June 21, 2015
FUNNY HOW TIME FLIES BY
This week's headline photo comes from Lifer Tammy. Entomologists tell
us that the annual migration of the monarchs has declined precipitously
in recent years due to a variety of factors, including insecticide pollution,
decline of their favorite nesting milkweed plant, and changes in global
average temperatures playing havoc with their instinctive migration patterns.
THIS ISLAND LIFE
Life got a bit more interesting on the Island this past week. Encinal
High and several other West End schools went on lockdown Thursday at 11:45am
on report of a person possibly armed with a gun. A bit of digging revealed
that an Encinal student reported she received a threatening message on
social media which featured a video of what looked like a handgun.
The student who sent the message was taken into custody and it was discovered
the gun in the video is actually a starter pistol.
As both individuals involved are juveniles, no names were released to
the press.
Work is to begin Monday on the new OES center at 1809 Grand Street and
the adjacent Fire Station No. 3 on 1625 Buena Vista. Bear in mind that
this construction taking place during the work week will affect traffic,
most of which in that area is headed toward Mariner Square Village and
the Tube as well as the Corporate Yard further down Grand.
Hayward police raided a marijuana grow operation to snag 13,000 plants
in a massive warehouse on Diablo Avenue, arresting Islander Tony Hoang
as well as two other men attempting to grow, harvest and process plants
worth over $15 million dollars on the street. Tony, you naughty boy! Whatever
happened to keeping business on the Island, Tony?
Perhaps the good weather brings them out, but who knows? Twenty people
were detained on 5150's last week. The revolving doors at John George
must have been spinning enough to generate electricity. Good news is that
there were only two cases of battery reported. We may be crazy as bedbugs,
but at least we are genteel.
LAND PIGS
It is no news that the rental situation has moved from ridiculous to
outright obscene and unlivable, provoking intense discussion about rent
control options -- which oddly enough were initially raised over a year
ago by an out-of-town developer who publicly justified 300% rent increases
specifically on the knowledge that there is no rent control here at all.
There is a front page article in the Sun titled "Does Rent Control
Work?" (Alameda Sun, vol 14, No.38, June 18,2015, MIchele Ellson,
excerpted from The Alamedan). Most discussions about rent control typically
conclude it sort of works sometimes, but not nearly to the extent it is
supposed to do. This is largely due to the large number of evasions, exceptions,
workarounds and allowances built either into the laws themselves or into
overriding statutes established precisely to defeat across the board rent
control.
Probably people should talk in advance about attachments to rent control
statutes to shunt aside the bad effects of things like Ellis Act evictions,
which have been plaguing Oakland. Rent Control cannot of itself be a cure-all
panacea. Some people have the idea of ensuring all new developments incorporate
"affordable housing", but then who is it who gets to define
what that vague phrase means when the "market rate" is so obnoxious.
Looking at San Francisco, from which people of all stripes are fleeing
because of this "market rate" thing, we see that nobody can
afford the exorbitant rents there, not even the often vilified Dot-Commers.
What happens is that when the apartments go for $3,000 a month, squads
of four or more people pack in to these one bedrooms by way of bunkbeds
and creative sleep scheduling. Obviously the quality of life declines
for everybody when a 15 unit building suddenly is home to 60 people all
trying to take showers, flush the toilets, use the electricity and park
their cars.
The wear and tear on the physical plant is ferocious, but hey! The landlord
can always pass on the cost of repairs to the tenants afterward.
There may be some report of a Recession rollback, but real incomes have
not risen around here in well over 12 years. Gone is the assumption that
you pay 33% of income for housing. That just is not true here. So when
more income goes to paying rent, less income goes to paying for anything
else. And that is when people look to things like Dollar Stores and Walmart
for basic supplies. And the neighborhoods go to pot, because how are you
going to know your neighbors when your street, which once hosted a few
dozen families now houses over a thousand faceless people in a hurry?
And why is it so many former Islanders born and raised here now live
in San Leandor and Hayward? We know native San Franciscans three generations
deep and more now living in Ohio. People need to talk about how the rampant
property speculation is destroying the fabric of life here.
Given that the pressure to make money on land is so intense there may
be no way to entirely halt development. If that is the case, then we should
look to more amenable developers like Tim Lewis Communities, which has,
in several instances, indicated that it wants to build here and it does
want to do that as a partner with the community instead of as a complete
predatory shark.
THE WORLD IS ALL HEAVY WITH TRAFFIC
The Letters to the Editor continue to indicate that people are increasingly
unhappy with the Shoreline street restructure. We indicated a couple weeks
ago that after a visit down there, the constricted lanes offer constricted
sightlines with potentially hazardous conditions existing momentarily
as the single lanes become obstructed for any reason, such as parking
in progress and truck deliveries.
One writer called the setup a "hideous configuration". Another
suffered an accident he blames on the new lane arrangement with the concrete
barrier that guards the bike lane and says "someone should be held
accountable for the planning and construction of this very expensive and
dangerous endeavor."
Having made several more trips down there it does appear that how dangerous
the street is depends on time of day. During periods of low traffic, there
are fewer parked cars and the sightlines remain more open. A difference
of a few hours, however, and the place does become a nasty area to avoid,
with parked cars limiting fields of vision for drivers and constant pedestrian
and automobile cross traffic tossing a welter of visual stimuli, which
all points to the need to SLOW DOWN, as fractions of a second may matter
a great deal.
We have to repeat that our objective opinion, having take a bicycle down
there and a car, that for bicycles, the route is a pleasure. For an automobile
driver, go slow or go fast, the experience is much worse due to the increased
risks due to situational inattention. That is to say, the combined weight
of visual stimuli impacting a driver will overload the driver's base of
judgment, leading to an accident with safe passage becoming largely a
factor of luck.
The EIR may state for reasonable or entirely fictitious reasons that
a sum total of only one additional vehicle will occur at rush hour by
2035, but streets like Shoreline are going to become wretched bottlenecks
at that time and others. Why? Because even the EIR says so by inference.
All the traffic that would have been flowing out the Tube and the bridges
will happen locally. That means more traffic on every city street.
Probably the best solution would be to entirely close off Shoreline to
ALL vehicular traffic save emergency and commercial vehicles. If you think
about it, that solution is not as outlandish as it may sound. In fact,
we probably should do the same with Park Street as well. Now that would
definitely slow a lot of things down.
LANDSLIDE
So anyway, this weekend turned out to be both Father's Day and the Summer
Solstice. The Household members had to fend for themselves as individuals
this year. The year when the girls of the place all took their dads to
brunch at Mama's Royal Cafe very nearly ended in disaster that was circumvented
by adroit redirection maneuvers and linguistic incomprehension. Claude,
Tipitina's father, would have caused a riot had anyone at the table save
Tipitina understood his crude Cajun insults.
Out on the sealanes, Pedro escaped the dreadful breakfast-in-bed ritual
that plagued mom with extensive kitchen cleanup after Mother's Day, for
his workday began long before the sun rose and ended safely just past
the traditional time of brunch. Motoring out toward the spots that glimmered
on his radar, his face drew grim as he listened to the wrenching unfolding
of the tragedy that had convulsed a small church in South Carolina. The
man had sat quietly among the praying congregation for some time, as it
was said, before standing up to massacre nine people by gunfire and injure
several more. The survivors of the murdered, all the relatives, came to
the courthouse where the killer was arraigned so as to face him, and instead
of hurling insults and hatred, they came to forgive him.
The news ended and Pedro's favorite program that featured the Lutheran
televangelist came on, beginning with its familiar piano jingle borrowed
from the Blues.
The televangelist told a parable about a man in a small Minnesota town
who possessed a terrible singing voice. His voice was so bad, people enjoined
him to stop singing in church, which caused him much grief, and so he
would take a boat out to a cove on the lake there and belt out the familiar
hymns to his heart's content once he was sure no one was listening. He
eventually had to leave the small town because something about his scent
or his habitude of being caused blackflies to attack him everywhere he
went. So he moved from place to place and eventually settled in Barbados
where he found he had a flair for tropical flower horticulture, and so
he built up a business growing and selling exotic orchids and he started
attending a local church that was primarily Black in attendance. Barbados
is substantially Black in population, so this is not unusual. This congregation
possessed many powerful voices and so when he sang along, no one noticed
that his voice was in any way bad. And in fact it is understood that when
one of the flock of many goes astray it is the duty of the many to gently
take ownership of the lost one and guide him. And so after a time, his
singing did improve a great deal. Because he was supported and held up
by the stronger.
Pedro told himself this is a story he must repeat, because its message
is so important. Even at the risk of plagiarism. Because too often the
power of the Righteous is used to bear down, instead of bear up.
Many times, with the St. Elmo's fire a dim glow and the sea more than
especially amenable to contemplation, Pedro had imagined turning the boat
from the fishing lanes to point out to the open sea and head for the Philippines,
or perhaps Tahiti. He had provisions and fuel and he knew how to sail
with a step-up mast and having abandoned all that he had come to know
his new life surely would be something compelling and different among
the grass-waisted women and the pungent flowers of this new land. There
would be no more taxman or payments to meet or squabbles with irritating
and extremely stupid neighbors about the chicken coop.
Although he had the ability to leave, he did not. There were the children,
Gilberto, Filiberto, Alicia, Ana, Santiago, Yolanda, Yvonne, and little
Santiago, each with their lessons to learn. He had to give them all something
important before he left this life entirely. Something in addition to
how to read the tides and how to tie a bowline. How to lash yourself to
the rings during rough seas, trusting persistence to win survival amid
the torrid wash. Or how to fight off a shark attack on deck with the help
of a faithful dog, as he had done. Something that involved finding the
center in yourself, wherever it may be, while all around stares the blank
and open sea, a desert, a vast prairie that will eat the soul of an empty
man.
And so every morning he turned the prow away from Tahiti to head on home,
a father to his sons and daughters.
Toni's Wiccan coven met for the solstice observances down at the cove
at midnight, same as last year. As usual they drew the pentangle on the
grass and set out the candles and the logfire was kindled and Sophia read
her poem and Arthur chanted the tantric chant of freesoul and Brian and
Eloise did the dance of Pan and the Faun. As they sat in zazen, they heard
the snuffling and the hooves announcing the approaching manifestation
of She, the personification of the Goddess. This had happened last year
and the year before that, so it understandably had been taken to be a
kind of Tradition.
Shari, who was a Jewish witch, understood perfectly all about Tradition
and always had a great deal to say on the subject.
Into the firelight circle the massive bulk of She appeared. It was Eunice,
once again escaped from Wootie Kanootie's moose paddock located at the
base of the Park Street Bridge. And since she did seem to have a talent
for getting out of there at the same time each year, who was there to
say she was not indeed the Goddess herself personified and not simply
a female animal itching with all the drives of Spring to get out of the
confines of the cubicle.
Every Spring something similar can be observed in office environments
all around the Bay area, but that is another story.
As per tradition among the coven, there was rejoicing and a draping of
flower garlands about Eunice and a feeding of apples and grains as the
revolve of the Earth turned from the cold of Pluto's domain towards the
sunny chariot ride of Phoebus Apollo as the shortest night of the year
spun out its start-studded ebony threads.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, and its
chainlink fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked in front
of the shuttered doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of
shadows on the edge of town past the Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
JUNE 13, 2015
MEAN OL' WIND DIED DOWN
This week, in honor of the winds bringing the long anticipated change
in the seasons, we have a photo from the Harbor Bay Island end of things
via Tammy. At one time the Island featured thousands of trees just like
this one.
THIS ISLAND LIFE
ProArts Open studios continued this weekend with more studios opening
up their spaces and others taking the 2nd week off.
According to the Crimestoppers Notebook, we see 11 people detained on
5150 for observation. Wow! Was there a full moon? No, it's just that a
lot of crazy people live here.
John Knox White sought to clear up the "confusion" over the
Point EIR which incredulously stated that adding several thousand inhabitants
to the island would result in the net increase of just one car over all
Island access points during rush hour periods.
JKW did indicate that the individual who pointed out this figure is an
anti development partisan cherry picking facts from a comprehensive report
which went through -- supposedly -- extensive review.
The reason that the increase is held to be so low by the planners in
the report is that the assumption was most of the new homes would be tenanted
by stay-at-home workers and that a fair number of people living here now
and working elsewhere were going to be leaving.
Um, how those assumptions came about is more grist for violent debate
right there, but anyway, onward.
Turns out that very simple math accounted for this really weird number
for the net increase in vehicles. The project reporters considered cars
entering the Island as offsetting the number of cars leaving the Island,
with an increase in over five hundred cars coming and going, but with
a net difference of just one vehicle (JKW states that 340 new trips in
and out of the Island produced by 1,200 households can be expected, with
another 340 trips that used to be off the island becoming local traffic
to new businesses).
O! Now everything is clear. The reports figures are based upon assumptions.
Uh, yeah. Did anyone factor in to the equation the Manhattanization effect
in which single family units become suddenly multiple family units --
as they have been doing for the past eight years -- resulting in a far,
far higher influx than planned.
Now we think JKW is generally well-informed and bases his positions on
well-informed grounds, but we insist that these assumptions trend to the
overly optimistic in the extreme and fail to recognize historical traffic
patterns, such as the changes at the Maze which had engineers scratching
their heads and saying, "Never imagined so much traffic through her
would happen!"
Yes, you can have your opinion and you can have your facts, but you also
have to take in realistic forecasts based on historical trends as well.
WHAT'S GOING ON
Here is the upcoming lineup for the Bay Area.
Coming to the Fox, we eagerly anticipate Jason Isbell, formerly of the
Drive by Truckers. He is all cleaned up and he has a hot girlfriend who
plays a mean fiddle.
Grace Potter is coming to the Fox August 15th. Get 'em while they are
hot.
Social Distortion will welcome the new freshmen on September 9th with
a show that is likely to blow the doors off the place.
Because of the scope of things October major events are going on sale
now. The Treasure Island Music Festival takes place October 17-18th.
The Greek is lining up a powerhouse set of concerts in October. Get ready
for Florence and the Machine who are going to prove that even little girls
can have big, powerful voices.
Thursdays look like they are becoming weekend warmups around here. The
UC Redwood Grove will host a series of outdoor concerts from 5:30 to 7:30.
Check out botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu.
In the Berkeley Art "Ghetto" Third Thursdays have started to
develop some buzz with performances in the galleries being added to the
fun.
The Kate Wolf festival in Laytonville will feature just about everybody
who is hot on the borderline bluesy acoustic-electric world. Angelique
Kidjo, Iron and Wine, Steve Earle, Charlie Musselwhite, Dan Hicks, and
Roy Rogers are just a few headliners.
BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN
So anyway, first week of June rolled around and that meant it was time
for high school graduations and Javier's birthday once again. This being
Javier's 57th celebration, it was thought -- and hoped -- that this year
things will have calmed down. About the graduations, it was expected that
there would be some mayhem and as for life after high school, there existed
similar wan hopes as for Javier's birthday. All the parents knew there
would be trouble; they just hoped nobody died or went to prison for it.
The Island is a sort of place that takes Time on its own terms, trending
to do things as things have always been done with scant good regard for
changes just to keep up with the neighbors. That is why weeks after other
local districts have packed up the cafeteria chairs and rolled up the
boundary flags and stored the lecterns Island schools hold their ceremonies
not one minute before May's darling buds have been tossed away in the
rough winds.
After the series of dock sizzlers that ended May, June warmed up considerably
with temps going into the 80's along the coast. The high fog of morning
has given way each day to bright cloudless days that sailed overhead with
effortless breezes.
Graduation day all the joyous grads filed down the way and across the
track, wearing their rented gowns and caps, swishing to their metal seats
out on the athletic field where some of them had seen glory, some of them
embarrassment, many of them tedium and hard work and soon all that had
been their lives for four years would change.
The invited speaker for the day was Charlie Stutz, an alum who was most
noted for having played ball with the more famous Willie Stargell, and
who had flown fighter planes in Korea and Vietnam and who had been a City
Councilmember and then a County Supervisor for a couple decades during
the turbulent Sixties. Somebody said he had been shot down and captured
by the Viet Cong in addition to all this, but he really was most famous
for having known Willie Stargell.
Even though Stargell had been born in Oklahoma and never played for a
California team, he attended high school on the Island, and Islanders
tend to grasp at what sliver of fame may offer itself like a brass ring,
so they named a street after him.
This year the Board had decided to issue a stern prohibition against
tossing hats in the air
Principal Juanita Juarez introduced the speaker and sat down as the white-haired
Stutz made his way to the podium as Mr. Stivers, the School Superintendent
in charge of event setup looked on anxiously for any signs of the usual
annual pranks practiced by the outgoing senior class, who knew that no
matter what they did, retribution would be distant and avoidable. Next
to him sat the prim School Secretary Madeline Felcher. This year the Board
had decided to issue a stern prohibition against tossing hats in the air,
as last year far too many of these things either vanished or became damaged
to great expense against the General Fund.
In any case there had been little sign of any serious trouble ever since
someone had broken into the Principal's storage locker on campus a few
weeks ago. In fact, the school had been uneasily quiet, which made Mr.
Stivers very nervous.
"Class of 2015, I greet you from the other side," began Mr.
Stutz. "I am on my way out, pretty soon to be out of all this stuff
you are just getting messed up in and I know that there are some of you
who are glad of that. Some of you say when the Baby Boomers are all gone,
and I am one of the first, everything can start to improve and there will
be no more Grateful Dead hippy retrospectives to plague us all. No more
endless repetition of Hotel California."
This comment drew forth a few snickers.
"That is appropriate. We, too, believed the world would be better
once all the darned Rat Pack Frank Sinatra with the black and white memories
of Jackie Gleason had faded away and were buried finally under six feet
of earth. Then we could enjoy our own music, our own memories, and not
have to relive Gallipoli, Prohibition stories, barbershop quartets and
those damn boater straw hats all over again in endless reruns. And finally,
on that magic day, we could sit in that plush reclining easy chair in
front of the modern TV set and change the channels ourselves without having
to ask permission."
Nervous coughs. Scuffle of feet.
"Class of 2015 those things don't really matter. They never did
matter. Your journey is your own and the first one that ever occurred,
because this journey is happening to you, not to those who went before.
Some of you may go out there and do really great things. You may climb
mountains, found companies, become very rich, go bankrupt, get married,
travel to distant countries where they do not speak English and do not
care to learn how to do so, and it does not matter anyone did this before
you, because you are yourself doing it now. No one can live your life
for you . . . "
Mr. Stivers and Ms. Felcher turned pale as a black cloud arose
At that moment a tremendous explosion shook the earth and Mr. Stivers
and Ms. Felcher turned pale as a black cloud arose from down by the Strand
a mile away. Another cloud indicating a rather large fire arose also from
that direction but nothing else happened beyond that and the distant sound
of sirens.
Mr. Sturtz picked himself up off the floor of the Dias to re-approach
the podium. He looked with attention at the seating area for administrators.
"I can see which of you are Officer material," he said. "You
did not duck or take cover. Anyway, to continue, you never know when the
unexpected will happen. That is why they call it 'the unexpected. . .'."
The explosion turned out to be entirely independent of the annual Senior
prank. In the end, the Seniors waited until Lisa Sanchez delivered her
speech.
"Class of 2015, I, Lisa Sanchez, am your Valedictorian. To me is
given by tradition at this school the final speech of this assembly. This
means that according to the Latin definition of the words "vale dictum",
I am to say our general farewell. And so I say farewell to the faculty
and staff of this noble institution that has tried to educate us for four
years. I say good-bye to our mascot, the Least Tern, who although least
among terns is greatest in our hearts . . .".
At that moment a motorized mini-aircraft flew across the area towing
a sign, behind which fluttered a line of lacy lingerie of various colors.
The sign read, "Principal Juarez dirty knickers!" The drone
did a pass and then circled about to return again overhead.
"Heyyyy!" Lisa said, before a line of roman rockets and fizzlers
went off in a spectacular line in front of the stage from underneath the
bleachers. All of the graduates, without exception chose that moment to
toss their caps into the air with a great, collective "Huzzah!".
Mr. Stivers, ready with a fire extinguisher, ran about under the bleachers
to put out the fireworks with the help of Ms. Felcher as grads and family
dispersed while the drone continued to circle overhead until its batteries
ran out and it crashed into the empty seats. Nevertheless, this was the
fifteenth year in a row the reading of the roll had to be abandoned.
On the Strand Javier's birthday party proceeded with little incident.
Denby was there with his guitar and Jose had come, not without some trepidation
and precautions to be sure, and all the Household of Marlene and Andre
had showed up and Martini had scored bags of iced premixed Cosmos and
Margaritas and Long Island Iced Teas from the CVS where they were selling
this stuff at 75% off. Suan had a Costco card from the Crazy Horse as
a perk and she had gone out with Pahrump to fetch two bags of hotlinks
and buns in industrial quantity along with something similar to potato
salad, so there was food and drink and general merriment and nobody got
stabbed and nobody got shot until Piedro showed up in a truck driven by
some Guatemalan friends.
The pickup towed a chassis that carried what looked like a very large
field cannon. This was Piedro's auctioned purchase of a 188 howitzer from
the old Navy base when all the material had been sold off. The GSA is
stern about selling off Federal property and is well known to be inflexible
when it comes time to dispose, whether it be land or armaments. As we
have seen with the McKay Avenue Opera. His friends parked this in the
dead-end circle under the trees on McKay Avenue.
Usually the arms are rendered inoperable. Piedro, who had narco friends
in Mexico City, had the inoperable part reversed. He could do that and
he did. He also obtained live rounds from the same source who only asked
that when finished with playing, they also got to play with this thing
against a rival cartel. Piedro was normally a good boy who had not a criminal
bone in his well-intentioned body, and usually acted in a way that made
his abuelta proud of his honesty and industriousness. But of course
good boys sometimes have bad company and really, who can choose their
friends all the time.
"Mi amigo, I bring you birthday gift!" Piedro said.
"Feliz Cumpleanos! I cannot wait until you are sixty when
I really wanted to give this to you because so many of your old girlfriends
want to kill you. I am not sure you will live so long. Maybe this will
help."
"This is fun," said Javier, now interested and clambering over
the chassis. "How does it work?"
"I think you push this in here and that there and there is a charge
already loaded so I think you just press here. . . ".
The world erupted in an deafening thunder of fire and smoke and both
men were thrown to the ground as everyone for about 100 yards covered
their ears and babies started crying and dogs howled and sensitive people
bled from the ears. Both of them lay there, stunned and insensible for
several minutes.
The smoke arising to the heavens was seen as far away as the high school
graduation ceremony at Island High.
"What is going on over there," Denby asked, pointing toward
the Marina.
"I think that is Mr. Howitzer's yacht," Jose said. "I
think they have hit it and set it on fire and destroyed it. We should
get out of here now."
As sirens began to wail, Piedro tried to get his Guatemalan friends to
hitch up and get gone out of there. But he had to pay for delivery first.
"I don't have money for that. They are coming and we are all going
to be arrested if you do not act now.
They acted now. They promptly disappeared with their truck.
IPD Crown Vics blocked the exit to McKay and men in SWAT uniforms began
approaching with guns drawn.
"Once again another birthday with Javier and I get arrested,"
said Jose complaining. "Why is this?"
"Tradition," Denby said, as the first polizei threw him down
to the ground face first.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, and its
chainlink fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked in front
of the shuttered doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of
shadows on the edge of town past the Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
JUNE 7, 2015
SIGNED, SEALED, DELIVERED
This week's headline photo came from an enterprising woman named Cindy
Manit who took part in the 534 mile bicycle charity ride to raise money
for AIDS research. Along the way from the Bay Area to Los Angeles Cindy
met and inspired a great number of people by her selfless determination.
Here is a letter from an impressionable kindergartner.
The student's name is Yuna and her teacher, Ashley, helped a bit with
some spell-editing. And fortunately, no, Cindy's helmet did not get broken.
Cindy runs a yoga business in San Francisco.
WHAT'S THE BUZZ
This pre-graduation weekend for the Bay Area schools turned progressively
more gorgeous with moderately cloud-dappled skies and increasingly warmer
temperatures for a bevy of Area events to kick off the Summer season.
ProArts held its annual Oakland Open Studios, and roped in a few Islanders
along the way, including the delightful Wanda Fudge on Minturn and Garage
Mahal on Santa Clara near City Hall.
Old times with family histories on this island going back generations
showed up to check out Patrick Erwin's space which he shares with Elaine
Carpenter in a garage outbuilding the two have converted into an atelier.
Patrick does intimate, focussed oil and pastel landscapes of local perspectives,
capturing a warm, homey feel of familiar prospects while Elaine tended
to focus upon the aquatic boundaries of the Island and neighboring areas
along the coast. Her moonlit seascapes of boats at anchor or tacking offshore
have a dreamy, compelling quality.
Oakland's First Fridays has become famous, more for hearty partying than
for the artists who began the exuberant affair. This weekend, Chronicle
Books moved its annual Bookfestival to Berkeley where the city allowed
the festival to block off nine blocks for a very large celebration of
all things written. The centerpiece was Lacuna, a circular structure built
entirely of 50,000 books discarded by the Boston public library. Lacuna
was 50 feet in diameter and eight feet high at the lower edges. A sort
of pavilion top consisted of ropes running up to a center pole and bedecked
with book covers. All books were meant to be taken away as freebies.
Outdoor stages were set up all around the Festival area for readings,
talks and performances. We took in part of an open mike setup in front
of the Berkeley Post Office. In addition to scads of bookstore, publisher
and author booths and tables, special events took place at selected venues.
Because of the confusion regarding admission to these things -- people
needed a ticket to enter, but no information in the Program guide about
getting the free tickets was printed -- we and a lot of people missed
out on some of the juicier sessions.
We did get to hear John Scalzi read and speak, and found the Hugo-winning
author animated and delightful as well as full of useful information about
the path from Unknown to Successful.
Also talked with Richard Silberg at the Poetry Flash booth. Poetry Flash
has been reporting Bay Area poetry issues for over 40 years. Richard Silberg
is associate editor of Poetry Flash and co-director of the Poetry Flash
at Cody's Books in Berkeley. He also teaches "Writing and Appreciating
Contemporary Poetry" and poetry workshops at UC Berkeley Extension.
His first book was a volume of speculative social philosophy, The Devolution
of the People, published by Harcourt, Brace and World in 1967. His newest
book, Reading the Sphere: Essays on Contemporary Poetry (Berkeley Hills
Books 2002) is a collection of essays that were originally published in
Poetry Flash.
Talked with author Eric Golub, who goes by the name online and in print
of Tygrrrr Express. Tygrrrr, or Eric, has a mission to tell everyone about
being Jewish and make sure they laugh about it. About Eric we can offer
this helpful critique should he ever venture onto this site: keep the
beard. It looks good on you and it might help deflect potential Lubavitcher
acrimony. "He's so irreverent, but oy! What a great beard!."
One more thing. Somebody's parents are getting itchy trigger fingers
over the lack of grandkids. Eric, is a handsome, well-bred, successful
boy who makes yontif religiously. And ladies, the man is single. And he
has a beard. He is from Brooklyn, but we will not hold that against him
as he now lives in LA. We happen to know of two ladies up here who are
absolute stunners and very available. The really pretty one with legs
to die for from the ground up to THERE lives in Babylon and, oy!,is she
Jewish! Only problem we forgot her name, but we can get that for you as
a very good friend in Babylon can fix up a shiddoch for you.
Other girl is named Rose. So maybe Rose Aquilar is not so Jewish, but
with a name like Rose and a mother like her's she might as well be. Rose
works for the radio station KALW as a reporter/commentator and we understand
she is very available.
BROTHER LOVE'S TRAVELING SALVATION SHOW
So anyway, everyone on the Island is gearing up for the spate of Graduations
to take place this week. Some places hold them earlier, but we on the
Island tend to move at an historically relaxed pace. Besides, it takes
a week or two for the cash-strapped Unified District to process all the
paperwork and the final grades so we have gotten used to being a little
behind everybody else.
It's not like as if the results were not foregone conclusions. Those
seniors of a mind to go to college, hopefully far distant from the land
of birth and rearing, got their notices of acceptance months ago and they
have been coasting along ever since. Those others destined to step into
the shop to help out Dad in the family business are resigned to their
fates.
The East End of the Island tends toward those destined to inhabit the
well-matriculated slopes of Marin and places further off. The West End
remains the abode of those more resigned.
another event which has some local notoriety is Javier's birthday, which
is slated for some kind of fireworks this week. In anticipation of this
event, which trends toward the explosively sanguine in scenes best imagined
by a young Sam Peckinpah, Jose has purchased Life Insurance from the shop
over the bridge on Fruitvale that offers things like this for terms of
less than a month. Last time one of Javier's ex-girlfriends showed up
and ran him through with a spear. Jose figured that if he were like to
die horribly in celebration of someone's birthday, his dear Abuelita might
as well enjoy her old age in some comfort from the insurance checks. Several
neighbors typically stock up on ammunition and Old John has gotten the
Depuglia brothers to unload a ton of sandbags with which he plans to build
a sort of fortress around the place he rents until all the screaming has
stopped.
Celebrating birthdays is a weird tradition in the Bay Area, with an urgency
not experienced in other parts of the country. No one seems to know exactly
why this thing is felt to be important for adults over the age of 25 and
up in the Bay Area, but in Javier's case, the urgency usually results
in property destruction and/or visits to the hospital by any number of
people and pets.
This year Javier would turn 57, which meant truly significant milestone
actions would not be foisted upon people. Save that Piedro went out to
the storage facility he had at the Point to look at the thing he had purchased
during the big auctions of Navy materiel when the Base had closed. Inside
Hangar #8 there his prize sat, draped in oilcloth and grease. A fully
functional Vietnam-era 188 howitzer mounted on a four-wheel frailer. The
thing had cost him a bid of $200, mostly so cheap because nobody could
imagine at the time a purpose for such a curiosity. The gun had not been
functional when sold -- not even the Navy is that stupid to sell such
a thing -- but Piedro had friends with narco connections south of the
border who could put their hands on just about anything, including howitzer
parts and ammunition. So the hours ticked off to Javier's 57th birthday
and Piedro stood there wondering if maybe this was the time to bring out
his baby. Before all the old land at the Base got developed and keeping
something like this impossible.
So now with the seasonal fog having brought its message of changes, the
temperature rise signals the onset of the Summer of 2015.
Ms. Morales, who has kept this title despite being properly Mrs. Sanchez,
because of her many years of service in the Unified District, has been
working with the Graduation Committees of both Longfellow Middle School
and Island High to get everything arranged. This being a drought year,
there is no thought of rain preparations at all, but there remains the
accounting for the reduced parking due to construction and getting the
seats and making the arrangements for the Invited Speaker.
This was a curious week on Church Row for sermons. At the Zen monastery,
the Rinpoche held up his left hand and said, "Clap now with one hand!"
Anyone who did not get it, was soundly beaten with sticks, which is an
example of one reason why only true believers practice Zen This sort of
thing tends to weed out the dilettantes.
In the Immanuel church the Lutheran Pastor Nyquist quoted from the Default
Gospel of St. John as part of the Holy Trinity liturgy, mostly because
he could not think of much to say, having to deal with more pressing issues
during the week, such as the death of beloved Alma and her grieving relatives.
This was one of his sermons he called unpretentiously "autopilot
sermons", because it covered most general issues and got past the
time effectively with little destruction until he could come up with something
better.
"Be thou like the lilies of the field."
The Catholics always had the red shoes and the gilt-edged embroidery
fabric, and iconography on which to fall, and so they were seldom at a
loss. Everything was symbolic and a metaphor and so you could travel miles
on that. The face of the imaginary Jesus just appeared on a tortilla.
Hey! You could employ that image for miles of sermons. This week the sermon
from Father Danyluk was, admittedly, a pass on serious effort. The improving
weather had gotten to him and his attention had flagged. So he had called
on the old chestnut "Be thou like the lilies of the field."
While he was speaking someone in the first or second row let out a tremendous
blast of gas, which passed with only a little sound. He heard this sort
of long wheeze and thought nothing of it until this odor of rotten eggs
came drifting up to the pulpit and Father Danyluk sort of gagged in mid-sentence
and he lost his train of thought and the place on the page that held his
notes.
A few people got out of their seats and moved towards the back of the
church and a few more just used the side door to leave entirely.
Father Danyluk began talking about game 2 of the Warriors and how important
it was to play the game with integrity, and the Holy Trinity was the Coach
-- no HE was the coach, the priesthood were the coaches and the Trinity
was the Referee, and he struggled with getting back to the lilies of the
field, but by this time he had gotten pretty far afield himself with the
smell getting stronger. And so he said the uniforms do not matter -- they
change all the time. The game was not about the uniform it was about the
ball and the player and Communion of Team and even his own robes did not
matter as a priest for he would still be a priest were he to stand up
there in front of everyone naked. . . .
And at that point, the unfortunate soul with the intestinal problem let
loose a tremendously loud series that went Blat! Buh, buh, buh, fffffffft!
BLAAAAAAAAT! and the last one was so loud that it caused the nave to reverberate.
A very red-faced Old Joe got up out of his seat and walked stiffly to
the exit to find the restroom he should have used some time ago.
Father Danyluk continued, "And that is the word. Let us all rise
and go in peace -- I think today we shall skip the recessional and everything
else besides. Just go in peace. . .". Which was just as well as most
of the front half of the church was making its own exit at this time
A Zen monk threatened Zen terrorism, which caused a great deal of stir
downtown. Bill Fong went and sat in the rotunda of City Hall threatening
to meditate on world destruction and nothingness as he sat cross-legged
in his purple robes and the Mayor was very put out about it. He was joined
by several other radicalized Zen practitioners and they all sat in a circle,
chanting while a couple monks destroyed a small statue of Elvis Presley
and a big painting of the King done on velvet with sticks and pinking
shears. Then they sat down among the ruins of the priceless artifacts
after stomping around in a circle chanting Daess! Daess! Daess! There
is no god but the one god of Nothingness!
Some people claimed this religious extremism had gone entirely too far
and what was the world coming to.
The Rinpoche for the Tibetan monastery on Santa Clara had to come down
and berate the radicals for being a bunch of idiots and only then did
the monks get up shamefaced to go.
"I have a right to No Mind!"
Murphy, of the Island Sun, did a story about radicalized Zen elements
lurking in the heartland and revealed that social media had been exploited
by Zen practitioners who desired to create a Zen State that would be governed
by the Principles of the Fivefold Way. Everyone would have to shave their
heads and practice yoga twice a day. The idea of practicing Mindfulness
and Compassion under duress really ticked off members of the motorcycle
club the Beanplant Giants, and they drove out to the Monastery to protest
the Zen religion, which is not really a religion per se, but Bernie Klotz
of the BG Club was not a man to nail down distinctions. So they all stood
around with guns and signs saying, "Violence is American!" and
"I have a right to No Mind!" (Mindfulness did not fit on the
sign) and Bernie beat his head with two bricks in front of the TV news
cameras until he fell down and was arrested for blocking the sidewalk.
He afterward blamed the Media for his headache.
Inside the monastery the Rinpoche shook his head. Some people. He sat
before the congregation there after ringing the little bell and, returning
to the subject which he had begun before the City Hall affair, held up
his left arm. "Today I want you to make the sound of clapping with
one hand."
Suzi, watching the coming and going of lives in front of her
In the Old Same Place Bar, which is a sort of temple of the spirits so
to speak, the discussion was all about how crazy the world had become.
Suzi, watching the coming and going of lives in front of her from behind
the bar. She poured highballs, shots and beers and listened to the stories
about relationships and marriages or the lack of them and when it got
quiet she sat down on her stool and took out her Anthropology textbook
to read about the Bonobo, those gentle souls of the jungle who soweth
not, nor reapeth, who practice compassion and mutual concern for each
other and all living things, who bow neither to the East nor to the West,
who have no laws compelling anyone to do or not do anything, and who never,
never, never ever go to church, temple, mosque or synagogue where practicing
yontif is never more than caring about one another.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked in front of the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
MAY 31, 2015
WOKE UP THIS MORNING AND YOU WERE GONE
More than half a century ago Andy Pagano put a hardware store into this
old building and built it up to a local tradition, a fixture of the island
City and a delightful reminder of things past.
Now, another casualty of the ongoing property greed and the march of
Time that is destroying one landmark after another, including Boudin's
Bakery, the Central Cinema, the Drive-in Theatre, Jim's Barber Shop, Vines
Coffee Shop, and any number of businesses that have been around since
the end of World War II, Pagano's on Lincoln is no more.
Dave Giovanelli, one-time partner to Pagano, has shifted operations to
the Neptune Plaza which coincidentally happens to be at the cross of Central
and - quelle surprise! -- the disputed McKay Avenue.
To add yet more interest, that old building that housed the old Pagano's
was built so long ago that none of it is up to code and so any new business
in there will have to enjoy several thousand dollars in major upgrades.
Given that the storefronts in that block can hardly remain open for more
than 18 months at a time as it is, the realty company may have seriously
shot itself in the foot by carping about the rent.
THIS ISLAND-LIFE
It's moving out of the Spring Season, typically a die-down time for the
footlights and concerts as Mainliners gear up for the Summer, the movie
industry holds its horses back for the Blockbuster Reely Big Shews, and
the theatre venues change over productions as the Season rolls over to
the new lineup. One item to watch for here will be a daring choice for
Altadena which shall be presenting the caustic Glengarry Glen Ross by
David Mamet -- not a play known for pleasing small town conservative audiences.
Should be very interesting to see the critical response here.
Death of young and old took the front pages this week. Niel Tam, 69,
passed away after contracting Leukemia. He is best known for serving as
a trustee for the Unified School District. Before becoming a trustee,
Mr. Tam taught in the schools here and served as Washington Elementary
Principal for a total of 30 years in pedagogy. He is generally remembered
for possessing a voice of quiet common sense and for initiating more recently
the anti-bullying curriculum that caused a bit of a stir. Personally,
we remember him working as a volunteer for the Island Food Bank, also
in a very quiet and understated capacity.
It is sad to lose an elder statesman of experience. Sadder still to lose
a young person just starting out on Life's journey. Clay Harding was just
17 and a senior at Alameda High when he mixed prescription drugs and alcohol
at a friend's house with fatal consequences. The popular teen was a talented
skateboarder and will be remembered June 6 at the City View Skatepark
out on the Point by way of a tournement.
In perusing the Police Blotter we see that the rate of 5150's continues
at about 7 detentions per week. 5150 is the code for putting a person
on three day psychiatric evaluation at John George. We do know that John
George has been releasing persons before the 72 hour period has elapsed,
so we don't know how many of these are repeats. Our in-house psych nurse
tells us that a 5150 is executed only if a person appears to be a danger
to themselves, to other people, or property. It is interested that we
have so many of these, and yet there was the case of the man who was beaten
by a patrol officer badly enough to require hospitalization and extensive
rehab.
On the upbeat news we are pleased that Oakland held its first Book Festival
this Sunday. Due to a confusion of dates (we had the Festival down for
6/6 - 6/7 which are the dates for the Chronicle Bay Bookfest) we missed
out on that significant event. The event is significant in that, despite
the large cultural richness of literary talent here, we have not had anything
like the events hosted in New York City. Not even San Francisco has held
anything like this recently, and it is interesting that this event, organized
by NYC transplants Kira and Timothy Don, is being held in Oakland instead
of across the water. This may be another sign of a culture flight from
the City that Rents High.
If you did miss this one, Chronicle Books will have its own book extravaganza
next weekend for two full days of literary explosiveness. This one also
takes place in the East Bay in the Downtown Berkeley's Arts District.
An evening with popular childrens author Judy Blume and a keynote
by Googles Laszlo Bock are just two of the headliners at the Bay
Area Book Festival, June 6-7, 2015 in Berkeley, California. The two-day,
free festival will welcome 300 local, national and international authors
in 145 keynotes, interviews, panels and performances on indoor and outdoor
stages throughout a 10-block radius of downtown Berkeley.
See the full list of authors and the weekend schedule. Highlights include
conversations and interviews with Paolo Bacigalupi, Michael Chabon, Peter
Coyote, Daniel Handler, Pico Iyer, Kim Stanley Robinson, Rebecca Solnit,
and the Icelandic novelist Sjón; Lauren Oliver on the Teen Stage;
Mac Barnett regaling the kids on the Childrens Stageand, this
being Berkeley, Cal Peternell, head chef at Chez Panisse, on a panel on
the joys, perils, and practicalities of writing cookbooks.
A centerpiece installation will be the "Lacuna", a structure
composed of 50,000 books.
You will want to go to http://www.baybookfest.org/ for information and
schedules.
THEN CAME THE LAST DAYS OF MAY
So anyway, this is the week after Memorial Day week, when people who
don't know or who have not been there, put away their BBQ tools and their
charcoal and return to work, while some other people take this time of
quiet to revisit that grassy place up on the hill or some such similar
locus for what what lost. When the traveling Wall had come around the
Editor had stood there searching and searching, finding this and that
name, but not two more. An officer sat in a hot tent out on the tarmac
of the decommissioned Navy base and had found one of those names -- Raymond
of Falls Church -- but not Johnny, in a binder book of many names all
of which for one administrative reason or another had not wound up on
the wall. He had stood there, knowing the entire story -- members of Johnny's
unit had told him everything, but the boy had enlisted underage and the
officer, probably knowing quite a few stories similar to Johnny's kept
saying, "Sorry. Sorry I can't do anything for you." A stock
phrase, repeated many times.
And all the many lost who lived through that time, seeking some mooring
in an imagined loss that must somehow be real the longer it was clasped
to the heart because the entire Country seemed to have lost so much as
if a recognized name on the Wall, no matter how distant, could somehow
bind the lost person to an emotional truth that made sense amid this national
agony. But the names on the Wall are real and what happened was real and
the concrete trivia of a soldier's life is real, as the Officer well knows
and his commitment is to the men and women who truly served. Sorry. Sorry,
I can't do anything for you."
And it bothers the Editor that his own search to find resolution for
two people he has known is conflated with amorphous psychological fictions.
In the end, it all comes down to red tape and administrative issues.
Volunteering to sit in an unairconditioned tent to look up names. Some
names lost because the forms had not been properly completed. Pretty much
the entire way of the US Army from time immemorial. Situation Normal.
