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It’s All In The Heart
It’s All In The Heart
You might have heard the expression that “The Heart is Where the Soul Resides.” This belief originated in ancient Egypt. This was the reason why during the mummification process, other parts of the body were removed while the heart was the only organ preserved. The Egyptians also believed that the heart was the source of memory, emotions and personality. Later on, ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that the heart was the source of intelligence, motion and sensitivity? Only during the Renaissance did it become clear to Europeans that the heart functioned solely to pump blood. But does the heart have anything to do with love? Isn’t love “located” in the heart as well? Years ago, when I would disapprove of my daughter’s choice of boyfriends, my wife Elfa told me, instead of brooding, I should connect to my heart. This worked like a charm. Since in my heart I only had love for my daughter, the anger was departed.
The idea that in addition to fulfilling its vital role in our bodies, our heart has enough room for love as well as the soul; is going to be manifested over Valentine’s Day, next week. On Wednesday the 14th, chocolates, flowers and other gifts are exchanged, many in the familiar symbol of the heart, which interestingly does not resemble what human heart really looks like. Recently in “The Wall Street Journal”, the Review section published an essay from Marilyn Yalom’s new book, “The Amorous Heart: An Unconventional History of Love” titled “The Mysterious Origins of our Most Enduring Symbol of Love.” According to the author, “The earliest illustrations of the amorous heart, created around 1250 in a French allegory called “The Romance of the Pear”, pictured a heart that looks like pinecone, eggplant or a pear.
In the huffingtonpost.com, I learned that “It was around in the Middle Ages that the heart symbol took on its current meaning, when Valentine’s Day originated in England in 1600s, the heart symbol was the obvious choice for symbol to reflect the new holiday.”
Back to the essay. “In 1977, the heart icon even became a verb, with Milton Glaser’s famous and endlessly repurposed “I ❤ NY” logo. Today the stylized heart symbolizing love reigns supreme throughout the world. It may be only metaphor, but it serves us well as a universal sign for the mystery of love.”
For me, love is not a mystery. And is not only expressed once a year. All of us have the capacity to love both conditionally and unconditionally. If you have difficulty, try my wife’s advice – connect to your own heart.
P.S. We can encounter with the heart symbol everywhere, just open your heart to see it. To find four images with the heart, I had to search my photo archives. I wanted to be sure they are not conventional. However you can be the judge.
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How To Celebrate A 100th Birthday
How To Celebrate A 100th Birthday
Last week I wrote about reaching my seventy-first birthday mark. That might not be a big deal, since in the U.S. there are about 77 million baby boomers; those who were born between 1946 to 1964, and the number of those who are over 65 is growing. How about those who are living to the age of 100? Online I found out that “Nationwide, the centurial population has grown 65.8 percent over the past three decades and according to 2010 Census Bureau data there were 53,364 centenarians.” That means that they were born at the time when San Francisco’s East and West parts were connected after the completion of the West Portal Tunnel. It opened in 1918. I found out about it by chance after visiting my favorite branch of the San Francisco Public Library, on West Portal. There I learned that on Saturday, February 3rd there will be an Open House with different performances from 1-5 pm to mark the tunnel’s 100th event.
The tunnel not only connected two parts of the city, but also created a shopping district along West Portal Avenue, which serves a number of the neighborhoods, which seemed to sprout as a result of the tunnel’s proximity. One of them is called Monterey Heights. This is where we bought our house in 1984. It was built in 1928 and has the charm of old homes, like other buildings in the adjacent neighborhoods, like St. Francis Wood and Forest Hill. During the centennial celebration in the library, there will be a display of historical photographs of the area, courtesy of MUNI.
