341. Photography San Francisco

Link to Table of Contents

Photographs

It's been a while since I last did a photo post. Let's see what I've accumulated,

Here's an interesting new building gate I photographed just today (why this occurred to me).

Here's a building in my neighborhood that has long had a problem with people camping on their front "stoop." I noticed they had taken care of this by storing a bunch of stools out there, but it was only last week that I finally noticed that the stools are bolted to the paving.

It does work.
This next may be hard to explain.

They are currently in the process of upgrading Camino del Mar in Lincoln Park. In particular, they are reducing the storm runoff into our sewer system. There are several of these structures that are designed to capture water from the street, let the water flow from one deep basin to the next (Note the the little gates at the low point in the little walls) giving the water time to be absorbed into the ground. Eventually, if necessary, any water beyond what the system can absorb will flow out the opening at the end and go to either the next structure or to the storm sewer.

This is my favorite Wee Free library, also near Lincoln Park.

Okay. I know this is strange, but I have always had a thing for outdoor lighting -- street, parking lots, even the side of buildings. This is a classic 1960s street light fixture but the only time I've ever seen it with four lights. Someone when BART's MacArthur Station was being planned noticed this rarely (if ever) used option in some catalog. It's only a matter of time before it gets replaced by an LED fixture, so I wanted to capture it.

Architects are having more fun with parking structures these days. This one is in downtown Berkeley.

340. How It All Began

Link to Table of Contents

How It All Began

by Penelope Lively - Viking 2011

P13 End of chapter 1.  Oh, I do like Lively. Already we’ve got three strong point-of-view characters. First there’s Charlotte the elderly woman we start with who’s been mugged; then her daughter Rose, another strong female character, and finally Marian who shares my habit of redecorating spaces when bored. Though Marian is a decorator, so knows what she’s talking about. Rose and Marian are both middle aged. 

And we also got just a bit of Rose’s employer His Lordship or Henry. 

P22 Chapter 2. Henry is rather more important here. His forgetting his notes and making a mess of his lecture -- in particular forgetting names -- is clearly Lively making something out of the inability to remember names she spoke of in her other book. The thing is, forgetting the name Pitt is not something that only comes up in a lecture. Surely he would have realized this problem before and had some experience with dealing with it -- I know I have. It’s a bloody nuisance but you can make light of it and either use others to help prompt you or failing that, kill time until the name comes to you. What’s even worse is when you completely lose your train of thought. But again, this is not that unusual. Of course Lively is making the most of this because it is so annoying for academics in particular. 

P24 And we get just a dash of Thomas Hobbs.

I am attempting to apply both Stoicism and Roombaism to the crises in this novel. It’s an interesting exercise. So far the crises have been: Charlotte getting injured in a mugging -- you move on and deal with the PT; Stella learning her husband is having an affair -- for him, you can make an argument for moving on to a less difficult relationship, for her there doesn’t seem to be either a Stoic or Roombic option; Henry’s disastrous lecture should lead to either a new approach to doing these things or an avoidance of the situation. I kind of think Roombaism wins this comparison.

p30 “...Henry is in fact out of touch with the eighteenth century. He stopped thinking much about it a number of years ago, he has not kept up with new publications. The eighteenth century has moved on, leaving him behind. History is a slippery business; the past is not a constant but a landscape that mutates according to argument and opinion. Henry is well aware of this, and aware that the eighteenth century has disappeared over the horizon so far as he is concerned, reconstructed, reinterpreted.”

It is interesting to see how Lively pulls things from her own life into her novel. The bit about traveling on London buses (I didn’t quote) is from her own experience, this bit about history is thanks to her late husband. But I take issue with Henry’s being so removed from his subject. Lively was around 78 when she wrote this interesting observation about the 18th century “moving on.” She continues to process her reality. As much as I dis-esteem academics, I have a hard time believing they don’t continue to think about their subjects -- just as I occasionally come upon a novel thought while rehashing either philosophy or history. (Just confirmed that Lord Peters is 76.)

P86 Chapter Six - As with Martha Grimes, I’m wondering if Lively starts with a plan or just lets the characters lead her forward. I assume Anton’s having been an accountant will come to something. I assume things will go in surprising directions, rather than calming down, since the point of this novel is how a random event can lead to changes. It’s the old butterfly effect again. Unless I’m wrong about that, Butterfly Effect might have been a better title. (I had forgotten that she mentions the Butterfly Effect at the very beginning.)

