The San Francisco Bay Area is well known for its fog. Sometimes it’s a high overcast that shrouds the tops of San Francisco’s highrises. At other times it’s a low lying blanket that hugs the ground and the surface of the chill bay waters, a scene that makes for picturesque photos from the surrounding hills. That ground hugging cloak usually burns off by noon leaving a crystal clear day.
Lately we’ve been experiencing a new fog. It’s a stubborn fog that never burns off or gives way to clarity but will over time, burn your supply of patience. This fog doesn’t hug the bay or embrace the Golden Gate. Instead it seeps and creeps through the halls of government. Call it, COVID-19 bureaucracy.
Life goes on here in COVID central (aka The United States of America). Well, it goes on if you don’t become one of the rising number of statistics; THE statistic, death, that is. As of this writing we’re closing in on 200,000 and change. Change. Change is a term used to describe coins as opposed to paper money. As a rule we scoff at mere change. Change is insignificant and sometimes you don’t feel like it’s worth the trouble.
I use that term here because life is apparently cheap to the current administration and the Congress. The mendacity started, oh…what…maybe end of January, beginning of February? We know that on January 28th Trump was told by his National Security Advisor, “This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,”
A few days later on February 7th Trump told Bob Woodward, “This is deadly stuff…more deadly than even your strenuous flu.” Three days later Trump told the American people, “I think the virus is going to be—it’s going to be fine” and “Looks like by April, you know in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” Continue reading
“I saw in heaven another great and marvelous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues—last, because with them God’s wrath is completed.” Revelation 15:1
At 7 in the morning the rec path along San Pablo Bay can be a busy place; hikers, dog walkers, runners and an occasional skater. Cyclists wiz by, more often than not catching pedestrians by surprise.
This morning the trail was free of cyclists. In fact it was nearly free of humanity. There was one couple walking unmasked and a woman struggling to control her overly aggressive dog that was looking to have my Lexi for breakfast. Standing at the shore a solitary man fishing, silhouetted against an ashen horizon. He was standing 50 meters or so from the sewage treatment plant, not a place I would pick to fish but then I wouldn’t fish anywhere in San Pablo Bay and would certainly not eat anything from the bay.
It’s another dreary depressing day today. Smoke from the many fires scorching California has cloaked the sky and choked the air. It’s slightly better today. The rising sun still had that surreal dark orange color to it. Yesterday the smoke mixed with fog created a curtain that had visibility down to about a mile at best. This wasn’t the usual Bay Area fog. Those are gray days when you know the sun will burn through by late morning; the morning fog that Tony Bennett crooned about.
The last two days were clenched in air that was thick with a tobacco colored tint. To even call it air is charitable. It was a malevolent thing, a living beast, shrouding trees that you knew were less than a mile distant. According to the weatherman the fog is pushing down some of the ash which is further staining the air. Everything is covered with a thin sheet of ash; my truck, the garden furniture, plants. The pool is splotched with clumps of ash. We don’t put a water bowl outside for the dogs as it quickly develops an ashen film. In fact we don’t really let the dogs out for any long period of time.
As bad as the last two days have been, they were much better than it was on Wednesday. Getting out of bed at 7 in the morning and peeking out the window felt like waking to the apocalypse or finding yourself on Mars. The entire sky was a burnt orange. Our world had taken on the hue of a Martian sky. There was no glow, there was no light, just a dull pulsing orange. Dull and dark enough that streetlights were still on at midday and people were driving with their lights on. A friend of mine told me she looked out the window and was literally terror stricken. It took her a couple of days to muster the courage to go out. She’s pining for her home in New York.
A “Martian” sky over San Francisco
If there’s any positive to be found, it’s that the smell of smoke has lessened to where it no longer chokes. A few days ago stepping outside was like putting your head in a campfire. The smell of smoke literally was clinging to clothes.
A few months ago when the new normal predictions were all the rage and being tossed around by everyone from my personal friends to pundits, psychologists, CEOs and politicians, I threw the “bullshit flag.” Human nature is what it is I objected. As soon as the all clear sounds people will flock back to stadiums, crowd movie theaters, dance at clubs, get hammered at bars and work off the hangover the next morning at the gym. People will be back at their offices complaining about the drudgery of being cooped up in a cubicle after months of complaining about the drudgery of being cooped up in the house.
Even now college football and the NFL are flirting with the notion of limited attendance at some of their games. As it stands now it’s just talk but I wouldn’t be surprised to see fans allowed in, even if just on a limited basis. I have to admit that I’m somewhat surprised to see NASCAR holding firm on empty tracks (and it’s very strange to watch) but I’m expecting crowds at the ovals in the near future. Some movie theatres are opening to small crowds as if the crowds hadn’t been small during pre-COVID.
All of the above, along with other services and businesses have been subject to local regulations which have ranged from laissez faire to strict. I still hold that human nature is what it is and always has been and sooner or later things will return back to at least close to the old normal. Some places never left the old normal and some are quickly and unwisely back to the old normal with people flocking to beaches and parks sans masks and distancing, which makes them, in my opinion, a bunch of flocking idiots. And then there are the Trump rallies which are attracting just plain fucking idiots.
And so I’m feeling like sooner or later my “bullshit flag,” on the “new normal” will be vindicated. Except, in one particular area – offices. And that may turn out to be a big deal.
In honor of Labor Day, guest host Rusha Sams challenges us to describe examples of labors of love in pictures.
