337. Nimitz

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Random

It is probably a good indication of how bored I am that I was kind of excited when our street sign started to fall off and I needed to repair it. It is, of course, an awkward job. The screw that has failed is at the full extension point of our extension ladder. So working on this means balancing a little higher than I’m entirely comfortable with. Thus, I am not repairing the stripped out screw hole the way I would if it were more accessible. I just bought a replacement screw -- the old one was so rusty it is obvious it hasn’t been in contact with the wood for decades. And I bought some plastic screw inserts that you screw in to fill the hole before screwing the new screw into the plastic. This should be reasonably easy to do at the top of our ladder. I even have my drill/driver charging at home to make this even easier. I'm hoping this paragraph will also serve as a “not-suicide” note in the event things go south.

We are now in the June lull of event greening season (I'm still way behind with my publishing) so I had breakfast at the Pork Store and learned that one of my favorite waitresses is moving to Dallas in July. At this point I can’t blame anyone for leaving SF, but it is unfortunate.


Someone on the Chronicle wrote something this week pointing out that the city -- and this means both the politicians and the people -- are willing to do anything to address the housing shortage so long as it doesn’t mean building new housing. That just about sums it up. And this goes nicely with our eagerness to solve the global warming problem so long as it doesn’t mean any change in lifestyle. The obesity situation also suggests itself here.


There’s also a political/sociological aspect to this. To change the world you have to have an unreasonable expectation that change is possible. I don’t believe people are currently willing to make things better. Perhaps it is better to be young and naive (or ignorant) than to see how bad the situation really is. 


If I knew more about Berthier, I would not be surprised to learn that at the beginning, before Napoleon first crossed the Alps into Italy, Berthier was pessimistic based on the very real difficulties of conducting a war on the far side of the Alps while the Royal Navy controlled the Med. I suspect Berthier both understood the difficulties and had reasonable ideas for how to overcome them. But you need a Napoleon who thinks unreasonable things are possible before anyone will attempt the thing. And yes, I’ve been thinking about the Waterloo campaign again and I’m even more convinced that Napoleon could have pulled it off if his army had moved the way it always had when Berthier was his Chief of Staff. Hypotheticals in history are never a sure thing, but this one is relatively easy when you consider how close run the real history was. 

Biography of Nimitz

This is a book I read a long time ago and own a copy of. I’ve been thinking that it was a great introduction to the USN both leading up to and during the Pacific War. Like a one book guide to the USN in the Pacific War. But, as I said, it had been a long time since I’d read it, so I thought I should give it another read to confirm this. There’s a lot I had remembered but some details I had forgotten. I just ran into one which inspired me to write this.

P164 “In June 1936 Chet [Chester Nimitz’s only son] was graduated from the Naval Academy and, after a period of leave, went to sea in the cruiser Indianapolis...” There’s nothing unusual about this except that the Indianapolis was Spruance’s flagship for much of the time he commanded 5th Fleet and the ship was sunk in particularly unfortunate circumstances at the very end of the war.

I had remembered that it was Nimitz who built the submarine base at Pearl Harbor, and that he had been an advocate of the circular sailing formation that became standard during the war. I had forgotten that he had the idea for underway oil replenishment and was serving as an officer on the first oiler to make it work while sending USN destroyers to Britain after the USA entered the Great War. It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of both the circular formation and underway replenishment in the conduct of the Pacific War.

P167 And here’s my favorite Nimitz story -- and this one I have remembered, though I thought it was in San Diego, not Long Beach. Doesn’t matter.

I mis-remembered the story about who transported Roosevelt on a destroyer back in the 20s? It was Halsey, not Nimitz. And it was apparently someone other than Spruance who came up with the “platoon” system for the Big Blue Fleet. And speaking of both of these matters, it occurs to me that Halsey is a perfect example of the Peter Principle. Right up until he took command of 3rd Fleet, everything went perfectly for him and the USN. He just was not up to that last step. If they had only given him 7th Fleet instead, and Kinkaid 3rd Fleet. Only he would not have been happy, though maybe MacArthur could have made him see reason. That’s an odd thing to say.

