Monthly Archives: June 2010

Carless in Seattle

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5

ferry! light rail! bus! feet!

I’m aware that most of the world gets around without a car and it’s not news to anyone that we should be driving way less, but we seem to have gotten around to this realization only recently in any kind of serious way.  I can see how ingrained the car culture is by the fact that I assumed I’d rent a car to get around this weekend when I’m up in Seattle for my brother’s wedding party.

But, really, why do that?  Oil is gushing into the Gulf.  The least I can do is print out some transit schedules and figure out how to get from SeaTac to downtown Seattle, to Vashon Island to see my friend Karen, and then to the airport.  We have everything we need:  a lot of transit schedules, small wheeled suitcases and something to read while we’re waiting for the light rail/ferry/bus.

Oh, and the other things we need we already have:   plenty of time and our own two feet.

Mazel tov!

More Summer Reading

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3

It was a less than perfect day today.  Maybe it’s the sudden turn from sun to gray here in San Francisco.  Could be the work I’m staying late tonight to finish contains, at its core, a story of people who seem to have not only no hope, but no hope of hope. 

Who knows what it is, but all day I’ve been hearing the phrase “grayed in and gray” in my head and so I went to see where it comes from, which means you plug that into the internets and you will find out, as I did, that it comes from a Gwendolyn Brooks poem called The Kitchenette Building. When I read it again I realized it was about circumscribed lives in which hope occasionally breaks out, even if not for long.  And that seemed like a good thing to have in one’s head on a not so great summer’s day.  Just one poem — that counts as summer reading too.

Kitchenette Building

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” mate, a giddy sound, not strong
Like “rent”, “feeding a wife”, “satisfying a man”.

But could a dream sent up through onion fumes
Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes
And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,
Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms,

Even if we were willing to let it in,
Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,
Anticipate a message, let it begin?

We wonder. But not well! not for a minute!
Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now,
We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Sweet Pea

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5

from C & J's garden

A day spent working at a friend’s still, calm house.  The ideal working conditions:  No internet.  No phone.  The only procrastination task was making tea.  So, I made a lot of tea.  And stayed wide awake.

The garden was full of sweet peas and I cut some to bring inside.  There was even a diced tomato can in the recycling bin to put them in.  I stayed until 9 and rode my bike home across Berkeley in the dark.  I have two lights and they blinked and shone all the way home.   My own house was full of boys, computer on, television on.  While I was gone, a lamp met with an “accident.”   And they were all so  happy — because it is summer and, really, who cares if a lamp has an accident?

Let Me Count the Ways

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#28 on the 50 Things List

1.  Nothing ever comes off the car

2.  You give people rides to school, even though you wish they’d bike

3.  Our yard would have died a long time ago without you

4.  I realize this doesn’t look like Archie, but you know he loves you for the nighttime walks.

5.  There you are at your desk, where you work hard and treat people well.

6.  Four more people ski because of your efforts.

7.  You rock in the lighting department.

8.  6,367,422 cups of tea, and counting

9.  Media Generosity:  Even though Glee doesn’t row your boat

10.  Three more people in the world windsurf because of you

11.  Few grill with the panache and confidence you do.

12.  We would follow you up any peak you asked us to.  But we would spend a lot of time complaining.

13.  Volcanoes may erupt all around you, but you never lose your head.

Father’s Day 2010

Summer Reading

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6

charlie + skating + summer = happiness

Summer’s arrived here at the bloglily household.  There is general happiness, and a movement spearheaded by the non-parents to suspend all routines, including the one that gets everyone into bed before the sun rises.  So far the adolescents and the ten year old who’s actually 40 are winning that one.

If you’re surly enough, and I’ll admit that this describes my general demeanor about half the time, you might trudge through summer without acknowledging its wonderfulness because you, after all, don’t get to suspend all routines.  But at least you get to read summer books, which is way, way better than going to see summer movies.  Summer books, at their best, leave you satisfied.  Summer movies, even at their best, make you feel like you’ve eaten at McDonalds, and although  maybe it was okay at the time, you really wish you hadn’t.