Code FUBAR.
At the Unitarian Church this week's sermon was about the Good Samaritan
and the Sufi who encountered the Mystic on the road to Mecca. This being
California, we tend to get quite a mixture when it comes to the Gospels
as you can imagine. Most people on the Island know the parable of the
compassionate man from Samhara. The story about the Sufi who encountered
the Mystic goes as follows. The Mystic riding upon his ass knew of the
Sufi's wisdom and so posed a conundrum he imagined might be difficult
to resolve, so he asked, "Who is greater, the Prophet Mohammed or
Bassam?"
A thunderclap threw the Mystic from his ride to the ground and the Sufi
exclaimed as the hills quaked in the distance, "The Prophet, of course!"
Now, if this story seems abstruse and difficult to understand, it would
pay the inquirer well to hold back judgments as he or she pursues greater
knowledge. It seems nowadays people trend to the unthinking and prepackaged
set of opinions about a great number of things that require some thought
and consideration. Of course when we act, we must act decisively, but
we should not adhere to the doctrine that it is better to do something
stupid than do nothing at all for the moment.
Reverend Freethought had no idea whatsoever where her sermon was going
to take her and she had some serious doubts about connecting the parable
of the good man from Samhara to this Moslem story. The windows of the
Unity chapel were open and the sky had shifted from its dull slate of
recent weeks to dappled blue heavens and the seabirds were winging in
from a storm offshore and a great change in the air was blowing all that
cogitation over a glass or two of wine last night out into the fields
of lilies, they that soweth not nor reap.
Just as this marvelous weather begins to turn fair, Eugene's landlord
finally got around to fixing the furnace, providing central heat to the
lower floors after a month of hemming and hawing the way slumlords are
wont to do. And the Island seems to have developed a fair number of these
slumlords in recent years. Eugene's landlord was named Bang Banana Bing
and he hailed from Vietnam, from which he had been airlifted as yet another
casualty of our foreign wars. Since the country which had forcibly adopted
him and his family refused to recognize his foreign medical degree, he
had elected to throw his intelligence into property acquisition and management.
Since the US is given to asserting itself around the world in such destabilizing
terms frequently we are likely to receive quite a number of folks just
like Bang for years to come. All give thanks to Bushie and the Project
for the New American Century.
Recognizing that the locals were bent on capitalizing upon his limited
language skills and seeming lack of control, Bang resolved to do things
the American Way, and provide as little upkeep as possible, to keep the
local vultures at bay, and extract what he could from the property. It
was clear after the first re-wiring job these locals were set to rob him
of as much as they could extract while still providing substandard work
that arced and sparked and consisted of tape-wrapped three-pole plugs
that possessed no ground.
As the lilies, you shall reap as you shall sow.
At Marlene and Andre's Household the denizens were restive, longing for
the change in seasonal temps that would release the pressure valve of
too many people crammed into a small space due to the obscene rent situation.
Fifteen people lived in that one bedroom cottage set to rent by Mr. Howitzer.
And the situation was gradually being duplicated all over the Island due
to the property greed that had infected the place like some vile disease
exported from the Congo.
All the studios now held two people. All the one bedrooms held three
or more. Two bedroom units now held four or more people. And the population
continued to increase and the problems of parking and crime also rose
with the population density. No one person could afford these prices and
the rare few who could bopped along the street like ignorant, happy apes,
unaware of the damage happening all around them. Until they were robbed
at gunpoint or mugged. Quelle surprise!
The corner of St. Charles and Lincoln looks desolate these days, but
on the revivified Webster A Touch of Wonder is going great guns with its
massage business run by Borg Rubbitsum late of St. Paul and the new Dragon
and Phoenix that slings out Loh Fan salty-sweet dishes that could make
a pelican gag, but which seems to garner grand reviews ever since Mei
Mei has been schtupping the reviewer at the Island Sun.
In the Estuary, the Iranian spy sub El Chadoor continues to ply back
and forth on its long forgotten charge to keep tabs upon the Infidel port
of Oaktown.
The captain claps the handhelds of the periscope up in disgust. They
got all the names of the Bassam story all wrong. What are we to expect
of these people otherwise. And the Chadoor dived and ran silent, ran deep
out beneath the Golden Gate to the grand Pacific.
Out upon the fishing lanes, Pedro Almeida flicks on the cabin light to
better read the maps as Ferryboat, grown a bit larger in recent months,
snarfles and snurfs on the borders of the housing. When the light goes
out there remains the pale illumination of the running lights and the
instruments.
An El Nino was developing north of the Hawaiian islands and even now,
even here, Pedro could feel the changes, caused by vast movements of water
and wind and air over millions of miles of ocean and land. There would
come relief upon the land, grief upon the sea when that thing finally
hit. Water would unparch the thirsty fields, water would rage upon the
sea-lanes. Water would rend the sodden hills into avalanche and water
would stir up the hidden treasures below. Grief upon the land, relief
upon the sea.
A great change was coming and he could feel it. Yet he was powerless
in the knowledge. For storms and floods and disasters will come, regardless
of all our best plans for the imaginary future.
For all of us are travelers upon that road, be it sea or land. All of
us have the chance to prove ourselves humane or otherwise demand superiority,
to say that we individually know the mind of the Prophet. All of us are
fishers of men. All of us come from Samhara.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked in front of the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
MAY 24, 2015
DECORATION DAY
The skies have been leaden of late, preventing clear, sharp photos around
town, so for this week we pull one from the archives. This shot is unusual
for a couple of reasons. One, you cannot take this picture anymore; not
only would the view be obstructed by security apparatus, including barbed
wire and concrete anti-tank blocks, and two, the passageway would be secured
after dark with no admittance.
This shot was taken at 11:00pm from the side of the Lincoln Memorial
in 1979, and even then guards came to warn about the danger of hanging
around such a dangerous area at night in D.C., then the Murder Capitol
of America. Still, on this Memorial Day weekend, its kinda worth looking
at the physical representation of the centuries of the world's oldest
Democracy. The battered Washington Monument still standing, the Capitol
with all its faults and glories, and the hallway of the memorial dedicated
to the man who kept things together during a time of wrenching national
agony to put all current points of view in perspective.
WHAT'S THE BUZZ
Printed version of Mule Sonata is now ready for order by the avid throngs
eager to delve into dusty history lessons. There is also the Kindle version
for those seeking to travel lite.
Well, maybe not avid or throngs, but its ready nonetheless.
Here is the hyperlink to Amazon.
Sorry it costs so much, but lean, sallow solicitors and publisher wonks
had more say in costs than the Authors. So you wrote a book and you think
YOU own it? Ha! Welcome to the world of publishing and such.
THIS ISLAND LIFE
The big elephant in the China shop here is getting restive. With obscene
rents rocketing to $1500 for studios with ratty carpets and obnoxious
neighbors and rooms that only recently went for $500 per month, the heat
is being applied for some kind of formal governance over the rampant greed
that is wrecking the place. We at Island-Life did a little round-about
sampling of the temperatures regarding the development issues here, and,
boy, did we get an earful.
Pretty obvious, both landholders and renters are not happy at all with
the way things are going. In this weekend sampling of some half a hundred
folks, not one single resident spoke optimistically about the currrent
course of development.
One homeowner near the old DelMonte cannery said he was looking to sell
and get out as soon he could, seeing the writing on the wall for the neighborhood.
This homeowner had been to all the community meetings and all the planning
session and had concluded that a passel of attorneys had gathered to formulate
their own plans and be damned to all the people who live here now as far
as getting in the way of what they have already decided. The latest plan
is to rip out and destroy Lincoln park with its swards and its basketball
courts in favor of a parking lot to benefit the proposed development inside
the old DelMonte Cannery. Didn't Joni Mitchell write a song about this
sort of thing?
Talked to members of the Island Renter's Association, who are developing
connections in City Hall in an effort to stem this ugly tide, and they
were filled with wan hope that convincing local landholders to adhere
to local priciples of decency in the face of foreign investment here may
preserve something of what used to be called our quality of life.
This is our Island and this Island is our home to our families, our kids,
and our descendents if allowed. This "if allowed" should be
put on the table and argued and defended, methinks.
If you really do not want legislated "Rent Control" the local
landowners need to get on board and halt this hideous progression towards
extracting every last penny for the moment.
Because you just know the boom will bust, the dot commers will depart,
and we will be left holding the bag of empties when the bubble collapses.
We are the ones who live here, not as tourists, but as generation after
generation of Californians who have endured drought, fire, earthquake
and plagues of locusts like these development vermin.
In other news, people are still disputing the Shoreline bicycle lane,
when it seems to us, the real problem is not the bicycle lane, but the
parking slots combined with the new bus intermodals that are the real
culprits in subtracting a driving lane from the once broad boulevard.
The bike lanes are barely three feet across, whereas the bus intermodals
and parking slots take up six or more feet across from the travel path.
In hindsight, it seems had the City just painted parking slots along
the existing path and zoned some sections for the bus, we would have been
far better off. Heck, this does not even address the idea of expanding
the shore path by a few feet to allow pedestrians and bikers to co-exist
above the curb.
Seems a lot of ideas that are more sensible got tabled by well-wishers.
PEOPLE ARE STRANGE WHEN YOU'RE A STRANGER
So anyway a sort of dull effusion of miasma suffused the Bay Area even
as thunderstorms headed east. We have had a time of low fog that usual
precedes the rites of Spring here, a bit late and a bit chillier that
usual, but still, the harbingers of Spring have arrived.
Jeanmarie came into the Old Same Place Bar and started talking with Denby
during the set break. Jeanmarie, a woman into her seventies, had once
been a stunningly beautiful woman in her day and even now, with her hair
gone silver, she remained a strikingly lovely woman the way some women
who age well sometimes do, looking a little like Emmylou Harris, with
the firm toned body of an outdoorswoman who loved to ride horses on her
ranch up in Mendo County. She showed Denby pictures of one of her horses,
a beautiful chestnut mare named Victoria.
She had lost her husband of 35 years to cancer not long ago and whenever
the anniversary of his death came around she got out of town and away
from reminders, so she had travelled south down the 101 until she came,
as some spirit wanderers do, to the Island.
Denby could see that here was a person who could use the distraction
of a story and so he told her this picture of her horse reminded him of
when he had first learned to ride horses back in the day. The family had
come down to California from Helena to visit Uncle Bob who had retired
from the Navy on the Island. At that time, the Base was still in operation
on the West End. Well visiting Uncle Bob was a fine thing for adults to
do but there remained little for the young Denby in sitting around the
livingroom and he was not allowed to go over unattended to the City for
sightseening, but the County Fair had come to Oaktown across the estuary,
and there could be no harm in that, so with a whole five dollars in his
pocket he had gone over there to occupy himself.
When he saw the pony's there in the pony paddock he had a mind to ride
one -- he had been watching reruns of Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger.
But the man said he was too big to weigh down one of those minature Shetlands,
so Denby pointed at one of the bigger horses that were used for stunt
riding and the man said go ahead if the owner didn't mind.
So Denby went up to one of the hands brushing down a full sized stallion
standing 11 hands high and asked if he could ride, which the man took
with a lot of amusement.
"So you think you can handle this horse, young feller?"
Denby said he was down with his family from Helena where everybody knew
how to ride.
Another roadie chimed in "Harry, you aint gonna put that boy on
Vickers are you?"
Denby didn't wait for an answer but bounced twice on his toes before
jumping up to hook one foot into the stirrup to hoist himself up into
the saddle of Vickers. His legs were not long enough though to hook both
stirrups so there he sat.
"Well looks like that boy does know something." said the roustabout,
whose name was Spats.
Harry asked Denby how much money he had on him and Denby answered, "Five
whole dollars!"
Harry led Vickers into the tent which was empty, the show having finished
20 minutes previously.
"Betcha ten he gets tossed before two circuits," Harry said
to Spats.
"Yer on."
Harry adjusted the stirrups for Denby and then shouted, "Hiii-yup!"
and slapped Vickers on the flank.
Vickers took off on a fast canter around the ring with Denby holding
on for dear life and the two roustabouts laughing and laughing, until
Spats commented there would be hell to pay if the boy fell and broke his
neck. Harry got real serious when he thought about that so he stepped
to grab the bridle, missed and tripped and fell under the horse who stepped
over him. Seeing there was some kind of problem, Denby pulled back on
the reins, and Vickers responded the way he had been trained to do in
performance. He reared up on his hind legs.
"Heigh ho Silver?" Denby said, wondering what to do next.
Vickers came heavily down to earth with Harry right behind him. That
is when Spats stopped laughing and ran into the ring. Unfortunately, Harry
got up -- always a back thing to do when behind a horse and Vickers, sensing
unwanted activity behind him neatly and sharply rapped Harry in the head
with his back hooves, knocking the man for a loop and a siesta of stars
as he tumbled over Spats.
"Vickers, you behave!" Denby said.
In response, the horse bolted around the circuit again at a gallop, once
again running through the routine that usually featured Marlene, the Queen
of the Indies standing on the seat. After completing the circuit, seeing
the path obstructed by two circus clowns, Vickers once again did as trained
and trotted right out the exit where normally a roustabout would take
hold of the bridle as Marlene dropped to a normal riding position. There
being no roustabout at the exit, Vickers kept on going out the channel
to the broadway where he turned left. Taking the jouncing boy's body as
encouragement Vickers broke again into a fast canter.
"You really didn't know how to ride a horse, did you?" Jeanmarie
said.
"I love horses, but I still don't know how to ride worth beans,"
Denby said.
Anyway they cantered right past the rubarb baked goods tent with everyone
staring and past the parasailing booth when he shouted at the man to throw
him a parachute.
"A what?!"
"A parachute! God's teeth throw me a parachute!"
Denby had it in mind to slow this animal down physically since nothing
he said or did made a difference. He tried yanking the reins left and
that only led to Vickers doing a mad dance in a circle and then doing
another one of those forefeet in the air high rears.
The parasail guy threw him what looked like a dufflebag with a metal
bar attached, which apparatus Denby put on his back as Vickers kept on
cantering down between the tents, scattering men, women, clowns and children
in his path.
"Heigh Ho Silver!" Denby said. "To the Estuary we go!"
Vickers broke into a gallop as the rodeo clowns appeared with ropes.
Down by the water, with the breeze coming in across the Bay, Denby pulled
the rip cord to release the parachute.
It was not a parachute -- it was a full sized parasail. Which caught
the wind and lifted Denby clear of Vickers as police, rodeo clowns, roustabouts
and curious spectators gathered about Vickers who began calmly grazing
at the edge of the shore.
Denby rose up over the Estuary, gripping the metal bar for dear life,
going higher and higher on that prevailing wind until he went over the
Island where the warmer air took him higher still. He was so scared he
nearly peed his pants, but the view was pretty cool.
Down to the right the immense container cranes that inspired Steven Spielberg
for the Star Wars robots looked like toys. Ahead he could see the Navy
Base and the airfield with its AA guns and the lagoon and the Old Same
Place Bar and all the churches along Church Row and the gilt statues of
the Tibetan Temple and the City Hall with its odd gap that used to be
filled with the bell tower and Washington Park with its Dog Section and
the hundred foot palms that hosted the nesting cranes and Wood Middle
School and Encinal with its jet on the lawn and all these things he knew
nothing about yet because he did not live there, but he thought, what
a charming place and what kind of odd people must live there.
There was Grand Street and to the left the old section, the East End
of fancy houses and the Disputed Bicycle Bridge that connected to Harbor
Bay and the broad grassy knoll of Mount Trashmore that had been once upon
a time landfill. At the time of this event one of the last drive-in theatres
still had its screen and lot hard by the entrance to the Tube and the
Mastic Senior Center was a baseball diamond.
There was the freshly minted lagoon below and the new shoreline and the
Strand and then the broad expanse of the Bay which chopped and sloshed
all the way to the distant outline of the City with its strings of pearls.
As he passed over the water of the Bay, the cooler air brought him down
and curious parasailers approached him.
"How do I get down?" he shouted. They did not hear him. As
he headed outward, still going higher, the City looked mysterous and ethereal
in the distance and he wondered if this was the vision of the New Jerusalem
Uncle Bob always talked about. Uncle Bob was a Born Again and he talked
a lot about the New Dispensation and the Rapture and lots of other crazy
stuff. Denby wondered if he was going to die when he crashed down in the
City somewhere and if it was okay to get into Heaven that way.
He kept on going out over the Bay and experimented a bit with changing
direction, losing some altitude in the process. At one point he found
himself turned around and headed back to the Island where sail boarders
looked up at this kid who seem to always be coming from some strange direction.
"How do I make this thing stop!" Denby shouted.
"Just drop in the water!" one of them shouted. "I'll come
get you."
"Just drop?" Denby pulled on this rope and that rope. In the
end he just tilted the metal bar in front of him until the air slipped
out and he went down fast and hard into the Bay 100 yards from shore where
he thrashed around scared to death of drowning.
"Calm down," said the sailboarder who approached him. "Just
stand up."
"Just stand up?"
"It's only three feet deep."
Denby stood up. The guy was right.
Later, his dad insisted they go back over there to check up on Vickers
and Harry. Vickers was fine and Denby gave the horse an apple. Harry had
a long-lasting headache.
When his family returned to Helena, Denby realized he had undergone a
Life Changing Event, and forever after that he remained a quiet, introspective
sort of person, someone regarded as a little odd. And he resolved that
he would eventually find a way to get back to that magical Island where
he had been given a vision of the New Jerusalem.
"I am glad about one thing in this story," Jeanmarie said.
"What's that?" Denby said.
"Nothing bad happened to Vickers."
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked in front of the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
MAY 17, 2015
WAKE UP MAMA, TURN YOUR LAMP DOWN LOW
Facebooker friend Stan has been taking pictures of this mama raccoon
dropping by for freebies. Hard enough feeding for two, but imagine feeding
for eight.
She "dropped", says Stan, appropriately sometime around Mother's
Day.
WHAT'S THE BUZZ
We are pleased to announce that the book Mule Sonata, another Island-Life
production, is now available for Kindle e-Books on Amazon.com. A hyperlink
in the sidebar leads directly to the store. Amazon.com will carry this
title in printed format in a couple of days.
The Mule Sonata is a lively history of Alta California from the perspective
of three families from the Beginning of Time as told by a mysterious Narrator
to a man known only as The Visitor, an Everyman sadly in need of an history
lesson. The Narrator tells his history with whimsy and humor, beginning
with a family feud that unwinds over the course of millennia through insurrections,
wars, plague, shipwreck, gold fever, massacres, murder, and the construction
of the Trans-American railroad to resolve itself during the infamous San
Francisco Earthquake and Fire in passionate romance.
Throughout this fanciful tale a preposterous family of mules impossibly
continues to breed and beget generation after generation. The narrative
is sometimes silly, sometimes deadly serious as the members of each generation
battle the elements, the European and American conquerors, and each other
as the history of Alta California plays out on a stage of epic sweep and
grandeur.
THIS ISLAND LIFE
The Park Street Bridge will remain closed to pedestrians and motor vehicles
from 8:30 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. Sunday through Thursday until August 13. Maritime
traffic must notify the bridge authorities at least two hours if they
need a span to be raised to allow passage.
It does not seem to matter for some kinds of people if you innocent or
not, or if you comply or not with regards to police these days. In any
case you are bound to get hurt, and at least in running away you stand
a slim chance of survival. Not so much for Jeffrey Navarro who failed
to stop when ordered to to so by police who imagined he looked like the
person who shoplifted a charger from the Verizon store July 27, 2012.
Jeffrey apparently got frightened and rode his bicycle into a cul de
sac where Officer Patrick Wyeth followed him, striking down the boy with
his baton moments after ordering him to lie down. Wyeth apparently continued
to strike Navarro, who suffers from schizophrenia, fracturing Navarro's
left arm and right wrist.
No stolen items were found on Navarro who had to stay four months at
a rehabilitation facility to recover.
Although the City maintains Officer Wyeth acted within protocol and entirely
properly, acting Assistant City Manager Amy Woodbridge decided to settle
the legal civil rights case initiated by the Navarro family so as to avoid
a costly, lengthy and image-damaging lawsuit.
Cost to the City for use of excessive force on a disabled man will be
over $430,000.
There has been a classic tit-for-tat between bicyclists and cage-drivers
who refuse to let up what will become something of an anachronism as time
moves forward. To those who say "America is about automobiles,"
(like America is "about" anything save personal opinions), here
is a factoid. The streets were originally paved not for automobiles, which
easily negotiated the rutted dirt roads, but for the Pennyfarthing bicycles
owned by the well-to-do. Seems a common hazard to those machines was "coming
a cropper", or doing a sometimes fatal header over the handlebars
as a consequence of hitting a bad rut.
So the wealthy lobbied for paved roads to replace the cobblestone city
streets and the rutted dirt throughways so as to protect themselves. Later,
the "safety bicycle" with pneumatic tires made this less important,
but by then the automobile also had developed technologically and people
got used to driving in their horseless carriages without the need for
the famous riding "dustcoat."
Next time you drive down a paved road, give thanks to the big wheeled
Pennyfarthing bicycle and the fractured skulls of the toity toity gentry.
THERE IS WATER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN
As David Byrne says in the song "Once in a Lifetime" , "You
may ask yourself, 'Well, how did I get here?'"
Howard Schecter is back from his travels with another technical report
from Mammoth. You gotta love this part-time scientist (by day he is a
Realtor) for ending a long discourse on millibars and wave trofs and degree
changes of +1C north of Hawaii with a statement like, "If it walks
like a duck and talks like a duck . . .".
Good news is that the powder is still good for people catching the tail-end
of ski season, and the recent spatterings here have translated to storms
adding 5 and 8 inches of snow at a time up top. It does not end the drought,
but it ameliorates some if its bad effects a tad.
As for the "duck", we are talking El Nino for sure now. It
is not just projected or foreseen -- it is happening now, although the
ever cautious Howard and the Dweebers say its all still wait and see.
Even though the mass movements happening now are like "geenormous",
which is Valley Speak for really, really big. Like bigger than entire
oceans and continents. It is possible, but extremely unlikely, that something
that big and complex is going to shift direction.
And of course the question that goes wagging its tail and begging to
each of us is how we 1. survive the dry spell until this massive Rain-a-geddon
and 2. how we survive once it does hit, given that San Diego got just
a smidgen of taste recently when three foot waves started coursing down
Main Street.
Last season we predicted Islanders would be needing sandbags, and lo!
Behold! The DPW started handing them out at the Corporate Yard. If you
still got 'em, better keep 'em.
As for the recent activity we collected the following from KTVU whose
Steve Paulson said 1/3 to an inch of rain fell from Livermore to Clayton.
The South Bay also received some relief from the historic drought conditions
with an inch of rain falling in the Cupertino-Sunnyvale area. Some flooding
was reported in the Novato area in the North Bay while San Francisco saw
zero precipitation.
But the rain was doing little to ease water woes in the drought-parched
Golden State.
"Any kind of rain, like we had last night, is certainly welcome.
Anything wet is welcome," said climatologist Bill Patzert of NASA's
Jet Propulsion Lab. "But it's not getting us out of the drought."
Meanwhile, a second round of rain from a rare spring storm swept into
drought-stricken Southern California on Friday, along with heavy winds
and snow in the mountains before heading inland, where other states were
also feeling weird late-season weather.
In San Diego, rain poured steadily a day after the regional water authority
decided residents can water lawns no more than twice a week -- a measure
aimed at achieving sweeping state-mandated cuts to water consumption during
drought.
Drivers were urged to use caution on roads in the San Bernardino and
San Gabriel mountains, where between 3 to 6 inches of snow was possible
above 6,000 feet. Temperatures hovered around freezing at higher elevations.
In northern Arizona, a rare springtime snowstorm hit a small town just
west of Flagstaff, dumping more than seven inches of snow. The area has
seen more than three inches of snow on May 15 or later only a handful
of times.
Firefighters rescued six motorists and a dog who became trapped in 3
feet of water on a San Diego street, and they pulled a man from the rushing
water of a flood control channel in Northridge, about 25 miles north of
Los Angeles, authorities said.
"One minute it's a little bit of water and all of a sudden it got
deeper and deeper really fast," Capt. Joe Amador of the San Diego
Fire-Rescue Department said about the flooded street.
Flooding and debris flows are possible if thunderstorms form over foothill
areas stripped bare by wildfires.
The downpour caused rare rain delays at the San Diego Padres' game against
the Washington Nationals at Petco Park and the Los Angeles Dodgers' game
against the Colorado Rockies at Dodgers Stadium. Meanwhile, snow in the
forecast for Friday forced organizers to relocate the Amgen Tour of California
bicycle race from Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains to Santa
Clarita.
It also soaked the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where flowers were being laid
on the star of blues legend B.B. King a day after his death.
An outdoor commencement ceremony at University of Southern California went
on despite the wet weather, with attendees told to leave their umbrellas
behind. Many people, including graduates, wore crimson and gold Trojan ponchos.
The recent downpours caught local forecasters off guard, but Howard Schecter
had predicted the three punch system weeks ago.
GOT THE KEY TO THE HIGHWAY
So anyway, a series of wharf sizzlers blew through on cold winds, leaving
behind Magritte skies of deepest blue dappled with strange clouds after
the morning's leaden cover of high fog lifted from the chill, dank landscape.
The weather has been so strange it would not set anyone aback to discover
a rain of men wearing overcoats and bowler hats descending silently between
the blank houses.
This sort of atmosphere drives people indoors, to occupy themselves with
books and cats and Earl Gray tea and schemes of making money. Martini
has gotten Jose and their neighbors Oleg and Joe together on a plan to
market and sell "Tantric lightning bugs" to tourists big on
the whole foods holistic medicine thing. Martini found a way to harvest
LEDs and mini-batteries from discarded circuit boards and cobble them
together with solder to make a blinking sort of "bug" that he
embedded in tinted polyacrylate from molding kits from Beverley's.
The trick was to come up with some marketing that would convince people
who seriously wore magnetic bands and dosed with homeopathic remedies
that supposedly contained just one molecule of active ingredient. Jose
was dubious.
"I don't think it is right taking money from people with a lie,"
Jose said. His abuelta had been an honest woman.
"Motivational speakers do it all the time. Hey, anyone who indulges
in this stuff instead of heading right for the ibuprofen has money,"
said Martini. "And anybody who thinks aromatherapy and ear-candling
works will buy anything so long as the logo features a Cherokee dreamcatcher."
"Ear candling?" Pahrump said. "My people believed in none
of that."
Meanwhile Denby had ventured out, seeing as the Spring had been rendered
harmless by the cold weather, sending that naked child of Venus, Eros,
off to other places just to warm his cockles and de-ice his cherub wings.
He headed over to the Old Same Place Bar where Padraic had a guy sitting
there playing a solo guitar.
I got the key to the highway
Babe, I am billed out and got to go
Gonna set out running
'Cause walking is most too slow . . .
Denby sat there and nurse the one beer he could afford while the guy
ran through his set.
I am going to roam this mean old highway
Babe, you know why
I am going to roam this mean old highway
Until the day I die
The man had all the right feel with the right notes in the right place,
but beyond that he had the right feel, because the Blues is more about
the feeling than the right notes.
Everyday, everyday I have the blues
Everyday, everyday I have the blues
When you see me worried woman
And it's you I hate to lose
Nobody loves me, nobody seems to care
Yes nobody loves me, nobody seems to care
Speaking of words and trouble darling
You know I had my share
I'm gonna pack my suitcase, move on down the line,
I'm gonna pack my suitcase, move on down the line,
Where there ain't nobody worryin', and there ain't nobody cryin'
There was so much feeling there that the world should crack. One listens
to a thousand tedious dunta-duntas to finally get to hear somebody playing
like this man.
It serves me right to suffer
Serves me right to be alone
It serves me right to suffer, suffer
Serves me right to be alone, alone
Because the life I'm living
I'm living in memories gone by.
During the set break Denby went up to the man and talked to him about
the music. He said he sometimes played the guitar himself, and after a
while the man asked him a question.
"White boy how is it you choose the Blues?"
Denby thought for a moment. "Nobody chooses the Blues. The Blues
choose you."
The man thought for a moment, reflectively. "Sounds like that would
make a good song."
"I think I will write it," Denby said.
In the offices of the Island-Life newsroom, the Editor went down the
aisles, shutting off this and that lamp, logging off computers, packing
up the end of the week's issue. The Book, first of three, including the
reissue of stories, had been put to bed and now awaited proof approval
before production. A long project had finally come to term. As any writer
knows, you never really finish a novel; you basically just walk away from
it to start another one, leaving so much unfinished it is impossible.
From upstairs the Spurlock family was playing traditional Irish folk
together. Maeve and Susan and Oisin down from Mendocino. Music is an art
that exists, like dance, for the moment and then is gone, leaving memory
of that which was. At the end of the weekend the family will disperse
to the far corners of the Golden State, their link the melodies.
Out beyond the windows of the Offices the people who made Humanity worth
the name flickered across the galaxy's Milky Way, each a Light of Earth.
Musicians, scientists, poets, the Company of Saints and Scholars . . .
.
The Editor returned to his cube of glass and pooled light. Here he bent
to the task, his remaining white hair flying about his head, glowing in
the half-light an aureole. Each work a failed meditation seeking for that
unity with the Creator, no frippery or gaudiness or anything getting in
between. While all around through the curtains of darkness there flickered
the remaining lights of Humanity's hope.
As the World aged with the Editor and Time, successively each Light of
Earth winked out, leaving him there progressively more alone, surrounded
by the muttering darkness with his longing. Doing all for Company.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked in front of the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
MAY 10, 2015
ELECTRIC AVENUE
This week's shot is of the powerbox at the entrance to the library parkinglot.
This combination of bicycle and ride-share motif is likely to become a
major theme in the Island's ongoing history. Will we live to see trains
running down Lincoln again?
LIKE THE WEATHER
Howard Schecter has been out of town since his last post of May 6 when
the current cold front was forecast to bring snow to the High Sierra.
Here is what Howard had to say:
"It is interesting to note that some scientists called for a wet
spring because of the California Nino (not to be confused of an actual
El Nino) for this season. I suspect that more will be on the way as the
global models continue the trend of an active pattern over California
well into the following weekend. The timing still seems to be Monday or
Tuesday of next week and/or about the following Friday for another upper
low capable of producing more rain or snowfall in the Mono Sierra.
El Nino:
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, is it really a duck?
The Models that forecast El Nino are not all that reliable at this time.
So
.. More time is still needed seasonally to know with a greater
confidence. . . that a Significant El Nino is going to take place next
winter. . . .
The prospects for a strong El Nino are very important to the Eastern
Sierra for many reasons. For one, the prospects for a deep snowpack and
filling local reservoirs of water is most important. And although even
a Super Nino most likely will not undue the damage of 4 years of drought,
it will pose a sizable dent."
In the absence of the Dweebs we have a first hand report from mammothsnowman
who gives us today's report from Mammoth Mountain. "We had a taste
of the winter the last few days, spring will return today with highs in
the 50s at Main Lodge with highs in the 30 and low 40s up top.
We do have a east wind flow this am so that should keep the snow up top
in a winter state for now.
Yesterday was one special day with 12-18 inches of fresh up top. The
snow skied great and everyone who made it out had a blast. With the new
snow Mammoth Mountain will not close today but stay open until things
melt out.
The forecast calls for more snow late in the upcoming weekend into next
weekend, so we should be good to go for 2-3 more weeks unless it gets
to warm.
So at this point we have a base of 6-50 inches out on the hill. "
Well, its not the normal 84 inches of accumulation, but we will take
what we can get.
It may be good for travelers, but it is disheartening to hear this event
happened so early. The Tioga Road opened on Monday, May 4, 2015. The Glacier
Point Road opened on March 28. Tuolomne Meadows is clear of snow, but
snow persists down to 8,500 in some protected areas.
2015 PARK STREET ART AND WINE FAIRE
This weekend saw the 31st iteration of the annual Park Street
Art and Wine festival under gradually clearing skies on Saturday and full
bright blue skies for Mother's Day.
As usual, we strolled past the tchotchke booths, which appeared this
year to have gone significantly upscale in quality and scope, to pay head
to the music. For its music for which we live and music makes life worth
living.
Best of the Faire we must award to Fu Man Chu, which took the Lincoln
Stage on Saturday. This trio managed to do more with just three instruments
than many bands do with an entire orchestra. They were tight, disciplined,
energetic and fun to watch.
"Shred-rick" Dennis played fluidly, with assurance
and with clear enjoyment in what he was doing. We heard a piece by Jacob
Pastorius and what seems to be a festival tradition, Santana's Black Magic
Woman.
No American outdoor Faire is complete without the essential
staples that make Americana what it is.
Of course, dogs of all kinds are welcome, especially the
homey hot dog.
Well, there are hotdogs and there are Hot Dogs.
There is always room for hopeful whimsy among the crowd.
You never know when a Goddess might walk among us. Or ride.
Speaking of bicycles, the Island has a strong, vocal pro-cyclist
organization here. They provided free valet parking for your steed.
Sunday Steve Graves took over the Lincoln Street stage with
a jazzy smooth ensemble which was stunning in its instrumentals, but lackluster
in vocals. It seemed that Graves was enjoined to tamp it down for Mother's
Day as we could sense a bottled-up energy longing for release. The saxophonist
was absolutely superb as was Graves himself on guitar.
Back to the crowd. Where is that "wascally wabbit?"
At the Encincal Stage we had one of those "tribute
bands" that seems in vogue for special events these days. Heck, work
is work, right? This one focusses their attention upon the Doobie Brothers.
The Doobie Brothers were wildly popular in the early nineteen seventies,
but vanished during the eighties, only to experience a resurgence in the
following decade. They are still alive and performing now after fifty
years on the road.
This band calls itself Long Train Running and was notable
by the clear, crisp vocals.
The unsung heroes on the margins should get a mention. At
his usual corner on Park and Santa Clara sat the Pee Pah man.
They attend every festival with their Italianate flavor,
playing Amore and the Godfather theme.
At the end of the day, a fine time was had by all.
THIS ISLAND LIFE
The Letters to the Editor indicate that both the usurious rental situation
and the dismay over unbridled development will not be short-term matters,
but which very well may persist into the next electoral cycle.
Outrage over the ludicrous EIR report that claimed current development
will lead to an increase in traffic of only one car spread out across
all Island access points showed itself in a Commentary piece in the Sun,
titled "Don't Let Point EIR Fantasy Fool You." Interestingly
a retired civil engineer -- who also happens to be Eugenie Thompson's
husband -- called for an honest traffic study that puts away the seriously
flawed Point EIR which has been inadequately defended by City Planner
Andrew Thomas.
We observe that our new Mayor Trish (Spencer) has already voted at least
three times against major expenditures for which provision has not been
established, but each time has been voted down by a Council majority.
We are thinking that Mayor Trish may need to step up to the plate and
proactively get some momentum going with support of the Community or she
very well may turn out to be known as the longest term lame duck ever
in office.
We are already seeing consequences of development impacting the Island
as we note that there has been a consistent range of 12-14 psychiatric
detentions on 5150 per week for the past few months. In a front page sub
we note the police performed a local prostitution sting, netting six people.
Finally we are seeing continued complaints about the new bike lanes combined
with shore-side parking. Since a similar project is proposed for Central
Avenue, interested folks should come to express their views -- calmly
-- at the Transportation Commission meeting May 27 at City Hall at 7 PM.
There is an online open forum at http://alamedaca.gov/public-works/open-forum.
Of course prior to all that will be the annual Bike To Work Day on May
14. Look for the Energizer Station near you. Last year there were a couple
up Fruitvale Avenue north of the Station.
PERPETUAL BLUES MACHINE
So anyway, this Sunday was Mother's Day all over and everybody who had
a mother they knew about paid observances, each as to their wont. Mr.
Howitzer drove over the bridges to Colma with his pellet gun and flowers
to attend to the mausoleum of Dame Edna Howitzer. The flowers were for
his mother. The pellet gun was for the crows which seemed to like to gather
around the family plot for some reason, and he could not get the groundskeepers
to pay heed to his complaints. Which served to confirm his patrician opinion
of the hoi polloi's course temperament.
The Cribbages got together with the Blathers to trundle their surviving
mums over to Scott's Seafood for the elegant champagne brunch there. As
the elderly Maryanne Cribbage was helped out of the limo, she remarked,
"You don't have to go to such a fuss over me, Sonny. I am going to
give it all away when I pass away to that group you call 'pinko commies'."
"Now, now mother . . .".
"I am. I am giving it all to Greenpeace. So you can just relax."
Sonny Cribbage muttered something under his breath.
"What is that you said?"
"I said the anchor-outs were turning the estuary into an old, nasty
ditch. A ditch is what I said."
"It looks fine to me."
"It's getting cleaned up. Come along, mother."
Over in the Plushly Apartments a phone rang.
"Genie?"
"Hi mom."
"It's so nice to hear your voice. I so seldom see you and you never
call."
"I tried calling you on the cell I got for you but you didn't pick
up. Did you get the voicemail?"
"Uh, well no. It sort of broke."
"It broke?! Did you drop it?"
"Now the man at the store said maybe if I let it dry out it might
start working again. After a few weeks. Do you use the rotary phone I
saved from when did the switchboard for Ma Bell?"
"Mom, we don't have rotary service here. It will not work."
"Well what kind of cheesy place do you live where a plain old telephone
won't work? Genie are you living in a dive?"
"Mom nobody has rotary service anymore anywhere in California. Eventually
even the regular pushbutton phones are going away."
"I don't believe you. How come mine still works?"
"Is that the phone Tim got you from Sharper Image?"
"Well yes, the other one stopped working. I guess it was just old
and tired -- like your mother."
"Mom that phone just imitates the action of a rotary. Inside it
acts just like a touch-tone."
"Well that sounds like going backwards against progress if you ask
me. Here I am alone all the time with no one to talk to or care for me
and I never get out . . .".
What happened to Susan? And Tim and Mona? I thought they were coming
over with the kids . . .".
"O they are so delightful! Joshua and Kate and Stevie and Nicholas
and the baby . . . ! At least Mona gave me grandchildren. Not like some
of my children . . .".
"Mom . . .".
"Whatever happened to that girl Valerie you were dating?"
"Mom, that ended fifteen years ago. She didn't like trout, remember?"
"Always such a loner type. Never wanted to share his toys with the
other kids. You know Genie, there is a girl at the bowling alley where
the Senior Group goes to relax . . .".
"Mom . . .".
"Listen Genie, her name is Darlene and she is divorced, but that
is okay because I said you live in California where they get divorced
all the time -- except not you. You have never, ever been married. Not
even once."
"Mom, you live in Boston."
"She lives in Worcester. Which brings me to ask, when are you coming
home?"
"Home? You live in a retirement community. I was born in Atlanta,
Georgia. I have been living here for forty-five years."
"You could come for a visit; maybe you would like it. You know Darlene
really knows how to handle the balls at the alley. She's divorced, you
know. She really knows how to handle the balls . . .".
"Mom!"
"Don't be shocked, Gene, you are old enough to know how to do it.
Now we are going to have a party for Kate and I want you to come, because
it is very important. She is almost engaged to Ari Cohen and in June she
is going to be circumcised in their religion and we have . . .".
"What!"
"It's important in their religion when the children come of age,
you know. The girls get circumcision veil and the boys get . . . uh, I
forget . . .".
"I think you mean Bat Mitzvah. Girls don't get circumcised."
"Oh Bat Mitzvah! That sounds familiar! But whatever. You have to
come out for that because this is the union of two very different families.
Maybe. Possibly. Gene I want you here. And Darlene will help with everything."
"Why this Darlene?"
"She's half Jewish. Gene, come out and meet Darlene. We can all
make yontif together. We have trout in Boston . . . ".
"Mom, no, I can't get away . . .".
"Oooooooooowwwwwwwww! All my little ones are growing up and getting
married and moving away from their poor, lonely mother! And I raised them
when they were such cute little babies, mewling and puking and full of
crappy diapers. All by myself. Your father never helped. Ooooooooooowwwwwwwww
. . ."
"Mom, please."
"Remember that Halloween when you put on your pirate costume and
you had that accident at the Steinhauser's?
"Mom. No I don't remember."
"You went pissy boo in your costume and that's when we found out
you didn't put on any pants underneath! How everybody laughed! You were
so cuuuuuuute. Not like now."
"Mom, I don't want to remember that . . .".
"You never call, you never drop by. I could slip and fall into that
toilet and wind up just like that sad cellphone all dripping and useless
and no one will hear me calling 'help!' Help a poor old abandoned woman
left all alone. Helllllllllllp! Oooooooooohhhhhhwwwwwww . . ."
"O for pete's sake."
"That's okay Eugene. You just go ahead and enjoy your live all by
your self with your trout for company while your poor, dripping mother
stares out at the flakes of snow falling, each flake as cold as the hearts
of some ungrateful people . . .".
"Okay mom. . . "
"Ooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww . . .".
"Mom. I'll come out."
"O that's super. I tell Tim to fix up one of those airline deals
with his company. He can come pick you up at the airport. I am sure I
can get him to drop everything as this is so important."
"Yeah, I am sure he'll like that. Happy Mother's Day, mom. I gotta
go now."
"Okay, I gotta get things ready. So many things to arrange. And
tell Darlene!"
"Bye mom."
Click.
At the other end of the spectrum, the Household of Marlene and Andre
took their mothers out as part of the annual ritual to Mama's Royal Cafe
in Oaktown, those that still had mothers here on the West Coast. This
included Sarah and Suan and Pedro. Tipitina's mother had long since passed
away in Shreveport and Marsha's mom lived back in New Jersey at the Weehawken
Maritime Retiree's Home. Rolph, of course lost his mother suddenly that
fateful day on the bridge over the River Spee in Berlin, so they gathered
together with Xavier, Piedro, Jose and Jesus who all had mothers living
in various parts of Mexico to whom they sent such money as they had managed
to scrounge up, and the group collected to make a day's outing in a Ride
Share car up to the Berkeley Rose Garden.
Occasional Quentin, who at any time could have been called a motherless
child, got with Marlene and Adam and the waif Little Adam, who had come
to the Household after being thrown from the car by his cruel stepfather.
