“The Earth is a fine place and worth fighting for.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
I was a junior in high school when Earth Day was established.
A group of us went to one of the local San Mateo County beaches and picked up trash.
It was along about that time that an oil spill took place off the coast. Well, a group of us went out to help clean up. There were no hazmat suits or rigid regulations to follow. We just went out and scooped up glops of oil.
Since then there’ve been lots and lots of glops, millions, I’d guess, along with scores of other disrespects towards our Mother.
I suppose that I could take up this space with admonitions and a general ass chewing directed at humankind but there’s plenty of that already going around today.
Instead I’ll just celebrate Mother with photos (some new and some recycled; no pun intended).
“I see Earth! It is so beautiful!” – Yuri Gagarin, Soviet Cosmonaut
“Waves are the voices of tides. Tides are life.” ~ Tamora Pierce
Take me to the beach. Just don’t let it be a crowded one; not a Santa Cruz, where hordes descend for thrill rides and corn dogs on the boardwalk or to build sand castles or play a game of Frisbee. I don’t need to see string bikinis, or middle aged spread in a Speedo (Really, really I don’t).
Take me to a secluded beach – and leave. It’s not that I don’t like you. It’s just that I’m picky about my beachmates. My companions of choice are my author of the moment, a notebook and the gulls.
I don’t need conversation. I’m content to hear the voice of the sea; though the ocean can be an insistent raconteur. Try as I might to read, write or just laze in the warmth, the waves always demand attention, and once they have it, it’s hard to turn away. The waves are charmers. As much as you will yourself to turn away the enchantment compels you to watch the next and the next.
A wave at Gray Whale Cove, Montara CA. at 1/13th of a second.
Above and below, Note the turmoil of the wave and the seeming serenity behind.
Shore birds float placidly behind a crashing wave. It almost seems as if the water is cascading from a table. Gray Whale Cove, Montara, CA.
Groundhog Day is a movie in which Bill Murray plays a TV weatherman who finds himself reliving the same day over and over again There were a few moments of irony during Vice President Kamala Harris’s appearance with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, this morning. The Vice President paused in the midst of the ceremony, in order to make a few brief remarks about a mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis. A shooting that left eight dead and several wounded. In the end the shooter killed himself, because, well, why go off script? That’s what usually happens, I guess. Hard to keep track these days isn’t it? Why the irony? Because Japan has almost 0 (zero, ZERO, Z-E-R-O) gun deaths per year while American deaths get tallied up at pinball machine rates. Follow the linkto see the comparison. One can only imagine what Prime Minister Suga and his retinue are saying behind closed doors about America shooting itself to death and not wanting to do a damn thing about it.
“As with many traumatic experiences, they were anguished by their memories and haunted by shame for something that wasn’t their fault. Shame is a cruel thing. It should rest on the perpetrators but they don’t carry it the way victims do.”
― George Takei, They Called Us Enemy
I pass them frequently on the recreation trails; usually just before sunrise.
Two elderly ladies; they walk close together, shoulder to shoulder, nearly touching.
Another elderly woman toddles along and as I pass we wave to each other.
There’s the couple, at least I think they’re a couple. He walks about ten paces behind the woman, both of them about my age.
The runner; a slender girl with big round eyeglasses. We exchange the customary runner’s nod as she cruises past.
My friend, Michelle. I see her and her yellow lab Duke during the mornings when I get a late start. I stop and as we talk, Duke and Lexi do the doggy greeting; a butt sniff and some tail wagging.
They all have one thing in common; they’re all Asian. They all share the knowledge that Asians have become ground zero.
All of them know me by sight now so I guess I’m not seen as a threat. I wonder how they feel when they approach someone who they’ve never seen before.
What about the Asian people who are seeing me on the trail for the first time. Is there a moment of pause, a gulp, a little twinge of apprehension?
I can’t get inside their heads or feel the rise in pulse. I can’t know what’s in the pit of their stomachs; that place where mistrust and apprehension reside. I can’t fathom the idea of having to calculate the risk of going out for a walk, or getting on a bus, or going to the supermarket.
This year, after a 2020 COVID cancellation the NCAA Basketball Tournament, aka March Madness, has returned and is winding down towards crowning a winner.
