Opera In the Park
I thought I had written about this but apparently not here. This is an event I work every year so I have it down, but I don't much care for it, even though it is in Golden Gate Park. And the weather was perfect this year. The problem is the music. I;m not a fan of opera. But this year there was a change for the better as one of the opera singers sang a Queen cover: Someone To Love. That was pretty great and the crowd loved it. Maybe, moving forward, we can have more Queen and less opera. I can dream.
This Never Happened
I worked a rave! It was pretty damn dull. Frank Ozawa Plaza in the heart of Oakland was fenced off for this afternoon into evening, outdoor event. It was supposed to be the last day of our little heat wave, and in fact the heat wave was over in SF, but it was still sunny and warm in Oakland.
This is part of the “venue” for Art and Soul, but the audience was much whiter. Still diverse, but primarily white. The music was monotonous -- if you’re not on drugs, anyway -- and I didn’t have a good angle on the light-show projected on City Hall. What I could see were the people dressed to attract. There were enough women who looked unbelievably good to make up for the other shortcomings of the event.
And the main shortcoming from my perspective was that there was nothing to do for the bulk of the time. Nobody was generating a lot of trash. I grabbed the food area, but even there the pickings were slim. And then the event went about ten minutes long, which doesn’t sound like much, but I was supposed to get off at 9pm and they played until 8:55pm leaving me little time to consolidate and collect the bags in my area. I cheated by pulling in early the compost boxes at two stations that also had a regular Oakland can for general trash. I left the recycling in place but did a final sort on the compost and also pulled the sorted recycling so that all my work during the day was preserved. This took a bit longer than five minutes, but, as I said, I had not been working hard all day.
(They just posted a request for three people to help clean up the area the day after. I guess it was a mess after I left.)
The other bad aspect of the timing was that I had to catch the train home with the rave mob. To my surprise, I managed to even get a seat. And when I arrived in SF I remembered that the cable car system is down for the weekend so I caught a bus up the hill. Heaven after working on my feet for eight hours.
One good thing about rave music, no earworms. I still have a song from Opera in the Park I’m working to extract from my ear -- and no, it’s not opera. Or Queen.
Rockridge Out & About
It’s now Monday and they are still trying to pull in people to help cleanup the rave mess. I seriously thought about it but already had a chiro appointment and it sounds really tedious and back breaking work. The main reason I’d like to go is to see how we could do this better in the future. Maybe something in between a street sweeper and a wet/dry vac. I’m sure this exists. But on to Rockridge...
I’ve worked this before and it is dead easy. It’s a street festival in one of Oakland’s nicest neighborhoods. The biggest problem is that the people with all their kids and dogs just move so slowly it’s hard for us to get through. Once you realize there’s no real rush anyway -- none of the stations were overwhelmed and I added an extra compost to the busiest station in my area -- you can calm down and just wait people out.
We even wrapped up an hour early. And since the train station is right above the event, it’s dead easy to get to and to get home from. This was one Oakland event where we follow Oakland composting rules so all the expensive compostable cold drink cups had to go to landfill. This confuses everyone (and is stupid) but we’re not as outraged as you might expect since those bioplastic cups, even if you have a compost facility that can process them, result in shit “compost.” And all the hundreds or thousands of cups that ended up in the landfill yesterday don’t really add up to much in terms of weight or even volume after they are smashed flat. What they do do, at some point in the future, is add methane to a landfill.
And at the end of my shortened work day I again rode the bus up my hill. I am getting so spoiled by this shuttle service.
Undiscovered, again
This was the second of these events I’ve worked this year. Different crew this time, but I again grabbed the busy area in back where all the food was and spend the afternoon and evening piling up bags of sorted trash against the fence that separated the event from the rest of the parking lot behind the Federal Courthouse. Ended up with an impressive pile of bags. I have to admit I like being able to see the result of my work manifested like that. And someone else came in after the event and hauled all the bags away as I took down the four stations I had been managing.
We were done by 11:30 when my shift ended and I even made it safely through the late Saturday crowd of near-do-wells in SF’s last Skid Row to where I could catch the shuttle bus up my hill. Unfortunately that's the last time as the repairs are now complete and the cable cars are going back in service.
One thing I preferred about Undiscovered compared with the rave last Saturday was the presence of dogs. I don’t think either event was really a good place for dogs -- too loud -- but it was nice to see them last night. Lots of puppies.