They went down to the beach until Snuffles the bum called Quentin over
for company and to share his gallon of ninety-nine cent wine.
Of Javier, nothing had been seen for days, and it was expected he was
either getting into trouble with another wild woman or had already been
murdered by one of them and they would get the news from the police any
day now.
"Wussup with Quentin? How come he is so wierd," Adam asked.
"Hush now. No one in the Household is wierd, only troubled in their
own way. You can call him simple if you like," Marlene said.
"Yeah, well, why is he so simple then?"
"Adam, he lost his entire family in a ferry accident years ago,"
Andre said.
"After that some people . . . took advantage of him with the drugs
and so he went simple," Marlene said. "He actually has a kind
heart. Remember how he showed you how to make a sailboat out of paper?"
"Yeah, I guess he be cool." He paused a long time before snuggling
up to Marlene, the girl with the barren womb who would never have children
of her own. "I seen kids who sure be messed up. I guess not everybody
as lucky as me. Sure enuf."
Andre looked at him and the creases on his face turned up so the scars
on his face given him by both his father and mother back in the IDU days
of his own early childhood seemed to fade out into the tats. "You
make us feel luck, Adam."
And the girl Marlene let her long black hair fall over the child that
was become theirs, safe for the moment from all that is out there that
would steal the laughter of a child.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked in front of the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
MAY 4, 2015
UNDER THE BRIDGE DOWNTOWN
Well, we printed a shot of the Fruitvale Bridge so we might as well show
the main gateway bridge that takes traffic to and from Park Street past
the Kaiser concrete processing plant in Oaktown. This one, courtesy of
May Day, showcases the dirty fingernails aspect of workingman's Oaktown
and the Island. That is a dredging barge in the foreground.
MAY, MAY, THE LUSTY MONTH OF MAY
Lots of events took place this weekend and the last weekend of April.
Last Saturday Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to the USS Hornet
CV-8 and to surviving members of the Doolittle raid which launched via
aircraft carriers that set out from their base on the Island on April
18, 1942. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle himself was an Island native. Honorees
last Saturday were Lt. Col Frank Kappeler and Rear Adm. Henry Miller.
The bronze replicas were handed to their children, as the men could not
attend in person. Kappeler, also an Island native, died in 2010. Miller
passed away at 83 years of age in 1993. Because it was believed the carrier
armada had been spotted in mid-Pacific, the raiders took off earlier than
planned, knowing that this early start meant there would not be enough
fuel for any of them to return. Fifteen of the sixteen planes crash-landed
in China, and one crashed in Russia. Three airmen died in the crashes
and eight were captured. Of those eight, three were executed by the Japanese.
Kappeler escaped to fly 53 more combat missions during the war. The original
Hornet (CV-12) did not survive the war - it was sunk during the Battle
of the Santa Cruz Islands, and its namesake swung into action in the winter
of 1943.
In a martial-related them, the Vietnam vets held their annual picnic
at Crab Cove near the spot that had been the source of a war of a different
kind between the GSA and the EBPR when the land got put up for auction
in a bad faith action by GSA, who had previously promised the land to
the East Bay Parks organization to help fulfill a voter's measure to expand
the parkland Strand.
We had our own Earth Day last week again at Washington Park, which featured
the usual AMP presence of its lime-green eco car, booths and tchotchkes
and a bicycle rodeo.
This weekend featured Cinco de Mayo festivities again at the Fruitvale
BART complex and once again it was packed with the madding crowd. Our
representative came away with some handmade silver and stone earrings.
Cinco de Mayo, contrary to gabacho opinion, is NOT a celebration of Mexico's
day of independence, but a commemoration of the Battle of the Pueblo against
the French and has come to be much like St. Patrick's Day a celebration
of a particular ethnicity as well as of polycultural America. California
was Mexico once, so it makes sense to remember our roots.
It is Poetry Month, if you did not know, and Julia Park Tracy has been
writing articles for the homegrown weekly, The Sun, on why poetry matters.
THIS ISLAND LIFE
The disputation over the new bike lane and bus intermodals along Shoreline
ticked up a notch when a licensed traffic engineer named Eugenie Thompson
wrote a Commentary piece deploring the bad design, citing the placement
of the lane, while cost effective, does little for safety of people exiting
their cars on the beach side.
We did notice that there is no bufferzone between parking and the bike
lanes and saw several near misses. Ms. Thompson does have a point in that
licensed engineers should have designed the bike path, not well-meaning
folks who know little about formal road design.
In a bicycle-related theme, one letter to the Editor complained about
a deliberate assault on him while stopped at a stopsign on Walnut Street.
As the man looked for cross traffic a black SUV came up behind and to
the side of him. The passenger door was flung open, striking the rider
to the ground. The SUV then drove off as the passenger closed the door
while laughing. The victim obtained only a partial license plate of 5-M-A.
Incident took place Tuesday, April 21 at 2:40 p.m.
Now people can be rude and obnoxious on the road, and often ignorant
of turn signal niceties, but striking someone with a motor vehicle is
a crime and so is driving away from the scene of an incident. Anyone who
knows of these people and this incident should contact the APD. This sort
of thing turns the Island into a very, very ugly place. It must not happen
again or someone could die.
I THINK YOU'RE CRAZY
You may have noticed the wackjob table that has posted itself in front
of the main post office at Southshore Mall. Although the guys have removed
it, this table is part of the not-forgotten Lyndon LaRouche movement.
LaRouche was a presidential candidate in each election from 1976 to 2004,
running once for his own U.S. Labor Party and seven times for the Democratic
Party nomination. He originally claimed to be a leftist Socialist, but
soon, through associations with ultraconservative George Wallace and the
Ku Kux Klan and his close association with the Reagan administration,
he revealed himself to be a far right radical rather than a Socialist.
After moving his base of operations to a heavily fortified and militarized
compound in Leesburg, VA, he began denouncing people who disagreed with
him as "Soviet sympathizers, commies and homosexuals."
After a raid on his headquarters in Virginia, which very nearly ended
in a bloodbath due to the heavily armed presence of his guards, on December
16, 1988, LaRouche was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud involving
more than $30 million in defaulted loans; eleven counts of actual mail
fraud involving $294,000 in defaulted loans; and a single count of conspiring
to defraud the US Internal Revenue Service. He was sentenced to 15 years
in federal prison but was released on January 26, 1994.
Thirteen associates were sentenced to prison terms ranging from one month
to 77 years for mail fraud and conspiracy.
His defense in this case and in other matters was typical of Larouche
ideology: i.e., a vast conspiracy is in league with a number of parties
to derail his political efforts and succeed in assassination.
The trial judge called LaRouche's claim of a political vendetta "arrant
nonsense," and said "the idea that this organization is a sufficient
threat to anything that would warrant the government bringing a prosecution
to silence them just defies human experience."
While in prison, he shared a cell with televangelist Jim Bakker. According
to Bakker, LaRouche received a daily intelligence report by mail, and
at times had information about news events days before they happened.
Bakker also wrote that LaRouche believed their cell was bugged. In Bakker's
view, "to say LaRouche was a little paranoid would be like saying
that the Titanic had a little leak."
LaRouche was released on parole in January 1994, and returned to Loudoun
County. The Washington Post wrote that he would be supervised by parole
and probation officers until January 2004. Also in 1994, his followers
joined members of the Nation of Islam to condemn the Anti-Defamation League
for its alleged crimes against African Americans, reportedly one of several
such meetings since 1992.
In the 1996 Democratic presidential primaries, he received enough votes
in Louisiana and Virginia to get one delegate from each state, but before
the primaries began, the Democratic National Committee chair, Donald Fowler,
ruled that LaRouche was not a "bona fide Democrat" because of
his "expressed political beliefs ... which are explicitly racist
and anti-Semitic," and because of his "past activities including
exploitation of and defrauding contributors and voters." Fowler instructed
state parties to disregard votes for LaRouche.
He continues to attach himself to any number of causes on a whim, appearing
to do so only to secure publicity for himself and his organization and
at least temporary support.
This, then, is the nature of the group that has posted itself in front
of the Post Office, which denied his initial application to place his
table inside or on federal property.
RUN RABBIT RUN
So anyway, David has been over at the Native Sons of the Golden West
meeting hall at the marina, preparing the place for the Annual Golden
Poppy Spring Fling with the help of Pahrump and Jose and his wife, Columbia.
The Spring Fling is one the Island's most popular, well attended events
for this event marks the high point of Spring and provides all sorts of
opportunities for people to hook up, those that wish to, so as to get
through the Summer with some companionship.
Companionship through the Summer is highly desired by many people here
in NorCal during the period deplored by Mark Twain as the beds can become
cold in those old houses lacking central heating.
Eugene, who long ago dropped the idea of "hooking up" from
his activity list, has been preparing for the beginning of fishing season
in the High Country. The magic date has passed and now the boy is champing
at the bridle to get up there soon as the Tioga pass is cleared, for up
there swim the desirable rainbow, the brookie, the cutthrought, the imported
brown, and the wily, intelligent and coyly evasive beautiful golden trout.
Through the winter, Eugene spends his evenings after coming home from
the recycling plant meticulously tying flies, imitations of insect life
that lives at various Sierra altitudes. Caddis flies, nymphs, ants, mosquitos
and the ever utilitarian hares ear, each small body held in a jeweler's
vise as he works with minute materials and glue with a loupe strapped
to his forehead, taking hours to make a single bug that will, hopefully,
look irresistibly tasty to a trout. Then, once finished, he removes the
almost finished creation from its gripper and holds it aloft for a moment
before dropping the object to the floor and stamping on it with his combat
boots several times. Then he lifts it up again to examine the newly minted
artwork. And then into the tacklebox it goes.
The first of May is notable in Island History because long ago, during
the Jazz Age, whenever that was, the City Council banned dancing. The
Island had always been a Bay Area preserve for the more restrained of
the people who came to California from other places, even during the Gold
Rush, that wild time of unbridled avarice and bad behavior, but as things
swung into a certain sepia-toned period of flappers and drink and Gatsby
staring out across the water to a certain lighthouse, some people felt
that things had gotten a little loose here. Then came prohibition and
with that the houses of ill-repute and the speakeasies, among them was
the notorious Leaky Peter out on the West End, which featured dancing
girls who were not fully dressed and who would perform on stage and for
a certain fee of a certain amount would dance with any gentleman, or any
man who wore pants.
The sentiment began during Earl Warren's tenure as Oakland City Prosecutor
who sought in the 1920's to regulate, and close down, the large number
of dance halls which substantially employed Filipino women during a time
of rabid anti-Asian sentiment under the aegis of laws that forbade "mixed
color dancing". Filipino's are not Asian, properly speaking, they
are Pacific Islander, but this kind of prejudice tends to avoid looking
at both obvious and fine distinctions.
So the Council decided to ban dancing, seeking to put an end to "vulgar
and obscene" behavior, but did so in such broad language that it
included tea cotillions, the Senior Retirement Home Gala and the basic
waltz, which had been banned already in parts of Germany and Switzerland
as "too provocative".
The Leaky Peter sought to step around these issues by claiming to be
a "dance academy." That one did not work so well.
This is, in fact true; it is not made up.
The anti-Filipino issue continued to work itself out in an ugly fashion
for a couple decades after this, but Prohibition is what saved dancing
on the Island. That and the Eagle's Hall, the Rotarians, and the Masonic
Lodge, all of whom counted as members influential members of society and
all of which had counted on formal balls to raise revenue. Them as well
as the Chief of Police.
The Chief of Police for San Francisco had issued warrants and a summons
to "Boss" Abe Ruef only a few years prior to these events and
went mysteriously missing from a packet boat while crossing the Bay; his
body was later found floating near Wharf 2. The Island Chief of Police,
Brendon O'Malley, wisely decided to hold back his hand, in what has become
classic IPD behavior, and do nothing about the existing dance halls; he
lived a long and prosperous life. The ban was revoked by popular acclaim
on May 1, 1930.
The waltz had been saved.
Now, Rachel goes out during the week to the Metrodome to teach couples
the Lindy hop, the jitterbug, and the waltz. Beating time with a ferrule
on her palm. "And 1,2,3 and 1,2,3 and step and turn, and step and
turn . . .". And the couples turn and turn about, Asian-Americans,
Black Americans, Filipinos, Whites and Hispanics, First Peoples and Europeans,
Bostons and Californios, Midwesterners and Southerners, Nevada cowboys
and mestizas, all arrayed together like a garden of many flowers in that
room on Santa Clara.
Down at the Old Same Place Bar the old timers are all lined up and talking
about the crazy things they did as kids. Martini is talking to Old Schmidt
about cars. "Did I ever tell all of you about the time I drove a
hot rodded Mustang off of the Sonora Pass?"
Old Schmidt puffed on his pipe. "I don't sink zo."
"Well," Martini said. "The crane operator said it looked
like I was accelerating just before I went airborne off the edge of the
road." Martini paused. " I will have to tell you next time.
I have to go now."
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked in front of the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
APRIL 26, 2015
BLUE . . . SONGS ARE LIKE TATTOOS YOU KNOW
This week's beautiful photo was taken by Lifer Tammy from the windows
of her new job out on Harbor Bay.
LIKE THE WEATHER
A wharf-sizzler dashed in here Friday, which may alleviate in a minor
way some of the regional reservoir lack, but the better news is that Fishing
Opening Day looks to be entirely ruined in the Sierra as storms brought
in a few inches as low as Lake Crowley (c.6,000 feet elev.) The weather
wonks were saying Mt. Mammoth got up to 10 inches with accumulation down
to 6,500 feet.
Bad news from the Dweeb Report is that dry, warming trends will melt
a lot of that, meaning our Stage 4 Drought -- as set by EBMUD -- continues.
Our reservoirs stand at 50% full in total with our largest at Comanche
(which is located outside of Sacto) at 27% of capacity.
Island-Life Offices have shut down all garden watering save by "gray
water" left over from showers and dishwashing. The sprinkler setup
has been disconnected. We also put out collectors during the recent storms
and use a dehumidifier to collect atmospheric moisture in the basement.
You cannot let those outdoor collectors sit, however, as still, unclorinated
water attracts mosquitos and let it be known West Nile virus has been
detected in the County. It takes about 24 to 36 hours for the chlorine
in tap water to offgas, so don't let the kitchen sink sit too long either.
For those with no garden aspirations, it takes about a gallon to flush
your toilet by pouring directly into the bowl.
BRIDGE(s) OF SIGHS
DPW announced it has finished early with work on the High Street Bridge
deck repair by about 10 days. The bridge hours are now back to normal.
The main bottleneck will be the Park Street Bridge, with work starting
May 11. The bridge will close to all traffic, including pedestrians and
most sea vessels needing the drawbridge from 8:30pm to 5:am until August
14. Coast Guard will communicate the limitations to marine traffic.
On the other side of the estuary, plans are in the works for expanding
the bridge, sometimes called the Embarcadero Bridge, that goes over the
Lake Merritt channel. This work is slated to begin any day now and will
cause some traffic issues close to home until the summer of 2017. Questions
regarding the bridge project can be directed to Mr. Philip Fung, Resident
Engineer at pfung@oaklandnet.com or (510) 238-2938.
If that were not enough for you, BART announced work to the equipment
and tracks between Fruitvale and Coliseum stations. The effort will ensure
safer and more reliable service. When the work is completed, riders should
experience a faster and quieter ride. The work requires that the entire
track be shut down and that no trains operate between these stations while
it is being performed. To cause the least amount of inconvenience, BART
is scheduling this work mostly on Saturday nights and all day Sunday on
some weekends.
The schedule is as follows but is most certainly subject to revision.
Check the website and monitor station announcements.
May 2-3 Starts Saturday at 7pm and all day Sunday
May 9-10 Starts Saturday at 7pm and all day Sunday
May 23-25 All day Saturday*, Sunday, and Monday
June 6-7 Starts Friday at 7pm and all day Sat & Sun
June 13-14 Starts Saturday at 7pm and all day Sunday
July 11-12 Starts Saturday at 7pm and all day Sunday
July 18-19 Starts Saturday at 7pm and all day Sunday
Aug 1-2 Starts Saturday at 7pm and all day Sunday
August 15-16 Starts Saturday at 7pm and all day Sunday
You can get automated BART Service Advisories (BSA) on your phone. BART
offers both e-mail and text options. To sign up for BSAs, please visit
at www.bart.gov/alerts. Or, follow on
Twitter @sfbart for news or @sfbartalert for automated service advisories.
LET IT RAIN, LET IT POUR
So anyway, we had a wharf-sizzler blow through town, leaving everything
dank and sodden. It's not enough to relieve the drought though, and everyone
is adapting in their own way to the circumstances. We have bricks in the
toilet tanks again, and the retention of "gray water" from washing
things for whatever might need some watering. Sprinklers have been shut
off and you can bet that if any hapless fool sets off the lawn system
there will be a Water Nazi sure to leap upon the hapless homeowner for
wastage, just like we have Parking Nazis performing similar duties against
those who fail to park between the lines.
Mrs. Cribbage ran out into the street the other day to chastise one of
those ragpickers who harvests bottles from the blue recycle bins, shouting,
"You know that is illegal you! Stop this stealing immediately!"
and she whacked the man with her umbrella and scattered the stolen bottles
from his stolen CVS shopping cart. Of course it says quite plainly on
the blue bin that only licensed carriers may take from this container,
and of course it is stealing as we all pay for this service with the bins,
and of course they are trespassing when they enter your yard, but in every
district we have these control freaks and that man can no longer read
signs written in English than he could read in his native Chinese.
And if everything is hunky-dory why are people collecting stolen plastic
bottles to make a living?
Officer O'Madhauen, wearing civvies, came out of his apartment building
where he has worked as an unpaid live-in manager for 45 years to yell
at Ms. Grenouille, whose dog, was busy sniffing O'Mahauen's Monster Truck,
which the officer had spent many thousands of dollars to prettify. He
spent more time polishing the thing than driving it, for he took CalTrans
buses into the City where he worked as a security guard for Macy's when
he was not being parking enforcer for City College. The veins bulged from
his neck as he screamed at Ms. Grenouille, who at first just stared at
this apparition. The dog, a mixed terrier, too looked with curiosity at
the man.
"That mongrel better not piss on my truck! Don't walk so close to
it!"
Ms. Grenouille answered back that the Officer was being extremely rude
and that she had a right to walk where she pleased on any public sidewalk
and she was going to call the police about him.
"Go ahead!," said O'Madhauen, who always parked in the same
spot directly in front of the building, a spot he considered his by right
of having lived in the same apartment in that building for 48 years, an
apartment he had shared with his mother, who had been the unpaid manager
before him. He also had friends in the IPD. "Go ahead ya old bag!"
Ms. Grenouille made a gesture of annoyance with her shoulders and shook
her head. "Come along, Ribbit. Let's get away from this awful man."
Across the street, Mr. Andre Malderor was putting angry notes on the
windshields of cars that were not parked squarely between the faint and
sometimes badly eroded lines. He would later call Parking Enforcement
to have them ticketed.
"You better not ticket MY truck!" O'Madhauen yelled at him.
Andre looked at him from across the street. "How long is that truck
parked there? It's a three day limit."
The Officer folded his arms, steadfast. "I can park in front of
my building as long as I want. Nobody else parks here."
That's when the two of them started yelling at each other and Carol on
the third floor slammed her windows shut as the noise was bothering her
cats.
Northern California seems to have more than its share of Control Freaks,
who variously dominate apartment buildings, city blocks and neighborhoods.
No one knows what makes them appear, and no one seems to have an answer
for these idiots who think by threatening other people, their own world
will be made so much better.
This may be why the avalanche of Dot-Commers has overwhelmed the Bay
Area -- it is the Natural Selection response to Control Freakism. You
want to control something? Okay, pay $9,000 a month for your studio apartment.
Control that.
Mr. Howitzer, seeing the real estate figures and knowing the processes
going on behind them as well as the rampant and unstoppable juggernaut
of development on the Island, was on Saturday night in high spirits and
he commanded Dodd to bring him the finest cognac in the cellars to as
to celebrate the economic recovery that was hitting every part of the
United States, save for California, late.
That this recovery might be due to the sober-sided actions of the incumbent
President, a notorious LIberal, was a fact Mr. Howitzer chose to ignore.
Cheesin Loy, a basket lady, pushed her stolen shopping cart a bit faster
at the end of the block. She knew better than to try her luck rifling
the blue bins on this street. She had made that mistake once and once
only after O'Madhauen had wheeled out the bins on trash day. Her ears
were still ringing months later.
The sermon at the CFSM was all about the beer volcano up in heaven and
how midgets and strippers were equally blessed by God. Reverend Arrabiatta
then led the congregation in a rendition of "Onward Pastafarians,"
while Mr. DeCapo performed upon the organ impressively well as usual.
1. Onward, Pastafarians, marching off to dine,
with the plate of spaghetti and a glass of wine.
Pasta, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
forward into supper, see His red sauce flow!
Refrain:
Onward, Pastafarians, marching off to dine,
with sauce and parmesan and a glass of wine.
2. At the sign of triumph Dummheit's host doth flee;
on then, Pastafarians, on to beer and whiskey!
Tummies quiver at the shout of praise;
brothers, lift your forks, loud your slurping raise.
Refrain:
Onward, Pastafarians, marching off to dine,
with Chef Boy-R-Dee and a glass of wine.
3. Like a mighty army moves the sauce so red;
brothers, we are eating where the saints have fed.
We are not divided, all one body we,
one in peace and pasta, one more plate if you please.
Refrain:
Onward, Pastafarians, marching off to dine,
with Hunt's meat sauce and a glass of red wine.
4. Diets and demagogues may perish, School Boards rise and complain,
but His noodles for eternal thyme shall never wane.
Hunger can never gainst that meatball prevail;
we have His own oregano, and that cannot fail.
Refrain:
Onward, Pastafarians, marching off to dine,
with sauce and parmesan and a glass of wine.
5. Onward then, ye people, join our happy chorus,
blend with ours your cheese in the delicious sauce.
Onions, meat, and mushrooms unto the Flying Spaghetti,
through countless ages men and pirates stand at the ready.
Refrain:
Onward, Pastafarians, marching off with cheer,
with bowls of pasta and tankards of beer!
Ramen!
It may have been coincidence but the sermon at the Unitarian Church down
the street was taken from John 6:1-15, which is the parable of the loves
and the fishes getting duplicated better than with a 3D printer.
These congregations meet late in the day, there being a desire to allow
some rest on the Lord's day, so afterward Jason led his group over to
the Old Same Place Bar. Late in the evening Mr. Pooter of the CFSM, mindful
of Heaven and the sacredness of the stripper trade suggested Padraic get
a few ladies into the bar with a stage and a pole.
Padraic appeared to contemplate this proposal with some seriousness until
Dawn whacked him upside the head.
"Don't even think about it."
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
APRIL 19, 2015
MY NAME IS OZYMANDIAS, KING OF KINGS . . .
Up along the well-matriculated slopes of Marin there stands an house
with an hillside bedecked with grave markers, most of which are spurious.
Among the collection stands this item:
Obviously somebody in San Anselmo has something to say about the state
of things. Best pay heed.
THIS ISLAND LIFE
The Silly Council is finally getting going on its promised Slow Growth
program. But, darn, it sure is taking a while. Which is sort of emblematic
of our "festina lente" attitude as voters. High rents, bad traffic
and development remain the hot button topics in the Letters to the Editor.
Interestingly a pattern of the Mayor casting the sole dissenting vote
so as to save money during meetings of the Silly Hall Council, which just
approved a pot of gold for a consultant to do a study on traffic. A study
we hope is more impartial than the preposterous traffic EIR which claimed
adding 9000 people to the Island population will result in a net increase
one single automobile during rush hour, adding together every single access
point to and from the City.
Also interesting were the numbers Lauren Do discovered regarding the
max throughput of the Posey Tube after a citizen went down there with
a clicker to actually count the real traffic. (The guy came up with something
on the order of 5900 cars from 7:30 to 9:00, but then number is not relevant
unless this stat is gathered over many days and different times, as Ms.
Do indicated in her Blog.)
It appears CalTrans has rated the Tube for a max capacity of over 8,000
cars per hour, which number also smells a bit humorous, as this figure
cannot assume that the cars will disperse evenly on exit. No way that
number could all file around the corner, through the two lights there
and smoothly merge single file onto the packed freeway above, where 95%
of the traffic is heading. The Tube itself might be able to shunt that
number through, bumper to bumper, but the streets on the Oakland side
cannot, for there are metering lights on the 880 onramp that throttle
traffic.
The truth is that the Island might have open space which causes Developers
to salivate and makes people feeling pinched by exorbitant property costs
have hope that more buildings will ease the pressure, but the facts of
geography provide the real growth limits. Of course one could just do
away with the Marinas, make all the bridges fixed structures, and build
out over the estuary, as they did in Harlem to the point that no one alive
can remember what the Harlem River looked like. Just imagine what that
would look like here.
They are going to be "lowering" the lagoon, starting Monday,
so get ready for a bit of ripe seaside odors as cleanup begins over there.
Took a drive down Shoreline the other day to get a feel of what that
route really is like now that the bicycle path is in place.
Traffic moved at a moderate pace, but issues developed when a truck parked
on the side to unload furniture. The two lanes became one and a half,
which did cause a minor bottleneck. Once again the beach was packed with
people going down to enjoy the moderate weather.
WHILE WE'RE YOUNG
So anyway, as mentioned last week everyone on the Island is preparing
for the post-Winter season. Which, given the cloudy skies and occasional
sprinkles and rather chill -- for California -- evenings dipping into
the forties has not exactly arrived quite yet.
Yet nevertheless it is unwise not to prepare in advance for the Most
Dangerous Season. Yes, Spring is the most dangerous season. Maybe it is
different in other places, but here, wise men remain indoors and order
pizza for dinner, hunker down by the TV to watch endless reruns of Monster
Truck Destruction and Terminator I, II, III and IV. It's safer cuddled
there in the dark lit only by the blackout curtain blocked TV set glow.
Bees dive-bombing the clover, hummingbirds bayoneting the jasmine that
keeps throwing out punches this way and that while sending wafts of chemical
weapons of mass disruption. Army ants on the march in great phalanxes
and squirrels conducting reconnaissance forays add to the mayhem, while
raccoons begin nightly raids. The daisy bush bursts with yellow ack-ack
blooms while the poppies erupt with tiny explosions across the fields.
Squadrons of swallows swooping and diving, duck sorties, and Canadian
geese streak overhead and then, worst of all, there are the girls in their
summer dresses.
Meanwhile, somewhere overhead, flying in stealth mode -- that naked,
blindfolded, fat boy keeps firing off at random his erring arrows of wanton
mishap, those IEDs (Improvised Erotic Designs), wreaking chaos in a wide
swath more terrifying that Sherman's March to the Sea. Squadrons of women
and girls swelling with fatal charms stroll on patrol, their smooth lithe
legs flashing beneath their uniforms: thin summer dresses, haltertops,
daisy-dukes, and god knows what else underneath that armor - if anything.
It's all agitprop left to the imagination.
Observe Johnnie, happy and carefree as a lark, striding with ruddy cheeks
and full confidence. But after him comes Jane, armed with those sharpshooter
eyes, that flippy short skirt, and strappy high heels. Now Johnnie is
down! His face wan and his appetite poor, his breath coming out in ragged
gasps as Jane cradles his head among the wildly blooming, victorious daisies.
Right in the heart, poor lad. A goner for sure.
Yes, Spring is the most dangerous Season.
When the fog rolls back and feminine panzer divisions cruise the Uptown
district in search of some likely target holding his pinsel in his hand
at the galleries, when the leggy Joanne strides forth into the night on
six-inch stiletto heels and Danielle puts on that short black dress and
a European accent spoken with a sultry je ne sais quoi wafting pheromones
among the randy artisans, that is when Don Giovanni and Lola Lola stalk
the Salons for luscious prey.
That is also when The Editor, avoiding the leggy Joanne, stocks up on
Redbox flicks (Netflix now passe), and a fridge filled with Michelina's
frozen dinners so as to avoid the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
especially those arrows sent by that obstreperous hoodlum, Cupid. For
the artsbeat he sends his representative, the hapless Jose who safely
has no more a clue about Eros than Faber's Euphonia, and Javier, who knows
a good deal more about Eros than someone in his position ought to and
nothing at all about Art save for ogling the odalisque.
Spring is also a time when Mother Nature grabs your attention and, be
you the most rigid, retentive personality on earth, try you and vie you,
you shall not be able, for at least one day, to hold attention as the
mind skips the light fantastic to places that, for all we know, are far
better, more productive, more useful than that blasted spreadsheet demanded
by the CIO by noon. The boxelder branches are stroking the windowpanes
with trembling fingertips and you cannot get that fey Emma off your dirty
mind even as the demand for the spreadsheet swells in the background to
the rumble of the kettledrums of Business.
Which demand shall not be met and shall not be disciplined quite yet,
for that same day the CIO is herself skipping through the sun-dappled
buttercups in the bee-loud glade of her own mind and she is listening
to timpani and a lyre on the golfcourse, not kettledrums.
The Valkries shall ride anon; for now, there is the boxelder and thoughts
of Emma.
As a consequence, the Editor prepares in his own manner as does Denby,
who gathers up those .89 cent Knorr's rice sides at the Foodmaxx and downloads
the entire box scale system along with all the tabs for every Bob Dylan
song ever transcribed so as to diligently devote himself to Art, stat
Eros.
In the Old Same Place Bar Suzie observes the nightly courtships, the
flirting and the disappointments from behind the bar and after serving
the customers with their anesthetic or stimulation, take what you will,
she retreats to the back and her anthropology textbook. Those last few
credits towards earning her BA degree at Community College.
Eugene is of a mind that she should take Botany and get a BS degree,
which would be more useful in the long run, but Suzie is not so sure.
Ms. Almeida comes out to check on things around the chicken coop in the
backyard, sees the long black ropes of scat. Either the Opossum or the
raccoon has been scouting again with the weather changing. She looks warily
about the hedged fences and the border palms but sees no sign of glowing
eyes. All is dark and dangerous out there in this time.
Beneath the estuary waters thrums the engines of the AIS Chadoor, the
Iranian spy submarine, still diligent upon its vague charge issued long
ago from an office in Teheran that very likely may no longer exist.
Governments come and go with the winds and the sands of Ozymandias, but
bureaucracies persist for ages on end and very likely will do so until
the end of time. And so, given no countermanding order, the El Chadoor
continues its mission from month to month, from year to year, keeping
tabs on the port of Oaktown with its periodic reports, its officers getting
gray about the temples, its crew maintaining contact with distant families
via encrypted communications. How is little Avram? He is doing well in
school, getting good marks. That is good as he must provide for the family
should I not return. Say it not so, Ari, we all long for your safe return
. . . .
Such is the life of the military man conscripted into service. There
are no real choices; only the endless ticking of the clocks as people
wait and wait and wait . . . .
"It looks like some sanity may be coming to bear at last and the
fiendish DAESS, our common enemy, will be destroyed by the grace of God
and the necessary treaty with the Americans," said the First Mate.
"Common sense is never something combined easily with politics,
" said the Captain. "Necessity, however, that is something entirely
different. Necessity is always a part of politics."
"I do not know what this has to do with nuclear power for Iran,
which we badly need, but I think it sounds wise." The First Mate
said. "Truth to tell."
"Truth and trust have nothing to do with anything, and less to do
with politics. Each nation does what it must out of necessity. You must
surprise your distrustful ally with gifts that follow through out of necessity.
That is how truth is gained."
"Indeed, Captain, you are deeper than I can go."
"Deeper we shall go yet. Dive! Dive!"
And with that the spy sub dove out of the estuary into the Bay and out
the Golden Gate to the silent fog-shrouded sea, running silent, running
deep.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
APRIL 12, 2015
BRIDGE OF SIGHS
It does not get as much publicity as the Park Street entrance -- nobody
has petitioned to raise the height limit for buildings at the foot of
this one, but the Fruitvale bridge is nevertheless part of heart and soul
of the Island. Trains once regularly crossed this structure to run the
length of the Island down Lincoln to the Webster Street Terminal, which
briefly served as the terminus for the Transamerican Railroad, as the
Oakland Terminal was still under construction when the final golden spike
was driven home.
THE WORLD IS ALL HEAVY WITH TRAFFIC
Sympathies if you happened to be on the road Friday which saw a two-car
USPS big rig burst into flames and then hit the divider just over the
Richmond San Rafael Bridge near San Quentin. The rig skated on the concrete
barrier for 400 yards before coming to a stop, spewing an heavy slick
of diesel fuel behind and effectively closing all lanes on the Marin side.
This happened at 7 am and it was not until 6:40pm that day the way was
made clear, causing a major traffic snarl.
If he wasn't a praying man, he sure is now; the driver escaped unhurt.
People who knew about the accident joined already heavy traffic heading
north on 880 to cross at the Carquinez Bridge. Some people turned around
and headed over other bridges. Reports of 4 to 5 hour drive times came
in for trips that normally lasted 45 minutes.
In San Francisco, a key section of Van Ness was closed for construction
while at the same time heavy construction continued at the Bay Street
and Lombard Street approaches to the Golden Gate Bridge, causing yet more
traffic misery.
Later that day, a fatal accident on 880 in Hayward created more headaches
for CHP and drivers.
A MAN WITH FRAGILE EYES AND A GUN
BLAME SALLY AT THE SEBASTOPOL COMMUNITY CENTER
The first report of extended travel times Friday came from the group
we drove up to see, Blame Sally.
"How many people got caught in traffic today?" one of the band
said from stage. "We left Oakland at 1:00pm and got here at 5:30!"
If the faces that comprise Blame Sally look familiar, they should. All
of them were individual singer/songwriters before forming the band in
2000, and each of them continues to pursue side projects. The end result
is a surprisingly energetic, kick-ass band composed of women ranging in
age from forties to fifty-something. Save perhaps for the bassist, token
male Rob Strom who looks to be the youngest of the lot.
The core of Blame Sally consists of Pam Delgado (percussion and vocals),
Renee Harcourt (guitar and vocals), Jeri Jones (guitar, bass and vocals)
and Monica Pasqual (piano, accordion and vocals). Reviewers usually state
the band is based in San Francisco, however two members live in Marin
and two others live in Oakland. Monica Pasqual hales from Utah, but has
lived in Mexico and is bilingual in Spanish (her mother was born in Spain).
Pam Delgado was born on Ellsworth AFB near Rapid City South Dakota. Jeri
Jones is from Hawaii and, no, the guitar does not make her butt look big.
(We have to say that, because she admitted she learned how to shoot a
pistol at age 5).
Stylistically the music draws from draws from a variety of musical styles,
ranging from roots to reflective pop influenced by jazz, folk, gospel
and classical music with a healthy dose of Fleetwood Mac. While they might
want to claim the energy of people like Chrissie Hynde, Joan Jett and
Annie Lennox, they really are more folkie than any of those, although
they do have a few hard rocking numbers like "Living Without You."
Think more Jane Siberry, Indigo Girls and Joy of Cooking, to whom the
SF Chronicle has favorably compared them.
We actually thought of getting close aquaintance Toni Brown to come out,
but those two (with Terry Garthwaite) have long ago put aside music for
other interests.
Despite the hellish traffic, the band did tear the roof off of the place
in two long sets, with Jeri Jones putting in alternatively eerily soulful
slide work with incendiary burn down the house stomping rock easily the
equal of anything Chrissie Hyne and Ani Di Franco have done while Monica
Pasqual ripped through some piano that would have had Franz Litzt rocking
off his bad, bad hair. When called by the arrangements to soften up, Monica
presented delicate etudes tastefully and well.
Yes the group does focus heavily on "women's issues", but the
scope and breadth of Renee Harcourt's songwriting puts the band in a class
above niche acts which the evil media has pigeonholed into sub-genres.
They can do the Lilith Faire thing, but they also have toured internationally
to great success in Europe. This is a group that transcends boundaries
and genres, doing traditional Mexican ballads as well as Americana and
socially engaged tunes. Its the ability to vary the dynamics by blending
all of their various skills together that has held the band together for
a good 15 years and nobody dominates center stage overlong. In a way the
estrogen levels on stage are a welcome relief from the usual dynamics.
Rob Strom, on six string jazz bass, provides just the right touch of subtilty
to fill out the rhythm section supplied by Pam Delgado. Monica Pasqual's
piano (looked like a Hammond B3) does not overwhelm everyone else, but
she can pound away when called to do so.
Friday night they did the Fort Bragg song about the soldier suffering
PTSD, Night of 1000 Stars, Vie for Love, Disappear, Big, Big Bed, Living
Without You, Her Name is Knife, Countdown, Bird in Hand, and the Fleetwood
Mac cover Never Going Back Again. Oh yes, plus Pass the Buddha and the
internet hit If You Tell a Lie, which sort of hit popular liftoff for
months after appearing on Neal Young's Living with War and a powerfully
rocking gospel-style Hurricane.
At the end the entire packed hall stood up for a thunderous well-earned
ovation.
There were also some new things from Renee Harcourt's new CD as well
as some Blame Sally things that seem headed for the studio along with
a neat song that deromanticizes the musician's life as a series of Holiday
Inns, "where it's always bigger than you expect, but the rooms all
look the same." Still we are glad they do it, presenting excellent
music as well as strong, positive images on stage for women of all ages.
We think those are good things and you could do worse than become a groupie,
as one couple admitted, having attended some 50 shows over the years --
in addition to some of the side projects.
Always support live music. For live music stimulates the brain, cheers
up a rainy day, enlivens the mood, brightens the outlook, cures all manner
of diseases -- including but not exclusive to, chilblains, heartburn,
dandruff, dysentery, clap, hangnails, anomie, social diseases, antisocial
diseases, most forms of neurosis, reactionary tendencies, rampant uptightness,
stick in the ass, mugwhumpery, ebola, walking pneumonia, rheumatoid arthritis,
intolerant pseudo-Islamic stomping, Pentagon dissillusion -- as well as
resolves economic dysfunction, improves the constitution, firms the blood,
rightens the moral turpitude, abolishes quackery, gives you those abs
of iron and buns of steel you always wanted, and eases nervous jumping
up and down to the delight of the great majority, bringing smiles all
around.
HARVEST MOON
So anyway. The nights have drifted into their usual chill, but the days
burn with a sunny brightness as prevailing winds and inland seagulls remind
us that things are changing here on the Island. The box elder is beginning
to leaf out as well as the crab apple tree. A skein of clouds keeps things
from getting too hot, yet warm enough for people to toss up the sashes,
but at night the high altitude winds are keeping away the high fog, revealing
Orion tumbling over the Veteran's Hall and that secretive Harvest moon.
From somewhere out of an open window two extraordinarily beatiful women's
voices are drifting over the yards, singing an old Neal Young song, a
duet.
Makes a man want to fall in love. Take that dark one, the one who is
really an angel of light. Chain up her heart. Get into a bit of role play
and deliciousness. Tease and please. And the light one, she who is really
dark and fey and of the faery Se, tie her up too and do all kinds of things,
like cover her with roses. As if that had not happened to her before.
What is a man to do? Especially an old man in dustcoat, waiting, standing
out in the alley, listening to the concert with no more than a tattered
bouquet in hand.
Spring. It's a time when things start to happen. Imaginations start to
run wild. The ivy goes crazy and the squirrels act even more squirrelly
than usual with manic industry.
Pedro Almeida, on board El Borracho Perdido, with his new first mate
in training, Ferryboat beside, angles out toward the fishing lanes beyond
the Golden Gate. People who do not know think NorCal has no Seasons, but
those people do not know the lives of fishermen who cast their fates upon
the seasonal restrictions upon their trade. In this month you may not
take crab nor oysters. In this month you may take herring and sole. This
year you may take no tuna or salmon.
Nevertheless the fisherman's lot is his to choose. He is the sole proprietor
of his domain, the Sea. Woof! says Ferryboat. And the chop and the radio
provided all the accomaniment required.
Out toward the lanes pilots Pedro with Ferryboat beside and another galloping
across the waves, the ghost of Tugboat, his companion of many years who
fought the Great White and died on the blood-soaked decks of the ship,
for all mariners must suffer their ghosts to attend from day to day, ship's
bell to bell, hour to hour. For that is the way of the Sea, and perhaps
also those vast acres of wheat or alfalfa blowing in waves for miles upon
miles to the horizon and those who tractor across them in their iHarvester
cabs like small ships scudding across the waves.
The nights remain chilly, but the bright days increase in number. After
the calla lilies, the tulips and other harbingers of change are popping
out all over. It has been quite a winter for people east of here, but
the snow shall melt soon even in Boston.
At the Church of our Lady of Incessant Complaint, everyone was just knackered
after getting through the pastoral Eastertime, what with pageants and
egg hunts and the swapping out of color schemes in the hangings and drapery
and Sister Profundity getting into a snit over washing the chasubles and
Sister Incontinence tripping and falling down the stairs and the rolling
morality play wagon losing a wheel at just the wrong moment, dumping all
the prophets and apostles and Mary Magdalen into a heap and thank heaven
He is risen and its all over, hopefully for another 1000 years, or at
least next April. The exhausted priest just wanted to plotz down with
a fishing pole and not be bothered when up comes little Imbecilla Cupkake
to complain that Danny kept sticking his "thing" in her ear.
"Tell Danny to stop it."
"I did but he wouldn't stop. So I bit him. I bit him on his pinna."
The Father dropped his fishing pole. "You bit him on his WHAT!?"
"His pinna. I grabbed his head and bit him on his earlobe. . . ".
"O for Pete's sake. . . ".
"Then I shoved him and he started to cry and I felt good about it.
Is that a sin? Pinna -- that's a funny word. Sounds like something else.
A dirty word maybe."
Father Danyluk sighed.
No doubt about it, things were happening all over the Island. Tendrils
of fava been shoots had started to curl about the ironmongery in the back
of Marlene and Andre's Household. In Wootie Kanootie's paddock, Eunice
the moose shifted her feet, guaged the height of the fence and considered
the timing of her next escape. Night draped itself langorously as an odalesque
over the flat roofs of the town and Orion re-appeared, doing his gymnastics
over the Veteran's Hall. Sargeant Rumsbum twitched his moustaches and
sniffed the air for something suspicious, but it was only the lemon verbena
tree across the way and so he marched on down to the bus stop to catch
the O Express into the City where he would serve and protect the Macy's
basement Women's Intimate Apparel Department for a few hours as a security
guard.
