186. Catching up

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Chinatown

I either live in or on the edge of Chinatown, depending on who you ask. I used to haunt the shops and buy things for my apartment and as gifts, but these days I may not shop in Chinatown from one year to the next. Today (that was), however, I was picking up a book at the Chinatown branch library which led to my shopping at the local Walgreen's which led to my visiting my favorite bakery for moon cakes (next door) which led to my strolling down Grant street looking for a new backpack.

It occurred to me weeks ago that I should get a smaller backpack just for greening events. Just big enough to hold my personal stuff, water, and bags. I had walked most of the way through Chinatown before I came upon a likely shop, and as soon as I walked it I recognized it as the place where I bought my cheap rolling suitcase. 

While I like supporting Chinatown merchants, I feel bad about buying schlock products, but I only use the suitcase every year or so (and it's holding up surprisingly well) and buying a "nice" bag for sorting trash would be silly. Anyway, I now have a $14 backpack that seems perfect. I think it's actually intended for kids, but I wanted something small and light. Before I found myself "shopping" in Chinatown, my plan had been to wait until nearer Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, but now I can break it in over the summer.

Broken people

Something that keeps returning to my mind, is the notion, from either Perkins or Day in The Road to Character, that God loves broken people. That people like Dorothy Day are doing "God's work" when they serve these people. For one thing, this is distressingly similar to the notion that wives (or women in general) are only beaten because their man loves them so much.

I'm writing about this now because an hour ago I got hungry and so walked a mere two blocks to Bun Me, my favorite Vietnamese sandwich place. In that short distance I passed such an array of destitute and demented people that it even managed to surprise me. God must really love these poor sick bastards.


But then I thought, What if this is part of the bargain (Mephistophelian, of course)? You can only get great cities with innovative tech and wonderful tofu and carrot and onion and jalapeno sandwiches at the cost of a certain percentage of broken people you have to walk around on your way to lunch. Would you say Yes to that? I would want some clarification about the exact percentage and how the broken people were selected, but I'm guessing that in the end I would say yes.

Sump pump

The pump guy showed up this morning and I worked with him to diagnose our problem. As I predicted, I'm now familiar with the new electrical panel and I even documented it (with photos) for the HOA so I will remember, and so one of the others could step in and see to it if there were a problem in the future when I was unavailable for some reason.

I offered the service guy my headlamp, since there's no longer any light back by the tank and pumps, but he stuck with his hand held flashlight. Headlamps are so much more convenient for when you're working, but people seem to be remarkably resistant to using them for some reason. A couple years ago now I had a dental hygienist who used a headlamp instead of constantly adjusting the hardwired lamp that's part of the chair. Within a couple minutes I realized how much easier this was for her, since her head was always pointed where her eyes wanted to look. I mentioned this to the next two hygienists I got, but they were unimpressed and continued to use the big lamp. 

The only reason I have the headlamp is because we used to have to sort trash a fair amount in the dark. Now that we are usually done by the time the event closes, and work mostly in the summer, I rarely need it, but am carrying it in my new backpack. But when I need a flashlight (and remember I have it) it is so much better than using a flashlight and then only having one hand to work with. I will be using it for the final sort of the day at HSB since that is several weeks past the equinox. Which reminds me,

While waiting for the pump guy, I took a closer photo of the tree in a pot outside my window. The resolution isn't that good, but you can see a couple leaves that are changing color and one that is almost ready to fall. 

Next - 187. Trump as Commodus

185. Almost a holiday

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Almost a holiday

My life is snowballing out of its rut. First I decided to skip the gym today to give my back a rest. This was yesterday. Then I got a report that the pump alarm was sounding under the building. I went down to check it out but there was nothing obvious I could do, so I’ve scheduled a service call, but not before tomorrow morning, so maybe another day off. 

Back before I finally found contractors who know what they’re doing Re: our pumps, I was very hands-on and knew the electrical board better than the plumbers did. But now there’s a new board that I haven’t had any reason to become familiar with. That will change tomorrow. I ran both pumps manually and they sound fine. I imagine I could manually pump the tank clear until the alarm stopped, but if there’s a blockage in one or both pumps -- which is what I suspect -- that might not be the best idea. Also, I like the idea of the new owners down there being inconvenienced for a day or so to impress on them the importance of not putting anything down the toilet. Tough love.

