346. Final Greening 2019, maybe

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Greening 2019

Dragon Boat Races 2019
Another year, another DBR. There are a couple reasons I enjoy this event: It’s the warm up for HSB; and it’s the last event I work with James each year. Also, while Lake Merritt isn’t as dramatic as the old Treasure island venue was, it is still pretty great. This year the weather was milder than normal -- not as hot. The crowds were supposed to be smaller though I couldn’t vouch for that. As always, I showed up each day about an hour before whoever was supposed to be crew chiefing, so James and I had everything under control before anyone else showed up. We were taken by surprise by the number of one day teams who closed down their camps Saturday night. I was expecting that to be an easy time and it was actually worse than Sunday. But as a result, I adapted the CBF approach to closing down vendors to the rowing camps which seemed to work quite well. Next year we can do a version of that on Saturday -- maybe.

The bad news was that my “new” (this season) picker was stolen (or at least I lost it) on Sunday. I’ve already bought a new one.

I’m writing this on the Thursday after, so the day before HSB starts. I’ve done about everything I can to prepare for the next three days, including hitting the gym twice. As usual, I don’t know what resources I’m going to find when I make it to Hellman Hollow tomorrow morning. There’s a critical need for strong compost containers, but these are usually in short supply. I’m promised 25 bag rolls of the standard bags used for landfill and recycling which I will believe when I have them in my hand. I’ve been working on getting those for at least two years. (All these things actually happened!)


Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival 2019
It went really well. Thanks to the 2nd amendment, this year there were new security restrictions that drastically reduced the glass bottles coming into the event. This was great for us. Hauling all those tons of glass was the single hardest thing about this event. This is an event where I ignore the big picture and focus on just my small part. I have no idea what goes on at the stables where the main dumpster array is located -- haven’t been there in years. I don’t go beyond the bounds of Hellman Hollow and the satellite dumpster array there. This is a philosophical decision... though, for once, not in the sense of “Philosophy” even though I did spend my odd free time working on an interesting idea about how Epicurean metaphysics (of all things) may have suggested an idea from quantum mechanics.

Instead I focus on the line of food vendors at the old Arrow Stage location and the backstage area for the tiny Bandstand Stage. This went so smoothly I didn’t even mind when they threw me off last night by loading out the vendors slower than they have in the past -- which meant we were stuck there until 9pm since I wanted to see the damn job completed. The other, less helpful, aspect of the security measures was that it was harder for me to get between the vendor area and the public field. Especially on Friday this was a problem, but they added a new gate on Saturday that I took advantage of on Sunday so I was able to do more of my usual contribution to maintaining the public as well as vendor areas. Which meant that I went through a satisfying number of compost bag rolls on Sunday.

The past two years, on Friday night, the paella stand was left with a huge amount of product they couldn’t sell and couldn’t keep. We had to dump 30-50 gallons of very heavy food. We’ve been struggling to come up with better ways of dealing with this problem for years up to last week. And then this year the problem just went away because they had a female crew that was really on top of things and didn’t make more than they could sell (or give away at the end of the day). I love it when other people solve your (actually their) problem for you. 

I didn’t bring my camera this year -- I was working from a smaller, clear plastic (children’s) backpack because of the security measures -- but my Sunday co-worker got a great shot of the sunset I’m trying to get a link to. 

Sunday was the hottest day for the Bay Area, but the west end of the park started getting clouds mid-afternoon which gave us some shade while also setting the stage for a lovely sunset. We so rarely get clouds during the dry season, that this was more of a delight than people in other climates might imagine. We are still a month or two away from seeing real weather.

It is now the Tuesday after HSB and I’m struck by how good I feel. I did do less roving sorting on Friday and Saturday, but still... My back is great. My shoulder is great. My feet are fine. It’s almost disappointing. Not bad for being sixty-seven. And my new (recycled) child’s clear backpack is so much more comfortable for resting higher on my back. Last year my backpack was overloaded and sitting too low and caused me the most discomfort. I’m becoming such a Pollyanna, but even mass shootings can have a personal silver lining. Maybe I should write a Seneca style letter to the parents of slain children -- not really.


