Category Archives: Around Berkeley

Bear-ly there

Holly Doyne Posted on by 2

On Tuesday mornings, I have been meeting one of my neighbors for coffee and a walk. The coffee is picked up from Peet’s and we have been hiking around various streets and neighborhoods here in the Berkeley Hills. The variety of houses is just amazing. Many of the streets are winding and, as you might have guessed from the name – it can be pretty hilly. Not as in up and down but as in UP or DOWN.

When you get to the other side of Marin from where we live, it gets interesting  from a geological perspective. I will insert some pictures of Indian Rock (huge rock formation) probably next week since I don’t have any good ones from today. But back to the terrain. There are a lot of huge chucks of rock. As in protruding from the ground in front of people’s houses taking out a large chunk of their front garden. Large enough to obstruct the view from main floor windows.

I don’t think today that the city would even permit to build in this area, but the first half of the last century, I don’t think any one was quite as fussy.

The residents of one house have a sense of humor. What do you do when you have a huge outcropping in your front yard?

actually, not doing a dumpster dive

 

why, you place a statue of a golden bear. Not a small one nor light weight being solid metal and bolted on.

a find

Holly Doyne Posted on by 1

I started out thinking today was going to be pretty much of a loss. Not in terms of family, but in the realm of getting progress on any of my cross stitch projects.

There was the 0500 broadcast from WHO re: Neglected Tropical Diseases (leprosy among others) and the next in a series of occupational medicine broadcasts re: the construction industry at 0900. From there I made a mad dash over to the Eldest’s house (meeting up with the youngest for errand running) in order to make the 1100-1200 & 1200-1300 schedule. Even tho all were not “Zoom” since Cisco’s Webinex was in the mix – I was totally & completed zoomed out.

So anyway – Maus wanted to cruise the thrift (charity) stores for some household items and used furniture. Over the next few hours, we stopped at four (or was it five?) Goodwill locations, a consignment furniture store, and Out of the Closet.  She made out like a bandit. Found some picture frames, candle sticks, a most excellent tea kettle, serving bowls, and a couple of vases. 

I purchased one picture frame at a Goodwill – then found this lovely thing –

my new cabinet

 

Obviously (grin) it is a jewelry cabinet – a top that lifts up for precious storage on top, four draws with dividers inside, two draws below. 

Now, I don’t have jewelry. But I have floss, beads, and lots of notions. This lovely little cabinet is going to replace a number of cheap, plastic containers and look elegant in doing so. Price? $25US.  After it airs out a bit, I will move it to a place of honor in my sewing room. 

 

All dressed up

Holly Doyne Posted on by 2
and unable to go anywhere.

garage on Spruce St

In keeping with long standing tradition – the monkey frieze is decorated for the holiday. Otherwise, there isn’t much house decoration, lights, or action along the route from our house to the Package Sending station that is across the street from my local Peet’s. I had two packages to toss in the mail and had no interest in standing inside the official post office in line with rude people for however long it took. Instead, I could grab a coffee and wait outside in pleasant, cooperative, and socially respectful company. When my turn came, it was all of three minutes to handover, verify, and pay for the packages.

Which just left me the trudge back up the hill….

Modor?

Holly Doyne Posted on by 3
This is what the world looks like this morning

The time is 0844 on US Pacific Daylight Savings Time. Right now, that “daylight” is an obvious misnomer. Traffic is light, there is ash on everything. The photos were captured on my Cannon 5-D. Cell phones, as it turns out, even the new ones, are not equipped to capture orange sky secondary to reflected sunlight off ash.

The high heat of the last few days obviously has resulted in new wildfires as well as hampering CALFIRE as they desperately attempt to control multiple extensive burning areas.

So far, we are physically safe, but I am making sure that we have everything prepared for a sudden evacuation.

This is the current map –

current fire map from FireTracker

another bad air day

Holly Doyne Posted on by

No, we are not at fire risk, But the smoke? That is another complete story. The last several days have fallen into one of the following:

  • bad
  • worse
  • horrible.

 

the air quality a couple of days has won us the award of “the worst place on earth.” Which, considering Beijing and Delhi are frequently seen at the top, you can get the idea. Even the incredible sunsets can’t make up for it. That is when I can see as far as the water. 

