Beth Winegarner
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bethwinegarner.bsky.social
Beth Winegarner
@bethwinegarner.bsky.social
620 followers 490 following 480 posts
✏️ Journalist & author: bethwinegarner.com
📚 "San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History" out now!
🎧 Coming soon: Dead Reckoning podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dead-reckoning/id1812728990
👩🏻‍🦰 She/her.
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bethwinegarner.bsky.social
By the mid-19th Century it was illegal to advertise abortion services directly and "astrologer" was one of the code words that abortionists would use. I can't tell if the newspaper knew this (you'd think so). SF, 1871.
Newspaper text reads: "LOST, STRAYED OR STOLEN. — One Simon M. Cohen, an astrologer by occupation. He was arrested with Dr. C. C. O’Donnell and Arabella Knapp for the murder of Eugenie Chauvet, by procuring an abortion. He was subsequently released on $10,000 bail, his bondsmen being A. Rafael, L. Peyser and H. Bockheim. The Grand Jury found a true bill against him, but a bench warrant has been unsuccessful in reaching him. It is stated by some that the astrologer has “gone to the Springs;” others that he seeks the spot “where the woodbine twineth,” there to make lunar observations, and to hold communion with his lucky star. Go hence base maligner: would you insinuate that there “ain’t $10,000 ‘n the case, and that it ain’t cheap at the price that will be realized?”"
October 7, 2025 at 10:29 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
On Wednesdays we wear black.
Theda Bara in a black strapless dress, holding her hair out with her arms.
October 1, 2025 at 3:59 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
You could hardly find a more on-brand October event: Me, Amy Shea and @morbidloren.bsky.social at the SF Columbarium on Oct. 16. Registration link below!

www.eventbrite.com/e/a-book-tou...
Promotional flyer for an event titled "A Book Tour of Cemeteries: A Conversation with authors Amy Shea, Loren Rhoads, & Beth Winegarner." The event is scheduled for Thursday, October 16th, 2025, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at the SF Columbarium, 1 Loraine Ct, San Francisco, CA 94118. The flyer features headshots of the three authors and their respective books: Amy Shea with "Too Poor to Die" Loren Rhoads with "Still Wish You Were Here" Beth Winegarner with "San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries" The description highlights that the authors will discuss cemeteries as spaces that reveal community stories, cultural history, and personal reflections. It emphasizes the themes of death, memory, erasure, and storytelling. At the bottom, it notes: "Books will be sold by Green Apple Books!" The background is light blue with dark blue and white text.
September 22, 2025 at 7:03 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
PBR ad, 1910
1910 newspaper ad for Pabst Blue Ribbon
September 18, 2025 at 6:59 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
Meanwhile
a screenshot that says "Michael's" and "plague doctor" in the search bar.
September 16, 2025 at 9:07 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
Well, I feel much less violated now.
Text reads: Facebook consumer privacy user profile litigation settlement administrator has sent you $37.95 USD.
September 15, 2025 at 8:05 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
Ads for abortion doctors in the Oakland Tribune, 1905.
abortion doctor advertisement abortion doctor advertisements
September 9, 2025 at 12:18 AM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
Update: I finally got through and got my problem solved.
September 8, 2025 at 11:11 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
Worst poem, or PACER hold time? Why not both?
September 8, 2025 at 8:35 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
I came across my .sig file from sometime in 2001, and I'm back to being more like this person than I've been in a long time.
A block of text on a black background with white monospaced font. The top portion includes a quote: "Replace the rent with the stars above. Replace the need with love. Replace the anger with the tide. Are you on fire from the years? What would you give for your kid fears?" (Indigo Girls) Below the quote is a dashed and dotted line, followed by a description of content offered: music reviews + stories + poetry + photography + collage + Watchers selkies + froud-faeries + esoterica + links = http://echoes.devin.com
September 6, 2025 at 8:40 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
How about a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke? I just finished an essay and used a line from this piece for the title.
The Apple Orchard Come let us watch the sun go down and walk in twilight through the orchard's green. Does it not seem as if we had for long collected, saved and harbored within us old memories? To find releases and seek new hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys, mingled with darkness coming from within, as we randomly voice our thoughts aloud wandering beneath these harvest-laden trees reminiscent of Durer woodcuts, branches which, bent under the fully ripened fruit, wait patiently, trying to outlast, to serve another season's hundred days of toil, straining, uncomplaining, by not breaking but succeeding, even though the burden should at times seem almost past endurance. Not to falter! Not to be found wanting! Thus must it be, when willingly you strive throughout a long and uncomplaining life, committed to one goal: to give yourself! And silently to grow and to bear fruit.
September 5, 2025 at 8:49 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
1894, San Francisco, the rantings of San Francisco City Physician J. W. Keeney:
"A healthy child at birth, a child clean-blooded and properly nurtured, will be an absolute novelty in a few years if things keep going in the direction they have tended these several years past. Their little bodies come into the world charged with gin, opium, tobacco and disease. Just look at the record of mortality among the babies under one year of age."
August 26, 2025 at 10:35 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
I've been researching the town of Bethany (Al-Eizariya) in Palestine, for which I'm named. I looked at Google Street View images of the area between Jerusalem and Al-Eizariya and discovered this large border wall with spray-painted messages on it. Just look at it.
A wall is spray painted with messages that read, "The dirt whispered I'm coming home" "child" "love conquers all" "prayer for refugees" "the hands that build can also tear down"
August 21, 2025 at 8:13 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
A humorous tweet overlaid on a photo of a bog landscape. The background shows a wet, grassy, peat-filled marsh with scattered trees in the distance. The tweet, by user @LeahUnknowing, reads: "me: bog mood you: do you mean big mood me, submerging myself in peat: no"
August 21, 2025 at 8:09 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
I can imagine Jesus pinching the bridge of his nose in this part of the story.
11 After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.” 12 His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” 13 Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. 14 So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, 15 and
August 13, 2025 at 6:28 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
This poem.

