Re: 2022

With Gabrielle Clement, our first visitor in 2022.

 Winter

 

The year began auspiciously enough. Kathy's middle sister Laurie Snowden and I took a writing class together with our Berlin-based family friend, Clare Wigfall. In late January, I put together A Pandemic Journal, noting that the pandemic itself continued, so my stopping mid-month was arbitrary and bound to be followed by something worse. Alas, how true!  

Soon after my 75th birthday, the Russians invaded Ukraine. Then we learned of the untoward death of our grandniece Jane Marin Brinkley at Smith College. Jane’s burial in mid-March introduced me to Grant Conversano, her beau and now a friend, and his brother Adam—filmmakers from Brooklyn. I visited Eugene, staying twice with my sister Alice Parman, and her husband John Zerzan, to mark this sad occasion. Jane’s parents, Rachael Carnes and Ben Brinkley, and her brother Hugh Brinkley, were devastated—a terrible thing. 

 

With Michael Parman and Frederik Carbon in Inverness.

 

One highlight of early 2022 was meeting the cinematographer Katrien Vermeire and her filmmaker husband Frederik Carbon, who visited Inverness for several months with their son Felix. Their wonderful film, Sunnyside, is set in the complex on Inverness Ridge designed by the late Daniel Liebermann. Our oldest son Michael now owns Liebermann's house, which he's restoring. Both Michael and our daughter Elizabeth visited the couple, which gave us the chance to visit Gordon Oslow Ford's compound, a remarkable place. 

Spring

 

With Ross and Caroline Parman in Richmond, VA

In April, we spent a week with Alison Powers, Ross Parman, and our granddaughters, Caroline and Sarah, in Richmond, VA. With the parents, we bought a two-flat, 1890s row house in the Fan District, home of the main campus of Virginia Commonwealth University, one of many in this lively, fast-growing city. ("Most of Brooklyn is moving here," Ross noted.) We saw our friends Alison and Vernon Mays, as well as Liz and Charles Opalak and their family. Our nephew Charles was completing his neurosurgery residency, and they were in the midst of selling their Richmond house and moving to Greenville, SC, where he now practices. 

Summer

My photo-collages on display at Pallas.

In mid-June, our daughter Elizabeth mounted an exhibition at her San Francisco gallery, Pallas, of Vivienne Flesher's watercolors and my digital photo-collages. I saw several friends at the opening, including Bryan Burkhart and Rika Putri, who worked with Elizabeth and me in our studio at Gensler in San Francisco before I retired. 

The bride and her flower girl battalion.

 

In July, Roz Smith, daughter of Kathy’s sister Laurie Snowden and her husband Chuck Smith, married David Killion in Berkeley. This hugely popular couple, universally praised as a great match, drew contingents from both families. We saw Liz and Charles again, along with Emily and Tom Opalak, not seen since Sallyann Wright and John Parman’s wedding in 2019. They came too with their sons, Loz and Theo, and Loz’s Bella. Ross brought Caroline, one of a battalion of flower girls and ring-bearers, as our nephews brought their many children. Our grandson Conor ushered, joined by his parents (and our neighbors) Bo and Michael Parman. Our daughter Elizabeth was Maid of Honor at Roz’s wedding, and Roz’s brother Liam Smith and Shening Li, our neighbors, announced their engagement, to great happiness but no surprise. Our longtime friends the Ehris and the Kreitlers, together with Kathy’s sister Lenore and her husband Michael Opalak, grandparents now of seven girls and three boys, made up the Connecticut contingent. And then, as predicted, we got the Covid variant, each in her or his own way. Watered down, it was a nuisance but luckily not serious. 

 

 Autumn

 

Kathy and Ludmila Larmor in Biarritz.

In September, my sister Alice visited and we went to the museums in Golden Gate Park and then to Elizabeth’s Pallas gallery. Alice joined me at the 88th birthday of Chuck Davis, whose oral history I edited. In October, Elizabeth and Kathy both went to France. Elizabeth met up with her uncle, Michael Opalak, and his cousins in Normandy, and then Kathy joined Michael and Lenore, Michael's wife and her younger sister, at their house east of Biarritz/Bayonne. 

 

Signs of RB at a Berkeley café.

  

October also saw the death at 92 of my friend and writing partner, U.C. Berkeley Professor Richard Bender. In September, we marked 50 years of collaboration. We spoke weekly, usually with former Berkeley Campus Architect Emily Marthinsen. We coauthored conference papers, and numerous articles and book chapters, and consulted together in Tokyo and Zurich from 1989 through 2018. We met the first day I started graduate school and never looked back. 

 

With Jennie So at 54 Mint in San Francisco.

 

Saw friends: Yuki Bowman (Portland), Jennie So (HK), Rocky Hanish (Phoenix), Cheryl Parker (NoVA). Andrew Rabeneck (London) came for dinner with Marie Fisher; Michael Bell and EJ Seong (NYC), also. Peiting Li moved back from LA, and the itinerant Madeleine Stearns visited. I zoomed regularly with Ashley Chambers and Norman Spatz. My class with Clare Wigfall earlier in 2022 sparked a novella, which I'm editing.