The Commander in Bondage

Commanderad

The Commander, a battered old Dodge RV that until a couple of months ago was a familiar habitué of local byways, is for sale. Big deal. But here’s the drama: The owner, a Berkeley denizen without fixed address (though not exactly homeless, since he had the Commander), made a reputation for himself in the neighborhood by stowing his vehicle wherever his fancy led him.

Naturally, it led him to park in front of a lot of houses whose residents started out annoyed when the Commander took up station at the curb and soon became irritated, if not hostile, with its owner’s habit of not moving until he’d been parked for the maximum 72 hours and gotten tagged with a warning to move or be towed. If the guy had been a sociable sort, maybe his more traditionally domiciled fellow Berkeleyans would have eventually cottoned to him and his semi-nomadic ways. It’s that kind of town, filled with that kind of people. But his general practice was to avoid all contact with the locals; those who managed to speak to him — your correspondent not being in this elite group — found him defensive and truculent in answer to most inquiries. Without putting too fine a point on it, the guy was a pain in the ass and apparently reveled in it.

Late last year, people from several blocks that furnished some of the Commander’s favorite resting places conferred with the neighborhood beat cop. It turned out that the Commander is big enough it qualifies as a commercial vehicle; under Berkeley ordinance, it was an infraction to park it on residential streets from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. The police, who had a file with more than 50 complaints about the Commander just from this little slice of Berkeley, agreed to come out and cite the vehicle every night that someone complained about its presence. The fine for each ticket is about $30. The bet was that the rapid accumulation of fines would force the Commander — for me, owner and vehicle became one — to find friendlier, or at least less complaining, environs.

Commandertix

He didn’t give up right away, though. He piled up lots of citations throughout November, reportedly went to court to try to get them thrown out, then temporarily departed the neighborhood before Christmas. He reappeared after the first of the year, and the same routine started. He got towed and paid to get his vehicle back. Then one night, after the Commander had been parked in one spot about a block from us for two weeks, the police arrived with a tow truck at about 4 in the morning. They hooked up the Commander — the owner climbed out of the back, where he’d been sleeping — and it was hauled off. Now it’s for sale. As is.

The owner has apparently been taken in by a friend a few blocks away. We’re all wondering if he’ll go to the wrecking yard that’s selling the Commander to try to buy it back.

Lipto s

Liptos

Lipto s. That’s all there is to say, really.

But for those who want the full story: We have a little store around the corner from our house. Cedar Market, at California and Cedar. Berkeley used to be full of them. Not just on the intersections of major streets, but on corners on residential blocks away from the commercial thoroughfares. They’re nearly all gone, but you can recognize a lot of the old ones from the way their doorways open onto the corner at  45-degree angles or sometimes from the big commercial-size windows that have been clumsily integrated into an apartment front.

I might have even seen the sign at Cedar Market when it still said “Lipton’s Tea.” I definitely remember that “Tea” was still there sometime in the last 15 years or so. Now it’s just “Lipto s.” The market itself just changed hands. A Chinese immigrant couple owned it, and they sold a few months ago to an Arab family. The new owners have made some changes. They’re open later — till 9 p.m — and on Sundays, too. But so far they are content to leave “Lipto s” be.

Cedarmkt

Citizens of the World

Earlier this week on my friend Endo’s excellent blog, he had a brief comment on the winners of the Webby Awards. He made the comment that his post was part of his "ongoing quest" to care about the prizes. I’m in the same boat. The awards, which started in the Web’s Paleozoic Era (mid-’90s) in San Francisco, have appeared to be a testament to the stamina and ego and hopes of becoming a household name of someone named Tiffany Shlain.

