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It’s December. Do You Know Where Your Rain Is?

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It’s December now in the Bay Area, and if you’re fastidious about your weather expectations, you look out the window and want to see rain. Or at least a little gray. But in the wake of the little wind event of the past couple of days, what I see out there is a sparkling azure sky without a hint of a cloud.

Our climate is mostly dry from sometime in April to sometime in October, mostly wet from October to April, except when it’s not. And when it’s not, we’ve got trouble. Yes, things in the cities are beautiful, and when you turn on the spigot, water from somewhere magically appears. But you know that somewhere–up in the Sierra, out in the Valley–things aren’t so good. There won’t be enough mountain snow to help replenish the reservoirs in the spring. The farmers will want water they cannot get. The fish and wildlife that depend on an abundant flow of water through the Delta, species threatened because for decades they were last in line when people thought about how to spend the water we bank, will suffer. The edge to the anxiety comes from the knowledge that drought happens here, and drought can become a social and political as well as a natural and environmental mess.

Feeling nervous yet? I am. I follow Jan Null, a Bay Area meteorologist. Here’s his climate summary for last month:

November 2011 was a cool and mostly dry month across California. Monthly average maxima anomalies were -1.0 (San Jose) to -3.6 degrees (Los Angeles), while monthly mean anomalies were -0.8 to -2.3 degrees. North of the Tehachapis rainfall was well below normal ranging from 28% of normal (Sacramento) to 69% (Eureka) while Southern California was quite wet with Los Angeles and San Diego at 152% and 309% of normal respectively.

Sometimes, to reassure myself that all will soon be well, I might take a spin through weather and climate sites to see what the professionals are saying about the forecast. That image to the right is a graphic of the Quantitative Precipitation Forecast from the California Nevada River Forecast Center. During a wet period, the map will be a glorious swirl of color–blue and green and yellow, depicting progressively heavier precipitation, and sometimes orange and splashes of red and magenta when it’s really wet (there’s a scale at the top of the map; click on the image for a full-size version). Gray, on the other hand, means dry. No rain in the lowlands. No snow in the uplands. No reassurance.

Next, here’s how one of the meteorologists down in the Bay Area National Weather Service office in Monterey sums up the coming week in the Area Forecast Discussion (using familiar all-caps weather advisory style):

DRY WEATHER LOOKS TO BE IN STORE FOR THE DISTRICT SUNDAY THOUGH NEXT WEEK. HOWEVER…THE MODELS ARE STARTING TO SHOW SOME DIFFERENCES. THE ECMWF KEEPS A STRONG RIDGE ALONG 135W STRETCHING INTO THE GULF OF ALASKA WITH A STRONG SHORTWAVE DIVING DOWN THROUGH THE GREAT BASIN LATE THURSDAY INTO FRIDAY. THIS SCENARIO WOULD BRING ANOTHER BOUT OF GUSTY OFFSHORE WINDS. THE GFS WEAKENS AND FLATTENS THE RIDGE BY THE END OF NEXT WEEK…WITH A SHORTWAVE MOVING INTO THE NORTHERN PLAINS NOT DIVING SHARPLY SOUTHEAST. THIS WOULD NOT BE A WINDY SCENARIO FOR THE DISTRICT. REGARDLESS OF THE MODEL…DRY WEATHER IS IN STORE THROUGH THE END OF THE NEXT WORKWEEK.

Got that? The major question the weather persons are dealing with is whether or not the forecast models indicate another windstorm for the coming week. Chances of rain–none apparent.

The pluviophile now turns eyes to the coming month, even though we’re exiting the realm of forecasting and prediction and entering into one of probabilities and outlooks. But here goes: The National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center says the Bay Area should have “near median” precipitation in the period from eight to 14 days from now (median in this case meaning rainfall along the lines of the “middle 10 years” of the past three decades in terms of rainfall); the northern quarter of California is looking at below-median rainfall during that period. The center’s one-month outlook shows equal chances of above, below, or near median precipitation. That’s because “there were no strong and consistent climate signals” among the forecast models.