In case you hadn’t heard – we have 32,000 acres currently burning and less than 5% under control. And just to make it clear -these fires have NOTHING to do with deadfall or heavy forests – these are grasslands, open area, housing areas. The fires are the result of lightening strikes – over 10,000 in three + days due to the insane weather. 

Did I mention dry lightning? The rain never fell and everything was already super dry before this happened.  Dani is not headed to Dixon – the fires are within four miles of where she works. Travis Air Force Base went into Evac mode early today – which potentially compounds the fire fighting challenge (air base, reload, refuel, National Guard etc). 

California didn’t need this, didn’t cause this – and certainly does not need political abuse from Washington DC when there is an obvious clear lack of knowledge on what has actually transpired. We can only be grateful that the surrounding states are helping to the best of their abilities. But everyone is short this fire season which has started 2-3 months early.

Oh, and there is COVID-19 which is making evacuation, shelters, support, and fire fighting that much more challenging. 

I am almost afraid to ask – what next for fear the San Andreas or Hayward Faults might decide to scratch an itch.

 

 

 

Blockley

Holly Doyne Posted on by  
As I am sure that just about all of us know by now that there are no universities holding actual, physical graduation ceremonies.

So, enter the Minecraft World – visit Blockley – and watch today’s Cal Graduation on Twitch.

The story behind the project is perhaps best captured by NBC (link here).  There is also an extensive description here –  complete with interviewers.

If you want to explore the campus – log into your Minecraft account – the specific server is mc.blockley.com

and a bowl of cherries

Holly Doyne Posted on by  
and there was marked success at the Farmer’s Market yesterday.

Obviously, I was presented with cherries –

California Cherries and my cup of tea

Additionally, apricots, nectarines, peaches, and the most incredibly strawberries made an appearance in our kitchen.

I had two bouquets of flowers, supper brought in from a local Mediterranean restaurant and an evening spent quietly stitching.

The high point of today is going to be banding of the Falcon chicks shortly before 1400 PDT (which you can recalculate to your own time zone.

Fog rolls in

Holly Doyne Posted on by 1

East Bay cut off….

I am deriving this from the old English headline (1930’s?) which declared – Fog rolls in – Continent cut Off….

from the living room

 

where most days I can easily see the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin headlands

 

even in closeup

 

I can barely see the Berkeley marina and parkland which stretches out a short way into the bay.

The traffic report this morning, and yes, public radio reports on traffic on Saturday as well, noted the Golden Gate full of fog, and high winds on the Bay Bridge. Also, at different locations – old furniture in the road, a bicycle in the road, and a multi-car fender bender. The road construction slow downs make complete sense. CalTrans is very sensibly using their budget early in the year to make critical road repairs and upgrades while traffic is at a minimum. 

So, I am still hanging out at home while attending various webinars, conferences and social get togethers. Over Zoom for the most part with the occasional drift into GoToMeeting. 

Still safe, still relatively healthy.

Watching Annie

Holly Doyne Posted on by 2
Before you think this is either a spy mission or something less than savory – let me introduce you to Annie and Grinnell. This is their fourth year nesting on the UCBerkeley Campanile. Either they have excellent taste in music, or the noise level just doesn’t bother them.

As part of the Institute for Wildlife Studies – there are cams on the nest feeding live into YouTube 24/7. There are four eggs. The best prediction has them hatching starting early this afternoon (PDT). The link is here if you want to see yourself. Otherwise, if you just put Falcon Cam into the You Tube search box – you can probably find the other 2-3 cams also trained in the nest.

I had planned on finishing my paper this afternoon. But Annie proved to be too much a distraction. So I am stitching and watching instead.

The Coffee Fairy

Holly Doyne Posted on by  
Seems to be one of the few positive contributions that I am making around here.

I can stop for a coffee when dropping someone off. I can pick up coffee and bring it back to anyone who I would like to see vertical, rather than hanging out in bed, in a chair or on a couch. (I will include tea drinks for the non-coffee people in my household).

And it is not that I can’t make a pot of coffee. That happens regularly. I even have a small steamer to which I can add milk in order to make my own cafe-au-laits. Or non-dairy flavorer additives (probably complete with a full set of chemical additives and preservatives) should I want to create an imitation of flavored beverage.

