Not exactly the Rocky training montage
At the gym yesterday I was thinking that we're down to the last month and a half of Greening season -- only a month until International Dragon Boat Races, which is my warm up for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. The good news is that I'm on the mend. My mysterious ulnar nerve problem seems to be resolving itself, and the rest has helped my wrist. My back is slowly improving. I will not be back to full strength by the first week of October, but I should be fully functional. Given the year I've been having, that's a win. At this point I'll be happy if I end the season with all my limbs connected and my faculties intact.
I would love to start a more intensive training period for September -- I'm not happy about the strength I've lost since I've been nursing my back and nerve -- but that would be risky at this critical time. Better to take it slow now and possibly crank it up a bit after HSB.
Summertime
Today the inland (hotter) areas of the Bay Area are supposed to hit the mid-100s F; tomorrow the mid-110s -- Phoenix heat. Meanwhile I'm still sleeping under double comforters. Aside from a number of Sundays (always Sundays, so far) when the SF temp has slipped into the 80s, it has been consistently cold this summer. That will probably change soon, maybe as soon as tomorrow, but SF has been almost too cold for me this year. (Let's see what I have to say at the end of October.)
TV
I've been catching up with my TV the last several weeks. I bought (and then resold) seasons 12 and 13 of "NCIS," so I'm only two seasons behind now. The show (the show runner, I'm guessing) is very good at using its bully pulpit. At least a couple times a season they highlight some good cause related to Navy and Marine service people or veterans. Not only is it a good thing to do, but the show's audience is not going to complain, even if it does take time away from the "entertainment." It's a win-win, but you probably still have to have a show this successful to get away with it.
This week I'm wrapping up "Castle," the 8th and final season. The show has a lot going for it, but I think it's been limping along ever since Castle and Beckett got together. (I wonder if part of NCIS's success is how Gibbs has never really changed?)
The writing this season has been sloppy. There have been two episodes inspired in part or in whole by psychology experiments (including the Stanford prison experiment) but one of them makes no sense by the end of the episode when you finally know all. Aside from my trick of picking the villain by the casting, I'm usually not that concerned with figuring out Who Done It, but if you had been attempting that with the experiment episode you would have been mislead and confused.
Still, when they just let Castle be Castle, the show is as good as ever.
Hobart Building
Something has bugged me ever since I moved to SF...
See that blank wall in the center of the photo? That's the side of the, otherwise attractive, Hobart building, that was never intended to be seen.
Some closer views of the tower.
Before the International Style hit SF, the intersection where Montgomery ("The Wall Street of the West") hits Market was a place of beauty.
All that remains of these three buildings is the base of the one in the middle.
First Wells Fargo took down the building next to the Hobart and replaced it with a much smaller building next to their new tower (briefly the tallest in town).
Then Crocker Bank sacrificed the top of the building across Montgomery so they could build their own office tower at the other end of the block.
New Crocker tower at left with Galleria in between.
Combined, these changes meant that the blank side of the Hobart was revealed and that it was also visible for blocks.
There is now a plan to rebuild atop the base of the old Crocker building -- now a Wells Fargo, housing my safe deposit box -- and this may (or may not) help by blocking the view a bit. But, short of building something more fitting abutting the Hobart, I think something could be done with that blank wall. Something matching the granularity of the Hobart tower. Maybe. Anyway, some kind of mural.
Later that same day...
Just went out for a late lunch and to take some of the photos of the Hobart building above. Stepping out of the air conditioned Bank Cafe, I got a nose full of ozone. It's already warmer -- though not at all hot -- but the change in the air chemistry tells me that the wind has shifted and we are now swimming in air from the east and north rather than the usual air off the Pacific. Besides given me a Proustian flash of past time (the San Fernando Valley in the 1960s), this means we might indeed hit the 90s in the next several days. The horror! It will be a novelty to no longer sleep under blankets until the fog returns. And speaking of weather...
Hurricane Harvey
I've gotten sucked into a Facebook discussion of Harvey (the storm, not the rabbit) and to what extent this is a sign of climate change. (Now, I'm wishing that giant imaginary rabbits might become a sign of climate change.)
Of all the obvious indications and consequences of man-made climate change, I think this is one of the worst examples to point to. Hurricanes are just too unpredictable and it would not be unrealistic for someone to point to the 1900 storm that devastated Galveston as an example of previous storms that were on the same scale. And I continue to hold my position until someone can craft a convincing argument that the other weather pattern that boxed in Harvey, and sent it meandering around Houston and then back into the Gulf, was a consequence of higher air or water temperatures. That other weather pattern is what seems to set this incident in a new category.
