Of Languages and Lineages

Want to meet people from all over the world? Order Ubers in San Francisco. 

That was my thought after speaking Spanish to a driver last week who apologized that he has “very little English.” I told him not to worry; that I'm proficient in only one language as well — though not his. 

That said, thanks to watching “Sesame Street” with my son when he was little, I know the Spanish for "open" (abierto) and "closed" (cerrado). Also, I can find my way around a menu at a Mexican restaurant. ("Mas cerveza, por favor!") On a whale-watching trip to Argentina, I learned that helados ananas means pineapple ice cream, and under the influence of extreme jetlag in Buenos Aires, I ordered exactly that for dinner. Later, in Puerto Madryn, I asked a jewelry store clerk to show me a tiny earring shaped like a crab by saying camaron (that means "shrimp") and dancing sideways, clacking my fingers like claws. After that inspired display, I simply had to buy the earring.  

In spite of all that, in order to tell my Uber driver that my apartment building in San Francisco is on the left side of the street, I had to look up “left” in Spanish on my phone. I was successful, and called out "Gracias!" when the driver dropped me off.  

Je parle français — un peu, anyway — which I learned at a high school in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, and later took a few more classes at the University of Missouri at Columbia before gaining entrance to their storied journalism school. Nonetheless, on a trip to France, I was embarrassed that a woman who could not understand my Midwestern accent when applied to her romance language felt the need to summon a trilingual Asian man to translate for us. Quel dommage!  

On a wildlife safari in Tanzania decades ago, I learned the names of some animals in Swahili. (You do know simba means “lion,” right? Remember the mandrill that narrates "The Lion King?" Rafiki is the word for "friend.") In Italian, I can order pasta and then express my immense gratitude with “grazie.” I can deliver a toast in Irish (Sláinte!), hai is "yes" in Japanese, nyet is "no" in Russian and except for a bit of Yiddish, that's it for me. 

Since moving to San Francisco 16 years ago this month (!), I’ve encountered Uber and Lyft drivers from Nepal, Ecuador, Tunisia, Iran, Ethiopia, Ireland, Colombia, Guatemala, India, Nigeria, Iraq, Australia, Eritrea, Pakistan and from all over the U.S. If the driver is chatty, I ask whether they have family back in their native countries or cities, if they visit there often, what brought them to San Francisco and what they think of the city. Routinely, drivers praise the weather here as the best they’ve ever experienced. I concur. 

If the driver is from Brazil — which is not uncommon — I express my fondness for feijoada, the black bean stew from that country. I feasted on it often, back when my friends Judy and Scott used to throw annual rowdy samba parties. They cooked gallons of feijoada for the crowd, hired a samba band and brought in a dance instructor, who often dressed in carnival garb, complete with feathers and sequins! Here’s an old photo from one of those memorable parties. 

The Language of the Heart

Irish melancholy, historians say, is the result of lives long colored by oppression and hardship, experienced for eons (the Vikings first invaded the country in 795 AD), but particularly brought to light during and after The Great Famine (1845-1852). Sparked by a destructive mold that caused potato crops to fail throughout Ireland, the tragic time also is known in that country as The Great Starvation, due to England’s refusal to help feed the Irish. British landowners chose instead to export Ireland’s wheat, oats, livestock and butter — none of which the natives could afford after the potatoes died — and British soldiers routinely destroyed fishing nets and burned boats as well. More than a million people died of starvation, and nearly twice that many left the country.

“Land: A Novel,” Maggie O’Farrell’s entrancing new book, considers the lives of those who stayed in the beleaguered country. After reading it — avidly turning page after page, even as my eyes burned — I was unwilling to move on, and spent some time reviewing my family tree. 

My mother’s family left Ireland around the time of the Revolutionary War, but some members from my dad’s side came to America during the famine. Some stayed in Ireland, including Thomas Lamb and his bride, “Nappy” Byrne, who both were born and later died in Swinford, a town situated on the River Moy in County Mayo. Here's a startling story about Nappy's name, which I just discovered. 