So.  Summer books — for me — mean spy books.  I love spy books.  I like the whole noirish atmosphere of a good spy book.  I love the lone operative, the hero who behaves well, but somehow all the odds are against him.  (Why can’t I think of any spy books where there’s a decent woman spy?)  A couple of days ago I spent the whole day reading, which meant that we had frozen costco lasagne for dinner (here in Berkeley, that’s when they send the child protective services to your house).  What kept me from whipping up an organic, vegetable-filled dinner was Alan Furst.

Spies of the BalkansI really like Alan Furst’s books.  They’re all set in dark, rainy corners of Europe, on the eve of the second world war.  There aren’t any Americans in these books, or hardly any.  The most recent one is called Spies of the Balkans. I will not tell you what happens in it because you could probably guess.  Okay, I’ll tell you some things.  Is there a spy who’s a Greek police officer, who’s ethical, but not above trickery when it’s necessary to protect the innocent?  Check.  The occasional furling and unfurling of an umbrella because it’s always raining in the countries Hitler’s about to invade?  Check.  Sex?  Check.  Daring rescues?  Check. A general atmosphere of a world going to hell, during which tremendous acts of courage occur?  Check.

Like I said, I read the whole thing in one day.  I never do that.  Happy Summer!

The Poor Fictionist

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5

Trollope invented the pillar box when he was not busy fictioning

This, from Trollope (Phineas Finn, to be exact)

The poor fictionist very frequently finds himself to have been wrong in his description of things in general, and is told so, roughly by the critics, and tenderly by the friends of his bosom. He is moved to tell of things of which he omits to learn the nature before he tells of them — as should be done by a strictly honest fictionist. He catches salmon in October; or shoots his partridges in March. His dahlias bloom in June, and his birds sing in the autumn. He opens the opera-houses before Easter, and makes Parliament sit on a Wednesday evening. And then those terrible meshes of the Law!

There’s no hope for me.  I’ll never be a “perfectly honest fictionist.”  But what a relief to discover that Trollope wasn’t either. 

Ill Fares the Land

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3

Today’s post has no picture, because I couldn’t bear to look again at the images of the oil spill in the Gulf.  Today’s post is also a book review — of sorts — because, although it might appear my interests are confined to bicycles and lighting, I am actually still interested in words and books.

The best thing  I’ve read this year (well, I did love Parrot and Olivier too)was a book by the historian Tony Judt called Ill Fares the Land.

One of Judt’s significant points  – that we’re in a bad way because we have abandoned our belief in the idea that the government can actually perform functions that private enterprise cannot — is tragically and aptly illustrated by the BP oil spill.  Every answer to the question how did this happen? leads to this answer:  because we thought a private company like BP, acting with little public oversight, would keep our coastline safe. Paul Krugman is good on this subject too.  (“We need politicians who believe in good government, because there are some jobs only the government can do.”)

It’s a short book, one that reviewers have pointed out reads like a great commencement speech.  That’s not a criticism though. The book is rousing, intelligent, and uses the past to illuminate the present, which happens all too seldom.  And, for me, it turned out to be just what was needed to fend off the despair that comes with tragedies like this oil spill.

Let There Be Better Light

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5

it's landed -- well, more like it's hovering

Who knew I’d spend so much time considering lights while on my little break?  Stuff like that matters, though.  The way I feel at home is all about my physical surroundings. That is why I’m certain the old light in the dining room was 50% of the reason for all the shouting at dinner.   Once we’ve put a proper bulb in the spaceship, I’ll let you know if it fills us with a mid-century sense that anything is possible in this world, even a peaceful dinner.

Can you see why there was so much uneasiness at the table?

would you like some mead with your unhappy meal?

