This morning there is a piece of paper slipped under my hotel room door telling me that the Pride Parade is today, starting just one block from here, and that all hotel entrances will be locked! Coincidentally, a friend and I are going to a 7 AM meeting about a mile from here, listed as a gay meeting which fits neither of our descriptions but we figured what the hell, it’s a meeting. So it will be fun to see the parade preparations going on, and I will take my camera with me. I am sore tempted to skip the morning scientific session to see the parade-
Yesterday did skip a couple of afternoon sessions to go buy a jacket (I’ve been cold in this hotel!) and to take a long walk up along the piers. I wandered off the main drag and found steps that went almost straight up a steep hill, followed them to the top. They went though a magical garden in a sweet neighborhood, it felt like another country and it was quiet, no tourists. I wondered if I’d found Telegraph Hill, and indeed I had. I even heard the parrots who live there, though I never did see them.

Last night I woke at 1:30 to the sounds of a man down on the plaza outside making very loud gutteral noises and laughing. He sounded quite mad.

Addendum: The meeting we went to turned out to be populated by homeless mentally-ill folk who reside on the streets of the Tenderloin District. When we walked to the meeting place we passed by cardboard neighborhoods, practically, erected on the sidewalk. The man running the meeting was himself a veteran of the streets and knew how to keep folks in line, thank goodness, otherwise it would’ve been chaos! But we stayed and were made welcome.