-
To Follow this Blog Click Here!
The Ministry of Happiness
Categories
Ministry of Happiness on Facebook
A Happy Sunny Summer Day in San Francisco
I grew up in San Francisco. And so I’m informed in a certain kind of way about, you know, believing in democracy and believing in America. And I’m a very ardent patriot. ~ George Lucas
A Happy Sunny Summer Day in San Francisco
I’m fortunate enough in my job to be able to work a four, ten hour a day schedule in the summer. So this means I get eight free Fridays every summer. I consider these Fridays to be very precious and try really hard not to squander them by simply sleeping in and taking it easy. So while in fact I did waste the first one last week in exactly that manner, I was determined not to do that this week and made plan to visit a museum I have not been to in San Francisco, the De Young.
In planning my day I realized that the De Young is currently hosting an exhibit, Monet in Venice, and I’ve never seen a complete Monet exhibit so I was excited to visit. I was excited for the De Young in general, I’ve walked it’s grounds several time but had never visited the museum. It’s not a huge museum but it has really interesting architecture and I really love the layout. The grounds are wonderful and I dig their sculpture garden out behind their cafe. Probably my favorite room was the Oceania room, the sculptures in particular were really fascinating. There were some interesting pieces throughout the museum including a number of really interesting Chihuly pieces. Some of my favorites below:
I was excited for the Monet exhibit and it was nicely laid out with a good number of pieces. But I was a little disappointed. Let me put it this way, Monet’s work is really lovely, the paintings of Venice and the water lily paintings were beautiful and absolutely showed the talent and skill that the master possessed. But for me, art is not just about skill and beauty, for me personally, what makes me love a piece of art is if it moves me emotionally. My favorite painter is Van Gogh, and in Massachusetts several years ago I saw an exhibit of mostly lesser known pieces except for two, Wheatfields and Starry Night. The thing is though, almost every piece in the collection moved me in some small way, whether it was a village, a portrait, a field of wheat or an evening sky, something in Van Gogh’s work taps emotion in me. It’s this metric that makes Rodin’s sculpture of Saint John the Baptist my favorite piece of art. Decades ago a Rodin exhibit came to the museum in Knoxville, Tennessee while I was there in graduate school. I went to the exhibit, excited to see The Thinker and his enormous gate sculptures. The exhibit was incredibly impressive but much like Monet’s paintings, while I recognized the talent, skill and beauty of the pieces I wasn’t particularly moved. They had set up some of the pieces in a bit of a twisty maze of curtains so that you’d turn the corner and be face to face with the next piece. I was going through this part of the exhibit when I had the most amazing art experience of my life. I turned the corner and was face to face with St. John the Baptist, looking directly into the sculpture’s eyes and I started to weep. The piece touched me immediately and deeply in a way I cannot explain or understand but I was stunned. I spent an inordinate amount of time with that piece and it was an incredible experience.
I left the De Young and walked a winding route back to the Civic Center Bart station, strolling around Golden Gate Park.
I strolled through the Haight-Ashbury District.
And back down through Hayes Valley to BART, but this also meant I got to make pizza stops at both Escape from NY and Gioia Pizzeria, the two best slice places in the city.
I really love my walking days in the city. Today was really wonderful, the weather was absolutely perfect, Golden Gate Park was full of people and music. I did a drive at the beginning up to the De Young in a Waymo, and doing a robot taxi is always a blast and our robot overloads always remind us who is in control.
And yes, Waymos are Jaguars, so they’re really nice vehicles, today it even did a right on red which was a bit of a surprise to me. So great weather, a five mile walk and some great pizza make for a really wonderful and happy day in San Francisco my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Posted in personal happiness
Tagged be happy, california, de young, haight ashburry, happiness, happy, life, monet, pizza, rodin, san francisco, travel, van gogh, waymo, writing
Leave a comment
A Happy SF Slice Debate
I like coal fired. I’m definitely, generally, always a coal-fired guy. Crispy, don’t do a ton of sauce, but kind of a well-done, coal-fired pizza is my jam. ~ Dave Portnoy
A Happy SF Slice Debate
So, if you’ve read this blog at all, or know me even a little bit, you know the significant place pizza holds in my life. If you want proof, just check out the pizza page. In San Francisco, I’m always on the look out for high quality NY slices. A NY pizza slice has a very specific set of characteristics, thin crust, crispy bottom, sauce that is not sweet, good quality, full fat cheese with a bit of a fluffy crust and a burn bubble is always a beautiful bit of authenticity.