Lively has much more experience with the nobility than I do, but one of the things I actually like about them is that they tend not to care what others think, since they are born to their status. Lord Peters’s discomfort here seems middle class to me. I’m probably wrong.

P99 Chapter Seven - I’m never in Starbucks because I hate their process for serving iced tea, but I was there today when I read this chapter, which is largely set in a Starbucks. This is an interesting Starbucks simply because it faces a busy bus stop -- just off Market and across the street from the Bank Cafe (always closed on weekends, but now doubly closed for remodeling of Peet’s.) Here you see waves of FOB-looking Chinese and tourists. Three or four busy bus lines stop here. Sitting where I am in the window, it’s hard to notice what the people are doing in the Starbucks. Currently there’s a guy standing in the middle of the sidewalk right in front of the doors who seems to have misplaced his last brain cell. 

A nearly spherical man just climbed slowly off a bus and paused mid-sidewalk to light up a cigarette. Probably he juggles machetes as a hobby.

P101 Chapter Eight - I love where she’s going with Lord Peters. “A certain awful appeal. The voice, the manner, everything. You’d be sticking your neck out a mile, putting him on. People would love him or hate him. A provocation. Risky -- oh, yes. But just might be a winner.” Delia, a very minor character is considering put him on TV. Without wanting to insult Lord Peters, this could also have been said about Trump at the beginning. And I love Marian’s disbelief that Delia is agreeing to even the one show. (I’m sorry he didn’t have a little success in TV.)

P105 Now this is interesting, here is Lord Peters working up the script for his pilot, “ ‘I myself have a soft spot for what is known as the Cleopatra’s nose theory of history -- the proposal that had the nose of Cleopatra been an inch longer the fortunes of Rome would have been different. A reductio ad absurdum, perhaps, but a reference to random causality that makes a lot of sense when we think about the erratic sequence of events that we call history. And we find that we home in on the catalysts -- the intervention of those seminal figures who will direct events. Caesar himself. Charlemagne. Napoleon. Hitler. If... this person or that... had not existed, how differently could things have turned out?’...”

This is the historical twist on the butterfly effect. So another alternate title, Cleopatra’s Nose. 

And this passage continues, “... ‘A decision is made in one place, and far away a thousand will die. There’s an analogy, I understand, with a process that interests the physicists -- chaos theory. The proposition that apparently random phenomena have underlying order -- a very small perturbation can make things happen differently from the way they would have happened if the small disturbance had not been there. A butterfly in the Amazon forest flaps its wings and provokes a tornado in Texas.’ ”

P142 Chapter Eleven - Jeremy is interesting about the way he likes to lead life flying by the seat of his pants. I had to do something vaguely similar during my freelancing days, but I was never comfortable with it. I’ve always preferred something more routine and dependable. And I agree with Lively that this seems consistent with a man also being unfaithful to his wife. Though I also agree with Marion that Stella should know him well enough to be able to deal with this by now. 

I’m reading this at the Peet’s near Uber and they are playing hits from the ‘60s that are not the usual hits from the ‘60s. Songs that I know from the first bar or two though I haven’t heard them for decades. Some maybe since the ‘60s. And this reminds me that, as I noticed before with Lively, there’s little to nothing about music in this novel. Curious.

P154 “...Story, yes, indeed, but the fascination of story is what it can do. Henry James can tell it through the eyes of a child, and make you, the reader, observe the adult chicanery and betrayals of which the child is unaware. Charlotte needed to remind herself of the sleight of hand whereby this is done...” I haven’t read James but this makes me think of a favorite part of The Diary of Adrian Mole, when his mother is having an affair and he is oblivious.

My Bank Cafe is still under-construction -- taking longer than expected -- so I’m at the neighboring Starbucks again with hot tea, having given up on their idiotic iced tea, and have discovered an advantage to this location. Here one may enjoy, like a cat, the afternoon sun coming in the front window. If the sun ever hits the Bank Cafe windows it would be in the morning. Glare not so good for using the computer, but great light for reading and, after the gym this morning, it’s nice to absorb some UV rays.

P174 Chapter Fourteen - This is quite wonderful really, Jeremy and Stella’s secret romance. I don’t exactly like Jeremy but you have to admire him a bit. 

P202 Chapter Sixteen - How does one forget one has a million pounds in equity? This comes into the story like a Victorian bequest, but really! Are things so different in England that... Oh! Never-mind. Just realized that without income a bank would be unlikely to give her any sort of loan even with all that equity. 

Finished. Marion came out the best here. Jeremy and Stella did fine. Henry and Mark did well. Charlotte came out a bit worse for the wear. Rose and Anton had the best story though without the dramatic, romantic ending. Gerry dodged a bullet without ever knowing.

339. Warriors 2019 playoffs round 2

Link to Table of Contents

Warriors!

Once again one of our local sports teams has done something exceptional. And I don’t just mean they won, but they won in the context of a phenomenal story. It’s always the story that pulls me in. The next paragraph is background on the Warriors for the tiny group of people who aren’t familiar with their story, but might be interested in getting a quick review so they can appreciate the “story” I want to talk about.

The Warriors team was built around two amazing shooters, guards Steph Curry and Klay Thompson who are known as the Splash Brothers for their ability to hit 3 point shots. With the back court in place, the organization -- which is a model of what a basketball team should be -- started building up a supporting front court with Dramon Green and Andre Iguodala (a veteran starter and one of the most outstanding 6th men in the game). They won a championship but the next season they came up short against the same team they had beaten the season before -- there were some good reasons for this. The organization responded by going after Kevin Durant, either the best or second best individual player in basketball, depending on who you ask. With KD, Curry, Thompson, Green, and Iguodala they constituted what is popularly known as either the Hampton’s 5 or the Death Lineup. This group led the team to back to back championships and was leading the team through the second round of this year’s playoffs when KD went down with an injury late in game 5 against Houston. This has been a very close series with, through game 4, each team winning their home games. The Warriors were home for game 5, so this gave Houston a shot at “breaking serve” as it were. Last year, the Warriors/Houston series was the REAL championship as, after just barely beating Houston the Warriors easily defeated the champion in the east. The basketball world had been eagerly anticipating Houston getting another shot at the Warriors now that one of their players, Chris Paul, was healthy. Now, late in the 5th game, Chris Paul was healthy and they were playing the Warriors even in the series, winning their two home games while the Warriors won their two home games. That's when the Warriors lost KD to injury. That’s the setup for this story. A frustrated team, eager for revenge after feeling they were cheated the previous season finally given an advantage against the champions. This is when it gets interesting.

The Warriors managed to pull out that game 5, putting them up 3 games to 2. The next game would be in Houston and then a game 7 would be played in Oakland. As I’ve said, so far the home team had won every game and now the Warriors would be going to Houston short arguably their best player. Steve Kerr, their coach, was forced to play his bench -- the non-starters who had seen very little playing time because this was, to date, a close run battle between the starters -- and they responded brilliantly. But basketball is impossible to predict and Steph Curry, quite possibly the best shooter of all time, ended the first half of game 6 with zero points and three fouls -- so that he had to be pulled off the floor. So now the Warriors were missing KD and Curry was shooting blanks or sitting on the bench. Sounds like they’re doomed, right? No.

Klay Thompson and the bench managed to play Houston to a draw in the first half. Fate gave Houston two huge handicaps and they couldn’t take advantage. Then came the second half.

If KD isn’t the best player in basketball, then that honor goes to LeBron James. The Warriors sought out KD mostly so they could use him to balance the advantage James gave the Cavalliers the year they didn’t win the championship. And that strategy worked for two years. After game 6 LeBron James Tweeted the following, “NEVER underestimate the heart of a champion!! !!” 

After scoring zero points in the first half, Steph Curry scored 33 points in the second half. Especially in the crucial fourth quarter, he took over the game sinking long threes while also attacking the basket for easy twos. The dagger to Houston’s heart was a perfect Warriors play that started with Curry, passed though the hands of almost the entire team before it went to Klay Thompson who buried yet another three. It was a master class in team basketball.

The Warriors still have another series to get through before they make it to the championship round, and the longer they play the better the chance of their getting KD back, along with two of their centers who were injured earlier. They could get even better by the end. But what people will remember is what they did while short handed against a very dangerous opponent. 

Bringing the story up to date

That series against Houston seems so long ago now. The next series, against Portland, was also entertaining, but in the end the Warriors won. They then faced off against Toronto in the finals. Toronto won in 6 games but the Warriors team they defeated was without two of its three best players. Both KD and Klay Thompson started game 6 but left with new, more serious injuries. The Warriors did well with the players they had left, but that wasn't good enough.

Since then the Warriors team, and indeed many of the teams in the NBA have been blown-up and re-imagined. Last I heard, the Warriors will start the 2019-2020 season with only four players from their "dynasty." A fifth player, Klay Thompson, will return later from his injury. Most of the new team will be new faces and I'm actually eager to see how they do. I suspect that the "dynasty" is over, however. 

