Rain

A sooty grey curtain of rain hangs over the eastern hills and towards the north. During the afternoon and into the evening, heavy downpours followed brief periods of calm. Moments ago a gust of wind rattled my window. In the distance the sound of a jet plane preparing for take-off at San Francisco International — a deep-throated sound, like the rumble of thunder. Behind the next-door neighbor's house, a cat's plaintive mewling.

The weather forecast is for rain and more rain, and gusty winds. Flooding may occur in places.

* * * * *

The woman who cuts my hair is Vietnamese. I made an appointment for a haircut at her salon this morning, as she is leaving for her homeland tomorrow for two weeks' vacation. She tells me that she has a sister and a brother still living there, in a small village near the Mekong Delta. She has been in this country for about twenty years, yet she is still a stranger here.

* * * * *

The Games

Used to be that we looked forward after the closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games to the next ones in four years' time.  When we were somewhat younger, we did.  Just as we looked forward to the next Presidential election.  The Games and the election fell in the same year, the former in the summer, the latter in the fall.  Seems life was a lot less complicated then. When we were younger, it seemed that way.  Yes, indeed.

Since those times, as we know, they've shifted the schedule for the Winter Games to two years after the Summer Games, so now we watch the Games every two years, and the just-concluded 2006 Winter Games in Torino will be followed by the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.  Fine and good.  Olympic mania now occurs biennially.

As someone who has never been a great enthusiast of the Games (except maybe for the swimming and diving events in summer), it occurs to me that scheduling the Olympics every couple of years may be linked to the possibility that, as the television audience gets younger, the sponsors need to keep everyone interested by holding the events at shorter and shorter intervals.

Who is to say that, some years from now, we won't be watching Olympic Games of one kind or another annually?  Heck, they already have snowboarding events to attract the younger crowd.

I'm only kidding, surely.  Yes, I am.

The Match

When you are a kid, personal qualities like physical bravery and skill at sports are much esteemed, and are regarded with pride by their owner, his peers, and his parents. Contrariwise, qualities of the opposite ilk are looked upon with scorn, and their possessor may be ignored (as in not being picked to participate in team games) or mocked, or bullied, and otherwise harshly judged. Sometimes even by otherwise caring parents.

As a boy, I was not good at sports. While I did not consider myself a coward, I avoided violent confrontations as much as possible. Having worn thick glasses from an early age, and being fond of reading, I was considered the archetypal nerd, and on more than a few occasions, I had to suffer the consequences of my pacifist and bookish temperament. Nothing very severe. Just an occasional reminder that there were tougher guys in the neighborhood than one's self. So long as there was no personal damage that might be noticed by one's parents, one tended to keep such matters private.

I had an epiphany of a sort when I was nine years old. A neighbor kid had been harassing me for some time, and eventually it became clear that avoidance of confrontation was no longer an option. Tough and wiry, this kid was the sort who would make trouble simply for the sake of making trouble, and then delight in the pain it caused to others.

In the neighborhood there also lived an older boy, the Organizer, who possessed definite qualities of leadership and organization. It was this individual who, seeing the possibilities of a spectacle that might entertain himself and his comrades, arranged one evening for a supervised showdown between my harasser and myself. The Organizer would act as referee. He had a whistle instead of a gong.

The venue was our street. The crowd gathered at the appointed hour. Rudimentary rules were established, and a makeshift boxing ring was made by four boys holding ropes to form a square. There were no gloves. No kicking or blows below the belt. Not exactly according to the Marquis of Queensbury rules, this event nevertheless had all the aspects, to my nine-year-old eyes, of the Real Thing.

We danced around, my opponent and I, sizing each other up. With my glasses off, he had the advantage. I saw him only as a blur in the twilight. I think he struck the first glancing blow at me. He was skinny, determined, fast on his feet. I was just as skinny, and a bit bewildered, but I had a slightly longer reach. Somehow I hit him in the face, and the fight was over. He ran crying home.

I think the spectators were disappointed, including my younger brother, who was one of the rope holders. I think they were expecting at least a nosebleed or some evidence that it had been the Real Thing. But the Organizer came over and held up my hand. I had triumphed over my harasser. Once and for all.

