Author: Manny Kagan

Many people like dogs (or cats), though not everyone is willing to have them. In the past 35 years living in San Francisco, we’ve had two dogs. The first one Amber—an Irish Setter, was a lady with a temper. She would run away jumping over the neighbor’s fence and I had to chase her all over the neighborhood. After she was hit and killed by a car in front of our house, we decided that our next dog would have short legs.

Angus, a Welsh Corgi, was a perfect choice. He was from a champion lineage and our adopting him was under the condition that we show him at dog competitions. But as he grew, he became a giant Corgi (perhaps we fed him too generously). So, his showmanship career was over. We had Angus for 13 years. He loved to go with us to The Sea Ranch and did not want to go back to San Francisco. When we would start packing, he would stick his face into the corner, hiding it from us, as he tried to make himself “invisible”, since he did not want to go back. He was a good walking companion until the last year of his life, when he preferred to just lay down. One day, he let me know that it was enough for him. With tears in my eyes, I drove him to the vet where we said good-bye.

There is one legend about Saint Valentine of Rome, who was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and for ministering to Christians, who were persecuted under the Roman Empire. According to legend, during his imprisonment, he healed the daughter of his jailer, Asterius. An embellishment to this story states that before his execution, he wrote her a letter signed “Your Valentine” as a farewell. Apparently, historically, there was more than one Valentine. Different religious groups and even different countries have their own legends, which gave them an excuse to celebrate love and affection.

According to Wikipedia, the Valentine’s Day that we celebrate today to commemorate romantic love, evolved in 18^th-century England. This occasion was for lovers to express their love by presenting flowers, offering confectionaries and sending hand-written greeting cards thanks to the Hallmark Cards Company, which was founded in 1910. Hallmark transformed this holiday into a big business opportunity; not only for greeting card companies, but also for the flower and candy industries as well. As a result of the routine created by advertisers, we rush to honor our loved ones. But what about the other 364 days of the year? Do we need someone to tell us what to do?

Mr. Pollan used to live in a town in New England where he and his wife owned a small house on 5 acres of land. They were expecting their first child; and he realized that he needed more space to enable him to continue his writing career. He decided to build a hut with his own hands, without having any skills or dexterity for such a project. The book is a beautiful account of his experience. Like in his first book about gardening, he goes into minute details describing not only the physical, but the mental process he went through to realize his idea. In the process, he worked with an architect who suggested the idea that building a house is similar to reading a book. You start at the beginning and page by page, you learn the narrative as well as identity—yourself, with the process and the subject, by emerging into the process. I think this idea applies to many other endeavors in our lives as well.

Every new project starts with an idea. For instance, you come across a piece of land, a tear-down building, and then you want to build your dream house. But do you know what it takes to do that? “A Place of My Own” will help in many ways. One of the critical aspects of building a house is the cost analysis, or simply put, figuring out how much money one needs to realize their dream and avoiding the nightmare of running short on funds before the project is completed. In my work, I deal with these problems with my clients all of the time.

I often go up there to greet the sunset, or just to take photos of the expansive view of the city. But sometimes instead of the view, Mount Davidson greets visitors with the heaviest fog, which can be a great opportunity to take spectacular images.

When I reached the foot of the hill, I was surprised to meet another photographer. And then I heard voices coming from the top. A few moments later, out of the fog, emerged a group of young men and one woman, most of whom were carrying photo cameras. While I watched and listened to them greet each other, I was even more surprised that many were from out of town. To get here at 7am on this foggy morning was a really special effort. I found out that more than 20 men and a few women were drawn here by Instagram. The idea was to get together to photograph, or to create a video with the maximum duration of 15 seconds. Instagrams can be shared on a variety of social networking platforms.

When we stay at a timeshare, one of their features is to invite guests to an “informative” presentation that usually lasts a few hours. In return for your time, you are usually offered a complimentary perk of the resort. This time it was a buffet breakfast, 10% discount on all activities and food at the resort, plus 1000 pesos (about $70 US dollars), which can also be spent at the resort.

We bought the Mayan Palace in 1992 for about $7,000 US dollars. Since then, we have visited many different locations in Mexico, including Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, and Cabo San Lucas. The developers keep building new and more luxurious resorts and of course want to sell visitors yet another time share. In the past, we were suckers and bought more. But, this time we held our ground.

After the sales person failed to convince us to depart from our money, the manager stepped in. In his conversation, he told us his life story and hard work in the past, which was very similar to the woman from Boston’s story, whom I encountered on my beach walk. Santiago was born in Switzerland. His father was a doctor, who left in pursuit of higher earnings, traveled the world dragging his family along. Santiago graduated from a prestigious culinary school in France and his last job was an executive chef at the Ritz Carlton in Miami. There were two events which changed his life. He worked long hours at the restaurant. One evening, his (then) wife came and asked him to sign some papers. Since he was very busy, he did not even bother to read what he was signing. Only three days later, his mom called him telling him that he actually signed divorce papers. He also had a younger brother, who was planning to retire at the age of 40. To do this, he worked very hard. His dream was intercepted—he died at the age of 29.