Recollections: The Bay Area and Beyond
Novia Y. Cataldo
The book
There is an African proverb regarding the belief that with the passage of an elder, a library is lost. This book is one woman's library, and the wish that her writings will be recalled with the late afternoon's Bay breeze.
Novia Cataldo was born in Oakland in 1930 and spent nearly her entire life in The Bay Area--from Dublin Canyon to Mill Valley, Pacifica to Montclair. “Recollections” gather her insights of the Depression, a father lost on a Castro Valley curve, 1940s Fruitvale, Berkeley’s calling, familial influences, the quake, the hill’s fire and then interspersed with pure creative writing.
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"Bury me not in the cold damp ground. Just set me free to swim in the everlasting sea."
From When I Die · Part Two
The AUTHOR
Novia Y. Cataldo
Born and reared in the East Bay. A career that encompassed working at a branch of The Wall Street Journal in 1960s Oakland to the University of California — and throughout all those decades, an inner voice insisting there was more to life than what could be accomplished in an office.
She was a reader first. The reading became writing, the writing became an endeavor, and ultimately--this book.
From the collection
Three pieces
Prose
Dublin Canyon Road
A three-room cottage, fifteen acres for fifteen dollars a month, goats her mother named one by one — and a photograph in a radiator cap of the father she barely knew.
Prose
Cobblestones
A visit to Butterfield’s for an appraisal leads to recollections of a widowed painter, an old fire station, Seals Stadium, and the stones just beneath the streets of San Francisco.
POETRY
Awakened Senses
"So, if Love is for all the senses to awaken, then see and breath and taste and touch and hear the world that is within me."
The Bay is not the setting of this book. It is the subject.
Why this book exists
With the passage of each elder, a library is lost.
— A variation of an African proverb
"These writings are an anthology of my mother's life, most of which was spent in the Bay Area. I hope that each of you who read her book enjoys it as much as I treasure being her son."
Scott Cataldo
Novia Y. Cataldo
Recollections: The Bay Area and Beyond
Dedicated to the men and women of the American Armed Forces who died or served in the Pacific and European Theaters during World War II.