384. Now with COVID

 

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COVID finally catches up with me 

Day 795 of pandemic/340 since semi-return to normal - 5/20/2022

I am sitting at the long tables at the Bank Cafe for the first time since the pandemic started. This is because I need to charge my phone and backup battery and I can’t find a convenient wall outlet. Normally I do this at home, but I’ve had my phone on the energy saving setting and it managed to slip below 70% charge without my noticing. I kind of like this phone setting, all I don’t have is easy access to the flashlight and Google search. But I don’t see that it really saves that much. I expected the % left to stay nearly unchanged for days, which has not been the case. I will continue to try it over the weekend while I’m working, but may just return to the normal setting next week.

Recently I’ve been sitting in the lower level of the Bank Cafe, where the bathrooms are. It’s convenient for bathroom access and there tend to be fewer people down there since it’s been off limits for most of the past two years. And there are some comfortable chairs and sofas there as well. Still, it is underground and it is nice sitting up at ground level now and being able to see the street activity out the windows. 

Today the first Boeing Starliner is docking with the ISS. This is an unmanned mission to test all the equipment. Boeing has not looked good running this program. SpaceX looks so much better by comparison. Though landing the ships on land rather than at sea should be an improvement. I hope in time SpaceX will be able to do the rocket assisted landings they wanted. Maybe if Boeing screws up a few more times, NASA will fund that.

There’s a wonderful collection of videos about Classic American cars from the ‘50s and ‘60s called Charles Phoenix Joyride. Depending on the make and model, the peak of American car design was somewhere between 1955 and 1962. Probably. Curiously, the same cars preserved in Cuba by very strange economic forces. Of course these automobiles are also horrible in almost every other way. They are dangerous to the occupants and gas guzzlers. Still, lovely to look at. I’m surprised the MAGA crowd hasn’t built some propaganda around them, it would at least resonate with people of my age cohort -- people born between 1945 and 1965. Even I can wax nostalgic about that period: The foods I ate at the time that I couldn’t eat now. The good times prior to the bad times that followed. When we were naive enough to think well of our political leaders like Eisenhower and JFK. Of course it helps that at the time I didn’t know any people of color or people who were not at least trying to pass for heterosexual. And we will ignore the lead in the paint and gasoline and the radiation in the air and snow. Or the pollution in the rivers (where we would never go).

Still, it is amazing to find cars that are over 65 years old still looking so damn good.

5/23/2022

Just last night I saw an episode of Joyride featuring a ‘57 Bel Air, such a beauty.

This past weekend was Himalayan Fair in Berkeley’s Live Oak Park. So Berkeley. So difficult to get the vendors to understand the trash rules. After working a full shift on Saturday I was proclaiming two of the vendors the worst, most clueless I had ever seen. I only worked a half shift at the end of the day on Sunday, but I had already reconsidered. Yes, they were as bad as I thought, but, when you consider the situation from their perspective, we were like the priest of some really strange religious cult arbitrarily deciding what items go in which of the arbitrarily colored containers. One item even changed from day to day as it was called to our attention that the plates were “wax coated” and therefore landfill instead of compost. (And then this was corrected again so we went back to putting them in compost.) This is why I have “CHILL” written at the top of my Greening reminder list that I review before I leave the house.

Still, diapers in recycling and latex gloves and aluminum containers in compost makes no sense to me. But I’m sure they just see our three bins as festively colored.

The crew chief at the end of the day made what I considered “questionable” decisions about closing down stations serving the vendors sooner than I would have. I did make sure he was the one who had to deal with the consequences, though that meant I wasn’t around to see that. Saying the vendors should bring their end of the event trash to us is one thing, stopping them from just leaving it at the closest park trash can is another. If there is a next time, I can now remind him of what happened here.

Still it was nice to do this event again after the pandemic hiatus. Even if it does mean a 10 block walk back to Bart on the way home. (That actually isn’t true, or at least on Saturday there was a bus I could have taken had I waited for it. On Sunday I walked anyway because of a stunning waitress I had happened to notice on my walk the previous evening. There’s a fair amount of outdoor restaurant activity on Shattuck on the north side of University. Nice to see.

Because I wasn’t starting work until 4pm on Sunday, I decided to come a bit early and have lunch in Berkeley. I had done The Butcher’s Son deli last time, so this time I ate at Ike’s. Had a wonderful sandwich, though the bread was practically a dessert. I asked if they offered it as a wrap -- as Subway does -- but they don’t. A pity.

Day 799/344 - 5/24/2022 

Day of first COVID symptoms. Wouldn’t test positive until 5/26. Was probably infected 5/20-5/21. Damn close to 800 days since the pandemic began. 

5/24/22

Just woke up from an adventure movie of a dream with a plot I couldn’t begin to describe and a large cast and, right at the end, music by CCR. Looked at the time and it had been just about 90 minutes since I went to bed.

5/27/22

My standard pasta dish that doesn’t change from year to year but has changed almost entirely over 40 years. Only the broccoli remains.

5/30/22

Difficulty of managing post-covid!!! How long am I contagious? What can I do and what should I not do?

