"You want it to be one way. But it's the other way."
Well, not murder exactly; or not a murder, to be exact. Kate and I were walking near home and saw crows gathering near the local middle school. Intentions were unclear. Were they about to go Hitchcock on us? Apparently not. I went home and got my camera. When I got back about half an hour later, only a few stragglers remained, including this one, who was sort of gurgling as if it really wanted to sing.
“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected it with another and to assume among the powers of the Earth the separate and equal station which the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.”
Kate and I and a neighbor, Jill Martinucci, read (or maybe performed is a better word) a slightly abridged version of the Declaration to the assembled multitudes at our street’s annual Fourth of July picnic today. The main event at the gathering is a watermelon-seed-spitting contest (a new neighborhood record, 43 feet-plus, was set today), so I was afraid reading this, even with our little interjections, would be seen as a little preachy. But several people came up to us later to day they hadn’t read the Declaration in a while and it was good to hear the words again.
Just one small thing: Today, my son Eamon graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, one of 36 students in the East Asian Languages department who got their bachelor’s degrees (Eamon’s major was Japanese). I forget the exact words, but after the diplomas were all handed out, the department chair congratulated the group and said something like, “You’re now part of the community of educated men and women.” What a great accomplishment for Eamon. And the rest of the group, too. But especially Eamon. Did I mention he’s my son?
Tuesday: I walk up Eighth Street to the Civic Center BART station after work. Nightmare scenario: I need to buy a ticket, which means I have to stand in line behind other patrons trying to figure out how the ticket machines work or who have decided to buy a five-buck ticket by feeding in nickels. Sure enough, I wind up behind three or four other people. The first person deliberates over the bewildering array of two or three choices before purchasing a ticket. Then the next guy approaches the machine. He feeds in one dollar bill, then another. The machine won’t take the third one. Instead of just buying a $2 ticket and paying whatever he owes at the other end, he hits cancel, gets his dollar bills back, then repeats the process. His third bill still won’t go in; exasperated, he looks first to the right, then to the left, for help that’s not there. Then he hits cancel again, gets his bills back, and feeds them in again. One. Two. No go with the third. He looks right, then left, hits cancel, and starts to try again. At this point — I want to get home, man! — I lean around the woman waiting in front of me and say, "Dude, what’s the problem?" Except, I don’t say "dude" in the friendly "hey, dude" way; "dude" comes out in a tone that clearly signals it’s a substitute for "moron." He turns toward me. He’s a short guy, maybe 5-6, with neatly trimmed brown hair and beard; he’s wearing a short-sleeved yellow button-down shirt; he’s wearing olive green shorts and dark street shoes and socks that he should wear with long pants. I recognize him from somewhere. He says, "It won’t take my goddamned dollar." Simultaneously, the woman in front of me — tall, 5-10, and kind of lumpy in a Joan Cusack way but younger than Joan Cusack — turns around and looks at me and says something. I hear, "Shut up." So I tell the guy he’s holding up everyone in line and I ask the woman, "Who the fuck are you telling to shut up? You shut up." She says, "I said, ‘Chill out.’ And you need to." I sputter something winning; perhaps it was "you chill the fuck out."
Meantime, beard guy has given up his place at the ticket machine and says angrily, "You guys go ahead." I already have a twenty in my hand and say, "You held up the line for 10 minutes." "It won’t take my money!" "Here’s a twenty — it’ll work. Take it and buy yourself a ticket." But he doesn’t take it; he goes to the back of the ticket line while the "shut up/chill out" woman is at the machine. She’s buying something like a $5.85 ticket, exact change. She dawdles. I resist the temptation to say, "Hey, look, another rocket scientist." Then it’s my turn. Luckily, the machine takes my twenty on the first try and I get my ticket without holding anyone else up. Then I go down to the platform, wondering who among the people on the platform and the train home just witnessed my little display. I also realize that I recognized the beard guy from about 20 years ago; his name was John something and he was Kate’s roommate’s boyfriend when Kate and I first went out. Same beard and haircut and everything, though Kate’s roommate, Beth, moved on a long
time ago.
Wednesday (pictured): Back to Civic Center BART after work. I’ve left work a little early thinking maybe I can get a short bike ride in before dark. Armed with my dramatically procured ticket from the day before, I head down to the platform. There’s a train waiting — headed out to Bay Point, not my line. The Richmond train, to Berkeley, is due in 7 minutes. But the train at the platform doesn’t move, and within a couple of minutes, there’s an announcement that "smoke is emanating
from a train at Embarcadero Station" and all the East Bay-bound trains are halted for a few minutes. It’s about 5:10. More announcements. The train at Embarcadero has been taken out of service. The train at Embarcadero had an electrical overload. Or it might have hit something on the tracks. BART workers are walking the track to see if there’s a problem. The delay lengthens — 10 minutes, 15, 20, then 30. Finally, the packed train at Civic Center moves, slowly. Then a Fremont train, headed south toward San Jose from Oakland, pulls in. Then the Richmond train I had been waiting for. The operator announces that there’s another train with a problem at Embarcadero; but by 5:45, we get going, too. I managed to get a seat and fall asleep during a stop-and-go trip through the Transbay tube. We halt for awhile outside West Oakland station. The problem is that another train ahead of us has broken down at the platform there, meaning we have to cross over to the opposite tracks to get through the station. When we get to West Oakland, I’m surprised to see that the platform there (that’s the picture above) is filled with nearly no room to stand — people taken off a train waiting for another to come in; of course, their problem is that all the arriving trains are either already filled or using the opposite platform until everything is straightened out. So those people over there are as good as stranded. Anyway, my train makes it through, and after we turn north from downtown Oakland, we get to Berkeley with no more problems. I get home about 6:50 p.m., so the trip took about three times as long as usual. Surprisingly, no one complained. People even laughed when the train operator apologized for "this less than stellar commute. I guess that’s an understatement." This gives me, the commuting jerk, food for thought.