336. B2B Expo +

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Medium

Was on Medium just now and I’m still amazed by how much interesting content they have. An interesting piece on Seneca -- one of many? -- and another on existentialism and nihilism. Medium is almost always a handy way to start down a philosophical path. 

Seneca is always a mixed bag for me, Stoicism makes wonderful sense if you are a Stoic, the same is true with Buddhism. But this piece focused on Seneca’s ideas on how best to spend your time, or how best to not waste it. And this is problematic for the same reason Buddhism is problematic -- deciding what constitutes “wasted time” is not easy. Much of what Seneca -- or Cicero, for that matter -- would consider well spent time I would consider questionable at best. I can’t recall the name of the Roman poet I love to quote (Horace) who is so well spoken on enjoying life while you’re young, but I like his ideas too. Seneca was keen on spending time doing things that, in the end, ironically, probably had very little value. In his death tub I wonder if he had any second thoughts. Interesting that Seneca and Marat are both famous for dying in a tub.

Here's Horace:
"Tomorrow and her works defy;
Lay hold upon the present hour,
And snatch the pleasures passing by,
To put them out of Fortune's power.
Nor love nor love's delights disdain;
Whate'er thou gettist today is gain."

B2B 2019

My goal every year at this time is to avoid working Bay2Breakers. B2B is a charming SF tradition, a combination of a footrace across the peninsula and a party. There are clever costumes. There are always nude men. There’s still a lot of drinking. Working it is a pain. For years I dodged it by working Maker Faire and then last year, when we stopped doing Maker Faire, I switched to Himalayan Fair in Berkeley. This year I was unable to get a shift for that -- I’m not the only one trying to avoid B2B -- so I signed up for a Saturday shift at the B2B Expo instead. 

I wasn’t really happy about that move, but it worked out perfectly. For starters, we’ve been getting a series of winter storms in a month that should be the start of our dry season. Saturday was wet in a major way, so much so that they canceled the Himalayan Fair. And the B2B Expo turns out to be held inside one of the enclosed piers on our waterfront. Aside from some leaks, I got to work inside out of the rain on a day of serious precipitation. 

The only bad part was that I had to work my complete shift because we couldn’t finish before everything from the Expo had been hauled away, revealing all the signs and bundles of newspapers and random trash that the vendors left behind. It was a lot like the early days of volunteering for GreenFestival. Except that I was being paid and, being a much smaller event, it wrapped up hours earlier. 


The Bank Cafe

I’m currently sitting in the just opened remodeled section of the Bank Cafe. Now the center of the space is blocked off including the stairs. This is a huge improvement over before. And by that I mean over the previous blocked off state -- but also the remodel is quite nice, with more seating in the windows, for example and a much better sound system with better music to go with it. The most noticeable change, besides the new wood floor, is that everything overhead is now bright white except for the fire sprinkler pipes and the three oversize pendant shades over the central table, all of which are dark red. The new furniture is an improvement. Both better looking and just not as worn out. There are two small “rooms” on the Kearny side, I’m sitting in one now, and it appears that they are intended to have doors for increased privacy, though the doors are not installed as yet.

The biggest improvement is that we now have windows again for the first time in months. It was pretty oppressive. The trade-off being that not as many people have been working here so the WiFi has been better.

335. CBF 2019

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Cherry Blossom Festival 2019

This past weekend [I am months out of sync. I blame Genji.] was my first greening event of the new season, Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown. We’ve worked it for years now and I have it down to a science. Last year was thrown off by my getting a bad cold and by rain, but even so it worked out. 

I tend to dominate any food area, but this event is large enough -- an entire block of Webster street with seating areas at each end and the center divide lined with vendor booths facing each side of the street -- that I do need a couple other people to help keep it under control mid-day. Unfortunately, I can’t shut down most of our eco-stations at the end of the day because I switch to riding herd on the vendors. On Saturday they got the jump on us by starting to breakdown earlier than we were anticipating. They trashed the numerous stations we put out for them, by tossing in black bags full of unsorted trash (into any of the three bins) and then filling the others with boxes that hadn’t been flattened. And they dragged more black bags to our HQ and even threw a couple on top of the compost dumpster. I caught that guy in the act and made him climb up and retrieve them before taking them back to his area -- with him in tow -- to sort the bags. 