5/31/22

Finally sitting outside at Another Cafe. I was going to offer to switch seats with two guys who joined me here so I would be down wind. Glad I didn’t as they seem to be sicker than I am.

Another has a very good croissant. Now I’m going for my first uphill walk and then -- very quickly -- to the market for some essentials. 

Ran into information suggesting that I may not have been contagious last Monday and Tuesday like I feared. That’s assuming the vaccine did what it is supposed to do. And it looks like there’s a chance I could test negative before the weekend.

6/6/22

My first day out of isolation after twelve days in my apartment. Got a veggie breakfast croissant which I ate at home and now I’m sitting at the Bank Cafe with a chocolate croissant and my iced tea. I didn’t bring my personal cup, but I’m pretty sure I’m clean now after two negative tests. And my temp is down to 96F again, too.

Now I’m wondering exactly how much safer am I than before given all the different variants out there? Probably better but it’s not like I can start licking everything.

Day 820/8 days post-COVID - 6/14/2022

Today I made it back to the Pork Store for the first time since I came down with COVID. I’m happy to say my nose and taste buds are still working fine. In fact, I noticed that my favorite waitress was wearing a scent that I swear I remember from the ‘50s. So over 60 years ago, but I would swear it was a scent for little girls. It came in some sort of kit for girls pretending to be grown ups... something like the doctor kits I vaguely remember from the period. Maybe it’s been repackaged for adults?

6/21/2022

Post-covid life is more of a challenge than you would think. On the one hand I survived and everything worked out the way it was supposed to. But now I really want to relax -- after all, what are the odds of my catching it twice in a month! But then I just read in the NYT that the currently most prevalent variant doesn’t give much protection for the next two variants that are now spreading. Not that I have any idea which variant I had. And even if I did know, it wouldn’t help because I also don’t know which variants I could be exposed to in the future... or right now.

This past weekend I worked a North Beach street festival for the first time. I thought it was the Columbus Day event cleverly shifted to another month to avoid the push-back against all that Columbus represents. But I did a little more research and discovered this was an entirely different event and that -- “Italian Heritage Parade” -- event is still scheduled for the usual time. So I was wrong, but I think they would have been smarter doing what I was thinking.

I started out on Saturday with my mask on, but quickly gave up. For one thing I hadn’t used my anti-fogging spray -- turns out that is still necessary even when it’s warm -- and not many other people were and it was outdoors and not that crowded and I just finished isolating for over a week so give me a break. Anyway, I seem to have survived. 

6/23/2022 

And for an odd coda to my weekend: I’m sitting at Caffe Grecco enjoying a compensatory cookie and iced tea after picking up the latest check and crazy letter from the mentally ill woman in my building. So strange to be back in this block after spending so much of the last weekend working here. While we had one day of mid-90sF on Tuesday, it is now back to our usual weather, clear blue sky here, though I can hear the fog horns that signal there is a tongue of fog coming in through the Golden Gate. Every time I am forced to come over here to sign for a letter I didn’t catch at home, I give myself some kind of neighborhood treat. Last time it was an eclair from Victoria Bakery. This should be the last time, but if it happens again I may get an actual meal.

Quantum philosophy

6/29/2022

Over breakfast this morning at the Pork Store I was thinking about Free Will vs Determinism and quantum physics (quantum uncertainty and the collapse of the wave function) and how thoroughly the Ancient Greeks covered this material.

The Stoics hold my view of Determinism while the Epicureans managed to nail the uncertainty of quantum reality that can open the door to Free Will. Meanwhile Homer and the tragedians point out the consequences of Hard Determinism in the story of Cassandra who can actually see the future, which means there’s nothing she can do to change it.

It seems to me that one alternative to the Many Worlds approach to the Present moving into the Future, is a collapsing wave functions view. The future is an endless series of wave functions that collapse as we come to them. This is not inherently either Deterministic or allowing Free Will, but it does seem to allow for the possibility of Free Will. 

My personal view of Determinism is not as hard as the Cassandra story -- or any other story in which people can predict the future -- but I think the degree of uncertainty considering exactly how the next wave function will collapse is very limited. Similar to the uncertainty of very stable substances that will eventually undergo a change but probably not for a billion years or so.

376. Pandemic and greening

 

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Greco and Pork Store and Outside Lands 

Day 578/123 = 10/15/2021

Got my third vaccine shot yesterday so today is a day-off. I had my once-a-month blueberry pancakes out for breakfast and now I’m working at the Peet’s at 8th and Brannan. No exercises today as I’m letting my arm recover and was expecting to not feel that well, though, so far I feel fine.

Getting the shot at my neighborhood Wallgreens lacked the ritual and significance of getting the first two at Moscone Center South. Certainly more convenient, though. I presume I won’t get boosted protection for a couple weeks, but since I’m already taking so many precautions this isn’t so significant. Statistically, it will just move me from under 80% to over 80% protection -- maybe 10% more protection. And there are so many variables that I’m not even sure of that. Probably, because I’m in such good shape and eat so well, I didn’t need to do this at all, but at this point I’m not going to take any chances.