La Cocina 2019
This event is a shadow of what it was in its prime, but it is still a mess at the end when all the food vendors bring out their hidden trash. But this year my boss screwed up the shift assignments so I wasn’t there to deal with all that. I left an hour early when everything was under control and caught an immediate train home -- where I got to deal with a strange new problem in the building.

While it wasn’t particularly hot on this Saturday, there was no shade and it also wasn’t cool. It seemed like I spent as much time hydrating as sorting. I was also able to do a fair amount of education, which is always a pleasant surprise. None of that on Sunday.


Fleet Week 2019
I only worked the last day of Fleet Week, which was also fine by me. The crowd is there to see an air show and they don’t care about waste diversion. I realized, after the fact, that for both these events I only brought by B game. After HSB I’m ready to call it a season -- in fact there were years when I immediately hopped a train for Seattle or Portland right after HSB. Now I would rather wait for November to head for Portland, but I’m still ready to be done. I’ve now added some notes about this so maybe I can improve next year and stay on top of the damn vendors to the end. At least I was really happy with the way I took care of and then shut down my area of the Marina Green where the public were. 

I don’t pay much attention to the air show. They’ve replaced the F22 with an F35 which was interesting. The F22 has features that are fun to see in an air show setting. With the F35, all the reasons it exists are things you can’t see at an air show. All they could do was run it most of the time on full afterburner so it was incredibly loud. That seems to have been the goal and it seems to have succeeded. I didn’t actually catch if it was an F35A or F35C, probably an A since this is usually the Air Force part of the show. It would make for a better show, and tie in better with Fleet Week, if they demonstrated the F35B instead. Maybe they could let the Air Force fly a bomber in instead.

Besides the planes, this is also a great opportunity to watch the formations of pelicans constantly circling the bay at this time of year. I don’t think they liked the planes, but it didn’t stop them from their mission.


Overall, it’s been a good event greening season. No injuries. All the parts still in working order. Several small improvements to my work gear -- new clear backpack, protective sleeves to replace my badly stained old protective shirt, shorter picker, and on Saturday I finally realized that it was my aluminum water bottle that was making my lips appear blue or black at times. I’ve gone back to plastic for my water bottle needs.

300. Dragon Boat Races 2018

Northern California International Dragon Boat Festival

I was trying to remember on Sunday how many of these I’ve worked. Three now at Lake Merritt and at least five at Treasure Island. This year things went pretty smoothly, we were even done a little early both evenings. But let’s start with getting there.

It took me three years to look up the other bus line that runs by Lake Merritt in Oakland, where the event is held now. When I did, I discovered there’s a perfectly lovely AC Transit bus that I can take from the new Transit Center in SF to a block from where we previously had dumpsters and this year parked a very big truck we loaded with sorted trash bags. It only takes twenty minutes as well. Since I usually have breakfast on Geary before work days, and the Geary bus terminates at the Transit Center, I simply jumped on the bus after breakfast, rode up the escalator to the bus deck and caught the bus to Oakland. Easier and almost certainly faster than my previous train then bus method.

I did arrive early to catch the bus, so I spent some time checking out the new bus deck. It occurred to me, also on Sunday, that it was either brave or stupid of them to have a bright white ceiling there given that all the buses are diesel powered. Virtually every surface is bright white. The buses are much cleaner now than they were before the old terminal was terminated, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see the ceiling get darker in time. 

I’ve now taken the trip from SF to the East Bay and back three times and it really does work great. The connection to the Bay Bridge is as smooth as advertised. Normally this only saves a minute or two, but I’m sure there were times when buses got stuck in street traffic going to or from the Temporary Terminal. Back to the Dragon Boat Races. 