And one last stop: Both the most recent U.S. Drought Monitor report and the seasonal outlook, through the end of February, show California drought-free (things look scary in Texas, though).

So where’s the rain? Like that TV show used to say: Out there. Somewhere.

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Family History Files: Tim Hogan

A long-ago teacher of mine–G.E. Smith, who taught English, literature, and a lot more at Crete-Monee High School in the 1960s and '70s–became interested in his family ancestry late in life. It wasn't an easy thing. I don't know a lot of his personal story, but I do know that his mother left his biological father very early in his life, back in the mid-'20s, and that he was raised by a stepfather he remembered as generous if not saintly.

Also late in life, he brought out a book of poems he had written as a much younger man. He hadn't intended to, he said, but when he started into the family history business, his work took on a different meaning: "It wasn't until I began to think, as a genealogist, about how anything written by ancient relatives–even in signature–was (or could have been) so extraordinarily precious that I decided to consider publishing. I realized that I, too, someday, would likely be a long-ago ancient relative to someone who was pursuing my family history."

That line about the actual words of a forebear being "so extraordinarily precious" stuck in my head. I've listened to perhaps hundreds of hours of stories about my dad's family and my mom's, and recently I was struck with a little sense of urgency about setting down at least the basic outlines of what I've heard. So far, that's mostly involved cemetery visits and creating the beginnings of a family tree (through the very expensive and sometimes-worth-it Ancestry.com). There's a bit of an addictive thrill in tracking down someone you've been hearing about your whole life in a century-old census record: Wow–there they are, just like Mom and Dad said, in Warren, Minnesota, or on South Yale Avenue in Chicago. But records only take you so far, and they don't really give a voice to the people listed on the census rolls or on the draft records or on Ellis Island arrival manifests.

I imagine my family is like most in that whatever words were ever written down have mostly fallen victim to fastidious housecleaning, negligence, dismissiveness, or lack of interest. You know: "Who'd ever be interested in that?" or, "Does anyone want this old stuff?" (I think pictures are the occasional exception to this rule. Plenty get thrown away, but the images have an intrinsic interest for a lot of people when they can't readily identify the subjects of the photos.) Chance, mostly, and, less often, selection determine what survives. My dad has a collection of letters his father wrote to his mother during their courtship and early in their marriage, a century and more ago. I believe they are numbered and I remember hearing that after my grandfather, Sjur Brekke, died, in their 26th year of marriage, my grandmother continued to read those letters for years afterward. There used to be another set of letters, too–my grandmother's letters to my grandfather. But at some point she destroyed them. The story I've heard is that she considered them too personal for others to read. Wouldn't we Brekke descendants love to get a look at those.

Over to my mom's side of the family: They were Irish and stereotypically more voluble than my dad's Norwegian clan. But not much has survived (that I know about) beyond the oral tradition. One rather amazing exception: my mom's grandfather.

Timhogan-twins10061933I don't know a lot about him, but Timothy Jeremiah Hogan was born in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1864 (I'll let him tell that story), lived as a child on the Great Plains (ditto), raised a family, including my grandfather Edward Hogan, in central and northern Illinois. He was a railroad man, working for one of the roads back there (on the Wabash, I believe, but don't know for sure). He was said to have spent a lot of time riding alone in the caboose and taught himself to play the guitar. He was losing his hearing at the end of his life, was described as taciturn and short with most of his grandchildren, and was reportedly heartbroken when a favorite grandson drowned in the summer of 1939. He died himself a month later.

Another thing about Tim Hogan: He had a typewriter, and he used it. He composed poems on the typewriter, and song lyrics. Here's one of his poems, about two of my mom's brothers (that's them in the picture at right) shortly after their first birthday:

October 7th.1934.
AN ODE TO OUR LITTLE
TWIN BOYS TOM, AND ED
*********************
Early in the morning
When they open up their eyes
Laying in their tiney little beds
Rolling over, over
Both the same size
Cunning little round bald heads.
You couldent help but love them
With their smileing eyes of blue
Remember it was GRAND DAD told you so,
Charming little twinners,
Only new beginers
You can almost see them grow.