I heard a great bit of new English usage this morning at breakfast. Someone described something as happening in “June of the pandemic.” What I like about this is that it is a way of grouping time that spans two years. (Though I think it was understood that “the pandemic” meant prior to the vaccine.) For me, the pandemic started in March of 2020 and ran until April of 2021 -- so we need to come up with a way of differentiating the two Marchs and Aprils. Perhaps “first April of the pandemic.”

Day 579/124 

I’m sitting on the sidewalk at Caffe Greco after shopping at the new Cole Hardware. That corner restaurant between the two has finally given it up and the space is vacant. I got Shoe Goo to repair my boot that Anthony is not in the mood to repair. We are supposed to get some rain this week so I didn’t feel like I could wait to see if he would finally come through. I’m happy to see that Greco at least seems to be thriving. 

Everyone talks about workers quiting their jobs or not filling all the empty positions, but I haven't heard as much talk about the small businesses that you can't get to do anything these days. Besides the shoe repair guy, the person who repairs old windows still hasn't responded to my requests for a bid for our work. I'd add the HOA's lawyer to the list, but we always have a problem getting timely response from our lawyers. I don't know why.

I didn’t have much of a reaction to my third COVID shot. The arm pain lasted less than 48 hours so I’m already back to doing my regular exercises. Never did feel sick otherwise. Too soon to tell if my cell phone reception has improved :-|

Day 584/129 

By next week we should be under 50 cases a day for our rolling 7 day average. And it is dropping fast. Hospitalizations are holding kind of steady, though they are off their peak. [And this is the problem with extrapolating. The numbers hit 50 and then rebounded.]

So what does this mean for me? Perhaps next week I will go to the Pork Store and not worry about how crowded it is. They are still checking vax status, though I still don’t see the value of that. Aside from annoying the anti-vaxxers.

Day 593/138 

I was looking for the daily case numbers to drop below 50 to declare an end to my personal SIP, but I’m not sure that is going to happen. Both the case rate and the hospitalization rate seem to have plateaued or worse right around 50. The next few weeks, before Thanksgiving, were supposed to be my happy time before hunkering down again after Thanksgiving. But maybe not. 

I also thought my greening season was over but I’m working at least one more day. I’ve avoided the hell of Outside Lands, but we will continue to sort the trash for four days after the concert ends. All the shifts on Monday were too early, and it’s supposed to rain most of Tuesday, so I took an eight hour shift on Wednesday. I may regret this, but it seems like the least I can do for the team. Plus I repaired my work boots and I want to see how they hold up. And it’s an excuse to have brunch at the Pork Store again. Was there last week and learned that the last of the regular waitresses is leaving at the end of the year. This is the one from Luxembourg. 

Day 597/142 

Worked a full eight hour shift of table sorting to finish the Outside Lands cleanup. Was working with a new woman who has worked in the past with a returning regular. He should have put us with some of the less experienced people, but it was interesting working with someone who was similarly trained. There is a lot that is subjective about the sorting process. She pulled some tofu containers that I had tossed in the landfill and moved them to recycling. It is almost impossible to get the plastic film off the top of the (semi) rigid plastic tubs. I’m pretty sure they just get tossed by Recology. Then I pulled a big dirty aluminum tray out of the landfill and used a towel I had saved to clean it up enough for recycling. Aluminum is one of the few things we are certain will actually get recycled, so the only reason to not recycle it is if it’s too dirty to clean up.

We were using the largest size debris boxes which was a problem after they got so full you had to close the rear doors. They are just a little too tall to dump a can of sorted trash over the side, unless you are over six feet tall. There was a time when we would have had ramps, but these were judged to be unsafe so now we have to improvise. Stupid. It’s especially a problem when you overload a bag/can making it too heavy to even lift over the side. This is something I’m frequently guilty of. I needed help on multiple occasions as a result.

Up to a certain weight, you can toss bags over the side without much difficulty. Except that bags are not allowed in the recycling stream. Previously this year bags weren’t allowed in the other streams either, but they seem to have made an exception for this event. Thank god.

One of our crew actually lives in San Jose and was unclear on how to get back to the train station after his shift. So one of us knew the best way to get out of the park -- there are still fences up everywhere limiting where you can go. And the three of us took the streetcar that SHOULD have dropped him where he was headed. But then it said it was not going all the way. I talked to the operator and he said we could still stay aboard as his train was going to switch from being an N to a T. This was a new one even for Muni, but I finally figured it out. There was a Warriors basketball game at Chase Center and Muni was adding N trains to the usual K/T trains that serve that area. Makes sense once you realize what they are doing, but the K/T thing is already so nuts adding N/T trains to the mix is just over the top.

370. Last of Just the Pandemic... I hope

 

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Pandemic day to day

Day 183 - Had to run an errand to the P.O. so I stopped in at the Bank Cafe to buy an iced tea and to see if they have a schedule for returning to normal operations. No. Two of the regular Peet’s staff were behind the counter, which was nice to see. I noticed when doing my first of the month banking yesterday that I hadn’t used that debit card since March 15, 2020. And normally I use it four or five times per week.

