Finding Female Friends >50® | San Francisco Bay Area

Purpose: Catch the golden hour, the saturated light of the late afternoon sun over the marshes and bay.
Where: Coyote Hills Regional Park, 8000 Patterson Ranch Road, Fremont, CA 94555.
When: Nov. 15, 2024, 3 pm
Meet: Front door of Visitor’s Center
Proposed Trail: Quail and Bayview Loop, 3.1 miles 170 ft elevation gain
Pace: 1-2 hours, casual enough to take pictures.
Rain: TBD. Rain predicted, so may cancel. But I do enjoy a little rain on a stroll sometimes. The ordinary becomes extra-ordinary. Rainbows may appear. So, we will keep an eye to the sky.
Cost: $5 for day use parking permit or your annual East Bay Parking Pass.
Updates: Any updates will be posted by 8 am Nov 15.
Notes: Dress according to the weather. Please take care of yourself.
Pets: Please do not bring pets.
References:
https://www.ebparks.org/parks/coyote-hills
https://www.ebparks.org/sites/default/files/CoyoteHills-MapBrochure-2023-07-28-web.pdf
https://www.alltrails.com/parks/us/california/coyote-hills-regional-park

Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best Fiction (2022)
A soul-stirring novel about what we choose to keep from our past, and what we choose to leave behind.

Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising a beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in, and taking over her father's beekeeping business.

Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start.

And for just a short while, these new beginnings are exactly what Olivia and Lily need. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can’t help but fall for him, too. With Ash, she feels happy for the first time. Yet at times, she wonders if she can she trust him completely . . .

Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But she would be lying if she didn’t acknowledge the flashes of his father’s temper in him, and as the case against him unfolds, she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her.

Mad Honey is a riveting novel of suspense, an unforgettable love story, and a moving and powerful exploration of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves.

We will be playing the American MahJongg. The National MahJongg League publishes the American version of the rules. It also Supplies the Official Standard Hands and Rules Cards which change each year beginning in April. The rules of the game rarely change, and the way hands are described (i.e., colors, letters, numbers, format) stays the same. The changes are in the shapes and patterns of the hands. A very small amount of time and effort is required to become familiar with the elementary principles of the game.

Don't forget to bring your 2024 Official MahJongg Card. You can purchase the card at NMJLeague Website . (I have never ordered the card via Amazon but they also list them here Amazon - NMJLeague.)

***Please feel free to pack and bring your own lunch and drink of choice.

How to make your own 6@6
Please, help yourself to this easy way to post a gathering. JUST FILL OUT THIS FORM, and I'll post your event for you. The goal is to have many 6@6's (or 8@6's, 4@12's, etc.) in many locations. Women >50 need community. And this is an easy way to get there.

Let's meet at The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek for their annual Garden of D'Lights fundraiser event and then go down the street to Pizzalina for dinner afterwards. This is the forth year I'm hosting this event and it's been really fun in the past!

If you'd like to join us please purchase your garden ticket, and then sign up for this Meetup event. Tickets must be purchased in advance and may sell out. Buy your ticket for Sunday December 15th at 5:30 pm. Standard admission tickets are $29 for non-members, plus fees. If you're a garden member please look for the voucher/coupon code in your email to get a slight discount. Please note tickets are non-refundable, and rain does not cancel!

The free garden parking lot opens at 5:15, I don't recommend arriving before then. The address for the garden is 1552 Bancroft Rd, Walnut Creek, CA 94598, the parking lot is on the south side of the garden near Stratton Rd. We'll be outside and it may be chilly. Meet at 5:30 to the left of the entrance, we'll explore the garden as a group. It's small and flat and we'll walk at a slow pace.

Pizzalina is new to Walnut Creek. They have hand-crafted pizza and house-made pasta in a taproom setting. The restaurant address is 2064 Treat Blvd Suite B, Walnut Creek CA 94598. It's in the Countrywood Shopping Center just a few blocks north of the garden. Sharing food is nice but optional. We'll be eating indoors. Please bring CASH to pay for dinner. Average tab is around $30-40 per person.

Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best Historical Fiction (2023)
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new housing development, the last thing they expected to uncover was a human skeleton. Who the skeleton was and how it got buried there were just two of the long-held secrets that had been kept for decades by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side, sharing ambitions and sorrows.

Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.