Friday: On my way into work by way of the casual carpool. Waiting in the Civic Center line at the North Berkeley BART station with three people ahead of me, one behind me. The three in front all get into a Toyota Avalon. So the next car will take me and the other person. One pulls up to the curb and honks. It looks like there are already two people in the car (you need three to take the carpool lane, so they would only need one more rider), and I’m confused when the woman who’s been second in line walks very confidently to the car, opens the rear passenger door and gets in. Just a minute! She’s the third person. She’s taking my spot! I say,"Hey, I’m sorry, I was ahead of you in line. You need to get out." She looks up at me, very puzzled, and says, "Yes?" "Yes," I answer. And she gets out. Then she gets in the front passenger seat, where no one had been sitting. Um — I didn’t see the front seat was empty! Really I didn’t. Did I feel kind of stupid? No — very. And also like I must be cracking up to get into these um, misunderstandings. My trip home was altercation-free, though.
Record heat
in the Bay Area today; 90 in San Francisco, in the low 90s in the East
Bay; several places in the region set their all-time record for the
month (and most of the records broken were set in 1935 or 1965, long
before the phrase global warmiing was coined). But the real thing the
heat makes you think about is whether the lights will go out. So far —
with Enron and Calpine and the rest of the energy criminals sidelined
— things look OK. Even with temperatures in the hundreds in some
locations today, the state’s energy network operator said demand never approached the available supply.
Well, Kate and I spent a couple hours this morning walking around to MoveOn bake sales
in our general neighborhood. On one level, it seems like touchy-feely
naivete: Bake sales to defeat Bush? Yeah, right. On the other hand, it
was really encouraging to see the enthusiasm for the idea around town
and the determination people have that the small things they’re doing
in their own communities, and the money they’re gathering, could build
into something big. Of course, this is Berkeley, and you could get
people to do bake sales for nearly anything; at one gathering, someone
said there were 19 MoveOn bake sales around town; I’ll bet there were
even more. But I wonder how many there were in, say, Kansas.(I just
searched on the MoveOn site for future bake sales within 3 miles of our
zip code, and got five results. I checked for similar events coming up
within 300 miles of Wichita and got three hits. And actually, MoveOn has a map that illustrates where the bake sale hot spots were and weren’t) More on
this tomorrow.
Sure, the above could easily be mistaken as a description of me. But what it really is is a phrase from a West Coast surf forecast that a colleague, Steve Enders, pointed out earlier today. In discussing the big seas whipped up by today’s storm, www.stormsurf.com observed:
“…It is likely that some degree of very high seas will move close to the coast. In that event a large, unruly, ungroomed and raw swell will impact the North and Central California coasts. …”
The best thing:
–The unexpected sights. Tonight: the view of Sirius appearing just above a ridge top as I rode up Claremont; the mist lapping over the saddle at the top of Claremont Canyon as I finished the slow, steep climb; the fog blanketing the valleys to the east.
Breaking the poetic mood:
–The uncertainty whether cars approaching from behind on the dark hills roads really see you.
–The discovery as I started to descend Grizzly Peak toward home that the nice, bright white lines on the right side of the road were nearly invisible, obscured by leaves and mud and other storm litter. Made the descent a little tricky.
What are they? Little paper bags with sand and votive candles inside. This definition from the American Heritage Dictionary says they are “commonplace” in American neighborhoods during the holidays. I don’t know how “commonplace” they are, but we go out with our neighbors and line our street with luminaria (or farolitos, if you like) every Christmas Eve. We started in 1992 or so and have done it every year since; and in the last few years, nearby streets have started putting out luminaria, too. Last week, though, it was pretty wet on the appointed evening and the display almost didn’t happen on Holly Street. Determined and optimistic neighbors braved soggy sidewalks and the threat of more showers to put the lights out, but most of the other blocks did not. Some of those areas waited till last night to put out their luminaria, as I discovered walking home from BART about 8:30. Kate and I walked through the neighborhood early, then again late. We passed the house shown here, on Lincoln Street, about 11:30 p.m.
It was windy here early this morning, with a storm front coming through between 2 and 3 o’clock. Lying in bed listening to the blow, I suddenly realized the gusts were probably strong enough to knock over the three little Norfolk pines I have on the front porch. I went out there in the rain to find that one had been blown off a wide railing, broken, and probably fatally injured.
More later on the trees.