Day 185 - 69 turns out to be one of those shocking birthdays. It isn’t 70, but it may as well be. Just when you had gotten used to the idea of being in your 60s now it’s going to get even worse. It doesn’t help that neither of my parents made it out of their 70s with all their faculties intact... or at all in one case. I can’t assume, as I always have in the past, that in ten years I will be roughly the same person I am today.

As it happened, today is laundry day -- not what I would have chosen, but sometimes you need clean laundry. Regardless I will do my usual 200+ pushups and 190 crunches and I’ll take my daily exercise walk -- though not the one that takes me to the top of Nob Hill three times, that was yesterday. So I’m doing what I can to stay “me.” 

I plan to hit my favorite restaurants later in the month, after the covid-19 vaccine has had time to be at full strength, but I am having some of my favorite dishes today -- even if I have to prepare them myself, which is not the same thing at all. Last birthday I was new to the pandemic routine and just ate what I had. (I checked, and I had Burmese, but not from my favorite Burmese place.)

Recently there have been a series of mass shootings which has everyone (people on the left) talking about meaningful gun reform. Background checks should be improved, but banning certain types of weapons and magazines is a bad idea. Not because these weapons are needed -- if it was up to me there would be no semi-automatic weapons in civilian hands -- but because a ban like that risks far more than it could ever help. 

The reality is that mass shootings kill fewer than 200 Americans a year. And keep in mind that most of America is happy with 1,000 covid deaths A DAY. Or at least they prefer that to taking the common sense steps that would easily stop the disease caused mass deaths. If they won’t wear masks, social distance, and stop traveling then asking them to give up either the guns they already have or give up the right to buy more weapons will be viewed as an existential threat. As stupid as that is. The risk of civil disorder is not worth saving maybe 100 lives a year.

Day 391 - This will be the last day of my “Shelter-In-Place” since my vaccination should reach full strength tomorrow. I’m still not sure how much difference this will really make, but I will be back on public transit (with a double mask) and trying to catch up on all the little things I’ve been putting off for over a year. I will also be eating out and, when I get food to go, I will be getting a meal at a time rather than trying to reduce exposure by getting 4-6 meals at once. Or at least that’s my expectation.

The virus -- and new mutations of the virus -- are still out there and people -- especially the young and the dumb -- continue to ignore the reasonable and easy steps people can take to stop the spread of the disease. We are currently in the fourth surge of cases in many parts of the country just as we should be reaching the end of the pandemic. Carpe Mortem... seize your unnecessary death while you still can.

For young people losing a year of their short lives seems intolerable. My Stoic view is rather different, but at the same time, and especially as I’ve just hit 69 and so am on the cusp of my 70s, I am aware that I’m “losing” what is probably one of the few good years I have remaining. Carpe Diem, indeed. 

While I have not hated this past year, in fact I’ve learned a good deal from it, I am also very ready to get out again and start doing things. So long as I can stay safe -- which the vaccine and the now normal safety measures should make possible. It has even occurred to me that riding the bus will be marginally more pleasant while wearing a mask. I will be sad to see that particular change revert to normal, if it in fact does.

Day 392 - Ate inside at one of my old favorite places for the first time in over a year. Almost like old times. Had to ask for the password as I have a new Chromebook now.

As it happens, this morning they “paused” J&J vaccinations because there have been a couple blood clot problems. As a result they are now talking about dropping the second shots of the other vaccines for a while to get more people basic protection. This is what I wanted to do but they wouldn’t let me. The advantage of waiting a couple months for the second dose is that there is time for upgrades to match new mutations of the virus.

On the other hand, that they are pausing the J&J because of only six problems out of the millions of doses given indicates that people have a poor grasp of statistics (shocking, I know) so they probably wouldn’t be happy with the marginally less protection with the single dose. You really can’t win.

I never come here, Village Pizzeria, in the late afternoon so I didn’t know that, at least at this time of year, there’s sun reflected off the relatively new building across the street giving me almost direct sun at my usual window table. Very nice. And, as always, only more so, there’s no one here so this continues to be the ideal place to eat and then work while sipping my iced tea. I’m back, Baby! This could be the best belated birthday present for this crazy year.

Also, they’ve moved the bus stops yet again so the outbound buses now stop in front of Village like they did originally. This, too, is temporary as they will be moving to the center of the street eventually. They’ve actually made considerable progress with the BRT infrastructure over the past year, but there’s still a way to go. And I still can’t see exactly how it will work.

Day 396 - It is so strange acting almost like before the pandemic. I’ve been on multiple buses every day. I’ve eaten inside places with my mask off. Aside from the double mask while on transit, it, especially on Muni, would be just like old times. Golden Gate Transit has removed seats and taped off every other row of seats. Muni just asks you to board at the rear so you don’t infect the operator. Muni announces you must wear a mask to board. GG Transit announces you must wear a mask while on board. GG Transit wins that one.

I was back at The Pork Store for brunch this morning for the first time since 3/8/20. I would have been there 3/15/20 for my last pre-lockdown meal, but I had already decided public transit was too risky. By 3/8/20 I had already had brunch there eight times in 2020 so that gives you some idea how often I like to eat there. I was happy to see that my favorite waitress has survived along with the place itself. They were only seating at four tables inside -- the owner is dead cheap so I wasn’t surprised they had not spent money on outside seating. I won’t return on the weekend until they reopen the counter, but I might return on a weekday when I’m not hogging a table a party could be enjoying.