In the Offices of Island-Life the Editor came in at the end of the day
to restock the cabinet with good scotch and the fridge with Michelina's
frozen dinners in preparation for the Most Dangerous Season. What can
one do to prepare for a Season of Danger? And why is the upcoming Season
the most Dangerous of all?
A raccoon crept along the Old Fence and climbed on over to the other
side in hopes that maybe just this one time the door to the Almeida henhouse
had been left ajar. Little white clover flowers hung like silent bells,
moving ever so gently back and forth in the wake of his passing.
One will just have to wait until next week to learn all about the Most
Dangerous Season of all, for then came the ululation of the throughpassing
train from far across the water as it trundled from the gantries of the
Port of Oaktown with their moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across
the waves of the estuary, the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena
Vista flats and the open spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked
brick of the former Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its
weedy railbed, its chainlink fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked
past the shuttered doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out
of shadows on the edge of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts
unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
APRIL 5, 2015
APRIL COME SHE WILL
This week the headline comes from distant New Mexico where David Phipps,
friend, facebooker and sometime genius from a family that features Stanford-Binet
quotients that postively shock the monkey to the far .01% of the bell
curve and tip the old Mensa over on the patio. In any case here we have
a delightful sign of Spring on the march.
Yes, the pun was intended.
LIKE THE WEATHER
The song by Nathalie Merchant is not about atmospheric conditions, but
severe depression, yet the two might be conflated here in California.
Nothwithstanding the most recent storm, the Dweeb report was dreary. This
is what Howard had to say:
"The DWP snow survey was completed yesterday April 1st. It is as
dismal as it has ever been historically. This is The driest winter
on record as reported by DWP. The manual measurements taken yesterday
at Mammoth Pass showed a water content of 1.4 inches or 3% of the April
1st norm of 43.5 inches of water in the snow. Mammoth Lakes itself had
0 and so 0% of normal. The Minarets 2 site had an 1 inch. So the Mammoth
Lakes Area averaged .8 inches or 3% of normal. The average of all snow
courses south to Cotton Wood Lakes, down though the Southern Sierra was
not much better, with an average of 4% of normal over-all.
NASA has indicated that this particular 4 year drought is a once in a 1000
year event because of its severity.
- See more at: http://mammothweather.com/#sthash.ZrqStxOi.dpuf"
To give you some perspective on the numbers, the driest year on record
during that last drought in the '70's featured 10 inches of water content
at Mammoth Pass, and here we are finding barely 1.4 inches.
This is significant because over 50% of our water comes from Sierra snowmelt
and right now, there just isn't any up there. The NASA statement derives
from a combo of analysis of geological metaphorphic rock strata as well
as tree core samples from those long-lived Sequoias. Last time it was
this bad, the Black Plague was ravaging Europe.
Howard accurately predicted the present conditions several months ago
with an El Nino forecast that might be a dry (for California) carry over
to parts East. That is precisely what did happen. We got precious little
water and the East got body slammed with snowstorms. Governor Jerry Brown
was not just grandstanding when he declared a water emergency in the Golden
State.
We have reports of farmers cutting back already 33% of their allotments
from sources like the San Joaquin, attempting to cover the loss by drilling
wells that need to go ever deeper as the cumulative water table drops
as well.
Last year we got reports of wholesale failure of the State's cherry crop.
The fruit you saw in stores all came from the Pacific Northwest.
THIS ISLAND LIFE
If you did not read last week the warning about the 29th Avenue overcrossing,
nor heed our other articles on the subject, Friday started off really
bad for your commute and Monday is likely to be about as nasty.
Even as the High Street Bridge remains closed during the mid part of
the day to the 27th of this month, now the overcrossing closure will cause
periodic hiccups in traffic that has no intention of going that way as
people who normally do use that route find alternatives and heavy equipment
moves all around that area, performing major demolition and construction
to last into October of next year. Work goes around the clock on this
100 million dollar project, so expect both north and southbound I-880
to shut down at night as multi-tonne blocks of reinforced concrete drop
down to the road surface below.
Work is not restricted to this specific structure as surrounding streets
and access points also will undergo a rehab.
Look at last week's entry for a picture of what the new three lane overcrossing
will look like.
The work also will include the 23rd Street overcrossing, which has always
been a curiously odd way to enter the Island City, necessitating a hairpin
turn off of 7th onto a substantially unmarked passageway that only People
Who Know can find.
Much of the emphasis seems to be on expanding the access for both cars
and off-roadway traffic featuring bicycles and pedestrians.
Whenever we feel blue, have a need for stimulus, or want a pleasant jolt
that is far more healthy than an other cup of java, we turn to the Letters
to the Editor.
This week, the letters published put aside the Disputed bicycle path
on Shoreline to tackle other topics of lesser impact. We have a commentary
in the Sun advocating for teachers (hear! hear!) There is a letter jabbing
the Sun for doing an op-ed piece in the name (ostensibly) of journalism
when it was an opinion piece about Rob Bonta, a former Vice Mayor who
used the position to lilypad to State office. Well, the Sun might have
a bias, but Bonta did cynically employ the City position to leverage himself
up the political ladder. And we have seen no benefits from that process,
which is worse.
The flack about Trish Spencer issuing a no vote on an issue that she
knew would pass anyway in re rehab of Firestation 3 continues with a logical
defense of Mayor Trish. Seems the Mayor is concerned about paying for
things for which we do not have the money and this causes some disturbance
even as health benefit costs for retired firefighters and police are coming
under scrutiny.
Um, best be careful right now how you draw attention to yourself.
Looking to the Island Gerbil, which is looking more and more each day
like some rag that has less to do with our town than some corporate aggutination
of populace that just happens to include us. Why is there a discussion
about cutting down eucalyptus in Oaktown when this thing has nothing to
do with us at all? Then there is the wierd epistle that says developers
are pulling out and "leaving in droves". If developers are pulling,
out then fine! Go! We have plenty under development now that will add
thousands of souls to this island. Go away. We don't like you.
If this is supposed to express concern that the new go slow attitude
in City Hall may discourage development, then ok, that's fine.
WALK ME OUT IN THE MORNING DEW MY HONEY
So anyway, a proper wharf sizzler blew through here to soak all the remnants
of Pesach and the planned egg hunts this weekend.
Sister Incontinence and Sister Bombast had to run all around the grounds
of Our Lady of Incessant Complaint to gather up the Easter eggs and stow
them about the Rectory and the School and the Library where normally urchins
of small stature were not allowed so as to let the Hunt go on.
The Lutherans had their Easter Egg Hunt run around the parking lot
Pastor Nyquist had the same problem out at Immanuel Church and same for
the Methodists and the Episcopalians and the Unitarians, all of whom had
to employ such real estate as was available each to each. This is an Island
and there is only so much land for each Church to be allocated. The Lutherans
had their Easter Egg Hunt run around the parking lot maze under several
dripping tents, which worked really well until Tubby sat down in a blubber
and a wail out of frustration of getting through the maze to find any
eggs at all. Eunice went out in some sympathy to hand the boy a plastic
egg which he opened with great joy to find a one dollar bill. And so he
jumped up and celebrated and we suppose this is supposed to teach the
young the values of Christianity and Capitalism at the same time.
The Unitarian church fortunately shared a boundary with the CFSM next
door and the Bishop holding forth during the absence of Rev. Jason, who
had left with a Mission to convert the people of Indiana to sensibility,
was able to combine resources to bring the whole thing off quite well,
for both of the pastors knew that it really was all about the kids just
having a good time.
Everyone knows easter eggs and the Divine Rabbit who visits the most
Sincere Egg Coop in the world have nothing to do with Xianity or any of
its trappings -- its all a game for kids to enjoy and pretend to be Capitalists
exploiting natural resources and all descended from ancient pagan rituals.
So for Reverend Freethought, of the Unitarian Church, it was all good
anyway. So what if your neighbor believed God was a Flying Spaghetti Monster
-- there was truth in all religions.
The Tibetans held a brunch and the Island Agnostics Society held a crab
boil that got rained out at the Cove, so they all went over to Mountain
Pizza to finish up their gathering.
the Daess . . . do not read the Koran
This weekend everything pretty much shut down in an unusual fashion,
much as is the style in Old Europe during holidays of the Saints. This
may have something to do with murdering cartoonists in Paris and it may
have something to do with the slaughter of the innocents in Egypt and
it may have something to do with the Stompers stomping all over the Middle
East, the Daess trying to generate the Apocalypse because they are nihilistic
and do not read the Koran or the Bible, which has caused the local people
to re-attach themselves to their own religions, for good or for ill with
greater fervor. Or at least rope in their families who now are seen as
something which can be destroyed by blind, ignorant, foolish, bumptiousness
armed with AK-47s. That certainly, did not exist before this time.
In the Household of Marlene and Andre the annual Seder drew to a close
on Friday. Occasional Quentin passed out under the table due to too much
wine. This celebration was to commemorate something that happened a long
time ago.
There was a plague of toads and then of locusts and then it rained for
40 days and 40 nights while all the Second Borns got together for a really
nice lamb dinner after escaping slavery. Which is why they all eat library
paste and drink wine. The library paste is supposed to remind you of bricks
and the wine helps forget your troubles and take away the taste of bitter
herbs, which is not a bad idea, really. God knows why you would want to
stick something bitter in your mouth and chew on it, but people do it
anyway.
Over at Marlene and Andre's, everyone settled in for a feast. Marlene
and Andre celebrated Pesach at the Household on Otis in the usual haphazard
manner. A table got laid out, actually it was the coffee table in the
main room, with the usual condiments of horseradish and walnut mush and
salad from the dollar store. Marlene had saved up her pennies and gotten
a donation from Suan to get a lamb shank from the Encinal Market, so they
had the meat and the bone at once. All the parsley was doing well, so
they had the dipping greens from the ironmongery garden out back. Occasional
Quentin, as the obvious childish one, got to ask all the questions, even
though Adam really was younger in physical age.
A visitor named Baba kept insisting on her needs. "I need to have
clean and kosher napkins. So give me yours," Baba said to Quentin.
Given that the household was normally chaotic, so went the Seder once
again this year as per Tradition. Island-life Tradition.
Instead of asking the proper questions from the Haggadah, Quentin came
up with his own. "Why did G-d let Hitler kill all the Jews?"
Quentin asked, and naturally it was all at the wrong moment. Martini came
in then and drank up the glass of wine left out for the Prophet on the
edge of the table, which caused Andre much grief and severely put out
Marlene who put her head in her hands.
"I need to sit where it is warm on account of my condition,"
Baba said. "Since you have the comfy chair, I am doing to take the
divan and the settee for my feet. We are supposed to be comfortable on
this night of nights anyway."
"Is anybody going to eat that egg?" Tipitina said. She had
given up on her own Catholic upbringing to attend this dinner and all
of it was confusing to her.
"Where's the damn cracker I saw around here earlier?" said
Marsha. "I wanna get into that sweet stuff there with the walnuts
and raisins."
"That's the afikomen," said Marlene. "You gotta go find
it now. It's hidden. What are you doing with the effing prophet's wine
you dimshit!" This last part was screamed at the hapless Martini.
"Because there is no god and he hated the Jews," shouted Andre
at Quentin. "Now read the questions we gave you on the list!"
"How can I find any damn thing in this effing s***hole of a place!
It's an effing s***storm here!" Marsha said. She was a woman with
a tongue on her, so to speak.
"Gimmee some more of that wine," Snuffles said, for the bum
had also been invited in as the token foreigner, or maybe the prophet,
although there was a lot of doubt about that last part.
The new kid, Adam, also was there. "Yo dude. Don't bogart that bottle
man!"
Why is this night different from any other?
"Why are we doing all this crap," Quentin asked. "Why
is this night different from any other?" Adam was younger in physical
age but all agreed that Quentin was much more childlike, so to him were
given the questions.
"I need water," Baba said. "You have the napkins already
over there. So the water jug should be over here by me."
"There you go," said Andre approvingly. "You finally got
it right. We basically doing this to commemorate our delivery from slavery."
"I dunno about that. We be free? I think we be pretty effed up."
Adam said.
"Dude," said Arthur, who had returned from far off Minnesotta
and his failed attempt to hook up with a gospel singer there. "You
don't know nothing about slavery. Lemmee tell you about my man Malcolm
X . . .".
"Adam, I am watching you on the alcohol, buddy! You gotta go to
school Monday!" Andre said. "I mean it!"
"Yuck! This stuff is bitter!" Adam had a mouthful of green
silage from the odd plate in the center with its four divisions and he
spat the mess into a napkin.
"Dat odder stuff is schweet," Snuffles said, and he ploughed
a matzo into the haroset then shoveled the pile into his toothless mouth
with only a moderate amount of flying crumbs, dripping wine sauce and
spittle trajectories.
Adam got shut off from the wine and after that things went a bit smoother.
And Marsha told her story of escaping across the wide country from the
servitude of Jersey, her beating by her husband there and her shame and
her battle with the booze, and Javier talked about crossing the vast Sonora
Desert and then the Border at the Rio Grande and working in the fields
with los Migras and sleeping under the trucks to get away from the sun,
and so it was learned that each of us had been slaves in some form, either
in Egypt or some other place and had crossed the vast ocean on dry feet
and soaked straw and clay bricks with the hot salt of tears and sweat.
All knew exile and wandering and the pain thereof.
this year in fear and shame, next year in virtue and justice
The matzo bread was found by Adam after a great deal of clambering under
Andre's shirt and so the proscribed was allowed now and with each glass
of wine the far off hills began to skip like rams and old stories were
told and so, although it was not a perfect Tradition, it was a Tradition
of that household, this year in fear and shame, next year in virtue and
justice, with the next year always getting postponed until the next and
this sort of delay had been going on since the time of Moses when they
refused him a Visa to Palestine.
"Hey I led the people through the desert for 40 years and kicked
serious ass over that golden calf idol thing, I deserve entry to the Promised
Land."
"Sorry dude. Go back to the desert and do not pass Go, do not collect
200 shekels. You should'na busted up those tablets I gave you. Talk about
a law breaker! Your papers are not in order."
"Oy, I knew it; G-d is a German. Vey iss mir!" Wailing, sackcloth,
ashes. The whole bit.
"When I invent Germany, then you really will be sorry. You stiff-necked
people I parted the Red Sea for you and got you out of that Egypt where
the cockroaches are as big as housecats. I have no idea why I chose you."
"I am not so sure it is to advantage to always be Chosen. 40 years
in the desert without even a decent map."
"Okay so I relent a little bit. I give you a peak on what the place
looks like. The place your family gets to settle -- maybe with some quibbles
with the neighbors -- every neighborhood has got to have neighbors. So
there! See that . . . !"
"Oy, mein Gott, mein Gott! Is beautiful!"
"Hey what did I say about taking my name in vain? There you go again,
Moses. You always get yourself into trouble."
"All right you said that, but you never wrote it down . . . ".
"Yes I did!"
"Like where?"
"On those effing tablets you broke in a rage, you imbecile! Moses,
Moses, Moses! In you I have entrusted the patriarchy for five thousand
years worth of generations and this is the way you act."
"I don't get to go in for just, like a little bit?"
"No."
"Not even a short vacation?"
"No."
"Maybe some fruit from a tree there . . . ".
"Don't go there Moses. I am still sore about the last time fruit
was involved."
"How about like one of those house-swap deals like they do . . ."
"NO!" Voice of thunder. Mountains cracking. Skies clouding
over.
our Jesus (pronounced hay-zoos), went through all that in his dream
last year
Jesus Contreras, in order to avoid that terrible dream in which he became
the actual original Jesus, who suffered all kinds of mean, nasty, cruel
things like scourging and thorns and piercings and crucifragem and heaps
of insults on top of that even, and Jesus, our Jesus (pronounced hay-zoos),
went through all that in his dream last year, so he made the effort to
stay up all night. So Jesus went to hang with his buds at Silvio's place
and they all sat around watching Incredibly Strange Wrestling and drinking
beer. Naturally, this sort of thing petered out for most of his homies
in the early hours of the morning, precisely the most dangerous time for
dreams.
In terror, Jesus snapped abruptly awake amid all his snoozing mates and
made a beeline in the dim light of the DVR screen to the bathroom where
he ran into Maggie, the Irish girl who had fled her hometown of Wicklow
so as to escape getting sent to the Magdalene Launderies on account of
getting pregnant out of wedlock. The boy absconded and the child died.
In any case Maggie stood there in her nightshirt, woozy from Trazadone,
and Jesus stood there, unsteady from beer and lack of sleep and anxiety.
"Whats your problem," Maggie said.
"I can't sleep," said Jesus. "And I gotta piss."
"Don't let me stop you," Maggie said. She was an Irish girl
with red hair and could be short.
Jesus stumbled to the loo and managed to get most of the stream into
the pot, splashing a bit, and all was fine until he reached for a paper
towel with his pants still down and fell over into the tub, taking a towel
rack and a shampoo shelf amid a great clatter of noise with him in his
wooziness. In a tangle there he freed himself from his pants and the towel
rack and that is when Maggie came in wondering what the hell as the entire
house was then asleep save for those two.
"What the hell are you doing?" Maggie said.
"I am taking a piss if you mind," Jesus said.
"It looks like you are trying to bathe with the laundry." Maggie
said. "Are you all right?"
"I fell," Jesus said. "So is the nature of man."
"Let me help you, you sodding fool," Maggie said.
So that is when Maggie disentangled Jesus, but without finding his pants
and when they went back to find where Jesus was to sleep, Jorge had already
taken the cot in a drunken stupor, so Maggie offered her bed and so that
is how Jesus got through the final hours of the terrible Easter time --
by sleeping with Maggie in her bed without his pants and when both of
them awoke the following morning there was a resurrection of a kind that
was handled in the usual way. As is the nature of man. And Woman.
The Editor strolled the aisles of the Island-Life newsroom, shutting
off this and that desklamp with a feeling a great change was coming. Soon
there would be another parting of the Red Sea, another passage across
the desert. The moon was waning, but still glowed with three-quarter force
from that red eclipse of last week.
Something may have arisen, but there remains more to save
We may have evaded disaster but yet more is to come. Something may have
arisen, but there remains more to save. Spring erupts as it always has
with tremendous force, scattering seed pods hither and yon. And the girl
on the ferry with the dancer's tights and short skirt still haunts the
dreams of Denby as he trolls for another gig to take him out of this place,
this broken place of dying dreams that always smells of cheap wine and
cigarettes.
Out in the estuary the Iranian spy submarine El Chadoor continued its
patrol and observed all of these things. From far away came news that
the Daess had been defeated in Tikrit and that the US had finally lifted
the sanctions off of the Country and allowed nuclear power development
to go on with some stipulations.
"I think it is strange that we combine our resources with the infidel
to bring down the Daess," said the First Mate. "And now we help
to liberate the lands of our former enemies, the Iraqis."
"It is not so strange to find friends among those with whom we have
common cause. So it was in the time of the Mongol Hordes, we also collaborated
with the West to save the world." said the Captain, who knew something
of history, peering through the periscope. "After all, blessed is
the man who takes but one step towards God, for he shall enjoy the fact
that God will take two steps towards him. This means, there is always
some hope."
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
MARCH 29, 2015
WHERE'S WALDO
BAR people know of the locally famous Waldo grade that drops down on
the 101 to the fort at the Marin side of the Golden Gate. The Bill to
rename The Waldo Tunnel to The Robin Williams Tunnel passed unanimously
Friday.
It now goes to assembly appropriations committee.
Waldo Tunnel was the unofficial name of a tunnel on U.S. Route 101 between
the Golden Gate Bridge and Sausalito. It is named after Waldo Point along
Richardson Bay between Sausalito and Mill Valley. Waldo Point is named
after William Waldo, a California politician in the 1850s who became well
known for his relief efforts on starving immigrants coming West who got
stranded in the Sierra Nevada Mountains on the Nevada side during a winter
snow storm. He later ran unsuccessfully as a Whig candidate for the governor
of California in 1853.
The first bore of the tunnel was completed in 1937 and the second in
1954. The archways at the ends of the bores were painted in rainbows by
a Caltrans employee, Robert Halligan, and for this reason the tunnel is
occasionally referred to as the "Rainbow Tunnel".
Robin Williams was an American actor and comedian. Starting as a stand-up
comedian in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, he is credited
with leading San Francisco's comedy renaissance. In a State where entertainment
is a standard business, Williams stood out as a most unusually humane
and caring individual.
n 1986, Williams teamed up with Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal to
found Comic Relief USA, an annual HBO television benefit devoted to the
homeless, which has raised $80 million, as of 2014. Bob Zmuda, creator
of Comic Relief, explains that Williams felt blessed because he came from
a wealthy home, but wanted to do something to help those less fortunate.
Williams made benefit appearances to support literacy and women's rights,
along with appearing at benefits for veterans. He was a regular on the
USO circuit, where he traveled to 13 countries and performed to approximately
100,000 troops.
Williams and his second wife Marsha founded the Windfall Foundation,
a philanthropic organization to raise money for many charities. In December
1999, he sang in French on the BBC-inspired music video of international
celebrities doing a cover of The Rolling Stones' "It's Only Rock
'n Roll (But I Like It)" for the charity Children's Promise.
In response to the 2010 Canterbury earthquake, he donated all proceeds
of his "Weapons of Self Destruction" Christchurch performance
to help rebuild the New Zealand city. Half the proceeds were donated to
the Red Cross and half to the mayoral building fund.
For several years, Williams supported St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
Robin Williams took his own life after a very long struggle with clinical
depression as well as medical problems August 11, 2014.
THE WORLD IS ALL HEAVY WITH TRAFFIC
Just when you thought there is too many of us, the East Bay is about
to get body-slammed with a transportation triple whammy, starting off
with BART taking out the line linking the Fruitvale with the Coliseum
on the weekends.
Here is the official release to the Community:
-----Original Message-----
Subject: Critical Repair Work Begins April 5 between Fruitvale and Coliseum
BART Stations
Dear Community Leaders,
Vital repairs are needed to the equipment and tracks between Fruitvale
and Coliseum stations. The work requires that the entire track be shut
down and that no trains operate between these stations while it is being
performed.
To cause the least amount of inconvenience, we are scheduling this work
mostly on Saturday nights and all day Sunday on some weekends. Please
see the attached passenger bulletin for full details.
Bus Bridge between Fruitvale and Coliseum To accommodate your travel
while the work is being done, we will have a bus bridge providing lifeline
service for customers who don't have other options. The buses will carry
customers between the two closed stations.
There will be no additional charge for the bus. The bus bridge will cause
30-60 minute delays for some customers.
We recommend that you avoid travel between Fruitvale and Coliseum on
the designated weekends if possible. If you are driving, we recommend
that you park at the station (Fruitvale, Coliseum or Bay Fair) that will
allow you to avoid the bus bridge.
Revised Service in Effect During Track Work:
We plan to run trains at 20 minute intervals during this modified service,
but there may be unavoidable delays.
Service will not keep to the published schedules, timed meets, etc.
Listen carefully to Train Operator and in-station announcements.
Digital platform signs may not give the correct information.
Staff will be available to assist you in the station
Service to Oakland International Airport (OAK) The BART to OAK Airport
service will be operating to and from Coliseum Station. If you are going
to the airport you may go into the station as usual and take the shuttle
train. Enter the station through the fare gates and go through the station,
up to Platform 3 to catch the shuttle train.
From the Airport, you will take the airport shuttle train to Coliseum
Station and go through the fare gates and down to street level to access
the bus bridge.
Before traveling, we advise you check our website www.bart.gov
and look for updated bulletins in the station for new or updated information.
Far more pressing to Islanders will be the long anticipated/dreaded work
on both the 23rd and 29th Street overpasses. Even as High Street Bridge
remains closed.
NINETEEN MONTH CLOSURE FOR THE 29th AVENUE OVERCROSSING BEGINS APRIL
3
The future 29th Avenue overcrossing.
Image courtesy of CalTrans
CalTrans crews will close the overcrossing between Ford Street and East
10th Street on April 3 in order to demolish the existing crossing and
build a new one. Construction activities for the overcrossing project
are expected to take place through October 2016.
Construction activities will result in some nighttime closures on I-880
in both the northbound and southbound directions, as well as some occasional
on-ramp and off-ramp closures.
The overcrossing reconstruction is part of a $100 million effort to construct
operational and safety improvements on I-880 at the existing overcrossings
of 23rd and 29th Avenues in the City of Oakland. Improvements include
replacement of the freeway overcrossing structures, safety improvements
to the northbound on and off ramps as well as the freeway mainline. A
soundwall will be constructed in the northbound direction between 29th
and 26th Avenues.
Construction activities are expected to take place through 2018.
CalTrans plans to replace a pair of two-lane 23rd Avenue overcrossings
with a single three-lane span; the 29th Avenue overcrossing, which holds
two lanes now, will also be replaced with a three-lane crossing.
Other project phases include construction of a new I-880 North off-ramp
to 29th Avenue and a roundabout on East 9th Street, and reconfiguration
of 23rd Avenue. CalTrans has already constructed a portion of a planned
retaining wall on East 8th Street in Oakland, between Portwood and Lisbon
avenues.
CalTrans is hosting a public meeting to discuss the planned closures
from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Main Library, 1550 Oak Street.
Addition information is available on the 29th Avenue overcrossing project
page on CalTrans
website.
The project is one of several that will be affecting Island commuters
over the next 19 months. The Alameda County Public Works Agency has initiated
daytime closures for deck repairs and rehabilitation of the High Street
Bridge that will be in effect from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. weekdays through
April 27, and nighttime closures of the Park Street Bridge for repairs
are expected to follow.
The Bay Farm Island Bridge is also set for a $3.4 million makeover to
begin in October, with nighttime closures planned to take place through
May 2016. The Bay Farm Island bike bridge will also experience daytime
closures during weekdays, and boat traffic will also be affected.
DETOUR INFORMATION FOR CLOSURE OF 29TH AVENUE OVERCROSSING
Vehicle traffic
From Alameda Park Street Bridge to Oakland 29th Avenue:
Left turn on Ford Street
Right on 23rd Avenue
Right on East 12th Street
Left on 29th Avenue
From Oakland 29th Avenue to Alameda Park Street Bridge:
Right turn on East 12th Street
Left on 23rd Avenue
Pedestrian and bicycle traffic
From Alameda Park Street Bridge to Oakland 29th Avenue:
Right turn on East 7th Street
Left on Derby Street
Right on Elmwood Avenue/East 8th Street
Left turn through the pedestrian walkway towards East 9th Street
Left on East 9th Street
Right on East 29th Avenue
From Oakland 29th Avenue to Alameda Park Street Bridge:
Right on East 9th Street
Right through the pedestrian walkway toward Elmwood Avenue/East 8th Street
Right on Derby Street
Right on East 7th Street
Can you say "Commuter Hell"? I knew you could.
THIS ISLAND LIFE
Snooze and you missed it. Pagano's Hardware, in business on the corner
of St. Charles and Lincoln since 1952, started liquidation of goods in
preparation for moving further to the West End. The building that houses
old Paganos was built in 1898 and housed a store that sold ice and coal.
The new store space is half the size, but there may be an opening in the
new Neptune Plaza location next month.
Still seeing blowback about the Shoreline new bike lane layout with a
couple of Seattle tourists loving the new streetscape with its "traffic
calming" features, while a longer letter in the Island Gerbil from
a mid-term (24 years) resident finds the situation a "nightmare."
Adding to the chorus of complaints about development changes, we have
people getting up in arms about the way the new ferry repair facility
design and location was pushed into place with no public discussion --
this was of course prior to the new "slow growth" council getting
seated.
The WETA facility, in itself is a good idea. The problem is the smoky
backroom manner in which the whole project trundled forward and now many
people are up in arms about government transparency prior to the Trish
Spencer era.
That ought to be enough news for you to chew on this week.
O wait. There's more. Just got word that a road leading to spectacular
views of Californias Yosemite National Park opened to drivers on
Saturday, marking the earliest date for the occasion in at least 20 years.
Glacier Point Road takes drivers to a lookout perched at 3, 214 feet
above the valley floor, where visitors can view spectacles such as the
Half Dome rock, Yosemite Falls and Yosemites high country. The road
closes each winter blocked by snowfall, and last year the park reported
an April 14 opening. In other years, the road remained closed until late-May.
This years March 28 opening is the earliest listed in records dating
back to 1995 published on the parks website. California is struggling
through its fourth consecutive year of drought, with a mountain snowpack
at a fraction of normal.
Rangers say that the parks Tioga Road remains closed for now.
TV on the Radio is coming to the Fox March 31 while guitarmeister Johnny
A will hold forth at Yoshi's April 1, so don't be a fool and miss out.
Bassist extraordinaire Victor Wooten will occupy Yoshis through the weekend,
April 4-6.
Okay, that's it. If you don't like the news, go out and make some of
your own.
INDIANA WANTS ME
Old ladies from St. Paul will be issued language cards
containing. . . George Carlin's "7 dirty words"
So anyway, Indiana set a new level of boorishness, which just tells you
that those Midwesterners are gosh darned tired of carrying the reputation
for niceness and politesse for so many years. Pretty soon you will see
people from Lincoln practicing with flick knives their Brooklynese. Old
ladies from St. Paul will be issued language cards containing instructions
on how to use George Carlin's "7 dirty words". People from Fargo
are going to start refusing to serve pie as they swear like sailors. Why
the hell should I bother even making rhubarb if I do not feel like it!
God knows what is going to happen to Willie Nelson. They may run him
out of town -- any old town in Wisconsin or Ohio -- and he will have to
hide out in Fullerton, or -- god forbid -- a trailer on the outskirts
of Palm Springs.
Willie is too cool for Reno, so there are some places already off limits.
In any case we always had a strong suspicion that people living in Chicago
really, secretly wanted to be like New Yorkers, and fully inhabit their
gangster aspect. You know. Obnoxious, pushy, loudly opinionated, full
of themselves and goddamned if they would lift a tongue to help somebody
with directions. Where's Hal's Pizza? Why are you bothering me? Go look
in a phone book. Why did you come here anyway?
Midwestern people have chafed under their duty to act polite
Same for the outlying districts. Like Minneapolis. It is a full-fledged
City like New York and Midwestern people have chafed under their duty
to act polite and step aside and ignore obvious fools like the kid who
wears that hat and shouts on the corner about how he is really Jesus,
their uncle who drinks like a fish, and that kid named Ted Cruz. People
in Minneapolis actually long to flick the bird at everyone else at the
slightest provocation, to shove ahead to the front of the line, to assert
themselves the way New York people seem to do all the time, at least in
the movies.
All of this brought Jason Arrabiata, CFSM, to the conviction that it
was incumbent upon him to bring a mission to the Heartland, there to preach
the gospel of the FSM, which features tolerance, love for all living things,
and a diet rich in pasta sauce.
So Jason has gotten together a traveling Mission bus, which he acquired
from Greyhound, which now is enjoying the pleasures of its foo-foo Belgian
VanHooligan imports, gotten by means of the usual graft and bribery and
backroom shenanigans from CalTrans, no stranger to these kinds of deals.
So this mission bus, a 30 year old Kenworth, took a great deal of upgrade
and maintenance. Which chiefly involved copious spraypaint on the bland
exterior and the insertion of a mechanic's bag into the bay and the purification
of sage and the smoking of much wacky tabaky.
apostles who were to convert the heathen of Indiana
Jason went forth not unlike the prophets of old so as to canvas the neighborhood
and gatther unto his fold his acolytes and his apostles who were to convert
the heathen of Indiana who had fallen into evil ways under the spell of
Cthulu and Boehner. And he gathered unto himself his followers who consisted
of Occasional Quentin, and Snuffles the Bum and other worthy prophets
of this time, including Pahrump who enlisted so as to make sure none of
his friends got hurt or into serious trouble even though he was, not properly
designated a Pastafarian. Nevertheless, he knew how to drive a multiaxle
commercial vehicle and had for that a license, which made him well qualified
in the eyes of the Church and the CFSM is most liberal in attitudes towards
Unbelievers, holding them a bit screwy in the head, but often of great
use, as in being busdriver.
And lo! The sun set and the Followers of the CFSM mission set forth upon
their holy quest to convert the savages of Indiana unto the one true Faith,
or least unto the conviction of tolerance and reason.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
MARCH 22, 2015
WINTER IS THE CURTAIN, BUT SPRING TAKES THE BOW
Seems a good time to quote Richard Shindell again. Spring began Officially
on Friday, although some of you may be still having some troubles with
ice and snow because of that irksome Easterner Pennsylvania rodent named
Phil who predicted 6 more weeks of Winter.
Ok, here is our Californian rodent begging to say otherwise with a pissed-off
expression.
Spring is at hand. The trees may still be bare, but the freesias have
come and there are rumors of tulips. Stuff is budding out, even beneath
the snow, and if you look down there you will see that something is going
on. A bit of pneumocystitis, a bit of damp and cold, another lover gone
off leaving you with nothing more than a matchbox to hold your clothes.
You had to roust a group of guys in your driveway throwing dice for the
robe of Jesus. What of that? Good time to start anew.
THIS ISLAND LIFE
Front page news in the Sun gave the good word that the current City Council
quashed the exception to Measure A, which was passed in 1973 in an effort
to save the Island Victorians from being replaced with lavish condos and
big apartment buildings.
Recently developers have been asking for numerous waivers to the provisions
of the Measure to push forward plans that got the voters riled enough
to oust the power bloc of the former Silly Council, which was all too
cozy with development against the wishes of the people who live here.
Finally, somebody is living up to their campaign promises -- in this
case, the promise to slow down the juggernaut of development here.
YOU BETTER YOU BETTER YOU BETTER YOU BET . . .
Caltrans will begin the reconstruction of the 23rd Avenue and 29th Avenue
overcrossings in Oaktown Friday, April 3. This work is slated to end October
2016.
The projects contain many stages and feature underground tunnels for
pedestrians in the area. Preparation work has been going on for many months
at the Oakland side already, including brush clearing, materials drop
and general rehab at the bases of the overpasses.
The representative from CalTrans, when queried directly by Islandlife
at a planning session many months ago, looked us directly in the eye and
said during this work "no serious impact on existing services will
happen."
OK Joe. We do have numbers to call, should it prove otherwise.
High Street Bridge will remain closed during the middle part of the day
until April 27 as the deck is repaired and the center lock is replaced.
JUST REMEMBER, FAR BENEATH THE MELTING SNOW
So anyway, some signs that changes are in the offing have started to
appear. Trees are bare and the oranges are gone from the trees and each
morning starts with a ritual of throwing on a parka to get the coffee
going, but in the delta, the trout stir beneath the freeze. The Official
date of Spring's beginning was March 20th, and on the porch of the Universe,
Old Gaia slowly revolves her ravined and forested face back towards the
light shed by her son, Phoebus Apollo, the coverlet of stars and comets
and planets and galaxies draped across her ancient knees as she rocks
back and forth in that chair.
This week the Old Same Place Bar was again the center of attention during
St. Patrick's Day, a day that is celebrated all around the world, save
for in the Emerald Isle itself, for the Wearing of the Green is meant
to hearten the Irish Diaspora, who number, as some estimate, at some 32
millions, while a bare 8 million actually dwell on the Island itself.
So said Hamlet's friend
Various things account for these numbers. The Great Potato Famine sent
many abroad of course, while hardship, better opportunities, lousy weather,
the incessant screaming of the Bann Sé, and a savage, unregulated
priesthood sent many more to seek such fortunes as young people may find
better than at home. So said Hamlet's friend and it is as true now as
it ever was.
But such Irish as may live in America stand to profit much from this
truth that there really are only two kinds of people in the world: the
Irish and those who wish to be.
you should be wishing you were Irish
So it is at Island-Life we celebrate the Irish the day or week after,
just as we commemorate Martin Luther King the week after his birthday,
because you really should be thinking about the benefits all year long
MLK brought you instead of just on one day with a BBQ and you should be
wishing you were Irish and thanking the fact you are so far from Troubles
and roofslates every day of the week instead of just once a year with
a Gaelic coffee along with a shot of Arthur Power.
So there y'are.
Tuesday night everything was roaring along at a fine clip at the Old
Same Place Bar, an unusually lucrative evening for a midweek night when
things normally went slow. But on St. Patrick's Day, all the amateurs
came out in force, wearing the green and downing pints of Guiness like
it was good for you.
somewhere down the street warbled a sultry saxophone
It was late in the evening and somewhere down the street warbled a sultry
saxophone playing Harlem Nocturne. The Depuglia brothers sat at a table
with a pitcher of Guiness for each of them. Bjorn Rubbitson schmoozed
with a table of Not-from-Heres who had come over from the mainland to
check out the Island and see The Longest Ride at the Paramount. Officer
O'Madhauen, off duty and dressed in civilian clothes sipped an O'Douls
by himself after watching Mall Cop 2. Nurse Betty and her friend Gardenia
from the Hospital flirted with a couple off-duty Coast Guard guys.
And all was a chatter and a clatter in that home snug
All was going quite fine and Dawn was slinging out the Gaelic coffees
by the gallon, so called because Padraic refused to label them as Irish,
for no daycent Irishman would so malign the Water of Life by adulterating
uisce que bah with unnecessary ingredients. It was fine as it was
in the cruiskeen luin with nothing perhaps, perhaps, but a wee
block of ice to cool it down some. And all was a chatter and a clatter
in that home snug of so many for so many years with Denby laying down
a quiet bluesy backbeat on his guitar in the snug and the boys at the
bar talking about the Villanova game that just ended and the upcoming
fishing season.
The Man from Minot was talking to Maeve, Jackie's helper at Jaqueline's
Salon about bromeliads while Eugene was discussing with Latrena Brown
sea slug eversion and other topics that almost certainly would ensure
that he go to bed alone again this evening with placid countenance.
No, she is not a Terrorist
Only that Suzie sat there in her loneliness with her Anthropology book
behind the bar during the quiet times, wishing she, too, could join the
conviviality and common rapport after her disastrous affair with Jorge,
who turned out to be a Basque Separatists during a trip to Italy. This
caused a great deal of grief and required Padraic to fly out there and
straighten things out for the American. No, she is not a Terrorist, and
no she has no Islamic sympathies either and what the devil has that do
do with the Basque people anyway?
O why do smart women get involved with such devious men? Especially when
they are so beautiful. It is all quite frustrating. And on this particular
night, Suzie was mooning about that episode when so many people seemed
to be so artificially happy.
That was when then the door was opened and the wind appeared. The candles
blew then disappeared. The curtains flew then he appeared, saying don't
be afraid.
Red, too was his full beard and cobalt blue his eyes
It was Him -- the Wee Man. What did he look like? For a start he wore
a twill newsboy cap on a head of bright red hair. Red, too was his full
beard and cobalt blue his eyes. He wore a green checked waistcoat which
sported a gold chain that went into the side pocket and green checked
pants. And on his feet a set of green suede brogans with tassels and toe
tips that curled up and about in a merry way.
Jason Arrabiata, CFSM, turned from the bar and looking at the Wee Man,
exclaimed with joy that one of God's Chosen had arrived.
The Wee Man seemed to take this in stride as he climbed up onto a stool
and ordered a pint and a shot. While waiting for the pint to "stack"
he made inquiry to Jason as to what he meant.
"All midgets are preferred by God . . .".
"All midgets are preferred by God for he has touched them so repeatedly
on the noggin from above that their stature has remained diminutive. It
is a sign.
"I am not a midget," said the Wee Man.
This so startled Jason that his body jerked and his eyebrows went up
and down to such an extent the Wee Man smiled despite himself.
"Then what are you," Jason said.
"What am I?" said the Wee Man, reflecting. "Well I have
been myself all day."
"Well I most humbly apologize sir," Jason said.
"Apology accepted," said the Wee Man. "What then are you,
pray tell?"
"Me? I am Jason Arrabiata, a pastor of the faith of the Flying Spaghetti
Monster."
"A man of the cloth. And a bit daft besides. Well then, I shall
not kill you," said the Wee Man who downed his shot of Jamison's
with satisfaction and shot a small derringer pistol into the ceiling without
so much as looking before putting the weapon away. A bit of faery dust
rained down and everyone remained quiet.
others say he was of the legendary Firbolg
As to what the Wee Man really was, besides himself all day, which most
of us can claim at nearly the same rate, the matter was open to speculation
and never-ending discussion. Some say he came from the Spanish Armada
that sank off the coast and others say he was of the legendary Firbolg
that harried the ancient Romans loose from the Emerald Isle thousands
of years before. Some say despite his stature he was related to the mythic
giant Finn ni Cuchulain, Finn McCool, whose body extended the length of
Howth, and that his apparent manifest physical size was merely a kind
of trick, and some say that he was of the tribe of the Bann Sé
that howl about the chimneys at night and therefore a sort of faery, but
with some disreputable attributions, including cigar smoking and farting.
A faery fart is something about which to contemplate at a later time.
In any case the mood of the bar settled back into an easy rhythm of drinking
and conversation and all would have been fine had not the Depuglia brothers
got it into their heads to harass the visitor by tossing peanuts at the
back of his head. Suzie saw this and came around the bar, followed by
Dawn ready to give both of them the weight of her tongue, but Tom Depuglia
slapped Suzie on the ass, calling her a fine piece of meat on a stick
and Dawn made to punch the hoodlum as Padraic came around the end of the
bar with a look in his eye and with his blackthorn stick beside.
the violent themselves shall bear it away
The Wee Man stood up on the stool and clapped his hands once and everyone
froze in motion, unable to move forward or back save roll their eyes.
All save Suzie who stammered apologies for this dreadful behavior and
that they were good folk here. The Wee man then drained his Guinness in
a single draft and said, "I know Suzie, I know. But alas I truly
deplore violence, for it is said that from the days of John the Baptist
the kind and the good have suffered violence, but the violent themselves
shall bear it away. And as for you two," here the Wee Man indicated
the Depuglias. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy
might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in
the hell, whither thou hasten."
they beat themselves up ever more vigorously
And he waved his hand with an almost indifferent attititude and the bodies
of the Depuglias became free to move, but instead of running out of the
bar they came at the Wee Man as if to attack him. Tom Depuglia threw a
great roundhouse punch that continued in a circle until he punched himself
in the nose with astonishment. To everyone's wonder, the fists they made
launched at their own heads and they beat themselves up ever more vigorously
the more energetic they tried to come at the Wee Man until they staggered
around in circles with breaking knuckles and bleeding noses.