Labors of love are often those physically demanding, difficult, repetitive jobs done by people who we often depend on for the returns their labor produces. Fishermen have a bond with their boats and with the sea, working from before the sun rises and long into the day. Farmers and ranchers connect with the soil, sun and seasons.
Labors of love are the hours spent learning to paint, sculpt, create music, to write and to craft.
Fruits of labors of love satisfy our needs, inspire us, sadden us, satiate us, bring us joy and moments of reflection.
Labors of love yield rewards that tickle our senses.
Foods from the ground and the sea nourish us and excite our sense of taste.
Colorful peppers at the San Francisco Farmers Market
For the four days of the Republican National Convention, ending on a White House lawn festooned with American flags, the American people were warned that failure to re-elect Donald Trump to a second term will result in nothing short of an American Armageddon. The American people will lose their basic freedoms and have their guns confiscated only to be melted down and molded into statues of Lenin as Joe Biden turns the Constitution on its head while turning mobs of anarchists and undesirables loose on city streets and suburban lanes,
This Republican vision of a Biden led collapse of law and order was to be expected even after Trump promised that the Republicans would deliver a positive message of hope. Trump denounced the Democratic Party’s Convention as the “darkest” and “gloomiest” in history, an opinion seconded by Republican Party Chair Ronna McDaniel who called the Democrats event a “depressing, doom-and-gloom convention.”
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge for this first week of September is Commercial Buildings and Store Fronts.
One of my favorite places in San Francisco is Chinatown. There are two major streets through Chinatown. Grant Ave. which I try to avoid, is where the souvenir shops peddle threadbare t-shirts, postcards and plastic Buddhas. Stockton Street is where the local residents shop for baked goods, meats, produce, groceries and medicinals. Along with Chinatown’s alleys, Stockton Street is the place to go when you’re in the area.
Hing Lung Company is a tiny hole in the wall that puts out the best duck & Chinese BBQ pork
This week’s Len-Artists Photo Challenge is hosted by Leya who challenges us to pick one or more words from the list below and illustrate that word (or words) with a photo.
Comfortable
Growing
Tangled
Crowded
Exuberant
Exuberant “To be full of being is to live as a body-soul. One name for the experience of full being is joy.”
― J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals
Lexi having a romp in the park
“I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance.” ~ Bob Black
It’s 2020. This month marks four years since we put our Rainey to sleep. I wrote this four years ago. This is the last in a series of posts from a now defunct blog. I started the series in July of that year as it seemed that we were on the verge of losing our girl. I published this on September 20th, one month after she was gone. When I wrote these posts I knew that the end was coming but I didn’t know that it would be less than a month. Still there was hope.
I revive the series every now and then. I was relatively new to blogging then. The original left something to be desired in some ways and this posting includes some edits. While the words and punctuation, the nuts and bolts so to speak may have been changed, the story and the lingering heartache remain.
Sometimes decisions make themselves. You mull over options and without realizing it you’ve discarded all but one; good or bad, right or wrong the decision just turns up. Just turns up, sometimes uninvited, often unwanted – but there it is. It’s at times like this that you put yourself on an unemotional autopilot and do what you have to do with or without the realization that when it’s done you’ll drown in a wave of hurt. I did that some 20 years ago when my mom suddenly died. Nobody but me to plan a funeral, keep my dad on some sort of even keel and tend to the visiting relatives. You just do and when it’s done you allow the collapse into exhaustion and grief.
I walked over to Cora who knew by now where this was all going and she tried desperately to steer us away from the inevitable. Cora is that person who will spend hour upon hour scouring the internet and for weeks she’d done just that, hoping for an answer to jump off the computer screen at her. I sat down next to her and listened while she told me that she’d read articles explaining that sometimes it can take months for dogs to get used to three legs. “She’s still weak. She has to gain her strength.”
“Yeah but she has to start chemo for the cancer,” I reminded.
Cora responded, “Rainey can’t do the chemo until she’s strong.”
“Then the cancer takes over.”
And that’s when even Cora who’d tried to hold out for that further out end was coming to a realization. She realized that it was circular logic. She just stared blankly ahead; a thousand yard stare focusing on the gameboard with no moves left – checkmate.
In keeping with the current architectural theme, this week Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge focuses on modern homes and apartments.
This colorful apartment building sits just on the fringe of Chinatown in San Francisco.
Maaaaay-be there’s an apartment in there somewhere. The most prominent building in the photo below is the Salesforce Tower. I’d be willing to bet that someone in one of those buildings is staying overnight to meet some kind of deadline. Does that make it an apartment?
The building below is called MIRA, a 39 story, 422 foot gnarled looking residential monolith designed by Studio Gang Architects. (I did piece on this building a few months ago).
MIRA is located just two blocks from the San Francisco bayfront promenade, The Embarcadero. A condo on the east side will afford a panorama of the bay, the Bay Bridge, the East Bay Hills and spectacular sunrises. One has to wonder if a warped building will get you a warped view. My daughter once remarked that looking at it gave her a headache. I know I got a headache just looking at the cost to live in Mira.
For the unwashed masses a 614 square foot junior one-bedroom condo will run just under $900,000. High rollers can get into a 2,176 square foot three-bedroom, upper-floor unit for a paltry $3 million.
Given its unique look, Mira invites a little editing fun.
To view Cee’s contribution follow the linkto her site. You can scroll to the comments on Cee’s site to view the work of other contributors.
The Life in My Years 