Fifty Things

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20

so far anyway

because that is what I turned this year.  Andrea, at hulaseventy, makes the best lists I know.  But she isn’t 50, so I’m making this one.

1.  teach the boys to make brownies

2.  eat dinner in the Mission

3.  sell a book

4.  rescue mother in law’s books, the ones in boxes in the garage

5.  use my sewing machine

6.  read the Three Musketeers

7.  great retro green cloth binders – use them

8.  run out of pencils

9.  make a table from reclaimed wood

10.  get the perfect tattoo

11.  recover those chairs, the 1950s chairs from the Kaiser Building I got for free

12.  re-read Pudd’nhead Wilson

13.  sell something on craigslist; maybe more than one

14.  spend an afternoon in North Beach

15.  commute by ferry and bike — in July, September, or October, when that would be beautiful

16.  figure out what to do with all that great flannel fabric

17.  grow some herbs

18.  attach the pencil sharpener and use it (see 8 above)

19.  write a short story

20.  thank David Marshall for being such a great professor in college

21.  ditto Drew Clark

22.  have another Little House on the Prairie month

23.  use that doctor’s bag Jack carried in the Wizard of Oz

24.  honor Helen, our neighbor who died last year, by planting a rose bush

25.  write an episode of a television show

26.  plant a fruit tree

27.  send a postcard to my parents; maybe more than one

28.  make a series of drawings of family life

29.  spend a month out of the car

30.  walk the Berkeley Pathways

31.  have a picnic

32.  put up a canopy

33.  make margaritas

34.  play board games under the canopy

35.  make sweetbreads

36.  take the boys to the café at Chez Panisse

37.  learn how to change a bike tire

38.  play mini golf

39.  use a grommet

40.  help an orchid come back to life

41.  watch It Happened One Night

42.  ditto Easy Living

43.  have a 30s screwball comedy film festival under the canopy

44.  wear more hats

45.   use a staple gun

46.  paint some furniture

47.  figure out how many pairs of shoes I really need

48.  eat in Oakland’s Chinatown

49.  have one of those huge mission burritos

50.  thank my parents

Tools

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6

pencils: japantown, san francisco

I have too many pencils.  So many, that they’re not tools anymore.  They’re little writing fetishes.  I googled “fetish” by the way, just be sure I’m using that word right.  Indeed:  ”A fetish (from the French fétiche; which comes from the Portuguese feitiço; and this in turn from Latin facticius, “artificial” and facere, “to make”) is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a man-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent value or powers to an object.”

I’ve never understood why wikipedia links to words like “French.”  Do we really need a definition of “French”?   Not any more than I need a dozen beautiful black Japanese pencils sitting around in a glass vase, looking like good writing, and not being used to produce it.

Handy Husband

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5
 

if you try this at home, be sure to turn the light off first

He amazes me, my husband.  You ask him to replace the hall light that has, for over a decade, shed little light and made your hallway look like a weirdly tiny version of a castle in Transyvlania — and he gets out a screwdriver, and does it.

No one was injured in the making of this small house improvement.  If it had been me doing it, someone would have been.

A Picture and a Couple of Paragraphs

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14

the photo part

This isn’t actually going to be about Archie, but it’s never bad to put a dog in your post, right?  (There’s a Billy Collins poem where he advises poets who are stuck to put a dog in the poem.)  It’s just to say that I like my blog more when I don’t feel compelled to write really long posts. A photo and two or three paragraphs.  Sometimes I want to read more from other people, but honestly?  I don’t want to write more than that.

This happened to  me today:  While riding through Berkeley to get to my train into San Francisco, I thought deeply about helmet wearing.  I myself was not wearing a helmet.  These thoughts, more or less, passed through  my head:  it’s a beautiful day, helmets are so sweaty and I have to go in and talk to the judges when I arrive,  I’m going, like, 2.5 miles an hour, the biggest danger I’m going to encounter this morning on the bike boulevard through Berkeley is from a bug flying into my mouth, so I’ll keep my mouth closed, European bike commuters don’t wear helmets, sheesh, I’m not Lance Armstrong, biking like this isn’t dangerous, what kind of weird conspiracy is going on that tries to make people feel like they HAVE to wear a helmet or they’ll die?  And then I saw him, a guy in a helmet riding no hands down the street.  He took his helmet off, still no hands, adjusted it and then put it back on.

