushed me forward. My shoes clicked on the tile floor as I queued up behind the handful of my fellow citizens waiting to vote.

I scanned the long and narrow, high-ceilinged foyer. At both ends were arrayed several voting booths. Sturdy and tall, built of dark wood, and the size of a phone booth, each was draped with a privacy curtain of thick vertically striped canvas. Some stood vacant, the curtain drawn back and inviting. Other curtains, pulled closed, revealed only the voters’ knees, ankles, and shoes, while protecting the voters' privacy of choice from the public eye.

“Name and address?” asked the first gray-haired woman sitting at the check-in table.

“Joan Griffin—556 North Brand Boulevard, San Fernando.”

She found my entry in the long list of names and checked me off.

“Put your signature here.” A younger woman, as conservatively dressed as the older women who book-ended her, pointed at the line next to my printed name in her own book of lists. “Be sure to sign your full name.”

I took the pen and with great care wrote my first, middle, and last names in my best cursive, then pushed the book back. The woman scrutinized my entry before passing me on to the third clerk.

“Here’s your ballot.” The immaculately dressed and coifed woman held out a long, sheathed card. Then, noting my youth, she stood up, unfolding all five-feet of herself, and added in a grandmotherly voice, “Have you done this before, dear?”

“No, ma’am. This is my first time voting.” I spoke in the steady confident voice of my new personae—liberated female college freshman—but I’m sure she caught the ample dose of nervousness mixed with my bubbling pride.

She pointed me to an open voting booth to my left and reminded me to use the special pen waiting inside to put an X in the boxes beside my choices.

“Thank you.” I turned and approached the booth, feeling empowered and anxious.

I removed my marked-up sample ballot from the large macrame purse hanging on my shoulder, stepped into my booth, pulled the curtain tight behind me, and took a deep breath. Pressing my papers flat on the small shelf, I pick up the pen and was surprised to find my hand shaking. Another deep breath. I marked my ballot slowly and with great care. I took great pleasure in voting against Nixon and The War, voting for McGovern and The Peace Movement. 

Filled with pride and a deep sense of patriotism, I swept back my curtain, dropped my ballot in the box, and strode through that sacred space and outside into the bright light of that brisk and breezy autumn afternoon.

Back to the present—2024—beginning tomorrow, Saturday, I will be one of those older women behind the table—a volunteer at my local Voting Center for four days running up to the election on November 5. Like my mother before me, as soon as I retired in 2015, I began volunteering in this role. Voting is the key component of our democracy, and I take great pride in my small role in supporting that process.