And this is the first time the pumps have been serviced since the new shear wall was added, blocking light and easy access to the tank. I’m guessing I’ll have to help them get light over there and my extension cord may not be long enough. Should be interesting.



Since this is a non-routine day, and walking helps my back, I’ve wandered all the way over to South Beach, my old coding days stomping grounds. But first some photos I took on the way,

Detail of the entrance to what was once known as the "Birdcage" building.

And again. This is actually 166 Geary Street.

Final detail.

These images show parts of the building that either date to the time of the 1906 earthquake and fire -- when the building was a structural steel cage, still under construction -- or to the years right after 1906 when it was completed. I suspect they are doing some seismic retrofitting here, so, besides the structure not usually being visible, we will never again see this part of the building as it was then. When finished it will probably more closely resemble the Jimmy Choo shop next door.

But back to my old stomping grounds. I had my old favorite veggie Reuben sandwich (made by the same woman who always made it in the mid-’90s) and now I’m sitting in the garden at Crossroads Cafe. Crossroads is part of the Delancey Street program that trains ex-cons for work in restaurants and other service areas. I had forgotten how cheap their prices are -- half what you would expect for such a nice place, and the Delancey Street Restaurant at the other end of the block is the same -- but I had also forgotten that they don’t offer WiFi. 

I think I forgot about the WiFi because it makes so little sense. A familiarity with the routine of passwords and rebooting routers is as much a part of modern cafe culture as brewing coffee.

The last time I was here in the garden it had been torn apart and was mostly just dirt and a few trees. Now it’s back to being a fairly lush place with green grass for the kiddies to chase the pigeons on and flowers and ferns in addition to the trees. All this is surrounded by a rather nice fence (stucco-looking base with ironwork above. And beyond the fence is the streetcar tracks along the Embarcadero that are now populated by both our new LRV trains and the old style streetcars intended for tourist areas. And beyond that is the bay.

(I didn't think to take a photo.)

This area, formerly railroad yards, was redeveloped in the 1980s and 1990s and the warehouse area around it has been filling in ever since. Now virtually every lot is new construction or else remodeled over the past 20 years. With only a few exceptions, it is now fully mature -- in the sense that a forest is fully mature following the successful regrowth following a fire. 

This is an interesting new view of SF. In the foreground is the  South Beach redevelopment from the 80's and early 90's. The two tallest buildings from this perspective are newish residential towers on Rincon Hill, and behind them are even newer SOMA towers including the not-quite-finished Salesforce Tower on the left.

See the tiny brick building about the middle of the block? That's were I used to work. The building just beyond it with residential looking balconies is brand new. (It rises from a warehouse structure that is preserved as a pretty ugly facade.)

This is looking the other direction. The building behind the Stop sign is even newer and sits where there was a parking lot back in the day.

This is the other side of the block I worked in. The back of my little building looked out over another parking lot where the new brick building at the far end now sits. I'll give them credit for matching the existing, brick warehouse style of the neighborhood.

Now we are a block away at the edge of South Park. What is now a very busy Blue Bottle Coffee location was the original (I believe) offices of Wired Magazine. At least that was where they were when I first visited one of their early employees who had been a co-worker of mine at the Apple Multimedia Lab.

South Park has been tarted up just in the past year. I don't know why, as it looked fine to me before. Note that the very tasteful trash can is both too small and doesn't allow for sorting into the three usual streams.

Looking back toward the former Wired building from the middle of the park.

Caffe Centro, on the left, was the hub of this neighborhood during the dotcom bubble of the 1990s. I was there a lot.

Much too small.

The new play ground on the west side of the park.

The South Park Cafe predates all the tech changes to the area. I first came to this French cafe when a friend worked at an architect's office half a block away. The cafe is one of the few things around here that seems not to have changed at all.

Very shiny architecture in the center of the photo. I'm sure the architect had a wonderfully pretentious explanation for this.