Maybe it had been just one lucky punch. But, boy, did I feel good after that!

Just a couple of photos

For today, I'm just showing two recent photographs.

Tikal, Guatemala

In the early Eighties, I visited Central America a number of times on business. On one trip, I took in the Mayan ruins at Tikal in Guatemala. A few years later, my wife and I, in company with another couple, visited other pre-Columbian sites in Mexico, including Monte Alban, Uxmal, Palenque, and Chichen Itza. If I can find my diaries of those trips, I will post some entries and more photos in this blog.

These photos are of Tikal. They were scanned from my color slides.

Computers

While the knocking and thumping noises resume in the remodelling at our house, and before I leave for my daily walk, let me share with you a few thoughts about computers.

Having first made the computer's acquaintance nearly twenty years ago—my original computer was a Macintosh SE with 2Mb of RAM, a 20 MB hard drive, and a tiny screen about the size of a jewel-box for a CD—and having spent a fair portion of each day with keyboard and mouse, I am nowadays completely lost without it.

It has become as necessary to my lifestyle as food and companionship.

The best thing about my computer is the link it gives me via the Internet to other people. It sounds utterly ridiculous, but often the only way for me not to forget something is for my wife to send me an email from her computer in the bedroom upstairs to mine in the den downstairs.

During power outages the appliance I miss the most is the computer. Yes, it's another machine, just like a toaster or a stove or a telephone, only more complex, but it has become such a part of my existence that its absence from it would be unthinkable.

Recently I joined a Internet forum which shares ideas and tips about the many things that can go wrong, or right, with computers. I had a problem with my computer that I had been unable to clear up for a long time, one that resulted from my trying to partition my hard drive so that I would have exclusive space for video editing. It was my first attempt at partitioning, and it screwed up my hard drive so that I ended up with a number of gigabytes that were inaccessible, completely beyond my reach, or so I thought.

I submitted my question to the forum — how to reclaim the unallocated chunk of hard drive space and merge it to my main volume. In a very short time came the answer—brief, succinct, and perfectly understandable. In a jiffy, the drive was fixed. Profuse thanks to all concerned. No need to go out and buy an external hard drive.

The forum I signed on to is bleepingcomputer.com. Very helpful and knowledgeable people there. Give it a try if you have computer problems.

One man, one job

The guy doing our bathroom is back today, and the pounding on the walls has resumed.  The day is cold and clear, but I managed to get up a sweat during my one-hour three-mile walk.  Electronic replies are owed to a couple of my overseas friends, and I intend after this blog is posted to fulfill my e-mail obligations.

*          *          *          *          *

Interruptions and unforeseen events of one sort or another have made it impractical to complete some projects that have been awaiting my attention.  These nonessential projects call for a lot of sitting, and a lot of time.  Both these prerequisites are problematical given the tough demands the tasks will make on my lower back and the dearth of continuous hours that may realistically be allocated to them.

I'm speaking of organizing and scanning old photographs to turn them into digital files, and ultimately into DVDs to be shared with family members and friends.  Likewise, the conversion to DVD of old movie films and videotapes of birthdays, weddings, vacations, and other events over the course of many decades.  

In themselves, the projects can usually be fun, but the cost in sedentary man-hours to complete them in a fashion that will sustain viewers' interest, and not bore them into a stupor after the first several minutes, is quite heavy.  Especially when it is, and has to be, a one-man job.

Scanning old slides and negatives, or prints, requires on average about a minute per photograph, at least on the equipment I use.  And when you have these in the thousands, to sort, catalog, identify, scan and import into a computer's drive, clean electronically, assemble the parts into a story that makes sense, add titles, narration, and music, and finally burn onto a DVD, you have yourself quite a job.

Then there are the old 8mm movies, where you have to set up an old, clattering projector and screen to play them back, and videotape them with the projector running.  Then you digitally transfer the video to also be edited on the computer, and add the transitions, and titles, and music to make the finished product worth watching, while cutting out all the badly exposed or scratched parts.

Did I say the projects could be fun?  It's beginning to sound more and more like work.