Tim wrote letters, too. We only have a handful of them, but below are a couple that he produced in 1936 when he was trying to do a little biographical/genealogical research of his own. The first (click pages for larger images; full text is after the jump) is to the clerk of LaSalle County, and he's hoping to find records of his family's residence from around the time of his birth.

timhogan_1.jpeg timhogan_2.jpeg

The second letter is to the Railroad Retirement Board. He doesn't explicitly mention it here, but I recall a couple of my mom's aunts, Tim's daughters Catherine and Betty, saying he was trying to establish his date of birth in relation to a pension that might be due.

timhogan_3.jpeg

One question I have about these: Did he send them? As he says, he's earnestly interested in getting answers. So my guess is that these are copies of versions he sent. I haven't found any records in the sparse collection of family documents to suggest what answers he might have gotten. The full text of the letters is available through the link below. If the lines break in an odd way, it's because I tried to stick to how he broke the lines, starting nearly each new line with a capital letter. I've also tried to copy his punctuation and spelling.

Continue reading “Family History Files: Tim Hogan”

Posted on

Family History Files: Tim Hogan

A long-ago teacher of mine–G.E. Smith, who taught English, literature, and a lot more at Crete-Monee High School in the 1960s and '70s–became interested in his family ancestry late in life. It wasn't an easy thing. I don't know a lot of his personal story, but I do know that his mother left his biological father very early in his life, back in the mid-'20s, and that he was raised by a stepfather he remembered as generous if not saintly.

Also late in life, he brought out a book of poems he had written as a much younger man. He hadn't intended to, he said, but when he started into the family history business, his work took on a different meaning: "It wasn't until I began to think, as a genealogist, about how anything written by ancient relatives–even in signature–was (or could have been) so extraordinarily precious that I decided to consider publishing. I realized that I, too, someday, would likely be a long-ago ancient relative to someone who was pursuing my family history."

That line about the actual words of a forebear being "so extraordinarily precious" stuck in my head. I've listened to perhaps hundreds of hours of stories about my dad's family and my mom's, and recently I was struck with a little sense of urgency about setting down at least the basic outlines of what I've heard. So far, that's mostly involved cemetery visits and creating the beginnings of a family tree (through the very expensive and sometimes-worth-it Ancestry.com). There's a bit of an addictive thrill in tracking down someone you've been hearing about your whole life in a century-old census record: Wow–there they are, just like Mom and Dad said, in Warren, Minnesota, or on South Yale Avenue in Chicago. But records only take you so far, and they don't really give a voice to the people listed on the census rolls or on the draft records or on Ellis Island arrival manifests.

I imagine my family is like most in that whatever words were ever written down have mostly fallen victim to fastidious housecleaning, negligence, dismissiveness, or lack of interest. You know: "Who'd ever be interested in that?" or, "Does anyone want this old stuff?" (I think pictures are the occasional exception to this rule. Plenty get thrown away, but the images have an intrinsic interest for a lot of people when they can't readily identify the subjects of the photos.) Chance, mostly, and, less often, selection determine what survives. My dad has a collection of letters his father wrote to his mother during their courtship and early in their marriage, a century and more ago. I believe they are numbered and I remember hearing that after my grandfather, Sjur Brekke, died, in their 26th year of marriage, my grandmother continued to read those letters for years afterward. There used to be another set of letters, too–my grandmother's letters to my grandfather. But at some point she destroyed them. The story I've heard is that she considered them too personal for others to read. Wouldn't we Brekke descendants love to get a look at those.

Over to my mom's side of the family: They were Irish and stereotypically more voluble than my dad's Norwegian clan. But not much has survived (that I know about) beyond the oral tradition. One rather amazing exception: my mom's grandfather.

