breathe love, breathe light.

I’ve lived in this house for thirty years now. I sit within it and study it, inside and out. I love transforming it, as I love transforming spaces for installations. To create a vision of beauty. Sometimes I hear the house telling me things … that wainscoting is needed where the wallboard is that someone put up in the kitchen. I take off the wallboard and the wainscoting is already there, has been all along, waiting to breathe in the sunlight.

That a door needs to be between the two small bedrooms, I take off the fake wood paneling and there is a doorway already there.

For years I debated taking down two walls to make the house more open, but then I would lose my guest room. I finally decided to just widen the doorway in between the kitchen and the living room. I had taken the door off the hinges years ago anyway. When the doorway trim came off, there was a wadded-up piece of material jammed under it. I was afraid I would break it if I tried to unfold it, as it was stiff like newspaper. It was covered in dust and dried blood. I soaked it in oxygen bleach three times over and hung it outside on the clothesline.

It dried as you see it in the photo, holding that beautiful form. I knew that Volga Germans built this house in 1908, and I contacted Steven Schreiber, who has a site dedicated to their history. The story continues here.

kboo.fm/media/50048-vanessa-renwick-and-oregon-department-kick-ass 

In 1962, a small sailboat sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge. Aboard was Kenichi Horie, a 23-year-old Japanese adventurer, who had left Japan 94 days earlier and with nothing but the power of the wind, crossed the Pacific Ocean. He was at first arrested because he had no passport, but eventually was released and given a key to the city by the mayor.

This is his boat, at the Maritime Museum at Aquatic Park in San Francisco.

If you go there be sure to walk a few blocks to the much larger Maritime museum in The Cannery building at 900 Beach Street.

…Oh yeah, afterwards an Irish coffee at the Buena Vista Cafe (across the street from the cable car turnaround)…

• From @lloyd.kahn’s Instagram

Originally built to provide convalescent care for elderly women, it’s now a retirement home. Every time I go by, I admire it. Julia Morgan, along with Bernard Maybeck, are two of my favorite architects, each leaving a legacy of wonderful buildings in Northern California. It’s at 3400 Laguna Street in the Marina district. (I couldn’t get far enough back to get a balanced photo.)

Early this morning in streets around Piazza San Marco. Very few tourists.

Photo: Spitalfields City Farm

Spitalfields City Farm is a green oasis located in the heart of East London.

spitalfieldslife.com/2021/05/10/spring-at-spitalfields-city-farm

From Elisabeth Kirkland

More on Spitalfields: likelocals.blog/inside-spitalfields-city-farm-a-green-oasis-in-the-big-smoke