*          *          *          *          *

For dinner today I made a Tuscan leek and bean soup, accompanied by garlic toast.  

No, definitely no Chinese food for awhile.

Just a Few Words

We had the company of good friends and family members this holiday weekend.  Their visits offered opportunities to dine out and to chat into the small hours, about books and movies and religion and a social event (so-called) that we attended together yesterday.

The so-called social event was a meeting, rancorous at times, that centered upon the refurbishing of a building purchased some while ago as a gathering place for the members of several clubs having interests that might in a perfect world be called common.  But as with most such meetings, where large egos and intransigent attitudes hold sway, the opposing sides held forth in lengthy pronouncements and disquisitions over the right way or the best way or the wrong way to approach the multifarious problems facing the group and to address solutions that might prove in the end to be workable.

The committee charged with the task of running things came under fire as not having been properly constituted, as not being transparent in their dealings, as not having sufficient, or even any, accountability towards the membership of the clubs in question, as acting dictatorially, etc. etc.  On the other side, the critics were upbraided as being singularly unjust in their criticism of a hard-working committee whose members were serving, indefatigably, assiduously, and to the best of their ability, in the best interests of the aforementioned critics.  And in a voluntary capacity, to boot.

At times the arguments became heated and strident; challenges were met with counter-challenges; shouted accusations replaced civil discourse; and the persistent pounding of the president's gavel added to the general din. One could be forgiven for suggesting that the scene reminded one of a parliamentary session in an uncivilized Third World locale.

When the emotions reached an unbearable level, resignations were offered. Spouses of committee members, irate at the iniquitous treatment accorded their mates, forbade their continuing to serve in any capacity whatever, now and forever.  Faces reddened with passion, voices broke, tears were on the point of being shed.

A lunch break provided a period of calm, as the attendees refueled for the afternoon session.

At the appointed resumption time, in an increasingly chilly room as the afternoon shadows started to lengthen, the assembly continued its deliberations. Well-meaning persons stroked ruffled feathers, speaking in gentle tones to the injured parties, some still holding inelastic views, and in this wise they attempted to foster a return to correct parliamentary procedure, and a move towards the slow process of healing, if indeed that were possible, given the level of acrimony so far displayed.  

Whether resignations will be withdrawn, whether newly agreed-upon procedures will actually be put in place to the satisfaction of all, or whether proposed reforms will take hold, only time will tell.

Doctors

It's been a while since your last visit, says the doctor. Here, take this (he hands me a clipboard with some blank forms on it, and a ballpoint pen) and fill it out, please.  It's to update any changes in your medical history.  Sit over there.  Take your time.

The doctor is an oral surgeon whom I last saw some five or six years ago.  The blank form I am required to complete is three pages long.  The last page is legal boilerplate stuff with a place for a signature and a date at the bottom.  Most of the text on the page is about my being legally responsible for the doctor's charges, even if I have dental insurance coverage, which I do. Should there be problems with my insurer, it does not concern the doctor, who will look to the patient for remedy. The legalese also allows the doctor and his agents to share my medical information with others who may have legitimate reasons to have access to it.

The doctor's attractive receptionist has not yet arrived.  It is a very early appointment that I have, eight o'clock in the morning.  That is why the good doctor has to sit at the receptionist's desk himself, handing out clipboard and questionnaire and pen.  On the receptionist's desk is a framed photograph of a dark-haired toddler.  Probably the woman's child, I figure, and maybe the reason she has not yet shown up for work.

I was looking forward to seeing the receptionist, who has large eyes with thick lashes and is physically very well-endowed.

The questionnaire is not difficult to fill out.  I know the names of my medications, and their dosage.  For the majority of the ailments listed on the questionnaire I can truthfully check the box for No. For the handful of questions where the answer must be checked Yes, brief explanations can be offered by using letters of the alphabet, which after many years of consulting doctors I have learned to recognize. (HTTP, USB, LPT, NTSC etc.  Just kidding, just kidding, these are not them.)

Actually, all things considered, my health is pretty good for a guy my age.  Sure, there are the usual bits here and there that may not be working like I would wish them to, but on the whole the ol' corpus is holding together in a seemly manner.  