I meant to bring my camera on Sunday to photograph the inside of the truck, but forgot. I posted some photos of the event last year. I work the racing crew areas at the far end of the event from our truck, so I only visited at the end of the day, before I walked the short block to catch my bus home. On Saturday night my favorite crew chief had a little sorting station inside of the front right and the entire left side of the truck was a wall of bags stacked a single bag deep. An amazing creation, but he is a genius at trash organization. J___, my favorite event person -- actually he doesn’t work for the event but runs a separate team of haulers so that we sort and they haul -- was also impressed with the truck organization. I was advocating moving the truck closer to the event, but J___ was concerned the bags would fall if the truck moved. Though by the end of the day the back of the truck was mostly filled with bags, so that wouldn’t have been a problem. Maybe next year.

Usually I complain about the food vendors, but the support crew people are worse. Here are the ways you can ruin the sorted order I’ve been maintaining in our eco-stations all day long: 

1. Actually the first option doesn’t ruin it, and this is what we hope people will do, just set their unsorted black bags and boxes next to the station so we can do it properly. Officially, in general and especially at some events, the vendors are supposed to sort it all themselves -- but they can’t, and if they try we are still left with the mess.

2. Toss the unsorted black bags or boxes into a random container. It’s a mystery to me how they pick the stream to ruin. This isn’t so bad if I can get to it and remove the bag before there’s a pile of additional trash on top.

3. The worst, and I happened to be walking to the station and saw the crew guy doing this, is dumping the unsorted bag into a random container. In this case, the bag was primarily compost -- in fact a huge amount of heavy fruit mostly -- but it went into the landfill. That was on Saturday so on Sunday I grabbed their cans periodically and took them out to sort at the station. And I gave them so much shit about the dumping that they were good about placing any black bags, reverently, beside the station like a sort of offering to the trash fairy (me).

When you order a large amount of coffee from someplace like Starbucks, it comes in a plastic bladder inside a cardboard box. There were hundreds of these things since every crew needed coffee apparently (the non-coffee drinker judges them all). As with everything else, they tend to toss these into a random container... though I will admit that they are usually either in recycling or landfill. The bladder is not recyclable, it belongs in landfill, but the box can go in either recycling, if dry, or compost, if wet. Which means you have to take every single one of these beasts apart. Needless to say we get very good at this task, but I enjoy educating (making fools of) the high school students on the support crews by, once a year, forcing one of them to do one of these repetitive and annoying tasks they should be doing all the time. This years victim (student) was a girl who walked up with the coffee abomination and proceeded to empty the contents on the grass. This was unusual enough that it caught my attention, so when she then walked over with that “where do I toss this” look on her face I explained that she had to take it apart and put it in two places. I got to take a short break as she discovered how the box opened,  then how you can pull the bladder out of the box. I only wish we had more time for “education.” 

I’ve already sent in some suggestions for how we can improve this new truck-based system for next year. Why the event couldn’t obtain dumpsters I don’t really understand, but that’s not my responsibility, and this system seems to be working at least as well. Maybe better.


My favorite thing about the crew zone are the camp dogs. Many people bring dogs who hang around the camps all day long. Some are tiny ones who peek out from under chairs and bags, but there are also the decent sized ones who make eye contact with me, mostly, I’ll admit, because I’m usually carrying a bag of compost. 

207. Dragon Boat Races

International Dragon Boat Races

The Lake Merritt venue for DBR is growing on me. It doesn’t seem to be as popular with dragon boat teams though, there were fewer teams this year than last year. For the first time I had time on my hands mid-day on Sunday. In the past this event has run me ragged all day, both days.

In part this was because I’ve gotten better and the other crew we work with has gotten better (they know to stay our of my way), but I think there were just fewer teams. Poor Oakland.

I do still miss the Treasure Island site. It was always fun getting there and just being out there in the middle of the bay. But Lake Merritt is at least as beautiful in its own way. It’s also fun for me because it just feels so foreign (in a Midwestern sort of way) compared with SF. I’ve learned the local bus situation now so I’m not making the long hike from BART. And just waiting for my bus on Grand at the end of the day is interesting. That stretch of Grand could not be mistaken for any area of SF. 

Of course the weather plays a part in this. We managed to dodge the worst of the heat this year (it’s been getting hotter each day since Saturday but isn’t going to peak until Wednesday). It was warm but comfortable both days this year, whereas last year it was scorching.