The Wee Man sighed. "O dear, dear, dear. Such a sad display of pugilistics
I have not seen in many a day. I would like to see both of you improve,
but I simply must be on my way now." And so the Wee Man clapped his
hands twice. There was a blinding flash of light, followed by darkness
as all the lights went out for a moment before coming on all by themselves.
When they did so everyone was free to move at will again.
"O drat, the scamp has done something to my knickers again!"
Dawn said. While everyone look surreptitious looks beneath their waistbands
the Depuglias hopped up and down in what appeared to be great pain. "Ow!
Oww wow oww! He's turned them into cactus!" They finally ran out
the door Suzie held open for them.
"Look at that wilya," Padraic said. "Cute as a pansy in
a lunatic asylum florist shop." His blackthorn stick had been transformed
into a bouquet of long-stem gladiolas.
Suzie returned to behind the bar while the flirting between couples resumed
with a little more heat.
"I'd like to see what he did to yours," Maeve said to the Man
from Minot.
"That was Ecclesiastes," said Jason aloud.
"Verse 9:10," said Reverend Freethought, who came over to his
table. She was Pastor to the Island Unitarian Church on Santa Clara Avenue.
Suzie served up the next rounds while Dawn and Padraic went to the back
restrooms to change whatever it was the Wee Man had done to their knickers.
Padraic returned very red-faced with something clenched in his big fist
and Dawn had to pry his fingers open to see what it was -- a g-string.
She hung it up behind the bar next to the golden knickers of a couple
years ago. "At least they are green," she said.
"The man is a sodding pervert," Padraic said with energy. "What
about you?"
"Show you later," she said coyly and turned away to fetch another
case of Harp from the back.
Suzie meanwhile returned to her anthropology book. It's a dark night
on the Island that knows how to keep its secrets, but in the Old Same
Place Bar sits one bartender still puzzling Life's persistent questions.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across
the water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with
their moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
MARCH 15, 2015
MAGNOLIA . . . YOU'RE DRIVING ME MAD
J.J. Cale probably had a different magnolia in mind when he wrote the
song magnolia, but we do have a few tulip magnolias blooming right now
in the yards of the older houses in town. Because the climate here is
nothing like in the South, tulip magnolias grow very slowly. This tree
is probably about 110 years old looking at the age of the house in front
of which it is growing.
WHAT'S GOING ON
THE OAKLAND RACE FESTIVAL NEXT WEEKEND!
People who work the weekends in the East Bay or who need to get about
better be aware that next weekend Oaktown hosts its 6th Annual Marathon
within the City limits March 22, 2015, which is a Sunday.
Besides the main event, there will be other races, including a half-marathon
and a Lucky Kids Fun Run for those of, um, lesser stride. So expect traffic
effects from the massive event to last all day.
ACtransit has kindly sent out alerts to the community. Here's the info
for those not participating.
From: AC Transit Marketing & Community Relations [mailto:MCR@actransit.org]
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2015 10:39 AM
To: AC Transit Marketing & Community Relations
Subject: Service Disruptions and Detours in Oakland on Sunday, March 22
On Sunday, March 22, 2015, from 6am to 3pm, the Oakland Running Festival
will temporarily close streets in many parts of Oakland, including downtown
and the West Oakland, Fruitvale, Rockridge, and Montclair districts. There
will be significant service delays and route detours in and between these
areas, and we encourage you to visit AC Transit's website actransit.org
for more details.
Note that lines 14, 54, and 62 will be canceled. There will be a shuttle
operating in a one-way loop via MacArthur Blvd., Chatham Rd., Park Blvd.,
4th Ave., E. 15th St., 14th Ave., Foothill Blvd., 23rd Ave., Ardley Ave.,
and MacArthur Blvd. Please refer to the online map for more details (http://www.actransit.org/wp-content/uploads/MarathonShuttle2015.pdf).
Line 26 will only operate in a one-way loop serving downtown Oakland,
West Oakland BART, and Emeryville. Please refer to the online map for
more details (http://www.actransit.org/wp-content/uploads/Line26Marathon2015.pdf).
For people wanting to participate or at least observe, go to the site
website here.
NELSON'S MARINE AUCTION 03/17
Got a hankering to go to sea? Tuesday about 50 vessels, ranging in size
from dingy putters to 70' motor yachts will be auctioned off, all sales
as-is and where-is. The City padlocked Nelson's Marine in 2013 for failure
to address building code violations and failure to pay utility fees. In
May of that year the City seized the property, where hundreds of boat
owners had been storing their vessels. Owners scampered with little time
to remove their property, leaving about 150 frustrated owners complaining
about the lack of notice. Many others had seen the troubles coming and
had eloped before the seizure.
FIRE CHIEF DELBONO FEELING BURNED BY MAYOR
The City is going ahead with a new mid-island fire station on Grand Street
along with an Emergency Operations Center close by on Buena Vista. The
idea is to replace Station #3 which was closed in 2001 due to concerns
about structural earthquake resistance in the 91 year old building. The
Department rents the building next door to house firefighters.
In the 4-1 vote, Mayor Trish was the sole dissenter, arguing that the
City had no way to cover the cost of the projects or pay off the conceivable
loan save by using the General Fund, which is projected to run out of
money before the loans could be fully serviced.
Jeff Delbono protested in a subsequent press release that the Mayor "demonstrates
a lack of regard for the safety of our community."
THE BICYCLE PATH DISPUTE
People sure do get upset about the darnedest things when they have the
rest of their lives pretty comfortable. Latest community flap is over
the newly dedicated bike trail along Shoreline, which added two directional
bike lanes, bike parking, intermodals for southeast bound busses, plus
a couple strips for auto parking, and took away an automobile lane for
each direction.
This has produced shouts of joy and howls of dismay.
If you bicycle, well you like the idea. If you want to drive on that
road and get somewhere without hassle, well, you are in what we call euphemistically
a "traffic calming zone." People initially against the project
said that bicycle traffic on the existing path always had been sparse.
People supporting the project said that the bike traffic was sparse because
on the one hand, pedestrians sharing the path caused problems and that
using the road where people have been killed by speeding cars produced
the sparse usage. Heck, people have been killed on the path above the
curb by errant drivers, no less.
Now people complain the scenic strip looks ugly with lines of cars, that
the road is more dangerous now because of congestion and tighter maneuverability
room and that pedestrians are more at risk crossing the road because of
obstructed and cluttered views.
So okay, everybody has their crotchets. Some people just do not like
change at all and some people want change no matter how bad an idea it
might turn out to be.
We went down there and rode a bicycle up and down the bike path, parked
a bicycle at one of the intermodals, and crossed the street to take a
look at what had happened to the views.
Here are some pictures. Keep in mind right now all the paint is brand
new. This is of the southside at the Post Office where a street joins
the road. No parking is allowed at such intersections, hence the green
paint.
Here is a shot of a bus intermodal plus intersection area.
Here we see the parking. Pretty much all parking areas were
fully occupied on Sunday.
What about the view from the other side of the street?
As for the views, well, if you live in an oceanfront property, you might
object, however all those people also gained nearly 100 parking spaces
for themselves. Cross to the bike and pedestrian paths, those users have
no cluttered views of the Bay, the Peninsula across the water, or the
beach, which we found packed with far more people than we had seen in
years.
As for traffic, we sat and watched and observed as we rode along. We
saw everyone driving far more slowly than we have noticed in the past.
We also saw a lot more continuous traffic. Also, we noticed that the landside
parking has become more of a hazard when someone has to parallel park.
Basically it is no longer the case that when you see someone opening a
door, you could simply shift to the far lane to avoid hitting someone.
Also the landside has no intermodals for busses, so a stopped bus means
everyone following must also stop.
There is also the situational inattention factor that ramps up risk for
pedestrians, who typically lock eyes on the beautiful ocean rather than
moving objects that could injure or kill them. Heck people got out of
cars and invariably stepped into a bike lane and invariably turned their
backs against the traffic direction. Is Darwinian Evolution going out
of practice? I saw athlete bicyclists out there and I know from talking
to them they can easily do a neat clip at 35mph on the flat while barely
coasting on the pedals.
Have to say that for people driving cars it is worse without question.
Have also to say that might not be a bad thing, for everybody who lives
here will soon learn to avoid going down that road. Saw people trying
to turn left from the south side and boy, giving up was the best option
for all of them. They just drove blocks down the way until a stop sign
or streetlight could make a left anything possible against the unrelenting
northbound traffic.
As for stopping the people who used the road as a bypass to 880, some
of them might stop doing that. Some of them will not. Others will simply
wend their way through the neighborhoods as was done in Berkeley for so
many years. Some of you may remember what Berkeley did about that.
In any case, the slower, more cautious traffic on Shoreline can be cited
as a plus, one not immediately observable by drivers, but people will
get used to it. It will be harder to clobber someone on the paths when
a line of parked cars is providing a steel wall between people and maniacs
as well.
As for sparse bicycle traffic? Observed a count of upwards of 30 or more
bicycles going both directions inside an hour. Never saw that much before.
They all looked pretty happy, but there were not a whole lot of graybeards
among them. A couple, but not many.
Which brings us to the Traffic Impact Summary presented last week in
the Sun, but which had been hotly challenged prior to that on its assumption
that adding 9,000 inhabitants will result in net increase of one single
car over several years, including all gateways.
Which, of course, is preposterous. Just this weekend, with one change
to lanes on Shoreline, driving around the Island ranged from just okay
to sheer misery for all of the congestion. Which should cause more inner
thoughts in more people wonder if the car is really necessary to get done
what needs to be done. The bike way is not for everybody -- can't see
our 67 year old neighbor with mobility problems hopping on a red Specialized
10 speed, but there sure are a lot of unneeded, unnecessary, antisocial,
hulking vehicles out there on the road funneling gas money into the pockets
of Middle-Eastern terrorists.
Some people claim that they drive SUVs because they are safer than small
cars. They are not. Look at the statistics. One half of all auto fatalities
per year occurs in the SUV class. The rest of the fatalities get divvied
up among four-door sedans, two-doors, sport cars, hatchbacks, stationwagons,
light trucks, heavy construction vehicles, limousines, busses, motorcycles,
scooters, etc. It is not what you drive, it is how you drive, and people
who drive SUVs learn to drive badly. So said even the Tappet Brothers.
OK, that is probably more than enough news to chew on for a week. And
as Scoop Nisker used to say, "If you don't like the news, go out
and make some of your own."
TELL MAMA / LEAVE THE LIGHT ON
So anyway it looks like the Valentine's Night Dance fundraiser at the
Sons of the Golden West parlor hall went well. A stiff Lionel showed up
with the subject of his torch-bearing of many years, Jackie of Jacqueline's
Salon.
By stiff, we mean a bit awkward. During one slow dance, Eugene Gallipagus
leaned over and whispered to Lionel to dance "a little closer. That's
the way it is supposed to be."
Things went better after that and Jackie smiled and actually seemed to
enjoy herself. She figured that going out with Lionel for once would get
her at least a good supper at some place good, but it turned out by the
end of the evening she was starting to like the guy.
He had been exposed to Shakespeare . . . by his grandfather, born in
slavery
Lionel, born and raised in Carbondale, came West for some of those, what
some people called at the time, "social unrest" benefits. But
he still remembered the night rides of the local KKK in that part of the
country, and the terror of some of his friends and so he slept with a
loaded .45 under his bed even after all these years. Still, there were
many sides to him, for he was by no means a simple man to understand.
He had been exposed to Shakespeare and to Plato and Aristotle before college
by his grandfather, born in slavery in Louisiana and who never finished
a year of high school
Such were the times and such were the men in those days, for if you thirsted
for knowledge, you went and got it yourself, for sure as certain, no schoolhouse
in the Nation would provide it for you.
and nobody lynched them
So Lionel arrived in the land where the Free Speech movement was born
and where Bobby and few other brothers hung out with AK-47's and the Zebra
killers were caught and tried and convicted and sent to prison and nobody
lynched them, despite them being even more despicable than most of the
oh fay out there. And although some things were different, and some things
changed, some things stayed the same for the man overlayed with the Classics
and Romanticism and .45 caliber guns and ownership of the Pampered Pup
hot-dog shop, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Amendment.
a Man with a Past in the arms of a beautiful woman
So there was this man with this checkered consistency of soul -- with
quite a lot more personal history above and beyond anything related here
-- a Man with a Past in the arms of a beautiful woman and the desire of
his dreams and as it turns out -- quelle surprise -- a woman with significant
history and character development of her own and she feeling things on
which she had not counted at the start of this, this thing.
If all of us were so sure and definitive of what we truly desired .
. .
If all of us were so sure and definitive of what we truly wanted and
what we truly desired and knew precisely how to get it without fuss, the
theatre could close up shop everywhere and there would be no Blues, no
Gospel, no Albert King, Freddie King, nor BB King. The courts would all
close down and all the attorneys would turn to more useful occupations
like short order cooks and conga musicians. We would all be living in
a land of candy hearts and the temperature in St. Paul would remain a
constant 75 degrees all year around.
Not that such a set of circumstances would be desired by everybody. Plenty
of people enjoy the healthy vigor of minus 40 degree temperatures, but
someone up there would desire it and they would figure out a way to get
it while people who like ice fishing would be operating on some other
principle.
So as the dance winds down and the Monkey Spankers conclude their live
presentation with a Tom Waits song, we draw the curtain gracefully across
the set that hosts the Lionel/Jackie opera and let whatever comes out,
come out as best it may.
This is what far more authors should do with their romantic descriptions.
For even the best of the most randy "bodice rippers" leave the
best to the imagination. For in that perfect world of the imagination,
everything, including hot-dogs and sex, tastes better. Taste, of course,
is that about which we are speaking.
March has come on here in California with unfortunate dry weather. This
past week the coastal morning fogs yielded to stunning sunshine which
populated the beaches, such as they are in NorCal, where people born in
Santa Barbara claim there is no serious beach of any kind here.
"This is not a beach."
Emma, a short and sweet girl working here as a clinical therapist, walks
around stating emphatically that there are no beaches here in NorCal and
Baker Beach is a cold anomaly that is not really a beach if you look at
all its characteristics. There is no squid shop, for example. When brought
to the Strand on the Island, she looks at the signs warning about skin
parasites and looks at the area zoned off for mating of the snowy plover,
and says, "This is not a beach."
But there are people in the water and children frolicking in the sand
and sunbathers and of course quite a lot of sand.
"That is not a beach and those are not people"
"No, the sand was imported and the water is cold and there are no
waves, no ocean out there -- only a view of the industrial skyline of
Babylon and the parasites hurt and there are rules. A beach is broad and
warm and sunny and the people frolic in the waves that are the very nature
of the ocean, our mother and the source from which life crawled millenia
ago. This place is cold and the images do not frolic. That is not a beach
and those things are not people, they are automatons or projections."
People from SoCal are odd, but they probably say the same about us in
NorCal.
It is getting on to the only fake holiday that both annoys and thrills
the Irish diaspora in America -- St. Paddy's day.
Suzie has been posting up cardboard shamrocks
They are all getting geared up for this profitable and irksome day at
the Old Same Place Bar. Once again, Padraic has designed an embarrassing
miniskirt outfit for Suzie to show off her long legs, along with himself
and the missus, Dawn O'Reilly, to show off their respective sturdy assessments.
Suzie has been posting up cardboard shamrocks and bearded leprechauns
on the windows, while Dawn has been preparing for what seems to have become
a regular annual visit by the mysterious Wee Man, who always appears near
midnight and always has something amazing to say and always causes mischief
of some kind to vex both the clientele and the management.
some say he comes from the legendary Fir Bolg
Some say he is a leprechaun, if that is any sort of explanation at all,
and some say he is, because of his magical powers, of the Bann Sé,
who are known to howl about the chimneys during storms, make the roof
slates fly off into the yard, and cause other mischief. Some say he is
an elf of the old nasty type, and others say he is an Elv of the newer,
nicer,Tolkein type, and some say he comes from the legendary Fir Bolg
that were the original inhabitants of the Emerald Isle.
That he is of an Island and therefore a kind of Islander there is no
doubt, for he is impish, unpredictable, full of strong opinions, dedicated
to action regardless of consequences, nostalgic to a fault, an antiquarian
of renown, a randy gossip, perverted to a devious degree, a bit magical,
and endowed with anachronistic inventions and sentiments that are sure
to cause charm as well as irritation in providing obstacles to the momentum
some people call progress and others communal degredation.
And so the nights before his appearance everyone has taken to taking
precautions. All on account of the Wee Man and his powerful effect upon
the universe and people's knickers. Both Dawn and Suzi are packing extra
pairs. Just on the off chance he returns. For he certainly has a curious
fixation and he is impish.
There is not much to occupy people's minds and senses since Mardi Gras
ended and Lent has started for the Xians. Even the Wiccans lack a significant
sky sign during the Ides of March, so everyone is left renting Netflix
and Redbox movies and catching up on who won the Oscars. Seems for about
5,000 years nobody celebrated anything during these weeks, even though
it is entirely probable that the Xian Jesus was born in this month, and
not in December, when you look at all the data. It would be just like
that rabble-rousing Socialist named Jesus to get born in March and then
lead the world on a merry chase about December and Xmas for about 2,000
or more years. People do not imagine that Jesus had a sense of humor,
but please remember: his mother was Jewish and so was his earthly father.
How could he not have a sense of humor?
Well the details don't matter much; it is all in how it comes out in
the end.
Pastor Nyquist was quite at a loss for a sermon this Sunday and in desperation
he took the entire congregation out of doors, which sort of thing stood
as unusual and entirely unprecedented for the normally regularized Lutherans.
Ms. Martinez had to be wheeled out in an electronic motorchair to the
daisy field outside.
"I don't know what to say today," the Pastor said. "Here
we are and this might be all it is. Don't look for someone to provide
the reason you are here. You are here because this is where you are and
that is all you need to know. So do your best to do your best and be the
best you are. Think of who invented you and go from there. Look at these
lilies -- they sow and reap not and nevertheless are beautiful . . .".
And so the Pastor went into the classic "lilies of the field"
sermon, but everyone who listened heard it as if they had never heard
it before. This is only possible at the incipience of Spring where there
springs a bit of false hope.
In the darkened offices of the Island-Life Agency the Editor wrapped
up the week's edition and prepared for changes to come. Some of the Directors
were thinking of expanding, becoming a bit more formal. Some were thinking
of diversifying. The Editor was not so sure about all of that. The Online
World is like the Radio world, is temporal, evanescent. Each show lasts
so long as an audience attends, then vaporizes save for memories. The
doing is the thing. Why complicate matters?
not unlike our entire lives
Eventually the last office light is turned off and all is darkness and
there is nothing but the memory of things that once were glorious, performances
that astounded those present, moments that made all the drudgery worthwhile
during the brief term of its presence -- not unlike our entire lives.
The Editor put his hand on his left side and felt the silent, still beating
of the aging heart, still capable of some minor deeds, still possible.
Been left for dead before, but still fight on. Don't wait up leave the
light on. I'll be home soon.
Round about the pool of light provided by the last desklamp burning upon
the Editor's desk hung the muttering curtains of night while the Editor
labored over the manuscripts, darned slippery galleys. Somewhere out there,
enshrouded by the curtains of darkness, hovered a like mind, while he
remained islanded in this oasis provided by the lamp, laved and tossed
by waves of ignorance and foolishness and all the powers of darkness,
all the World's crazy blathering that blocks the soul's link to creation,
like the caveman of old beside his fire with the all the creatures of
the night moving around out there beyond the reach of the luminosity,
watching him doing all for Company while beyond the firelight, reflecting
back, the gleaming eyes of sentient and insentient beings.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
MARCH 8, 2015
CALLA LILIES! THE CALLA LILIES ARE IN BLEWM AGAIN!
WHAT'S THE BUZZ
Some of you may have noticed that we wound up Black History month with
a visit to the Berkeley Black Repertory Theatre. Others noted that we
are winding up significant half-century anniversaries, such as the famous
march across the bridge in Selma, Alabama.
The year 1965 seems like only yesterday for some of us, but that was
an era that ended the ban on voting rights for Black Americans, starting
with nonviolent demonstrations that seemed to arouse furious anger simply
in happening at all. Those marchers suffered a great deal at the hands
of the State Troopers and private citizens, but they knew they were in
the right and would eventually prevail -- by incremental degrees -- and
eventually they did.
Many good and dear friends and acquaintances suffered also from that
day forward. But what good is a comfortable easychair when a single location
exists as part of the United States that does not enjoy freedom and equality
for all people?
Encinal High held a symbolic march around Lake Merritt in Oaktown on
February 27 to commemorate the 1965 Selma march and Senior Malcolm Jackson,
President of the Black Student Union, thanked all participants. This commemoration
march was interesting in that it aimed to educate -- always a good goal
for high schools -- and inform and recognize that we indeed have come
a long way, but know that the Dream of which MLK spoke has morphed into
strategies on how to accomplish the "next step", and the people
are by no means unified as to what that next step might be.
Certainly a lot less than what happened in Ferguson, but that is not
a clear objected as obtaining Voter rights was in 1965.
One thing now unites high schools and middle schools across the country
during these Modern Times, a common anxiety that our parents and grandparents
never suffered. These past few weeks someone broke into a Bay Farm Island
kindergarten classroom and trashed the place. Someone else assaulted a
USD employee in the offices of Edison and fought with responding police.
A couple schools in Oaktown and here have gone under lockdown because
of reported shooters.
It used to be -- a phrase that is often repeated nowadays -- that the
kids were way off limits, and now we hear of demented maniacs slaughtering
entire schoolrooms abroad and barely a month goes by without hearing of
another attempt at a Columbine-style massacre.
That the Columbine-style mass murders were thwarted points to increased
vigilance in the world where the authorities treat this sort of things
as part of daily reality risk.
The nutcase armed with an AK-47 and thousands of rounds walking into
a shopping mall, a church, a school has become the modern equivalent of
fear of the A-bomb all of us oldsters went through.
It would be good for us as Islanders to put aside our quibbling about
inconsequentials and address the common disaster.
In other news, Development seems to have captured an entirely new news
category all by itself, along with Weather, Politics, street repair, School
funding, and Taxes.
Truth is the Island is about to change and by way of people who do not
live here and who do not care about the people who do.
Latest development proposed is the proposed 58 units for 2100 Clement
Avenue. The proposal features 46 single-family houses and 12 triplexes.
Problem with these is that since the avarice here has risen to boiling
point, single-family "homes" become subdivided into multiple
units. Sometimes single houses get split into 9 - 12 units that cost over
$2,200 each to rent.
We had an "on the QT" talk with a local realty employee who
admitted she did not like what was happening here on the Island and was
making plans to move quite a long distance away.
We are hearing from yet another realty employee that buying property
here and jacking the rent to "market value" is the best way
to make money right now.
Which adds up to people who remember how things used to be here being
forced out as these temporarily wealthy invade the vacated spaces, with
no manners or morals or memory of how it was.
In an interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet describes how big
money turned San Francisco into a carbon copy drone of every other big
city, devoid of any nuance of uniqueness that once made it interesting.
There is nothing different about San Francisco any more, according to
Ferlinghettii. This is interesting coming from a man who once was identified
with pride as an example of what made Frisco different. We wonder what
as happened to Jack Hirschman, a former poet laureate of the City, who
lived in a room 6 x 8, space enough only for a bed and one table.
If you enjoy fiction all of you will enjoy the 2014 EIR Point impact report.
This one is full of comical howlers -- comical if it not affect the quality
of all our lives.
This report insists, in all seriousness, that developing the Point will
result in a total, aggregated increase of exactly one (1) car during morning
commute.
Um, this does not include the other 13 development projects adding several
thousand more inhabitants to the island. It also is blatantly ridiculous,
delusional, and a colossal, preposterous lie.
There really is no more to be said about this stupid, foolish, insulting
piece of fiction than that. Unfortunately it is key to getting any number
of other projects approved.
The ADP will host "A Tale of Two Cities" with a panel discussion
about the last election and impact on the Island and Richmond, where a
similar groundswell against rampant development greed occurred, resulting
in Big Money candidates being dumped.
A quick gander at the East Bay Express confirms our suppositions that
the Best and the Brightest are now performing the East Bay. Seems the
booking agent that once serviced the Fillmore has now shifted skills to
the Fox. Umphjrey's Mcgee performed with Joshua Redman this Saturday.
Railroad Earth will fill the bill with the Infamous Stringdusters March
14, while Widespread Panic will testify from 3/19 through 3/21.
You will have to wait until June 6 for Susan Tedeschi to blow the doors
off the Greek Theatre with the Tedeschi-Trucks band, with an enviable
warm-up of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. The lineup promises to blow
the doors of the town.
Can you say, "Night of the Blues?" I knew you could.
The Warfield looks a little pallid this month save for OKGO coming in
3/21. Wonder if they will bring any of those treadmill things for their
act?
NEVER DID FIT IN
So anyway, the young opossum that has been seen along the Old Fence made
a reappearance stumbling over Mrs. Almeida's garden boxes. Calla lilies
have sprung up and this weekend Daylight Savings Time starts up, costing
everybody an hour of sleep and providing many an excuse for arriving late
to school. The fog presses down the entire town as slowly night peels
back and the coffee percolates or drips or does whatever it does in whatever
newfangled thing made in China that you got as a Holiday gift.
March is a time of transitions. It has been a long, dark, cold and mostly
dry Winter. It would have been an ideal time to send another messenger
up to find the Mayor of that mythical town up somewhere near Bear Lake
in Minnesota where all the women are strong, all the men good looking,
and all the children above average so as to apply for Sister City status,
but our own Silly Council had already picked some kind of nondescript
village in China, the name of which nobody can recall -- let alone pronounce
in decent Spanish -- and the fools over there had the outlandish idea
of accepting before they knew the true nature of the town with which they
really were hooking up . . .
Cheesin Soh Loh is a town of about 300,000 Chinese, all of whom are employed
by the single factory there which makes animated Barbie Dolls, and they
apparently had the misinformation that they were hooking up with a major
American metropolis of significant size.
We do have an excellent PR department at Silly Hall, and they have been
known to over-gild the lily at times.
In any case when the Chinese delegation arrived here to commemorate National
Day and check out this new Sister City right in front of City Hall, our
Tibetan population came out to meet them and stand there on the edges
of the crowd, silently weeping while the more ambitious immigrants from
there and Mongolia carried signs that apparently said really bad things
about the PRC. They also threw currants and loquats and overripe fruit
at the stiffly dressed representation.
The Islander Motel is full of hookers and crazy people
More demonstrations occurred at the hotel in Oaktown where they stayed
-- there is no hotel on the Island suitable for housing visiting diplomats.
The Islander Motel is full of hookers and crazy people dropped there after
three-day holds from the John George Pavilion and people with unhealthy
habits, and the Sunset Inn on Webster still smells of pot and all the
beer spilled by Navy personnel when they went on R&R from the Base
that closed over fifteen years ago. So the delegation had to be driven
through a crowd pelting the car with eggs and shoes over the bridge to
Oaktown where men and women with shaven heads and wearing maroon robes
marched up and down the street, carrying signs saying things like, "The
Llama's Mama Speaks the Truth!" and other things calculated to offend.
Larry's Island Tattoo, last of quite a variety of shops that used to
cater to sailors on Webster, offered free ink to the dignitaries but nobody
took him up on it and he is not such a great artist anyway.
In short, the visit was a mess, and the dignitaries got on the plane
and returned to their village and probably gave a bad report as we have
not heard from them since.
at least they serve decent meatballs
It probably would make more sense to partner with someone with whom we
share a common cultural heritage, and more along our own stature. China
has become a superpower and has become rather grand, launching satellites
into space and constructing huge projects that dwarf the Great Gate of
Kiev. We should have courted something like a town in Spain, or Portugal,
or Mexico, or Paraguay, but all those towns said, no way Jose, we are
hooking up with the Danes and the Swedes of Helmsoe -- at least they serve
decent meatballs at their gatherings.
Festus the messenger hamster is still quite put out about his failure
to contact the Mayor of our chosen city and the Editor has not let him
off the hook either, acting like the outraged William Hurt in the movie
"History of Violence".
"How could you not be able to find Clint Bunsen in a town that is
only half a mile wide! He was the Mayor!"
"It's not so easy. The grid-pattern streets are confusing. All these
towns look the same . . .".
"He has a business called 'Bunsen Motors.' Did you ever think to
go there?"
"Hey. I tried my best. How far you ever get putting your mitts on
the County Council of Yoknapatawpha? It's not so easy my friend. Those
Norwegian bachelor farmers are not exactly chatterboxes you know. I bet
you can't even pronounce Yoknapatawpha."
The Editor dropped his head into his hands with despair. "I sent
a rodent to do a man's job . . .".
"Don't go there, my friend. Don't go there."
The Editor went to drink himself with Scotch into a more pleasant frame
of mind while Festus returned to his enormous Habitot habitat, which consisted
of tube tunnels estimated at 1.35 miles long and located out at the Household
of Andre and Marlene.
They blither to you on the bus, they hop over fences . . .
March is known for its Mad Hares, and madness of every stripe is one
thing that characterizes the Bay Area. Lunacy impacts all of our daily
lives, and not a day goes by in which your average Joe must not contend
with The Woman who Peers from behind the curtains, the babbling basket
lady, the man shouting on the street to invisible giants, and the wacked-neighbor
who has in mind that your house belongs to him by right as a handyman
and jack of all the unskilled trades one can imagine. They blither to
you on the bus, they hop over fences, they get into your garage, they
prowl through your trash and your file cabinets in your office, they wreck
the plumbing and they have not a lick of sense of boundaries that condition
most of the rest of the civilized world and there is simply nothing you
can do about it.
They are bat-sugar crazy and you could wack them with a stick or shoot
them dead when they come into your house, but there are always more, like
in that movie series about zombies and you would feel bad about killing
somebody so annoying and so useless anyway.
Well, maybe not, but you know. There are consequences to killing someone
in this country. Unless you are a policeman. Then you can do what you
like.
There are many reasons people continue to live in unendurable places
and do not move to Florida or California. Florida has hurricanes of course,
but more importantly it has scads of people who still do not realize that
George Bush was bad not only for the Country, but also for his own Republican
Party. You could in all honesty call those people crazy as well.
the Bay Area is chock full of crazy people
California has earthquakes and fires, to which you can become adjusted.
After a fire you have lost everything and you realize that things are
not that important anyway. Besides, that ghastly quilt made by your mother
in law got totally ruined and you just had to throw it away. And that
part of losing things felt really, really good. No, the reason people
do not flock to the Bay Area as much as Bay Areans believe, is that the
Bay Area is chock full of crazy people with not a boundary to share among
themselves or anyone else. Su casa es su casa. Comes right out in Spanish:
the word for "yours" is the same as the word for "theirs".
The Constitution may say a few things about this condition, but crazy
people do not read. That much is obvious.
Eugene went out to tend to a noise in the early hours to find an elderly
Asian woman rummaging through his trash bins. He protested, as he felt
he ought to, not only because of the noise and not only because of the
stealing of the recyclables, but also because the woman had come down
the drive, opened an iron gate and proceeded another twenty yards past
the parking and the house with her stolen shopping cart to conduct her
pilferage.
The woman would only say,"My husband died and I have no source of
income." to every question and it soon became clear she had no command
of English, but had learned this phrase from somewhere as a way to pull
at the heart strings so as to get out of trouble. Her ring finger was
bare.
Nevertheless, she had opened the main gate and also the minor gate and
let out Mrs. Abodanza's dogs who galloped now merrily in the street and
this caused a series of problems for the next few hours.
what kind of place is this that produces such desperate measures
Eventually the woman was sent on her way, docilely pushing her stolen
shopping cart loaded with pilfered recycled booty and Eugene was left
wondering what kind of place is this that produces such desperate measures
to survive. Why does this person not go back to the place that once had
supposedly nurtured them? What has gone wrong with the situation here
that we take it as normal and matter of fact that people illegally raid
trashbins to survive? Now that the "economy" is on the upswing
and so many people seem to be making money hand over fist, why is it that
"trickle down" has dried out to nothing?
Why is it left to accepting the situation as "just the way it is."
The Bonobo always help one another with joyful abandon
In the still of the night, the fog flows over the hills of Oaktown and
the San Bruno Hills, much as it has for the past 10,000 years, flowing
over Grizzley Peak, winding through the trees to come down to the flatlands
and come curling around the house like a cat before falling asleep. In
the Old Same Place Bar, Suzie sits behind the counter with her anthropology
book, still focussed upon the Bonobo tribe. "The Bonobo always help
one another with joyful abandon. With sex or food or shelter, the Bonobo
are a magical tribe that practices survival skills which we in the West
would be well to emulate. . . ."
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
MARCH 1, 2015
PERFECT DAY
This headline photo comes from John Curley who claims to take random
photos using is Apple iPhone 4s. If so, the man has some award-winning
talent regardless.
THIS ISLAND LIFE
The new year is underway and gloves are off for all the politicos out
there. People are on high alert now regarding the various developments
going on and it is going to be very difficult for things to slide by via
the smoky backroom as they once did.
WETA is aiming for an upgrade to its facility at the Point, and is remaining
mum about any protection for the harbor seals which have used the area
to generally carouse and hang out for many years. The Sierra Club is recommending
that a new haul-out be setup to compensate for the loss of habitat after
the facility expands with new fueling stations and tanks. The Silly Council
will be looking at the issue this Tuesday in the regular Council meeting.
Once again we lose another major City Administrator, using the lilypad
of the Island to hope to better and bigger diggings. This time the City
Manager is jumping ship to scoot down to SoCal to handle Riverside, a
decidedly larger municipality than this one. Riverside's population is
some 304,000 souls according to the 2010 Census.
While everyone is being very professional and cordial about this, we
wonder what it is about the Island that leads to City Managers, City Attorneys,
Councilpersons, Healthcare District people to leap out of their positions
as soon as opportunity presents itself.
Could it be the property values are overinflated and the rents too high
and it is just too damn expensive to live here now?
O no. These people all make six figure salaries. They can afford to pay
four bucks for a cup of coffee.
More on Development. Seems parking has become an issue at the Harbor
Bay ferry terminal. You know, that area where Ron Cowan wants to pack
more development in via the construction of a massive hotel complex across
the street from the elementary school. Yeah, that place. Now Weta and
the DPW want to restructure parking in the area and remove 2 hour parking
limits and generally muck things up for people who live in the neighborhood.
Why? So as to bring in more people.
Have we heard this mantra before?
The Angry Elf gang has been at it again, starting a big fire in the 2400
Block of Shoreline because somebody was late with the extortion payments.
Since no traffic ordinances were violated, the perpetrators got clean
away. Again. Fire was brought under control with no serious injuries.
A reminder: The DPW has begun work on the High Street Bridge, which shall
remain closed from 9:30 to 6:30 Monday through Friday until around April
27th. This will definitely impact traffic over the Fruitvale Bridge as
well as boating traffic.
REVIEW OF BLACK REPERTORY THEATRE "MULATTO"
Langston Hughes remains one of the giants of American letters to this
day long after his death in 1967 at age 65. He is generally known as the
father of the 1920's Harlem Renaissance which featured Zora Neal Thurston,
Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and
Aaron Douglas. Also contemporary but on prickly terms with Hughes were
W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Alain LeRoy Locke.
He wrote novels, short stories, plays, poetry, operas, essays, and works
for children and was generally considered successful and popular in his
lifetime. With the encouragement of his best friend and writer, Arna Bontemps,
and patron and friend, Carl Van Vechten, he wrote two volumes of autobiography,
The Big Sea and I Wonder as I Wander, as well as translating several works
of literature into English.
Although successful from the 1920's through the Great Depression, Hughes
national literary reputation seesawed as times changed into the 1950's,
even as the Beat Poets picked up on the "jazz poetics" he had
created. Some American critics felt that his writings about Black pride
were out of date and he felt that much of the Black Power movement was
too strident. This occurred even as his reputation continued to soar abroad
-- much of his work heavily influenced writers in the French-speaking
Africa who were forging a new post-colonial pan-African identity similar
to what Hughes espoused.
Now we come around full circle and the younger writers, such as Alice
Walker, look to Hughes with favor.
Ah, the fickleness of fame. Regardless of fame, the position of Langston
Hughes will remain cemented for all time now as a major intellect of American
letters.
The Berkeley Black Rep is celebrating its 50th year in continuous production,
as well as Black History month, with several plays that promise to be
exciting, difficult and inspiring. We toddled on up to Berkeley on a long,
long, long delayed visit to the BBR which saw its humble origins flower
on Adeline near the Berkeley/Oakland Divide from its inception in a storefront
in 1964 in an area that still has some urban troubles. In 1964, that area
was hooker, homeless, and heroin haven. But the founders had just fled
Vicksburg after three visits from the KKK, complete with crossburning,
gunfire, and threats to come back and "finish the job". So that
is how the little college town of Berkeley became home to the longest
running Black repertory theater in the country.
Saturday we took in a matinee run of Langston Hughes' "Mulatto:
A Play of the Deep South". Mulatto was the writer's first full-length
play. Although it was not published until 1963, when it was published
in Five Plays by Langston Hughes, it was written in the early 1930s and
first performed on Broadway in 1935. This stage production set a record
for the number of performances of a play by an African American but, nevertheless,
only hurt Hughes's image. The play was produced by Martin Jones who dramatically
changed the written play by adding a rape scene and other sensational
elements to make it sell better on Broadway. The play was so controversial
that it was banned in Philadelphia. Black intellectuals and activists
decried its depiction of less than desirable stereotypical qualities of
African Americans of the time, such as uneducated speech. And the presentation
of Southern Plantation Whites as ugly, stupid, cruel, violent, and everything
else decried later by an angry Franz Fanon also caused an uproar.
Briefly, the play concerns the tumult that ensues when one of the children
fathered by the Plantation owner, Colonel Norwood, is called back to the
plantation from college where the Colonel has sent him to study "how
to work hard." Not surprisingly the now educated half-White man refuses
to do field work and begins to outrage the town and his father by assuming
all the rights and prerogatives of a man equal to any White by using the
mansion front door, driving the Colonel's car and claiming Norwood to
be his father in public.
His mother, portrayed extraordinarily well by Carla Hardiman, knows that
this sort of behavior in deep Depression-era Georgia will led to no good.
Hughes portrays well the rigid social and economic hierarchies of Jim
Crow South where Blacks had to "know their place and stay in it,"
and it was common for affluent Whites to take Black female mistresses
and thereby procreate any number of children -- who all had to remain
unacknowledged.
The Colonel, an admitted racist, nevertheless grants his illegitimate
children special favors as well as the mother, who after being taken into
the Big House from her shack, enjoys a life of privilege without have
to work the fields or even do housework. Will, her oldest child, gets
his house paid for by the Colonel, and at the start of the play a daughter
is being sent off to school, ostensibly to learn "practical skills",
like cooking and sewing. In reality, the two daughters sent to school
learn business skills applicable to women in the 1930's, but without informing
the Colonel.
In spite of some favoritism, the unspoken rule is that this system means
that the children are never acknowledged by the father, and as suggested
when a more strident racist neighbor of the Colonel comes to visit, this
system is indeed a system where it is common knowledge to keep mistresses
and produce any number of offspring. The system of "kept women"
is well described in one of Ann Rice's better non-vampire books, Feast
of All Saints. The fact that it happened at all is terrible, but the fact
that it was universally accepted and perpetuated in the White communities
on people of color is horrific.
As the young Robert Norwood clashes with his own father who refuses to
accept him, and the Georgia townspeople become irate at his insistence
on equality, the play moves through a stately three classical acts to
its tragic conclusion, with at one point Colonel Norwood pointing a pistol
at his son, but unable to fire the fatal shot. The character of Norwood
has some interesting streaks of regret and humanity, but he is far too
much a self-limited man to arise much beyond a limited regret and a limited
compassion to rise above the social structures that made living in the
deep South such a hell for so many Black Americans.
Our sympathy resides with Robert who has the terrible job of confronting
who he really is and what that means in terms of social reality. Clearly
the social reality is that it varies from place to place, and the place
where he was born is the most limiting place of all. Had he been able
to remain in more cosmo Atlanta, he would have lived a longer life.
To say that Mulatto remains a "difficult" play would be an
understatement. Hughes, a former student of Columbia University and as
many intelligent Black Americans an autodidact in Classicism, packed the
structure of the play with a pretty heady mix of Aristotelian and Shakespearean
poetics. The fact the play succeeds after so many years is entirely due
to Hughes' extraordinary poetic gifts. Indeed it is very likely he will
be remembered as America's Shakespeare long after the shallow Neal Simon
and Andrew Lloyd Webbers have crumbled to dust.
Still, the play's three act classical tragedy structure is very blocky,
with characters given tremendously long speeches to recite at one another
and with the concluding extended monologue delivered by a mother driven
insane by the impossibilities of her life, and the death of her son, as
well as her benefactor, at an empty chair. It is very difficult for a
director to block out actor's movements during these speeches. In this
case, the director has the actors sort of shifting aimlessly back and
forth on their feet and pacing a few short steps, as if the characters
are trapped in some sort of prison. It may be to suggest that the prison
is the society in which all of them are forced to live.
The play is, indeed a tragedy, following all the rules, with the principal
figures being highborn and endowed with the fatal character flaw of pride,
the essential feature of both Black and White Norwood. That the young
Robert Lewis Norwood, the titular "mulatto", like all the great
tragic heroes, goes through a tragic realization at the end, seems clear.
He wanted to put aside being Black and adopt being White with all prerogatives,
but realizes that this path, set in the framework of Depression era rural
Georgia, leads to disaster and that adoption of Whiteness also means adoption
of his White father, who has clearly rejected him. In the end, he has
to reject his White father, and so is left with nothing but the last bullet
in his stolen pistol.
