328. Coast Starlight

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AMTRAK should fire that bitch Julie. 

What with a train recently getting blocked by snow and a fallen tree, and news of even more storms, I did everything I could do online to learn the status of the train I was supposed to be taking to SLO last week. According to all AMTRAKs online information, the train wasn’t running. There’s a map where you can see the location of all AMTRAK trains, there were no 11 or 14 trains on that map. When I asked specifically, I was told the same thing. When I called the only number AMTRAK offers, I got to chat with Julie, their retarded AI. She confirmed that there was a disruption and promised to connect me with an agent... before disconnecting me. I then tried to call the local stations but was unable to find an operating local phone number. I sent an email and got a reply that someone would get back to me after they opened at 8am -- I needed to be on my bus at 7:50.

I had gotten up at 6am to reconfirm all this and then went back to bed. But then I thought, would even AMTRAK be stupid enough to just leave everyone up in the air like this? I mean they had my email and cell, they should have contacted me if I was going to be left stranded. So I got up, packed up quickly, and headed for the Temporary Transbay Terminal. I didn’t even have time to trim my beard.

I assumed there would be a replacement bus, but here I am on the nonexistent 11 train, getting an interesting tour of the lower part of the East Bay. We followed the inland route through Niles, which feels rather like SoCal in it’s endless suburban squalor. Just went by Levi stadium, to my surprise. I didn’t know the train could take this route. We’re on Caltrain tracks now -- and when did Caltrain get this facility in Santa Clara? Now we are passing where I thought we would join this line, but I guess that’s just a minor siding of some kind. 

There’s a Whole Foods down here? Just to the west of Deridon Station. Even more residential development than last time I was here. There’s really only one little lot of the old industrial section and it seems abandoned and no doubt about to be redeveloped. 

And speaking of changes. The parking lot at Jack London Square, that was filled with food trucks for the Eat Real Festival, is now the site of a new building, residential I think and still under construction, that fills the entire block. We don’t work that event anymore, but this is still a bit of a shock. I wonder if they’re developing the space behind where we put the dumpsters?

2019

I thought this would be the year I reflected back thirty years on one of the best years of my life. But thanks in part to having just read Calypso, where David Sedaris keeps thinking ahead to when he will be “old,” I’m finding myself also thinking back twenty years to when my dad died and then twenty years ahead to when I will be the age my mother was when she died. So twenty years back I was helping my frail, dying parents and in another twenty years I will be that same age, and potentially in that same condition. Given that my sixties so far have not been a walk in the park, I can’t help sharing David Sedaris’s gloom when contemplating the future.

Of course twenty years is a long time. This will be my twelfth year of Greening, which is itself a long time, especially for me in one job. I can imagine doing this for another five years, maybe nine. I can’t really imagine Greening when I’m past 75. There’s a point where the years ahead seem not too few, but possibly too many.

Spring?

I think our cold and rainy weather is coming to an end. I think this not for any meteorological reason, or because of the behavior of large rodents, but because I remembered I had a long, warm raincoat at the back of my little closet. I wore it yesterday and realized I should have been wearing if for weeks now. So, my assumption is the weather will change now. And nothing Descartes wrote can make me think otherwise. (Solipsism reference.)

Last night I learned that the person I worked for at the Apple Multimedia Lab had died in his sleep. I hadn't seen him in a few months less than thirty years. I don't know what health problems he may have had. Since March is the month my dad died in the hospital -- and a Lab friend has a brother currently doing the "dance of death" with his hospital -- my first reaction was to think that this was an unusually good death.

I'm also reading The Dark Flood Rises, by Margaret Drabble (more on this later), which seems to be shaping up as a fairly dark book about death and aging, so everything is going counter to the spring season -- though I am noticing the green, new growth on the maple tree out my kitchen window. I even walked past a funeral at Notre Dame des Victoires on the way here to the Bank Cafe.

204. Dog love

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Random

And I do mean random. 

I took this picture last week on the posh section of Grant Street. Why are these people sitting in the street in what looks like the smallest, cheapest parklet in the city? Maybe they are planning a new parklet for this location? They look like large children playing in the street. Actually it would be cool if they had constructed a towel shelter with some chairs like we did when I was a kid at the pool.

Rockridge Out & About

Somehow I had never worked this street fair before, but I signed up this year and it's really a nice one. 

I identified this area, with all the tables out, as probably the busiest section, and I was right. I went through two rolls of compost bags. 

I took down all the stations in my area and sorted all the food vendor bags. The morning crew chief was working the last stretch of the street beyond me (and training a new person) and when we shut down our stations we even hauled all the bags to our headquarters (by the dumpsters). I went out again with the evening crew chief and he was so happy to see there was nothing left to pick up in the truck but the actual station material (these steel frames that hold up the bags and the plastic lids that go with them). I ended up leaving an hour early.

While this is all the way over on the hilly side of Oakland, I have history on this stretch of street. I very briefly worked as a programming contractor a few blocks north, and, a block south, I found Molly, the dog I had been sitting, and brought her home to great relief and amazement. I can't think of a good reason not to tell the story...