Here are the few photos I took on my Saturday lunch break:

This is the view from the building where they fed volunteers and staff. From left (south) to right (north):

Below there's a spectator area on the left and one of the two crew areas (with all the tents) to the right, with the modest skyline of Oakland behind.

This year I was the only one on the crew who had worked the event before -- this is one Mary, the boss, has never worked -- so I made several suggestions for how best to handle it. There were really just two issues for me: More than the usual landfill dumpster space, because most of the waste here comes from food vendors and crew teams, neither of which have any understanding of what is and isn’t allowed (lots of Styrofoam). And time at the end (and possibly assistance) sorting and taking down the stations at the end of the day. I have a nice paper-trail of emails in which Mary and I are on the same page about all this. And then comes reality.

Not only did the event not increase the landfill dumpster space, they reduced it across the board. Officially, we didn’t have a compost dumpster. Ja___, the manager for the other, hauling crew, (we also work together at Art & Soul) and I decided to ignore this and make one of the too small dumpsters compost and the other recycling. The bigger (but not big enough) dumpster was for landfill. Jo___ (the actual crew chief, who had never worked this event before so was following our lead) went along. 

End of day Saturday I was starting to fear we would get Jo___ in trouble if we ended up with a partly full compost dumpster while we ran out of room for recycling. I don’t think I’ve made it clear that in all likelihood, our compost dumpster is going to be dumped into landfill -- for reasons unclear to any of us. 

Fortunately for Jo___, when we left Sunday night the landfill dumpster was full to overflowing; (this is a problem when you’re hauling it away on a freeway. But not our problem) the recycling dumpster was also full to overflowing; and the compost/landfill dumpster was equally full to overflowing. 

There was no way we could have allocated the dumpsters provided that would have held all the waste the event generated. We at least had the satisfaction of doing our part as well as we could (see also Tibetan sand paintings) while the event was left with three messes on their hands, thanks to trying to save a few bucks on dumpster rentals. And if Waste Management (the company that owns the dumpsters) really do dump our compost into landfill, we will at least have the satisfaction of knowing they had to also deal with the nasty overflows. It couldn’t have worked out better, given the circumstances.


And then there was that other matter of my being left to sort and take down the stations at the end. Ja___, is one of my favorite people in this event greening world. We’ve worked together for years and know each other well. His crew is, at best, well-meaning but limited, but through repetition and practice we’ve learned to work well together. Closing down on Saturday went really smoothly. The dreaded black vendor/team bags came to conveniently located eco-stations where I sorted them into clear, labeled bags to go straight into the proper dumpster. We left an hour early with nothing left but a cluster of black bags a food vendor (not in my area) put out at the last moment. And Sunday was going just as smoothly... until the end. 

As I said, it was actually slow mid-afternoon. I started taking down some peripheral stations in preparation for the late rush in the center of the two crew areas. Ja___ reminded his crew to let me take the stations down. And then, out of nowhere, our third crew member, who had never worked the event before, came through and -- I think because all the crews were away at the awards ceremony -- thought everything was over and took down my key sorting stations. I was left with a couple poorly situated places to sort the black bags as they slowly appeared after the crews returned from the ceremony. 

The one thing I could never have anticipated.

In the end it worked out fine. In fact, it has occurred to me that this kind of worked to my advantage in one small way. Which leads me to a new term I’ve just coined, Greening PTSD.

When I was advocating for more landfill and some assistance at the end of this event, I had a vague sense of how nasty it had been last year closing down, but I seem to have blocked out the very worst experience. One team, I don’t know which one and I don’t want to know, used the worst trash containers I’ve ever seen in their little camp (I really don’t understand how I’ve never seen them in action, only at the end when we have to deal with them). 