My little alley is also getting close to being fully mature in this sense. Our building is as perfect as it has ever been, and the back four units have been remodeled over the past decade. The building across the alley that had been the neighborhood eyesore has been completely remodeled. The building next to it was gutted (inside and out) down to the studs and is in the process (over a year and hardly moving from what I can tell) of being renovated and turned into condos -- or so I’ve heard. The larger building next door to us is in the midst of a renovation process that started before it sold and has accelerated ever since. They are almost finished painting the outside but may still be remodeling units inside. And now the even larger building on the other corner is undergoing weatherproofing and repainting. Most of the units there were renovated under the previous owner.

The only building that hasn’t undergone expensive upgrades is the one directly across from us. This is where the previous tenant died after spending most of one winter smoking in the rain while coughing up his lungs. Some new tenants moved in but I haven’t seen them recently and for all I know the building could be vacant. (The main entrance of all these buildings is on other, bigger, streets. We are the only building with the main door on the alley.) 

I have no idea how much all this work on the other buildings has cost -- too much, I’d guess, for the one that has been in stasis for about a year -- but I know our seismic work, which you can’t even see, cost $100k. All this to point out how expensive it is just to keep modest sized buildings habitable in SF. People may complain about the high rents and high land values (and I think the city should take steps to reverse this trend) yet it is this increase in value that makes all this work viable. In Detroit, or even Chicago, buildings are left to rot because the upkeep is more than they are worth. Here, $2,700 per month rent for a small one bedroom apartment justifies all kinds of cosmetic, but also structural, improvements.

In praise of YouTube

Usually what I learn about on YouTube has to do with science or some field covered by a CrashCourse, but the other day I learned something about chickens. There’s a video of an outdoor cat in the process of stalking a mouse when a chicken swoops in, nabs the mouse, and shakes and kills it the way a dog would. I did not know this about chickens. But I bet Proust's Françoise did.

Next - 186. Catching up

184. Our electric future

Previous - 183. Seeing the end

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Last time on Bloggity-blog...

Last time I talked about getting a glimpse or foreshadowing of the end of life or my event season. This morning I realized there is another way this is true just now. Below is a picture of the poor tree that grows in a pot in our alley. 

Last year it suffered all kinds of injury and indignity as it was pushed about the alley by various workmen before finally coming to rest outside my alley window. And then someone knocked off yet another limb for no reason I'm aware of.

But here it is, fully leafed out on its few remaining limbs, and doing surprisingly well. Except that I happen to know that it is already preparing for winter. It's going through the process of pulling the things it still wants out of its leaves and putting the waste it doesn't want into those leaves. Soon the leaves will all drop -- over a surprisingly short period of days -- and it will be bare for the winter. 

This is especially odd here as the tree's peak growing season -- when the days are longest and the sun is highest in the sky -- doesn't mesh with our warm weather, which will start in maybe a month, at which point the tree will probably be bare. Maybe if it was a species of tree that was native to this area it would have a cycle more consistent with our weather? I don't know. If it was in the ground instead of this pot, I'm pretty sure it would keep its leaves longer, so the fact that it is already starting to hibernate wouldn't be obvious. But it does serve to remind me that natural processes are going on all around us that we are unaware of. That appearances can be deceiving.

My Name Is...

I'm finished reading but not finished thinking about this novel. It's the story of a daughter, a wife, a mother, and a writer. Aside from it being fiction, it is remarkably similar to the memoirist parts of Salie Tisdale's collection of essays. 

It would be nice to have a book that mashed together the stories of families where the husband left the wife, the wife left the husband, and neither left but someone probably should have. The children would all be resentful of different things. Maybe one of them would be aware that the adults were all just doing the best they could. But this probably wouldn't be the kid who was the biggest screw-up his or herself.

And we never do get the hinted nasty bits of the story. I don't exactly mind that, except that it means we can't judge the protagonist's actions. If we knew we would be in a position to say she acted correctly or incorrectly -- from our perspective -- but as it is we have to give her the benefit of the doubt. Not that that's a bad thing, but it does seem a little unfair. Or a little too uncritical.