And yesterday I had my first, good, Indian meal since early 2020. So good. I’m now four birthday meals down with six more to go.

The only problem has been that it is still on the cold side here, almost never above 60F, which makes eating outside less tempting. Tomorrow is supposed to be a little warmer so I hope to take advantage of that. And it’s a one day “heat wave” so I really need to seize the day.

Day 400 - The guilty verdicts came down so fast yesterday that people were still in the process of boarding up all the windows around Union Square after the danger was past... for the moment. I was out for lunch inside another restaurant I hadn’t been to for over 400 days -- I hit it just before as I knew it was probably my last chance. Unfortunately, they took my favorite menu item off the menu again so I had to make do with something that was not nearly as good. And it was still good to be out doing something almost normal. Almost normal because I was the only customer eating inside. And now it’s cold again. We may even get some much needed rain over the weekend, though I’ll believe it when I see it.

Day 402 - Spotted the first bee in the still ripening blossoms of the bush out my kitchen window. There are even more little buds than last year so it’s going to be buzzing with bees soon. I am going to have to cut some of the branches back after they finish blooming as they are now long enough to brush against our building. Against the paint on our building. If the tenants below me hadn’t requested otherwise I would have cut the bush back to the property line last summer.

There was some looting across the bay the night before last but as they didn’t have the cover provided by hundreds or thousands of people violently protesting in the streets, the police stopped it quickly. They must have been very disappointed by the verdict.

Now that I’ve come out the other side of the pandemic, it’s interesting to look back on the experience. A year ago, when I made a rare trip to the market I would return with the thought that I might have been infected and that my chances of surviving were not good. Not because my health is compromised, but because I don’t have any in house support. If I got sick there would be no one to take care of me. I would survive on my own or not. And as time progressed and I learned more about the situations in the hospital and the dangers of being on a ventilator, I became even more reluctant to go that route. So either I would beat it or I would probably die. This is the kind of thing you try not to think about but it hangs over you. 

In the past week I’ve been living almost as before. Walking all over town running errands and eating out, riding public transit almost every day. The Bank Cafe is still not open for its intended third space purpose, but I suspect that will come next month or the month after. I’m still being cautious, wearing a double mask when I’m around groups of people, but the constant background fear is gone. I still wipe down my grocery purchases with alcohol, but this is mostly a habit now. I don’t think of the items as being coated with poison as I did a year ago.

I also just discovered that I’ve spent my stimulus payments down to the last dollar -- exactly. These were all expended on items that needed to be replaced in any event -- from a refrigerator to laptops to shoes and clothes to new eye glasses -- but I’m still surprised I didn’t save any of it. Most of it was even purchased locally, supporting local business or at least the local workers of national businesses.

Day 410 - I’m eating -- and working -- at my other favorite neighborhood pizzeria for the first time. Aside from its being empty and my wearing a mask now that my meal is over, it’s just like normal. And this is the place with good music, which is still just as good.

My birthday celebration is now past and my spring cleaning is still waiting on weather warm enough to throw my windows open. As soon as I get caught up on my errands I plan to resume with Proust. While the pandemic is as bad or even worse than ever in India and Brazil and a few other places -- Michigan is still a mess -- but, unless something strange happens, I think it is over here. I may only mention it now as even more places open up and as my usual work returns. Still hoping for the end of this summer but 2022 is probably a safer bet.

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

131. Walt Whitman

Previous - 130. Proust Was a Neuroscientist

Link to Table of Contents

Sunday in SF

My favorite kind of Sunday, I got something done (laundry) then went out for brunch at the Pork Store -- the Vegan Delight was even better than usual, more garlic. Then I strolled down Haight to Amoeba and actually found two of the things I was looking for (a DVD and a CD). Now I'm back downtown at my (most) usual Peet's. 

A fairly dressed-up man with a camera with a massive lens seems to be soliciting portraits on the sidewalk outside my window. You'd think that would be like carrying coals to Newcastle, but he seems to be doing some trade. It's a great business model, when you think about it. He takes a shot and then, I'm guessing, downloads the file to their phone. Your only cost is your capital investment in the equipment and the battery charge. You don't have to create prints, and the transaction is complete in a minute or two.


My Buffy online community is having a competition called Writing Idol, where people submit bits of competitive fiction. I've never played before, but the board has been too quiet lately so I thought I would participate in the interest of keeping the forum going.

The first theme is "telescoping;" which turns out to have many meanings to play with. I started out by reading what the OED had to say (smart move!) Thinking about what was in the OED I came up with a first paragraph that included a bunch of different meanings and that gave birth to the plot. Fine. But that was all I'd planned so I was delighted when the final paragraph wrote itself, as it were, without much thought and was itself a form of "telescoping" I hadn't anticipated. 

Why are the "Mozart" moments so much more satisfying than the "Salieri" moments?