San Francisco is of course a very large city, with many, many pizza places or places that serve pizza. What I’m always looking for though, is first off slice places, if they don’t do slices it’s not part of this discussion. And of course, I’m looking for NY slices. Sure there are Sicillian Style, Detroit Style, Chicago Style and all manner of gourmet slices. A lot of these are really good food, but they’re just not part of this conversation for me, and not what I crave when I want pizza.
I’ve sampled, and reviewed, a lot of pizza places in San Francisco and have had some incredible disappointments. There are also a lot of places that have good reputations and are good, but not spectacular. In San Francisco, for me, on the NY slice front there are truly two competitors, Escape from NY and Gioia. Escape has two locations and I really need to hit the downtown location for comparison some day, but the one I frequent is in the Haight-Ashbury area of the city. And I was there today:
You can see from the picture that slices at Escape absolutely pass the eye test for a NY slice. And honestly they can hit every point. The one thing that Escape does better than anyone is to nail the crispy bottom and soft crust of a perfect NY slice. The mushroom slice in the picture was absolutely a perfect slice. Toppings good and not overwhelming, sauce and cheese on point and an absolutely perfect crispy bottom with a soft crust. However, that pepperoni slice was meh, at best. The pepperoni wasn’t great quality, the sauce wasn’t quite right and the bottom was not crispy at all. And that’s the issue with Escape for me. They do everything right, it feels like a NY pizza place, down to the completely disinterested look on the face of the guy at the counter. It’s bare bones, a few tables, good music playing and a wall full of celebrity images of people who’ve eaten their pizza.
The pictures above are just a sample of the huge number of pictures from super famous actors and bands, to local bands and regional groups and athletes. So the atmosphere is absolutely on point and like that mushroom slice they can absolutely knock it out of the park, but the problem is consistency. I mean two slices at the same time and the quality was miles apart. Still, one of the best slices in the city.
The king though for me is Gioia. The ambiance isn’t a NY pizza place, the bottom is crispy just never quite perfectly crispy. But the slices are near perfect and consistently so, to the point that in all of the times that I’ve gotten a slice, and it’s a lot, I’ve never had a substandard slice, the quality is remarkably consistent.
So today, a really wonderful walking day in San Francisco did confirm one thing for me, that Gioia is still the king and good pizza slices always make for a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Posted in personal happiness, Pizza Places
Tagged be happy, happiness, happy, life, New York, NY style pizza, pizza, san francisco, slices
Leave a comment
Tiny Happiness
Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement. ~ Golda Meir
Tiny Happiness
A small post tonight, about a very simple idea, taking pleasure and gaining happiness from the small things. This time of year I post a lot of photos of what’s pictured above, and what I call, the tiny patio garden. Other years the garden is a little more complex, in addition to tomatoes I’ve often had basil, scallions, dill and mint that I grew. But this year, as I am trying to make a move out of my current life and situation, I decided to keep the tiny patio garden even a bit smaller than normal. So this year I only bought two tomato plants. However, one of my cherry tomato plants has hung on since last summer and is still producing, I ate the first tomato off it for the year today. It’s not producing a lot, but anything is a bonus. Additionally, in another two pots I have volunteers, plants coming up either from the roots of the plants from last year or seeds from a cherry tomato that dropped into the pot. I have a feeling both volunteers are cherry tomato plants. One is tiny, the other is doing incredibly well.
So, while the tiny patio garden is extra tiny this year, looks like I’ll still have a decent flow of homegrown tomatoes. In addition to my first cherry tomato, I also had my first regular tomato of the season that I wrote about this weekend. And so yes, I’ve already sliced, salted and ate my first homegrown tomato of the season.