Cafe calculus

Or, "Life is hard, Yo." I'm at the Peet's on Market because I got off BART at Powell and because it's the weekend  (so the Bank Cafe isn't open). Besides having to pay an extra dollar for my iced tea here, I'm also subjected to the hits from the 1960s. At the Bank Cafe, the music is better (usually) but the WiFi (while better than it was) still sucks. The Specialty Cafe (also, sort-of Peet's) has better seating, but costs a little more and has WiFi that is usually in the middle, plus they are also closed on the weekend and even during the week they close early (5 pm, I think). There's a Starbucks that has excellent WiFi and similar prices, but I'm not fond of Starbucks and they also have very limited seating. 

Yesterday I went to Caffe Grecco in North Beach because I wanted a change of pace and because I wanted to thoroughly browse the new hardware store there -- I suddenly realized that it was about the same distance as the one I usually go to (same company) but there is less of a change in elevation going to this new one. It does seem to be well stocked and not as busy.

An optimistic future

Recently I read a piece that spun several current trends in a very positive direction. The author saw electric, self-driving cars leading to a world with relatively few, long-lasting cars serving the majority of people. This would reduce drastically the need for oil (at least 30%) which would lead to a collapse of that industry and an end to both drilling and pollution (including greenhouse gases). Parked cars would become a thing of the past, freeing space for people and bicycles and for housing where there are parking lots and garages today. 

The author thought these changes would have job creation effects that would balance the obvious job loses of people who currently drive or work in the oil and automobile industries. I didn't buy that, so I didn't bother to remember the job creation details. I will give the scheme credit for preserving the value of suburban real estate, since it preserves automobiles in a new form. Since we appear to be too stupid now to build neighborhoods that work, I would rather see a return to public transit and walking, but I do think the autonomous electric car dream is more realistic. Even I would give in and buy a smartphone so I could access these vehicles when the prices were reduced to reflect the lack of a driver. 

Next - 185. Almost a holiday

183. Seeing the end

Previous - 182. Of this and that

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My Name Is...

I'm liking the meditative pacing of this novel. There's not much of a plot so far. The protagonist is stuck in the hospital and her mother, who she never sees, has come to stay with her. They converse and then there are sections either about her childhood or about her life after she left home, either before or after the hospital stay. Meanwhile here in SF the pavement is damp.

We were warned by the meteorologists that the pavement might get damp today, and now it's happened. (Bystander to news person: "This is such a quiet and dry neighborhood, this sort of thing never happens around here. Since all those high-tech hipsters started moving in everything has been going down hill. I'd move if I could").

I'd heard that Arizona, or at least Tucson, was having a particularly vigorous monsoon, and it's gotten so vigorous that it has been drenching SoCal and now dampening our pavements. Is nothing sacred? To add injury to insult, there's not enough moisture to wash the sidewalks clean, but the air is humid enough to bring out the smell of urine and shit. The weather is supposed to return to normal by Sunday.

Strout got me again. Right after saying there was no plot, I hit her describing a traumatic incident from their childhood -- mostly involving her dad and her brother, but of course the remainder of the family also. The hints about her father are coming so slowly that I thought, after the PTSD from an incident in WW2, that she was done. But no.

And there was just an incident where we saw how rude it could be to psychoanalyze someone based on their reaction to something, so now we see her father's nasty reaction to catching his son wearing women's clothes and how can we not think, "Hmmm?" Could he really be both closeted and suffering from PTSD? It does make a sort of sense.

Work

For some reason, there is always a slow work patch here in August. It should only be this weekend that I'm not working, but I'm skipping the big Outside Lands concert again this year, too, which will make it two weekends in a row. There's a slight chance I will pick-up a Monday shift right after the concert, but I really don't like back-end, table sorting. Especially eight straight hours of it. This is what I work hard at the front-end to avoid, but we don't do the front-end for OL.

I think the real reason I'm even considering taking the Monday shift is that I suddenly realized there are only two months left of the 2017 event season. And since Moscone Center (our convention center) is currently torn apart in the latest expansion effort, the big conventions that usually follow the event season will not be happening here this year. 2017 is becoming rather like a book when you notice you are in the second to last signature of the binding. 