But there is something nice, and perhaps comforting about picking up a coffee on my way somewhere.

It isn’t as nice as going out for an afternoon tea in England. Or a morning coffee in a German or French Cafe in spring.

But it will have to do for now.

In the road

Holly Doyne Posted on by 3
When you live in an area like mine, you have to have a certain tolerance for wild life in the road. Early morning or late evening it is not all that uncommon to see black-tailed deer out for a stroll. We are near enough to several parks that raccoons and possums are not a rarity. I don’t mind the animals, they are doing what animals so – out, about, seeking food, shelter or companionship.

The two legged kind, on the other hand, I have little tolerance for. This is Berkeley where, apparently people firmly believe they are entitled. This is a city. There are actually sidewalks. Many of them in my neighborhood have actually been replaced over the last five years. During daylight hours, no one should have any problems seeing the sidewalk.

So please explain to me the reason, other than total obliviousness, why all these people think it is perfectly fine to walk, jog, or run in the middle of the road? The speed limits here are not high, which gives any of us who happen to be driving, enough time to avoid the idiots. But why do they think that it is ok to run in the road.

If it was only an early morning problem, I might be able to understand it. All the emphasis on energy savings means that we have few street lights. Seeing your footing in the middle of the block might prove a bit more challenging. But if you are going to be out in the road at 0Dark30, please, please, please leave your fashion worries at home. There is absolutely nothing wrong with reflective orange, yellow, or neon green. In fact, it might just save your life. I am not driving all that fast, I know better. But nothing makes me more concerned that a jogger happily wearing black, complete with ball cap and headphones trotting down the middle of the street totally oblivious to anything around him. And yes, I used the pronoun him deliberately. The ratio of men:women seems to be about 5:1.

I can accept the bikers in the road. At least those that actually act like they are driving a vehicle and obeying the road signs. But there are a number of them as well that seem to think that lights, helmets and rules are not relevant to them happily peddling down the road.

And I most definitely think it is a Berkeley issue. Picking Angel up from work this afternoon, we detoured down Telegraph toward Oakland to drop off one of his co-workers. There were pedestrians. They were all on the sidewalk or crossing at corners. There were a few individuals on bike. As we drove closer to Berkeley, I could almost see the Oakland/Berkeley border. The closer we were toward campus, the more idiots in the rood.

And, no, it is not just students. Most of those I take pains to avoid are beyond even the age of graduate students. Nope, entitled “adults” is what most of them are. In fact, the closer we drove toward home, the more walkers, bikers, and dog walkers there were. Only the dog walkers seemed to stay out of the road. I am trying to be glad that plenty of people are trying to get some exercise while actually observing more than a minimum of social distancing.

But please, not down the center of the road. Not on foot. And, for that matter, if you are wobbling up our massive hill on a bicycle, you might just want to ride on the side like most others, or walk your bike up the sidewalk.

It is not completely hoarding

Holly Doyne Posted on by  
As someone wisely pointed out this week, the absence of toilet paper is not solely the result of toilet paper holders.

In the normal way of things, most adults spend at least part of their day out of the house related to employment. Children spend time at school. People go to restaurants, concerts, sporting events. In all of those situations, the toilet paper used is supplied by the location as it is not the custom in the US to supply your own no matter where you are.

Now, with everyone home, those extra 8-12 hours of toilet use – and prime awake time at that – are transferred to the home. This results in the increased use of home toilet paper.

In addition, if you are suffering from seasonal allergies (unfortunately extremely common right now in the Northern Hemisphere) you are also pushing fluids. Or if you are coughing, drinking a lot of fluids improves your health. In any case – this results in more trips to the loo.

If every person who normally buys toilet paper bought just one extra package in a two week period, the shelves would be empty. Well, duh! The shelves are empty! Also of interest is that the commercial supply (restaurants, hotels, convention centers, schools….) is a completely different supply chain than that for the home market. Since most of us don’t want to buy 100-1000 rolls at a time (nor can we even get accounts) it isn’t easy to shift between the systems.

So before you look askance at the person who has bought a package of 12 rolls of toilet paper, they may not be hoarding. In fact, they may be like this household where we buy once for three locations (upstairs, downstairs, Richmond) from one package.