When I was born, my father filled out my birth certificate, naming me after some of my ancestors, as the Irish like to do. Years later, my mother told me she had planned to name me Penelope and call me Penny, for the red hair I was expected to have, as one of my grandfathers was a redhead. (I got green eyes, an Irish pug nose and freckles, but missed out on the red hair — at least until college, when I invested in the first of many bottles of Lady Clairol.)

Fast forward to 2009, when an editor at the St. Louis Jewish Light assigned me a freelance article requiring that I speak with five women, ages 75 to 93, who were preparing for a group bat mitzvah at their senior residence. After the interview, the eldest woman thanked me for my time. She said the group felt heard, and they were grateful for my enthusiasm for their planned celebration. Then she asked if I would be offended if she gave me a Hebrew name.

Here's some background regarding my religious upbringing: Neither of my parents were religious. When I was an infant, my aunt kidnapped me one morning and had me christened Catholic. At 6, I landed my first acting gig as the head angel in the Christmas pageant at an Evangelical Reformed Church in the neighborhood. My friend Tommy's family were members, and the church said if I would lend them my Tiny Tears doll to play Baby Jesus, I could be in the pageant. Deal!

When I was 10, my Southern Baptist grandma saw to it that I was “saved” at a tent revival and gave me a Bible. As a young teen, when I stayed overnight on a Saturday with a girlfriend, I sometimes went to that family's church, so I sampled several denominations. As an adult, I have shivered in the presence of Shiva in Mumbai, spoken aloud to a statue of the goddess Sekhmet in Luxor, Egypt and came close to genuflecting on my first visit to City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. For a while, I described myself as an ecumenical pantheist, but now I claim to be a self-styled Druid, one who is spiritually renewed when sitting in small boats next to large whales or in the company of majestic trees. 

So, no, I was not all offended by the woman's question, and even felt honored. She then told me my Hebrew name would be Penina, which means pearl (my birthstone!) and that she and her friends would call me Penny. When I caught my breath and found my words, I told her that had been the very name my mother had chosen for me. We hugged! 

Earlier this week, after I finished reading “Land,” I searched online for more clues about my great-great grandmother Nappy Byrne. One site noted that "Nappy" is a nickname for Penelope. 

A Penny for your thoughts!

Swedish Death Cleaning, My Way

Oops. I thought my recent whirlwind spurt of decluttering qualified as Swedish death cleaning, but research reveals I’m wrong. (Not the first time; nor likely to be the last.) Actual Swedish death cleaning is decribed as “a slow, methodical process rather than a sudden purge, often starting with large, easy-to-remove items.”

That's not my style. I like to whip through closets, drawers, cabinets and even the knickknacks in a short time, sifting and sorting quickly and then moving on. That method has served me well in the past — this exercise last week was not my first experience at paring down.  

In 2010, I got rid of two-thirds of my stuff before I moved from St. Louis to San Francisco. (See nextavenue.org/how-lose-1000-square-feet--and-keep-it/) That was a romp, because I was so eager to move. When a woman looking for a neighbor of mine knocked on my door one day, I offered her a chair. Not to sit in — to take home. Her husband picked up the nearly new recliner the next day. Next, I sold my crystal dining room chandelier from the trunk of my car. 

Five years ago, when I moved from a 720-square-foot place into a 500-square-foot apartment, I got rid of a leather loveseat, a cedar chest, a futon, a couple of area rugs, assorted lamps, a red Kitchen Aid stand mixer, two side tables and the microwave oven. I miss none of that. 

Author Margareta Magnusson explains Swedish death cleaning in her book “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter.” It was first published in 2017, and inspired a TV show in 2023 that Amy Poehler produced.