There are the two big events I look forward to (train for) all year -- the Dragon Boat Races and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass -- and a couple other events that can be fun or a pain -- the big one being Art & Soul in Oakland in two weeks. Beyond that, some other things will probably appear on the schedule, maybe even after HSB, but the end is almost in sight.


A couple days ago I heard people upstairs and went up to investigate, it was my neighbor and his son trying to decide what to do with the floor of the unit, as they try to rent the place out. The son is about my age and the father in his early 80s with some heart problems, but otherwise he and his wife are still going strong. But the son is supposed to be taking over the business of the condo rental. They are both very much alike, so it seems to be going pretty smoothly, but it's odd to see that particular father making way for his son. He too seems to have a sense of the end coming into view.

Why there was a gap

I can't believe that it's taken me so long to think of this, but since partial conditioning is more effective than constant (?) conditioning, it really makes sense for me to not post every single day -- which I've tried to do when blogging. So this may become the new normal.

Next - 184. Our electric future

182. Of this and that

Previous - 181. Flower Piano

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Money

I believe I've already written about my curiosity as to where money for something like a government military acquisition -- like a ship -- goes. In the same vein I wonder what the wealth of the average billionaire is actually doing. When people talk against the One Percent the assumption seems to be that their wealth is in gold and jewels stashed under their beds. In reality, I imagine their wealth -- when it isn't tied down in the stock of a company they are associated with, or in land -- is actively doing the kinds of things one expects capital to do. Perhaps we would want to redirect it to different sectors of the economy, or to different charities, or to different politicians, but that capital is still out there actively creating jobs of one sort or another. (Now I'm pretty sure I have written about this before.) Even the money they spend on themselves goes from pocket to pocket.

People really should be protesting me. Aside from supporting (in a very modest way) a number of modest cafes and restaurants, I spend almost nothing in ways that put dollars in the pockets of clerks or plant workers or artisans or even repair-people.

As I imagine Ford Madox Ford's good Tory landowner, one of his primary roles is to be the chief consumer of his neighborhood. Consuming the fruits of his tenants labor (or labour). Of course this is a role that Christian Tiejens shirked. Voltaire may have been much better in this regard. Also Vronsky. And do we want to be dependent on the occasional good seigneur? Especially when we know that the average landlord will see the benefit of clearing the land or in-closing the commons -- just as the average Clinton and Obama supporting landlord in SF sees the benefit of asking for the maximum rent the market will bear.

It just occurred to me that Sir Walter Eliot in Jane Austen's Persuasion could be the poster child for the economic quality I'm talking about. His inability to "retrench" would have been greatly beneficial to the common people around Kellynch Hall. We see him as vain and uncaring of others -- even when he is played by Tony Head (BtVS's Rupert Giles) -- but I imagine that, when they left for Bath, his purse was more missed in the neighborhood than was Anne's wisdom and good sense.

And now I'm wondering if any of the Annales School historians has studied the economic effect of the concentration of nobility in Versailles under Louis XIV? I'm guessing it was a sad time for the rest of France.

"Ballet of the good city sidewalk," with coughing 

This morning I had a very early doctor's appointment downtown -- so equal distance between my gym and the Bank Cafe (where I'm writing this. I even got one of the nice chairs in the window I'm so early). I woke an hour early and was walking to my appointment at the time when I usually wake up. My point being that I was seeing Bush Street at an unusual hour. 

This is the stretch of Bush I've written about before because it has so many French connections and because it is the haunt of the smoking gnome. I was only two hours earlier than normal, but the street felt so different I was reminded of Jane Jacobs's "ballet of the good city sidewalk" from The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

If I gave that woman a copy of the book, do you think I could get her to write her own description of the changes on Bush over the course of a day? No. But I love the idea. As perfect as Jacobs's Greenwich Village street was, this stretch of Bush may be even better. There are a number of small hotels and restaurants catering to tourists. There's the Tunnel Top bar and that nest of commerce by the Stockton tunnel that I've already written about -- including The Green Door Massage parlor

But there are also apartment buildings, the big parking garage, the church, the consulate, and the Goethe Institute. And of course the ebb and flow of commuter foot traffic that I've also written about before. 