Last night I also tried out the recycled, clear backpack I got from a co-worker after having a hard time finding one for sale here. It is a bit small, and was tossed out because the zipper on the main section is broken, but I actually love the way it fits. I’m working on another way to keep it closed. I think it will still carry enough for HSB, which is what I need it for. That it sits much higher on my back actually makes it better for carrying a heavier load of bags and even water. Last year I had to give up on the extra water because my backpack was irritating my lower back.
Random
I just had an odd peak experience. For me, Subway is as good as it gets for “fast food”. I went in the one on Van Ness at Jackson and got my usual veggie Delight, but what actually made the experience special was that, while it was a tad cool out on the street, the interior of the little place was bathed in the heat from the ovens and the smell of baking bread. It was pretty magical for a franchise food shop.
Random
And I do mean random.
I took this picture last week on the posh section of Grant Street. Why are these people sitting in the street in what looks like the smallest, cheapest parklet in the city? Maybe they are planning a new parklet for this location? They look like large children playing in the street. Actually it would be cool if they had constructed a towel shelter with some chairs like we did when I was a kid at the pool.
Rockridge Out & About
Somehow I had never worked this street fair before, but I signed up this year and it's really a nice one.
I identified this area, with all the tables out, as probably the busiest section, and I was right. I went through two rolls of compost bags.
I took down all the stations in my area and sorted all the food vendor bags. The morning crew chief was working the last stretch of the street beyond me (and training a new person) and when we shut down our stations we even hauled all the bags to our headquarters (by the dumpsters). I went out again with the evening crew chief and he was so happy to see there was nothing left to pick up in the truck but the actual station material (these steel frames that hold up the bags and the plastic lids that go with them). I ended up leaving an hour early.
While this is all the way over on the hilly side of Oakland, I have history on this stretch of street. I very briefly worked as a programming contractor a few blocks north, and, a block south, I found Molly, the dog I had been sitting, and brought her home to great relief and amazement. I can't think of a good reason not to tell the story...
The last Summer trip my parents made to the California in the mid-90s is the one I most remember. I had learned, because of the preceding trip, just how limited they were in terms of mobility, and I cleverly planned their stay as though they were in a coma. And my plans were thwarted at every turn.
But this is about the prior trip, part of which involved a stay in a lovely home (of friends of friends) in this lovely area of Oakland. My parents would discover, according to the plan, this charming (and not infernally hot, like Scottsdale) neighborhood, while we would house and dog sit for the people who were on their own vacation.
All the things that went wrong are not pertinent to this tale, but on the final day I had to drive off with my parents to put them on their plane, before the friends of friends (who were running way late) returned. Molly, the dog, was left safe and sound, but not successfully passed off to her owners.
When I got home from the airport I learned that, when her owners returned, they found her vanished. They started the usual neighborhood search (she was a sweet but neurotic dog, that's part of the reason I was enlisted as sitter) with posters and the whole family out searching the streets.
The next day I hopped on the train for Rockridge to help. I figure they would be covering the immediate neighborhood, so I went south on College, past the blocks in the photos above, to a sort of mini-mart on a key intersection. I asked the guy behind the counter if he had seen her, and he actually knew someone who had. He sent me less than a block down the side street to where I found Molly. (It's worth mentioning that Molly was a black Lab. This will come back into the conversation when I get back to The Five Invitations and God vs DOG. Molly "lost" was just Molly having doggy fun with new people.)
I took off my belt and beat her to within... no, I don't know where that came from. I used the belt as an improvised leash and took her home to her other family. Who were astonished to see both of us, as I hadn't said I was coming over.
The friends of these people had a garden party back in May and Molly's owners, still friends I guess, were there and still remembered me as Molly's finder. It's an odd sort of fame.
The tree
We are now on the cusp of autumn. And here's photographic proof from the microcosm of my poor tree in a pot.
This morning.
End of August.
Back in July.
I'm still astonished it's doing as well as it is, given all it suffered last summer. Turns out it's as tough, in its own way, as the jade plants.
Alan Kay
Medium sent an interview with Alan Kay my way. The interview turned out to be more interesting than I expected -- not just him talking about all the cool stuff he did back in the day, and complaining about Millennials crapping on his lawn -- and, even better, I disagree with him to some extent. The interview is HERE.