I’m guessing normal people don’t have a “favorite” trash bag, but I do. Maybe three years ago now, at HSB, there was some screw up and we couldn’t get the usual trash cans, so we fell back on medium sized toters for all three waste streams. And we had these huge, heavy duty plastic liners that fit these toters. (I’m told we still have boxes of them in storage.) These bags are so strong they can stand on their own, so one person (well, me) can dump a partial load of landfill or even glass-heavy recycling from a toter into the bag without needing the usual assistance. I adore these bags and still rave about them if given half a chance.

Anyway, the team bags are just like this only instead of tough plastic they are made of opaque paper. So you can’t see what’s in them and the bottom is almost certainly pulp. And the contents are whatever anyone has tossed in over two days. They are an order of magnitude worse than the dreaded, black plastic vendor bags.

Because my co-worker had unaccountably closed down my sorting station, when these bags showed up -- mere feet from where my station had been! -- I said screw it, and had Ja___’s crew haul it all back to our dumpsters unsorted. It was only last night, while thinking over the events of the day, that it came back to me what it had been like sorting those bags last year, and how the experience had cruelly touched me in my special place. (I’m pushing the Sexual Trauma angle of PTSD here.) 

If my station had been up, I would have sorted the damn things. And while I have to admit I hope they came back to the guy who took down my stations so that he had to sort them, I really hope Jo___ just tossed them in the landfill. 

And that’s all you were eagerly waiting to learn about this year’s dragon boat races... except to report that once again this year, there was a winner in every race. 

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

I like to think my campaign to promote HSB machochism in our little greening community is having some success. Jo___ seems to be looking forward to the upcoming work-fest as much as I am. Though it’s worth recalling that this could in part be because two years ago he was in a drug induced coma in the local burn unit at this time, so working really hard in Golden Gate Park is something of a lark in comparison.

Mary is desperate for more bodies this year as HSB and Fleet Week are overlapping -- I will be sorry to miss my usual greening of Marina Green with the airshow roaring above, but that doesn’t compare with HSB. Several of Ja___’s crew are signing on, and Jo___ was trying to tempt Ja___, which would be great, but he wasn’t buying it. 

The Class of '70

Your high school graduating class is one of those things that is only important (if it's important at all) while you are still in high school. As we were closing down our base by the dumpsters last night, and talking about greening related things, it came up that our third crew member (the one who blindsided me) and I are both class of '70. It came up because 1970 was also the year of the first Earth Day, and the year I sold my car (stopped consuming gasoline) and became a vegetarian (stopped consuming meat). 

I had deflated a rant against the environment destroying ways of capitalism by pointing out that capitalism didn't force people (me) to do the things that are harming the environment. It's a little like the elderly woman in Mesa who would complain about my working on the Sabbath while I drove her to church in my taxi. 

Let's blame capitalism for giving us the things we choose to buy. The world is full of failed capitalists (or at least failed entrepreneurs, their fellow travelers, I suppose) whose dreams were dashed when people refused to buy what they wanted to sell.

At any rate, I now know the two of us are the same age. I'm as bad guessing ages as I am remembering names, so I had never wondered how old he was, so I can't say I'm surprised that we are both class of '70. (And why does it seem like that should appear on a banner whenever you say it, even to yourself?) It does make me wish we were better friends -- he lives way north of SF so mostly works up there, where I never venture. If we were better friends I could now make senior citizen jokes at his expense.

43. 94 F

Previous - 42. Apocalyse

Saturday

The first day of the Dragon Boat Races went pretty well. I was foolish to think it would be dramatically easier than in past years. Instead of the crews being in one paved area they were in two separate grassy areas divided by a road. One of the grassy areas had more trees than the other -- which would turn out to be important for the shade. But I'll get more into that when I talk about Sunday. Lake Merritt is a lovely place for boat races and this park is much nicer (and bigger) than I knew. Something else I've learned thanks to my Greening work. 

Cities and Burke & Jacobs

I was standing on the sidewalk in downtown Oakland -- in front of the new offices of the Oakland Tribune --- waiting for the shuttle to take me to the Dragon Boat Races, when I make a connection I don't recall ever making before. 

This is the old Oakland Tribune building.

