Category: Berkeley

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Quadrantids 2012

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Kate and I got up at 3:26 a.m. — that’s what the clock said — to see if we could get an eyeful of the Quadrantid meteor shower last night. (Why so late/early? It was after moonset here, and meteor visibility would be better.) We each saw one pretty good streak before crawling back into bed. Of course, I stayed out for half an hour hoping to get one on camera–and in fact the one I saw flashed by while the lens was open, but it was outside the frame. In any case I got a couple of OK star shots, including this one of the Big Dipper, which was virtually overhead; Polaris, the North Star, is just above and to the right of the tree on the left.

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Quadrantids 2012

dipper010412.jpg

Kate and I got up at 3:26 a.m. — that’s what the clock said — to see if we could get an eyeful of the Quadrantid meteor shower last night. (Why so late/early? It was after moonset here, and meteor visibility would be better.) We each saw one pretty good streak before crawling back into bed. Of course, I stayed out for half an hour hoping to get one on camera–and in fact the one I saw flashed by while the lens was open, but it was outside the frame. In any case I got a couple of OK star shots, including this one of the Big Dipper, which was virtually overhead; Polaris, the North Star, is just above and to the right of the tree on the left.

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A Semi-Blue Post-Christmas

Forgive me a moment of post-holiday wistfulness as I stare into the glare of our sunny, dry January.

Has anyone come up with a word for this “it’s all over” feeling I experience as the page turns on New Year’s Day? It’s not quite sadness. It’s not quite regret. It’s not quite a pining for the holidays, with all their promise and hope, both material and immaterial, to continue. Yet it’s somehow all of these, hardened by the knowledge “Well, that’s that. We won’t be back here again.”

The lights are still hanging on our house and will for a week or two longer (we have to leave them up at the very least so our nephew Max can see them, right?). They’ll come down, though, and I’ll have a pang. Not for the lights themselves, but maybe for what they might represent: a wish to project something joyous and hopeful (and cool) to all our neighbors and all the passers-by. I have one neighbor, up the street and around the corner for us, who seems to deal with the post-holiday mourning period by maintaining one light display after another throughout the whole year. At the very least, he’ll give us Valentine’s, Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween, and Thanksgiving light displays.

Resolution, for the season to come: Find some other small way to project that holiday light to others. And now back to January.

as i stare down the last hour of our extended holiday and watch the lights, lights no longer shining in anticipation of a celebration to come, no longer carrying a promise of something anticipated but still surprising in the deepest shadows of our short days, lights shining out now maybe with a little insistence that the season isn’t, should not be over, lights maybe a little bittersweet because they may shine in place of other hopes and disappointments of the season adn the longer year juste passed.

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Balmy New Year, with Crow

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Crow on a wire, just around the corner and up the street from us. This particular specimen was one of a pair that was taking a dim view of The Dog’s passing as we headed out on a walk late in the afternoon. And the afternoon: Clear and warm as any New Year’s Day has a right to be. The very unofficial high at our house was 68.5 degrees; the Berkeley record going back to about 1900 is 67, set in 1996 (the National Weather Service reports that at least one East Bay high temperature record was set today: it was 67 in downtown Oakland, breaking the record of 66 set in 1997).

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Berkeley Rockin’-Chair Eve

A quiet TV New Year’s Eve with our friends Jill and Piero. Let’s see: the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center, playing some Bernstein and Gershwin. Then “Portandia,” Coldplay on “Austin City Limits” (most frequently heard comments: “what are they singing about” and “all those songs sound the same”) and, God bless us, “Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve (with Ryan Seacrest).” Has anybody tried to get Dick Clark together with Lenin on Red Square to see who has more pizzazz? Maybe someone can get Kim Jong-Il to join the party.

We’re back home now, and quiet prevails. Not even a lot of fireworks tonight. Happy New Year to all–have a great 366 days of 2012.

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Further Greetings from the Friday NIght Ferry

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Kate and I drove down to Jack London Square for the last Friday night ferry of the year. A low sky, with the cloud ceiling down around the tops of the Bay Bridge suspension towers. Somehow, that made the usual port light show even more intense than (or maybe just different from) usual. Among several ships working in the Port of Oakland tonight, Yang Ming’s YM Great, which arrived this morning is scheduled to sail tomorrow morning.

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Rain, If You Look Hard Enough

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There it is, that drop of water right there at the end of that little clear holiday lightbulb–evidence of our big New Year’s Weekend rainstorm. Somewhere far to the north, it’s really been coming down the last couple of days. A favorite weather-table wet spot, Red Mound in the southern Oregon Coast Range, has probably picked up half a foot of rain or more. Here, we’re measuring the wet in hundredths of an inch: .01 in San Francisco, .05 on the top of Mount Diablo. Up in the middle of Mendocino County, Boonville got a real soaking: .11. At the north end of the Napa Valley, Mount St. Helena got .16–a full sixth of an inch. And so ends one of the dryest Decembers since the new arrivals in the area started measuring such things a bit more than a century and a half ago.

After this torrent blows through, the next chance that rain will fall within 100 miles of us here in Berkeley is about the middle of next week; and right now, it looks like it might not be much closer than 100 miles.

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Mission Peak Walk

Mission Peak

[Update: Here’s the route for the hike.]

A holiday week outing, down to Fremont, then up Mission Peak. With our trademarked late start, we left home just about 2 p.m. and were on the trail just before 3. A surprise: There was a pretty good crowd setting off the fairly steep fire-road trail toward the peak. The climb is about 2,140 feet, in about 3 miles, from the Stanford Avenue parking lot. The peak elevation is given as 2,517 feet, just a little under the top of Mount Tamalpais (which was visible far to the north above a smoggy-looking haze). I’m used to having trails in our more northerly reaches of the East Bay pretty much to ourselves; meaning sure, you see other walkers, but generally they’re some space between groups. One exception to that: Nimitz Way in Tilden Park, above Berkeley, which has a large parking lot that generally seems mobbed on the weekends (the main reason, along with the asphalt paving, I haven’t walked out there in years). But I think the crowds are drawn to the Nimitz Trail because it’s easy, whereas the Fremont Peak walk involves a pretty decent grade most of the way (for my knees, easier up than down).

The day was warm and the light was gorgeous all the way up. The mountain gets rockier and more “alpine”-feeling the higher you go. We got to the top just after sunset, and I had the thought as several groups passed us on the way down that maybe we’d be the last ones up there for the day. We hung out for a few minutes, took some pictures, at sandwiches that Kate had made, gave the dog some water, broke out a headlight to negotiate the rocky parts of the trail in the dusk, then started down. And here came another surprise: hikers, alone and in small groups, climbing up the trail in the dark. We stopped one group of three to ask whether this was a local custom. It is. Since the park is open until 10 p.m., this is a popular destination at night; and that’s a big difference from the Berkeley Hills, where the parks seem to clear out completely at dusk even though they’re technically still open as late as the ones further south.

The picture above: Looking west from Mission Peak across southern San Francisco Bay. The light really was that good, only better.

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Luminaria 2011: The Lights

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A shot across the street from our place, looking north on Holly toward and beyond Buena Avenue. A capsule summary: the lights seemed to stretch farther than ever tonight, and neighbors to the east of us shut down a block and had a communal dinner in the middle of the street. Lots of people were out walking, and lots of the walkers stopped by the table in front of our place for cider and baked stuff and stayed to talk. A special night. And a special day to come for all, I hope. Merry Christmas.