Author: Dan Brekke

Posted on

Season of Light

I put up a bunch of Christmas lights today, although I need another extension cord to light them all. I had spent all the good daylight hours puzzling out whom were the essential Irish American writers of the ’20s and ’30s (two are essential: Eugene O’Neill and James T. Farrell; Margaret Mitchell actually gets honorable mention; and F. Scott Fitzgerald and John O’Hara add some glitter, but you would never have known they came from Irish backgrounds from their writing; don’t consider this an exhaustive list ). So it was dark by the time I got around to the lights. I don’t want to think about how many strings there are along the eves and the little trellis on top of the driveway gate and on the hedge along the driveway. But enough that I think they’ll make the electric meter spin a little faster. And that spinning will make me think on and off again about how our merry light display and the ones around the neighborhood (and around your neighborhood as well) are all part of this warming equation that could make the North Pole untenable for future Claus & Co. habitation. That’s what I was thinking as I sat on the edge of my roof in a pair of shorts in the dark hanging those lights. And this: that it’s not as easy as it was just to plug the lights in and enjoy the spectacle.

Still: It’s the season of light, right? We’ll warm ourselves in this one and look down the way for the others to come.

Posted on

The Paper

A few months ago we did something that still depresses me to think about. Today I was reminded of it: the San Francisco Chronicle called to get me to start up the paper again. They were offering six months of the paper for ten bucks. That’s about a nickel a day, and that’s how hard up they are for paying customers. Meantime, back at the plant, they’ve been firing people left and right. A nickel a day would have done nothing to save any of those jobs; it’s a desperate ploy to prop up circulation numbers and what’s left of the paper’s advertising base.

That’s depressing right there. But there’s more.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Continue reading “The Paper”

Posted on

Unhand Me, Grey-Beard Loon

Ferry120107A

“At length did cross an Albatross,

Thorough the fog it came ;

As if it had been a Christian soul,

We hailed it in God’s name.

“It ate the food it ne’er had eat,

And round and round it flew.

The ice did split with a thunder-fit;

The helmsman steer’d us through!

“And a good south wind sprung up behind ;

The Albatross did follow,

And every day, for food or play,

Came to the mariner’s hollo!”

However: ‘Twas not an albatross that glided into sight when we were on the ferry from Tiburon back to the city on Saturday, but a California gull. The gulls: They’re more familiar for their late-game invasions of local ballparks, swooping on peanuts, Cracker Jack, stub ends of hot dogs and stale buns. They appear in the hundreds and often put on a more interesting show than the paid performers on the field. Another habit they have, with which you’re familiar if you spend time on the water hereabouts: They trail boats, looking for any sign of free calories. This guy followed the ferry for five minutes or more. (Click for larger images.)

Ferry120107B

Ferry120107C

Ferry120107D

Technorati Tags:

Posted on

Guest Observation

By way of the Writer’s Almanac, which notes that this is the anniversary of Lincoln’s 1862 State of the Union address (actually, it appears to be a long, written report rather than a speech). Anyway, he had a way of summing things up. He closed his message this way:

“The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. … In giving freedom to the slave, we ensure freedom to the free, honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth.”

Posted on

Short Layoff, Long Comeback – New York Times

Short Layoff, Long Comeback – New York Times:

Good piece last week from Gina Kolata on how the body reacts when training is suspended and what sorts of activities do or don’t help performance in specific events (if you’re a cyclist, walking ain’t gonna help a lot with that, no matter how much you walk. …).

“WHEN Helen Betancourt, an assistant coach at Princeton, was preparing for the World Championships in rowing in 1998, she suffered an overuse injury: stress fractures of her ribs. She competed anyway, but then had to take five months off.

“Like most athletes, she did her best to maintain her fitness, spending hours cycling. Finally, she returned to her sport.

“ ‘I lost half my strength,’ she said. And rowing just felt weird. ‘It was like I had stepped off another planet.’

“Yet a couple of months later, much faster than it takes to get that strong to begin with, Ms. Betancourt felt like her old self on the water. Four months of rowing and she was in top form.”

Posted on

Where Do You Hurt?