You do not have to be a history buff to appreciate the way things once were. It is part of San Francisco’s illustrious history. In the book “San Francisco’s West Portal Neighborhoods”, from the Images of America series written by Richard Brandi, I found out that Adolph Sutro who made money during the Silver Rush, and after being a politician and philanthropist, served as the 24th mayor of San Francisco from 1895 and 1897. In 1880, he bought Rancho San Miguel, which was the name of the area. After his death, the eastern portions were sold for development in 1909. It was the vision of the city engineer Michael O’ Shaughnessy to build a tunnel through Twin Peaks, to provide streetcar service to the new developing area. The book contains many photographs (which can be found in the San Francisco History Center of the Public Library). It was especially interesting to see images of West Portal Avenue, which still has the same original buildings with different tenants. We eat at the local restaurants, visit stores and watch movies in the movie theatre, which opened in 1926. The question crossed my mind – will it look the same after next one hundred years?
P.S. Through the years I’ve photographed many wonderful people who work here, like these four who seem to be very happy to encounter me.
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Why Celebrate A 71st Birthday
Why Celebrate A 71st Birthday
Celebrating a birthday is a very old tradition; it is even mentioned in the Torah. “And it was on the third day, Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast for all his servants” (Genesis 40:20). But the age long question remains — why celebrate birthdays?
When I reached the age of seventy a year ago, I decided that this is going to be my new starting point for the next count of my life experiences. On January 13th I turned seventy-one, which was the first year to measure what I’ve accomplished and how many people benefited from my presence in this world. In my life I follow a saying by Hillel the Elder, who two thousand years ago famously proclaimed, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, who am I? And if not now, when?” I derive great pleasure in everything I do as a devoted husband, loving father, a great friend, a caring mortgage broker, and the provider of employment for our company’s hard working associates and employees.
In 2017, I personally helped 84 clients benefit from their mortgages. 4,443 readers received my weekly “Encounters” and “Money Solutions” and over 700 acquired my photo-story book “42 Encounters in San Francisco”. Judging by the reviews on Amazon, people enjoyed reading the book and praised my images. During the last year, I finished working on the sequel photo-book, “42 Encounters with Couples in San Francisco”, which will be available before the end of this year. On September 4th we adopted a labradoodle puppy who became the hero of my next book, “42 Encounters with Dog Lovers”, which is going to be available in March. I am currently working on a new book, “Retirement Solutions for Smart People. 5 Easy Ways to Enjoy Your Golden Age”. After helping a number of clients with their reverse mortgages, I realized that a lot of people are not ready to retire. I hope my book will help them in this process. To continue working on this book and to celebrate my birthday, we came to The Sea Ranch for a week. Thus this short vacation, which we enjoyed very much, will also benefit others. And since our dog Max enjoyed this place as well, we will probably come back here in a few months, so I can continue writing the next chapters of the book.
P.S. Since this story is about making myself and other people happy, I am sharing with you four images of happy people I encountered in The Sea Ranch.
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Why To Have Cash?
Why To Have Cash?
You may have heard the expression “Cash is King”. I thought this was an old saying from the pen of Benjamin Franklin or perhaps William Shakespeare. Turns out, according to Wikipedia, “The origin of ”cash is king” is not clear. It was used in 1988, after the global stock market crash in 1987.” The phrase was also widely used during the global financial crisis in the Fall of 2008. Companies that had cash, i.e. money that was not invested in any type of asset that lost its value, could survive and avoid foreclosure. This is also relevant to households, in terms of avoiding foreclosures. Actually, what prompted me to write about the subject, was an article which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on December 27, 2017 – “Cash Losing Cachet – More Places Don’t Take It” by Andy Newman. The story starts with an event connected with the opening of a new lunch spot called Dig Inn on Broadway and 38th Street in Midtown Manhattan, which only accepts credit cards or debit cards – no cash. This can be understandable for various reasons – convenience, speed, smaller wallets, easier to reconcile (i.e. to check the bill at the end of the month), or to see the charge right away on your mobile phone, purchases online, and the list can go on and on. Now let’s take a look at the other side of credit card usage. The increase of debts, mistakes in not paying bills on time, lowering credit scores, which automatically increases your interest rate on all your credit cards. According to the site creditcards.com, in a report published on December 27, 2017, “Consumers increasingly are relying on credit cards to make payments instead of cash or debit.” According to new research from the Federal Reserve, credit card usage climbed to 10.2 percent in 2016. In addition to this, “The national average APR climbed to 16.24 percent”, and “the number of cards with maximum APR above 25 percent has jumped”.