Sunday we (Jonny and I) nailed it. We started shutting down some peripheral stations as soon as the crowd started thinning and quickly shut down all the vendor stations except the one where I was working. I steadily sorted all the black bags as they came in and processed them into a neat pile of sorted bags for Jonny to haul away. Meanwhile our other people were taking down the other stations. I ended up leaving a half hour early as there were plenty of young’uns around to do the final packing up of the truck.

And for one more event, I didn’t kill a vendor or recycling thief -- this is probably the most important thing. There was one “canner,” as the others started calling them last year, infesting the vendor area -- which is literally an island, the landscaped island in the middle of Webster street. I did lose my temper with her when I caught her attempting to tear open the bottom of one of my bags to get to a can or bottle. Dog is not strong enough in me perhaps, or perhaps I’m slipping over to the Dark Side of Dog. Anyway, something I need to work on as it isn’t going to get any better. It doesn’t help that she was always laughing and thanking me for letting her steal our CRV items. I’m thinking of having one of our Cantonese speakers teach me how to say, “I’d have you arrested if I could.” I wonder if that’s in a Cantonese guide for travelers I could find. And I need to “let it go” with the vendors as well. And the idiot event goers who put things in the wrong bins. Giving everyone the stink-eye just doesn’t help. 

Many many years ago, possibly the first year we worked this event, the event organizers took advantage of us to clear out all the junk in their offices. After we had cleaned up all the trash from the event we suddenly discovered a pile of office junk on the sidewalk -- virtually none of it anything but landfill -- that we had to haul back to the dumpsters. But this year we actually got a surprise gift in one of the dumpsters left on the street -- a bunch of wood frames covered with chicken wire. This would be just an annoying addition to the landfill except that the boss now has chickens. We hauled it back to Santa Rosa for it’s new life... no idea what it was being used for before it was dumped on us.

While I haven’t worked since October -- trying to rehab my shoulder -- Green Mary the company has managed to stay busy the entire “off” season. This means we have more of the good people from last season still working. There were only a few unfamiliar faces at CBF. So it was easier to figure who was tossing the wrong bags into the compost dumpster. (These weren’t the vendor’s black bags.) This is just one of the reasons I’m so sensitive to the social problems of seriously intellectually limited people. There’s plenty about what we do that is complicated, but when you have a dumpster full of green bags filled with food and paper, and then think your clear bag filled with recycling or landfill might belong with those green bags, I have my doubts that more training will help. 

There are still plenty of hauling and other tasks that this person could probably handle, but there’s a cost of increased supervision. It was actually worse in the old days when we did table sorting. Sorting requires a fair amount of knowledge and some judgment. Some of us still disagree about certain things, like how dirty a can or aluminum tray can be to go into recycling, or when a cup might be better in compost. I’ve worked with people who couldn’t master the basics. Where I spent too much of my time fishing plastic out of the compost. 

The main reason I’m writing all this is to remind myself how far we’ve come. CBF 2019 was a typical event for us. We were all done within two hours of the event being over. And most of that two hours was spent moving around equipment and packing the truck. In the old days, we would have just been getting busy as the event ended, and would still be at the table sorting for hours -- while still having to move around the equipment. 

The worst event we ever worked -- and the event that would later inspire our new method -- was a Pink Saturday street party where we sorted until almost dawn. Granted, this was an event that ended late and most of the crew was either ill or too stoned to stand, but still... As far as I know, I was the only one to do actual sorting this weekend (slight exaggeration) and that was only for those hours at the end of each day when I dealt with the vendors. Yes, I was roving-sorting all day, but that’s easy -- you just pull out the easy stuff and never have to mess with the worst part of any bag sort, which is the bottom of the bag. 

2nd weekend
Saturday went about the same but Sunday was different. Sunday is both the parade and the final day of the event. We have more staff and the final shutdown involves even more vendor black bags. How, exactly, is a mystery.