This year, America has been enduring another version of madness in March. Don’t order a pizza or dip into the nachos for this madness, because this is all about a month long tidal wave of foolishness that’s been washing over America.
No layups or buzzer beating shots here, but it’s a slam dunk that you’ll find a month’s worth of American foolishness over issues real or made up, serious and silly. The guacamole is optional but have a beer, well, maybe a six pack, handy.
And so without further adieu, and in no particular order, lets get on with the other March madness.
Indulge me for a few moments while I waste my time.
There was another mass shooting in America yesterday. It was the seventh one in seven days. Hell, mass shootings have become so ho hum that I only knew about two of them; the shootings at the Atlanta spas last week and the shooting in Boulder yesterday.
The others?
Five people shot in Stockton, California on March 17th. No fatalities.
Four people shot in Portland, Oregon on March 18th. No fatalities.
Five people shot in Houston, Texas on March 20th. No fatalities.
Eight people shot in Dallas, Texas on March 20th. One fatality.
Six people shot in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on March 22nd. One fatality.
I’m seriously not being flippant when I ask a few pointed questions.
In America should we establish a specific number of victims when we want to call something a mass shooting?
Does a mere four or five victims qualify as a mass shooting?
And what about fatalities. Is it really a shooting if nobody died?
Again I’m not being flippant. That’s because mass shootings, however you want to define them, long ago stopped being tragedies. They’ve become America’s national sport.
That isn’t to say that we’re absent of any tragedy. Let’s put the rat on the table, the real tragedy is America’s response to shootings.
In the end, this is a positive story. This is a story about moments. This is a basketball story but it’s about much more than basketball – or sports. And yes in the end, this is a positive story. It has to be.
I’ll admit it. I’m that guy. I’m the one who gets all misty watching the One Shining Moment videos. Just this morning I watched the 2015 version. And then I went from misty to teary to teetering on sobbing.
I’ll get to the One Shining Moment thing in a bit. Stay with me; teary and sobbing notwithstanding, this is positive. We’ll get there.
Fort Point is one of San Francisco’s often overlooked jewels. Built between 1853 and 1861 to guard the inlet to San Francisco Bay, the fort, surrounded by water on three sides, rests on the southern shore of the Golden Gate.
While it is a historic fort, one doesn’t have to be a history buff to appreciate Fort Point. It’s a place where one can go to enjoy nature, watch sailboats on the bay or big ships pass under the Golden Gate, or marvel at surfers challenging the turbulent waters.
Fort Point is nestled beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. From the bridge itself you wouldn’t even know that a historic brick fort sits beneath the span’s steel skeleton.
The fort was planned so that the lowest tier of guns could be placed as close to the sea level as possible, thus affording cannoneers the opportunity to skip cannonballs across the water to strike ships right at the waterline.
While the army built thirty similar forts on the east coast, Fort Point is the only such installation west of the Mississippi.
The fort is a maze of brick arches.
Ground floor. Note the arcs on the ground. These mark where tracks were laid to swivel the large cannons which were mounted on wheels.
A shirtsleeve day is a rare day at Fort Point. While the views are magnificent, it’s a cold and windy place. The Pacific wind surges through the gun ports and is channeled through the arches. At the very top of the fort is where you feel the wind’s full force. Every time I visit the fort I try to imagine what it must have been like to be stationed there in 1865; a rainy, windy winter night must have been miserable.
“I’ve got some bad news and I’ve got some good news. Nothing lasts forever.” ~ Kate McGahan, author.
The “where were you when” conversations.
You know the ones. Somebody asks, “So where were you when…? The when is always one those consequential events, usually an unpleasant one. Life’s moments that leave stains that won’t wash out.
For my dad’s generation it was, “Where were you when you heard about Pearl Harbor?”
Me?
Where were you when JFK was assassinated? In Mrs. Campbell’s 4th grade class. The school closed and sent the kids home to parents trying to make some sense of it.
Where were you when the Challenger exploded? At work. I cried.
Where were you when the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake hit? At the local supermarket near the liquor aisle. I’ve never heard so much exploding glass in my life. On my way out the door grabbing a woman who was losing her shit, in tears, frozen; pulling her out by the arm.