The purpose of Swedish death cleaning is “to reduce the mental and physical burden on loved ones after you pass away, turning a daunting task into a manageable one.” One friend, in an effort to reduce those future burdens on loved ones, affixes notes to the backs of special items in her home, instructing who gets what. When another friend tried that, after she was hospitalized her family members changed all her notes. To their surprise, the woman recovered fully — and promptly drew up a punitive will.  

On Writing Your Own Obituary

In July, a friend died suddenly, and though she had talked about writing her own obit, no one found it. I decided to try writing my own, and that's what jump-started my recent urge to purge. I need one version for my hometown paper and a shorter version for the newspaper in my adopted city. For a while, because of my job, I was famous in St. Louis, but now my family will have to pay to inform readers in both cities that I have moved on. Depending on how long I live (I feel fine, by the way), some of my retirement money may cover the cost.

During my stint on the night shift at what was then a major metropolitan daily newspaper, I wrote many obituaries on prominent people, and in the years since, I’ve penned obits for friends when families requested help. In the newspaper biz, obits follow a particular format. When you’re taking on the task yourself and will pay to have it published, you can write anything you want — once you figure out who you are. 

Warning: That takes longer than decluttering. 

Eventually, I decided to focus on my six decades of practicing journalism, but my friend Edward and I need to discuss that once more, because for over 30 years, we've argued about what constitutes a person's legacy. (As we age, we keep changing sides.) Meanwhile, I'll keep tweaking the document as I continue to determine what to include and what to leave out. I've already chosen not to bother mentioning where I went to high school. 

Never Save Anything for 'Later'

Working on my obit reminded me that I had recently broken my own rule not to save for later anything I buy. (At this point, how much “later” can there be?) Six months ago, the place that makes the towels I love best discontinued my favorite charcoal gray color. My current towels were about three years old, not stiff and crunchy, but not exactly fluffy either. 

Before they disappeared forever, I bought four new towels for hardly any money and stashed them away. As I fiddled with my obit, the image of the brand new towels, going unused and unloved, started to haunt me, so I dug them out, washed them and donated the older ones. 

Then I started looking around for items I own that have outlived their usefulness. Over the next couple of days, I tossed stretched-out t-shirts, ratty socks and sweaters with holes beyond repair. I donated unworn pajamas, a single-serve cocktail shaker and corduroy pants that were way too tall for me. I cleaned out two desk drawers and three kitchen drawers, shredded nonessential paperwork from 2025 and (here's the craziest part) culled a third of the photos and magnets displayed on the fridge. It was fun!

"Your apartment must be empty," a friend said earlier today. No — in spite of additional bouts of decluttering, I still have clothes I don’t wear, kitchen implements and bakeware I don’t use and assorted cute doodads that carry sentimental value. But for now, I am enjoying living with a bit less. After all, I have a challenging writing project.   

Let's Head Back to 'The West Wing'

Curiously, the more episodes of “The West Wing” I re-watch, the more I talk like Leo, echoing his sensible "Don't worry about it," his truncated questions and his succinct answers to questions from others. That’s odd, because usually I am accused of providing “too much context,” in the fashion of Jed Bartlett, who like me, does love bits of arcane information.    

I can’t recall whether this was the case when I first watched the show after it premiered on NBC on September 22, 1999, and then ran for seven seasons through May 14, 2006. I do remember I had to be bullied into watching it at all. 

“You must watch ‘The West Wing,’ said my friend Gail Pennington, at that time the TV critic at the newspaper where I was a reporter. Dutifully, I watched the first episode, and gave up. I told Gail I couldn’t sort out which character was who and besides, they all talked really fast while walking around in crowded offices. Gail yelled at me and insisted I try again. 

As one of those first-born kids who sometimes does what I am told and sometimes rebels, I was reluctant, but Gail knew me well (and still does) and I realized she was, after all, an authority on television shows. If she said it was worthy, then it likely was. I went back to the show and quickly grew deeply attached for the rest of the run.  

