Yesterday: Just after 11 a.m., on the Eastshore Freeway (a.k.a., Interstates 80 and 580), at the Powell Street entrance. A beautiful day with no accidents in the vicinity. Just a lot of cars. The reason for all the cars well after the height of the commute hour: a day game between the Giants and the Dodgers, just across the Bay Bridge). When I drive in to work, I usually drive late and am spoiled; with an electronic toll pass, I don’t even slow down much for the toll plaza anymore, and I make it to the office reliably in about 30 minutes, door to door. Yesterday it was a little more than an hour, a lot of it spent just like this–in traffic that was going nowhere fast.
Owl-less Midnight
Just came in from walking The Dog. He’s a little out of sorts because his pack leader (a.k.a. Kate) is away for the night at a salmon/watershed institute for teachers (I’m so envious of her).
Anyway, the walk: Very quiet tonight. Cloudy, so no moon. Still, barely a breath of breeze. And unlike some summers past, not a single hint of owls in the vicinity.
We were spoiled two years ago by a nesting pair of barn owls that set up housekeeping in a big Canary Island palm a couple blocks away. There were four chicks who carried on incessantly as both parents hunted the neighborhood and beyond to feed the hungry brood. I thought at the time, or hoped in any case, that we’d hear and see those birds again.
Over the winter we heard barn owls nearby. But this spring and summer, the neighborhood’s fallen silent at night. I hope those birds are hunting somewhere. Maybe they can come back sometime and run some night-time raids on the crows, who have taken over the daylight hours here.
Berkeley Bird Sightings: Sidewalk Edition
About a week ago, Kate happened upon this bird (and took this picture) while out walking The Dog. The poor thing had come to a bad end, but the real mystery for us was what kind of bird it was. After looking through a couple of our bird books and considering different possibilities–the bill and feet are pretty distinctive–we started looking at shorebirds even though our neighborhood is about a mile from the bay and, except for the occasional gull, we don’t see them alight here. The closest match we found: the Virginia Rail, possibly an immature one (despite its name, the species seems to be more widely distributed in California than its eponymous state, if indeed it’s named after the state).
Kate’s friend Debbie took our guess and sent it to an editor at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Here’s what she heard back:
What a sad thing to come upon! You’re right–this is indeed a Virginia Rail. Rails sometimes misidentify fields and even wet pavement for marshes and make too hard a landing and break a leg or even both of them. I used to be a licensed rehabber, and sometimes I had to care for these poor crippled birds. Sometimes they did heal well–I suspect in this case a dog found it before it could take off again. One time a Sora [another rail species] ended up on the sidelines of Soldier’s Field in Chicago during a Chicago Bears football game being broadcast nationally. I guess the announcers had no clue what it was, and kept the camera on the bird more than they did on the game until an ornithologist identified it for them. (I personally would much rather be watching a Sora than a football game, myself!)
I’m really impressed that Debbie got such a nice answer. It’s enough to get me to pay for access to the lab’s Birds of North America site.
Berkeley Vehicle of the Day
Outside the Bread Workshop (University Avenue and Acton Street). It wasn’t clear to me what “Guerrilla Grub” was, but I was impressed that whoever went to the trouble of painting the truck spelled “guerrilla” correctly. (There’s a Guerilla Cafe on Shattuck Avenue, in the old Smokey Joe’s space, which unironically offers “art, coffee and vibes” along with its second-rate orthography.)
Inside the Bread Workshop, a frequent Sunday morning destination for coffee while we walk with The Dog, I met a guy from Guerrilla Grub. He was wearing a shirt that said so, and was picking up rolls for sandwiches. Guerrilla Grub is a street food operation, he said, and the truck pictured here is its “transporter.” Today’s mission was to hustle stuff over to the Temescal Street Fair in North Oakland, where they’d be serving sloppy joes–both vegetarian and beef. The G.G. guy said they’d be trying to sell 200 sandwiches for the day.
He also said the paint job was by a local artist named Nite Owl, a.k.a. Daniel Zawadzki of Oakland.
Nice truck.