poets.org/poem/small-n...
A Small Needful Fact Is that Eric Garner worked for some time for the Parks and Rec. Horticultural Department, which means, perhaps, that with his very large hands, perhaps, in all likelihood, he put gently into the earth some plants which, most likely, some of them, in all likelihood, continue to grow, continue to do what such plants do, like house and feed small and necessary creatures, like being pleasant to touch and smell, like converting sunlight into food, like making it easier for us to breathe. — Ross Gay
August 9, 2025 at 3:30 AM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
Is the mom autistic? If not, I don't want to hear her story.
August 9, 2025 at 12:20 AM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
Seen today at Diamond & Chenery, a melon ready to be salted and eaten. On a city trash bin.
July 18, 2025 at 2:00 AM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
imagine visiting a quarantine facility for people with smallpox, syphilis and Hansen's disease (leprosy) and one of your chief complaints is that the walls aren't light green.
Text reads, "the pest house is illy arranged in every particular. The walls should have been plastered, not ceiled. Accommodations for a female nurse are totally wanting. The walls are stained mahogany color, whereas, as we believe, they should be of a light green. Ventilation is defective, and the attendants' rooms cheerless."
July 16, 2025 at 2:50 AM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
same
Text reads, "Mrs. Adele Bentzinger was also committed to the asylum. She imagines she is haunted."
July 16, 2025 at 2:01 AM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
Just got off a call with these two amazing writers and this event is going to be SO FUN, y'all. Please come. @sezindevikoehler.bsky.social
Text reads: Campfire stories & other ghostly narratives “Grotto Nights” at the San Francisco Public Library Tuesday, July 29, 6 p.m. “The Page” room 100 Larkin St., SF
July 10, 2025 at 12:23 AM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
A humanoid robot in a futuristic armored suit stands against a cloudy sky, looking upward. Overlaid text in two separate boxes reads, “I was having an emotion” and “and I hate that.” The text is styled in orange and gray, conveying a mix of introspection and frustration.
July 4, 2025 at 6:19 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
I had to go back into the California Digital Newspaper Collection to find this image from the San Francisco Call, 7 February 1894, and it never disappoints.

(The skulls were originally found near 1st & Minna in downtown San Francisco, NOT in this barrel, for what that's worth).
"Black and white illustration of several men, some in suits and hats, investigating a scene outside a building labeled 'Evans & Son' and 'Murch & Grinnell Tools and Manufacturing.' In the foreground, a barrel contains human skulls and bones, with a caption below reading 'Where the Skulls Were Found.'"
June 13, 2025 at 1:43 AM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
I've got some events coming up this summer & fall. Mark your calendars!
I've got some events coming up this summer & fall. Mark your calendars!
June 7, 2025 at 10:40 PM
bethwinegarner.bsky.social
Some things never change (by 'some things' I mean NIMBYs).

cdnc.ucr.edu?a=d&d=SFC189...
A newspaper headline reads: SWINE SPOIL BAY VIEW Residents Ask the Supervisors to Condemn Four Hog Ranches. THE STENCH IS UNBEARABLE. Forty-Five People Say That Foul Refuse Makes Their Homes Unfit to Live in.
May 13, 2025 at 10:13 PM