A few years after the series ended,  I informed my tech-savvy son that I had purchased all seven seasons of “The West Wing” on DVD and that my intention was to watch it when I’m in hospice care, whenever that  day might come. He said, “By the time you are in hospice care, there will no longer be DVDs or DVD players.” 

I’m still nowhere near needing hospice care, but he was right about the demise of the technology. When I moved from St. Louis to San Francisco over 15 years ago, I donated all my DVDs to Goodwill.

Over the recent holidays, I confessed to Gail that Netflix had lured me into streaming “The West Wing” all over again, and I am startled at how much I had forgotten. Among assorted story lines in the show, I also had forgotten that Gail was not alone in demanding I worship at the altar of Aaron Sorkin. “When you said you’d given up on the show, Edward yelled at you too,” she said. Belated apologies, once again, to Edward and Gail.

Of Bobbleheads and a Precious Paper Clip

What I do remember clearly was being envious that when twice a year, Gail went to Los Angeles for the national television critics’ conference, she got to spend time in the presecne of Sorkin and the cast. One year, I had a brilliant idea, and Gail promised to run it by Sorkin. “Tell him,” I said, “that we need bobbleheads of the lead characters — Bobblehead C.J., Bobblehead Toby, Bobblehead Josh, Bobblehead Donna, Bobblehead Sam, Bobblehead Leo, Bobblehead Charlie and of course Bobblehead President Jed Bartlet.” I would buy them all, I promised. 

Gail did pass along the idea, and though I suspect Sorkin didn’t actively promote it, he gave Gail a blue paper clip for me as a small token of his appreciation. I kept it in a handmade myrtlewood box for a long time, but I must have put it to better use at some point, as it isn’t in the box any longer. 

Gail got way more than a paper clip from Sorkin, whom she has referred to as "my very favorite person in all of TV Land." (Jon Hamm, if you're reading this, you know Gail loves you too, but writers always like talking to writers.) Over the years, Sorkin shared friendly hugs with Gail on several occasions, and he even named a minor character after her. Remember the goldfish that Danny gives C.J. in Season 1? He tells her the guy at the store told him the fish's name is Gail.

A few weeks ago, when I had decided I would prefer to watch the government in action on “The West Wing” rather than the one playing out in Washington, D.C., just now, I said so in a Facebook post. Soon after, my friend Gerry called to say she’d seen a few random episodes of the show from a handful of seasons long ago, but was considering starting at the beginning. When I informed her that two of the major cast members (Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford) are now reunited in “The Diplomat,” that intrigued her, as she likes that show. (I do, too. Don't miss it,) 

“Maybe I’ll watch the pilot of ‘The West Wing’ tonight,” Gerry said in a phone call, “and see what I think.” The next day, she sent this in an email: “Well, I am hooked. I watched the pilot and the first four episodes last night. Love it!” Of course then I had to tell her that Dulé Hill, who plays Charlie, is a rhythm tap dancer and brag that I saw him on Broadway in “Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk” in 1996 with Savion Glover. Here's a video of Hill tapping on a telethon in 2000.

Gerry is already deep into Season 3. I'm just starting Season 2, moving slowly because I had to gear up to face the shooting that occurs in the finale of Season 1, as well as the painful aftermath. Plus, as with "Breaking Bad," I have to watch the scary bits early in the day, because watching violence on TV at night keeps me awake. (Even parts of "Twin Peaks" scared me — remember that creepy guy lurking behind the couch?) 

Anyway, most of the time, much of the past holds little allure for me. In “Angels in America,“ Tony Kushner reminds us that the world only spins forward. Also, President Bartlet is a big fan of the phrase, “What’s next?” and that attitude propels me forward when I am sinking into despair over some new disappointment in life or, as happens often, in the news. Still, I am not apologizing for time traveling back to "The West Wing," as the show repeatedly reminds me that though governing is complex, it can serve many higher purposes than a Vengeance Tour ever will. 

Enough. I have things to do, places to go, people to see — not to mention several seasons of "the West Wing" waiting, ready to help fill winter days. Thanks, Netflix.