Boat Ride
We took a trip to Japan in 2008, and I was struck by how many people on trains seemed to be glued to the screens of their cellphones (smartphones or smart-enough phones). The adoption of smartphones was only just picking up in the United States, and while it wasn’t unusual to see people talking or texting, I don’t recall people becoming wholly engaged in their phone screens for extended periods the way they seemed to be in Tokyo. But that has all changed. Now it’s commonplace to see people walking down the street entranced by Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp, Groupon, some latter-day version of Pong, or the works of Voltaire (or all of the above in sequence, while listening to “Viva la Vida”).
I’ve never become comfortable plugging in earbuds and listening to music as I walk down the street; I immediately feel disconnected from my surroundings in a way I don’t quite trust–I don’t hear traffic as well, or other people, or my own footfalls. As the saying goes, your mileage may vary; I know plenty of people for whom this isn’t an issue, including folks who run long training distances and even endurance cyclists. Of course, when people are listening to music while training, they’re using it as part of the routine, to inspire and pace themselves (and I’ve always loved group indoor-cycling workouts for the music part of it; the music is part of the shared experience).
You don’t need a smartphone or iPad or anything electronic to put up a wall between you and your surroundings. A newspaper or book can achieve that effect quite nicely. On a noisy, crowded train after a demanding day at work. I think it’s natural to want to create your own little bubble and retreat into it. I remember the first time I did a daily commute, when I was 18, watching people diving into their paper for the hourlong ride (me, I used the time to catch up on my sleep, and still do when I take the rain to work).
But that’s one of the reasons I like to walk from work, across a hill or two, and over to the bay to catch the ferry every once in a while: to make contact with the world, to see it, to be part of it. And of course, offer my critique of the proceedings around and about. All of which leads to the two guys above, pictured on the ferry to Oakland from San Francisco yesterday. The one on the left never looked up; I assume he was reading a book or important memo on his device. The one on the right barely looked up. Me? Well, when I wasn’t checking on my fellow passengers and documenting their activities, I was standing at the aft end of the boat’s top deck, watching the sunlight on our wake.
Dismasted
Last Friday night, heading toward Oakland from San Francisco on the ferry. A spectacular evening: clear, warm, calm. Just entering the Oakland Estuary from the Bay, we caught up with this: a sailboat that through some misadventure had lost its mast, being towed back to port. The skipper, visible at the rear of the boat, gave a theatrical shrug as he realized he had an audience on the ferry (I didn’t get a picture of that, though). Kind of hapless. The boat’s name: Irish Mist.
Berkeley Fourth: The Knuckleheads’ Turn
I confess: I think whoever it is in the neighborhood who’s still setting off firework as we’re moving toward midnight is (are) knucklehead(s). Never mind that even “safe and sane” fireworks are supposedly banned in Berkeley. From the little I saw strolling up around the corner this a little after 10, there was a bad mix of alcohol and clueless adults trying to please their mostly unsupervised kids. At one point, someone through a smoke bomb (apparently accidentally) in front of a cyclist who was riding down the street. Someone else sent up a couple of low-rise skyrockets without any apparent consideration of where the live cinders might come down (a neighbor’s roof and a redwood tree).
Knuckleheads.
In the distance, lots of ordnance going off. And some of it really is ordnance. Amid the loud pyrotechnics and potentially digit-severing small explosives, one hears occasional series of very regular, rapid reports. One presumes those come from fellow citizens celebrating the Second Amendment by firing off surplus 9-millimeter ammo. Distant sirens sound continuously. If John Adams could only see what his great anniversary festival has turned into.
Anyway. Here on our placid street, long before the concussive terrors that descend with the lowering of night, we had our Fourth of July picnic. A staple of this celebration: a watermelon-seed-spitting contest. Various categories of contestants, from young uns to novices to “pros,” try for distance (our neighborhood record: 43 feet and some inches) and accuracy. We also have what started out as a “trick spit” category and has now turned into a sort of improv theater “spit skit” — often referring to politics or sports or popular movies. In the past, we’ve had take-offs on “Star Wars” (“The Phantom Melon”), “Titanic,” and “The Sopranos” (“The Seed-pranos”).
What’s the flavor of the event? Here’s today’s “trick spit,” “The King’s Spit.” And yes, this actually was performed.