Some of Oakland's finest surviving buildings were across the nearly dead street from me. Downtown Oakland, like many other traditional American downtowns, has never recovered from the economic devastation caused by the auto-age. These cities are like the failed states produced by the "Arab Spring" in that the consequences of making changes had dramatic unintended consequences. People, like Robert Moses or Le Corbusier or Mary Shelley's parents, think you can make extensive changes to complex systems -- even start over from scratch -- without considering Edmund Burke's conservatism and the need to make small changes while keeping an eye out for signs of system failure. 

Jane Jacobs was arguing for the same kind of conservatism for cities that Burke was for political states. Cities are actually trickier than states in that they are inherently dynamic and strict conservation -- preventing any change -- would be as bad as too much change. The same is true of nations of course, but cities need to change even faster if they are to thrive. 

Sunday

Day two of the Dragon Boat Races was an entirely different experience. For one thing, my sock/shoe insert strategy for working multiple days in a row failed miserably: It felt like I was getting a blister on the bottom of my left heel at the start of the day. (I have two weeks to work this out before the three days of HSB.) And then it was hotter than it had been on Saturday.

As I think I've said, San Francisco has not had a summer this year. We've had one day when it hit 80 F and for virtually all August it was below 70. On Saturday in Oakland -- always warmer than SF -- it was in the low 80s. When it felt hotter on Sunday I wrote it up to my working harder and the natural tendencies of San Franciscans to whine when it's over 80 or under 40. I worked to stay hydrated because I sweat profusely, but I didn't really think much about it aside from pausing, during a mid-afternoon hydration break, to realize I was really beat and still had four more hours (the hardest four hours) to go. Something about all this -- the heat and the park setting -- was reminding me of something but I couldn't put my finger on what it was.

My crew chief suggested I get a cold beverage at the volunteer food area and I enthusiastically took her up on this brilliant idea. (On Treasure Island the volunteer food/break area had been in a hot tent with views of nothing. Here it was on the second floor of the boat house with the best views of the event. There was even an outdoor, but under shade, terrace. It was really nice.) I grabbed my ice cold water and went to sit outside in the shade. 

This is a dragon boat on Lake Merritt but not from the festival. That is the boathouse in the background with the outdoor deck on the left. I was working in the trees to the left of what is shown here. Our dumpsters were awkwardly located near the building on the far right, which is much better than what was shown on the map we were given. Either my Chicken Little impression of the consequences of having the dumpsters so far away made them rethink their plans or the map was created by people not good with maps. I would lean toward the not-good-with-maps option.

As I said, I was working two crew areas (with bus traffic in between) and James had one of his people assigned to each area to keep things clean and to haul my sorted bags out to the road where they could be picked up (by James, usually). I had been wondering what had happened to the guy in one of these areas as my bags had started to pile up noticeably.  I found him listening to the Oakland Raiders football game up there in the shade. Smart... though not helpful. 

As a response to some boneheaded play by a Raider, he said something like, "That's the kind of thing you learn not to do in Pop Warner." And that's when the penny dropped and I realized what this day had been reminding me of. 

"Pop Warner" football is a program for pre-high school age kids. I played three years of Pop Warner football while living in the San Fernando Valley in the mid-1960s. The worst... worst part of the season was our training camp in mid-summer before the season really started. It was the equivalent of boot-camp but held in a lovely park in Encino. (This was the only occasion I had any reason to be in Encino, which was on the other end of the Valley. Why we trained there rather than at our usual facility in White Oak I don't know, but speculate it was so we didn't come to hate our regular practice field.) This was always at the hottest part of the summer with vile, mid-60's air quality. All I remember are hellish episodes of exercise and endless running with maybe a few blissful minutes collapsed in the shade under the trees.

Both Saturday and Sunday were "Spare the Air" days, and perhaps the program works because I didn't notice the smell of ozone, something I'm finely attuned to thanks to those years in the Valley. But the heat and lack of wind and the constant work (and sweating) were certainly reminiscent of those days almost 50 years ago. And then, when I got home, while drinking close to a liter of electrolyte water to keep the foot and leg cramps at bay, I learn that I hadn't been working in 80 degree heat but in an Oakland record (for the day) 94 F. That explains so much.

