bringing the crazy

After Obama was elected, I had this idea that perhaps political discourse in this national would be somewhat elevated. I imagined that with a smart and articulate president, people would actually talk about ideas. Holy Fuck-Stockings, was I wrong! Ok, I knew it was incredibly naive to think that, but I had high hopes.

The Crazy has been coming out of the woodwork all over. It's a deluge of Crazy. First the Birthers, who insist that Obama was not born in this country despite proof that he actually was. Then there was all the talk of Texas succeeding from the union. And the "Tea Bagger" tax protests. People showing up at Obama events with guns. The kicking around of the Thomas Jefferson quote "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." The irrational conviction that Obama is a socialist dictator, planning to take away our freedoms, suppress dissent and put republicans in concentration camps. The comparisons of Obama and Hitler. Then there is all the disinformation about the health care reform, which has veered into bold-faced lies and weird fantasies about "death panels." The latest is that Obama's planned speech to school children, to stress the importance of education and encourage them to work hard in school, is actually an attempt to "indoctrinate our children with his socialist agenda."

There will always be paranoid and delusional people, at all parts of the political spectrum. But I am stunned, and scared, that this level of insanity has become so wide-spread. It's not just the fringe now; people with power and influence are spreading this Crazy. Sometimes it seems that we, as a species, will just keep getting more and more insane until we destroy ourselves. It's actually a pretty likely outcome eventually. What's surprising is that we have not done it yet.

Well... this is turning into a happy blog post, isn't it?

Of all the sources of Crazy, there are two people that really worry me. I would like to dismiss them as harmless, but I can't. I think they will provoke the right-wing nutjobs until one finally cracks and does some serious violence.

One of these nut jobs is talk-show host Glenn Beck. He's one of the loudest voices in meme of Obama as socialist dictator. And he has a show on Fox with many rabid, brainless followers.

The other one that scares me is Minnesota congresswoman Michelle Bachman. Her brand of Crazy is more ridiculous than dangerous, but still dangerous. She makes Sarah Palin look reasonable. I first became aware of her when she proposed on TV that the media should start taking a look at what people in congress are actually "un-American". Here are a few other examples of what Bachman has to say:

“The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. It’s all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax,”

"And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums."

"We're running out of rich people in this country."

"What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This [health care reform] will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass…Right now, we are looking at reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom. And we may never be able to restore it if we don’t man up and take this one on.”

"Many Americans pay more than half their income in taxes... it’s nothing more than slavery.”

"I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We're the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs."

“He [John McCain] is not my man. Our candidate was chosen by the media. But there are other races out there.”

This goes on and on...

How on Earth does an insane person like this get elected to office? I am SO glad I don't live in her district.

Only in San Francisco...

Recently, I saw this on the side of a bus here in San Francisco:


Yes, those are really cartoon penis men. Apparently it's part of a larger public service ad campaign in the city. Although I have not seen this in person, the campaign has taken 3-dimension form too:















You can read all about it at healthypenis.com.

The Fog

Sometimes the fog looks quite dramatic coming over Twin Peaks. This was taken on Saturday from the steps across the street from our apartment.

The Murals of the Mission

I've always admired the great number of murals in the Mission district, and for a while I've wanted to photograph a bunch of them. Today, being a beautiful sunny day in the city, I finally made the time to do just that. Unfortunately, my digital camera is with Stella in North Carolina right now, so I took all these on my iPhone. While I was biking around, the streets of the Mission were full of cars stuffed with Mexicans waving theirs flag, honking and screaming. You see, Mexico had just beat the US in Soccer to win the Gold Cup. My Mexican neighbors were very, very excited.

Here is a but a sampling of some of the murals in neighborhood.

Zen and the Art of Palm Maintenance

I've never thought too much about palm trees until recently. On the five minute walk between the train station and my office I pass roughly 75 palm trees (no, I've never counted them, and I'm not going to). Recently, a crew has been doing maintenance on them. I never realized that palm trees needed to be maintained, particularly with such big machinery.