A friend emailed me that Randonneurs USA, the organizing group for cyclists who do long, nutty rides of the type I’ve been trying for the last several years, is conducting a survey of riders who went to Paris-Brest-Paris this summer. PBP is not the longest or nuttiest of the rides, but it’s long and nutty enough (750-plus miles) and it’s older than any of them, including that big French tour race thing they do every July. I realized a sort of cycling dream by finishing PBP in 2003; I went back this year — it’s a quadrennial event — and succumbed to a sore Achilles tendon (and, yes, soggy morale after a prolonged ride in the rain).

Anyway, the survey includes a question on physical problems that riders might have experienced during PBP. The list itself says more than I ever could about the nuttiness rampant in this kind of event. Without further comment, here’s the litany of possible symptoms, ailments, and physical breakdowns from the survey:

numbness or tingling in fingers

numbness or tingling in toes

hot foot

swollen feet

Carpal Tunnel wrist issues

loss of toenail(s)

saddle sores

arm or shoulder weakness

Achilles tendon issues

Shermer neck (inability to hold head up)

disorientation or dizziness

visions or hallucinations

respiration issues

inability to swallow

headaches

leg cramps

digestive issues (nausea, vomiting)

falling asleep on the bike

acid reflux

hypothermia

mouth sores

genital injury

blurred vision

None

Other

Technorati Tags:

Posted on

Wednesday at the Ponderosa

You know — the Cartwright place; not the steakhouse. This could also be called Late Discovery Wednesday.

Last night, one of the local public radio stations broadcast a discussion from a month or so ago about a singer/songwriter named Nick Drake. I had heard something of his story before: a wildly talented and deeply depressed singer/songwriter in the late ’60s and early ’70s; he made just three albums in what I would suppose you’d call the British-type folk-rock style — think Fairport Convention and Richard and Linda Thompson. He died in 1974, in his mid-20s, a possible suicide. His music never went away, though. The albums didn’t find a big audience, but they survived because the fans were devoted and sometimes influential. From listening to the program last night, it sounds like Drake’s big posthumous break was having a marketing guy at Volkswagen happen across one of Drake’s late songs, “Pink Moon,” and decide to use it as the soundtrack for a commercial (you can watch it on YouTube). That was in 2000, and the sudden mass exposure of the song moved 5,000 copies of the “Pink Moon” album in less than three weeks — more than it had sold in the two years between its release and Drake’s death.

Out of curiosity, I went looking for the Volkswagen ad. I remember it, though I wouldn’t have guessed it was on the air seven years ago already. Four young people in a Cabriolet or whatever those little Rabbit-like convertibles are called. They drive along beautiful moonlight roads and arrive at a roadhouse. They pull into the parking lot and are greeted by the yahoo-like carryings-on of their peers. Disgusted, too in touch with the wonders of the night (thanks to the car), they soulfully head back out to the open road. There’s no dialogue; just a minute of the Drake song, which is pleasant enough but not world-shattering. As commercial’s go, it’s a pretty good one (another VW favorte: the couple driving through the New Orleans French Quarter in the rain, where absolutely everything they see on the street — people walking, people unloading a truck, a guy sweeping the sidewalk, another guy dribbling a basketball — happens in time to the car’s windshield wipers. That one would have worked better without dialogue, too; it’s also on YouTube).

There are some Nick Drake videos on YouTube, too (sort of; there’s apparently no extant film footage of him playing, so people have just pieced together moody still images). “Pink Moon,” for one. And one called “River Man,” which is a lovely minor-key ballad that prompted me to see if iTunes has any Drake stuff. They do. I wound up buying a compilation album, “Way to Blue.” If you’re in the market yourself, go to AmazonMP3 — the album is three bucks cheaper than it is on iTunes (also, Amazon’s songs can be played anywhere and come without the digital-rights management limits that Apple imposes on most cuts at the behest of the record companies.

Technorati Tags:

Posted on

Tuesday at the Hacienda

Now that telemarketers have stopped calling — for the most part, anyway; that do-not-call list actually has worked for us — my favorite phone moments involve recurring wrong numbers. For a long time, we had a guy who’d call and say, “Hi. Is Victoria there?” He kept calling and saying exactly the same thing in the same tone of voice long after it was obvious that the voices he was hearing at our number had no connection to Victoria. On the other hand, he must have been getting in touch with Victoria sometimes and then occasionally misdial and get us. He has moved on.