Walking here to the Bank Cafe from the doctor's was like swimming against a salmon migration as I neared Market and the swarm of commuters exiting the train station there around 9am. And while 7am is early for me now, I know from my taxi days that the Financial District (and now the downtown part of SOMA as well) wakes up at 4:30am. Somewhere in there I'm sure there's a shift change with commuters (coffee cups in hand) starting to trickle in by car, bike, bus, train, and ferry while the "homeless" start to breakdown (some) of their camps and move into their begging positions.

YouTube

One of my favorite YouTube science presenters (?) is in the midst of a wonderful series of videos about Quantum Field Theory. (Here and Here and here and here .) I was promised a second video focused on Richard Feynman but there has been an annoying delay. (Here.)

My favorite Medium writer about science just did a wonderful piece on what's been learned about the universe (astrophysics, here) in the past hundred years. But it's almost like they are teasing me because what I want from both of these sources is more about Quantum Chromodynamics. 

It would seem to be the logical next step for the YouTube person, and perhaps the third step ahead for the Medium person. But I don't know if they see it the same way.

New book

Our latest book club title is My Name Is Lucy Barton. A novel by Elizabeth Strout. I'm enjoying it but there's nothing to write about so far. It's a refreshing change of pace, to be honest.

So, having said that I read a few more sections... The book, at least so far, is about how we are shaped by our childhoods; by how our parents managed their parental duties along with everything else in their lives. 

It's easiest to see this when the parents did an obviously bad job, leaving their kids with emotional injuries they often never recover from. But it's always worth being reminded that the parents who did a better job are also responsible for how their children turned out. At least to some extent. 

I'd say my parents did a great job up until I was about eight, and that may be the most character forming period. My mother always said I was born "this way" -- calm and reserved, I guess. Self-sufficient. Yet would I have stayed this way if I hadn't been so supported in those early years? No way to know.

Now, I remember the way my parents argued constantly, from the time I was eight or nine until I left home after high school, the way I remember that I had swine or avian flu several times in the 1950s and 1960s (that I hope will continue to give me some immunity in the future). I recall it but I don't dwell on it or remember the day to day anxiety unless I really think about it (like now.) The immunity I got from that experience has also stayed with me and shaped me in social ways. It's the main reason I can check off the "Single, never been married" option on some forms.

One of my online friends has had a life, but especially a childhood, that no one would believe if you recorded it in the form of a novel. She's more damaged but also more resilient than I am. 

Next - 183. Seeing the end

181. Flower Piano

Previous - 180. Kite Festival 2017

Trending towards Braudel

Today (that was) I worked Flower Piano at the Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park (see HERE). It was a lovely event on a near perfect day, but there was very little for me to do. On what I consider a "good" day I fill around 30 bags of compost but today I only pulled two.

But that gave me time to think. I had been thinking about the origin of the bourgeois world order so was trying to work out a chronology with the Crusades, the Black Death, the Renaissance, and the Reformation. (Did you know that one of the most recent proposed causes for the Little Ice Age is reforestation following the Black Death in Europe and then again following the mass die-off in the Americas after 1492?) Then it occurred to me that I could fall back on Fernand Braudel and start with what he considered the origin of modern capitalism in the market fairs. (I have, once again, been unable to find the passage I'm recalling in Civilization & Capitalism. I don't even know which volume it should be in. Four months later: On a hunch I consulted not Braudel but A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne and found the passage I remembered. It is around page 209 in the Book about The Formation of the Bourgeoisie.) 

This is interesting because it reasserts the Jewish connection. (And thinking about that made me aware that I can't recall why the Jews were able to give credit when the other "People of the Book" couldn't. Also, it seems like futures could have been a brilliant work around for credit. Braudel starts (in my recollection, which I can't substantiate) with farmers needing credit to plant their crops, but buying the crop in advance wouldn't seem to involve credit -- though maybe futures would have been just as bad in some way I will never understand.)

It is interesting that capitalism as we know it today had its start in helping farmers plant their crops. It all seems so innocent.