It makes sense that you should cut off the dead fronds, lest you end up with a tree like this:


But what surprised me was the workers striping the old remains of the fronds off. Here are before and after photos:



I don't see what the purpose of this is, other than to create a more manicured look. Personally, I prefer the "before" look to the "after" look. Anyone else agree, or is this just evidence of my preference for all things scruffy?

Sierra 1990 - 2009

Sierra, my feline companion since January of 1991, was put to sleep on Sunday. She would ld have been 19 this fall, in late September or early October.

This was one of the most difficult things I've had to go through. Sierra was my constant companion through some of the most formative years of my life. I was 22 when I got her, and a very different person than I am now. She first lived with me on Prospect Street in Ann Arbor while I was attending the University of Michigan and playing guitar in the band Assembly Required. She was such an adorable kitten.

A few months later we moved to Longshore Drive, a beautiful secluded street along the Huron River. There is a beautiful trail nearby that winds through the woods along the river. I would often go walking on that trail and Sierra would follow me. We had a favorite spot where we would sit near a tree that had fallen out on the river. This is where I intend to scatter her ashes when I return to Ann Arbor in a couple of weeks to get married.

Next we moved to a farm in northern Vermont, near the town of South Alburg on the shores of Lake Champlain. It was February when we arrived, in a house heated by a sub-par wood burning stove. I slept bundled up in my sleeping bag covered by blankets, and Sierra would crawl into my sleeping bag with me to keep warm. Come summer time, she loved to be in the field, among the vegetables and herbs we were growing. She particularly loved laying in the shade of the broccoli plants. In addition to the farming work, I was also working part time in Burlington, 45 minutes away. When I would return home, I would wander out into the tall grass near our farm plot and call her name. I would then see the grass rustling, moving closer to me. As she approached, I would lay down in the tall grass, and Sierra would sit on my chest and purr. We were so happy to see each other.

After a year, we moved back to Michigan, living with my friend Steve in Whitmore Lake. She loved the open country, and sometimes would disappear for two or three days at a time, exploring. Later, we moved to an apartment on Fountain Street in Ann Arbor, where we lived for nine years. We briefly had another cat, named Boutros Boutros-Ghali. I called him "Booty" for short. Sierra didn't much like living with another cat, and was happy when Boutros left one morning and never came back. I, however was sad. A few years later, I got another cat, Ariel, who still lives with me.

One of my favorite memories of Sierra in that house was how she let me know when she wanted to come in. She loved going outside, but when she was ready to come in, she would climb up the screen door until she could see through the small window in the door at just above human head level. It looked as if a tall person with a tiny cat head was peering through the window. My neighbors would sometimes walk by and see her clinging to the screen near the top of the door. They loved it.

After nine years at that house, we all moved in with Shannon in a house on Spring Street, a block away. Here the cats now lived with Tierra, Shannon's dog, and Amber, her cat. This experience brought Sierra and Ariel together as a family, trying to cope with this new living situation. Before too long, though, I bought a house on Sunrise Street, where we all lived together; two humans, three cats and a dog. The cats loved the garden and would lounge about among the flowers and on the patio or deck I built. One of my favorite memories here is when Sierra would jump on my bed at night, crawl beneath the covers and lay next to me and purr loudly.

After four years in this house, Stella & I moved to Berkeley, California. Sierra and Ariel lived mostly in my office, which had a door going out to the beautiful patio and garden. Ariel loved the garden, but by now Sierra was so old that she preferred staying inside. Still, she occasionally explored the garden and enjoyed the California sun.

After six months, we moved to San Francisco, to a large house in the Outer Richmond. Here, Sierra had the run of the house, but preferred mostly to lie in a corner in Stella's office or on the sofa bed in my office. By now she really seemed old.

One year later, we moved to our current apartment in the Bernal Heights neighborhood in San Francisco. It's a much smaller place, but with a nice deck overlooking Noe Valley. Again, Sierra mostly stayed in her bed, but would often sit on the deck and enjoy the sun.