But someone posted a link to a counter position HERE that I think is very interesting, without changing my view. Actually I'm kind of shocked I didn't make this connection to the Houston/Beaumont area as the Mecca of the petroleum economy/society. And he doesn't even mention Spindletop, which I would have done. It really is almost too perfect.
We humans are not very good at reason, but a storm is a kind of logic even a fool understands. Some percentage of the people flooded out this time will come to the conclusion that living on this coast is not worth it. (There are supposedly about 100,000 Katrina evacuees still in the Houston area. I would love to know what kind of decisions they make now.) Even the people who decide to stay this time will be less likely to stay next time, especially as funding for repeated inundations is reduced. And companies -- even energy companies -- may be less sentimental in their decisions than the average person.
How many more storms will it take to convince a significant percentage of the population? I don't know. And how to make the transition from making better decisions about residence placement to making lifestyle changes that reduce the likelihood for even more destruction in the future? I have no idea. I still think that's more likely to be driven by economic factors relating to electric vehicles becoming cheaper than gas powered vehicles. We are much better at making that kind of comparative decision. (Though that's the sort of decision process that led to the off-shoring of so many jobs and the Wallmart-ization, and now the Amazon-ization of the retail economy.)
And I fully expect a large percentage of the people who flee to higher ground will continue to deny climate change. Because stupid monkeys.
Birthday
It has occurred to me that I should be celebrating today -- the last day I'm 64 -- rather than tomorrow, when I'm definitively a senior citizen.
TV
Growing up, my mother (the mystery reader) could always figure the killer early in the show, and I almost never could. Partly this is because I like to be told a story -- taken along for the ride. (The same reason I don't like to see "making of" and "behind the scenes of" features.) But now I could probably beat her in guessing the killer, though not because I'm better at solving mysteries. I just look for the most recognizable face around the murder. They usually give the juiciest part to the most experienced or talented actor, and that person has usually been around.
I think I've even written about this before, but I'm finishing the 7th season of Castle and it keeps happening. The good thing about this is that I can pay attention to the murderer throughout the show and don't have to re-watch to see how she played the earlier scenes. It does feel like cheating though.
Birthday
You can't say I don't know how to celebrate a birthday, for lunch I had my favorite Vietnamese tofu sandwich, then I walked up Market to my usual Peet's were I ordered both my usual iced tea and a cookie. And now I'm reviewing an Advanced Health Care Directive a friend gave me. (No coupons for adult diapers, I checked.)
I hate these things. They are like a test with no right answers. Plus, selecting an "agent" to represent you is a nightmare. Who would you trust to do this? Who is likely to be around (or still be alive) when you need to surrender your agency? I have the same problem picking an executor for a will.
3. Life would no longer be worth living if I were not able to: Well, I can't really know that in advance, can I? I would like to say, "Survive a migration across the Serengeti with basic survival supplies." But I have reason to believe I could adapt to living in a less robust state. I even have reason to believe that I could learn something by living in that state.
I could drop down a gear to, "Use the bathroom without assistance." But, again, who can know for sure what I would be willing to put up with if I were in a blissed-out, semi-mystical, near-death state?
How about, "Put me down if I need a bone-marrow transplant or the services of a Burn Treatment Center." But then, they can't do that.
Even the CPR question is a stumper. I still have problems with a minor rib injury from the early '80s, so CPR sounds like it would almost certainly be a bad idea, but I can imagine strange situations where -- nothing else major being wrong with me -- it might be worth the risk. This would be easier to answer in another 20 years. By that time I expect my answer to all these questions will be, "Just run me over with the ambulance."
My thoughts and feelings about where I would prefer to die: I put, "In my sleep... Probably." Again, who knows? This is contingent on what death is like. Would I rather die in the middle of a particularly irritating dream or while normally conscious? Don't know? Can't know.
One answer to this is, "At home." But even that is not necessarily true. "At hospice or a good hotel," could be a better option for me.
I want my loved ones to know that if I am nearing my death, I would appreciate the following for comfort and support (prayers, rituals, music, etc.) "Strippers!" was the first thought that came to me, so maybe I should go with that. Would "rituals" include human sacrifice? Asking for a friend.
Religious or spiritual affiliation: "It's complicated." Chanting Tibetan monks might be a delight to have around while you're dying... or not.
There is no conclusion here, at least not now. I don't even know if I would choose death by complete surprise (like being blind-sided by a bus) to a contemplative death in my own bed -- or a bed in a nice hotel. If given a choice, I would have to go with "surprise me," though quick bus death sounds like a lot less work.
