I needed to go to the bank earlier this afternoon. I went over to a branch on University Avenue instead of going up to North Shattuck as I usually would. Walking down California Street, several blocks from our house, I spotted someone lying on the sidewalk up ahead. This guy. From a distance, I couldn’t tell if it was someone taking a nap, passed out drunk, or hit over the head. When I passed him, a young guy, I called out. He didn’t move. I kicked one of his feet. He didn’t move. So then I decided, not being a big fan of leaving people unconscious on the sidewalk, that I’d call the police. They dispatched an officer who, after putting on a pair of latex gloves and grabbing her baton (whatever happened to “billy club”?), immediately roused the guy, who seemed pretty loaded on something. When I left, she had him on his feet and was going through his pockets, maybe trying to figure out who he was. When I walked back by 20 minutes or so later, they were gone.
Red Sox Moon
The Red Sox completed their World Series sweep as a lunar eclipse unfolded in our eastern sky. I think the Boston guys were up 3-0 already when the eclipse started, and the moon got most of my attention after that. So, the Red Sox win. Can the Cubs be more than a decade or two behind?
After the Storm
Had a pretty good storm in Berkeley last night. Didn’t last all that long, but at one point, maybe 2:30 in the morning or so, the rain was pounding down hard enough that it woke me up (I found a couple local weather stations that recorded rain comiing down briefly at the rate of 4 inches an hour). Today was clear except for towering cumulus off in the distance. This big bank of clouds rose up to the east, beyond the hills, late in the afternoon. I just missed the most dramatic moment, but here’s how it looked from the corner just up the street from us.
Local Politics
Tonight, a lot of the people in the neighborhood got together for what has become a pre-election ritual: We met at Jill and Piero Martinucci’s house, across the street from us, to go through the local and state ballots and talk about the issues.
Kate and I were discussing when this tradition started; we moved into the neighborhood in 1988; I remember for sure meeting in 1992 — one of the notable events of the evening was that Jill’s brother Cliff, a Republican, declared he’d be voting for Clinton — and I don’t believe that was the first time we went over the ballot together. I believe that the meeting has been held at the Martinuccis every election but one, when we had people over to our house; we generally gather the Sunday immediately preceding the vote; we met a week earlier this year because Halloween is next Sunday. By this time, our neighborhood confabulation has come to have sort of a ritual aspect to it: Jill and Piero get pizzas and make salad, we and a couple other neighbors bring extra chairs, there’s plenty of wine, beer and soft drinks to get us through a three-hour or so discussion, and everybody chips in for the food.
The ballot this year is very long. We have 12 city issues (mostly tax measures to fund services hurting because of the state’s fiscal crisis; but there’s one, Measure Q, that would direct the police to ease enforcement of anti-prostitution laws; that one got a big “no” from our crowd tonight), three county measures, and another 16 statewide propositions (everything from how the budget should be structured to approving a new stem-cell research establishment in the state). Then you’ve got your candidates — no City Council elections in our district this year, but we have to pick a couple of school board candidates, members of the rent stabilization board, and board members for the local transit and community college districts. All that in addition to a representative to the state Assembly, a state senator, congressperson, U.S. senator, and POTUS. By my count, that’s 41 decisions to make.
By consensus, we don’t take up issues like the presidential race and other top-of-the-ballot elections that people have probably made up their minds about already (although if someone really insists on talking about one of these, they generally can). So the focus is mostly on the numbered and lettered items on the ballot. Jill is an aide to one of the members of the City Council, and she lays out most of the local issues; our neighbor Doug is a retired teacher and longtime teachers’ union activist and usually has something specific to say about the people on the ballot for school board and school-funding measures when they’re on the ballot. Others might have particular interests — Piero is a small businessman and usually has something to say about the impact of all the tax and bond issues we’re looking at; Doug’s wife, Kay, is an accountant and also looks at the money measures pretty closely. For the rest, we all have our moments to speak up. OK, yes, I usually find something to sound off on at length.