Walt Whitman - from Proust Was a Neuroscientist

p1 For Walt Whitman, the Civil War was about the body. The crime of the confederacy, Whitman believed, was treating blacks as nothing but flesh, selling them and buying them like pieces of meat. Whitman's revelation, which he had for the first time at a New Orleans slave auction, was that body and mind are inseparable. To whip a man's body was to whip a man's soul.

This is Whitman's central poetic idea. We do not have a body, we are a body. Although our feelings feel immaterial, they actually begin in the flesh...

Whitman's fusion of body and soul was a revolutionary idea, as radical in concept as his free-verse form. At the time, scientists believed that our feelings came from the brain and that the body was just a lump of inert matter. But Whitman believed that our mind depended upon the flesh. He was determined to write poems about our "form complete."
...

p2 Neuroscience now knows that Whitman's poetry spoke the truth: emotions are generated by the body. Ephemeral as they seem, our feelings are actually rooted in the movements of our muscles and the palpitations of our insides. Furthermore, these material feelings are an essential element of our thinking process. As the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio notes, "The mind is embodied . . . not just embrained."
...

p3 The story of the brain's separation from the body begins with Rene Descartes... [who] divided being into two distinct substances: a holy soul and a mortal carcass. The soul was the source of reason, science, and everything nice. Our flesh, on the other hand, was "clock-like," just a machine that bleeds. With this schism [mind-body dualism], Descartes condemned the body to a life of subservience, a power plant for the brain's light bulbs. [You could tie the Church's disapproval of pleasure in "this" life to this schism, except that the Church's attitude preceded Descartes.]
...

p5 ...Whitman believed that his existence could be "comprehended at no time by its parts, at all times by its unity." This is the moral of Whitman's poetic sprawl: the human being is an irreducible whole. Body and soul are emulsified into each other...

Emerson
Whitman's faith in the transcendental body was strongly influenced by the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson... A lapsed Unitarian preacher, Emerson was more interested in the mystery of his own mind than in the preachings of some aloof God. He disliked organized religion because it relegated the spiritual to a place in the sky instead of seeing the spirit among "the common, low and familiar."

Without Emerson's mysticism, it is hard to imagine Whitman's poetry. "I was simmering, simmering, simmering," Whitman once said, "and Emerson brought me to a boil." 
...

The Anatomy of Emotion
p15 Whitman's faith in the flesh... had a profound impact on the thought of his time. His free-verse odes, which so erotically fused the body and the soul, actually precipitated a parallel discovery within psychology. An avid Whitman enthusiast, William James was the first scientist to realize that Whitman's poetry was literally true: the body was the source of feelings. The flesh was not a part of what we felt, it was what we felt. As Whitman had prophetically chanted, "Behold, the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern, and includes and is the soul."
...

p16 ...William James inherited the philosophical tradition of Emerson. Pragmatism, the uniquely American philosophy James invented, was in part a systematization of Emerson's skeptical mysticism. Like Emerson and Whitman, James always enjoyed puncturing the pretensions of nineteenth-century science. He thought that people should stop thinking of scientific theories as mirrors of nature, what he called "the copy version of truth." Instead, they should see its facts as tools, which "help us get into a satisfactory relation with experience." [?] The truth of an idea, James wrote, is the use of an idea, its "cash-value." [Now that does sound uniquely American.] Thus, according to pragmatists, a practical poet could be just as truthful as an accurate experiment. All that mattered was the "concrete difference" an idea produced in our actual lives. [Is it just me or is this language as puzzling as the German Idealism it was inspired by?]

p17 [About the physics-inspired psychology of the day] James also wasn't very good at this new type of psychology. "It is a sort of work which appeals to patient and exact mind," he wrote in his masterpiece, The Principles of Psychology, and James realized that his mind was neither patient nor particularly exact. He loved questions more than answers, the uncertainty of faith more than the conviction of reason... James was drawn to the phenomena that this mental reductionism ignored. What parts of the mind cannot be measured?

Searching for the immeasurable led James directly to the question of feeling. Our subjective emotions, he said, were the "unscientific half of existence." ...
...

p18 ...When James introspected, he realized that Whitman's poetry revealed an essential truth: our feelings emerge from the interactions of the brain and the body, not from any single place in either one. This psychological theory, first described in the 1884 article "What Is an Emotion?" is Whitman, pure and simple. Like Whitman, James concluded that if consciousness was severed from the body, "there would be nothing left behind, no 'mind-stuff' out of which the emotion can be constituted." ...

...James believed that our emotions emerged from the constant interaction of the body and the brain. Just as fear cannot be abstracted from its carnal manifestation, it also cannot be separated from the mind, which endows the body'd flesh with meaning. [This would mean that animals that are so motivated by fear must also share in "mind," I would think] As a result, science cannot define feelings without also taking consciousness -- what the feeling is about -- into account. "Let not this view be called materialistic," James warns his reader. "Our emotions must always be inwardly what they are, whatever be the physiological ground of their apparition. If they are deep, pure, spiritual facts they remain no less deep, pure, spiritual, and worthy of regard on this present sensation theory, They carry their own inner measure of worth with them."