What's a little awkward about this is that they are also leaving Oakland and moving to a new facility in San Francisco. Instead of showing off a championship team in their new house, they will start with a team that is still learning how to play with each other.

338. Autumn Light

Link to Table of Contents

New book - Autumn Light

by Pico Iyer - Knopf 2019

Tale of Genji referenced on page 14. God help me.

P22 I didn’t pay much attention to the description of the failed new development of Nara in the ‘80s, but this is a perfect example of top down planning that doesn’t understand how cities and business work. It was like Skywalker Ranch on a much larger scale -- a lovely idea but not really practical. He references Mountain View, but even Mountain View and the original Silicon Valley only made sense because of Stanford and the existence of San Jose and San Francisco nearby. That and the fact that the first generation of tech engineers were mostly from the Midwest. Suburbia appealed to them, especially California suburbia.

P30 “...I can hardly recall the bright-eyed kid who made such a pius point of telling himself that purity and kindness and mystery lay inside the temple walls and that everything outside them was profane; the beauty of Japan is to cut through all such divisions, and to remind you that any true grace or compassion is as evident in the convenience store -- or at the ping-pong table -- as in the bar where two monks are getting heartily drunk over another Hanshin Tigers game.”

This is pretty damn close to my response to Buddhism -- though he left his pal the Dalai Lama and people like him off the hook with that ending. The point I think he is making here is that Japan encourages a mindfully sacred way of looking at life while not rejecting life as most religious traditions do. His teachers are not the Dalai Lama and his local equivalent, but Hiroko and the routine of life in Japan. This does make me curious about how different his life is in California. 

P32 “...I can hear kids chanting... the forty-seven syllables of the hiragana alphabet, in the ceremonial song that features every syllable once and once only.
...

“This song, though, might be the scripture of Japan. ‘Bright though they are in color, blossoms fall,’ I hear the children shouting out. ‘Which of us escapes the world of change? We cross the farthest limits of our destiny, and let foolish dreams and illusions all be gone.’ ”

Well that’s pretty profound for a school song. I tried to find the rest of it through a Google search and could only find a link to this book. 

Among the things that Iyer doesn’t cover, but I wish he did, are more about his relationships with his own family -- another book, perhaps. His feelings about SoCal. And, since there’s a fair amount, thanks to Hiroko’s father about wartime Japan, a little about how things like education changed after the war. Most of what I know about pre-war Japan and the education system has to do with the indoctrination program.

P33 “The season is a kind of religion, I think, to which we offer poems and petitions, but it’s not one you believe in so much as simply inhabit.”

P34 “It took me a while, after I settled down here, to realize that every detail -- the apples, the boxes they sit in, the table on which we place them -- counts, because none of these things is inanimate in Japan. Only yesterday, Hiroko remembered, ‘I small time, I kicking table -- sometimes little angry -- every time, my father say, “You must apologize! To table. That table has heart. It never hit you. Why you must hit it?” ‘ “

I bet her father could have explained why the Japanese military didn’t repair damaged planes during the war. Something I’ve read about but never understood. I think it’s related to this idea of animation.

P37 ...”What makes the air feel thronged [in Japan] is the presence of household deities and ghosts, the spirits that for my neighbors inhabit every last desk or box of chocolates. Nothing essential ever seems to die in Japan, so the land is saturated with dead ancestors, river gods...”

This reminds me of the Ryuko Lady in Genji who, even after her death, possessed Murasaki. There was no further mention of Genji after that first one, but I do wonder what Hiroko would make of this aspect of The Tale. Would she find it exaggerated or very familiar?

P41-42 So I guess the Japanese Buddhist notions of death and after death are quite different than the Tibetan notions. Since you are supposed to be reincarnated after a year, it wouldn’t make any sense to honor the dead past that period in Tibet. I’m not sure about the other Buddhist traditions in India and SE Asia.

P46 The mother in law refusing to eat (but secretly eating) is so like the prince’s daughter at the end of Genji. I’m doomed.

P50 I love Hiroko’s baseball analogy. Sometimes it seems like the true purpose of American foreign policy is to spread baseball around the globe. It has only taken root in places where we have profoundly messed with the local culture. I wonder if they see this as reasonable compensation?

P54 The point of this introduction into being Japanese is so opposed to our being ourselves. While he is using ping pong to show this, I can see how ballroom dancing would work even better.

Pico reminds me a bit of Bill Bryson in how he ends up in Japan. So far, and I know this is his intention, Masahiro is the most interesting thing in the book. How is he possible? What is his story? It is a great way to preserve your status since you can’t do anything wrong if you are never there. He’s like a god you choose to imagine in the best possible light and no one can argue since he’s invisible. 