Tonight, I think the most prolonged discussion centered on similar state constitutional amendments either would or would not lock in the share of tax funds the state allocates to cities and other local governments. The measures are confusing: It’s tempting to lock things in to make sure the share the locals get doesn’t decrease; on the other hand, locking things in has a way of setting both a ceiling and a floor for funding. What we came to after talking it through was first, it’s not wise to write any more firm funding allocations into the state Constitution and second, we really want the governor and Legislature to do what they’re being paid to do, which is handle the money responsibly instead of throwing up their hands and running to the voters three or four times every couple years to decide how the state’s finances should be run.
The other measure that got a lot of talk was an initiative that would write an amendment into the Constitution requiring a small phone surcharge to provide $500 million a year for emergency medical services. The argument against: that it’s foolish to make this a constitutional amendment and that it does nothing to fix the root problems of the health-care systems (both arguments are pretty persuasive). The argument for: Emergency medical services are being overrun throughout the state, we’re in the middle of a bad fiscal crisis with only uncertain light at the end of the tunnel, and we have to do something to ease the situation, even if it’s not the ideal solution (I come down on that side of the issue).
We got through our dozens of measures in two or two and a half hours. People took their kids home early, because it’s a school night. A few of us lingered to talk about a problem that’s not on the ballot — the apparently homeless guy who parks his decrepit RV all around the neighborhood and what can be done about him (more about that later). Kate and I brought our chairs home. Her comment afterward: “Looking around that table, I realized, boy, we’re getting old. We’ve been doing this for a long time.”
And for a long time to come, I hope.
(Pictures: Top: Getting ready for pizza and politics. Middle: Piero, sporting his brand-new November 2 button. Bottom: Our much beloved state voter guide.)
Hermaphrodites & Me
Kate’s got her book group over tonight, so I have absented myself from the premises. The reason is that, you know, it’s kind of her thing. We cooked dinner — some “Greek” pizzas (pesto, eggplant, kalamata olives, red onion, and feta cheese) — and then the group started showng up to discuss the most recent reading, “Middlesex.’ It’s a novel about hermaphrotism. I left to walk up to a cafe on Shattuck Avenue that has a free wireless connection set up; when I departed, there was a discussion of genitalia and hormones and such (I wonder what they’re talking about in the swing states tonight).
Anyway, to the cafe. As I said, the WiFi here is free. And ever since it’s been offered, this place has been jammed with people working on laptops. I wonder how it works out for the owners, because it never seemed to me like they had trouble getting people to come in here. I’d think that people would be tempted to do just what I’m doing now: Buy a coffee, then park yourself and do your online stuff, and do it and do it and do it until long after you’re down to the fine, flavorful grounds at the bottom of your grande cappucino. Tonight — I took the picture through the window with my phone from the one free table I found, on the sidewak — there’s lots of computing going on.
Rainy Season
Earlier this week, it was smoky and hot. And now, suddenly, the dry season is over and the rains have started. Today was the first of several days of predicted on-an-off rain. Not so dramatic, weatherwise, for people used to tornadoes and typhoons or big seasonal variations with snow and bitter cold in the dark end of the year (you all know who you are). But here — this is it, the big change, when the weather starts coming in from the Pacific. John Adams and I were up hiking in the Sierra last weekend, and it’s just about certain that at least the highest place we reached, the Sierra Buttes, at 8,500 feet, has got a foot or two of snow on the ground tonight. (Took the picture from a doorway at St. Ambrose Catholic Church, where I ducked in to get out of a heavy shower this afternoon.)
Local Politics
Just before Labor Day, I think, Kate and I drove up to Calaveras County to spend a night with our friends Jill and Piero at their cabin. Along the road, we saw a sign for a candidate to the county board: “Studley for Supervisor.” I would have taken a picture for my own amusement, but hadn’t brought my camera. I asked Jill if she’d take a picture when she and Piero were on her way back down here. She did, but it got erased before she could send it to me. Then last weekend, this sign appeared on our front lawn, courtesy of Piero, who grabbed one from the roadside. Now the ethical dilemma: Should we return it to restore the roadside political ecology of Calaveras County to its natural state? Or should we keep it? (So far, it’s still in front of our house, and no one in the neighborhood has asked us who in the world this Studley guy is.)