Our crew was one person short of what it should have been, and, because the worst trash doesn't come in until the vendors (and in this case the crew teams) breakdown at the end of the day (and the crews tend to party which delays things even more), I would have needed another half hour to get my sections shut down to my satisfaction. Some bags went directly into the landfill that I "could" have diverted. But for the most case, if I do say so myself, I totally rocked it, while also training one of James's people who sometimes also works for us. In part this went well because the crews didn't leave behind some of the most difficult trash I recall from previous DBRs, and in part because I was grabbing stuff from them throughout the day -- my plan for the year. 

In any event, when my shift was over I walked away (limped away, and I still had to walk quite a few blocks to catch a train home) not really caring about those final bags. I was at the open end of the landfill dumpster and was, I admit, tempted to look at the most recent bags to see if they were ones I had marked as sorted, but it was getting dark and I just wanted to go home, take a shower, and dig into that bottle of electrolyte water.

I almost forgot the highlight of the day. Cans and bottles of some beverages come in cardboard containers wrapped in plastic,

 The problem with this packaging for us is that the plastic goes in the landfill stream while the cardboard goes in either the recycling or compost. I've joked in the past that we should teach seminars in the occult science of removing the cardboard from the plastic (flattening cardboard boxes is the other skill vendors seem unaware of). Yesterday a high school aged rowing crew member came up to a station where I was working with one of these empty boxes and asked if it went in the recycling. I said yes, once you remove the plastic, which, and I give him credit here, he preceded to do. Only it was so pathetic. At one point I thought he was going to start crying. I even offered to finish it for him but he was determined. Though I did still have to flatten the cardboard.

I say it was the highlight of my day, because it made me laugh, but really it was sad. We are never going to win this battle to get people to properly sort their own trash.

And there was something else that made me laugh. The PA directed all the teams to their marshaling points by name. One crew was going by the team name "Boaty McBoatface."

Caption.

It's no secret I have an interest in military history and weapon systems. This leads to my viewing any number of YouTube videos and even commenting on them. Which then means I get a long stream of notifications of responses or other comments. Currently, we are more than a few days into a debate about the relative value of Sherman and Panther tanks during WW2. I'm using the popular names though most of the weirdos in these debates use the official designations -- though they may disagree even on that, and they aren't even as specific as I would like. It quickly gets very complicated. 

And the reason I'm bringing this up is because of an image I just saw of a B-24 bomber from the same period. You could argue (well, I could argue) that the B-24 and the M4, excuse me, Sherman tank have something in common. While no one would ever say they were the best bomber or tank of the period, they each played an essential role in wining the war. 

The B-24 is the ugly stablemate of the more beloved B-17. Most crews come to praise their aircraft, even if it wasn't what they would have chosen (I'm thinking of the P-47 here), but I don't recall hearing anyone say they loved the B-24. And yet it was, arguably, more important to winning the war than the B-17. It carried a heavier bomb load, but that isn't what made it so valuable in all theaters of the war. It was it's longer range that made it possible for the US and the UK to close the gap in the mid-Atlantic where German U-boats had previously been safe. And in the Pacific it could hit remote targets like Truk. 

It wasn't until almost the end of the war in Europe that the U.S. Army fielded a tank that was the equivalent (face to face) of the best German and Soviet Tanks, but the Sherman was operationally superior to everything else in almost every situation. You don't need to defeat Panthers and Tigers one-on-one to win a war. 

Just as the Japanese wasted precious resources on building super battleships they didn't really need, the Germans wasted their resources on building tanks that were a poor value for their army. I've heard that there is a Russian proverb, "Better is the enemy of good enough." The Sherman and the B-24 are perfect examples of "good enough." 

And, since we've come this far, it's worth noting that by the end of the war, the Sherman had been improved to M4A3 status which included a version with what was essentially a 105mm assault gun (in a regular turret) and the M4A3e8 (Easy Eight) version that mounted a decent anti-tank gun. The M4A3 family of vehicles may not have looked as cool as their German or Soviet equivalents, but they got the job done. 