At least that was one thought, not that there aren’t those who have years supply in their garage in case of the apocalypse.

Jury Duty?

Holly Doyne Posted on by 4
really?

In the middle of everything, the computers of Alameda County grind on. Unsupervised, or just automated, the printer is spewing out Jury Duty summons. I received one last month, but the courts shut down before my report date. George received his summons on Monday. As I remember correctly, he was in the hospital last fall when his number came up. He called them and explained that 1) bone marrow transplant in hospital 2) house bound for a minimum of 100 days afterwards 3) recommendations for avoidance of extremely close quarters for at least six months. No problems, they would take him off the list permanently for medical.

And another summons shows up.

Perhaps they are leaning forward and hoping that the courts will be back open next month. Not. Going. To. Happen. The best modeling predicts things are going to be extremely ugly right about then. And, in any case, there is no way that he should take that kind of risk. Not unless the judicial system can go to Zoom courts…

Think about it – Anything that doesn’t require physically passing something around could be done by Zoom/GoToMeeting or one of the other softwares that link people in video conferencing. Certainly the courts could easily blow through all of the traffic tickets that way without requiring personal appearances. Effective use of both court and law enforcement time. For that matter, it would mean that people would not have to waste an entire day sitting on a bench just in case their number comes up.

Right to a trial by your peers? Ok. Where does it say that those peers have to be in the same room with you? Where does it say that you have the right to reach out and touch someone? If we can manage to support thousands of people through tele-medicine, why can’t we think ahead and set up tele-courts?

And before anyone goes down the rabbit hole about advantages to the wealthy and disadvantage to those of age, color, or poverty – exactly who do we think is tying up the court system (outside of family court) right now? It isn’t grandma on her old age pension, it is the dude with money. It is the larger landlords who have the money to evict their tenants, it is the insurance companies that would rather fight than pay claims.

But anyway…I am thinking of the waste of computer time, paper, ink, postal services for something that can’t happen next month. And this just may be symptomatic of all those automatic systems in place. The ones that let us do dumb things more quickly….

Meanwhile, “the paper” grinds slowly on. Miriam continues to build webpages as part of her “work remotely,” Shana is being the demo model for the local BAR Method’s move to Zoom Classes. Noah is on his way back to San Diego as he has lab classes when the quarter resumes next week. Angel is hard at work – more than half the staff where he works are now either out or gone and people want bagels, Alex is putting together some on-line activities for groups of JCC kids now locked down at home, Dani’s work is shut down – so she is hunting for on-line employment.

As the numbers today went over ½ a million that have tested positive, the curve is slowing only in a few locations. The US has passed Italy for total number of cases. Both Italy and Switzerland are reporting over 1000 cases per million inhabitants; and not everyone who is ill is getting tested. I think that is lot more realistic. California is still lagging hugely in testing, Ignorance doesn’t help; in my area it leads to complacencies.

If he was wearing a red suit

Holly Doyne Posted on by 4
he would be a dead ringer for Santa. Instead, above the round, smiling face which almost disappears into an exuberantly full white beard sits a slouch hat. Black shirt, open sturdy blazer, heavy work boots, and a large silver cross hangs around his neck.

We are standing that 2 meters apart outside Peet’s waiting on our mobile coffee orders. There are several whose faces I recognize, but other than Joe (Berkeley Police and wearing both uniform and name tag) I can’t call anyone by name. Peet’s has adjusted to an 0700 opening time, and mobile ordering only.

Meanwhile, J. gets his coffee, checks in with one of our homeless regulars who sits bundled up in his electric chair, and heads back to his blue van. It doesn’t look like a sleigh. But as part of Night on the Street – Catholic Worker, he has been collecting and delivering meals, sleeping bags, essentials for several decades.

The numbers of ill and deaths are continuing to climb. Part of the challenge for all of us on a daily basis is to remember that cases showing up now are from people infected 2-14 days ago (average 5-6 days) which means that social distancing doesn’t show a drop in new cases until 28 days after restrictions are instituted. In that middle time, everyone who has already been infected has a chance to get sick and spread their joy. To this point, the “average” person landing critically ill in the hospital survives several days in the ICU. So fatalities lag several days behind increased numbers of cases. The better the health system, the longer that lag time is, until the health care system becomes totally overwhelmed. Once it is overwhelmed, the challenges mount. There was a great article in the NYT yesterday discussing triage, priority setting and the burden it places on staff and hospitals, not just on family and patients.