Because there was an abundance of staff, after lunch Jonny and I agreed I would stick with the vendors and try to get ahead of the closing-down trash dump. This seemed to be working well as I was collecting bags and even sorting trash at some vendor areas -- something I do at other events but that I haven’t done here before. I foolishly thought the ending was going to be easy. I really don’t know where all the black bags came from but, with a little help right at the end, I got through them. Both Jeffry and Ryan, who have assisted me at HSB were working so I should have tried to get one of them assigned to me sooner, but as I say, the pile of bags was a surprise. Jeffry finally did show up and helped with the last three or four bags and some other people helped haul everything to the dumpsters and close down my sorting station. I still left half an hour early.

Sunday probably was the best weather of the event. The gale force winds of the previous day had calmed down but were still cooling as it was a warm and sunny day. I didn’t manage to see any of the parade, but I’ve seen it before. 

Today is Earth Day, but we -- or at least I -- don’t have an event. Though I do have a dentist appointment. Saving the earth, one dental cleaning at a time.

334. The Endless Tale of Genji - conclusion

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The Tale of Genji

I’ve been carrying around Genji for maybe a week now; hesitating to resume. Today I finally started and was overwhelmed with all the names and connections. Hard to recall who is whose real father/son and how many of the women are married to Genji. Genji’s secret son, the emperor, has suddenly abdicated and now Murasaki it asking to become a nun. It seems like all these people could save themselves a lot of trouble and social climbing if they simply became nuns and monks at the start. Though their social lives do seem like a great deal of pointless work.

P620 New Herbs - The Rokujo Lady is quite a character. Isn’t this the second of Genji’s women she has “possessed” and nearly killed? His first wife she did kill. Again (I believe) I wonder if this was a common belief at the time or merely a literary flourish? Are there any common illnesses that could pass for possession? A high fever or consumption of some unexpected poison might do this. Or could this be an interpretation of a mental condition? HERE is something about this story. It tells the story but doesn’t answer my questions about what their basis might have been.

This is an interesting section of the book. All of Genji’s “seductions” sound more like rape to modern ears and now Genji’s best friend’s oldest son has “seduced” the pathetic (but pretty) young wife Genji has been saddled with. And Genji has found out. He’s actually being quite good about it, though he does give Kashiwagi, who knows he knows, a very subtle hard time. This has apparently undermined Kashiwagi’s health. (And the Third Princess is pregnant). So he already has a brother who is actually his son and will now have a child who is not related to him at all. He did, however, steal one of his friend’s natural daughters just to make the connections between these two families all the more complicated.

I had also forgotten that he has taken over the residence of the dead lady who is now demonically possessing Murasaki. Or trying to. At the moment she seems to be trapped in a medium. That would be an interesting part to play if this were a film and the medium was an established character (which isn’t really the case here.)

Evening Mist
Yugiri, Genji’s son, has been presented as “better” than the rest in terms of his behavior toward women but, alas, Murasaki has lead us astray. It’s true he hasn’t actually raped the Second Princess (his dead best friend’s widow) but he has ruined her reputation as well as his own. Murasaki seems to be revealing him as, if anything, worse than his father in the complications resulting from his actions.

Though it has to be recalled that his friend, Kashiwagi, also has a lot to answer for as he forced himself on, and impregnated, the Third Princess, Genji’s wife, which led to his death and the widowhood of the Second Princess. Being an Emperor’s daughter doesn’t get you much, it seems. And their father really went out of his way trying to protect them.


(From some time ago now) I’m having a really hard time getting back into Genji. I mean hard. I’ve been carrying it around but still haven’t read a page. I have to finish it. *Doesn’t go for the book*



Early Ferns
The tale of the two most annoying Japanese princesses continues. They make Fanny Price seem like a libertine. I mean, Fanny actually speaks to people! What next?

The Ivy
I’ll give the author of this part of the work credit for Kaoru’s natural perfume. When it was first mentioned I thought it was simply a way of giving a character a quality even above that of Genji, but it works into the story so often. Surprising the ignorant and making it impossible for Kaoru to conceal his presence -- or recent presence -- from those in the know. Still, he seems something of an ass compared to Genji, and I’m not exactly fond of Genji.