Unlike Shakespeare, who always has some figure enter the scene to restore
the order of the State, as does Fortinbras at the end of Hamlet, in Mulatto,
we have only the savage overseer, Talbot, enter to discover the dead body
of Robert before striking down the weeping mother in savage anger.
"We came too late," Talbot's final words are the caustic last
works to the play.
As for the production, it is sad there is no playbill or website breakdown
of the cast or any press release information, as this means we have no
attribution for any of the actors save for Carla Hardiman, who pretty
much carried the play with an extraordinary performance of a woman living
in a house as a "kept woman" and trying to make deals as best
she can to care for herself and her five children, all born as mulatto
sons and daughters of the White landowner who never acknowledges his parentage.
Langston Hughes, also a product of mixed racial ancestry, was abandoned
by his father, who left the United States to live in Cuba and Mexico so
as to escape the racism. Hughes went to live his with father in Mexico
and was pretty much rejected by the man who disliked the writer's ambitions
and his "effeminate" nature. His father only agreed to pay for
Hughes to go to Columbia under the stipulation that Hughes would study
to become an engineer. Langston lasted a few years there before racism
drove him out.
Certain one could stop at the depiction of harsh mistreatment of Blacks
by Whites in Jim Crow South, as the Whites all enter as despicable ogres,
with only a few strains of humanity suggested in the figure of Colonel
Norwood, the Plantation owner, who runs the place pretty much the same
as if the Emancipation Proclamation never happened. However, the more
interesting meat of the play resides in the ways in which the sons and
daughters handle their identity of being half-white. There is also an
interesting and topical suggestion in Robert's aggressive self-assertion
for equal social prerogatives in what has been happening in the news regarding
the horrific death rate of unarmed Black men at the hands of Authorities.
As Cora tells her more unambitious son William, who stands with his head
bowed and shifting from one foot to the other, "You never stood up
for yourself. You will be all right."
In truth, an educated and aware Robert would have been a threat to the
racist White community no matter what he did, for he would always have
suggested that the system is wrongly built. The various sub-characters
keep saying, that the Blacks need to know their "place" and
stay in it. The same response can be seen in the tragic deaths of Trayvon
Martin, Garner in New York, Oscar Grant here in Oakland, Ezell Ford, and
others. These young men all, regardless of any sort of supposed criminality,
were killed when they wriggled a bit too much while someone was kneeling
on their neck, for confronting a bully following them without reason,
for speaking up out of turn, for not responding quickly enough to orders.
Robert Norwood died, essentially, for being "uppity", for not
knowing his "place." The more things change, the more things
stay the same.
The next production by the Berkeley Black Rep will be "Amen Corner",
which promises to be a romping presentation of Pentecostal old time religion.
We hear that Ossie Davis and Alan Alda will be showing up on the boards
at this venerable institution in Berkeley. Just don't go for no starchy
"entertainment" with predictable lines. We have ACT for presenting
yet another Shaw, another Ibsen. The Berkeley Black Repertory Theater
presents living theater that matters.
DANCING IN THE STREET
So anyway, we had a brief wharf sizzler here. Sporadic storms spat out
a few drenchers and soon the sky returned to its usual moody. Trees all
down Santa Clara remain bare and Winter riven and as the nights get into
cool with the days remaining just a tad into sweater weather.
We hear that Boston is digging out of its Snowmageddon and now the cold
is approaching normal for what it is in Bear Lake Minnesota and all the
ice houses have been pulled from the lake and everyone has finished taking
wagers on when the Ford sitting out on the ice will break through.
Here in California, where we are all hoping for rain at any moment and
the temperatures remain stubbornly above freezing, at least here along
the coast, we have other concerns. Some powder has dusted some parts of
the Sierra, with Tahoe enjoying a healthy few feet of cold stuff, but
the outlook is that the snowpack remains only at 25% of what it needs
to be to shunt aside drought.
The Depuglias got into a bit of trouble recently when someone found that
a sort of tunnel and cave had been dug out near the Disputed Bicycle Bridge.
The Bicycle Bridge, a sort of lifted passageway that goes over to Harbor
Bay Island beside the main bridge there, has long been a source of contention.
It was built because dogwalkers complained about bicyclists riding on
the main bridge walkway, but nobody really set hard and fast rules as
to its use. The dogwalkers insisted that the more elegant bridge was clearly
designed for them to walk their poodles and the bicyclists insisted that
the bridge, built to resolve the original dispute, was intended for them
and walkers continued to use both spans.
This, of course, meant bicyclists continued to use both spans and so
the controversy seesawed back and forth for years with both sides claiming
damages.
In any case someone found that a great pit had been dug with a tunnel
near the base of the bicycle bridge and the suspicion arose that someone
meant to do something really nefarious, like blow it up or launch a terrorist
attack of some kind. The tunnel featured an electric fridge stuffed with
Fat Tire ale and a microwave which had been used to heat up Michelina's
Frozen dinners and chicken wings. There were lights and a heater and everything
was powered by a diesel generator.
The entrance was covered by boards and dirt.
Everyone wondered what the intention for such a thing happened to be
and nobody wondered about who owned this land, but eventually it turned
out the Depuglia brothers had built it for personal reasons, which is
what they told Officer O'Madhauen, who would only say that no traffic
laws had been impacted by the tunnel.
Then, of course, this being a small town everyone wanted to know what
kind of personal reasons involve digging a tunnel several yards long like
that and everyone started keeping tabs on their daughters to an extraordinary
degree to the point that Paul Depuglia had to come out and admit he had
built it as a survivalist bunker and also a good place to watch the Superbowl
with his buds. The terrorists were coming any day to convert the island
into a stomping Islamic Caliphate called The Dish of the Prophet Dude.
Or the Prophet's Dish. Or the the Isle Pizzle of Prophet Poo (IPoPP).
Or something like that. Whatever. Wall Street was gonna crash any day
and ivy will cling to the library steps.
The Depuglias, not the brainiest of the survivalist bunch, built their
tunnel too close to the Estuary, so at the next Supertide, the whole place
turned into an underground swimming pool, shorting out the generator and
ruining the chicken wings. They were really put out about that and the
City made them fill in the hole, which -- since everyone knew about it
and where it was -- didn't provide so good a hideout. Certainly not from
their wives.
When the bottom does drop out, you might not want to hang out with the
Depuglias.
This is generally a time of expectation and of slow, silent mutations.
In places where there is snow, things start to slump, to steam a bit.
It stays pretty cold for sure, and you still have to get out the scraper
to clear the car windows each morning, but something about the light in
the afternoon becoming more yellow, as if to suggest that warmth might
come sneaking around the corner any day now. Beneath the snow, things
are starting to happen. No sign of it yet, but you just way for that slow
surprise. In the deltas, the ice rimes over the sleeping trout where it
seems no life could ever survive. All across the hills, the golden European
grasses are waiting, dormant, for something to happen, some word that
everything can cut loose.
And the calla lilies. The Calla lilies are in bloom again on the Island.
Some people think there is no continuity with the past. There is always
continuity to the past -- we simply need the poets to remind us of our
humanity from time to time. That is their purpose in life.
The Editor sits at his desk, the lamp making its pool of light while
all around hovers the dense, impenetrable darkness. All of the machines
have been shut down and all of the staff have left to go to their homes
and their real lives separate from this artificial world of work, which
always in America's cities shall be a place that is apart from real life,
almost like every corporation is a work of fiction that has little to
do with how people really feel about one another.
But now all of that corporate speak is shut down and there remains the
Editor. His desk is a legacy. This desk was once a schoolroom desk for
children in the 1800's and was brought from Omaha in a covered wagon by
pioneers quite a long time ago when the old schoolhouse was broken up.
The desk served as the main writing desk for some decades before circumstances
improved and it wound up stored in a garage for a few more decades. It
got used as a lemonade stand and a work bench and returned to the garage
from which it was fetched to be sold at a garage sale for $20 with its
chair to the Editor who needed a serviceable piece of furniture.
In cutting a piece of wood with an electric saw, the Editor discovered
by accident that the chair, and probably the desk as well, was made of
cherrywood. Probably a cheap source of timber in the place where someone's
grandmother had once learnt her sums well over 150 years ago in that Iowa
schoolhouse.
After the Editor discovered this fact, he treated the desk with its warped
top and its battered legs with some significant respect and he glued down
the veneer top, which looked to be a single plank of wood and he oiled
the rest and he taped up the mistake with the saw to cover up his ignorance.
Then he sits down to work with the muse of History.
And so Island-Life gets typed out each week on a newfangled computer
sitting square on top of a desk that came across the Prairie over 150
years ago. In the hovering darkness, someone's grandmother stands, observing
these things, sometimes approving, and sometimes disapproving.
The Editor stood up from that desk and walked out to the deck where the
swelling moon hung over the yard with Jupiter hovering nearby. Somewhere
from the packed apartments across the way, someone was playing Bob Dylan's
new album, which consisted of old crooner covers. Frank Sinatra...
And the Editor was called to remember a memory of a woman he had known
named Aoife, which is an Irish name. She had been a mighty handful, and
largely the reason he had remained single all these years. He had a photograph
of her with her hair all flying from the wind and her lips cherry red
like Sheela na Gig, all filled with passion and anger. A woman to avoid,
but like Javier his taste in women had never been wise. Funny how you
always pick the person who is worst for your soul and body.
Things continue, despite our best efforts to wreck the past. They really
do.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
FEBRUARY 22, 2015
BROKEDOWN PALACE
This week's photo is of the former Thomsen Garden Center on Lincoln.
John and Iris ran this combo garden center /cafe with art gallery for
33 years until retiring at the end of last year. The place was a quiet,
magical oasis and had been providing the citys most exquisite collections
of plants since 1943 when Bob Thomsen set up shop there. Iris bought the
company in 1981.
At the time Iris knew nothing about plants, but that quickly changed.
Iris read every book she could and went to many seminars to grow her knowledge
of gardening. "I didnt know how to run a business," said
Iris. "I remember having to deal with invoices for the first time
and other things and I would say to myself, what have I done?"
She and her husband John turned the upstairs unit into the Vines Cafe
and Gallery in 1986. Poets and people seeking calm amid the chaos found
there a quiet place for many decades.
The property will be turned into a residential unit with a garden court.
The neighborhood is likely to change substantially, as the neighbor across
the street, Pagano's Hardware, will be leaving in May the spot it has
occupied for over 60 years.
LIKE THE WEATHER
We got sunny but cool days with cool nights continuing through the week,
leading up to some cloudy stuff but no sign of rain in the short term.
As for the Sierra, report from Mammoth ski country is as follows: "We
have light snow falling at this time with 1-3 inches of new fresh light
powder snow.
Up top its a cold 9 with a 19 at Main Lodge. Winds are out of the
NE to 60 up top with gusts to 21 at Main.
Mammoth Mountain Weather: Today into Monday cloudy skies with snow showers
at times. We could see 3-5 inches of more snow by the time all is said
and done.
Winds are NW 15-30 at 9000 feet and should be double that later in the
day. Up top wind gusts of 50 60 by late in the day are possible.
Expect highs in the 20s thru Monday, then 40s Tuesday through Friday.
Lows will be in the teens and then 20s mid week for some great snowmaking.
As for the word from Howard, we have this as of Thursday last: "A
Transition in the Weather Pattern from Warm to Cold this Week is Certain
.Light
snowfall looks likely
.Cool Breezy Weather is Expected Next Week
.Then
March Roars in Like a Lion
".
"Amounts in general still look good in the 4 to 8 inch range over
all by morning. The highest amounts would be over the higher terrain and
boosted a bit due to the Snow to Water Ratio. The storm track for the
up coming week looks like it will be down over the interior of the west
coast. Although there may be some over water trajectory to boost amounts
next weekend, no long fetch or subtropical entrainment is expected."
Howard did indicate that he has found a reason for the unusal dry weather,
but unless you can parse an highly technical jargon-packed discussion
that features " I challenge anyone to find a +PDO indice for the
months of December of 2014 and January 2015 for the past 115 years as
off the chart as it has been! Not since 1941 has the +PDO been so wacked
out!"
Well, ok Howard. We are glad you are excited about the +PDO.
Furthermore, "According to the Jamstic, the AMO will crash this
year and so the Atlantic will cool, especially over the western Atlantic
north to the NW Atlantic. Odds are the +PDO will weaken at some point
before the end of this year. The new ENSO outlook from Scripps shows El
Nino taking another run for the tropics. "
What this eye-glazing stuff means, together with the usual patterns of
wet weather up high through March and April, is that some drought relief
will come after some gale force winds across the summits followed by radical
temperature drops severe enough to endanger the citrus groves at lower
elevations as global systems gradually work their way literally around
the world. In short, March will be good for skiers and the snow resorts,
but serious drought relief in toto is not likely to occur until 2016 when
El Nino #2 picks up steam.
Given the history (in our recollection) of 10 year weather cycles in
California we ought to be due for some gully-washers in 2016 or 2017.
WHAT'S GOING ON
In following several feature articles in the Island Sun, we notice that
there has been a pattern here of minor victories of modest citizens against
seemingly unstoppable Development forces. Recently we know about the Jean
Sweeney Open Space Preserve. Latterly we learn that Roemer Bird Sanctuary
is the result of another successful battle against Big Development. We
will not recap the already well written article by Klaus Mitterhauser
which describes how Elsie Roemer fought the Utah Construction and Mining
Company and won to preserve salt marshes at Bay Farm and at the end of
Broadway. Suffice it to say that nothing is written in stone and nothing
is predestined here, for others have battled seemingly unstoppable juggernauts
of development in the past and this energy and aptitude can continue here.
Visitors are always amazed when we tell them that the island population
is hovering around 79,000 souls and slated for increase of some 20%.
79,000 people packed into a space barely three miles long and one mile
wide is a lot of people already. And we do not need a "gateway"
over thirty feet in height.
The sign at Fruitvale does not hold its message for long as you drive
past, but you should know that the High Street Bridge will undergo repairs
starting next Monday from 9:30 am to 6:30pm, which might dent your commute
somewhat. This will also affect maritime traffic. Work is slated for completion
around April 27. Note that this is Phase I of a multiphase project. This
bridge will also face closures at the end of 2015 for additional work.
The Jewish Music festival is in full swing and Kitka is in attendance.
Check out www.jewishmusicfestival.org.
Florence and the Machine has a new CD out, so expect that powerful voice
to come rocking to your hood some time soon.
The Fox is ramping up for quite an unstoppable series that makes it totally
unnecessary to go over to the City that Use to Know How for anything.
Ledisi kicks off a decidedly jazz-heavy March on the 1st. Umphrey's McGee
bings its quirky jazzy rock with special guest Joshua Redman and the The
Revivalists on the 7th, the following weekend
Railroad Earth brings it down to real on March 14th, with surprise Bill
Maher showing up 3/15 for what promises to be an engaging and challenging
evening of controversy.
Widespread Panic holds forth from the 19th through the 21st, after which
Bill Maher promises to return on the 28th to press any buttons he has
not already pushed.
Yonder Mountain String Band starts up your Friday on April 3rd.
As for the Paramount, Bill Clinton came and left already, but Gloria
Steinem is winding up March 31st her on the warmer side of the Bay.
Can you say Oaktown Rocks? I knew you could.
TRAVELLING IN SOME VEHICLE, SITTING IN SOME CAFE
So anyway, word coming from Boston is that Snowmageddon is in full swing
out East. Indeed, these are hard times, hard times indeed and the hard
time killing floor is sweaty with the blood that has been spilled just
to get by and put meat on the table.
Now is the harsh time of bitter wind against the cheek and the scarf
pulled up and the ice reaching past all crevices to steal into the chambers
of the heart and there seize with a cold grip the last defences against
cruelty until the savage beasts of commerce and rule laugh and shout in
echoing halls over the smoldering, gleaming heap of their riches, the
coiled worm dozing in the halls of victorious Smaug, the dragon of winter's
avarice.
Now is the time when black tree bones scratch against the pearl-grey
sky when the wind picks up and the white flags of winter chimneys, pleading
truce against the moon. From the mirrors of a modern bank. From the windows
of a hotel room.
And some of us sit in cafes, drinking Earl Grey tea, defectors from the
petty wars that shell shock Love away.
When Denby got out of the jail on Seventh Street, after last week's St.
Valentine's Day massacree debacle, the hookers let out about the same
time strode into the street boldly, still dressed in red negligee's and
pouffy boas, chilly in the mouth-breathing clouds of air, hailing taxis
to take them back to some place for a shower and a meal or someplace warmer.
As for Denby, he had to walk down to Webster and go through the Tube and
walk along through the fumes and the shopping-cart people, rumbling along
with their plasticbag loads and mumbling to themselves, to get home.
He had hoped to avoid his usual bad luck with V-day by going to the movies
and hiding in the dark, but things had not worked out according to plan.
They never do.
And why was the theatre showing 50 Shades of Grey, a raunchy B&D
flick with Spongebob Squarepants anyway?
There is a flu going around. And a nasty infection associated with it.
Everyone is getting this thing and offices everywhere are full of hacking,
wheezing people suffering through chills and coughing and loads upon loads
of phlegm upchucked into wastebaskets and sinks.
There is the flavor of Halls menthol and Vicks and Robitussin and metallic
clang of antibiotic and loads of chicken soup from a can because everyone's
grandmother who knew how to make the stuff right is dead. Dead as rocks.
And there is another terrible reminder.
We are all looking forward to an end to this particular winter, not just
the Bostons.
Meanwhile an incensed Javier wants to go and toilet-paper Sean Penn's
house in Marin over his comments at the Oscar ceremonies, but Jose, the
younger man, feels this would not help the image of hardworking, decent
Latino emigrants and Pahrump refuses to give him a ride over the bridge
on his scooter. So Javier was left to stomp around on the porch, angrily
cursing in Spanish.
"Hey Javier, I heard your girlfriends had a run in with a flasher
at the theatre," Marsha said. "Some naked guy and he wasn't
even you."
"Todos los gabachos son estupidos!" Javier said. Marsha laughed.
"He have anything worth looking at," Suan said, idly.
"Eh," Javier said making a planar guesture with his hand. "Que
colgaba."
"Ask him if he needs a job. We are building out the Apollo Center
at the Crazy Horse," Suan said.
"I didn't know the Crazy Horse swung that way," Sarah said
with some interest. She had spent Valentine's Day performing for the Cupid's
Ball fundraiser at the Native Son's of the Golden West.
"Baby, we got something for everybody at the Horse," Suan said.
Valentine's Day, like many of these artificial holidays, is a time for
some people to make money, like Suan and Sarah, and for others to get
into trouble, like Denby and Javier.
President's day is one of those odd ones shoehorned into the annual schedule
which seemingly benefits no one save for mattress salesmen. Perhaps it
is fitting that this one follows hard after Valentine's Day, for how many
people really spend any serious time thinking about their mattress unless
someone else makes a comment. Or some event causes wan hope to rise in
favor of future opportunity. Most bachelors don't even wash their pillow
cases more than twice a year. Admit it.
In any case another week passes and its all back to work, leaving the
nights of disappointment or mad passion, whatever has been one's luck
this past V-day, to leave ashes, bottles and wrappers as forgotten reminders
in the gutters along the curbs.
Over at the Old Same Place the paper hearts and pink bunting remain up
on the windows and unused candies with cute sayings remain littering the
tables. A disconsolate cupid with flaking gilt dandles at the end of the
Snug with his arsenal of projectile weapons chipped and blunt, his bow
waving a broken string above Denby who plays his instrument quietly with
his fedora pulled down over his eyes.
Listen: a clarinet oodling its way through passageways. Strains of Benny
Goodman drifting through smoke and pinewood trees.
Eugene, whose idea of hot pursuit in Romance is dropping a line through
a hole cut in the ice out on a frozen Sierra lake to wait their with a
warm hip flask for something to happen, mulls his cider with as much thought
as the man can muster at any one time. He is actually debating with himself
as to whether a spoon lure should have string or feathers. Obviously,
he is not one for Relationships; trout are moody enough.
Suzie, sitting behind the bar has her Anthropology text open to the chapter
on the Bonobo while the patrons come and go, the serious drinkers raptly
intent on one thing and one thing only, while the ever hopeful and flirtatious
hunters and temptresses remain intent on one thing and one thing only,
albeit with different goals than the drinkers. Each has his and her dance
in the forest. Maeve is sitting there close to the Man from Minot with
her legs crossed, one shoe dangling half off her arch.
"Courtship rituals among the Bonobo are remarkably free of pretense
or showmanship, as is found among other tribes in the Congo. They freely
mingle and mate with joyful abandon with undisguised affection and sympathy
for one another. When a Bonobo finds someone he or she likes, they simply
take the other's hand and off they go . . .".
"Lifting houses sounds like such fascinating construction work,"
Maeve says. "Tell me more about the joists and the jacks. . .".
Down the street, The Editor emerges from his mancave with a large garbge
bag of whiskey bottles and empty Michelina's frozen dinner containers
as the City street sweeper hugged the curb down the block. He drops this
into the trashbin near midnight and pauses to regard Orion tumbling over
the Veteran's Hall before returning inside as the night unspools and the
laughing stars twinkle on a night with no sirens and no screaming. The
weekend night remained silent and peaceful and calm and no one got shot
and no one got stabbed.
The Editor turned out the light, leaving the town in the keeping of the
one who was sweeping up the ghosts of Saturday Night.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
FEBRUARY 15, 2015
LET YOUR LOVELIGHT SHINE
They added some lamps to Jackson Park, only trouble is that the line
of lamps borders not path nor seat nor gazebo, but marches military formation
up the middle of the place, completely wrecking any idea of soccer or
touch football or Frisbee. What on earth got in the minds of those people
at Silly Hall?
THIS ISLAND LIFE
The Prairie Home Companion tail-in that goes "I was a quiet week
in Lake Wobegon" pretty much applied to events this week. Seemed
like as temperatures rose so did certain indoor demands and all the City
employees and developers found reasons to make this long Presidents Day
Weekend especially long via amorous embraces. Even strong-arm robberies
declined on Park Street, indicating that even thugs got smitten with the
arrows of Eros.
SEE WHAT CARELESS LOVE HAS DONE
So anyway, this week has been a time of what they call "false spring"
when the temperatures rise and the sap as well. Islanders took advantage
of fine weather and a three day weekend to observe Valentine's Day, each
in their own way. The Editor holed up in the Offices with a stack of Michelina's
frozen and a couple liters of scotch, seeking to avoid the leggy Joanna.
Jose hid out under the porch with Snuffles the bum and a gallon of cheap
wine when Javier came looking for him with two of his girls.
"Where did that compadre get off to?" Javier said aloud, standing
right over Jose and Snuffles.
"C'mon Javier, lets go do the chi chi boom boom again," one
the women said. She was wearing a hotpink tube-top and fuschia shorty
shorts so tight you could read the care label on her underwear. She had
six inch stiletto heels on her feet and her companion was dressed in a
skintight nurse's costume with red pumps. Her dress was short enough to
be banned from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition.
"Where's my valentine, you promised me, Javier," the nurse
pouted and stamped her foot.
"I have no idea where the boy has gone," Javier said.
"Hey, somebody's down there!" said Fuschia.
Snuffles stuck his head out from the hole in the porch where Javier had
nearly burned down the house on his birthday seven years ago.
Javier bent down but then recoiled. "Phew! Snuffles, when was the
last time you had a bath!"
Snuffles paused a moment in serious reflection, then brightly said, "December!"
"You're disgusting!"
"Wan' some wine!" Snuffles offered.
"I think not. Ladies, lets go have fun," Javier said.
Lionel stands nervously outside Jacqueline's salon, a bouquet in his
sweating hands. The place is about to close and he has been waiting for
an hour until the business quieted down. Jackie sees him, but pretends
not to as she fusses about the shop. Eventually Maeve takes pity on him
and opens the door.
"Hello Lionel, come on in."
"O no, I, ah . . . I".
"O don't be such a fish. Come on in, we are about to close up."
Maeve hooks the stuttering Lionel by the elbow and drags him in. "Well
Jackie, you have a visitor. I think I'll just neaten up the scrubs in
the back. Ta ta!"
"Hello, Lionel," Jackie said, sweeping up loose hair around
the barber chair.
"Ah, hello."
Sweep, sweep.
"You have some flowers, I see."
"Ah. Yes. Flowers. They're for you."
"Why that is delightful! How nice of you!" Jackie took the
flowers from Lionel who removed his hat and turned about by the brim in
his nervous hands.
"Iyyy, ah . . .".
"Were you about to say something?" Jackie said as she trimmed
the stems and set the flowers in a vase.
"I, ah . . . got a restroom?"
Jackie laughed. "Yes its back there." And she motioned with
her hand.
Lionel scampered to the back only to run into Maeve who was peering from
behind the curtain.
"Saints and pebbles!" Maeve said. "Lionel what is it?"
"I just want to ask Jackie to dinner," Lionel whispered. "Don't
tell!"
"O for pete's sake, just ask her out would you, man!"
"Shhh! Sshhh!" Lionel said. "What if she just laughs at
me?"
"God's whiskers, she won't laugh at you; she likes you! Go out there
. . .".
"What the devil are you two up to back here?" Jacqueline said
as she threw open the curtain. "Lionel! Maeve! Are you two trying
to make love in my closet?"
"O! Pleasenoit'snotwhatyouthinkatallwewerejusttalkingandnothinghappenedIpromise
. . .", Lionel said.
"Well Lionel, I never took you to be ladies man . . .". Jackie
said.
"I . . .I . . .I . . .".
"Lionel, just ask her." Maeve folded her arms.
Maeve raised her wrist dramatically to her forehead. "O to think
with my colleague, Maeve! I suppose I will survive. And to think I thought
you . . .".
"NonononononoIdon'tlikeheratall . . .".
"Hey!" Maeve said.
"NoIdidn'tmeanthatatallIlikeMaeveshe'sniceandeverythingbutityouIwantImeantotake
outtodinnerIamsorryImadeamessofthingsagainIjustbroughttheflowershopingyouwouldliketheman
daskyououtandthatisallitreallyis."
Jackie looked a little cross-eyed."Lionel you are going to have
to slow down and stop trying to tear your hat in half".
"Ok."
"It's Valentines Day. Everything is booked, I am afraid."
"I have reservations for Skates," Lionel said.
"I'll close up," Maeve said. "You two go on."
And with that, Jacqueline and Lionel left together. After closing up,
Maeve went down the way to the Old Same Place Bar where the 3 day roistering
was already in progress.
Denby, seeking to avoid the slings and arrows of outrageous Eros, spent
the day listening to Cowboy Junkies CD's and that new Grammy winner, Beck.
He then put on an overcoat and took himself to the movies where he watched
Fifty Shades of Grey and the Spongebob Squarepants Movie as well as a
space opera flick.
He fell asleep during the space opera flick and awoke to find that the
kids in the Spongebob movie had glued the seat of his pants with bubblegum
and shoved taffy in his shirt and somehow worked cotton candy past his
waistband and there were wet jujubes in his shoes. He felt his way in
the dark to a side door and let himself into a passageway that was cool
and dark. He saw a light shining and pushed open a door to find himself
in a restroom where he yanked off his shoes to shake them over the wastebasket.
He then took off his pants and his shirt to try to clean them in the sink.
Damn kids.
It was while rinsing his underwear that he heard a woman's voice saying,
"I am dying to take a leak." The door opened and a stunning
raven-haired woman wearing a skintight nurses uniform stalked in on red
stiletto heels followed by a another woman dressed in shorty shorts.
The nurse shrieked and threw up her hands, while the woman in shorts
looked up and said, "Nice hat." Then she looked down and said
with curiosity, "Are you Jewish?"
That's how Denby wound up spending another February 14th in jail again
asking the Creator why this sort of thing always happened to him.
Because you make me laugh, responded the Creator. That's why I really
love mankind.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
FEBRUARY 8, 2015
LIKE A SEED BENEATH THE SNOW, IT HAS A WAY WITH SLOW SURPRISES ALL ITS
OWN
This week's photo comes from Tammy who captured these blooms
popping out because of the rain in February. Some hint of things to come.
LIKE THE WEATHER
The recent storms brought some relief to local reservoirs, but the big
picture for this area and California as a whole is painted further east
where the 400 mile long snowpack reservoir got some badly needed reinforcement
from 8,000 feet elevation on up. Although snowpack doubled its entire
winter storage at the Pass near Mammoth, according to Dr. Howard Schecter,
unofficial meteorologist for Mammoth County, meaning the ski resorts will
enjoy an extended season, some numbers came out disappointing.
Projections of 12" of snow came out to about 3 inches, with some
snow below 9,000 getting wiped out by subsequent rains advancing to 10,000
feet, meaning the freeze level stopped that high up.
On a side note the Round Mountain Fire destroyed 40 homes in the Swall
Meadows and Paradise areas near Bishop. Fortunately no one was killed
and the fire is now 65% contained. This fire was propelled by winds measured
at 60-100 MPH from Mono County and Reno on up north. Sierra crest stations
clocked in winds at 135 MPH. The subsequent snow and rain quenched the
firesystem.
Now how would you like to spend a night up in one of those Sierra Crest
towers under conditions like that? If you want to have a look at nature's
fury, go to Jerry Dodrill's posts of what he saw at
Wilderness Exposures.
People who have some connection with the area can help out fire victims
by contributing at Round
Fire Relief.
Our local rain-maven, Mike Rettie, has recorded a total of 1.81"
at 6PM since Friday, which also the total for 2015 today. Other areas
saw greater or less than this amount, but for much of the East Bay, this
looks pretty accurate extending out to Pleasanton and down to San Jose,
according to the NOAA readings. So forecasts of a 3" monsoon failed
to, um, hold water.
It's not enough to turn the drought around, but if this keeps up after a
6-10 day break, it just might.
ON AN ISLAND
Remember Lena Tam, former Councilmember and unsuccessful bidder for County
office? Well just to prove you can't count an Island homegirl out until
she is ready, she has been elected to the Friends of the Parks Foundation
Board of Directors. In addition, Tam manages the water-resource planning
for the EBMUD. Before all of this she was a founding board member of the
city Health Care District.
We are reminded in the face of all the development threats happening
here on the island that nothing is etched in the book of eternity for
sure, as the Jean Sweeney Open Space Park is proof that diligence and
persistence can succeed against the Moloch. Sun County LLC had wanted
to build over 200 homes on the site of the old railway passage, but Jean
Sweeny found a clause in the 1924 contract between the City and Union
Pacific Railroad that gave preferential buying rights for the City to
re-aquire its own land at 1924 prices.
Development issues occupied the Letters to the Editor pages of both the
Sun while the Journal had a letter rebutting some Silly Hall sniping,
which seems to becoming a sort of party theme around here lately after
the elections. Some people are unhappy with the way the elections turned
out for their pet candidates. Well, it is a democracy -- or democratic
republic (take your pick -- and not everybody gets everything they want
all the time.
Regarding what to do with open space at the peninsular tip jutting into
the Bay and facing the Babylon skyline anyone ever driven out to the end
of 7th Street in Oaktown and seen what they did out there? The drive out
is scary in how the last mile resembles passing through the border barricades
that used to divide East and West Berlin but the end is heart-stopping
beautiful. Do it on a nice weekend and you will not be sorry.
BUILD ME UP FROM BONES
So anyway, a real dockwalloper swept over the Island at the end of this
past week, making us remember that what we in NorCal miss in cold temperatures,
we earn in double payback via precipitation. Because the weather waits
so long between storms, the earth sort of relaxes into that carefree California
let-it-ride attitude. Then, the earth gets suddenly pounded by the drums
of Wagner's Valkries and powerlines go down, trees uproot and entire hillsides
slide away taking with them fences, houses, freeways and entire bowling
alleys.
We hear that Norwegian Hafthor Bjornsson broke a world record last week
that, had stood for 1,000 years. What did he do? He took five steps while
carrying a log over 30 feet long that weighed 1,433 pounds. The legend
of the Icelander Orm Storulffson says that he walked three steps with
this monster wooden log which weighed over 650kg and was 10m long. Hafthor
carried the 650kg and 10m log for 5 steps.
So supposedly the record was meant for years to be an exhortation for
Norwegian kids to clean up their dinner plate so as grow up to be big
and strong.
"But mom! It tastes like soap!"
"Clean that plate if you want to be strong as mighty Orm Storulffson!"
"O ma! It stinks!"
"Shut up yer whinin' or there will be no more roving for you."
People may not know that the world's most impressive strongman feat took
place right here in California. Alonso Seville de Espadrille was a merchant
mariner and strongman back in the final days of the Spanish colonial conquest
of Alta California. He often was called upon to reset the ship's mainmast
His Royal Majesty. He would do this by grabbing the mast in a bear hug
and lifting the entire mast, together with topgallant and crowsnest, long
enough for shipwrights to fix the mounting chocks below decks. Then he
would ease the entire thing down and when it had settled, he would go
have a beer.
People wondered from where this 400 pound giant of a man had come, and
some said Seville, and some said, no, the Pyrenees rock mountains, and
others said Pamplona. In truth, he was a mixture of Spanish and Azteca
and Yoruba of Africa, so he was a man made entirely of the New World.
This may explain why he stood a full six feet seven inches in height
among a people that generally attained no more than five four at the most.
He claimed he drew his strength from the Blessed Virgin, and to emulate
her practiced the most steadfast chastity himself. When he would see a
group of lovely senoritas strolling down the boulevard, and they would
flirt with him, he would quite often grab an ox cart and hurl it into
a garden over the fence -- together with the surprised oxen -- out of
what one supposes was sheer boyish exuberance.
In any case it may be because of his vow of abstinence he decided to
journey up to Alta California with the explorers looking for a good seaport,
as Alta California was a place to which decent womenfolk seldom journeyed
for all the hardship and lack of culture. This was understandable as the
Mexican senoritas in those days were dangerously hot blooded and of fiery
temper. This may no longer be true, but who can say?
So Alonso set out with an expedition, beginning first by sea around the
tip of Baja and then up to San Diego and then to El Pueblo de Nuestra
Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, which now bears a shorter
name, and thence to the splendid place that later would be called the
Bay of Monterrey, which turned out to be less of a Bay than a sort of
wishful arc that would be a Bay had it only tried harder before giving
up.
he . . . threw his arms around the bear
From there the expedition, let by Padre Junipero mi Siempre and the soldier
Juan Sebastian Pato, the expedition marched north overland to find the
perfect Bay and having many adventures along the way as they mapped the
landscape while the schooner tacked along off the coast, charting the
seafront. At one camp a group of brown bears came down to nose among the
packs and perhaps nosh on a few oxen, while the intrepid explorers all
fled shrieking into the night bushes. Save for Alonso who greeted the
largest of the grizzlies like an old friend. And like an old friend the
grizzly, who stood easily seven feet tall and weighed well over 1500 pounds
greeted Alonso with a fierce bearhug, which Alonso took to be a mark of
affection, so he too threw his arms around the bear and hugged him back
just as fiercely. The grizzly howled and racked the back of Alonso's armor-plated
back and Alonso obliged by raking his own fingernails through the tangled
mat of the grizzly as a comrade. The grizzly tossed down his great head
and chomped on Alonso's shoulder and Alonso did the same until the big
leviathan of the mountains staggered back and sat down in great distress
and defeat with a sigh.
"Don't be sad brother!," Alonso said. "Enjoy life!"
And so he grabbed an ox and tore it in half and gave its haunch to the
grizzly and he roasted some for himself and they all sat down there and
had a great time for an hour or two until Alonso led the grizzly pack
off into the wilderness where they roistered for several days before Alonso
came back and rejoined the expedition, a bit bashful at all the fuss.
Coming up from the place known as Pacifica, the expedition encountered
steep bluffs and cliffs coming down to the sea. Seeing that clearly there
could be no decent bay up front, the party met up with the schooner and
sailed out to reconnoiter the coast. Encountering the Farralones they
felt grateful at sailing so far distant from such dangerous shoals and
so about the meridian of Drake's estuary, cut back in again when they
noticed a gathering of birds there with the ominous signs of an impending
thunderstorm chasing them into that shallow place.
There the sailors and the expedition made a joint camp with the schooner
bobbing a distance away while the nervous local tribe of coastal Miwok
observed them from a distance.
Always a friendly guy, Alonso went over to them to make peace. This he
did well enough and pretty soon they had found ways to talk to one another,
"using hand and foot" as they say. They asked him about the
"big canoe with the trees growing in it", by this meaning the
schooner and mentioned the on coming storm.
Alonso asked, well, what did they do with their canoes and the headman
indicated how they had drawn up the tulerush canoes high up the bank to
safety.
Alonso looked at the Schooner, and he looked at the cliffs and then he
looked at the schooner again.
Then he asked the Miwok for help and they agreed.
They all went out to the schooner where Alonso weighed anchor while ropes
were fastened to the ship. Then they all got into the canoes and started
paddling, some 100 or more canoes, pulling the ship toward the beach where
a sort of cut made by a stream allowed the ship to ride up close.
Rain began to pelt down at the start of the storm and the ship still
was not entirely out of danger with its keel slurping in the deep mud
now. So Alonso jumped out of his canoe and motioned for everyone to grab
the ropes and pull the ship up higher until its hull would fit snug into
the cut. He grabbed the forward rope and began hauling while all the Miwok
pulled their boats to safety before running off into the night and, presumably
shelter.
He fell down exhausted . . .
So Alonso entirely alone put his great shoulders to tugging the schooner,
with each step gaining a foot, but also digging down with his feet into
the soft bank until he had made himself a groove into the slope. After
hours of this labor he heard the grinding of the hull as it wedged itself
into its natural berth at the stream outlet, whose waters flowed merrily
past the hull to either side. He fell down exhausted into the swampy groove
he had dug for himself and fell asleep.
That night there was a tremendous storm that brought out the sky titans
who rolled thunderballs at one another as gales of rain beat down the
land and stirred the once placid estuary waters into a rage. Had the ship
remained where it had been left, with on mariners on board, it surely
would have been destroyed much as what happened to Cermeno, who came to
this same cove a bit later in history.
In the morning the expedition awoke, fearing the worst, but to their
surprise, they found their ship bobbing safely during high tide at the
mouth of a new river that had previously been only a rivulet.
Alonso was nowhere to be found but they made haste to pull the ship back
from shore and climb aboard. Numerous extra ropes were found lashed to
the ship and trailing idly -- these the men cut loose. One thick hawser
ran deep into the sand where a shallow depression marked a place that
had been recently filled in by the force of the storm.
The men had no idea what had become of Alonso, but they felt that as
expeditions go, they had come out well ahead of some of them and so they
all headed back to Mexico City with their maps and their stories.
The legend of Mighty Alonso grew, and the tale of how he had grabbed
the hawser in his teeth and dragged the ship doing the backstroke across
the estuary got more and more fanciful and how he died fighting off the
terrible Kraken, which they could elaborate because of course they had
left him behind. And some said he did not die on that beach but climbed
up out of his rut there and looked around to find all of his companions
gone and so he had settled among the Coastal Miwok whose ladies taught
him to put aside all of this foolish chastity business -- wussup with
that? -- and so he lived a long life eating oysters and giving the ladies
a good time, which is a much better ending, as all can agree.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
FEBRUARY 1, 2015
COLD ICE AND SNOW
This week's headline comes courtesy of artist Catherine Harris, who spends
most of her time in Atascadero, but who occasionally wanders East for
visits. The native Californian is married to a gentleman from Virginia.
We keep getting notes from acquaintances and family that say things like,
"You make a good choice to live in California! The weather here is
dreadful!"
One earthquake with a fire and all those Bostons crowd down the 101 to
catch the first plan back East, suddenly remembering that weather teaches
humility and forbearance better than any preacher or deacon ever did from
the pulpit.
In any case, the kids decided to get raised here, so we had to stay .
. .
WHAT'S THE NEWS, TELL ME WHAT'S A HAPPENIN'
Most of the music scene is geared toward the Spring Season however there
are a few gems here and there among the plethora of local bands filling
the clubs. Devil Makes Three played the Fox on Saturday. Sergio Mendez
brought Brazilian sounds to Yoshi's mid-week. Rufus Wainright will be
doing Yoshis February 10-11.
Oakland's Uptown District is still going strong with The Parish, Brick
and Mortar, and Leos all presenting local talent.
In a sign of our times and the way the real estate thing is really wrecking
the neighborhoods, iconic island institution Pagano's Hardware will be
moving from the location it has occupied for 65 years. Dave Giovannoli,
current owner of Pagano's, said "We just could not come to terms
on a lease."
The new location will be at the corner of Webster and Central on the
West End. The site was the former home of Blockbuster Video.
Andy Pagano, original founder of the hallmark store, and partner Giovannoli
had an opportunity to purchase the building in 1994, but that plan never
came to fruition, due in part to the death of the senior partner, who
had opened the store in 1950.
On the upside, you no longer have to pay the dump to discard your old
mattresses, nor need you plotz the old cushions into the Bay. DR3 will
actually pay people for old mattresses at its facility at 9921 Medford
Avenue in Oaktown due to a new County waste program seeking to reduce
ugly litter and landfill material.
In other news we have the new City Council getting thoroughly dissed
even though they have not done anything yet. It may be related to the
various developments in progress, many of which appear to be unstoppable
and fait accompli right from the drawing board with the assumption, "well
somebody is going to develop this parcel anyway."
Let it be said each and every project in motion and on the boards has
something really obnoxious about it, whether it be nomenclature, parking,
density, and/or height variances. No matter what they come with there
will something troubling about it, so that itself is a fait accompli.
Why on earth, as we all wring our hands about affordable housing, are
they planning to demolish the affordable housing we do have at the Point
where perfectly decent bungalow apartments have been serving low income
people safely and effectively for years? Because, as the EIR said, "it
is difficut to monetize the existing structures . . .". Yeah, that
is the real reason. Echos of "greed is good" roll across the
decades.
It's not like we do not have historical precedents for bad development
in the Bay Area. Someone recently posted an image of the Bay Area BART
plan, which looked so reasonable and logical when it was devised in 1965.
Had that plan been pursued before the dreadful property booms that began
in the mid 1970's, we would have a sane metropolitan transit system the
equal or superior of other metro areas around the world.