Before I get to my point (Gresham's Law, again), I have to say a little about the "back in the day" part of the interview. The principle people at Apple's Multimedia Lab, when I was there, were all from the MIT Media Lab. Consequently, they were all over this history. (Many of our support people came from Wesleyan while I represent not just ASU but public universities in general.) In fact Doug Engelbart was almost the Apple Lab mascot, invited to all our big events. I recall a party on a large boat with Engelbart aboard. Unfortunately, all these big events occurred at the end of periods of all-nighters when I was so tired I could hardly stand. I have no idea what this particular celebration was for or where on the Bay we sailed, or what happened. I was at the point where you are too tired to sleep. I have a vague recollection of discovering someone smoked cigarettes that I hadn't known smoked. And that's all.
Almost as soon as I left the Lab, I did a quick contract job at Alan Kay's Vivarium in Beverly Hills. I'm pretty sure I met him when I arrived, but I was working for other people and he wasn't involved in what we were doing. Here's the way I now imagine the introduction going, "This is Ted. He's an expert in a bastardized version of your SmallTalk programming language, and he's here to code something for us in an even more bastardized version of SmallTalk that he's never used before. What could go wrong?" Followed by several minutes of laughter. This may not actually have happened.
Now to his current concern about the end of literacy.
I like his use of "the 10%" to mean the traditionally literate and intellectually influential portion of the population. He could be right about all this, but I'm not sure schools have ever had all that much to do with education, beyond being institutions with libraries and the occasional person worth talking to.
And I also recognize what he's saying about the downfall of "literacy" and intelligence from reading Albert J. Nock. And Nock's conception of the publishing equivalent of Gresham's Law seems to cover Kay's situation, as well as the state of publishing in the 19th century and on through the 20th.
The thing is, it isn't obvious to me that either of them are totally correct. Yes, publishing in general is dominated by the least common denominator, but aren't there actually more quality small and university presses now than in the past? Yes, few people today can read Latin and Greek, but weren't those skills simply temporarily necessary to access the knowledge passed down in those languages? I may lose some of the pleasure of reading Caesar in the original Latin, but does that detract from my understanding of the political lessons one gains from studying centuries of Roman history?
Even if it's true that nine people our of ten are more likely to gain a repetitive stress injury than any real understanding from their use of today's smart phones, tablets, and even laptops, does that mean that there isn't still a 10% that may go even further with digital media than they could have with the simple print media of the past?
And I say this with full knowledge that Nock, Kay, and the things I've written about the real consequences of the Trump candidacy are all coming from the same place.
DOG
I have to give Ostaseski credit, he saved me the trouble of making my point about how dogs are the model of the approach to life he is advocating in this chapter. I thought I would have to quote his lesson and then let in the dogs to show how they do it better, but here he is doing this for me,
p110 ...I asked Michael to name the one person it was easiest for him to love, or the person who had loved him without hesitation.
p111 He took his time.
Then he said, "My dog Jonesy." His childhood companion, he explained.
"Your dog, huh . . . Why?" I asked.
Michael replied, "Well, no matter what I did, my dog loved me. If I went away for the day or even longer, he was at the door to welcome me when I got home, tail wagging, a big doggy smile. He was full of love for me." Michael went on to say, "It didn't matter whether I was grumpy or happy-go-lucky. He never judged me. He just loved me..."
Now I would add the way dogs tend to just accept what life throws them as another indication that they are masters of the Zen concepts Ostaseski is pitching here. (A guy with a cute little dog just sat next to me here at the Market Street Peet's as I'm typing this.)
I also have to add that my own dog very much had a life of his own. He didn't just live in his love for me. We were good, but that didn't mean he didn't have other things to do. Now I think of it, this was the sort of relationship "in love" but not of dependence on either side, that I've had trouble finding with people.
I wonder if this isn't yet another of those "one size does not fit all" situations? Also in this chapter, Ostaseski has revealed his personal experience with the wonderful world of Catholic Church child-sex abuse. He was able to recover from that experience through the deep love of Buddhist metta, just as Augustine and Day and Lamott have used Christian love to transcend their personal traumas. Maybe my dog coming up to the fence to say Hi during middle school PE (I was inside the fence, he was outside), wagging his tail, sniffing my fingers, and then going on with his day's business, is more characteristic of my personal standard of love. Not exactly something they write songs about.
To extrapolate on this notion of "the right kind of dog" to express the kind of love you need, Ostaseski has frequently mentioned the value of just silently sitting with, being with a person or even a corpse. Might a retired greyhound, the kind you can see time-lapses of on YouTube hardly moving over the course of a day, be the perfect spirit animal (misuse of term) for some traumatized people. I like the idea of a therapy dog that just sleeps near you, shares your space and time, without imposing or interfering.