The last Summer trip my parents made to the California in the mid-90s is the one I most remember. I had learned, because of the preceding trip, just how limited they were in terms of mobility, and I cleverly planned their stay as though they were in a coma. And my plans were thwarted at every turn.

But this is about the prior trip, part of which involved a stay in a lovely home (of friends of friends) in this lovely area of Oakland. My parents would discover, according to the plan,  this charming (and not infernally hot, like Scottsdale) neighborhood, while we would house and dog sit for the people who were on their own vacation. 

All the things that went wrong are not pertinent to this tale, but on the final day I had to drive off with my parents to put them on their plane, before the friends of friends (who were running way late) returned. Molly, the dog, was left safe and sound, but not successfully passed off to her owners. 

When I got home from the airport I learned that, when her owners returned, they found her vanished. They started the usual neighborhood search (she was a sweet but neurotic dog, that's part of the reason I was enlisted as sitter) with posters and the whole family out searching the streets.

The next day I hopped on the train for Rockridge to help. I figure they would be covering the immediate neighborhood, so I went south on College, past the blocks in the photos above, to a sort of mini-mart on a key intersection. I asked the guy behind the counter if he had seen her, and he actually knew someone who had. He sent me less than a block down the side street to where I found Molly. (It's worth mentioning that Molly was a black Lab. This will come back into the conversation when I get back to The Five Invitations and God vs DOG. Molly "lost" was just Molly having doggy fun with new people.)

I took off my belt and beat her to within... no, I don't know where that came from. I used the belt as an improvised leash and took her home to her other family. Who were astonished to see both of us, as I hadn't said I was coming over.  

The friends of these people had a garden party back in May and Molly's owners, still friends I guess, were there and still remembered me as Molly's finder. It's an odd sort of fame.

The tree

We are now on the cusp of autumn. And here's photographic proof from the microcosm of my poor tree in a pot.

This morning.

End of August.

Back in July.

I'm still astonished it's doing as well as it is, given all it suffered last summer. Turns out it's as tough, in its own way, as the jade plants.

Alan Kay

Medium sent an interview with Alan Kay my way. The interview turned out to be more interesting than I expected -- not just him talking about all the cool stuff he did back in the day, and complaining about Millennials crapping on his lawn -- and, even better, I disagree with him to some extent. The interview is HERE.

Before I get to my point (Gresham's Law, again), I have to say a little about the "back in the day" part of the interview. The principle people at Apple's Multimedia Lab, when I was there, were all from the MIT Media Lab. Consequently, they were all over this history. (Many of our support people came from Wesleyan while I represent not just ASU but public universities in general.) In fact Doug Engelbart was almost the Apple Lab mascot, invited to all our big events. I recall a party on a large boat with Engelbart aboard. Unfortunately, all these big events occurred at the end of periods of all-nighters when I was so tired I could hardly stand. I have no idea what this particular celebration was for or where on the Bay we sailed, or what happened. I was at the point where you are too tired to sleep. I have a vague recollection of discovering someone smoked cigarettes that I hadn't known smoked. And that's all.

Almost as soon as I left the Lab, I did a quick contract job at Alan Kay's Vivarium in Beverly Hills. I'm pretty sure I met him when I arrived, but I was working for other people and he wasn't involved in what we were doing. Here's the way I now imagine the introduction going, "This is Ted. He's an expert in a bastardized version of your SmallTalk programming language, and he's here to code something for us in an even more bastardized version of SmallTalk that he's never used before. What could go wrong?" Followed by several minutes of laughter. This may not actually have happened.

Now to his current concern about the end of literacy.

I like his use of "the 10%" to mean the traditionally literate and intellectually influential portion of the population. He could be right about all this, but I'm not sure schools have ever had all that much to do with education, beyond being institutions with libraries and the occasional person worth talking to. 

And I also recognize what he's saying about the downfall of "literacy" and intelligence from reading Albert J. Nock. And Nock's conception of the publishing equivalent of Gresham's Law seems to cover Kay's situation, as well as the state of publishing in the 19th century and on through the 20th.

The thing is, it isn't obvious to me that either of them are totally correct. Yes, publishing in general is dominated by the least common denominator, but aren't there actually more quality small and university presses now than in the past? Yes, few people today can read Latin and Greek, but weren't those skills simply temporarily necessary to access the knowledge passed down in those languages? I may lose some of the pleasure of reading Caesar in the original Latin, but does that detract from my understanding of the political lessons one gains from studying centuries of Roman history?

Even if it's true that nine people our of ten are more likely to gain a repetitive stress injury than any real understanding from their use of today's smart phones, tablets, and even laptops, does that mean that there isn't still a 10% that may go even further with digital media than they could have with the simple print media of the past?

And I say this with full knowledge that Nock, Kay, and the things I've written about the real consequences of the Trump candidacy are all coming from the same place.

DOG

I have to give Ostaseski credit, he saved me the trouble of making my point about how dogs are the model of the approach to life he is advocating in this chapter. I thought I would have to quote his lesson and then let in the dogs to show how they do it better, but here he is doing this for me,

p110 ...I asked Michael to name the one person it was easiest for him to love, or the person who had loved him without hesitation.

p111 He took his time.