Next - 44. Jacobs & George

42. Apocalypse

Previous - 41. Dusty

Doctor Faustus

If chapter XXX. is the key to Mann's true attitude toward the Great War, then chapter XXXIV. does the same for the rise of Hitler and WW2. It is more than a little frightening to read about "the Kridwiss sessions" at a time when Donald Trump is running for President in this suddenly shaky democracy. Substitute "Liberalism" for "Wiemar" and they could be talking about today. And the bit about how science can't defend itself in this climate was seconded just today by a new Senator in Australia, of all places, explaining to his fellow Senators how climate change is a global conspiracy.  

Bank Cafe

At the Bank Cafe for my iced tea and muffin. Since I’m here so frequently, I’m familiar with both the bank staff and the cafe (Peete’s) staff. Of course I haven’t failed to notice two young women baristas who Jane Austen’s Sir John Middleton would undoubtedly describe as “such pretty girls” (the passage I have in mind is not in the original but in the 2008 mini-series, so maybe I should credit Andrew Davies instead) and Mrs. Jennings would be trying to marry them off as quickly as possible before the bloom is off the rose. Anyway, these two are often paired behind the counter and, now, they are both obviously in college -- as they can frequently be seen not working behind the counter but at a table with books before them. 

There are a number of colleges in this neighborhood, including a new campus of the gigantic SF City College. I was sitting here, waiting to get onto the WiFi (takes forever) and speculating where they might be attending when one of the bank employees walked up to the table -- where the blonde of the two was sitting. While it’s handy for them to have such a convenient place to study where they work, the downside is that everyone recognizes them and is tempted to chat them up. The bank guy (I’m two tables over so I could hear pretty well) was intending to be helpful only to discover, to his dismay, that she was studying calculus. He actually recoiled. Another employee, passing at that moment, when she got the news, added her own, “dear God” and they both fled into the elevator. 

I’m wondering if this would also work on planes to keep people from talking to you.

Dragon Boats

Tomorrow is Day 1 of the sadly reduced and relocated Dragon Boat Races here. Officially it’s the San Francisco Dragon Boat Festival but since they’ve lost the Treasure Island location, it will actually be held at Oakland’s Lake Merritt. First we steal Oakland’s basketball team and now we hold SF events in their public parks. No wonder they have so much gun violence.

That was my second favorite event of the year (the Alice radio free concerts in GG Park would be third favorite, and those have been abandoned entirely it seems). Lake Merritt is a lovely setting so I have a feeling the new venue will only be disappointing in comparison with the beauty of TI. And it should be easier to work because it’s a much smaller event now. Though probably hotter since it’s on the lake not in the middle of the Bay.

Dwelling on Dwell

Dwell magazine, from here, has been establishing itself in SoCal for some years now. The current issue of the magazine talks about a “content series” featuring mid-century LA residential architecture from around the Case Study period -- possibly overlapping with the time Thomas Mann was living in Pacific Palisades. That made me think how Faustian -- in Goethe’s sense -- SoCal is. The magazine says, “...they took advantage of the region’s pleasant climate by creating experimental spaces that blur the lines between indoor and outdoor living.” 

SoCal is almost magical -- and not a little Mephistophelian. At the end of Faust, Faust, with Mephisto’s help, reclaims land from the sea to build his new world. In SoCal, people reclaimed a desert with water stolen from other places. The lush beauty of SoCal residential landscapes comes with a high price. The Owens Valley is the equivalent of the simple people crushed by Mephisto’s men -- to fulfill Faust’s wishes, though Faust doesn’t want to know about it, just as Angelenos don’t wish to dwell on the consequences of their lifestyle. (Note second meaning of “dwell” played with there.)

And that’s before you even get to the oil that comes from below the city to fuel the cars that ravage the surface and the air above. And naming such a Mephistophelian place “the city of angels” is so perfect. What genius wrote this reality? 

Next - 43. 94 F