I try to be consistent with my daily walk, do my best to keep active, get fresh air and sunshine whenever possible. Eat well.  Think good thoughts.

So now the oral surgeon examines xrays of the troublesome tooth.  Not a crack, he tells me, not an abscess, no root canal job called for. Let's wait and see. Don't bite down on that side, give it a rest. Take Tylenol for pain, see me in a month, unless something else shows up before.

Sigh of relief.   On my part.

I go out to the reception area. The receptionist has not yet arrived.  It is after nine A.M.  The doctor puts me down in his appointment book for a date in mid-March.

You prefer early morning? he says without looking up.  

I am on the point of asking him what time his receptionist comes to work, but that would have been too awkward a question to put to him, for various reasons.  Instead I answer simply that early morning is fine.

How about 9:30, he says.  

Fine, I reply.

In time, his bill will show up in the mail.

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow

Yesterday the Northern California sky put on a breathtaking display of puffy clouds from horizon to horizon. Yesterday the daytime temperatures were still in the seventies.

Today the skies are clear, the clouds have been swept away by a stiff breeze, and the mercury (or whatever they use nowadays in thermometers) has fallen by a dozen or more degrees F. The fragrant blossoms of the flowering plum tree outside our kitchen window have been blown hither and thither, carpeting a part of our redwood deck in bright pink.

So from an early spring we are now back to a cold and windy February. And the prospect of rain hangs in the chill air. The moisture-laden cumulonimbus clouds can be expected here around this weekend. As I type this, the wind is whistling through the dark trees outside.


* * * * *

The double issue of The New Yorker, for February 13 and 20, has some fine articles. "Hutong Karma" by Peter Hessler, is about life in a Beijing alleyway, and Joan Acocella's piece "The Saintly Sinner" covers the many lives of Mary Magdalene. And the ever-reliable Haruki Murakami is also there with his short story "A Shinagawa Monkey," a subtly-rendered Kafkaesque tale worthy of inclusion in next year's Best American Short Stories.

* * * * *

A different workman was here today, preparing to install a new bathroom window. There was much pounding of hammers and rasping of files, producing enough vibrations to tilt my oil paintings into a cartoonish arrangement on the walls of the adjoining room.

* * * * *

Depending on one's political perspective, the current furor over the Vice-President's hunting accident, where he peppered a companion with birdshot, is either the White House press corps going out for blood against the Administration, or another example of the Administration's unseemly secrecy and hubris in not keeping the public informed. Perhaps one day we will find the answer somewhere between these two extremes.

* * * * *

My tooth hurts like the dickens. Surgery may be in the cards, but I sincerely hope not.

Remodel - Act One

The workmen came today to begin the job of tearing up our bathroom.  The foreman departed right after he gave directions to the young fellow he left here by himself.  In about 4 hours the kid had gotten everything stripped away: wallpaper, sheetrock, insulation, sink, faucets, countertop, toilet bowl and tank, light fixtures, hardwood floor.
Everything had been piled onto the back of the battered pickup parked outside.

At the moment, the bathroom looks as it might have looked in the final phase of the construction of this house, thirty-some years ago.

The workman (the one I call 'the kid') speaks very little English, and my high-school Spanish is woefully inadequate in dealing with the rapid-fire Spanish a native speaker speaks.  One wonders whether Spanish is always rendered in this rapid-fire fashion, as when the foreman talks to the kid.  Once in a while, fooling with the television remote, I may chance upon a Spanish-language channel.  Usually the program is a variety show which includes comic skits performed by chubby mustachioed men in checked jackets and beautiful young women in absurdly skimpy clothing.  The jokes exchanged are very, very rapid-fire.  Judging from the laughter and applause, the studio audience does not miss any of them.

The kid asks if he can use my phone to call his foreman on the latter's cell phone.  "Teléfono" is not hard to recognize. I understand that the job is done, at least for today, and the kid would like to know when the foreman will be coming to pick him up.  The pickup outside is not his, and so he can't drive it.  He can only load it with the debris, which the foreman will eventually take to the dump.