For me, the most recent where were you question is, “Where were you when you realized the coronavirus would challenge everything you knew to be true?”
Caffe Sport almost exactly one year ago.
I’ve mentioned that lunchtime more than a few times during the past year and with good reason. It was my “where were you when” moment; another stain.
Caffe Sport is a small restaurant on Green Street, half a block off Columbus, the main drag through San Francisco’s Little Italy. At Caffe Sport it’s garlicky Southern Italian cuisine in abondanza (abundance).
It’s booth seating on heavy wooden bench style seats in front of thick, solid wood tables inlaid with tile. When the tableside conversation gets stale you can kill the time waiting for your meal by gazing at the abondanza of Sicialian kitsch on the walls and ceiling; paintings, sculptures, lamps, tiles, framed maps, and an oversized model of a fishing boat. It’s a limitless collection of junk and stuff and things; almost as if a single square inch of unadorned wall is an affront.
It’s been almost a year to the day since Cora and I had that lunch. We went with the full knowledge that things would change, and change drastically. We’d no idea what the changes would be or how long they would last. As it turned out we reallyhad no idea. We went out to have our “last supper.”
In Italy, mealtime, every meal, is a celebration, a glorification of life, love, family and friendship. I know this for fact, having sat at many an Italian table during visits to the land of my mother’s birth.
On that day, at that lunch, there was no celebration. It was a concession to an unknown; an ironic comprehension of being on the cusp of something we couldn’t really comprehend.
The dining room was almost empty, the atmosphere quiet and somber. Not even Dean Martin crooning about the moon hitting “your eye like a big pizza pie,” or the unmistakable Italian aroma of simmering tomatoes, heavy with garlic, could lighten the burden of knowing that things were about to change drastically. Continue reading
My San Francisco is a series of posts that describes my own personal relationship with The City. My San Francisco pieces might be photo essays; they might be life stories or they could be commentaries. They might be a combination of some or all three. My impressions aren’t always paeans to San Francisco; it’s a beautiful city but like any beautiful city it has it’s dark side and its ugly stories. These pieces will always have one common theme; they are my expressions of my personal San Francisco experience.
February wanes; the Year of the Rat is done. A foul rodent of a year, leering through sharp filthy teeth has passed and given way to the ox. In ordinary healthy times San Francisco’s Chinatown would now be winding down from the February festivities. February is when Chinatown typically dresses up in it’s finest, brightest gold and red.
Chinatown in February has always, whether in lean times or flush, been a cultural feast. It teases the senses. The brilliant red of the ubiquitous lucky money envelopes, the multi-colored dragons and lion dancers and the big parade itself, a brilliant canvas of colors and joyful faces.
The popping of thousands of firecrackers; the beating drums and the clanging cymbals and gongs that accompany the gyrating lion dancers. Leave the acrid odor of spent firecrackers on the street and enter the aroma of a banquet room of New Years’ delights. The crunch and pleasing warmth of a freshly fried spring roll. And the tastes; the sweetness of rice cakes; juicy tang of a tangerine; a savory slice of roasted chicken or a whole steamed fish blessed with ginger and soy.
February is a time when the Asian community looks forward to prosperity and good fortune. This COVID year, prosperity and good fortune have been hard to come by. The Year of the Rat delivered a trio of curses; the virus itself, economic hardship and a spate of violence incited by a former president and his acolytes; a malevolent group searching for someone to blame, found Asians to be a target of opportunity.
Despite it all the community has been resilient. It’s pulled together to do what little was possible, while doing as much as it could to observe the changing of the Zodiac.
Anyone who has read this blog and my posts on Chinatown knows my affection for The City’s cultural jewel. It’s a place of memories that reach back to my childhood.
Readers of this blog also know that I usually stay away from kitsch laden, touristy Grant Avenue. I prefer to keep to the streets, the alleys and the shops where the community and culture are alive and authentic.
Early in February I took a Sunday walk up Grant Avenue, curious to see what COVID has wrought. On a Sunday during the run up to the Lunar New Year parade, one should expect to weave in and out of a nine block long stream of foot traffic; to join a crowd gathered to watch a troupe of lion dancers or to see people hopping comically away from a string of exploding firecrackers.
The Life in My Years 