While it’s not very big, or all that impressive, I take great joy and happiness from my tiny patio garden. It’s very soothing and a bit zen to be out on the deck and trimming the plants, pulling weeds and even watering them. Of course, there’s great joy in eating the tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes taste so much better than store bought tomatoes.
While I’m certainly all about big swings at happiness and adventure, we can’t do those things all the time. There need to be consistent and small bits of happiness that we wrap into our lives to make this existence as good as it can be, my tiny patio garden is certainly that for me. As they are annoyingly saying on social media these days, tiny patio garden tax below. Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Posted in personal happiness
Tagged be happy, garden, gardening, happiness, happy, life, small things, tomatoes
Leave a comment
Happiness: First Tomato of 2026
When I think of summertime as a kid, I think of my Grampy’s gardens full of tomatoes, buckets heaping with blackberries, and countertops lined with an assortment of Ball jars, ready to can the flavor of summer. ~ Damaris Phillips
Happiness: First Tomato of 2026
I have a tradition, taken from my grandfather, Grandpa Kane as we called him. He’s the main influence in my life in terms of my love gardening. He also taught me to grow roses by brilliantly tricking a little six year-old guy by explaining the first step was to go fishing and I loved to fish. We would catch bluegills and then put them in the hole where we planted the rose bushes to serve as fertilizer.
The tradition is a simple one, the first tomato of the year is to be celebrated and to quote him, “eaten like an apple with salt and a bottle of beer.” I rarely drink but tradition is tradition so I’ll be buying a bottle of beer tonight to enjoy my first tomato.
This was Grandpa Kane in front of some of his flowers, he also did the gardening at the convent where my aunt is a nun and the nuns knew him well. He was a fascinating old dude, WWII veteran, landed on D-Day in France, a few weeks later became a POW in a German camp, escaped, re-captured and lived til 90. When he died I did his funeral and a couple of years before, yes, in his 80s, he got into a street fight. It was that story that I told as his eulogy and has become the favorite poem I’ve ever written, enjoy and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
A Eulogy to amuse the penguins 2006
People don’t want the truth
particularly not when death is at hand
they don’t want to know a life
can’t stand to see the warts
they want disneyanna
where at the end of the day we gather
and have a parade down main street America
My grandfather was a man
a hard man
a cold man
but he mellowed with age
hard jagged lines on his face
fading soft with his laughter
eyes lit as he talked about back in the day
He died in 2000 and I was asked to do the eulogy
wanting to speak his life warts and all
but my sister ratted me out
ratted me out to my aunt the nun
I suffered through the speeches
sister, aunt, father oh my
to my shame I acquiesced
But I was on the hook my friends
had to stand up in front
relatives, family, friends, nuns
So I chose to pick a slice
grab a day in the life
and this is the one I chose
My grandfather loved tomatoes and roses
and in the neighborhood was a challenged boy
a boy of 32 with a dad in his 50’s
the boy had trampled grandpa’s plants and he was pissed
he had the opportunity to see the boy’s father
never given to silence, he spoke
of course grandpa spoke with his fists
like an 87 yr old warrior from the WWF
he came off the top step with a right cross
Grandpa went to scrappin in the street
he lost, hitting his head on the curb
I found my way to the hospital the next day
and asked him what happened
he said that guy had a roll of nickels in his hand
yeah grandpa, he was waitin for you
then he grew stone faced and paused
looking at me seriously, he said
I hit that guy in the gut with everything I had
and he didn’t go down, I might be getting old
and I laughed at the coolest thing I’ve ever heard
that day,
my 87 year old grandfather
just started to consider that he might be getting old.
