A great believer in marriage, I got married for the fifth time on April 26. My bride is my longtime partner/girlfriend Lynn Axelrod, known to many in town as the coordinator of the Point Reyes Disaster Council. As such, she works with the county fire department. She’s 68 and from New York and Boston. For many years, she worked as an attorney in San Francisco. I’m 74 and from the San Francisco Bay Area. I worked in journalism for most of my adult life.

Our wedding was in the bluff-top garden beside the 3rd floor of Marin County Civic Center. (Photo by Kathy Runnion)

The garden is right outside the County Clerk’s Office, and conducting the ceremony was (at center) Olga Lobato, a supervisor in the Clerk’s office.

The office’s wedding schedule is a busy one. We had to settle for getting married on a Thursday because Friday was booked up well in advance.

“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” supervisor Lobato told Lynn and me with a flourish. (Photo by Kathy Runnion)

Acting as official witnesses were Tony Ragona of Point Reyes Station and Paul Kaufman of San Rafael (formerly of Marshall).

I must say being married is fun although it’s had some prickly moments. For the past three weeks, I’ve been digging up, pulling up, and cutting up thistles in the fields around Mitchell cabin.

Now that’s not fun.

The night after the wedding we headed down to Sausalito’s No Name Bar for our weekly ration of jazz, which is inevitably fun.

Inside the bar, the bride spotted one of the regulars, the prominent Sausalito artist Steve Sara, sketching her as she listened to the music. Obligingly she moved a bit closer to his sketchpad and was rewarded with an attractive drawing.