Pico has just mentioned that his own father was not happy with his own life choices -- why Hiroko never met him -- but we aren’t learning much about his family so far. Settling in Britain or Japan is a little like ignoring your own family, though not as decisive. More passive aggressive than outright rude.

P88 "Tokyo Story" and Yasujiro Ozu are a call back to The Elegance of the Hedgehog, unsurprisingly.

P94 Of course the brother is the absent heart of this book. Such an interesting story and perhaps a plot less predictable than the story of aging and death. You expect some kind of resolution or else why is he writing this? (And why is he giving so much information for a potential stalker? Have they moved now?) From my perspective, I see that siblings have options that only children don’t have. Or they do but it would be even more egregious. 

Here’s a question, Are Hiroko’s charming lines her English or his translation of her Japanese? What language do they usually speak? 

P112 The battleship Hiei that sank at First Guadalcanal was named after Mount Hiei. That was the battle in which the USS Barton was sunk (family connection to our book club. A better way of putting this is that First Guadalcanal was the battle in which both the Hiei and the USS Barton were sunk.) 

Just hit the part where everyone is reminiscing about the past and in particular their work past. There are different ways to count this, but I’d say I’ve had around fifteen different jobs, all of which I liked to some extent. My twelve years of greening work is the longest period I’ve done the same thing. I worked in tech for a similar time but as a writer, tester, and coder. And for many different employers. Though it is also seasonal, so I imagine I worked more hours as a bookstore clerk. Hard to know for sure.

P139 Being sent to Manchuria was probably the best way to survive the war. You were very fortunate if you were sent east and survived.

P143 Transient global amnesia -- oh, great, something new I’ve never heard of to worry about. I did think it didn’t seem like a stroke, but this would be very confusing. Of course if you were alone you would probably just go to sleep and wake up fine. So maybe not so bad.

P158 Interesting about forgetting your own observations. I know this is true for me as well thanks to blogging, especially with books. Hard to know when you’re plagiarizing yourself. 

P191 He mentions Thoreau translating the Lotus Sutra but not that he was reading the Bhagavad Gita at Walden. Like Iyer, he was a mix of Western, Indian, and Japanese influences. I didn’t say anything about the passage with the Dalai Lama but he captured what I had a problem with on my friend’s chanting tour of South Asia -- the places are of no real importance. I was thinking -- with some pride -- that there are no particular sites associated with philosophy. The Academy in Athens is an exception, but it isn’t regarded as sacred or anything. Walden Pond, come to think of it, probably has as much status as the Academy does. And that makes sense as it is the nature experienced there that is important. Unlike with a religious “sacred place” the connection with nature Thoreau experienced there is available to anyone willing to look for it. Of course Thoreau would say this patch of nature is not so different from others so you shouldn’t have to travel there to see what ought to be visible everywhere. 

I guess I was naive to expect any kind of resolution in this book. I am surprised that he has taken the liberty he has with the brother’s story. Not exactly kind, but a reasonable guess, I guess. And I’m still surprised he gives so much personal information. Unless he’s fictionalized it.

P227 I love the way he shows us Hiroko, 
“ ‘You writing autumn story?’...

“ ‘Not so much story,’ I say. If autumn is a religion, it’s something you recite -- or see with your eyes closed -- more than put into words.

“ ‘Like Ozu movie?’ she asks in apprehension. My attempts to inflict the seasonal explorations of mood and dissolving families on her have not been a success...

“ ‘You know me,’ I say. ‘I’m so greedy for sunlight, I need to be pushed into the dark.’

“ ‘Your book, nothing happening?’

“ ‘Well, not exactly nothing. But what happens is not so visible. It’s hard to see which parts are important until years later. Or maybe never.’

“I see her watch me skeptically, and gird myself.

“ ‘When I came here, I was so taken by everything that was different, full of drama, so distinctly Japanese. Like you when you go to America. Now I see it’s the spaces where nothing is happening where one has to make a life.’

“ ‘Little no-action movie,’ she says, visibly unpersuaded, and closing the pages of this book without needing to open them. ‘Rain come down window. Car stuck in traffic jam. Quiet music playing. Autumn light.’ 

“Exactly.”

I would love to hear her synopsis of The Tale of Genji. Perfumed men raping every women they see then musing about becoming monks but never getting round to it.

It's curious to me that he briefly references his family's connection to Theosophy without any suggestion of the Hindu influences. I wonder if this was part of his awkward relationship with his father?