Our Deer Friends
When I walk at night, I usually go out sometime after nine o’clock and head up toward the hills. If I have time, there are a couple fairly long, steep routes I’ll take. It’s quiet in most of the neighborhoods around here, and even moreso as you head uphill. Every once in a while you’ll see something in the local paper about some street robberies up there at night, and occasionally that’s made me nervous. The only untoward thing I’ve ever encountered myself is the kind of stuff that would hardly be noticed in a really big city — kids goofing off in some park or other, drinking, maybe breaking bottles if they’re really obstreperous. So, not too much excitement. Often, if I walk down one midblock path late at night, I’ll see the very same guy sitting in the very same spot at the foot of it, wearing a parka, with his backpack beside him. I’ve never seen him during the day; he’s always there at night, sitting up. I’m tempted to go out there at three or four in the morning and see if he’s there.
Another regular but startling occurrence, and it just happened when I was out about an hour ago, is meeting up with large four-legged creatures. It’s the damnedest thing to turn a corner and run into a couple full-size deer, facing you in the middle of the street, maybe 20 or 30 feet away. I remember when seeing a deer, back in Illinois, out near Crete, was like a visitation from the wild. You’d see them at a graceful distance, and they always seemed to be at a full run or clearing a fence in one bound the moment you saw them. It was probably that way here 30 or 40 years ago, too. But now, they’re everywhere, and I’ve even run into them down here around our house, which has got lots of nice flowers to eat, probably, but is a long way from any place a deer could go to get away from us humans. What seems odd, and unwild, is how unperturbed they seem to be when you meet them. The pair I ran into tonight took a long look at me before they started to trot, slowly, right down the middle of the street. They stopped to look back and only kept moving when they saw I was still coming. This went on for a block. I could see one of them as a silhouette, a small set of antlers outlined against kitchen lights down the way. Finally, they got to a corner and split up, the buck going into a garden between two houses.
These deer — they’re just getting to know us a little too well.
More Smoke
It’s Day Three of the big smoke. The sunlight this morning is a dull, hazy grey-yellow. A little worse than a typical day in Los Angeles; definitely atypical for these parts. The latest from the fire, up north on the border of Napa and Yolo counties, is that crews have cut lines about halfway around the blaze. The Chronicle ran a remarkable picture this morning — a satellite photo that shows the smoke plume. Impressive how far it stretches.
Smoke
Monday: A beautiful, clear, hot north-central California autumn day. The wind was up all day, coming over the hills from the northeast. About an hour or so before sunset, I was walking down to the store and saw this striking arc of thin cloud, billowing out to the southwest; almost an illustration of what the wind seemed to be doing on the ground. It was breezy well into the night. I went for another walk after 10 o’clock, and the warm breeze seemed to be gusting down the western face of the hills. This is the kind of condition — Diablo winds, the local cousin of Southern California’s Santa Anas and a variation on what meteorologists call foehn winds — that makes you think about fire in these parts (the hottest, driest, windiest episode of Diablo winds that I can remember since I moved here in the mid-70s kicked up the morning of the big Oakland Hills fire in October 1991). High pressure centers, usually well to the north and east of the Bay Area, help set up a wind from California’s interior out over the coast. The winds start out warm and dry, and as they rush over the various spurs of the coast ranges and descend the leeward side, they get even hotter and drier.
Tuesday: There was word late Monday that a fire had started earlier in the day up on the border of Yolo and Napa counties, a lightly populated area a good 70 miles or so north-northeast of here. Though the acreage wasn’t large when I heard about it — a few thousand acres — what got my attention was the number of tanker planes and helicopters the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection had already assigned to it — something like a half dozen planes and 10 choppers. That’s major. Those dry winds, which calmed down here overnight, apparently kept going up there, and now the fire has burned about 30,000 acres (almost 50 square miles, about the same area as San Francisco, if you’re wondering). By early afternoon, the air in the central Bay Area turned murky (the picture’s looking across to Treasure Island from the Ferry Building). Everything smelled lightly of smoke. It’s not expected to get better tomorrow.
(And before signing off, just want to acknowledge one of the best Web information resources I’ve ever encountered: the American Meteorological Society’s Glossary of Meteorology. Amazing.)