Last Thursday it became more obvious that Sierra was very old and in less than great health. She was peeing on the rug rather than making the short walk to the litter box. I decided I would take her to the vet the following Tuesday, when I planned to work from home. Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse on Sunday. She was very sick and could barely walk and wouldn't eat or even drink water. I took her to the animal hospital where I learned she had acute liver failure. To attempt to save her would require at least 48 hours of hospitalization and the vet doubted that she would even make it through the next 12 hours.

We both agreed that the best thing was to put her to sleep. It was one of the most painful things I've ever endured. I held her in my arms, looking into each other's eyes, as she passed away. I can't remember the last time I cried so hard.

So much in my life has changed in the last 19 years. But the one constant through it all has been the companionship of Sierra, my Familiar, my friend. She enriched my life greatly, and I can only hope I was able to do the same for her.

I take some comfort that in the final few days I spent a lot of quality time with her, knowing that our time together was growing short. It was still shorter than I expected, but I am grateful that I had that time at all.

Sierra, I miss you. I love you. I will remember you always.

waiting...

Damn, now that's a long wait!

In Rainbows

The title of this post is also the name of the last Radiohead album. This post has nothing to do with Radiohead.

But it does something to do with rainbows. And trains.

On the CalTrain ride home from work today, we sat at the Bayshore station for 20 minutes because there was an accident on the tracks somewhere in San Francisco that prevented the trains from going through.

But as I sat there on the train I could see a full rainbow over the bay. I took photos with my iPhone and tried unsuccessfully to stitch them together on my computer. So here are the two photos, of either end of the rainbow:


























I also tried to take another photo of the rainbow while passing by a scrap metal dump, but the rainbow was barely visible:


This could be seen as a metaphor for urban life: fleeting moments of beauty sitting upon a huge pile of shit.

missing the ocean

We used to live less than one mile from the ocean. We could see it from a window in our house. Now we live on the other side of the city, several miles from the ocean. I used to go to the beach, either to surf, run, or just watch the sunset, nearly every day. Now it's been weeks since I've seen it and I realize just how much I miss it. Something about the ocean just draws me to it, and I'm really feeling that pull strongly right now.

I will, however, have some time to go this weekend Stella & Jeffrey are going to Ann Arbor on Saturday until Thursday. Some portion of my free time will involve the ocean, hopefully surfing on it. The surf report for Saturday looks a bit intense for me with waves 5-8 feet high. I like around 3 foot waves the best, since I still totally suck at surfing. Hopefully sunday will be calmer, but if not, I'll probably see what I can do with the bigger waves.

a taste of Bar Kokhba

After I raved about the Bar Kokhba show in my last post, I figured I should follow up with a taste of their music. Here's a video of a performance in Marciac, France August 10, 2007.

Zorn/Masada fest

Last week was a intense week of live music. While I still go to a fair amount of shows, these days it's rare for me to be at something this involved. Just Edgefest every October. Years ago, I would often travel to extended festivals in New York or Victoriaville, Quebec. Life is very different these days.

New York composer/musician John Zorn did a five night residency at Yoshi's in San Francisco starting last wednesday. Each night was a different group, two sets per night. As soon as I heard about this last fall, I became terribly excited. I LOVE Zorn's Masada groups, especially The Masada String Trio and the sextet known as Bar Kokhba. Both groups have Erik Friedlander playing cello. He's something of a hero to me and is the main reason I starting playing cello years ago. Over the years, every time I've read about the Masada groups playing somewhere, always in New York or Europe, I try to figure out if I can fly out for it. It's that amazing to me. Finally, they do their first US Masada festival outside of NY and it's in my city! Wheee!

I knew that I definitely wanted to see the first three nights and bought tickets as soon as they went on sale. I figured I would see how things went with the last two nights. While interested, I figured it was a long stretch of time to go out and leave Stella & Jeffrey to their own devices. Who knows what trouble they could stir up without me looking over them!