The only reason I am writing about such an important subject at the beginning of the year is to share with you a bitter but good medicine.
In my line of work, before I can figure out how to help my clients buy a new property, or lower their monthly payments, or to get cash out for remodeling or to pay college tuition, I need to run a credit report. And believe me, I’ve seen it all. Let’s say in January or February you will need a new mortgage for whatever reason. Meanwhile, in November-December you took vacation to the foreign lands or bought a lot of holiday presents, or appliances (since everything on sale). But now your credit scores are down and your minimum monthly credit card bills can prevent you from qualifying. Have you ever asked yourself how long it will take to pay off existing debts without incurring new ones? In our business and household, my wife is in charge of our money. We have survived many storms thanks to her frugality and care. She ensures that we always have cash in the bank. Years ago, I had a business coach who taught me how to save money. It always starts with knowing your monthly cash flow, how much cash we need to survive for the next six months. My next writing project is a book titled “Retirement Solution for Smart People”, where I will address how to save in more details.
P.S. I personally mostly use credit cards sparingly, to be sure that the balance can be paid off at the end of the month. I do carry some cash to pay for services like haircuts or shoe repair. But I always carry dollars to support some of people who only take cash, whom I encounter on the streets of San Francisco, some of whom you can see in these photos.
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It’s All About Birds
It’s All About Birds
Do you care to know how many types of birds there are in San Francisco? I did not care to know either, until I saw an article in the National Geographic with a photo of an eagle on the cover and a story by Jonathan Franzen titled, “Why Birds Matter”.
So I did some research, and learned on sfbaywildlife.com that there are 48 species of birds. In my curiosity, I checked how many birds I would recognize and whether I knew what type of bird they were. The list did not include the wild parrots in San Francisco, which became popular after the 2007 documentary. Now there are about 300 parrots separated into several flocks living in different parks throughout the city. When I made an inquiry of how many pigeons are there in San Francisco, I learned that there is no definite answer. Nevertheless, there was a very interesting thread on the subject on Yelp. One of the comments stated that: “The pigeon population to be 5 million…until the homeless people started eating them.” Actually these amounts are probably grossly overestimated. Turns out that every year the Golden Gate Audubon Society conducts a bird count. This year it took place in San Francisco on Wednesday, December 27, 2017 (there was another one in Oakland on December 17, 2017). We have to wait for the results, but we have information from the 2015 count. There were 128 observers who counted 184 species and 73,095 individual birds.
I was curious to find out if we have the American Symbol, bald eagles, in San Francisco. On April 5, 2017 U.S. News reported: “Endangered bald eagles are making a comeback in the San Francisco Bay Area… Fifty years ago, the bird seemed destined to become a memory, now nineteen nests have been tallied in eight Bay Area counties.” This can be exciting news for the seven million people living in the San Francisco Bay Area. But what if someone lives in Unalaska City in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska? In the National Geographic story I learned that “hundreds of bald eagles, Haliaeetus leucocephalus, or Dutch pigeons, come to scavenge and nest in the area, which is home to about 4,400 human residents. Birds accost people who wander too close during nesting season, sending victims to the medical clinic for scalp stiches.” If you read the article “Why Birds Matter”, you will find an incredible trivia about many birds out of the world’s 10,000 or so species that have evolved into a spectacular diversity of forms. Turns out that birds have been around 150 million years longer than humans and “One reason that wild birds matter – ought to matter — is that they are our last, best connection to a natural world that is otherwise receding.”
P.S. You do not have to travel far to see birds, just stop and notice them, as I did many times. For this story I’ve chosen four encounters with birds, which I thought might tell a story. Like two ducks swimming towards the sunset in Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park, a Seagull who caught his share during crab season, and birdwatchers in Downtown, San Francisco trying to capture an image of a hawk, whom I photographed not far from West Portal.
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