But I digress. My perusal of the Webby list was arrested at the very first entry, for the "activism" category. And the Webby goes to … The World Citizen’s Guide. The link goes to a site from a group called Business for Diplomatic Action. The guide’s home page explains that it’s a project involving students from Southern Methodist University who worked with BDA to get to the bottom of a troubling trend in this global free-trade world of ours: Lots of people outside the United States don’t like the United States very much; more to the point for the business group, many folks outside our borders look on U.S. corporations and brands with a mixture of envy and loathing; that’s a bottom-line problem now and could become a crisis.

So Business for Diplomatic Action sent people out into the world to find out why non-Americans aren’t in love with America, and the guide says the group identified four causes: "our U.S. public policy, the negative effects of globalization, our popular culture, and our collective personality."

"Collective personality"?  That one hurts, especially since I like to be considered a jerk on my own considerable merits instead of getting lumped in with the rest of the rubes and yahoos.

The online guide can’t do much about "our U.S. public policy," or globalism, or our popular culture. So it’s designed to address the collective "Not Only Ugly, But Loud and Ignorant American" issue. That’s a pretty ambitious task in itself, and the online guide is disappointingly thin, consisting of a handful of official resources for Americans traveling abroad; a collection of some of the flags of the world, each accompanied by a fun fact about the country ("While in Syria, pass things with your right hand or both hands, but never pass anything with just your left hand."); and there’s a Harper’s-index style rundown on the world’s population that’s not bad.

There’s an accompanying five-page brochure you can download that offers a lot more traveler-specific advice: Don’t talk religion. Try the local language. Be interested in the local version of "American Idol." Don’t forget to smile (though some travel guides will tell you that smiling is one of the very American habits that non-Americans distrust.

So the least of my questions is what the judges saw here that merited an activism award. I also wonder whether the well-meaning people behind the effort really think this is the kind of "activism" that will make a difference in a world that’s come to distrust and dislike us for a lot more than our habit of raising our voices to make our English easier to understand.

It’s easy to mock an effort like this; but I suppose it’s a good cause — trying to make us all aware that we’re ambassadors for the U.S.A. when we travel. Yet — is my unintentionally boorishness, or some other Yank’s culturally sensitive grace, really going to sway someone who’s real fear of my country comes from what’s becoming a habit of fixing the world by sending in the troops, damn the facts, the expense, and the world’s opinion?

Back at the Crossroads

In yesterday’s New York Times: A review of the first of Cream’s reunion concerts in London. Without going too far down memory lane again — though I have to mention that where I heard Cream the first time was in Randy Robinson’s basement on Monee Road, the setting for many then-avant-garde rock moments — the review, by Times staffer Jon Pareles, was a joy to read for both its historical appreciation of the band and its music and for its close examination of why the show the other night was less than ecstatic:

“…The neatness and order of the music were precisely what made Cream’s first return engagement underwhelming. It wasn’t unity that made Cream one of the great 1960’s rock bands. It was the same friction – of personalities, methods and ambitions – that would soon tear the band apart. …

“… In its most incendiary 1960’s shows, Cream played like three simultaneous soloists, relentlessly competitive and brilliantly volatile. Back then Mr. Clapton didn’t need Robert Johnson’s hellhound on his trail; he had Mr. Baker and Mr. Bruce snapping at his heels, goading him with bass countermelodies and bursts of polyrhythm. It was the brashness of youth in sync with the experimental spirit of the era. Cream played with reckless intensity, as if sure that all the risks would pay off; most often, they did. ”

The soundtrack I hear when reading this: “Crossroads.”

‘News’: Worse than Pot

The Voice of the West — aka, the San Francisco Chronicle — picked up a two-week-old press release from London Wednesday morning and ran it under this headline and subhead:

E-mail addles the mind

Endless messaging

rots brain worse than

pot, study finds

To be fair to the Chron’s reporter — though he did lift quotes directly from the release, attributing one to "a statement" — he did some imaginative legwork. He visited a couple of San Francisco’s medical marijuana clubs to get the proprietors’ views on email.

