219. Start of Genji

Link to Table of Contents

The Old Mint

On Friday (already two weeks ago. I'm so far behind) I worked an event at the Old Mint called Undiscovered 2. I only signed up at the last moment because we were short people. This was an evening event partly in the little plaza on two sides of the Old Mint and partly inside. I worked the plaza, which was lined with food trucks and food vendor tents. It was the usual.

After the plaza was shut down, I went inside briefly to help in there. This was the first time I'd been in the building, which is one of the few survivors from the 1906 quake and fire. As I recall the story, a few people stayed behind and threw buckets of water on the heavy wood shutters to keep them from bursting into flame.

The building is amazingly solid -- it was the U.S. Mint, after all, and no doubt full of gold and silver much of the time. There's an open courtyard in the middle at the first floor above ground level. This was the main "venue" for the event, though they were also using many other rooms on that floor. I would love to explore the place. 

We finished sweeping the plaza to the north of the building just before 1am and I left. I arrived at the foot of Powell street just in time to see the final cable car of the day leave. At that time of night it makes surprisingly good time up Powell. Past my house.

Caffe Puccini

For a change I am at Caffe Greco in North Beach, sitting out on the Columbus sidewalk. To my surprise, Caffe Puccini is no more. The place is gutted. I'm sitting on the sidewalk closest to Puccini and kept trying to identify the unpleasant smell, which I was thinking was a demolition smell. Finally realized it is a fire smell. A quick search informs me that it was gutted by a fire on the 10th of this month. I'm surprised I didn't hear about that. Nothing indicates that they will be returning. The restaurant on the other side of them is closed with signs saying they will re-open. This assurance turns out to be a lie half the time anyway.

I just went through the hundreds of photos on Yelp and found a good shot of the amazing jukebox that was in Caffe Puccini,

SMART

I'm on the SMART train sitting at the new San Rafael terminus. It has functioning WiFi! A very comfortable little commuter train with a perfunctory little snack bar. 

I think I will be seeing some of the fire damage above Santa Rosa, but that's based on my interpretation of a photo I saw in the paper. In any event, I figured this would be a clever way to get out of the heat (this, too, is over a week old) during this little heat wave. Though, judging by yesterday, I will somehow end up hiking around Santa Rosa where it's even hotter than in SF.


This train is remarkably smooth.


This train is actually getting full. I'm seriously surprised. 


We're in Novato now. It looks very dry and there's a vulture circling... still California summer. We are at the edge of what should be wetland. Or what will probably be part of San Pablo Bay in 50 years -- they don't seem to have built up the track in anticipation of sea-level rise.


Just passed through the burned area between Santa Rosa and the airport. I expected more of the countryside to be burned but it seems to have been primarily the subdivisions that burned. Which supports my suspicion that building codes are a large part of the problem. Also, I haven't been able to regain WiFi since I shut my laptop around Petaluma. I think this is a Chrome problem, but I only run into it with certain routers. It's nice to see they are using the old stations at Petaluma and Santa Rosa (among other places) but to call those stations "downtown" is misleading. "Central" would be a better adjective. If I could get to Google Map I would check to see how far the station is from what I think of as downtown Petaluma. I have no idea about Santa Rosa. They probably just have an older mall. "When I was a boy you could ride your horse to Indian Genocide Mall and tie him up in the food court where there was a water trough and the Cinnebon guy kept some hay on hand. You could tie him up, do some shopping, have a snack, molest some girls, and come back and your horse would still be where you left him."

Just passed through the fire area again and the trees did survive better than the houses. Were their roofing materials soaked in napalm?

The Tale of Genji

by Murasaki Shikibu - Vintage, 1990 (the book itself was published "before 1021" according to Wiki)

I was trying to think what the circumstances of Genji's mother in the court of the Emperor reminded me of, and finally realized it was the story of Auntie Lindo from The Joy Luck Club. Her mother had also been the too-popular, youngest woman (concubine?) and so hated and plotted against by the older wives and concubines. (And this is also why I believe it is older wives, and not men, behind Islamic traditions of keeping young women in bags.)

Viewed this way, Jane Austen's novels are like chamber pieces with only a small group of players (single women and a variety of mothers, mostly), where literature from polygamous traditions are like symphonies with all the various additional sections of extra wives and concubines and their respective families. Since I tend to prefer smaller groups of musicians to full symphonies, it isn't surprising, I guess, that I'm not sure I will have the patience for Genji. Not because of its length but because of its base political nature. Unless there's an Auntie Lindo in here somewhere.