The last few days, someone has wrong-dialed us twice. Our exchanges have been brief. I answer in my usual cheerful general American way: “Hello?” The first time, I got a confused snort in return; it was enough of a vocalization that I’d guess the caller was an older woman; she hung up immediately after her flustered snuffle. Today she called again. “Hello?” This time the snort sounded a little incensed. “I think you have the wrong number.” Another offended-sounding huff, and then she hung up.

I’m looking forward to our next talk.

Technorati Tags:

Posted on

Today’s Top Research

My foray into matters of Irish Americana tonight has me reading about the Irish community, German Americans, and World War I. Yes: Irish Americans and German Americans made common cause to try to keep the United States out of the war. Ireland’s longstanding grievances against Britain motivated the Irish; support for the Fatherland inspired the Germans. I’ve found lots of interesting and informative stuff on the topic, but I wound up searching the New York Times archives for stories about William Jennings Bryan’s role as an advocate of U.S. neutrality.

I found one precious item from June 1915, a week or so after Bryan had resigned as secretary of State because he could see by President Wilson’s reaction to the Lusitania sinking that his argument didn’t stand a chance in the administration. The item is about a speech that Bryan was supposed to make in Chicago to the Sons of Teutons. The group had invited Bryan, thinking he would inveigh against U.S. ammunition shipments to Britain and France and renew his call for an embargo. But when the Sons of Teutons found out that Bryan instead intended to urge the warring parties to enter peace negotiations, they met him at the train station and said the speech was canceled. At least that was the Times’s version of events.

I came across a more recent item, too: a March 1967 piece by historian Barbara Tuchman (“The Guns of August,” etc.) published in The New York Times Magazine and titled simply, “How We Entered World War I.” I haven’t read Tuchman’s books for decades, but this article is a reminder of why her histories are so accessible: she was a great writer (and yes, a capable historian, too). I found this in her description of the American and German diplomatic struggle over limits to submarine warfare: “Each time during these months when the torpedo streaked its fatal track, the isolationist cry to keep Americans out of the war zones redoubled.”

“… The torpedo streaked its fatal track.” I’ll remember that one for awhile.

Posted on

World Toilet

Toilet crusade: From Seoul, the AP reports that the World Toilet Association opened its inaugural conference yesterday. “To the celebratory rhythms of a percussionist beating on toilets,” the story says, representatives from the U.N. and dozens off governments began deliberations. The surprise, for me: the association’s purpose is so serious — to reduce disease and death by providing proper sanitation facilities for the half (almost) of humanity who lack them — that there are dueling international toilet groups. The World Toilet Organization — www.worldtoilet.org — sponsors a World Toilet Summit, a World Toilet College and annual World Toilet Day (November 19 — we just missed it). The johnny-come-lately World Toilet Association, the one that’s beating on toilets in Seoul, sums up its mission this way: “Toilets are essential to life, human health, human development and the environment. Wisely managed toilets mean better health, prosperity and environmental sustainability. On the other hand, poorly managed toilets bring about vicious cycle of diseases, poverty, environmental degradation and a loss of human dignity.”

Both groups are led by someone named Sim — the WTO by Jack Sim, a Singapore real-estate mogul and sanitation activist who first founded a group called the Restroom Association; and the WTA by Sim Jae-Duck, whom the AP says is known in Korea as Mr. Toilet for his efforts to improve sanitary facilities in before the 2002 soccer World Cup held in Korea and Japan. As part of his campaign for toilet awareness, the WTA’s Sim has built himself a toilet-shaped house.

At a speech he gave in August at Malaysia’s National Toilet Expo and Forum, the WTA’s Sim said that on average, most people will spend two to three years of their lives going to the toilet. And though most of us think we know what a toilet is for, Sim expanded on its role:

For the establishment of the World Toilet Association, I visited many countries around the world and witnessed many regions at the risk of secondary transmission of contagious diseases owing to lack of toilet facilities. I could see that especially many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America were facing serious toilet issues.

Most of these regions and countries were too poor to invest in toilets, and it seemed that their people also considered this reality as a given. That was when I realized the importance of changing people’s perception. I wanted to tell leaders of countries all over the world:

By changing toilets, you can change politics.

By changing toilets, you can change people’s lives.

By changing toilets, you can change the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, a toilet is no longer a place for mere defecation. It should not remain out of our perception and awareness any more. The toilet is a “sacred place” that saves human beings from diseases. It is a place of “contemplation” that provides the philosophy of rest and emptiness. And it is a central space for living full of culture.

Technorati Tags: