Ferlinghetti shares his saddest memory

Accompanying students in the Yick Wo Elementary School newspaper club on a visit to The Chronicle last week, Mauro Aprile Zanetti, father of Penelope, mentioned that the San Francisco school’s newspaper, the New Yick Times, had interviewed poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

“When you were a little boy, what was one of your Halloween costumes?” asked the journalist.

The poet remembered wearing “a pumpkin on my head,” and added that as a grown-up, he’d worn a Dada costume at a City Lights Halloween event. Dada, he explained, was a “poetic movement ... all crazy people doing crazy things.”

Asked his saddest memory, Ferlinghetti said it was the 2016 presidential election.

P.S. Trick or treating at the White House? Julian Grant guesses they’ll give out rolls of paper towels, autographed copies of “The Art of the Tweet” or Russian pastries. Meanwhile,

Will Durst, whose “Durst Case Scenario” is at the Marsh on Tuesdays, says that so far, the president’s major accomplishment “has been to change his foundation color from Tequila Sunrise to Autumn Squash.”

Here’s to Bob M., a clerk at Trader Joe’s in Stonestown. When a customer told him she was just down from Santa Rosa, having escaped the fires, he left his post at the cash register, walked over to the flower section, returned and presented her with a bouquet. “This is actually always the case,” said Steve H., one of the managers, as it is Trader Joe’s corporate policy: “Whenever we notice someone either having a hard day, or notice something’s not quite right, we empower everybody to give them something on the house.”

When Liam Mayclem, who was emcee at a dinner on Sunday, Oct. 15, for CUESA (which manages the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market), introduced winemaker Robert Sinskey, whose house burned in the North Bay fires, “the entirely 800-strong crowd erupted into applause,” reports Mayclem. Sinskey had donated wine for an auction package that would support CUESA. The proceeds went to the Napa Valley Community Foundation instead.

As a refugee from the fire in Santa Rosa checked into the Holiday Inn in San Francisco, he overheard an older couple fleeing from Oakmont talking to each other after a phone conversation with their daughter. “She says we can stay there,” the woman told the man, “but it would be much better if we came after the 15th, when they leave for vacation.”

Pink balloons bobbed in the breeze, pastries from Tartine and candy from Charles Chocolates were arrayed, and single zinnias were centerpieces on picnic tables. Works of art were sold at silent auction, but there were neither vacations abroad or dinners cooked by celebrity chefs auctioned, nor were there goodie bags. Although there was live music by Carlos Reyes, the program featured informational talks rather than entertainment.

There’s nothing frivolous about the cause, and befitting that, Sunday’s benefit for HairtoStay, at Charles Chocolates headquarters at the foot of Potrero Hill, was a plain and simple plea for money.

One in 8 women get breast cancer, said UCSF oncologist Hope Rugo, and half of them undergo chemotherapy that results in 100 percent hair loss. “Of course,” she said, “your life is more important than your hair.” But when a patient is facing cancer, “what’s important doesn’t always make sense.” Keeping one’s hair has to do with vanity, of course, but also it has to do with maintaining privacy, keeping one’s identity, and probably most essential, enabling some sense of control over the situation.

New therapies, involving caps and cooling devices, enable patients with some solid-tumor forms of cancer — most often breast cancer, but not limited to that — to retain their hair. The cooling therapy is available in 21 states, at 110 medical centers around the country. But not everyone can afford the $1,500-to-$2,000 cost of the treatment. So HairToStay provides grants, typically covering half the cost. Because there are usually only a few days between diagnosis and the start of chemotherapy, applications are processed speedily.

One in 8 is a frightening figure. Men and women who chipped in to help — many, no doubt, with a friend or family member in mind — had found some way to be less frightened. They left empty-handed, but they didn’t need a scented candle wrapped in tissue paper to remind them of the need.

PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “You’re not getting a drone until Mommy gets a drone.” Mother to young boy, overheard in the Mission by Karen Rhodes