And now I've cleaned out my webmail folders for March. All ready for my next year of life.
Day after
Wrapped up my birthday last night at my favorite Burmese restaurant. We had all our favorite dishes. There are even a few left-overs for tonight.
Today I went to the SFMTA office to get my Senior Clipper card so I get the senior discount when riding public transit... this is my big payoff for being a geezer. Turned into the ultimate MUNI experience. It was like taking the worst aspects of riding their buses and putting them indoors.
I walked in and was assigned a number. As I was sitting down the number before mine was called so I figured this would go quickly. A half hour later I was still waiting. Here's what I think happened: I was not waiting for any window, but for window 10 which apparently was the only one dealing with my issue. The person before me took quite a long time to resolve their business. When they finally left I was poised to jump up and respond to my number being called... but it never was. Either the woman at 10 took a break, or she simply forgot to inform the system that she was free. After a half hour I went back to the guy who assigned me the number, who said my number was still in the cue and he didn't know why it hadn't been called. I finally just walked over to window 10 to see what was happening and the woman was doing something on her phone. When I said I'd been waiting 30 minutes she said my number had been called (no). We completed our business in a minute or two. So MUNI.
TV
Here's one that suggests the most pathetic Venn diagram of all time. I'm currently re-watching Wonderfalls and season one of Eureka and I would be watching season one of Warehouse 13 except no one has managed to get it on YouTube (or I haven't found it). (Incidentally, this may mean that Alison is considered to be hotter than Myka -- a judgement I wouldn't dispute.)
There is only one overlap of these three 'verses -- and for Warehouse 13 it doesn't happen until a later season -- but somewhere in the potential (though not actual) audience for my blog there are a few people who would know what actor these three shows share.
What's more interesting is why I'm re-watching these programs (including the one I can't access). Surprisingly, the obvious appeal of Jaye, Alison, and Myka is not the answer. (Though I can't say for sure that I would have watched these shows without them.) It seems to be some sort of comfort food thing.
Vertigo
We've moved on to another chapter and another narrator -- this time in Austria (the Tyrol). All the narrators are similarly uncomfortable and yet avid travelers. One wonders why they go to the trouble. They are also all writers/journalists.
There's a pleasantly dreamlike quality to this confused progression from point of view to point of view with no particular purpose in view. Rather like peeking in on someone else's dreams. For the most part, the settings overlap in featuring the Italian Po valley and then north through the Alps to Vienna. The first one might have wandered further than this, but I don't think any of the subsequent ones have.
Well, it seems that I'm even slower on the uptake then I realized. Just now, walking home, I was pondering what it was about these narrations that appealed to me when it suddenly struck me that it was that the narrators (except for Stendhal) are all solitary travelers using public transit and often writing in public places. Aside from the neurotic problems sleeping or leaving their lodgings or leaving a particular neighborhood, these accounts could be mine.
And why would you travel if you are constantly beset by these problems? Are they trying to escape problems that are even worse at home? Or is taking their neuroses on the road a welcome diversion from their normal lives?
In any case, I've always thought accounts from this point of view would be too dull to find an audience, but apparently that isn't quite true. Since Stendhal, there has been no sex that I can recall and scarcely any plot. And the Stendhal chapter (not unlike Doctor Faustus) had just enough sex to give the narrator syphilis. At one point there seemed to be people following a narrator at the same time a rash of murders were taking place, but it was never clear if this was reality or in the narrator's imagination.
Same Tyrolian chapter and there has just been a reference to a family ancestor who died at Marengo. So there's that.
In a sort of branching out of a story in which almost nothing happens, we're now getting the family history of some childhood neighbors of the narrator. Here's the bit I really like (no idea why):
p215 ...Whether it was Babett and Bina who had the idea of opening the cafe, or whether Baptist thought that it would support his unmarried sisters, was a part of the story that nobody could recall anymore. At all events, there had been a Cafe Alpenrose, and it had continued until the deaths of Babett and Bina, although nobody had ever set foot in it...
Every week they bake a new cake and place it under glass for customers who never arrive. Every two weeks, they split the stale cake between them. In the same large house there is also a doctor's "surgery" that is almost as unattended since almost everyone in the community depends on the elderly local doctor and not the stranger doctor from Moravia.
This place makes Martha Grimes's Hotel Paradise seem thriving by comparison. Perhaps the cafe is even more like the little shops run by Emma's spinster friends with the hair chewing cat?
Why does this appeal to me when I get so bored when I'm not busy at work? Spending my days in a cafe without customers would drive me insane. Yet the idea is quite charming.
OMG! There was a sex act and a suspicious death. I need a moment...