Before I started my shift I had breakfast at the Pork Store again. I ended up sitting at the counter next to a person who must have decided he was a sullen, disheveled woman trapped in a man's body and decided to do something about it. My hair is longer than hers and, I believe, better looking. *Flips hair dismissively*

I so lucked out working Saturday in GG Park, yesterday and today have been typical summer days when the fog hasn't burned off anywhere near as far west as the park. Did I even write about the clouds that day? They were so lovely. We hardly ever see clouds in the summer, so there was the novelty, but beyond that they were just lovely little clouds. Not as high as cirrus but less substantial than the usual cumulus. Maybe stratocumulus? Undoubtedly related to some storm system out in the Pacific, but I didn't hear about an actual hurricane or anything spectacular. Just enough of a front to push aside the marine layer for a day or so.

Rattlesnakes & Pigeons

In a recent SciShow YouTube video (HERE) I learned that, thanks to Rattlesnake Roundups, today's rattlesnake is less likely to have a rattle. I'm imagining some conservative Arizona rancher reacting to this consequence of natural selection with, "Well damn, that Darwin fella might have been on to something after all." But that's just crazy talk.

Anyway, this morning I was waiting for a BART train at Powell Street Station -- so three floors underground with MuniMetro trains directly above and the shared mezzanine above that. There were at least three pigeons working the platforms down there, as they often do, and with rattle-less rattlesnakes in mind, I wondered if they might come to forsake the surface -- with all its hawks and unpredictable cars -- for a subterranean life. I know they can go from station to station riding inside trains because I've seen them do it. And since BART can't stop people eating on the platforms or on the trains, there will always be something for them to eat. Will we see a generation of pigeons who become traumatized by a space larger than a train station? (I doubt it.)

Climate

Yesterday it was over 100F in Portland, OR -- I heard on the radio as I nestled under my extra layer of comforter this morning. Also yesterday, I read the local fire department is planning a floating station on the Embarcadero where they dock their fireboats. These two bits of information go together, Because Global Warming. 

I've seen interesting floating building projects from the Netherlands (of course) and even Britain, but this is the first local project I've heard of besides houseboats. Which I don't understand. We are in the process of "redeveloping" Treasure Island (TI) -- a man-made island in the middle of the bay created for the 1939 World's Fair and intended as a location for an airport, but then taken over by the US Navy for WW2 and only recently returned to the City. TI could combine features of Venice with the best of today's floating building technology, but instead they seem determined to go with generic development that could be anywhere. Perhaps the fire station idea will at least get people thinking about the option of having buildings rise with rising sea level rather than attempting to keep the sea always at bay. (ha)

Dwell

Without a book to read, I'm finally catching up with the latest Dwell magazine. What I like about Dwell is that so many of the houses are for the architects themselves. They may be a little stark, but they are usually interesting. I did have to laugh just now when I read about the decision of an architect couple to boldly paint the interior of their Brooklyn townhouse... white. Really thinking outside the box there. 

The last house I read about is from around here, but on the other side of the Oakland Hills. It is by an architect but the clients merely gave him freedom and a large budget to work with. I have to say I really like the house, it's mostly Cor-ten steel and glass on the outside and bare wood inside, the mezzanine layout is inspired by Le Corbusier's Unité -- which was referenced but not shown. (Are all Dwell readers familiar with architecture to this extent or is the magazine satisfied to leave many of their readers in the dark? Those architecture survey classes I took in college, in retrospect, could have been titled, "Preparation For Consuming Dwell and The Like.")

Not only is this house in Orinda stunning to look at, it is "sustainable" in all the check list ways: Solar panels; Rainwater catchment for everything but potable needs; Over insulated (and, while they don't mention it, I'm sure it's seismically sound.) Of course describing this as sustainable makes me gag given that it is also a huge house for four people in a location that requires automobile use for everything.

But then I look at Tiny House videos and think I could do better with less.

Next - 182. Of this and that

180. Kite Festival 2017

Previous - 179. What's wrong with TRTC?

During my break I've been writing things that are more like normal blog posts but not posting them, thinking I would wait until I have material for daily posts for some time. But I'm now rethinking that.