The Eastern Cottage
Kaoru, it would seem, will not be happy until he ruins the lives of all the Prince’s daughters. The one he fell for starved herself to death, he “married” her sister to Niou who has now married another princess. Now a third, half, sister turns up and Kaoru has carried her off just as Genji did with Murasaki. I do long for a Lydia. Actually there was a sort of Lydia but we lost track of her long ago. No one was very interested in her interest in men. It would almost seem that there would have been a kind of protection in being thought to be an adventurous woman. Now that would have been an interesting character to read.


I’ve finally found a good article about rape and marriage in The Tale of Genji (HERE ) This was really interesting. I hadn’t actually thought about Kaoru dooming the eldest sister, but it is true. But what does it mean that Kaoru, with morals that transcend (in sometimes destructive ways) those of his times, has that distinctive odor? Also, I recognize this logic of sexual responsibility from my own youth. My Ôigimi was not better pleased by my reticence. Now that’s something I didn’t expect to find in The Tale of Genji.

Still, it’s curious that the Western chaperone tradition was so much more effective -- not just the older relations but saddling the girl with younger siblings or cousins. I’m not sure even Genji would be able to get around a bunch of kids.

Thinking about this piece, I’m not so sure about some of this. Besides the rape of Oborozukiyo that the author alludes to, there are similar rapes of women who are supposed to be protected by powerful men: Genji of his father’s favorite wife and Kashiwagi of Genji’s princess. Not to mention Niou seducing Kaoru's Ukifune.

P994 Well this at least is new. Having now been literally carried off by both Kaoru and Niou, Ukifune finds herself trapped in a Country Western Song -- caught between two loves. Take that Lydia. Or should I say Elizabeth -- imagine if Elizabeth had been lovers with both Darcy and Wickham? Wait, this is really more like Bridgit Jones, now that I think of it.

P1006 Kaoru has discovered that Niou is after his daughter of the Eighth Prince so, obviously, Kaoru is regretting not moving on Niou’s wife, the other surviving daughter of the Eighth Prince. Everyone, or at least Niou and Ukifune, are rendered ill by desire or indecision. Which reminds me a bit of Mrs Bennett. Someone could write something interesting on the origin of illness in The Tale of Genji. (And of course, someone has, see HERE but this doesn’t cover the love angle. The “mother love” angle is interesting though. ) And HERE is another one, even more disappointing. The other one goes in one direction, this one doesn’t really go anywhere. 

The Drake Fly
No, Ukifune doesn’t starve herself to death like her half sister, she drowns herself in the river. It’s suggested, or at least Kaoru thinks, all this is because he was drawn back into life after first associating with the Eighth Prince because of religion. The Buddha has caused these half sisters to die to teach him a lesson. Religious thinking is so odd. There’s also the other interpretation, that all this has happened because he isn’t man enough to force himself on these women and then take care of them as wives or concubines. 

Niou, of course, was a more immediate cause of this girl’s death and he is more torn up about it. I would compare him to Willoughby and Kaoru to Brandon. That works even better as Kaoru is the “general” while Brandon is the “colonel”. The parallels between Austen and Murasaki are really amazing.

So now I’ve searched on “the tale of genji and jane austen” and found I’m not the only one to note the similarities, but many people describe Murasaki as a combination of Austen and Proust. That one doesn’t leap out at me.

The chapter ends with both butterflies sniffing other blooms, but both still rather obsessed with the 3rd daughter. It’s curious that Kaoru is now taken with the sister of both his princess wife and of Niou while Niou is still “ill” over the loss of his wife’s half-sister. Of course Kaoru is also still interested in the surviving daughter of the Eighth Prince who is also Niou’s wife. It’s a very incestuous little circle. (And I think Kaoru and Niou are thought to be related but they actually aren’t, but I could be wrong about that. At least they aren’t related through Genji, which the world thinks is the case. Actually that could be wrong too as there’s an ex-emperor who is actually Genji’s son and I’ve lost track of his offspring.)

At Writing Practice
Alas, it seems Ukifune wasn’t even able to drown herself properly. And this is the girl our two heroes are so smitten with. She has now been carted off by a bishop and some nuns. I did wonder when no body was found. We were assured the river would carry the body to the sea. Now who’s going to fall in love with her? As if she doesn’t already have too many lovers.