The book wraps up... well, it ends rather abruptly after the narrator decides to leave his hometown and sets off across Europe and then England by train. The last we know of him he has nodded off while reading Samuel Pepy's diary and is dreaming Pepy's account of the Great Fire of London.
Off hand, I can't think of a stranger novel I've actually read. (And no, we never learn any more about the suspicious death.) I can't think who I would recommend this to or how I would go about recommending it. None the less, I probably will re-read it. And W.G. Sebald has certainly given me something new to think about when it comes to fiction.
Cable Car Museum
I have a little less than two hours to kill before my annual doctor's appointment, so I'm at the nice little cafe across the street from the Cable Car Museum, where I tend to visit only when I have a doctor's appointment (it's in a geographically awkward location on my hill). I would have to describe the decor here as '50s funky. There are models of pre-Century Series U.S. Air Force fighters hanging from the ceiling. There's an old style, metal, roller skate -- the kind with a key -- sitting on the counter where you pick up your drink order. The music is popular tunes from the '50s and '60s -- "Neon Cowboy" was on a moment ago and I've heard a couple Sinatra hits -- and, and I don't really blame them for this, I just heard my first Christmas song of the year. There's also a PBY model hanging from the ceiling, but WW2 was such a part of the '50s, I don't have a problem with that. ("Blue on Blue," a song I didn't remember but recognize.)
My intention was to continue working through my Medium folder but, for the first time ever, Medium seems to be broken and I can't access any of their links. There is something especially poignant about being in a place with a '50s theme while suffering the disappointment of not being able to access the Internet... frustrations of the future we never imagined. Flying cars, yes (and thank god that hasn't happened); space stations, sure. ("Do You Know the Way To San Jose," I would never have guessed, back in the day, I would know San Jose as well as I do.)
TV
I think I mentioned I was starting "Rizzoli & Isles." I made it into the second season but didn't finish. There were two reasons -- that I was aware of -- I decided not to finish the season before returning the discs. First it was getting to be too much like "Criminal Minds" -- too much rape and violence against women. ("These Boots are Make For Walking.") Second, given the disturbing nature of the A stories, the B stories were becoming disconcertingly frivolous. I guess it was supposed to mitigate the sick content, but it just struck me as being inane.
("Age of Aquarius" and I recognized it after the first couple notes.)
But watching "R & I" had reminded me of things I loved about "Castle" and when I returned the "R&I" discs I found a dirt cheap copy of the first season of "Castle" and bought it. Re-watching it I'm noticing additional weaknesses in "R&I" by comparison. Seeing the "R&I" victims before they died never stopped bothering me, but watching "Castle" I couldn't help noticing how much better the cinematography, use of music, and general writing is. Even the music over the closing credits is wonderfully crafted. By comparison, "R&I" is just sloppy.
Time
This morning I was doing a little math in my head and thinking about how I was 24 when I moved here to SF in 1976. That's the most obvious point to divide my life into a "before" and an "after." For my first 24 years I lived in cities of my parent's choosing, since then I've lived in SF, my choice.
Since I moved a year after graduating from university, it is also tempting to view my first 24 years as my education, followed by my 40 years of career -- or careers. But that, too, is dramatically misleading.
I only started to read the Classics when I moved here. Even my knowledge of Greek and Roman philosophy was limited to what I had learned in a couple lower level philosophy classes at ASU. Starting to read Livy was one of those unaccountable -- but life changing -- decisions (like reading Samuel Eliot Morison's history of U.S. Navy operations in WW2 while I was in middle school) that have shaped my world view.
I also hadn't yet read Proust, Gibbon, Mann, or Fernand Braudel. It's like moving here was the start of my (auto-didactic) graduate education. If I were to meet the "me" of 1976 I would consider him annoyingly uneducated. (Also annoyingly moody and angsty, as are some of my current Buffy Board online friends of that age.)
Even in terms of military history (the subject I know best and the only thing I feel I could teach at a moment's notice) aside from the foundation in Pacific War Naval history and a superficial knowledge of some periods of European military history, I knew almost nothing. It has been a slow, cumulative process of delving deeper and reading wider. My understanding of even the Pacific War, the subject I knew best back then, has probably changed a half dozen times in the past 40 years. (This does help to put Caesar's "over-night" success in his 50's in perspective. Perhaps he wouldn't have been "Caesar" if given an army command 20 years earlier. Just as I maintain Napoleon wasn't "Napoleon" without his chief of staff, Berthier.)