Timhogan-twins10061933I don't know a lot about him, but Timothy Jeremiah Hogan was born in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1864 (I'll let him tell that story), lived as a child on the Great Plains (ditto), raised a family, including my grandfather Edward Hogan, in central and northern Illinois. He was a railroad man, working for one of the roads back there (on the Wabash, I believe, but don't know for sure). He was said to have spent a lot of time riding alone in the caboose and taught himself to play the guitar. He was losing his hearing at the end of his life, was described as taciturn and short with most of his grandchildren, and was reportedly heartbroken when a favorite grandson drowned in the summer of 1939. He died himself a month later.

Another thing about Tim Hogan: He had a typewriter, and he used it. He composed poems on the typewriter, and song lyrics. Here's one of his poems, about two of my mom's brothers (that's them in the picture at right) shortly after their first birthday:

October 7th.1934.
AN ODE TO OUR LITTLE
TWIN BOYS TOM, AND ED
*********************
Early in the morning
When they open up their eyes
Laying in their tiney little beds
Rolling over, over
Both the same size
Cunning little round bald heads.
You couldent help but love them
With their smileing eyes of blue
Remember it was GRAND DAD told you so,
Charming little twinners,
Only new beginers
You can almost see them grow.

Tim wrote letters, too. We only have a handful of them, but below are a couple that he produced in 1936 when he was trying to do a little biographical/genealogical research of his own. The first (click pages for larger images; full text is after the jump) is to the clerk of LaSalle County, and he's hoping to find records of his family's residence from around the time of his birth.

timhogan_1.jpeg timhogan_2.jpeg

The second letter is to the Railroad Retirement Board. He doesn't explicitly mention it here, but I recall a couple of my mom's aunts, Tim's daughters Catherine and Betty, saying he was trying to establish his date of birth in relation to a pension that might be due.

timhogan_3.jpeg

One question I have about these: Did he send them? As he says, he's earnestly interested in getting answers. So my guess is that these are copies of versions he sent. I haven't found any records in the sparse collection of family documents to suggest what answers he might have gotten. The full text of the letters is available through the link below. If the lines break in an odd way, it's because I tried to stick to how he broke the lines, starting nearly each new line with a capital letter. I've also tried to copy his punctuation and spelling.

Continue reading “Family History Files: Tim Hogan”

Posted on

The King’s Daughters Home for Incurables

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Broadway in Oakland, between 40th Street and MacArthur Boulevard.

I have been up and down this block hundreds of times driving, on the bus, on a bike, and on foot. Late this afternoon, while waiting for a prescription to be filled at one of the Kaiser pharmacies nearby, I took The Dog for a walk. On our way back, just below 40th Street and on what you’d call more or less accurately the east side of Broadway, we crossed a driveway and I looked up. A spare and striking archway said “The King’s Daughters Home.” I went back to the car, grabbed my camera, left the dog, then walked back to the gate. The name alone suggests there’s a story there.

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The building, not pictured, is now owned by Kaiser and houses at least part of the organization’s psychiatric and counseling practice. What was it before? To me, “King’s Daughters” suggests what used to be called a lying-in (or maternity) hospital; maybe one for what used to be called young women in trouble.

The actual history: The Broadway facility was indeed a hospital, designed by architect Julia Morgan (perhaps best known as the architect of William Randolph Hearst’s castle on the Central California coast). A gallery of the King’s Daughters Home pictures gives its completion date as 1912, so we’re on the eve of the centennial. What kind of hospital was it?

First, the home took its name from the International Order of King’s Daughters (later “Daughters and Sons”), an interdenominational Christian organization that started in New York in 1886. According to the order’s history, the movement spread rapidly and had 50,000 members across the United States, Canada, and overseas within the first year. The group’s mission was to undertake good works in the name of Christ. If you look for the phrase “King’s Daughters” now, you come across many hospitals across the country that apparently began as projects by local King’s Daughters circles.

In 1890, a San Francisco circle organized The King’s Daughters Home for Incurables. In July 1895, the San Francisco Call detailed the home’s workings, including the high demand for services, the difficulty finding money to provide it, and rates for long-term patients (“life memberships can be secured for those above 60 years of age for $500…”). I’m not sure how long the San Francisco home lasted; I find references to it, first on Francisco Street in North Beach, then on Golden Gate Avenue in the Western Addition, through 1917.

