Sure Cure for Stir Crazy?

The same cooped-up family members and roommates. The same dog or cat that refuses to learn how to tell time. The same four walls, even if some are transparent.

Maddeningly, housebound routine is grating on more than a few of us in these cautious times; and we thirst to mix it up a bit, without additional pandemic exposure.

Maybe being housebound has aroused interest in your oft-neglected plants. Maybe you're tired of watching taped baseball games and want to root for some fresh material. Maybe you're feeling the itch to change up some dusty art on those omnipresent walls.

And then, lo and behold, arrives via Internet and snail mail the shakeup that your pandemic-inhibited, rule-of-three psyche so dearly craves. Yes…it's the Spring '20 issue of CA-Modern magazine.

In it, even stir-crazy, borderline-claustrophobic readers find sustenance for all the aforementioned cravings, as well as literary nourishment about unsung jazz pianists, photographer Ernie Braun's 'Life-like' photo shoot of a Los Altos Eichler household, and features editor Dave Weinstein's portrayal of how 'growing up modern' shaped the lives of his Boomer and Gen-X sources.

"Every child who grows up in an Eichler, it seems, comes away with a different take on the experience," Weinstein observes in 'The Re-Uppers,' his feature about childhood MCM survivors who later wound up choosing Eichler or Streng homes for their own families.

"I love the natural light, things you don't notice until you move out to an apartment," says Kerry Little, who grew up in an Eichler tract in Concord and now lives in another with her husband and daughter. At her apartment in between Eichlers, she tells Weinstein, "Everything was so dark and blah. I didn't think growing up in the Eichler affected me much, but then I moved out and realized how valuable the natural light was, the indoor/outdoor space."

The treasured indoor/outdoor aspect of modernist architecture is dependent not just on glass walls and doors, but on attractive, natural views inside and out. That is explored in writer Adriene Biondo's two plant-based stories in the Spring issue, including a main bar titled 'Houseplants to Love,' and sidebar story that calls out ten indoor plant recommendations, for brighter and lesser lighting, respectively.

Interviewed recently by email, Biondo cited a plant on the lists that she enjoys at her own Eichler in Granada Hills.