The Body Electric
p19 Modern neuroscience is now discovering the anatomy underlying Whitman's poetry... 

p20 One of Damasio's most surprising discoveries is that the feelings generated by the body are an essential element of rational thought. [We've been over this before. He describes the gambling experiment.] 
...

p21 ...What Damasio found was that after drawing only ten cards, the hand of the experimental subject got "nervous" whenever it reached for one of the negative decks. While the brain had yet to completely understand the game (and wouldn't for another forty cards), the subject's hand "knew" what deck to draw from. Furthermore, as the hand grew increasingly electric, the subject started drawing more and more frequently from the advantageous decks. The unconscious feelings generated by the body preceded the conscious decision. The hand led the mind.
...

p22 ... The moral of Whitman's verse was that the body wasn't merely a body. Just as leaves of grass grow out of dirt, feelings grow out of the flesh...
...

Feelings from flesh? Soul from body? Body from soul? our existence makes no sense. We live inside a contradiction. Whitman exposes this truth, and then, in the very next sentence, accepts it. His only answer is that there is no answer. "I and this mystery, here we stand," Whitman once said, and that pretty much says it all. 

..."Now I see it is true, what I guess'd at," Whitman wrote in "Song of Myself." What he guessed at, of course, is that the soul is made of flesh.
...

p24 [After a bleak description of the decayed state of his body at the time of his death] What could Whitman have been thinking as he felt his flesh -- his trusted muse -- slowly abandon him? He began his last Leaves of Grass [the "Death-Bed" edition] with a new epigraph, written in death's shadow:

     Come, said my soul,
     Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one).

...We are the poem, his poem says, that emerges from the unity of the body and the mind. That fragile unity -- this brief parenthesis of being -- is all we have. Celebrate it.

And here I'm reminded of the mystical bliss that Dostoevsky writes about as his The Brothers Karamazov characters near death. (Though not the Karamazovs themselves.) If we grant that Dostoevsky wasn't just making this up -- and I think I've run into other instances of the same thing, but I can't recall where just now (Anne Lamott) -- is it so unlikely that a soul in conversation, as it were, with a diseased body would find a new song to sing?

Next - 132. George Eliot

110. Tainted blood and sticky buds

Previous - 109. Oakland

Link to Table of Contents

Pork People

I'm back at Coffee to the People after having breakfast at the Pork Store. I'm sitting at a different table and this one, I'm delighted to find, has a concert poster for "Not In Our Name" an anti-war benefit in Berkeley from 2003 headlined by Ani Difranco, who I love. Cool. 

Absalom

p321 Shreve imagining Bon, "...It should have been me that failed; me, I, not he who stemmed from that blood which we both bear before it could have become corrupt and tainted by whatever it was in mother's that he could not brook...."  

p323 Still Shreve talking to Quentin, "...and you said North Mississippi is a little harder country than Louisiana, with dogwood and violets and the early scentless flowers but the earth and the nights still a little cold and the hard tight sticky buds like young girls' nipples on alder and Judas trees and beech and maple and even something young in the cedars like he never saw before..."  

I haven't a clue what Shreve/Faulkner means by this, or what Ivan/Dostoyevsky means by "sticky little leaves", but it would seem there's some male descriptive tradition here that I've never known about -- though I wonder if it can be traced back to either Goethe or Byron. In this day, however, "sticky buds" sounds like potent cannabis.

"besides knowing that that sherbet [Judith] is there for you to take... and him [Bon] not used to that since all the other cups [women] that had been willing and easy for him to take up hadn't contained sherbet but champagne or at least kitchen wine..." 

I must confess here that it's never occurred to me to compare women to beverages. Now I'm also wondering what beverage I would be. This is why reading is so valuable :-|

Next Shreve speculates about how incest might differ from other "fleshly encounter[s]." The idle curiosity of sister-less boys. 

Troy 2

Still reading that other book. Finished the part where he covers what is now known about the Hittites and Mycenaeans (some) and about the Trojans and "Sea Peoples" (next to nothing). For someone who has spent far too much time reading and thinking about obscure areas of history (and philosophy) I have very little interest in subjects we are unlikely to ever know much about. The best case scenario would be our discovering some historical text -- carved into clay, probably -- by a precursor of Herodotus. How would we ever be able to judge the veracity of his (or her) account? Maybe "alternative facts" go back a thousand or more years BCE -- in fact I'm sure that they do. (I really like Kellyanne's "alternative facts" coinage. This is a term the study of comparative religion has always needed.)

What's more important? What actually happened over 3000 years ago or what the Attic tragedians, and Homer and the others, were able to make of it. Just as what actually happened to the characters in Absalom, Absalom! (nothing, in fact) is less interesting than what Quentin and Shreve see in this Rorschach-like story.

You can even say that what Trump does will be less interesting (though it does look like it's going to be compelling TV) than what the rest of us do with this situation. Will this turn into America's "Finest Hour" or, as an article I read suggested, is this just a Hegelian thesis, antithesis situation waiting for a synthesis. 