But had sanity ever governed development, the sweet San Bruno hills would
still be sweet refuges for deer and rabbits, San Mateo would not have
ticky-tacky boxes on the hillside, the Geneva Towers would never have
blighted the area for decades until neighbors all cheered as they were
demolished, the Fillmore Pink Palace would never have been painted hideous
pink and San Francisco's downtown would still be San Francisco instead
of a poor imitation of Manhattan.
And more than likely San Franciscans born and raised in San Francisco
would still be living there instead of herds of blithering, condo-dwelling
mouth-breathers bashing into each other with their Google-Glasses.
Why does the height-limit for the "gateway to the island" need
to be raised thirty feet? Because the savages cannot "monitize"
the thing to their satisfaction. To hell with what the people who live
here want.
Don't get us started.
THERE SHALL BE PEACE IN THE VALLEY
This past weekend we bid farewell to Ilona E. Riley, Iola E. Riley was
born in Lake Charles, LA on August 13, 1915 to parents Laura and Harold
Ricks. Iola was baptized at an early age, attended Baptist church and
schools in Lake Charles, LA and Houston, TX, where she graduated high
school. Iola moved to Oakland in the late 1930's and worked various jobs
including Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company where she was employed
for 40 years.
It was at Golden State Mutual where she met and married Harold Jack Riley
who preceded Iola in death. Iola was a lifetime member of the NAACP -
Oakland chapter and was a member at Beth Eden Baptist church in Oakland.
Iola was the last surviving founder of The Church for the Fellowship of
all Peoples founded in 1944, where Iola was on the board, as well as church
treasurer.
It is here we would like to interject just a few comments about why Ms.
Riley, called by many with affection "Aunt Ricky", was a remarkable
Californian. The story is told that she came to California with her mother,
who was such an accomplished seamstress that her dress creations stirred
up murderous envy in the hearts of some people in Lake Charles who did
not like the fact that a Black woman walked around town dressed so well.
Despite this beginning in life, Ms. Riley remained open to all people
of every color, every stripe, and after meeting Bayard Rustin, was inspired
to co-found the first integrated church in the Nation with the eye that
the really important thing is to convey The Word to all men and all women
and that what really mattered was the personal relationship a person had
with the Creator. This in 1944, a time when all the churches, even in
San Francisco, were completely segregated.
Although without child her entire life (she would claim, with some tongue-in-cheek,
that the key to living such a long time was that she never smoked, never
drank, and never had children) she provided a main pillar of support for
the numerous nieces and nephews, some of whom became quite famous in their
own right. Curt Flood, the man credited with completely altering the professional
baseball draft system, was a nephew. Also related by marriage was NFL
Hall of Famer John Henry Johnson, who was part of the Miracle Backfield
for the San Francisco 49'ers after starting with them in 1954.
Dr. Dorsey Blake orchestrated memorial proceedings at Oakland's Chapel
of the Chimes this past Friday, and also delivered a moving eulogy remembering
her extraordinary spirit. Dr. Blake was joined by Dr. Kathryn Benton who
delivered the Sacred Reading and Prayer, both individuals from the church
Ms. Riley had co-founded.
Kevin Marshall delivered a powerful and flawless rendition of "Precious
Lord, Take My Hand" with a segue into "A Closer Walk with Thee."
Iola E. Riley was preceded in death by her parents: Laura and Harold
Ricks, Stepfather, Herman Flood Sr.,brothers: Alvin Ricks, Herman, Carl,
Curtis Flood and sister Barbara Flood Johnson. Iola touched many hearts
and will truly be missed by family and friends. Iola leaves to mourn a
host of nieces, nephews and friends.
I AM TIRED, I AM WEAK, I AM WORN
So anyway, we are hearing about Severe Weather in the East, with people
getting stuck out there due to the tremendous snowstorms causing thousands
of flights to be cancelled, while the reports are that Minnesota is suffering
an unaccustomed period of balmy temperatures.
Something about this report caused us to question this -- not the Eastern
storms, those are real -- but it being Minnesota we did a little check
up and found the current temperature in Minneapolis is 18 degrees, which
certainly is not balmy. And the forecast calls for the unusual climb from
19 to about 36 by the weekend, so this leads us to wonder about the trust
we put in some people. True its not minus 20 or minus 30, which is probably
what people would prefer so as to preserve some sort of self esteem. So
we checked the seasonal average and found the city gets about 13 degrees.
Frankly we are shocked, simply shocked.
Could it be that people in Minneapolis are suffering classic weather
envy syndrome because of those snooty people in Manhattan enjoying blizzards
and howling gales enough to justify their normally bitter dispositions?
We have a resource here in California that could help -- its not like
we are inexperienced with handling disaster, which criteria this seems
to meet. We have thousands of MFT's -- lord a-mercy we are packed up to
the gills with MFTs well versed with treating all sorts of anxiety and
self-image issues and we would be all too happy to ship several hundred
of them up to the Great White North. Hopefully to stay for a good long,
long, long while.
New Yorkers and Bostons don't need any more therapists. They have figured
out a way back East to incorporate therapy into daily lifestyle and conversation
to the point the entire system of affluent mental health acts like an
immense hamster wheel that does nothing really, but does seem to calm
some people down simply by virtue of the routine.
It's getting a little like that here to the point some MFTs give up on
the crowded people field entirely and go become specialists in psychiatric
veterinary medicine.
"The problem with your dog, Mr. Smith, is that Gerald has unresolved
issues surrounding mother. He is going to need quite a long series of
therapy sessions to work out this emotional baggage he has been carrying...".
In any case the way it would play out, our Marriage and Family Therapists
would begin gently with selected Bachelor Farmers sent on referral.
"So Mr. Nordstrom, when exactly did you start to have anxiety about
snow?"
"Aboot a month ago."
"And how do you feel about snow?"
"It's cold. Ya sure, it is cold."
"Does the snow bring back memories for you?"
"O ya sure. Mostly shovelin'".
"Shoveling. And in the past you always did this alone? When did
you first start to shovel snow."
"As a kid. With my dad."
"With your dad! AH HA . . ."!
It may be just about time to talk about Rafael, said Wally. Rafael comes
from on the one side were brothers who worked the Comstock lode after
the gold fields played out, and on the other from the Casias family who
descended from the original Californios who herded cattle in the area
just east of Rancho San Antonio with an original desueno from Eschandia
that they keep still in a glass frame, despite turning out to be as worthless
as a brass nickel after the tidal wave of Americans arrived.
Wally was holding forth in the Old Same Place Bar, getting pretty lubricated
after completing a fuel oil deal with Chiton Manioc and Bowtie Souvlaki
earlier in the Bearflagger Cafe. Wally, himself, had grown up in Antioch
and going to school with the likes of the Mitchell brothers who even back
then had been spitball throwing, back of the class clown jerks before
establishing the O'Farrell adult theatre in Babylon, a place where the
daughters of otherwise decent families went to flip their fingers at family
values and take their clothes off for fun and profit.
Rafael's ancestors, like some, and some say like many, Californians saw
their dreams dash up against the hard granite realities of the way things
just happen to be, calling it bad luck when the gold played out and the
only successful miners at the Comstock turned out to be the big mining
concerns endowed with deep-pocket investors and huge earth-moving equipment
and the men who worked for them.
One branch of the Stockwell family built a small resort near the town
of Brawley, looking to take advantage of a brand new man-made lake down
there, only to watch with wooden eyes as the lake became ever more saline,
more acidic, more poisonous as each year passed, until no one dared bathe
in its toxic waters and any birds who made the mistake of eating its few
fish died quickly by the stinking shoreline.
Now the shutters of the abandoned place swing back and forth in the hot
desert wind and a kind of grit coats the empty dining room tables that
remain and chemical salts encrust the wooden pier pilings of the wharf
that cannot decay for all the stuff dissolved in the water preserves things
past all use.
Rafael grew up in Moraga, which back then was a sleepy rural town where
it was the habit of some to step out the back door so as to bag a deer
to supply the freezer with venison for a few months, Wally said. Some
visitor from the East might be passing by on very rare occasion, and since
Californians have always been raised to be hospitable and share what we
have in abundance, just like the Ohlone and the Miwok used to do, Rafael
would offer up some steaks or lights to take home and the Bostons would
get all bug-eyed at the dripping meat and exclaim, "I can't take
that on the plane!"
Well, to each his own. Deer meat is good meat.
When people from elsewhere think of California, they usually picture
San Francisco, LA, Hollywood, San Diego and all the cosmo coastal towns
where a hare krishna is likely to skateboard past a kid with fluorescent
green hair.
They seldom think about Sunol, Gustine, Calpatria, Ione, or Weed or any
of the dirt farm towns strung out along the 400 mile Valley between Lodi
and Maricopa; God's country where the American Baptist was forged out
of hellfires and damnation spewed from orangecrate pulpits and a homeboy
aint worth nothing until he learns to hop up a Mustang and work sheet
metal. Nobody dreams of being a movie star or a guitar god there -- if
they do, they move away to the coastal metropolis and wind up becoming
aromatherapists in Beverly Hills. And the only gold is in the invasive
European stalks that replaced the evergreen bunchgrass over the past several
hundred years.
In these towns the ghosts of the old patriarchs still rule things with
toughened, weathered pioneer fists, or at least with the intransigent,
flinty attitude their sons carried forward in anger at the civilization
brought here by their fathers, which exfoliated like a cancer all along
the coast and across the interior, bringing people who had never known
want, never fought for what they have, and have yet to know disaster sure
to come. Only a matter of time.
Anybody need some good fuel oil -- I got hella barrels of it coming cheep,
Walley interjected. Got plenty for the regulars and more besides.
What about what you was saying about Rafael? Eugene asked.
I'll get to that, Wally said. I gotta piss. And with that the man wandered
with his beer over to the head which had been signed by Padraic for years
in Gaelic as "Fir". Distaff side was labeled as "Mna"
and generally there were few errors in orientation. Once people got used
to the way things were.
Conversation passed to the weather, which in California meant lack of
rain down below and serious lack of snow up above. Farmers were already
cut back to 38% of allowance, which in other places would have meant death
to the farms. But we had gotten insured to privation and the periodic
drought. Nobody liked it, but there it was. Drought was a fact.
When Wally came out with his beer in hand, someone from Oaktown had come
in during his absence to take the place where he had been sitting and
Suzie had already served up a bump and a glass.
"That's my seat," Wally said.
"I am sitting here," said the man who stood about six two and
weighed from the look of him about 220 pounds.
"That's my seat," Wally said. "Scoot."
The man looked at Wally calmly and calmly said, "Eff off."
"O just give Wally what he wants," someone else said.
"No!" Said someone else. "Wally is being a prize a-hole!"
Denby took his prized Tacoma D-9 that he had been playing in the snug
and put it away safely in its hardshell case.
"You're a pantywaist, sleek otter aren't you?" Wally said.
"Mind if I piss in your arty craft beer to give it some strength,
you female cat you."
"You talk too much," said the man. "Eff off."
"Mind if I ask if your mother was a hooker on San Pablo or a plumber
in Frisco?" Wally said.
"You are valueless. Eff off," said the man.
In answer Wally swung at the man, who anticipating this, knocked Wally's
punch aside with his left and landed a good one with his right on Wally's
forehead.
Things decayed substantially in the bar from that moment. Suzie and Dawn
grabbed all the loose bottles and glasses and hid them away so they could
not be used as weapons as the encounter turned into a savage atavistic
orgy of violence amid breaking chairs and splintered tables.
Pretty soon the sirens and lights of Officers O'Madhauen and Popinjay
came down the street.
O'Madhauen came in with his nightstick drawn and Padraic put away his
shotgun behind the bar.
"You sir, better not be planning to drive a motor vehicle anywhere
within the confines of this municipality!" Office O'Madhauen said
to Wally, who stood there weaving on his feet with one eye half closed
from swelling and blood streaming down his face."Not in that condition!"
"I have not had a drop to drink all night," Wally said and
someone guffawed in the back.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
JANUARY 25, 2015
SHE'S A BRICK HOUSE
Because this structure represents so much of what is about to change
on the island, we thought we would toss in a pic of how the old lady looks
today with her leaf-strewn loading dock and grassy railbed and chainlink
fences all at once. This is the Old Cannery that has seen many uses in
its nearly 100 year history. It began life as a warehouse for the Del
Monte brand and saw life during various world wars as a small arms munitions
factory and transit point. It has been used as a staging point for truck
shipping since the old Beltline railway stopped running past here for
the last 20 years.
Tim Lewis Communities has a plan to convert the place into condos and
offices with some height additions, although they have claimed an intent
to preserve both the brick facade and the loading dock area. In this earthquake-prone
part of the world, brick structures of any type tend to be as rare as
snakes in Ireland, so we have high hopes what results from development
shall be least offensive.
ON AN ISLAND
A few items that surfaced in previous years have returned to occupy the
minds of our citizens. Everyone is wondering about the "mystery gunk"
that is killing shorebirds from Oyster Point to the East Bay and now off
Crown Beach. People should recall there was a massive fuel oil spill off
Oyster Point about a year ago, and it is highly likely that residual chemicals
from that event sank to resurface. Also please remember the Costco Busan
which tore open on the Bay Bridge a while ago. This petroleum stuff just
does not wash away, people.
Now we are hearing about this "gunk" appearing along the Hayward
and San Leandro shorelines. With all the construction and debris happening
along the Bay, together with all the dreck we are dumping into our Bay,
do we have a Silent Spring in operation here?
In a truly sad case reflective of how badly our society handles both
medical care and senior issues, people are talking about the Jerry Canfield
case in which the 72 year old man allegedly placed a vase of roses next
to his wife in bed before shooting her in the head. The man subsequently
went to the police station to turn himself in.
They were married for 37 years. Their neighbors say they were very much
in love.
The stated reason he had killed his wife was that they had made an agreement
previously to end each of their lives should pain become an overwhelming
issue and that she was suffering constant pain. Canfield apparently withdrew
his wife from the nursing home where she had been living to their home
on Clinton Avenue prior to the killing.
Sympathetic neighbors have called this action a "mercy killing",
however there is no provision in California law to address such an act
with such a term. Canfield remains detained at Santa Rita with an offered
$100,000 bond, itself an unusual provision for someone accused of murder.
For the record, there are resources available for caregivers who may
feel overwhelmed. The Family Caregiver Alliance works with people all
over the country, and their representatives will visit your home to see
how to help you best. You can call them at 415-434-3388. Or to visit their
website, click here https://www.caregiver.org/.
In other areas of contention we see a firm, resolved and persistent continuation
of organized renter response to the present rental crisis in which rents
have rising to obscene rates along with nauseating assumptions among some
greedy landlords.
On the upside, some local landowners have perceived the problem and are
working to ameliorate the conditions that threaten to destroy the town
in which they live and own property.
This last part cannot be understated in its importance. If we are going
to preserve anything of the quality of life we have here, renters will
need to work with local landholders to block the effects of landrush greed.
Rent control by itself will not stop this thing, nor will individual good
intentions from the handful of landholders who understand what is going
on.
WHAT'S GOING ON
The Island-Life Holiday CD is now in production and copies soon will
be going out to unsuspecting and innocent recipients. This is the first
CD we are producing which consists entirely of originally orchestrated
work. (cheers and applause). This does not mean it is any good. (Sighs
of dismay). In any case you can expect an unwanted delivery in your mailbox
in March and another obnoxious posting to the youtube channel.
People in foreign countries use this thing to teach people how to speak
English, so you better be careful.
You know if any of you ever bothered to DONATE we maybe could afford
singing lessons.
LOVE FOR SALE
So anyway, now is the time when the gelid light congeals on the morning
floor and everything takes a while to warm up: the the coffee in the pot,
the Ford in the driveway, the house after work, the girl who lives across
the way, your wife, your overcoat. Outside the world looks like a chiaroscuro
drawing of the way things should be, everything harsh stone white and
black and perfectly defined. In places where they have snow, shallow dimples
hold pools of bluish shadow and the robin peck pecks with little to show
for all the trouble.
Near the Island-Life offices the sentinel owl persistently queries anyone
who passes by. In the morning hollowed shells of orange indicate the opossum
has been busy in the citrus tree overnight with his marsupial investigations.
Round about this small island with its trees and fields and small wildlife
the ramparts of the industrial metropolis stand across the Water, with
its glowing backdrop and forefront of smoking chimneys and skyscrapers
that march impudently right up to the edge of the hills where the forested
green stands up through the dense fogs that roll down the slopes with
some quiet persuasion, whispering, "all is not what it seems, you
city man."
Across the Bay, the gleaming jewels of Babylon twinkle in ropes strung
for miles along the peninsula rollercoaster slopes, while even there the
inexorable fog streams and dreams over the humpback hills.
All down Santa Clara and Lincoln the sad castaway Xmas trees have started
to vanish, squirreled away by the local Scout Troop.
In the shadows of Oaktown the Angry Elf gang torches another business
that failed to pay its protection money and runs away gleefully as the
shadows redden with flames.
On the corner of San Pablo and 40th new flesh Amy Holliday who has just
crash landed from Virginia Beach into NorCal stands offering love for
sale in a short skirt and boots. A way to pay for the cost of CSU tuition.
Which just went up.
Officer O'Madhauen sits in his cruiser at the pullout down by the Old
Cannery with the lights off and eyes on the radar, watching for speeders
and red light runners.
The opossum who had briefly lived in the Xmas tree at the Household snarfles
quietly along the Old Fence to the orange tree.
There is a clatter of glasses and chatter in the Old Same Place Bar.
People are talking about the usual news. How the recent rainstorms failed
to dent the water shortage. The current price of gas and oil. The "anchor
out" problem in the Estuary. Will the Fighting Otters finally get
a shot at contending for the championship this year? How can deflating
a football possibly be of advantage to anyone on the field? Are not the
Refs supposed to check the regulation PSI for those things every time
the ball changes hands?
Football is a weird sport to begin with. The Island has hosted any number
of famous pro wrestlers, Jiu jitsu masters of world renown, baseball players
like Willie Stargell, soccer stars, and even a squad of munchkins who
performed with Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz. Well okay, acting is
not exactly a sport, but we sure loved those little guys, most of whom
came from Germany as it should be pretty obvious to everyone that a munchkin
is no way a member of the Master Race and they were all likely fodder
for the terrible cattle cars scheduled for Bergen Belsen.
Beside being cute as the dickens, they were all full of great humor and
extremely foul mouthed, for cursing in a language not your own is always
great fun, and they would march around in circles during filming set breaks,
stamping their feet and singing off color made-up songs, like "Ding
Dong, the Wicked Witch is a nasty B-----!" and "We're Off to
Pee Our Gizzards" and "If I Only Could'a Fart."
So anyway, our only claim to football fame was Jorge "Pincers"
Garcia, a wide receiver who weighed some three hundred and fifty pounds
in high school. He developed significantly more weight during his career
with the Oaktown Raiders to the extent that in those occasions where he
caught the ball he proved to be virtually impossible to tackle without
risk of serious injury to the members of the opposing team.
His shoes had to be specially made in Hong Kong by master shoemakers
who invented a new size, size 25, just to accommodate his own dimensions.
His workout towels were made from Sunfish sails which had their grommets
removed and his protective equipment featured futons sewn into canvas
duvet covers. His helmets were made from the hoods of discarded VW Beetles,
so he was one of the first of that era of leatherhats to get a hard-shelled
piece of headgear.
The inevitable happened and Jorge fell upon the hapless body of an opponent,
crushing him so badly that his mother could barely recognize him.
He was exonerated by the Commission, but felt personally so bad about
what had happened that he gave up football entirely and retired to a mobile
home in Grass Valley, where he lived out his days earning money on odd
jobs, like lifting stray cows out of ravines and pulling tractors free
from bad situations.
There are many extraordinary stories about unusual people in the West,
and you can go crazy listening to all of them, to paraphrase an old acquaintance.
But California is part of the West, as much as we on the Coast sometimes
pretend to believe we are not. We like to think that we are reasonable,
but we are not reasonable at all. No reasonable person would put up with
so much nonsense. Nobody reasonable deals with so much outrage from day
to day.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
JANUARY 17, 2015
LET IT RAIN, LET IT POUR
This week's photo comes from Tammy and is of a leaf during the recent
downpours.
We have not seen much more weather since then, so we will need some might
storms in the next few months to pull us out of a drought.
THIS ISLAND LIFE
Development projects occupied people's attention during the second full
week of the new year. The hurried last minute approval of the Cannery
project passed by the lame duck administration in City Hall could not
be easily overturned without risk of litigation although new council members
did comment that the density bonus failed to incorporate affordable housing
elements and that the City cannot afford to rubber-stamp these bonuses
for every project.
Tim Lewis Communities will build 380 multifamily units on the five acre
site as well as retail space, while preserving the historic brick facade.
They also will pitch in $2 million for improving the Jean Sweeney Park
on land that used to be part of the old Beltline.
In another project, Alameda Point Partners has submitted plans to build
800 condos on the 68 acre parcel between Main and Seaplane lagoon out
at the Point. They also will be building a new ferry terminal at Seaplane
Lagoon, which may possibly alleviate some of the traffic congestion as
locals take the ferry to SF for the daily commute instead of driving.
In answer to who will pay for habitation infrastructure improvements to
land that had been used for military/industrial use, APP promised to run
a sewer line in from the north side. APP will save on some construction
costs by repurposing seven existing buildings for commercial space.
With the Coliseum gentrification `project about to launch across the
estuary, this part of the world is set to change dramatically, and not
necessarily for the better.
In broader area news, Barbara Boxer's announcement of retirement means
that a prime Senatorial slot goes up for grabs. The GOP has glitter in
its collective eyes in the possibility of seizing a senate slot in a key
state of 35 million souls, but the chances of them placing a starchy conservative
in place of Boxer are slim. It is far easier to shoehorn a movie celebrity
into the governor's office than the Senate.
On the GOP side the best options appear to be Neel Kashkari, Kevin Faulconer
and Kevin McCarthy, none of who are especially gifted with pizazz.
On the Democrats short list we have former Insurance Commissioner John
Garamendi, Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Kamala Harris,
former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and a few curiosities who
would be good picks, but don't have the media exposure, as in Jackie Spier.
There is another reason why the GOP is unlikely to capture the seat vacated
by Boxer. KPCC, 89.3, said it best in a recent online article, "Jostling
to replace Barbara Boxer in the Senate shows minority influence."
(http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/01/17/49334/, January 17, 2015)
"When the California Democrat won her first term in 1992, 8 of 10
voters in that election were white. Far more Hispanics and Asian-Americans
call the state home today compared to a generation ago, and her recently
announced exit has revealed a diverse field of potential candidates.
The maneuvering showcases the growing influence of minority voters and
a challenge for the Republican Party, which has struggled for years to
make inroads with many of them.
Attorney General Kamala Harris, the first Democrat to enter the 2016
contest, is the daughter of a black father and an Indian mother. Her possible
rivals include prominent Hispanics, such as Los Angeles Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa and Reps. Loretta Sanchez and Xavier Becerra, and state Treasurer
John Chiang, whose parents came to the U.S. from Taiwan.
"It's a huge sea change in the electorate," says Democratic
consultant Bill Carrick, who notes that only 25 percent of California
voters today were registered in 1992."
In other state matters, assemblyperson Kevin McCarty has introduced legislation
that would establish and independent oversight review of all fatal shootings
by police, which panel is likely to be housed in the state DOJ, pulling
investigative decisions away from local DA offices. It is noted that the
DA's and local police tend to be in bed together on many issues, making
pressing charges difficult.
Governor Jerry Brown released the State $164.7 billion budget this past
week, and presented therein few surprises, albeit many unpleasant features.
Brown's focus is to build the rainy day fund and pay down the existing
debts to the detriment of practically all other services save for the
funding of prisons, which will enjoy a $160 million increase. From health
care to human services to the universities, K-12 schools, and even the
state parks, everyone will feel the pain.
Not included in these figures are the bond measures assigned to accomplish
tasks, such as establish a water reservation system that is supposed to
ease times of drought.
A bit late to take that one one, as it seems the horse has left the barn
long ago, while we rank dead last nationally in school spending per pupil.
In the Live World, we see Rufus Wainwright is coming to Yoshi's for two
nights February 10-11. The Wainwright family is so fabulously talented,
their ova and semen should be banked and distributed around the world,
just to raise the general IQ level of the population.
THERE'S AN EVENING HAZE OVER TOWN, STARLIGHT BESIDE THE CREEK
So anyway. The nights have been chill, with the fog wrapping itself around
everything, seeping deep into the bones of things and people to make the
overtly moderate temperature feel much more frigid than it is. By morning,
everything is damp and the sky is pearl grey until before noon, when the
sun cuts loose and all the birds go off like mad in a tremendous racket,
as if preparing something to come next.
Some say California has no seasons and the people are as mellow as sloths
indolently munching lotus leaves, and that may be true down there in SoCal,
the LaLa Land of the West, but up here in NorCal we track the seasons
by the pogonip, old Ohlone word for that dense bank of moisture that creeps
over the hills like some kind of Tolkein dream. Oaktown hosts the nation's
first bird sanctuary -- bet you did not know that -- and it is out there
on a spit jutting into Lake Merritt. Each year thousands upon thousands
of birds pause there on there journey to and from Canada, Sault St. Marie,
Frontelac, and Bear Lake, Minnesota.
As for the people, NorCal has its snobbery and its intense Bear Flaggers
driving ancient pickup trucks with angry gleams in their eyes, upset about
how they rammed that I580 through the neighborhoods and Manhattanized
Babylon and built the Pink Palace Filmore (Do Dee Do Dee Oh) and pampered
the schoolkids until they can't do their sums or recite the list of Golden
State counties anymore, turning them into lazy day trippers who can't
work without a foo-foo latte in hand and never strung wire or used a posthole
spade, ripped up the railway tracks on the Bay Bridge, and as for that
Golden Gate, they never should have built that bridge. Turned Marin from
a decent blue collar place into some well matriculated yuppified section
of pallid gentry who couldn't tell the difference between a sawsall and
a Peterbilt truck.
No, those people are certainly not mellow. They've watched their world
change from when a family trip to Brennans for cioppino hard by the waterfront
was a big Night Out, a rare treat, to singles bopping into sushi joints
any night of the week.
Martini remembered everyone getting into the Rambler, the car that had
handstraps above the windows because seatbelts had not been mandated yet.
And his father would drive down the winding Route 1 along the steep escarpments
to the working fishing village named Princeton-by-the-Sea. And his mom
and dad would get down to the wharves and they would bargain for a fish
caught that morning. One time his dad bought an entire baby tuna, which
was so large it had to be cut and folded in half to fit in the freezer.
Those fishermen were sturdy men working boats that were barely thirty
to forty feet long, if that, and coming back from beyond the Golden Gate
where a six foot well was considered calm. By the time Martini's family
met up with them at ten am, they were ending up a long ten hour day that
had begun before the dawn.
Martini drove down there on the back of Pahrump's scooter, which took
them hours to do as the little engine could barely labor up to 55 miles
per hour with two people on board. Princeton had turned from a working
village into a place with a Visitor Center and a little mall that hosted
seawrack and t-shirt shops and Taco Bell style restaurants. A friend of
his named Gillespie ran a sort of arty greasy spoon kind of place that
served up battered fish and chips come from the freezer, popcorn shrimp
and the usual breaded calimari, all delivered in cardboard boxes by the
Safeway truck. It had the look and feel of the way it used to be, but
not the soul. There were framed paintings of fishermen on the walls that
looked like they were made to grace the walls of a motel room or a bank.
"Gillespie, what happened here," Martini asked.
"Had to go with the flow, man. Move with the times. And they done
changed." Gillespie said. "Gotta pay the rent that keeps goin'
up and up."
There was still a single wharf where boats that catered to the fine restaurants
in Babylon moored up after a day of fishing that pretty much had not changed
for the fishermen involved, but gone were the fleets of schooners and
dorys that had once congregated in this place. And the younger ones looked
at Martini sort of odd when he asked about buying a fish for the Household.
The older guys understood and so the pair came away at last with a couple
rockfish and flounder. And so the two made their way back up the peninsula
and over to Oaktown and then again to the Island as night dropped its
curtains of mercy and promise for overnight renewal. But Martini resolved
never to return to Princeton-by-the-Sea. The fish in Chinatown were cheaper
anyway.
Winter here in NorCal has something of a sluggish quality that makes
some transplants briefly long for the sharp bite of cold and snow and
the nostalgia of central heating. They only have to hear about the latest
freeze and the latest blizzard in Newton or Buffalo to put aside all those
crafted feelings. In the Old Same Place Bar, the Man from Minot is talking
about walking through minus forty degree temperatures and the terrible
anxiety of those who consider placing their tongues upon the iron pump
handle. God knows why someone would ever want to lick an iron pump handle
at any time of the year, let alone dead winter, but apparently someone
did in the distant past, which story sends shivers down the spines of
many a young child to this day.
One can imagine the terrible helplessness of that curious boy, stuck
on that pump handle until he either expired or, god forbid the thought,
someone found him and the fire department all came and the entire school
grade to watch as they cut him loose . . .
Aaaaaaaarrrgh!
We have iron pump handles in the Sierra and no one has any recollection
of anyone having a pump handle fetish, so we have to wonder if different
localities possess different bugbears of a unique type. There may be something
about Midwesterners that causes a fascination with licking dirty old pump
handles. Heavens to Betsy, Californians pay big bucks to dine on raw fish
and call it a delicacy, and nobody else features things in great numbers
like Aromatherapy, so go figure. Everyone enjoys their peculiar madness.
"Now I want to tell you about the time the horses broke loose from
the stable and ran into the river, which was so cold that every single
horse froze in place before getting over to the other side," the
Man from Minot said. "This took place only a few miles north of Minot,
and the horses remained frozen there in place all winter long and people
took winter picnics out there among the herd just to see them. It is all
true, I swear."
And all who sat there in that bar were amazed at the extraordinary tale
of a cold so cold it froze an entire herd of horses.
"I know one thing," Eugene Gallipagus said. "I aint puttin'
my tongue on no iron pump handle. Not now and not ever. Earthquakes are
a better bet by far."
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
JANUARY 11, 2015
UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS
This week we welcome the New Year with a shot by Tammy of the Island
Marina looking toward Oaktown.
The sea is calm, the way is clear to depart and so lets go on a voyage!
PEOPLE WHO DIED, DIED
We won't go into detail but here's a handful of beloved -- and detested
-- and simply odd people who passed away in 2014.
Phil Everly - singer, musician
Ariel Sharon - Israeli soldier, politician
Hiroo Hinoda - soldier, die-hard
Pete Seeger - musician, activist, humanitarian
Maxmillian Schell - actor
Philip Seymour Hoffman - actor
Amiri baraka - poet
Fred Phelps - religious demigogue, hatemonger
Gabo Marquez - seminal author
Rubin Carter - heavyweight boxer contender, wrongfully convicted of murder
Bobby Womack - R&B singer, songwriter, R&R Hall of Fame
Eli Wallach - Actor
Paul Mazursky - scriptwriter
Johnny Winter - blues musician
Baby Doc Duvalier - hated dictator
Ian Paisley - peace worker for ireland
Joan Rivers - comedian
Ben Bradley - Editor, Washington Post
Galway Kinnell - poet
Jimmy Ruffin - soul singer
Mike Nichols - film director
Mario Cuomo - NY governor
Shirley Temple - Beloved child star and diplomat
Joe Cocker - 1960's folk singer, song writer
Robin Williams - great-hearted and beloved comedian and actor
Ruby Dee - actress, screenwriter, poet, playwright, civil rights activist
Louis Zamperini - Writer, Track and Field Athlete, WWII POW survivor
Most people know of Ariel Sharon as "the bulldozer" for his
tough, inflexible political and military service to the state of Israel
over a span of fifty years.
The Israeli statesman was a national war hero to many Israelis for his
leadership, both in uniform or as a civilian, during every Israeli war.
Many in the Arab world called Sharon "the Butcher of Beirut"
after he oversaw Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon while serving as defense
minister.
He was a major figure in many defining events in the Middle East for
decades, including his decision to turn over Gaza and parts of the West
Bank to Palestinian control.
During the Lebanon war in 1982, Sharon, a former army general then serving
as Israeli defense minister, was held indirectly responsible by an Israeli
inquiry in 1983 for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians at the Sabra
and Shatila refugee camps. He was forced to resign.
Sharon, who lived on a ranch in the Negev Desert, became Israel's 11th
prime minister on March 7, 2001.
He was the man who encouraged Israelis to establish settlements on occupied
Palestinian land, but he also was the leader who pushed for Israel's historic
2005 withdrawal from 25 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, which was
turned over to Palestinian rule for the first time in 38 years.
Sharon formed the centrist Kadima in an effort to build political support
for his controversial plan to turn over Gaza and parts of the West Bank
to Palestinian control.
As waves of suicide bombings by militants rocked Israel, Sharon sent
tanks and troops into Palestinian towns, ordering assassinations of Palestinian
militant leaders.
Sharon ordered construction of the barrier through the West Bank and
confined then-Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat, whom he called "a
terrorist," to his compound in Ramallah, accusing him of encouraging
attacks on Israel.
This veteran of all of Israel's wars was a national hero to many.
In 1953, after a wave of terrorist attacks from Jordan, Sharon the military
leader led the infamous Unit 101 on a raid into the border town of Kibya,
blowing up 45 houses and killing 69 Arab villagers. Sharon said he thought
the houses were empty.
In June 1967, as a general, Sharon led his tank battalion to a crushing
victory over the Egyptians in the Sinai during the Six Day War.
But what he considered his greatest military success came in 1973 during
the Yom Kippur War. He surrounded Egypt's Third Army and, defying orders,
led 200 tanks and 5,000 men over the Suez Canal, a turning point in the
war.
As defense minister, Sharon was the architect of Israel's invasion of
Lebanon, an occupation meant to stop the Palestine Liberation Organization
from using Lebanon as a base for attacks on Israel. The attack was disastrous.
After the Sabra and Shatila massacre, he allowed Israeli families to
settle in occupied Palestinian land, the same land Palestinians claimed
as a future state.
As a result of the inquiry, however, Sharon was forced to stand down
and was banned from ever being defense minister again.
His political comeback in the 1990s when he became party leader, came
to an abrupt end when he visited the holiest site for Jews, the Temple
Mount in Jerusalem -- known to Muslims as Haram al Sharif, "The Noble
Sanctuary." The stop sparked violent protests. The incident prompted
the second Intifada -- the Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule --
that began in September of that year.
The name Hiroo Onoda is likely to pass into the obscurity of history
books. Few know the name of this fascinating individual even today, but
his official surrender effectively ended the last hostile activities of
WWII.
In 1974.
In 1944, Onoda was sent to the small island of Lubang in the western
Philippines to spy on U.S. forces in the area. Allied forces defeated
the Japanese imperial army in the Philippines in the latter stages of
the war, but Onoda, a lieutenant, evaded capture. While most of the Japanese
troops on the island withdrew or surrendered in the face of oncoming American
forces, Onoda and a few fellow holdouts hid in the jungles, dismissing
messages saying the war was over.
For 29 years, he survived on food gathered from the jungle or stolen
from local farmers.
After losing his comrades to various circumstances, Onoda was eventually
persuaded to come out of hiding in 1974.
His former commanding officer traveled to Lubang to see him and tell
him he was released from his military duties.
In his battered old army uniform, Onoda handed over his sword, nearly
30 years after Japan surrendered..
"Every Japanese soldier was prepared for death, but as an intelligence
officer I was ordered to conduct guerrilla warfare and not to die,"
Onoda told CNN affiliate, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "I
had to follow my orders as I was a soldier."
He returned to Japan, where he received a hero's welcome, a figure from
a different era emerging into postwar modernity.
But anger remained in the Philippines, where he was blamed for multiple
killings.
The Philippines government pardoned him. But when he returned to Lubang
in 1996, relatives of people he was accused of killing gathered to demand
compensation.
After his return to Japan, he moved to Brazil in 1975 and set up a cattle
ranch.
"Japan's philosophy and ideas changed dramatically after World War
II," Onoda told ABC. "That philosophy clashed with mine so I
went to live in Brazil."
In 1984, he set up an organization, Onoda Shizenjyuku, to train young
Japanese in the survival and camping skills he had acquired during his
decades in Lubang's jungles.
His adventures are detailed in his book "No Surrender: My Thirty-year
War." The Japan Times excerpted some of the book's highlights in
2007.
Here is a sample:
-- "Men should never compete with women. If they do, the guys will
always lose. That is because women have a lot more endurance. My mother
said that, and she was so right."
-- "Life is not fair and people are not equal. Some people eat better
than others."
-- "Once you have burned your tongue on hot miso soup, you even
blow on the cold sushi. This is how the Japanese government now behaves
toward the U.S. and other nations."
Pete Seeger belongs to the category of man they just do not make any more,
and it is highly unlikely we will ever see his like again. With his lanky
frame, use-worn banjo and full white beard, Seeger was an iconic figure
in folk music who outlived his peers. He performed with the great minstrel
Woody Guthrie in his younger days and wrote or co-wrote "If I Had
a Hammer," ''Turn, Turn, Turn," ''Where Have All the Flowers
Gone" and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine." He lent his voice
against Hitler and nuclear power. A cheerful warrior, he typically delivered
his broadsides with an affable air and his fingers poised over the strings
of his banjo.
In 2011, he walked nearly 2 miles with hundreds of protesters swirling
around him holding signs and guitars, later admitting the attention embarrassed
him. But with a simple gesture extending his friendship
Seeger gave the protesters and even their opponents a moment of brotherhood
the short-lived Occupy movement sorely needed.
When a policeman approached, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger said at the time he
feared his grandfather would be hassled.
"He reached out and shook my hand and said, 'Thank you, thank you,
this is beautiful,'" Rodriguez-Seeger said. "That really did
it for me. The cops recognized what we were about. They wanted to help
our march. They actually wanted to protect our march because they saw
something beautiful. It's very hard to be anti-something beautiful."
That was a message Seeger spread his entire life.
With The Weavers, a quartet organized in 1948, Seeger helped set the
stage for a national folk revival. The group Seeger, Lee Hays,
Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman churned out hit recordings of
"Goodnight Irene," ''Tzena, Tzena" and "On Top of
Old Smokey."
Seeger also was credited with popularizing "We Shall Overcome,"
which he printed in his publication "People's Song" in 1948.
He later said his only contribution to the anthem of the civil rights
movement was changing the second word from "will" to "shall,"
which he said "opens up the mouth better."
"Every kid who ever sat around a campfire singing an old song is
indebted in some way to Pete Seeger," Arlo Guthrie once said.
His musical career was always braided tightly with his political activism,
in which he advocated for causes ranging from civil rights to the cleanup
of his beloved Hudson River. Seeger said he left the Communist Party around
1950 and later renounced it. But the association dogged him for years.
He was kept off commercial television for more than a decade after tangling
with the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955. Repeatedly pressed
by the committee to reveal whether he had sung for Communists, Seeger
responded sharply: "I love my country very dearly, and I greatly
resent this implication that some of the places that I have sung and some
of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they
are religious or philosophical, or I might be a vegetarian, make me any
less of an American."
He was charged with contempt of Congress, but the sentence was overturned
on appeal.
Seeger called the 1950s, years when he was denied broadcast exposure,
the high point of his career. He was on the road touring college campuses,
spreading the music he, Guthrie, Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter
and others had created or preserved.
"The most important job I did was go from college to college to
college to college, one after the other, usually small ones," he
told The Associated Press in 2006. " ... And I showed the kids there's
a lot of great music in this country they never played on the radio."
His scheduled return to commercial network television on the highly rated
Smothers Brothers variety show in 1967 was hailed as a nail in the coffin
of the blacklist. But CBS cut out his Vietnam protest song, "Waist
Deep in the Big Muddy," and Seeger accused the network of censorship.
He finally got to sing it five months later in a stirring return appearance,
although one station, in Detroit, cut the song's last stanza: "Now
every time I read the papers/That old feelin' comes on/We're waist deep
in the Big Muddy/And the big fool says to push on."
Seeger's output included dozens of albums and single records for adults
and children.
He appeared in the movies "To Hear My Banjo Play" in 1946 and
"Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon" in 1970. A reunion concert
of the original Weavers in 1980 was filmed as a documentary titled "Wasn't
That a Time."
By the 1990s, no longer a party member but still styling himself a communist
with a small C, Seeger was heaped with national honors.
Official Washington sang along the audience must sing was the
rule at a Seeger concert when it lionized him at the Kennedy Center
in 1994. President Bill Clinton hailed him as "an inconvenient artist
who dared to sing things as he saw them."
President Barack Obama on Tuesday said Seeger used his voice to strike
blows for worker's and civil rights, world peace, and environmental conservation.
Seeger was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 as an
early influence. Ten years later, Bruce Springsteen honored him with "We
Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions," a rollicking reinterpretation
of songs sung by Seeger. While pleased with the album, Seeger said he
wished it was "more serious." A 2009 concert at Madison Square
Garden to mark Seeger's 90th birthday featured Springsteen, Dave Matthews,
Eddie Vedder and Emmylou Harris among the performers.
Seeger was a 2014 Grammy Awards nominee in the Best Spoken Word category,
which Stephen Colbert won.
Seeger's sometimes ambivalent relationship with rock was most famously
on display when Dylan "went electric" at the 1965 Newport Folk
Festival.
Witnesses say Seeger became furious backstage as the amped-up band played,
though just how furious is debated. Seeger dismissed the legendary tale
that he looked for an ax to cut Dylan's sound cable, and said his objection
was not to the type of music but only that the guitar mix was so loud
you couldn't hear Dylan's words.
Seeger maintained his reedy 6-foot-2 frame into old age, though he wore
a hearing aid and conceded that his voice was pretty much shot. He relied
on his audiences to make up for his diminished voice, feeding his listeners
the lines and letting them sing out.
"I can't sing much," he said. "I used to sing high and
low. Now I have a growl somewhere in between."
Nonetheless, in 1997 he won a Grammy for best traditional folk album,
"Pete."
Seeger was born in New York City on May 3, 1919, into an artistic family
whose roots traced to religious dissenters of colonial America. His mother,
Constance, played violin and taught; his father, Charles, a musicologist,
was a consultant to the Resettlement Administration, which gave artists
work during the Depression. His uncle Alan Seeger, the poet, wrote "I
Have a Rendezvous With Death."