People in the church smiled,
but the penguins rolled in the aisles,
because they knew him best
Posted in personal happiness
Tagged be happy, family, garden, garden tomato, gardening, happiness, happy, life, tomato, tradition
Leave a comment
Happiness: The Next Phase
Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road. ~ Dag Hammarskjold
Happiness: The Next Phase
Life happens in phases or chapters. For me, the first chapter, like it is for all of us was obviously childhood. My childhood was a mix of an absolute shitshow and supportive bliss. My parent’s marriage was a mess, they were married for seven years, divorced for seven years, then married again for seven years and divorced, in between dad was married and divorced. The marriages were constant storms and chaos, anger, fights, passive aggressive madness. lies and disappointment. Growing up mostly with a single mom we didn’t live in the best part of town and that meant crime and violence and being tied up with really shitty people. My grandfather who I was incredibly close to died when I was five. I have no memory of it, my granny said I was absolutely inconsolable, but I still had my granny. She was an absolutely unending source of positivity, love and support. Any confidence I have, any bit of positive self image came from her, honestly, without her influence, I shudder to think what kind of monster I might have become. Childhood ended when I left for college, and like on any trip you take your baggage comes with you.
The second phase, my college years, lasted for another twenty-ish years. The baggage I brought with me led to addiction, alcoholism, crime and failure. But there was a lot of learning, not just from school, but in life and mostly about myself. There was a lot of growth, but like any progress there were lots of one step forward, two-step back moments. My twenties and thirties were really hard periods for me. But then I graduated from this phase into the good years.
Turning forty really signaled the beginning of a new phase for me. For a lot of people turning forty is a hard time, it often signals a transition to aging that people perceive as going downhill. For me it was quite the opposite, I felt like I was peaking. During this phase I started my phased retirement where every few years I would embark on a huge adventure. It was the time when I really started to get deeper into hiking and writing. It was during this time that the Ministry of Happiness was born, when I walked across Scotland, biked around Ireland and went to the Himalayas and Mt. Everest. Turning fifty, again a time for most people to feel things slowing down just felt like another hill I was climbing. During my early fifties I hiked the Appalachian Trail, swam with whale sharks, traveled to Petra and the Dead Sea and hugged a forty thousand pound whale in Baja. During this period I also wrote and published three books (all available on Amazon and linked below):
Appalachian Trail Happiness about my time on the Appalachian Trail
Otherness, a book of poetry about feeling like and outsider
Athena’s Addict, a book of poetry, every poem inspired by one woman.
Then COVID hit and life really took a turn. So this phase that was so positive really slid downhill. Over the last five years since COVID my job has sucked, my social life has completely tanked. I really lost focus, lost purpose and over the last few years have really languished. This last year especially has been hard, heart surgery, my mom’s death, family issues, personal relationships crashing and burning and a delayed retirement transition that has not worked out the way I hoped. This led to a real hit to my mental health and honestly a really hard year and an incredible feeling of loneliness and my real life being on hold.
Recently I’ve been able to make a turn mentally, I’ve worked through a lot of the obligations and issues that needed to be dealt with in my life and there are a couple of big decisions I’ve made recently. All of them are connected to the transition to the next phase of my life. The first is of course to start living again, this on hold bullshit has to end.
I’ve already started that with going to NC and finding my first shark tooth, a small adventure, but a start. This decision means that the planning has to restart for my last two continents, Antarctica and Australia. My job search will pivot, I need out of my current existence and so I’ll be pretty radically changing my job search to move things forward. And finally, as regularly readers know I’m a story teller, and people often say to me, you have to write a book. I’ve always said that I would, but only after my mother was gone. Not because I have anything bad to say about her, but the stories, the details, things I have to say about others might have hurt her and I never wanted to do that. So I have my next writing project, my memoir, working title, What The Actual Fuck, A Life. The first draft of the outline is done, many of the stories have been previously written, so I’m working on putting that together and will actually see if I can find a commercial publisher for this one. The final plan for this phase is to find a property, to create some roots and community. Because the reality is, this chapter might be my last, so I plan on making it a hell of a good one with many happy days my friends, and I hope you have the same. ~ Rev Kane
Posted in personal happiness
Tagged adventure, appalachian trail, be happy, chapters, COVID, family, happiness, happy, life, love, memoir, mental health, phases, writing
Leave a comment
The Ministry of Happiness 