A second home, sometimes called the Alameda County King’s Daughters Home for Incurables, opened in Oakland sometime in the late 1890s (were the two operations connected? I don’t know). A story in the September 3, 1902, edition of the Call suggests the home’s first East Bay location may have been at 11th and Oak streets, near the current site of the Oakland Museum of California). The story mentions a deadly fire there, and the May 10, 1902, Journal of the American Medical Association reported: “The north wing of the King’s Daughters’ Home for Incurables, Oakland, was destroyed by fire, April 28. Despite the heroic efforts of the matron, nurses’ and attendants, one inmate was fatally burned and another will probably die from injuries received.” (The San Jose Evening News published a more complete account under the headline “Awful Fire in Oakland Hospital.” The story reports: “That so many inmates were rescued is due to the prompt and heroic action of some of Oakland’s most prominent society ladies who resided in the vicinity of the Home.”)

The fire prompted the home to move to the property at 3900 Broadway, which contained both a building that could be used for temporary quarters and room for a new, permanent hospital. In subsequent years, the Call reported on plans for the new facility (“King’s Daughter Will Erect New Home for Incurables,” March 31, 1906) and a redoubled fund-raising effort to obtain the $100,000 needed to finish the project (August 23, 1910. The story says “Every home in Oakland, Berkeley, and Alameda is asked to contribute at least one dollar. Coin envelopes are being distributed from house to house by specially appointed workers, who may be identified by a badge they wear, with ‘King’s Daughters’ printed upon it. Every family is asked to donate what it can, inclosing the amount of the gift in the envelope, which will be called for Thursday, August 25, between the hours of 5 and 8 p.m.” )

Who were the incurables? Those who medical science of the day could not treat: stroke victims, the disabled, patients diagnosed with tuberculosis. One patient in the 1930s and ’40s is said to have been Bess Maddern London — Jack London’s first wife — who had suffered a crippling stroke.

Where did the patients and residents end up? Mountain View Cemetery, less than a mile away (and designed by another notable architect, Frederick Law Olmstead), reportedly has a section devoted to Kings Daughters patients.

Among the many things I don’t know: When the facility ceased being the King’s Daughters Home for Incurables. Still on the hunt for that, but I’ve got to get to bed.

[Update: One interlocutor asks: Where did the name “King’s Daughters” come from? The order’s history says a Mrs. Irving, one of the founders, suggested that title. “The King” was to be understood to be God. An 1888 poem by an early member spells it out:

“…Her Father sent her in his land to dwell,
Giving to her a work that must be done.
And since the King loves all his people well,
Therefore, she, too, cares for them every one.
Thus when she stoops to lift from want or sin,
The brighter shines her royalty therein. …”]

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Berkeley Parking: $516 an Hour

ticket102411.jpgAbout a month ago, I had an errand to run on Berkeley’s Solano Avenue. I needed to go into the bank to get cash to pay our local after-school dog-walker. A row of spaces outside Andronico’s, the grocery near the top of the avenue, was empty. Paying for parking here is a matter of going to a machine that serves the whole block and paying for the time you think you need. The machine dispenses a receipt that displays an expiration time. You put that on your dashboard as “proof of purchase” for the city’s roving parking attendants, and then you go on your way.

I’m usually pretty good about taking care of this; I don’t trust my luck in trying to beat a meter, usually, and I have an aversion to parking tickets. But for whatever reason, I walked into the bank, about 50 yards away, without paying for parking. There was no waiting at the ATM, and I was headed back out to the car no more than three minutes after I’d gotten out. At that point, I saw someone else buying a parking receipt and thought, “Oh, shit.” As I approached the car, the parking attendant came around the rear of the car. She had already written the ticket. I said, “Is it too late?” and she said, “Yes.” I told her I’d intended to pay, which was true enough in a general sense, but didn’t change the fact I’d forgotten this time. I was not happy. She reached out to hand me the ticket, and I refused to take it. “Put it on the windshield,” I told her. And she did. When she walked away (to ticket another car that had just parked), I got out and took the ticket. Forty-three bucks. Making allowances for the possibility I had been gone for five minutes instead of just three, that’s $516 an hour. I’ve paid more; last fall, I paid about $60 for five minutes in an Oakland space that I didn’t realize was timed parking, for a rate of $720 an hour. It’s still galling. (And of course I managed to pay $30 extra this time by not paying the fine immediately.)

