April always makes me a little nervous. All that new green showing itself. Flowers. Plants. Reveling in an ecstasy of self-indulgence. For a Canadian, such 
excess seems suspect. But California, northern California that is, doesn’t care. It just keeps making these spring-like gestures. Even the weather is getting into it, warming up a bit today and aiming for the high 70s/low 80s on Sunday.
Am I complaining? No. It’s a stunning place to live. I have no complaints.
It was spring when I moved here in 1963—May. My friend Barb and I took a train from Vancouver that landed us in Oakland. A short bus ride planted us in ‘Frisco’ as we called it then, thinking we were sophisticated to call it that.
I’ve never left.
I love this city more than any other in the world, except for Istanbul. It has a similar setting, surrounded by the Bosphorous and the Sea of Marmara, a body of water that connects the Mediterranean Ocean to the Black Sea. The city seduced us with it minarets and multiple layers of history. The haunting calls at 4:30 AM from the mosques. Streets filled with Europeans, Muslims, Americans, Canadians, and more. It was and still is the crossroads of the world, much like Venice. (And has a similar effect on me as Venice did: I feel transported when I’m in either place to another time.)