Pete Seeger said he fell in love with folk music when he was 16, at a
music festival in North Carolina in 1935. His half brother, Mike Seeger,
and half sister, Peggy Seeger, also became noted performers.
He learned the five-string banjo, an instrument he rescued from obscurity
and played the rest of his life in a long-necked version of his own design.
On the skin of Seeger's banjo was the phrase, "This machine surrounds
hate and forces it to surrender" a nod to his old pal Guthrie,
who emblazoned his guitar with "This machine kills fascists."
Dropping out of Harvard in 1938 after two years as a disillusioned sociology
major, he hit the road, picking up folk tunes as he hitchhiked or hopped
freights.
"The sociology professor said, 'Don't think that you can change
the world. The only thing you can do is study it,'" Seeger said in
October 2011.
In 1940, with Guthrie and others, he was part of the Almanac Singers
and performed benefits for disaster relief and other causes.
He and Guthrie also toured migrant camps and union halls. He sang on
overseas radio broadcasts for the Office of War Information early in World
War II. In the Army, he spent 3½ years in Special Services, entertaining
soldiers in the South Pacific, and made corporal.
He married Toshi Seeger on July 20, 1943. The couple built their cabin
in Beacon after World War II and stayed on the high spot of land by the
Hudson River for the rest of their lives together. The couple raised three
children. Toshi Seeger died in July at age 91.
The Hudson River was a particular concern of Seeger's. He took the sloop
Clearwater, built by volunteers in 1969, up and down the Hudson, singing
to raise money to clean the water and fight polluters.
He also offered his voice in opposition to racism and the death penalty.
He got himself jailed for five days for blocking traffic in Albany in
1988 in support of Tawana Brawley, a black teenager whose claim of having
been raped by white men was later discredited. He continued to take part
in peace protests during the war in Iraq, and he continued to lend his
name to causes.
"Can't prove a damn thing, but I look upon myself as old grandpa,"
Seeger told the AP in 2008 when asked to reflect on his legacy. "There's
not dozens of people now doing what I try to do, not hundreds, but literally
thousands. ... The idea of using music to try to get the world together
is now all over the place."
At the height of his career, boxer Rubin Carter was twice wrongly convicted
of a triple murder and was imprisoned for nearly two decades. He was exonerated
in 1985 and became an activist for the wrongly convicted.
In 1957, Carter was arrested, this time for purse snatching; he spent
four years in Trenton State, a maximum-security prison, for that crime.
After his release, he channeled his considerable anger, towards his situation
and that of Paterson's African-American community, into his boxing --
he turned pro in 1961 and began a startling four-fight winning streak,
including two knockouts.
For his lightning-fast fists, Carter soon earned the nickname "Hurricane"
and became one of the top contenders for the world middleweight crown.
In December 1963, in a non-title bout, he beat then-welterweight world
champion Emile Griffith in a first round KO. Although he lost his one
shot at the title, in a 15-round split decision to reigning champion Joey
Giardello in December 1964, he was widely regarded as a good bet to win
his next title bout.
Carter was training for his next shot at the world middleweight title
(against champion Dick Tiger) in October 1966 when he was arrested for
the June 17 triple murder of three patrons at the Lafayette Bar &
Grill in Paterson. Carter and John Artis had been arrested on the night
of the crime because they fit an eyewitness description of the killers
("two Negroes in a white car"), but they had been cleared by
a grand jury when the one surviving victim failed to identify them as
the gunmen.
Now, the state had produced two eyewitnesses, Alfred Bello and Arthur
D. Bradley, who had made positive identifications. During the trial that
followed, the prosecution produced little to no evidence linking Carter
and Artis to the crime, a shaky motive (racially-motivated retaliation
for the murder of a black tavern owner by a white man in Paterson hours
before), and the only two eyewitnesses were petty criminals involved in
a burglary (who were later revealed to have received money and reduced
sentences in exchange for their testimony). Nevertheless, on June 29,
1967, Carter and Artis were convicted of triple murder and sentenced to
three life prison terms.
While incarcerated at Trenton State and Rahway State prisons, Carter
continued to maintain his innocence by defying the authority of the prison
guards, refusing to wear an inmate's uniform, and becoming a recluse in
his cell. He read and studied extensively, and in 1974 published his autobiography,
The 16th Round: From Number 1 Contender to Number 45472, to widespread
acclaim.
The story of his plight attracted the attention and support of many luminaries,
including Bob Dylan, who visited Carter in prison, wrote the song "Hurricane"
(included on his 1976 album, Desire), and played it at every stop of his
Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Prizefighter Muhammad Ali also joined the
fight to free Carter, along with leading figures in liberal politics,
civil rights and entertainment.
In late 1974, Bello and Bradley both separately recanted their testimony,
revealing that they had lied in order to receive sympathetic treatment
from the police. Two years later, after an incriminating tape of a police
interview with Bello and Bradley surfaced and The New York Times ran an
exposé about the case, the New Jersey State Supreme Court ruled
7-0 to overturn Carter's and Artis's convictions. The two men were released
on bail, but remained free for only six months -- they were convicted
once more at a second trial in the fall of 1976, during which Bello again
reversed his testimony.
Artis (who had refused a 1974 offer by police to release him if he fingered
Carter as the gunman) was a model prisoner who was released on parole
in 1981. Although lawyers for Carter continued the struggle, the New Jersey
State Supreme Court rejected their appeal for a third trial in the fall
of 1982, affirming the convictions by a 4-3 decision.
Inside the prison walls, Carter had long since recognized his need to
resign himself to the reality of his situation. He spent his time reading
and studying, and had little contact with others. During his first 10
years in prison, his wife, Mae Thelma, stopped coming to see him at his
own insistence; the couple, who had a son and a daughter, divorced in
1984.
Beginning in 1980, Carter developed a relationship with Lesra Martin,
a teenager from a Brooklyn ghetto who had read his autobiography and initiated
a correspondence. Martin was living with a group of Canadians who had
formed an entrepreneurial commune and had taken on the responsibilities
for his education. Before long, Martin's benefactors, most notably Sam
Chaiton, Terry Swinton, and Lisa Peters, developed a strong bond with
Carter and began to work for his release.
Their efforts intensified after the summer of 1983, when they began to
work in New York with Carter's legal defense team, including lawyers Myron
Beldock and Lewis Steel and constitutional scholar Leon Friedman, to seek
a writ of habeas corpus from U.S. District Court Judge H. Lee Sarokin.
Life After Prison
On November 7, 1985, Sarokin handed down his decision to free Carter,
stating that "The extensive record clearly demonstrates that [the]
petitioners' convictions were predicated upon an appeal to racism rather
than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure." The state continued
to appeal Sarokin's decision -- all the way to the United States Supreme
Court -- until February 1988, when a Passaic County (NJ) state judge formally
dismissed the 1966 indictments of Carter and Artis and finally ended the
22-year long saga.
The former prizefighter, who was given an honorary championship title
belt in 1993 by the World Boxing Council, served as director of the Association
in Defense of the Wrongfully Convicted, headquartered in his house in
Toronto. He also served as a member of the board of directors of the Southern
Center for Human Rights in Atlanta and the Alliance for Prison Justice
in Boston.
In 2004, Carter founded the advocacy group Innocence International, and
often lectured about seeking justice for the wrongly convicted. In February
2014, while battling prostate cancer, Carter called for the exoneration
of David McCallum, a Brooklyn man who was convicted of kidnapping and
murder and had been imprisoned since 1985. In an op-ed article in the
The Daily News, published on February 21, 2014 and entitled Hurricane
Carter's Dying Wish, Carter wrote about McCallum's case and his own life
: If I find a heaven after this life, Ill be quite surprised.
In my own years on this planet, though, I lived in hell for the first
49 years, and have been in heaven for the past 28 years. . .To live in
a world where truth matters and justice, however late, really happens,
that world would be heaven enough for us all.
Ruby Dee was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter, activist,
poet and journalist, perhaps best known for starring in the 1961 film
A Raisin in the Sun. She's also known for her civic work with husband
Ossie Davis.
quotes
The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes
from within: strength, courage, dignity.
Ruby Dee
Born in Ohio in 1922, actress Ruby Dee grew up in Harlem and joined the
American Negro Theatre in 1941. She is well known for collaborations with
her husband, actor Ossie Davis. Dee's film career spans a generation and
includes 1950's The Jackie Robinson Story, 1961's A Raisin in the Sun
and 1988's Do the Right Thing. In 2008, Dee received her first Oscar nomination
for playing Mama Lucas in the hit film American Gangster.
Dee and Davis were well-known civil rights activists.[19] Dee was a member
of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the NAACP, the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee, Delta Sigma Theta sorority and the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference. In 1963, Dee emceed the March on Washington for
Jobs and Freedom. Dee and Davis were both personal friends of both Martin
Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, with Davis giving the eulogy at Malcolm
X's funeral in 1965. In 1970, she won the Frederick Douglass Award from
the New York Urban League.
In 1999, Dee and Davis were arrested at 1 Police Plaza, the headquarters
of the New York Police Department, protesting the police shooting of Amadou
Diallo.
In early 2003, The Nation published "Not In My Name", an open
proclamation vowing opposition to the impending US invasion of Iraq. Ruby
Dee and Ossie Davis were among the signatories, along with Robert Altman,
Noam Chomsky, Susan Sarandon and Howard Zinn, among others.
In November 2005 Dee was awarded along with her late husband
the Lifetime Achievement Freedom Award, presented by the National Civil
Rights Museum located in Memphis. Dee, a long-time resident of New Rochelle,
New York, was inducted into the New Rochelle Walk of Fame which honors
the most notable residents from throughout the community's 325 year history.
She was also inducted into the Westchester County Women's Hall of Fame
on March 30, 2007, joining such other honorees as Hillary Rodham Clinton
and Nita Lowey. In 2009 she received an Honorary Degree from Princeton
University.
You will not find the name of Fred Phelps on any media lists of people
who died, and for good reason. Mr. Phelps was arguably one of the most
detested Americans to have afflicted our country since Benedict Arnold,
for he was a self-styled preacher and he preached only one thing: hatred.
Fred Waldron Phelps, Sr. (November 13, 1929 March 19, 2014) was
an American pastor who headed the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), an independent
Baptist church based in Topeka, Kansas. Phelps attained notoriety primarily
from his vehemently anti-gay activism and his picketing of funerals of
homosexuals and soldiers.
Phelps' claim to ministry stems from a 1954 appointment as Assistant
Pastor to Eastside Baptist Church. Phelps promptly established the Westboro
Church and broke all ties with any formalized Baptist organization in
1955.
Phelps was a disbarred lawyer, founder of the Phelps Chartered law firm,
and a former civil rights activist. He sought public office four times
as a member of the Democratic Party. In the election for United States
Senator for Kansas in 1992, he received 49,416 votes (30.8%), coming in
second after Gloria O'Dell (who subsequently lost to later presidential
candidate Bob Dole).
Phelps and his followers frequently picketed various events, such as
military funerals, gay pride gatherings, high-profile political gatherings,
university commencement ceremonies, performances of The Laramie Project,
and mainstream Christian gatherings and concerts with which he had no
affiliation, arguing it was their sacred duty to warn others of God's
anger. This led a group of motorcycle riders to form the Patriot Guard
Riders to provide a nonviolent, volunteer buffer between the protesters
and mourners.
An examination of his behavior, starting with the actions that led to
his disbarrment prior to this obnoxious picketing presents a portrait
of horrid man who truly remained unredeemable in all facets of life.
A formal complaint was filed against Phelps on November 8, 1977, by the
Kansas State Board of Law Examiners for his conduct during a lawsuit against
a court reporter named Carolene Brady. Brady had failed to have a court
transcript ready for Phelps on the day he asked for it; though it did
not affect the outcome of the case for which Phelps had requested the
transcript, Phelps still requested $22,000 in damages from her. In the
ensuing trial, Phelps called Brady to the stand, declared her a hostile
witness, and then cross-examined her for nearly a week, during which he
accused her of being a "slut", tried to introduce testimony
from former boyfriends whom Phelps wanted to subpoena, and accused her
of a variety of perverse sexual acts, ultimately reducing her to tears
on the stand. Phelps lost the case.
According to the Kansas Supreme Court:
"The trial became an exhibition of a personal vendetta by Phelps
against Carolene Brady. His examination was replete with repetition, badgering,
innuendo, belligerence, irrelevant and immaterial matter, evidencing only
a desire to hurt and destroy the defendant. The jury verdict didn't stop
the onslaught of Phelps. He was not satisfied with the hurt, pain, and
damage he had visited on Carolene Brady."
In an appeal, Phelps prepared affidavits swearing to the court that he
had eight witnesses whose testimony would convince the court to rule in
his favor. Brady, in turn, obtained sworn, signed affidavits from the
eight people in question, all of whom said that Phelps had never contacted
them and that they had no reason to testify against Brady. Phelps was
found to have made "false statements in violation of DR 7102(A)(5)".
On July 20, 1979, Phelps was permanently disbarred from practicing law
in the state of Kansas, though he continued to practice in Federal courts.
In 1985, nine Federal judges filed a disciplinary complaint against Phelps
and five of his children, alleging false accusations against the judges.
In 1989, the complaint was settled; Phelps agreed to stop practicing law
in Federal court permanently, and two of his children were suspended for
periods of six months, and one year, respectively.
Nathan Phelps, Fred Phelps' estranged son, claims he never had a relationship
with his abusive father when he was growing up, and that the Westboro
Baptist Church is an organization for his father to "vent his rage
and anger." He alleges that, in addition to hurting others, his father
used to physically abuse his wife and children by beating them with his
fists and with the handle of a mattock to the point of bleeding. Phelps'
brother Mark has supported and repeated Nathan's claims of physical abuse
by their father. Since 2004, over 20 members of the church, mostly family
members, have left the church and his family.
Although claiming to be religious and once an associate of Billy Graham,
Phelps considered Billy Graham the greatest false prophet since Balaam,
and also condemned large church leaders such as Robert Schuller and Jerry
Falwell, in addition to all current Catholics.
In 1997 Phelps wrote a letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, praising
his regime for being "the only Muslim state that allows the Gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ to be freely and openly preached on the streets."[80]
Furthermore, he stated that he would like to send a delegation to Baghdad
to "preach the Gospel" for one week. Saddam granted permission,
and a group of WBC congregants traveled to Iraq to protest against the
U.S. The WBC members stood on the streets of Baghdad holding signs condemning
both Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as anal sex.
The habit of upsetting mourners at military funerals with signs like
"Your son deserved to die!" has resulted in the federal government
and several states enacting legislation to protect funeral services. On
May 24, 2006, the United States House and Senate passed the Respect for
America's Fallen Heroes Act, which President George W. Bush signed five
days later. The act bans protests within 300 feet (91 m) of national cemeteries
which numbered 122 when the bill was signed from an hour
before a funeral to an hour after it. Violators face up to a $100,000
fine and up to a year in prison.
On August 6, 2012, President Obama signed Pub.L. 112154, the Honoring
America's Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012 which,
among other things, requires a 300-foot (91 m) and 2-hour buffer zone
around military funerals.
As of April 2006, nine states had passed laws regarding protests near
funeral sites immediately before and after ceremonies
Ironically, as Phelps lay dying, his own church reportedly excommunicated
him because he spoke with the members of Equality House across the road
from the church, which was regarded as "rank blasphemy" by the
WBC.
Because the Calvinist WBC does not engage in any sort of celebration
of any kind, there was no funeral.
Maya Angelou - born Marguerite Ann Johnson; April 4, 1928 May
28, 2014) was an American author and poet. She published seven autobiographies,
three books of essays, and several books of poetry, and is credited with
a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning more than fifty
years. She received dozens of awards and over thirty honorary doctoral
degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies,
which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age
of seventeen, and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
She became a poet and writer after a series of occupations as a young
adult, including fry cook, prostitute, nightclub dancer and performer,
cast-member of the opera Porgy and Bess, coordinator for the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during
the days of decolonization. She was an actor, writer, director, and producer
of plays, movies, and public television programs. Since 1982, she taught
at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she
held the first lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies. She
was active in the Civil Rights movement, and worked with Martin Luther
King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Since the 1990s she made around eighty appearances
a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties.
In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning"
at President Bill Clinton's inauguration, the first poet to make an inaugural
recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.
Her early life includes a Bay Area connection, but hardly proved auspicious
for someone who would later charm Presidents and the World.
At the age of eight, while living with her mother, Angelou was sexually
abused and raped by her mother's boyfriend, a man named Freeman. She told
her brother, who told the rest of their family. Freeman was found guilty
but was jailed for only one day. Four days after his release, he was murdered,
probably by Angelou's uncles. Angelou became mute for almost five years,
believing, as she stated, "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed
that man, because I told his name. And then I thought I would never speak
again, because my voice would kill anyone ..." According to Marcia
Ann Gillespie and her colleagues, who wrote a biography about Angelou,
it was during this period of silence when Angelou developed her extraordinary
memory, her love for books and literature, and her ability to listen and
observe the world around her.
Shortly after Freeman's murder, Angelou and her brother were sent back
to their grandmother. Angelou credits a teacher and friend of her family,
Mrs. Bertha Flowers, with helping her speak again. Flowers introduced
her to authors such as Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan
Poe, Douglas Johnson, and James Weldon Johnson, authors that would affect
her life and career, as well as black female artists like Frances Harper,
Anne Spencer, and Jessie Fauset. When Angelou was 14, she and her brother
moved in with their mother once again; she had since moved to Oakland,
California. During World War II, she attended George Washington High School
while studying dance and drama on a scholarship at the California Labor
School. Before graduating, she worked as the first black female streetcar
conductor in San Francisco. Three weeks after completing school, at the
age of 17, she gave birth to her son, Clyde (who later changed his name
to Guy Johnson).
She experienced a great number of personal adventures in the Bay Area,
but it was not until novelist James O. Killens recommended in 1959 she
move to New York to focus on her writing career that her life began to
take shape on an upwards momentum. After hearing Martin Luther King, Jr.
speak, and meeting him personally in 1960, she and Killens organized "the
legendary" Cabaret for Freedom to benefit the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC), and she was named SCLC's Northern Coordinator.
After meeting South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make, she moved to
Cairo, and then to Accra in Ghana, where she lived until 1965, returning
to the US to help Malcolm X build a new civil rights organization, the
Organization of Afro-American Unity; he was assassinated shortly afterward.
She returned to New York in 1967 and there renewed her friendship with
James Baldwin.
Martin Luther King asked Angelou to organize a march, but circumstances
intervened and the great man was assassinated on her 40th birthday (April
4).
In 1968, inspired at a dinner party she attended with Baldwin, cartoonist
Jules Feiffer, and his wife Judy, and challenged by Random House editor
Robert Loomis, she wrote her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings, published in 1969, which brought her international recognition
and acclaim. This lead to an extraordinary 10 year prolific output of
original composed music, articles, short stories, TV scripts, autobiographies,
poetry, plays, acting jobs that garnered at least one Tony Award (1973,
Look Away), and a supporting role in the television mini-series Roots.
She was given a multitude of awards during this period, including over
thirty honorary degrees from colleges and universities from all over the
world.
I make writing as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening
to music.
Maya Angelou, 1999
I also wear a hat or a very tightly pulled head tie when I write. I suppose
I hope by doing that I will keep my brains from seeping out of my scalp
and running in great gray blobs down my neck, into my ears, and over my
face.
Maya Angelou, 1984
Nothing so frightens me as writing, but nothing so satisfies me. It's
like a swimmer in the [English] Channel: you face the stingrays and waves
and cold and grease, and finally you reach the other shore, and you put
your foot on the groundAaaahhhh!
Maya Angelou, 1989
All my work, my life, everything I do is about survival, not just bare,
awful, plodding survival, but survival with grace and faith. While one
may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.
Maya Angelou
ON AN ISLAND
Crews are still cleaning up after the big windstorm that knocked down
dozens of trees all over the Island. The golf course alone lost some 31
stand of timber and some yards are filled with ten foot high stacks of
cut logs that once had been proud shadetrees.
The new Council is in office and already there is bickering about the
new development projects, with attention on the proposed Boatworks area
and the old brick Cannery, which some want to repeal. There is also a
curious event going on at 1207 Union where the owner wants to build out
the duplex into a fourplex, which has the neighbors hopping mad.
As for what's going on in the living world, check out the year's updated
Calendar in the sidebar. KPFA has some sweet stuff lined up. So does KQED.
MOON RIVER
So anyway, its been chilly but not cold, not cold in the way some of
you may have experienced.
We had a storm, a really big one that knocked the oranges from the tree,
but we don't have schooldays when all the schools are closed. Relatives
up in Winnipeg say the school never closes, not even when temps drop to
40 below and stay there. When it snows the kids just use the tunnels.
We don't have Bad Weather School Days. Save we did have one about two
weeks ago due to the rain. People couldn't drive around in their cars
for all the flooding, especially here on the Island. All these people
in SUV's nosed around carefully through the puddles, a little like newborn
hippos or something just trying to figure out the world and not knowing
this sort of weather is made for them.
What on earth is the reason people buy these monstrous things? SUV's
we mean, not hippos. The things are designed to plow up steep hills carrying
loads of concrete and railroad ties, but you see people creeping around
in them afraid to get a scratch or dent in their truck.
Speaking of driving it appears a meeting of Floyd's Non Compos Mentis
Chapter of the National Association of the Directionally Confused and
Traffic Enfeebled is once again taking place. This one day seminar is
typically scheduled for eight or nine days -- sometimes a month -- both
for its great popularity, but because the members are so hapless that
it takes about a month for all of them to have arrived at the same place
at the same time for anything.
Again, the main topic is the Stealth Turn, the secretive maneauver practiced
by those seeking to attain the height of style in Deceptive Driving. This
maneuver involves abruptly changing direction without providing the slightest
clue as to the driver's intentions. There is the four lane power shift
on the freeway from the fast lane to the right hand exit. Then there is
the mid-intersection revision of decision, which is followed by the highly
sophisticated left turn at a stoplight from the right turn arrow lane
and signal going like mad first one way then, after completion, on the
other side.
Some say the drivers of Milan, Italy first originated this technique.
Others say this esprit is particularly French or Spanish. All can agree
Northern California has perfected the Stealth Turn to such an high degree,
Washington is known to send CIA and Secret Service operatives to study
the methods honed by Floyd Bender and his group of radical Rotarians.
In an interview by the Examiner, Floyd was asked why and how he came
to perfect this technique.
"I realized that if I don't use my turn signal, they'll NEVER know
where I am going. Ha ha!"
Floyd comes from stock that traces its lineage to the earliest days of
Alta California. It was a Bender, actually Ignacio Behar, who rode with
the problematic explorer Vizcaino as the man sailed up the coast, attempting
to find a perfect bay for the galleons crossing the Pacific to moor and
retro fit before heading south to lower California.
Vizcaino, not an especially talented or capable man, was also charged
with finding gold in California for the Archduke of Monterrey. He had
failed on behalf of the Duke in a number of other enterprises, and he
really wanted a royal merchant ship so as to conduct trading, so he was
hell bent on setting things right this time, taking on Behar, who presented
himself as an expert navigator. He was not, but he needed a job, and so
the ship sailed up the coast for weeks without finding any decent port
north of Long Beach.
In desperation, Vizcaino sent back packets on a ship, claiming he had
found a perfect, well sheltered bay ideally suited for the massive galleons
to make port. This deep water port he named Monterrey Bay with some fictional
license before heading north, sure he could find something better than
that shallow crescent of water. Along the way, he renamed all the previously
christened spots on such maps as he did have with the eye of covering
himself once he did find this perfect port with the claim that the Monterrey
Bay lay actually far north of where it really is and what map are you
looking at anyway?
So it was the Behar, expert navigator that he was, spied the rocks of
the Farralones, assumed they were shoals off a dangerous area and so directed
the ship to pass far to the west of them, in so doing completely missing
the mouth of the Golden Gate as well as what would come to be known as
Drake's estero.
Naturally Vizcaino never did find that perfect port for he ran out of
provisions before attaining the longitude of Oregon, and so he turned
back with his spurious maps and not the slightest indication that gold
resided anywhere in California.
When the Duke of Monterrey heard there was no gold in Alta California
to be had, his eyes fell.
"O but there's buckets of priceless pearls to be had. Would have
brought some back but they fell overboard in a storm", Vizcaino said.
"Near that perfect bay I named after your highness. Might I not have
a merchant ship as a reward to go shopping in Japan now?"
Vizcaino was sent on his way to thoroughly irk the Japanese to such a
degree they closed the entire East until Admiral Perry arrived three hundred
years later.
Meanwhile the Behar clan continued to affect the history of California
by acting as guides to territory of which they had no knowledge, leading
the early explorers with those maps Vizcaino had concocted out of wishes
and angel dust.
When the United States pretty much seized Alta California after the Mexican-American
War, the Behars anglicized their name, seeing how things were playing
out for the old Hispanic Californios, who were getting robbed left and
right.
But not before a Behar attempted to guide an emigrant expedition one
year over what became known as the Donner Pass with unfortunate consequences.
That Behar wound up in a soup pot at the pass during the winter, but other
Behars survived elsewhere, continuing to guide would-be explorers and
setting up guide agencies that were the prime agents for getting the Oakies
out of the Dustbowl and into California.
From the Lusitania to the Titanic to the Andrea Dorea, there was not
a famous ship in which the Benders did not have a hand in guiding them
to their fates.
Benders served on both sides during WWII. A Polish Benderinski misdirected
the Wehrmacht as to the shortest path to Moscow being through Stalingrad
when the Field Marshall stopped to get directions, with of course the
results we have seen. It was a Von Bender that guided the Germans around
in circles during the Battle of the Bulge, which is the main reason the
Nazi's lost that one.
So it was that Floyd hung on as one of the last of the Benders -- and
barely arrived at that distinction -- for the obstetrician who had delivered
him was also a Bender, a man with a serious kinesthesia problem in which
he sometimes confused his left hand with his right, and so little Floyd
got dropped on his head right at birth when the doctor tried to spank
him with the same hand that held him up.
Floyd ran a small travel agency of Kearny Street in San Francisco called
Barefoot and Begone Travel. From there he sent people off on vacations
to Kazakhstan and Albania and guided tours of the decommissioned Pripyat
nuclear reactor in Byelorussia.
Some people have noted that we just experienced a full moon. Hemmed in
by the light pollution of the Metropolis, and further limited by the uneven
construction that closes in everything here to a claustrophobic binder
view, it is difficult to experience the moon and other celestial events
the way more open places, like the prairie people do. For wide open vistas
one has to go out to the edge of the continent and look out over the lampless
vast Pacific. It is there you can actually see the broad band of cloudy
stuff that is the Milky Way. Only then do the old sky-myths make sense.
Otherwise we make do with Orion doing his cartwheels past the pale lunar
light while the urban skyline glows like Troy on fire.
The moderate weather along the coast sometimes creates the illusion that
our resignation in the face of Life's disappoints means that we as a people
are mellow, laid back,
One who does have a modest open view and who takes advantage is Senior
Don Luis de Guadeloupe Erizo, who has the habit of observing the moon
outside his burrow under the hedges of the Jean Sweeney Open Space Preserve,
nee Beltline Railroad tracks. Out towards the West End, beyond the assembly
of densely packed clapboard and stucco houses where the savage arm of
the Developer has yet to reach, the Island opens out to the Buena vista
flats through which ghosts of the old donkey trains still chug the Beltline
when the moon swells above the nostalgic mists out to the old airfield
that is now the nesting ground for the least tern.
Proof enough that open space is worth preserving.
Which is just like the Island to get instead of an imposing Great Auk,
or eagles or condors, we got instead the modest Tern, and of the terns,
the Least of all of them. It is said that it is as hard as to pass a camel
through the eye of a needle, and for all of that, up there if it turns
out there is a Heaven, at the gates you certainly will find the Least
Tern -- should that be your final destination -- for it is also said that
the Least shall be first.
Reverend Freethought of the Unity Church put down her pen after composing
these lines for next Sunday's sermon. She then went out to the deck, which
was a bit wobbly after the recent violent storm, and removed her clothes
before getting into the hot tub so as to look up through the branches
of the box elder at the stars and the full moon and consider how to work
in the parable of the lilies of the field, they that sow not nor reap.
She was so silent and engrossed that she did not notice the raccoon that
came along the fence from the back, nor the self-absorbed opossum that
came along the fence from the front. The opossum apprehended the raccoon
about the same time as the other noticed it and the two of them shrieked,
each in their respective languages, causing Toby and Stella, two terriers
that lived on the other side of the far fence, to launch a tremendous
confab of barking. Rev. Freethought leapt up out of the water in alarm
as the raccoon bounded up onto the outstretched arm of the box elder so
as to get the advantage while the opossum leapt upon the fence.
The box elder branch, made heavy by the heavy rains and weakened by the
powerful winds, abruptly cracked and came down with the raccoon onto the
fence, which tottered, swayed, and all of which gave way with a crash
into the street. The raccoon ran off to such refuge as raccoons find at
such times and the opossum vanished amid a hullabaloo of terrier barking
that was answered by dogs for several blocks in all directions.
Lionel, who had just closed up the Pampered Pup Hotdog Shoppe came around
the corner at this moment to see Reverend Freethought standing there naked
and knee deep in the hot tub, a new Venus silvered by the light of the
bright moon.
"Are you all right," he asked.
"I wonder if you could hand me my robe," said Reverend Freethought,
somewhat hoarsely.
Lionel obliged, then stepping back, reached into his shirt pocket, thinking
of something to say that would be most appropriate for the situation.
He half pulled out his reading glasses to display them, glinting in the
moonlight, then said, "Good evening, Sir." And with that
he left.
A little distance from that place, Dame Herrisson poked her head out
of the burrow and said to the Don, "Les gens disent que les gens
agissent fou pendant une pleine lune."
Which, of course, is quite true as it ever was. People say that people
act crazy during a full moon.
"Es cierto, pero siempre estoy loco". Responded the
Don, confirming both that he was always crazy and that males and females
often seem to speak different languages at one another.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
moonlit towers, letting its cry keen across the waves of the estuary,
the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open
spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked brick of the former
Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its weedy railbed, its chainlink
fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered
doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out of shadows on the edge
of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to parts unknown.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
JANUARY 4, 2014
CALLING THE MOON
This first image of the new year comes from Tammy and displays the bright
full moon this past weekend.
It's not like "Full Moon over Alamagordo", but
hey! We are good enough for a moody shot just as much.
WELCOME BACK MY FRIENDS TO THE SHOW THAT NEVER ENDS
Hope everyone got what was coming to you this past Xmas and that your
New Year was raunchy and safe. Don't go firing your pistol in all directions
-- not without adequate protection. You never know what is going to come
down nine months later.
All the discussion in re Silly Hall is about Development and possible
repeal of the hastily voted Del Monte Cannery project. It probably is
okay, given that some kind of real estate vulture is needed to turn the
place from a warehouse into something else, still, the idea it needs to
be something else is up for debate.
Still again there are other massive development schemes underway and
any visitor out to the new Target will get an eyeful of what to expect.
We are glad Tim Lewis wisely refrained from continuing with the entanglement
out on McKay Avenue, which likely would have spelled many delaying lawsuits
and bad feelings.
The new Mayor, Trish Spencer, along with the slate of development moderate
Councilmembers are now sworn in on a slim mandate to curb the reckless
building and zoning variances that threaten to destroy this little place
possessed of firm and inflexible borders.
It has been the pleasure for a couple decades to watch the relatives
of Andy Pagano gather on St. Charles Street under the massive oak tree
for a children's birthday celebration, featuring the traditional pinata
bashing. Those kids rode their bikes and skated their boards up and down
the street as they got older. They walked to the bustop on Lincoln and
waited patiently for the 51 to take them to school and they graduated
and they got jobs in town or in the City and in many cases moved out to
the Valley as things got expensive here.
This is our town. We fussed and fought and got into trouble and fixed
things up again. This is our home. We all grew up here; let's take care
of it.
If you thought the house was a rockin' during the Holidays, you must
know it was not due to hard partying. Two earthquakes have struck north
of Los Angeles, shaking parts of Ventura and Los Angeles counties, but
fire officials say no significant damage took place.
The U.S. Geological Survey says a magnitude-4.3 quake hit at about 7:18
PST on Saturday and was centered close to 50 miles north of Los Angeles
near the town of Castaic.
The Los Angeles Times reports that a magnitude-3.0 quake occurred near
the same place about 20 minutes earlier.
The Times says there have been three earthquakes of magnitude-3.0 or
greater centered in the area over the last 10 days.
On the drought. Reports from the High Country say that all streams and
waterfalls are flowing with vigor after the recent rains, but that disturbingly,
there is no snow at all in Yosemite Valley and the daytime temperatures
are warm enough to go around without a jacket. Photographs indicated sparse
snowpack at elevation, which means despite the recent storms we are by
no means clear of drought conditions as of this date.
WHAT'S THE BUZZ
The annual Island-Life CD is in Studio, still, and the last track needs
to be recorded while everything else wants mastering and multi-track overlays.
The Monologue is 22 minutes of insufferable tedium -- we do hope you enjoy
that with stoicism when it finally comes out.
We are proud to say that this is the first year in which all material
is original stuff created in-house by our hapless staff.
NOTHING CHANGES ON NEW YEAR'S DAY
So anyway, a brand new full moon arose over the Island as we all sailed
into another year. Now is the time to put aside the past year's disappointments
and make a few resolutions. Denby resolved to drink a little less. The
Editor resolved to drink a little more. Larry resolved to eat more cheese.
Rev. Howler of Adelphian Iglesia del Luz de los Cajóns de Estacionamiento
del Mundo resolved to make more money out of this cash cow he had going
with the entertainment club he passed off as a "church".
Sabine, the Buddhist nun, resolved to be more mindful. And forgive and
try to understand hapless people like Eugene who had fallen in love with
her. Fe Corpuz resolved to be a little more devout. Her friend Mona resolved
to help her be a bit more earthly.
Mr. Howitzer resolved to get more money and pay less in taxes -- same
resolution for him as last year.
The Native Sons of the Golden West held their annual New Year's Eve Ball
at the Parlor hall again. David rigged up a glowing discoball and set
it to fall from the top of the main mast to Wally's schooner. Actually
Wally's 20 footer had no masts to speak of, so he rented the restored
18th century brigantine that people could charter for excursions and for
use as a privateer during pirate festivals. One would think pirate festivals
were a thin way to make a living, but ever since Jack Sparrow appeared
pirates of a certain type have developed cachet. Not real pirates like
they have in the Malaysian islands or off the coast of Somalia. Those
pirates have no pizzazz. They don't carry parrots around and go, "Arrgh,
me maties!" or say colorful expressions like, "Heave ahoy and
blow yer lubbards to windward! Avast abeam and starboard ya luffin' gunwale
davit!"
Indeed now that pirates of the Spanish Main have got game, everybody
is looking into the family tree in hopes there was a Bluebeard snatching
the petticoats off of proper French ladies, when in the past, this sort
of thing was kept under wraps and never told to the children.
Kids, of course, love the idea of pirates, because pirates get to swear
a lot and go late to bed without brushing their teeth. Furthermore nobody
ever demands that a pirate each all of the brussel sprouts on the plate.
In fact, pirates don't eat vegetables at all. Pirates eat massive turkey
legs and poltroons, which is probably a kind of candy, and hamburgers.
Try as he would, Mr. Howitzer could find no evidence of any English pirates
in his family tree. There were a few robber barons who formed part of
the railroad octopus, but nobody had ever gone to sea that he could find.
As it turned out both Mr. Larch and Ms. Light had pirate ancestors. So
to did Luther, however his family was presently decent and law-abiding
and they did not respect this distant relative who had plagued the Mediterranean
Barbary Coast. That man, known as "Lashing Leroy", wielded a
bullwhip ten feet long in battle and was known to be a rake and a scoundrel
to the all the ladies between the south of France and North Africa. He
was something of a black sheep, but Luther felt secretly a little pleased
that one of his family had terrorized the same people who had enslaved
so many others.
Unlike many pirates, Lashing Leroy got out of the piracy game in good
time with his neck still attached to his shoulders, for he captured a
woman from Ethiopia who proved to be such an excellent cook that the ship's
crew persuaded the captain to retain her services instead of tossing her
overboard for fishbait. It wasn't long before she was sleeping in the
captain's cabin and not long after that she became the First Mate to succeed
Old Firepants who got blown right off the ship during a nasty run-in with
a British man of war. Once she became First Mate, she made the men start
taking baths, dressing in something other than rags -- which meant that
many of them started wearing uniforms taken from officers of captured
ships. Then she had them pay heed to keeping the ship so tidy and well
swept that when a French man of war on the lookout for pirates examined
them via spyglass, they were taken for an English military vessel, and
so were left entirely in peace.
It was while moored near Tunis that she rechristened the ship's name
from Tsunami to Poesy Bucket.
So it was the ship sailed around the West African point to stop at Lagos,
where Betty forced Leroy to marry here in an English missionary chapel.
Shamed by these outrageous acts of propriety, as well as the crinoline-draped
gunwales and all the lace doilies, and especially the toy poodle named
Wow Wow picked up in Tunis, the crew mutinied and departed the harbor
without the First Mate or the Captain who stood with his bullwhip drooping
on the wharf as his ship left the harbor to return to its old ways. There
was a little splash and sure enough a white head could be seen dogpaddling
to the wharf, where the rather sodden Wow Wow pulled her self up by her
front paws. The crew had simply tossed her overboard.
Leroy wanted to get another ship, but Betty would have nothing to do
with this kind of nautical life. The last voyage Lashing Leroy made was
aboard an emigrant ship that brought them to free state Boston Harbor,
and from there the three traveled via many adventures until they came
to the new Zion of Utah Territory where they had many, many children on
the frontier, who dispersed themselves like flower seeds across the country.
Leroy eventually died an old man in his bed, which is unusual for a pirate.
As for the crew of the Bloody Outhouse, formerly Poesy Bucket, nee' Tsunami,
that ship was set upon off the coast of Libya by Portuguese warships and
overwhelmed. The new officers were hanged, while the remainder were transported
to serve hard labor on the then rocky Azores and the ship was sunk.
In the Old Same Place Bar, someone asked Padraic why there were no famous
Irish pirates. The rest of the crew there were intent on the horse races
starting up out at Golden Gate Fields in Berkeley.
Padraic and Dawn both had to exclaim that quite to the contrary, there
had been several notorious Irish pirates, starting with Edward Seagar,
who changed his name to Edward England, because nothing to an Irishman
was so vicious and bloodthirsty sounding as the sound of that hated name.
Then it was Dawn who referenced the Bonny Anne Cormac, who like many
wild Irish girls simply could not stay quiet and demur on the plantation.
Her mother had been a servant to Bill Cormac and when their affair came
out, they fled County Cork for the American city of Charleston, where
Anne got bored. So she married James Bonny, a basic ne'er do well and
occasional pirate. Once again Anne fled, this time to the Bahamas after
burning down her father's plantation. Here, again, Anne got bored of her
husband who had turned to rather humdrum business of con jobs and narcing.
She then fell for a guy because of his pants, a certain Calico Jack.
They ran off together after a bit of trouble with the husband, and the
romantic duo turned to privateering. During one foray Anne desired to
"have her way" with a fair-looking sailor but discovered in
her room that the sailor was a woman named Mary Reade.
The two became great friends and they robbed and plundered with zest
until, as with all pirate ships, they were captured by an English warship
when the male crew hid below decks to avoid the withering cannonfire,
leaving the two women to fight alone.
The survivors were all hanged, save for the two women. Mary Reade died
in prison and Anne was released to sign a contract with Walt Disney Studios
in 1721. Not many people know this.
Then of course, there was the most fabulous Irish pirate of all time,
The Sea Queen of Connacht, Gráinne O'Malley. She inherited the
large sea trading business started by her father, but soon turned her
resources to other means. It seemed logical to here that since Galway
collected taxes on ships that traded there, she as chieftain of the O'Malley
clan had perfect right to do so as well. Naturally some captains refused
this taxation, to which O'Malley responded with what may be termed "excessive
force."
She lived quite a long time, exacted terrible punitive revenge on land
and sea for offenses against her and her lovers, and in a moment rare
for a pirate, after some relatives of her were captured, she sailed to
England and was brought in audience to meet Queen Elizabeth, before whom
she refused to bow as she felt the Queen had no lawful jurisdiction over
Ireland. She did, however, surrender the dagger found under her bodice
during the meeting with the Queen. There O'Malley negotiated with the
Queen for the release of her relatives, the removal of a particularly
odious English governor of Connacht, and the return of property she considered
to have been stolen from her lands in exchange for ceasing all rebellious
activities.
Her relatives were released, but the property retained and so was the
English Governor, and so she returned to supporting the rebellious Irish
Lords. She passed away of natural causes about the same time as Elizabeth,
having caused about as much trouble as she could during her time. For
which the Irish are very proud to have had her as one of their own.
"So you see," Dawn said. "The best of Ireland has always
been the women in it. Ain't it right, Padraic?"
Padraic paused a bit, thinking hard, before saying, "It would be
fatal to disagree."
"Righ'," Dawn said.
Just then the horn blew and the horses launched from the gate for the
last of the trifecta at Golden Gate Fields. They were off on the first
set of races for the New Year and the full moon hung overhead to gleam
on it all, the dew and the sweat and the challenge.
Then came the ululation of the throughpassing train from far across the
water as it trundled from the gantries of the Port of Oaktown with their
towers bedecked with holiday lights, letting its cry keen across the waves
of the estuary, the riprap embankments, the grasses of the Buena Vista
flats and the open spaces of the former Beltline, through the cracked
brick of the former Cannery with its leaf-scattered loading dock, its
weedy railbed, its chainlink fence interstices until the locomotive click-clacked
past the shuttered doors of the Jack London Waterfront, trundling out
of shadows on the edge of town past the old Ohlone shellmounds to the
unknown future.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
FOR PREVIOUS MONTHS AND YEARS GOTO THE HYPERLINK
BELOW
ARCHIVES
|