97. A park-like parklet

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The one percent

The other day I heard, again, that statistic about 1% of the population (maybe less) having as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the population. Today I was wondering -- if it were quantifiable -- whether the same might be true for beauty or talent. It wouldn't surprise me.

Evanescence

The other day -- this seems to be my theme -- I ran into a top 10 list of Evanescence hits. I watched it mainly to see which of the top two they placed first. They went with "Bring Me To Life" where I would have picked "My Immortal." Evanescence kind of fascinates me. They are a "metal" band lead by a chick. I've referred to them in the past as "whipped metal." I'm pretty confident Amy Lee is a total bitch, yet she is what I like about the band. I say that ignoring the fact that I haven't liked anything they've done since Ben Moody left. 

The version of "My Immortal" on the CD is not the same as the video. The video adds a tiny metal part in the middle that, in my opinion, makes the song. On my iPod I have the CD version which is nice but not at all the same.

Absalom

I've now finished... and started re-reading Absalom, Absalom! If ever a novel required re-reading it is this one. 

p12 He [Quentin] was a barracks filled with stubborn back-looking ghosts still recovering, even forty-three years afterward, from the fever which had cured the disease, waking from the fever without even knowing that it had been the fever itself which they had fought against and not the sickness, looking with stubborn recalcitrance backward beyond the fever and into the disease with actual regret, weak from the fever yet free of the disease and not even aware that the freedom was that of impotence.

But are they free of the disease? Or just of the fever?

p20-21 ..."even I [Rosa Coldfield] used to wonder what our father or his father could have done before he married our mother that Ellen and I would have to expiate and neither of us alone be sufficient; what crime committed that would leave our family cursed to be instruments not only for that man's destruction, but for our own." 

I don't think it's accidental that Faulkner describes her father here as "...a Methodist steward, a merchant who was not rich...." Someone who, despite strict religious feelings, still participated in, enabled, the diseased culture and economy of the South.  

A very green parklet

Walking on Valencia in The Mission yesterday I came upon a particularly green parklet. The original idea of the parklet movement was to reclaim space from the car-serving streets for public space, but "park" here was both a play an "parking," since parklets occupy what were previously parking spaces, and also suggested the intention that they be park-like in bringing plants and even grass to the street. If I recall correctly, the first test case -- only up for a part of a day, I think -- included sod as well as planters.

Now public space, rather than park, has become the emphasis, yet here's an example where bringing greenery to the street has been the focus:

View approaching from the south.

View from the south.

Looking south, my cup is next to the sign.

Looking back from the north.

Sorry, this was the best I could do with the signage.

Next - 98. Thoughts on the South