The kid says, "Cuarenta minutos."  Forty minutes.  Okay, so he waits.  Forty minutes becomes an hour, then ninety minutes.  The kid asks again for the teléfono.  He is apologetic, this kid, and patient besides.  He has had no lunch, and I have nothing to offer him except a banana. Gracias, señor, he says.

The foreman finally shows up.  He inspects the job.  His cell phone rings two or three times in the five minutes of the inspection. Evidently he has other jobs going simultaneously, and our bathroom is just one small piece of his world.

They are coming back early tomorrow.  I hope the kid brings a lunch box with him.

La Niña and the Quake

Please don't be alarmed if there's no posting in The Daily Muse for several days. Or even a week. The reason is that things have been going on around here, only some of which are within the writer's control.

The 'within the writer's control' items mainly have to do with his willingness to apportion the time to this blog — time to sit down at this desk and compose a suitable entry that might maintain his readers' interest for a minute or so. The 'outside-the-writer's control' items include the evening periods of inaccessibilty to our Internet provider (a major factor this past week, and a cause for continued annoyance that may cause a long-overdue change); the diurnal obligations that most of us have, such as grocery shopping, meal preparation, feeding and sleeping.

But coming up next week will be a major disruption, when the guest bathroom is being remodeled, and a new floor is to be put on our entrance hall. The project is supposed to last two weeks, so the fellow tells us who will do the job. We'll see.

For the past several days the outside daytime temperatures have been in the mid-seventies Fahrenheit. And even the nights have been in the sixties. We are made to understand through the news media that the reason for this fine weather we've been having on the West Coast is the result of La Niña.

The severe winters we have had in past years, the climatologists tell us, were the result of El Niño, a phenomenon associated with the warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean waters, and the interaction near our shores of those very warm waters with cold Artic air descending from the north. Well, it seems that these things go in cycles, and we are coming in for some years where the Las Niñas, producing the opposite effect in our weather, will predominate.

Where Los Niños could generate terrible flooding and landslides, Las Niñas may be the reason for the spate of wild fires that have threatened homes down south.

And so it goes, the pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other. And all this happening in Earthquake Country, to boot.

Speaking of which, when I visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art this past Wednesday to see the Chuck Close portraits, I also saw the exhibition of photographs of the Great 1906 Earthquake and Fire. A truly remarkable set of photos.

The centenary of the Quake is April 18, 2006.

Chuck Close

Yesterday I visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where the self-portraits of the American artist Chuck Close are on exhibit. The works range from small sketches to giant oils and composite photographs. They cover the entire spectrum of his idiosyncratic self-portraits from 1967 to 2005.

Close is known for his use of circles, ovals, and diamond shapes in variegated colors to construct his portraits. He has also experimented with all kinds of media, including plugs of handmade paper in different shades of grey that he attaches to a canvas or a panel.

Most of his self-portraits are head-on views, as though he had been set up for a passport photo; there are a few done in profile, as in a police mug shot. All are finely crafted, and engage the viewer in a way that is, for me, almost impossible to describe. You see the artist first as a young man with long, unruly hair, and a cigarette pointing straight out at the viewer. Each succeeding portrait becomes a variation of the first large one, and these variations progress through the years until you see him as a man in his sixties, balding and jowly and always somewhat stern. A life unfolds in a face over a span of thirty-eight years.

I've included two monochromatic images for comparison. These small images do not do justice to the large ones at the exhibition, and certainly not to the vibrant application of spots of color that Close has made his own.

The show has been at SFMOMA since last November; there is still time to see it before it closes at the end of February.

Little Beaver and the Streamliner

Went to see my dentist this morning for the semi-annual cleaning and checkup.  Leafing through the current issue of the National Geographic magazine in his waiting room, I began to mull over how the changes in the magazine over the years reflected the changes in this country. As a young man, I subscribed to the magazine and looked forward each month to the arrival of the familiar yellow-bordered cover picture in my mailbox.

In those far-off days the advertisers were companies like TWA, and Burlington Railroad, and Matson Lines, and Studebaker automobiles.  All gone.  Long vanished from the Big Board.