My tendency to see American history as an echo of the Roman Republic is consistent with this Hegelian view, I think. Though I'd never thought of Roman History in that way. I've always viewed the swings between the popular and senatorial Roman factions as like a machine falling out of balance and finally toppling over. But I guess you can see the Empire as a kind of synthesis. And of course the core of this synthesis was that, while the Roman people continued to hold elections and the offices of the Republic remained, the real power was removed from their hands. If anyone before had doubts about why one would want to do that, they should be gone now.

Though I still think there is a chance for a synthesis that preserves the Republic. But that could change if The Opposition can't get it's shit together in the next several years. If instead we go all Italian, I'll have to reconsider the desirability of the Imperium.

Finally

Our rains are finally letting up. On the one hand I don't mind: We've got a good supply of water and snow, and I would like to start getting back to the gym regularly. On the other hand, now people are going outside to smoke again. Now we'll get to see if the air cleaner I bought for myself at Christmas actually works.

Next - 111. Miscegenation

75. Life + History

Previous - 74. Going to the dark side

Life goes on

The world may be going to hell but I just had my favorite vegan breakfast at the Pork Store and now I'm having tea at Coffee to the People, so life is good for the moment. 

Leaving home this morning I ran into the owner of the lower level unit, she was overseeing the dance of vehicles in our alley as four or five cars and trucks pulled out into the street so that the van with her new carpet could get back to our building. For some reason, the people doing construction next door work even longer hours on Saturday than on weekdays. Sometimes, and this was true yesterday as well, the alley is blocked even after the normal quitting time of 4pm. My latest plan for "landscaping" our back yard is to put down tarps and observe how they drain until the construction is complete next door, or until I have a much better idea when we can schedule a delivery of 60 bags of gravel and not run into an alley parking jam.

Speaking of construction, yesterday I walked past a guy finishing some newly replaced cement on a Grant street sidewalk. The rest of the sidewalk there has an unusual pattern and he was doing a skillful job of matching it. The reason I noticed him was that he had brought his dog to the work site. The dog was lying comfortably on a blanket the guy had laid out on the sidewalk adjacent to where he was working. Nice gig for everyone concerned. 

Not again!

As if things weren't bad enough this week. Walking past Union Square on my way to breakfast this morning I was shocked to see the big Christmas tree is already up and decorated. I'm interested to see if we will get our subway construction zone streets back for the shopping season -- as we always have in the past. Now that they are working on the station, I don't think they can just cover everything up with fake grass for a few weeks. Hope I'm wrong. 

History!

I just ran into something amazing on Medium. This relates both to the Holocaust and to the subject of the Faustian/Mephistophelian character of the Jewish bourgeoisie. I'm amazed I've never heard about this. HERE's the link. Only think what Goethe could have done with this story. Or Dostoevsky. 

Next - 76. The New Financial Distric

15. What I'm talking about

Previous - 14. Turnbuckles

Staycation

Before the contractors return on Wednesday I'm taking a one day staycation. I don't think I can really abuse this term any more than this. One day off isn't even a proper weekend. 

I went to The Pork Store this morning for my favorite breakfast and there was a new waitperson at the counter. He! was OK except that he brought my toast buttered. What originally attracted me to The Pork Store, besides all the great veggie options, were the wonderful waitresses. One of the original two doesn't work much anymore and the other wasn't there today either. But even the substitutes seem to do well except that it seems to be left to me to train them in not buttering the toast that comes with the vegan item on the menu. Do people not know what vegan means? 

After breakfast I boarded an SF bus on my way to the Temporary Transbay Terminal to catch an East Bay bus to take me over the bridge to Emeryville for design magazines and getting just-a-little out of town. As always, I scanned the SF bus to see where the crazy was sitting and discovered that everyone looked sane. We all have to do our bit, so I played the crazy for this trip. The voices in my head were telling me to balance my checkbook. 

I took some quick photos at Transbay Terminal before my bus pulled out. 

There used to be a freeway running between the building in the center and the row of buildings on the right but it was taken down after the 1989 earthquake.

I'm really going to miss this place when they finish the new Transbay Transit Center and operations get moved over there. I'm pretty sure it's not going to be as seamless or as pleasant an experience as this temporary facility. I hope we get to see the next crop of skyscrapers rise before we move. I suspect the odds are about 50/50.

Blacks and Blues

(Inspired by browsing too many design mags.)

When x and y were ready to grow their family they decided they needed to move to a bigger house. They immediately thought of z, an architect x had met in rehab who knew their "quirks" and had plenty of ready ideas to meet their needs.

z remembers, "The program of the house was determined by the need for privacy and sound proofing. I new that y -- an avid dominatrix -- needed a custom designed space, with a separate entrance, for her loyal clientele.

"x -- a, frankly terrifying, sadist -- needed even more privacy as he was planning to progress towards secreting a sex slave in the lower-level dungeon. I had never created a dungeon before but I had lots of ideas. My first thought had been to go with a red color scheme -- to hide the blood -- but x was keen on blues. I really think he loves the contrast of blood on all these vivid blues."

The home is furnished with an impressive collection of Mid-century Modern classics x found in an unattended house the week they moved from their old house in Aspen.

And so on...

Next - 16. How French...