I think I will try giving priority to the moment, and then fill in with other things when I need to. Of course now I need to catch up with some of the posts that were "of the moment" but no longer are. One good reason for this new, more spontaneous (less guarded and considered), approach is that it makes me uncomfortable. Chances are I'll get back into a book and revert to my old ways. But for now...

Summer

Northern California is having a bit of a heat wave at the moment which pulls in the fog making San Francisco a little colder than normal. This morning, before I got up, I was thinking that it is the end of July and I'm still under my winter comforter and wearing my winter pj bottoms (though not top, for a week or so). Even I look forward to those rare evenings when you can dine outside and not either freeze or get blown away by the wind. Those evenings will come in the next month or three, but this weather is the reason I would be reluctant to move away, even to Portland.

Organ recital

Also this week I've been thinking that, having turned 65 and become officially a "senior", it feels like my warranty has expired. My problems are all just continuations of things I've had to deal with for years (in several cases since high school), but they all decided to spike at the same time. The ulnar nerve thing is newish -- and it's one of those annoying health issues where it's hard to determine to what extent it's the nerve in the arm, hand, or the neck. 

My family (all my cousins, as near as I can tell) are blessed with the ability to generate lumps under the skin on a variety of parts of the body, the way oysters generate pearls. Three years ago I had one we were "keeping an eye on" suddenly go bad and get infected Thanksgiving week, when it was impossible to get an appointment with a doctor. To avoid that happening again, I decided to be proactive and have the latest -- in the same awkward location -- seen to yesterday. From past experience, I assumed Step One would be doing a biopsy followed by the minor surgery next week. If I had known she was just going to cut/push it out I would have waited until after this weekend, since I'm working Berkeley's Kite Festival on Sunday.

Both of my back issues should be much better by Sunday, and my ulnar doesn't bother me when I work -- same with my eye problem -- so none of this should really effect my life. 

Berkeley Kite Festival

And now we are really up-to-date. Yesterday was the Kite Festival and everything went just as I had hoped. No problem with my back, and the crew chief for both days was so happy to have me working on Sunday. I came up with a new way of interacting with the Berkeley garbage crew, who do the hauling, which I think we can copy in the future. We were even finished a little early, with everything sorted before the garbage trucks made their final pass. 

I have no idea why my back went "out-ish" last Tuesday, I wasn't doing anything, but as I did my usual thing Sunday -- including leaning down into containers to sort out trash and picking up and then dumping heavy cans of compost -- it struck me again how odd it is that this never bothers my back. There were a few cans I waited for help with this week that I would normally have attempted, but at the end of the day my back was fine. Maybe even better than when I started. I have my x-rays, so I know (approximately) what my vertebra looks like, but I don't understand why one thing trashes it while something else doesn't. I'm pretty sure if a back "expert" were to watch me work he would constantly be saying, "For God's sake don't do that." Yet, from the beginning it has always been something stupid like getting up out of a chair that causes me problems. Of course I do wear a lifting belt when I work -- against recommendations.

This park (Caesar Chavez) could have been created with kite flying in mind, and yesterday the weather and wind were just about perfect. We're not seeing the sun that much in SF, but the story is different even a few miles away across the bay.

The only drag was the new bus situation. Perhaps AC Transit got word of my proposed motto for Golden Gate Transit ("It's the Least that We Can Do") and wanted in on the action. Besides replacing the 51B with the 81 line, they've removed the two inbound stops that were convenient for me, so that I now have to walk all the way to the seawall -- as close to SF as you can get without getting wet -- before I can catch a bus home. I'm guessing AC Transit is trying to knock down the ridership numbers from the Marina even further so they can stop service entirely. That would probably be the end of my working events out there, so I hope I'm wrong. 

Whether through planning or just luck, I did have great connections home (after waiting a quarter hour for the driver to take his break). The bus took me to Ashby BART and I arrived on the platform a minute before the train I wanted arrived -- I was shocked as I normally have to wait 20 minutes for this train. And when I transferred to the SF bound train at the next station, that train was already waiting with doors open. 

Next - 181. Flower Piano