Election over and it’s time for repair

The Workshop Residence in the Dogpatch sent word last week that on Saturday, Nov. 3, “workshop facilitator” David

Pike was speaking about kintsugi, “the Japanese art of reassembling chipped, fractured or otherwise broken pottery using natural lacquer and powdered gold.”

I looked at the elegant pictures and turned to my computer to Google up some information on the art, in which repairing something broken is admired and celebrated as part of the history of an object.

Postelection, the same principle might be applied.

Organizers of the book tour for Michelle Obama’s “Becoming,” which begins Tuesday, Nov. 13, in Chicago, are no doubt aware there’s been some backlash to its highly orchestrated — and expensive — nature. The tour is produced by Live Nation. Tickets for the former first lady’s Dec. 14 appearance at the SAP Center in San Jose started at $29.50, but a look at the site a few days ago revealed that the only ones still available were in the range of $260 to $336.

So in addition to announcing that “a limited number of VIP meet and greet packages with former First Lady Michelle Obama are also available” (presumably at a higher rate), organizers have announced that “thousands of tickets will be given away” to school groups and members of certain organizations.

The list of people who will be interviewing the author begins with Oprah Winfrey in Chicago, and includes Reese Witherspoon (in Denver) and Sarah Jessica Parker (in Brooklyn). In San Jose, Michele Norris, former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” will do the interviewing.

Writing and dresses were the themes at Zuri on Fillmore Street the other night, where a roomful of literature lovers (and yes, some potential dress buyers) had gathered to hear five writers “share their work on the theme of fabric.” Zuri, as has been described in The Chronicle, was founded by Americans Ashleigh Miller and Sandra Zhao, who set out to provide jobs at fair wages and decent working conditions for the women who make them, Kenyans living in the area with that country’s highest rate of unemployment.

The dresses — all one style, in a pleasantly dizzy array of patterns — are easy fitting and cheerful. They were sold online only at first, then in pop-up stores, now in a few permanent stores, including one in San Francisco. Thursday night, Nov. 1, organized by Zuri with writer Audrey

Ferber, was a win-win, women coming together to listen to five writers read pieces; and also, although it was not like a trunk show and there was no pressure to buy anything at all, to shop.

Anna Mantzaris, most specific, said she’d set herself a limit of 10 Zuris, and had invented a way to put on a dress upside down and wear it as a jacket; Thaisa

Frank read a story about a woman who dressed like her furniture, camouflaging herself and thus allowing herself to watch her husband without talking with him; Kimberly Chun spoke of an obsession with outlet stores; and Ferber read about the press of duties caregiving for — and dressing — her partner. Molly Giles, in “How to Dress Like a (Woman) Writer,” provided the most useful advice for writers dressing up: “Black seems to be de rigueur for writers everywhere actually, and that’s OK: it’s the one color that shows attitude without showing dirt.”

We were in a storefront crammed with shelves and racks brimming with exuberant prints, but the observation was met with approving nods. Who says the country is divided?

PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “You’d better bring me some cheesecake. I’ve been standing out here so long.” Woman overheard in Brooklyn by Stefan Gruenwedel

At the Friends of the Library book sale at Fort Mason, Eric Poulson saw two men with a cart full of books, one saying to the other, “Well, it’s down to either ‘The Glory Hole Mystery’ or ‘How to Tell If Your Cat’s Gay.’ ”

1 At its Saturday, Nov. 3, Alumni Awards Gala, the University of San Francisco gave its annual Public Service Award to the family of the late San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee.

1 Wise Chronicle colleague Carl Nolte noticed that the New York Times story about the killing of Whitey Bulger referred to the much-feared criminal as “Mr. Bulger.” At the same time, that newspaper’s stories about the death of Willie McCovey referred to the beloved San Francisco Giant as “McCovey.” Does this mean that if Al Capone killed Ted Williams it would be “Mr. Capone Takes Out Williams?”