Then he said, "My dog Jonesy." His childhood companion, he explained.

"Your dog, huh . . . Why?" I asked.

Michael replied, "Well, no matter what I did, my dog loved me. If I went away for the day or even longer, he was at the door to welcome me when I got home, tail wagging, a big doggy smile. He was full of love for me." Michael went on to say, "It didn't matter whether I was grumpy or happy-go-lucky. He never judged me. He just loved me..."

Now I would add the way dogs tend to just accept what life throws them as another indication that they are masters of the Zen concepts Ostaseski is pitching here. (A guy with a cute little dog just sat next to me here at the Market Street Peet's as I'm typing this.) 

I also have to add that my own dog very much had a life of his own. He didn't just live in his love for me. We were good, but that didn't mean he didn't have other things to do. Now I think of it, this was the sort of relationship "in love" but not of dependence on either side, that I've had trouble finding with people.

I wonder if this isn't yet another of those "one size does not fit all" situations? Also in this chapter, Ostaseski has revealed his personal experience with the wonderful world of Catholic Church child-sex abuse. He was able to recover from that experience through the deep love of Buddhist metta, just as Augustine and Day and Lamott have used Christian love to transcend their personal traumas. Maybe my dog coming up to the fence to say Hi during middle school PE (I was inside the fence, he was outside), wagging his tail, sniffing my fingers, and then going on with his day's business, is more characteristic of my personal standard of love. Not exactly something they write songs about.

To extrapolate on this notion of "the right kind of dog" to express the kind of love you need, Ostaseski has frequently mentioned the value of just silently sitting with, being with a person or even a corpse. Might a retired greyhound, the kind you can see time-lapses of on YouTube hardly moving over the course of a day, be the perfect spirit animal (misuse of term) for some traumatized people. I like the idea of a therapy dog that just sleeps near you, shares your space and time, without imposing or interfering.

65. Confusion

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30 year anniversaries

The other day it occurred to me that a bunch of important anniversaries are coming up for me, in fact I've already missed a few. I started teaching myself BASIC in the mid 1980s. I switched from my cheap Timex-Sinclair ZX81 to a first generation Macintosh in 1985. But that was just setting the table. The big anniversaries start next year.

I switched from BASIC to HyperTalk (part of HyperCard, also HERE) in 1987 and this is where it gets confusing. I was trying to remember when I started writing technical books about HyperCard and HyperTalk. I'm pretty sure it was 1987, the same year the software was released and before much was published about it -- the documentation was not very good. But I figured all I had to do was go home and look at the publication date in my copies of these books, only the date given is 1989, which can't be right. 

I started working at the Apple Multimedia Lab in 1988 and my job there ended in 1989. I only got the job as a result of the work I had done on those books. There's no way the books came out after 1988 and I would still bet on 1987 since that's when I started meeting people in Silicon Valley, also as a result of the books. 

Toryism

At the gym this morning I was thinking again about toryism and what it means. This after thinking about how reading The Magic Mountain had lead to everything from Goethe's Faust to The Brothers Karamozov, The Birth of Tragedy, and The Passion of Michel Foucault, while then looping back to Mann's Doctor Faustus. But the separate (though intertwining) examination of classes and the nafarious role of the bourgeoisie, started not with Mann but with Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End. Proust has an interest in the pre-bourgeois world he personifies in name De Guermantes, but he is merely looking on voyeristically from the peanut gallery of his solidly bourgeois family. 

Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are more in line with Ford's concerns. The Brothers Karamazov is really where the two lines of inquiry (from both The Magic Mountain and Parade's End) come together and merge. But it is curious how little Mann seems to be interested in the bourgeois aspect of all this. Perhaps because he himself was so thoroughly bourgeois -- though that was true of Foucault as well. 

The only time Mann shows us the pre-bourgeois world order is in that odd passage in Doctor Faustus when we see the very worst of it, a wealthy noble woman who constantly travels, at least in part, so that she doesn't have to witness the villages that are the source of her wealth -- where the peasants are too poor to even have candles.

Naphtha mimics some of the hyper-Christian aspects of Dostoevsky's monks, but shows us nothing of the relationship between the religious (or gentry) and the common man. I think Dostoevsky would find The Magic Mountain encouraging at first but ultimately disheartening.

What is unexpected is how what starts with Ford not being clear what he means by "Tory" leads me to The Periodic Table by Primo Levi and Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks -- thanks in part to Fernand Braudel's The Structures of Everyday Life which traces the origin and ebb and flow of European capitalism to the movement of the Jews following their expulsion from Iberia. Which also explains the less than friendly attitude toward the Jews we see in both The Brothers Karamazov and Parade's End. The Jews are the anti-Tories. Can you even separate anti-bourgeois attitudes from antisemitism? And what does that say about Marx. (Whoops. I see Karl Marx's family situation is remarkably like Marcel Proust's. He was Christian, though Christianity did not go very far back in his family. interesting.)

Next - 66. Freakish weather