Something about that made me laugh and I decided to lighten up.

Re-Cycle

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the re-cycle

In addition to home beautification projects, I also gave some attention during my time off to the sorry state of the world and my contribution to that sorrow.  That’s why I have a new bike.  I’ve decided that the whole oil spill thing in the Gulf is at least 50% my fault (and the fault of people like me) — because, really, would they be drilling for oil in the gulf if I was riding my bike to work? Right.  It’s more like 75% my fault.  The rest was so inevitable, greed and politics being what they are, that it’s actually pretty much 100% my —  our — fault.

It seemed wrong to buy a new bike, though, particularly when there are so many bikes out there looking for good homes via the miracle that is craigslist. And I really lucked out — I found this great bike on craigslist and I bought it from a very nice young woman with no real desire to ride it.  I stuck a basket on it (after taking votes on the important question of wire vs. wicker on facebook) and now I’m trying to ride it everywhere.

How’s that going?  Well, the first time I took it into the city to work (I had to watch four youtube videos of how you load your bike on the bus before I had sufficient courage to do this), it rained.  Still, I rode it from the bus terminal to my office, down Market Street in the pretty great bike lane the City of San Francisco has created for people like me.  Several guys on bikes stopped and chatted me up at red lights.  One handed me his business card and asked me to call him if I ever wanted to meet and have a drink.  What that was about I have no idea.  People don’t generally chat me up.  Maybe it was the cute bike.

What’s Been Going on Around Here?

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in the morning, this is archie's spot. also, check out the curtains. they do not have birds on them. they are simple, pretty, washable and cost a total of $50 at IKEA. Plus, no birds.

Children have grown, as they do.  I wrote a screenplay.  More on that later.

A few weeks ago, some guys came over and painted our living room, dining room and hallway.  It took them five hours.  I was stunned by their industry.  For thirteen years every wall in our house has been realtor white.  In other words, we have never painted the interior of our house.  It always seemed too complicated.  In fact, it is not complicated at all to other people.  Like the woman who came over and told me the name of the sort of color I like.  And the guys who painted.  For them, the walls of houses are made to be painted. For me, apparently, they were made to sigh over, cringe at, and complain about.  Maybe there is a metaphor here.

What I do  know is that the walls of our living room, dining room and hallway are now actual colors.  Pewter, and pewter’s even mellower cousin.  It’s calming.  Oh, and those curtains that were here for thirteen years?  The ones with the birds on them?  They’re gone too.

Parrot and Olivier

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4

I'm pretty sure that must be Olivier

Books with two narrators are hard to pull off.  I almost always prefer one narrator to the other, which means I almost always have the following poor reading experience with two-narrative books,  to wit (as they say in books written a while ago and in legal documents still):

So there I am, reading along, and then the great story I’ve been loving slams to a stop and some other story starts up, and it turns out to be one I don’t care about at all.  It’s sort of like what happens at parties when some guy steps in between you and the person who’s telling a great story about, say, the time their mother tricked them into going to the United States so you wouldn’t get your aristocratic behind in trouble, and the boring guy starts to relate to you the tale of how he bought his Prius.  Bad.   I always wonder how the writer failed to see that the narrator I like is so much better than that other narrator to whom the writer handed over big swathes of the book.  It is not a question you can ever get answered.

These problems are not present in Peter Carey’s new book, Parrot and Olivier (they go to America, and that’s part of the title too).  It took me 24 hours to read it.  Both Parrot and Olivier are equally wonderful.  You might want to pick it up.