A Brief History of Masada: Four of the five bands play tunes from Zorn's "Masada" book. His first Masada group was just called "Masada" and consisted of Zorn on alto sax, Dave Douglas on trumpet, Greg Cohen on bass and Joey Baron on drums. The music was jazz heavily influenced by sephartic Jewish musical traditions and other eastern and klezmer influences. It went so well that he ended up writing over 100 pieces. Masada recorded 10 studio cds and a number of live cds. He then created The Masada String Trio, The Bar Kokhba Sextet and Electric Masada to also explore the compositions. This was all in the mid to late 90's. More recently he wrote a whole second book of compositions called "Book II: Book of Angels" and invented even more groups to play the music.

Wednesday night was the String Trio; Erik Friedlander on cello, Mark Feldman on violin and Greg Cohen on bass. Zorn sat on the floor in front of them conducting. The first set was pieces from Book I, the second from Book II. I bought tickets for both sets. It was absolutely amazing. All three musicians are virtuosos and master improvisers. Listening to the recordings is one thing, hearing and seeing it unfold before mes was a whole other thing. Watching Zorn conduct them... deciding who improvises when and for how long, dynamics, whether to bow or play pizzicato, whether to improvise melodically or just freak on their instruments... it was amazing to behold.

Thursday night was the Masada quartet. I had seen them in Columbus, Ohio years ago. I had a ticket to the first set and met a new friend at the club. The set was amazing, of course. Zorn and Douglas have been playing these tunes together for so long that they could really do amazing and things with them. My favorite parts where when the two of them improvised together, weaving a spell-binding conversation.

I decided not to stay for the second set... I had to work the next day and was already pretty tired. I should have stayed to see how they did with the Book II pieces.

Friday night was Bar Kokhba and my expectations and excitement were high. I was not let down. This was the String Trio plus Marc Ribot on guitar, Joey Baron on drums and Cyro Baptista on percussion. Ribot is mindblowingly amazing. They all are, really. Again, I stayed for both sets and had a near religious experience. It was one of the best shows I've seen in my life. If you ever get a chance to see Bar Kokhba live, GO!!!! Even if you think you won't like it, you will. I promise.

As Saturday night approached, it became clear that Stella was still way too busy with work to even want me around to distract her. So I headed off to Yoshi's again to catch the first set of The Dreamers, the only non-Masada project of the Zorn residency. The Dreamers is a recent creation, put together for a new cd a year ago. With Marc Ribot (guitar), Jamie Saft (piano, Fender Rhodes, Hammond B3), Kenny Wollesen (vibes) Trevor Dunn (bass), Joey Baron (drums), Cyro Baptista (percussion) and Zorn directing and playing alto sax, this group plays music exploring a bunch of Zorn's influences in more "popular" music traditions - exotica, surf, film music, etc. The structures were fairly straight-forward but interestingly arranged with complex rhythms. But it was the soloing and group interplay that was most amazing. It times it was almost like listening to jam band, but much more focused. I loved it, but it wasn't on the same level for me as the previous three nights. I declined to pay for the second set and was home by 10pm.

Finally, as Sunday evening rolled around, and Jeffrey was in bed and Stella busy with grading again, I decided to head back to Yoshi's to hear the final set of Eletric Masada. This was the group I was least familiar with, not owning any of their cds (as opposed to many cds by the other bands). What little I had heard of them didn't impress me all that much, but I figured live it would be a different experience.

I arrived at Yoshi's at 9:35, expecting to get a good seat and wait for the next set. Instead I learned that Sunday's showtimes were at 7pm and 9pm. I talked my way in for half price and it turns out they started late, at 9:15, so I only missed 20 minutes or so. It was just as well; i still heard over an hour of music for half price and what I heard did not thrill me on the level of the other nights. While the lineup was much the same as The Dreamers (adding Ikue Mori on electronics and switching Kenny Wollesen from vibes to a second drum kit), the music was very different. Loud, bombastic, structurally simple, noisy in-elegant solos. Ribot sounded great, and Saft had some great solos, but much of it I could have done without. Maybe, isolated from the other nights, I would have enjoyed it more, but compared to the first 4 nights, this was a bit of a let down. The crowd loved it, of course. Zorn has a devoted cultish following that worships every scrap he produces.

