Sunday Morning Pics, From Piedmont Hills to Piedmont Avenue ...

Okay, Blogger, so you want these two pictures at the top?  You have a way of shifting things around behind my back.   I did not consciously put  them there! But why not.  I want to go to St.Leo's someday, for more than a brief sit down. I must admit, I love the rich atmosphere of being inside a Catholic chapel -- or is it cathedral? . I remember attending one on Christmas Eve in Glasgow, Scotland, many years ago. 

The border between Piedmont and Oakland, where I live,  crosses through my apartment building, it has been said. Which might mean that I sleep in Oakland and, up the hall, do my laundry in Piedmont.

Sometimes, above and below, with my Canon SD 780 1S, which I took to China in 2010. Sometimes, it seems in the right mood and I love the results. Other times I raise my iPhone SE to the view, forever suspicious that it is pixelating to dazzle me with something closer to a techno seduction than to a  more intimate connection with nature and art.

 

And yet, I can't tell you for sure, picture to picture, which camera took which one. I think my iPhone came in handy for this image, as it did for those along Piedmont Avenue.

We are, above and below, on Cambridge, my favorite street in Piedmont. It is hilly and cozy, winding and filled with a variety of homes, not all that spectacular except for this one, my favorite house in all of Piedmont (of those I have seen).

 

 

 

 

This corner house bears the most lavish new landscaping, it must have been sold. It is for me impossible to photograph, so here I have simply gone for a wide view through the iron gate.

 

If I may say, this is a keeper, which I came upon up above a stream below that winds its way under and along  a series of blocks. It's that little brown shape that makes it for me, whatever it is -- it looks alive.

The impromptu chairs. I love reading here, and often I have the spot all to myself as people and dogs amble by -- my current paper mate, a Hamish Macbeth mystery. You can hear the trickling stream down below.  Nobody knows how the chairs got there, at first there were only three greens. Sometimes they take a break and are gone and I fear they will never return. Happened a week ago, and I assumed they were gone for good. And then they came back!   So now,  to the Piedmont Avenue part of this post.  
 

The Piedmont Grocery went mask-free for two or three daring weeks.  Of course, it  couldn't have lasted.   The un-vaccinated are the problem -- sorry if you are and feel offended.  The two shot protection is so amazingly good (99.9% against hospitalization and death),  that  what really boggles my mind is how many health workers resist it, too. Which only goes to show that those who administer science-based treatment to others do not always accept the same treatment for themselves.. We are innately irrational creatures.  

I wondered who that was in the window. Oh, it was me!

I could cry,  Ninna's was my favorite Thai restaurant on Piedmont Avenue.

And Gaylords, still shuttered.

This was a total shock. Greetings. I thought it was invincible, I have bought so many things there over the years, mostly gifts.  The walls were lined with greeting cards, some blank, from the world over. They always had just the right thing.. So many small business owners got screwed by one of the most shamefully self-serving governors ever to rule the State of Insanity. A smug self-entitled despot who faces a recall.  And may have plenty of time, if he gets the royal boot, to wonder what all went wrong at the French Laundry.   

Goodbye, another our-town Piedmont Avenue luxury.  My last purchase a few days ago was a  colorful little child's book with blank pages, which I will give to my friend Boyi's son, Ethan, come Christmas.  You can see him up there, top right. playing a game of rescuing me (that's how it felt when I hid and made funny sounds and he came after me), during their visit a couple of weeks ago. He is such a cute kid, and now he can say name perfectly -- when he wants to. Oh, the joy a child can bring with just one word.

8.8.21