In a nation that long ago shed the chains of monarchy … and that has plenty of problems without having to deal with a bunch of hereditary narcissists … who gives a spit anymore about the royals? We do!
And since that’s the case … we want to bring you a very special moment in the history of the House of Windsor … where Prince Bertie is getting ready for his public debut – his very first solo spit … in front of the whole neighborhood.
Bertie
Hello, everyone. I have … a very special slice … of watermelon … from my dad … the king!
Crowd
Oooooohhhhhhh!!!
Bertie
Here … goes!
(Dribbles a seed onto his shirt).
Berkeley Fourth: The Knuckleheads’ Turn
I confess: I think whoever it is in the neighborhood who’s still setting off firework as we’re moving toward midnight is (are) knucklehead(s). Never mind that even “safe and sane” fireworks are supposedly banned in Berkeley. From the little I saw strolling up around the corner this a little after 10, there was a bad mix of alcohol and clueless adults trying to please their mostly unsupervised kids. At one point, someone through a smoke bomb (apparently accidentally) in front of a cyclist who was riding down the street. Someone else sent up a couple of low-rise skyrockets without any apparent consideration of where the live cinders might come down (a neighbor’s roof and a redwood tree).
Knuckleheads.
In the distance, lots of ordnance going off. And some of it really is ordnance. Amid the loud pyrotechnics and potentially digit-severing small explosives, one hears occasional series of very regular, rapid reports. One presumes those come from fellow citizens celebrating the Second Amendment by firing off surplus 9-millimeter ammo. Distant sirens sound continuously. If John Adams could only see what his great anniversary festival has turned into.
Anyway. Here on our placid street, long before the concussive terrors that descend with the lowering of night, we had our Fourth of July picnic. A staple of this celebration: a watermelon-seed-spitting contest. Various categories of contestants, from young uns to novices to “pros,” try for distance (our neighborhood record: 43 feet and some inches) and accuracy. We also have what started out as a “trick spit” category and has now turned into a sort of improv theater “spit skit” — often referring to politics or sports or popular movies. In the past, we’ve had take-offs on “Star Wars” (“The Phantom Melon”), “Titanic,” and “The Sopranos” (“The Seed-pranos”).
What’s the flavor of the event? Here’s today’s “trick spit,” “The King’s Spit.” And yes, this actually was performed.
In a nation that long ago shed the chains of monarchy … and that has plenty of problems without having to deal with a bunch of hereditary narcissists … who gives a spit anymore about the royals? We do!
And since that’s the case … we want to bring you a very special moment in the history of the House of Windsor … where Prince Bertie is getting ready for his public debut – his very first solo spit … in front of the whole neighborhood.
Bertie
Hello, everyone. I have … a very special slice … of watermelon … from my dad … the king!
Crowd
Oooooohhhhhhh!!!
Bertie
Here … goes!
(Dribbles a seed onto his shirt).
Berkeley Fourth of July: Taiko Drumming
For more than the last couple of years, we’ve made a habit of rising early the first weekend of the Tour de France and having a few neighbors over to watch a stage (the first Sunday of the Tour generally features the first full stage; not this year, though, as the race opened with a big stage yesterday and then changed things up today with a team time trial). So we did that this morning with our neighbors Marie and Steve. Then in the course of the rest of the day, first I took a nap, then Kate did amid a series of chores she was doing. Then we took The Dog for a walk up to campus and back.
On the way up Virginia Street, we could hear drumming. Just east of McGee, people were holding a block party, and the group pictured above was entertaining a small crowd. Fourth of July Weekend Taiko Drumming–it was a first for me.
A Brief Tour of the Fireworks
In my other (paid, employed) life, I also sometimes blog. This morning, I was called upon to blog about which towns in the Bay Area are holding fireworks celebrations. I discovered that some other local media outlets had come up with good lists, so rather than invent the wheel with my limited time and resources, I simply linked to what had been done well elsewhere. Of course, that wasn’t enough for me, so I dressed up the post with a dash of Fourth of July fireworks history. Including part of this widely cited passage (note the mention of future celebrations) from a letter John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, on July 3, 1776:
The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.