One thing I was surprised about in this case was the officer’s arrival immediately after I had parked. I asked a friend whether the attendants lie in wait around that location (as opposed to circulating through the neighborhood, which in theory would give you a chance to get away with a three- or five-minute violation). She said they do. And not only that, one officer has drawn complaints for writing tickets while newly arrived drivers are in the process of purchasing their parking receipts.

Yes, I’m crying over spilt milk, and none of this comes as a surprise to anyone who lives in a big city. Financial times are tough for cities that are still expected to deliver services. Still, you can’t help feeling a little shaken-down when a five-minute lapse of attention winds up costing you this much. Grace period, anyone?

Further reading:

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. parking meter rates, fines among the priciest

San Francisco schedule of parking fines (you can get a $105 fine for removing parking control chalk marks)

Oakland’s schedule of parking fines (note you can get a $45 ticket for leaving a key in the ignition)

City of Berkeley: Last year’s proposed increases in parking fines (city manager recommended a $5 across-the-board increase, City Council adopted a $3 increase. One reason for the hike: the state Legislature, in perennially courageous pass-the-buck fashion, has passed a series of bills that skim ticket revenue from cities and counties for courthouse construction; the cities and counties in turn have been raising fines so that they can pay the new state levy).

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Morning Sky Show: Hawk vs. Crows

hawkcrows112611.jpg

I’ve read that in other parts of the country, West Nile virus has had a devastating impact on crows, with 90 percent of the population dying in some places. In the small piece of California I see regularly, it’s a different story. The crow population seems not only healthy, but ascendant, with crows for now crowding out songbirds and less aggressive species. It’s not at all uncommon to see crows, usually in pairs or small groups, take on hawks–red-tailed hawks in particular, which are one of the most common raptors in this part of California. On our way out the door this morning to walk The Dog, five crows were harassing a red-tailed hawk high over the street. This scuffle went on for several minutes, with the hawk circling higher and higher into the sky and the crows keeping up their attack. One by one the crows dropped away until just two were chasing the bigger bird. The hawk finally stopped circling and made a beeline to the southwest. (Click images for larger versions.)

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Old Business

1. Anniversary week: This here blog turned eight years old (56 if it was a dog blog) on Tuesday, the 22nd. I was thinking of writing a post on the Top 10 Things I Have Learned blogging, and maybe I still will. For now I’ll just say thanks to the happy few regular readers out there.

2. A falcon makes it home: A while back I pointed to a site that was following a site that was following a peregrine falcon on her migration from Canada’s Baffin Island to the central coast of Chile. The update: She’s made it home.

3. Aftermath of apartment house fire at Telegraph and Haste in Berkeley: There’s been some good follow-up coverage:

Daily Californian: Open letter to mayor from tenants displaced by fire
Berkeleyside: The Sequoia Building: At heart of Berkeley’s rich heritage
Berkeleyside: Friday’s fire another ‘hit in the face’ for Telegraph Avenue
Berkeley Daily Planet: Sequoia fire investigation ongoing

4. Happy Thanksgiving: Well, that’s not old business. And if you’re still facing that cooking thing, some advice:

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PM Getaway, Holiday Eve

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I almost never drive to work in the city (San Francisco) at regular commute hours. I go in at midday, usually, and return home well after the last of the evening commute. But today I drove because it was the day before the holiday and the morning rush hour was light. I waited a little too long to start home, till almost 3:30, and this is what happened: a long (but standard) jam on the western approach to the Bay Bridge. The stop-and-go and merge after merge after merge slows you down so you can reflect on why you love living here.