Overall, I am immensely gratified that I had the opportunity to witness such a wonderful series of events. Next week I'll be heading over to Yoshi's in Oakland for a double bill of Myra Melford's Be Bread and Alex Cline's group.

ski weekend

I know... it's been forever since I've last blogged. I've been busy.

This past weekend we had our first ski weekend at Lake Tahoe. It was wonderful. We went with another family of three from our neighborhood; Jeffrey goes to school with their son. We rented a house in Truckee for two nights and drove up Friday night. On saturday it was a bit warm and sunny, but the snow was still good enough for skiing at Mt. Rose, just over the Nevada border on the north side of Lake Tahoe. It was Jeffrey's first time skiing and he did quite well. It was my first time in two years, since skiing in the French Alps. It didn't compare to that, of course, but it was much more mellow and less crowded, which we loved.

By the second day it had warmed up even more and was raining, so we headed to Kirkwood, one of the few resorts high enough to be above the snow line on warm days. And it was snowing non-stop. This place was nice too, but the constant snow made skiing slightly less pleasant. But it was great skiiing on all the fresh powder. Here I had my first fall, trying to ski down a black diamond slope I had no business being on. I like the blue squares the best. Steep slopes with moguls are just no fun for me.

I had been to Tahoe in the summer, but never the winter. It was amazingly beautiful in the mountains, particularly when covered with snow. We can't wait to go back again! Here are a few photos taken with my iPhone.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

So much has changed recently. We moved across town, from the Outer Richmond to Bernal Heights. It's the third time in 18 months that we've moved. I have not moved this much since college. After the last move, which nearly killed me, I swore I would hire movers the next time I moved. I guess I lied. We moved ourselves again and it nearly killed me. I'm surrounded by boxes in our new beautiful, but small, apartment. There's still a bunch of stuff at the old house, which we're paying for until the end of the month. And worst of all, until I get this damn cat door installed, my kitties are living alone at the old house.

About that cat door... since the new place is SO small, there is no good place for a litter box except on the small back deck (which has a wonderful view; photos to come later). So I bought a new door from Lowes, cut out a hole & installed a cat door, cut holes for the door knob & dead bolt, and chiseled out space for the hinges. Now I have to cut about a half inch off the bottom of the new door before I can hang it where the current one is (the current one will go into storage until we move out). Then I have to paint it. Once I finish all that tomorrow, I can finally introduce the kitties to their new home.

I also bought a stackable washer/dryer combo that is currently sitting in the garage because it's so incredibly heavy that we can't move it up the stairs. Fortunately our friend Elliot has some kind of contraption to move incredibly heavy objects up stairs and will be helping us out on Saturday.

What prompted this move was the fact that I was laid off from my job of 12.5 years back in late October and have not been able to find a new job. Faced with the possibility of prolonged unemployment, we decided to move to save money. I love the new neighborhood; we're on the eastern edge of Bernal Heights, one block from Mission St, so it's very close to The Mission, Noe Valley and Bernal Heights. Unlike living in the Outer Richmond, this really feels like urban living and all that entails. So far, I love it.

The irony here is that on the first weekday in our new apartment, which we moved into because of my unemployment situation, I was offered a new job which pays more than the job I lost last year. The company is located in Santa Clara, which is about a 40 minute drive south (up to 70 minutes in rush hour traffic). I, however, will start by taking CalTrain instead of driving, since we currently have only one car. I can bike to the CalTrain station on 22nd St in about 15 minutes, I think. Then it's just over an hour train ride to Santa Clara. Fortunately my new job is about a 5 minute walk from the train station. Still, that's about a 90 minute commute each way, but I can read/work/whatever while riding the train. I'm thinking it won't be too bad. I start on January 26, so I still have some time to get settled into our new place.