I was right. Someone caught a glimpse of her hair and is now besotted. I’m reminded of a line from "Ten Things I Hate About You", “What is with this chick? She have beer flavored nipples?” I don’t think the line is from Shakespeare.

The Floating Bridge of Dreams
P1090 It’s over. She was not molested a third time, I’m surprised to report, but the ending leaves everything up in the air. I thought Kaoru might join Ukifune in taking vows. I thought he and Niou might come to blows or take their respective complaints to the Empress. But nothing. Kaoru has learned that Ukifune still lives and tried to make contact with her, sending one of her young brothers he had taken in his service, but the girl still refuses to admit anything or speak to anyone. She is universally annoying. 

After a thousand and ninety pages you do expect some kind of resolution to the story. I suppose we have to suppose that the Tale reflects life itself in not having a proper conclusion. At least it is over and I never have to read it again.

333. Birthdays and death

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Birthday part 1

Today (when I wrote this, but it's been sitting for weeks) would be my father's 99th birthday. It would also have been the 20th anniversary of his easy death in his sleep. But that didn't quite happen. Instead of "going gentle into that good night" he had to struggle in hospital as the light too slowly faded.

I wish he had had the easier death, though if he had, I would not have had a chance to observe it and would have lost that very educational, if uncomfortable, experience. What I learned is that, at the end, you have very little control over events. Or at least you can't count on having much control. It will be what it will be. And as with illness in general, you just have to ride it out as best you can.

This evening I was in my neighborhood bar having a martini in my dad's honor, and caught the very end of the Duke basketball game. And I mean the very end, as I sat down they were just running out the clock so I didn't get to see a single play. As a Louisville boy, my dad must have been distressed by dying just as March Madness was getting started. Meanwhile I only watch the highlights of the Warrior's victories. I'm a pathetic sports fan.

Europa

Leaving the gym today there was a guy just outside the gym playing an acoustic version of Carlos Santana's Europa. It wasn't an electric guitar, but it was amplified, so I could still hear the song as I crossed Sutter and walked down Trinity Place. Covering Santana is dangerous, but this guy was doing a good job. He was just to my favorite part of the song, the four rising, sustained notes that take it up into the stratosphere, and I was wondering how he was going to negotiate this with a conventional guitar. Wisely, he didn't even try. Though that is a frustrating way to end the song.

Birthday part 2

The other day I was reading an interesting piece from Medium about our relationship with death -- can't find it now. The author was probably around thirty and his doctors thought he might have a serious problem, though by the end of the piece the tests has come back favorably. Still, he had been forced to confront his own mortality... to see the elephant, to reinterpret a phrase from the Great War.

Some people spend their entire lives obsessed with death, some never seem to notice death until something unexpected, like this health diagnosis, comes up later in their lives. This author spoke of the immortality of children and teens who never seem to think of death. Of course there are always the exceptions to this. And he also spoke of seeing his own death in the mirror, of being aware that it was always with him. This is an idea that I believe Phillip Pullman also played with in His Dark Materials. 

An aspect of being in what must now be considered my late sixties, is that you can't get away from death and aging. Recently I learned that my boss from thirty years ago, who was a couple years younger than me, suddenly died in his sleep. Yesterday I was watching a PBS Space Time episode I had previously missed featuring Richard Branson (both Branson and Pullman are, "Sirs") and couldn't help noticing that he was only a year older than me and that the sun had not been kind to him.

I think I look a bit younger than my age because I've done a good job of avoiding the sun because I was aware of that danger. I'm out in the sun a lot during event greening season, but the sun rarely touches my skin. I could almost be a vampire. 

But sixty-seven is sixty-seven regardless of how well you're holding up. You notice the gaps in your cohort even if you don't attend the funerals. You know that your death is with you, even if it's likely that it remains twenty years off. For my birthday I'm slowly hitting all of my favorite places to eat, but I'm not overdoing it. Mission Pie is still on my list, so there will be at least one desert, but I'm also ramping up at the gym, so things aren't getting out of hand. Thanks to being a veggie, my most decadent eating is actually quite healthy. I'll probably die of some strange interaction of brown rice and tofu.