My 40 years here in SF can still be sub-divided by careers: Student (2 years), bookstore clerk (7?), programmer (13?), greener (10?). Though, while the first and last sub-divisions have been the most learning intensive, the ones in the middle were only marginally less so -- for lack of time, mostly.
While I sometimes have "What if?" thoughts about attending Wesleyan or one of the Great Books colleges (or Sandhurst), I think SF has proven to be an ideal post-graduate school for me.
Peet's
I have dumped the Bank Cafe. It pains me to pay an extra dollar for my iced tea, but the impossibly slow WiFi was finally more than I could stand. Peet's opened a new, larger, location on Market a block further away, and I've been coming here now for about a week.
I've written (a long time ago) about my fondness for Peet's interior design, which they've now updated. The front counter/table I'm now sitting at is still oak, but rough cut and not stained in the same way. I can't say I like it more, but it has it's own appeal. I'm sure this is much poorer quality oak -- probably pieces that would have been scrapped in the past -- so I like that they are doing something nice with wood that would have been wasted. Eventually, I will be writing on a sheet of paper and my pen will sink into one of the crevices and I will curse the high-concept of this surface, but for now I approve.
The people watching at the Bank Cafe was not bad, but this Peet's overlooks Market, our main drag, with wider sidewalks and a steady flow of a little bit of everything. The crazy woman I first noticed walking here and there in front of the cafe eventually came to rest on the cafe's seating that acts as a barier between the street and the cafe. I say "rest," but she seems unable to be "still." I would guess she's Southeast Asian. She seems childlike, in a demented sort of way -- she's been lying on her back picking at her fingers and toes since she assumed this position, never quite being still. It is hard to tell to what extent she is aware of her surroundings and, in particular, of the people around her. She seems oblivious.
I don't know if this is a Peet's in general thing or just at this location, but they play a surprising amount of Brazilian music from the '60s. Not a bad thing.
HOA
Back at my building we are in the process of seeking the origin of a leak. It is either coming from above -- though no one has any idea from where or how -- or it is rising from a poorly tiled shower in the bathroom (of that same unit that has been a thorn in my side since June.) For reasons I can only guess at, they thought it wise to paint the room before dealing with the rotted threshold between living room and bathroom. Now, understandably, they are not eager to open up that wall to find where the damage starts. We just today opened up a section of the "box" that conceals our sewer drain pipe as it traverses the bathroom to it's furthest point under the three kitchens stacked above. We determined that the water is not coming from that pipe (which would have been a nightmare to address) but that's about all we've learned. Odds are that it's coming from the shower on the other side of the bathroom wall, though, I admit, I don't quite see how.
I've now painted the door and doorway (which I originally ignored/forgot) so my participation in this drama should be complete, unless it really is a leak from elsewhere in the building.
I am happy to see that we are still all being quite civil, given the summer we had. We've all lost patience at one time or another, but the HOA as a whole seems to be holding it together. Still, I will be happy to see the end of this year... and that's even before taking into account the Presidential election.
TV
To celebrate the end of my greening season, I went to Amoeba on Sunday and bought some DVDs. I finally found a copy of the version of Sense and Sensibility I love so much. And then, since they didn't have any of the TV shows I was hoping to find, I started Rizzoli & Isles. The hook for this particular murder procedural is that it focuses on a friendship between two women -- the Detective and the Medical Examiner. All of these shows have a characteristic way of starting an episode, and almost always it involves finding the body. R&I starts with a glimpse of the victim before death. I wish it didn't. But otherwise, the show has an amazingly talented cast and the core friendship is a shockingly novel thing to see on TV. (Note that this is not a new show, just new to me.)
When I say it's a talented cast, I mean you know almost everyone from previous roles. Isles was previously a beloved character on NCIS. Rizzoli was on Law & Order for years. Donnie Wahlberg played one of my favorite characters on Band of Brothers.
Aside from two women engaging in a friendship that has little to do with men, the show seems pretty routine so far. It's like they had a TV Trope Checklist and were eager to check all the boxes. To be fair, I'm only four episodes in, but the tricks I learned for determining the murderer from watching NCIS and Bones and Castle and The Closer seem to still aply. And these tricks have nothing to do with evidence but instead with show pacing and how recognizable characters are. It's rare when the possible suspect you recognize from previous substantial TV roles, or from a long career now coming to a close, didn't do it.
I'm pretty sure I will complete the season I bought, but I'm not sure if I will trade this in for the next season. All the shows I mentioned above, had more interesting irons in the fire when they started. But I think this show is still on the air, so maybe what it has is engaging enough. This genre is so popular, you'd think someone would do something really novel -- and maybe someone has, I watch so little TV I wouldn't necessarily know.