The source for the story’s dire yet entertaining revelation is HP’s operation in the United Kingdom. It put out a release on April 22 warning of the dangers of a new malady called "Info-Mania" and reporting the results of a study the company commissioned on how distracting modern information technology can be to office workers.

The press release, complete with important-looking footnotes, has an urgent lead: "The abuse of ‘always-on’ technology has led to a nationwide state of ‘Info-Mania’ where UK workers are literally addicted to checking email and text messages during meetings, in the evening and at weekends." 

Britons checking messages — away from the office. And on weekends. Where will they find  time for soccer hooliganism or producing new episodes of "Masterpiece Theatre"?

Continue reading “‘News’: Worse than Pot”

Bashõ’s Take

Late, and without a blog entry. I resort to another’s words:

“Having no talent,

I just want to sleep,

You noisy birds.”

That’s Bashõ, from Robert Hass’s “The Essential Haiku.”

Noisy birds or no, I’m going to sleep.

Later.

Monday Meatballs

Meatballs_2

Thom was gone for the weekend, off on his first solo journey (with friends only, no shepherding adults) to a far-off music festival. It was a big deal event down at Coachella, in the desert east of Los Angeles. The New York Times took note (of the music, not Thom’s attendance); so did NPR. For Kate and me, the biggest deal was that Thom was off on his own on a trip that required two late-night drives — late Friday into early Saturday to get down there (it’s about a 500-mile trip), and late Sunday into early Monday to get back (Thom’s friends dropped him off in downtown Berkeley so that he could go straight to school to take a test). It reminds me of Eamon and his friends driving off late on stormy night to cross the Sierra on their way to see the Winter Olympics in Utah. The thrill of the road trip.

Anyway, he made it there and back, and had a great time that he talked about all afternoon and evening, when he wasn’t napping, and when we didn’t have "24" on the tube. To celebrate, Kate made spaghetti and meatballs (despite my a little too up-close-and-personal portrait of the meatballs, they were extra-tasty).

Aspirador Solo

Vacuum3

A question from the audience: Whatever happened to that vacuum cleaner?

Frankly, I thought I’d ridden that humble household appliance clear round the bend when I found myself turning it into "The Velveteen Vacuum."

But I did go out and check on it one more time. It had migrated from its corner a little way down the street and stood suggestively close to a Dumpster (out of sight in a driveway in the picture) the last time I saw it. Inspecting it, I saw that someone was very concerned that whoever used the vacuum cleaner ("el vaccuum" here, instead of the more common "el aspirador") switched it to the off position when they were done with it.

Siempreoff

The label reads: "Siempre OFF. Solo ON mientras lo uses. Ponlo OFF cuando acabes de hacer el vaccuum." Online translation — Google’s, which is among the many sites I tried that couldn’t handle the word "ponlo" — renders the message thus: "Always OFF. Only ON while you use it. [Ponlo] OFF when you finish making the vaccuum."

Note that el aspirador is switched off. Someone was finished making the vacuum.

April in Iraq

“But Iraq has — have got people there that are willing to kill, and they’re hard-nosed killers. And we will work with the Iraqis to secure their future. A free Iraq in the midst of the Middle East is an important part of spreading peace. It’s a region of the world where a lot of folks in the past never thought democracy could take hold. Democracy is taking hold. And as democracy takes hold, peace will more likely be the norm.”

–Bush, press conference, April 28, 2005

Killed in April:

–51 U.S. troops, including 11 in the month’s final three days. The total for March and April is the lowest two-month toll since February and March 2004, immediately before the Shiite uprisings in Baghdad and elsewhere. The total number of U.S. soldiers who’ve died in the Iraq war is now 1,586.

–501 Iraqi civilians, police and military. The breakdown: 302 civilians, 199 police officers and troops. Those are rough numbers compiled by Iraq Coalition Casualties and don’t include any accounting of insurgent deaths; nor do they resolve uncorroborated casualty reports.

–At least 20 foreign contract workers, from Australia, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Fiji, the Philippines, and the United States.