The America in those ads was exemplified (for me, anyway) by the black and white illustration of a sleek streamlined train speeding through a Southwest desert landscape, in the foreground of which stood a little Native American boy, who could have been a model for Little Beaver, the sidekick of the cowboy Red Ryder in the comic book.

The boy in the ad is waving at the last car, the observation car, of the speeding train, from whose windows a white family, mother in hat and gloves, father with a fedora, and their two kids, a boy and a girl around the Indian boy's age, are all waving back.

The Southwest setting of the tableau is shown in a few artful strokes of the illustrator's pen  — a streamlined saguaro cactus near the Native American kid, one or two streamlined stratus clouds overhead, and radiating lines to represent a setting sun.

These days when we think of Native Americans, it's unlikely we'll think of Little Beavers waving at passing streamliners filled with vacationing white families.  Chances are we'll be thinking of Indian casinos and the vast sums that have been paid to lobbyists and politicians, and federal indictments that have come and may yet come.

Shopping at Big Box Stores

Most of the time I enjoy shopping at those so-called Big Box stores, like Costco.  For several reasons.  

The prices are usually quite inexpensive when compared to retail supermarkets and stores in shopping malls.  

The place is so big that you do a lot of walking, which is good exercise.

There are usually ladies, and sometimes gents as well, serving free hot and cold samples of food items at the ends of the aisles. For those of meager appetite, it is possible if the timing is right to manage to eat a light meal by moving from one server to another.

You can find a number of electronic gadgets there, if electronic gadgets interest you, as they do me.  Just the giant televisions alone can occupy one's interest for a fair amount of time.  Likewise the digital cameras, laptop computers, cordless phones, and so on.

Unfortunately these Big Box stores also have some limitations.  On an average weekend, they can be very crowded, and the checkout lines are usually long (even with a full complement of checkers who are well-trained and fast).  Very often the lines are so long and winding that it's difficult to get into line with one's shopping cart.  (They also have large flatbed carts for people buying the big items, like leather sofas and even beds.  I suppose that's why these stores are referred to as 'Big Box stores'. )

Some shoppers behave in the Big Box store in a way that they would not in a regular store.  Here are some examples of such behavior:

Transferring all the best-looking fruit from a number of cardboard cartons to replace the less-than-perfect ones in the shopper's own carton.

A wife standing in a checkout line with an almost empty cart, communicating with her spouse by cell phone to find and fill her cart with a host of other items, just so she can preserve her place in line.

Leaving empty (or sometimes not empty) paper cups and food containers on any available flat surface, including on top of cartons and furniture, instead of dropping them in nearby trash bins.

You don't see shoppers doing stuff like that at Safeway or Macy's.  I wonder why.

Super Sunday

Being that it was such a lovely day today, and not being a football fan, I drove into San Francisco. It's something that I rarely do because of the terrible parking in the City.
Here are some photos of the downtown and Chinatown areas that I think turned out pretty well.

You can click on the images to enlarge them.




A view northward up Kearny Street



The meeting of Stockton and Columbus Streets



Diners in the window of the Panta Rei Ristorante



Chinatown residents watching a chess game



An old apartment building in Chinatown



Another apartment building nearby



A Victorian building in North Beach



The Transamerica pyramid, one of the
City's most recognizable features



The tip of Coit Tower seen from
Washington Square in North Beach

Saturday's Pictures

Fig Tree in Winter



Evening Rush Hour

Dull, dull, dull

It's a dull, drizzly, overcast day here in the Bay Area. There has been such a lot of moisture of late that moss has begun to appear in the sidewalk cracks and beneath the gutter downspouts. Yet how can I complain, when my friends in Seattle haven't had a respite from the rain for weeks on end.

Weather like this is fine for curling up with a good book, but I have miles to go before I sleep.

* * *

I thought that last night's State of the Union address by President Bush, and his speech today in Nashville, were uninspiring. What I'd been hoping for from our Commander-in- Chief was a more sweeping vision than we saw, delivered with greater panache. There were some good moments in last night's address, as when he spoke directly to the people of Iran, but overall I would just give him a B-. (And I don't expect he'll ever learn to pronounce 'nuclear'.)