Every August I write a letter to Oakland’s mayor, Libby Schaaf. This was the third year I sent a long, handwritten letter to her City Hall address. I keep the letters half positive and half negative — I don’t just complain. Who knows if she even gets them or reads them or cares. But it is cathartic to write them.
This time, I wrote about my day photographing pollinators in the Lakeside Garden. (A man was shot yesterday afternoon just outside the garden, across the street from my son’s school, but I’d already mailed the letter). I painted a large image of the Libellula saturata we caught.
Last year, I wrote about diving pelicans and drew a picture of our former mayor, Jerry Brown, who used to jog around Lake Merritt. I’ve not seen Mayor Schaaf out there.
Probably, as one of my friends said, this was “two bucks wasted.” Who knows?
Steven E. F. Brown 