Reality? I would forgo a respirator if it meant that someone younger would have a chance at long term survival. But not everyone of those over 65, 70, 85 would make that choice. Perhaps it is because I feel I am already living on borrowed time and have had the gift of the last two decades and these past couple of years to spend with my family.

But it is Monday – one on-line Zoom class I think is actually not happening this week due to a previously scheduled spring break. Back to my regularly scheduled procrastination and stitching….

Leaping

Holly Doyne Posted on by 2
well, ambulating anyway toward bed at a reasonable time.

If there was supposed to be something special about today (other than dozens upon dozens of bad puns) I missed it completely.

Life is rolling along. I have to call a halt to my procrastination and add in the references and footnotes to that flipping paper so that I get it off my to-do list.

George is doing fine, the kids all seemed to be occupied at this and that which leaves me with little complaints, a sewing room to clean, and a lovely pile of cross-stitch waiting my attention

More Monkey

Holly Doyne Posted on by 2

on Spruce St

Underneath it all is this almost gargoyle appearing monkey. Dressed differently according to the season, I just noticed this version the other day. Walking down the hill with Miriam and Angel, I took them this route on purpose.

Not raining for the moment

Holly Doyne Posted on by  
And I am headed down the hill to Haas Pavilion for another Cal Women’t Basketball game. But first an addendum to yesterday’s post:

As Noah and I were returning home from picking up burgers from Barney’s

Heading east on Vine with Noah after picking up burgers from Barney’s, I needed to turn left onto Shattuck. About ½ way through the cycle, a woman in dark clothing, obvious grey hair started across the street in the crosswalk. So I waiting. Good person here, pedestrians have the right of way. Even if they are strolling. Even if they are walking with their phone held out in front of them talking. It took her the rest of the light to get across the street while I snuck behind her as soon as there was space. And then Noah and I went down the rabbit hole of older women, shorter hair with a perm, walking slowly. I actually never saw her face, but we both judged her on the hair…

Otherwise, we sorted out several boxes of “stuff” in the garage ending in a break till the garage pick up on Mon.

 

Rosie

Holly Doyne Posted on by 5
I met her at the Safeway just down the hill from our house. An slightly bent-over woman with a walker who didn’t appear that much older than me. We exchanged comments at the cheese counter about getting an education, then that education didn’t guarantee common sense. And, that occasionally, being a woman meant that you just had to work harder.

She also remarked that, long ago in Tokyo, wearing her USA team clothing didn’t get her a seat in a restaurant. Apparently being Black was more important than being courteous to a visitor. We introduced ourselves, chatted a few minutes longer, then went on our ways.  And I am thinking – Olympics?

Finding information on the male athletes from 1964? No problem. Finding one of the women? A bit more of a challenge. But starting with the name Rosie and assuming California – I found her.  Rosie competed in the 80 meter hurdles, coming in 8th overall. There are other athletes in her family, she doesn’t capitalize on them. For years, she has been quietly supporting various athletic clinics along with other Olympians. She is a tireless advocate for seniors. None of this she told me, and it took a while to dig it out.

Power out is not powerless

Holly Doyne Posted on by 12
Trust me on that. But just after I emailed last night – first one set of lights blinked out. Less than a minute later, all the other circuits went dead. And it was quiet, a very quiet 2230. Good writeup in the Berkeleyside which is an on-line only Berkeley newspaper.

At least it was quiet in my the house. Most of the time, none of us notice all the background noise produced by various machines, electronics, and appliances. I wasn’t able to say the same for the renters up the hill from us. Quiet? No – they had been partying hard since 2000, complete with barbecue from the smells of things. Suddenly they were literally (as apposed to aware of their affect on others) in the dark. More noise, complete with laughs, shrieks and giggles.

Rather than starting WWIII in the neighborhood, I just shut my window. Plus, I finally realized that it was Saturday night. If you are young, I guess Saturday night is for partying.

Which takes us to this morning when I started smelling smoke in the house – nothing burning near us – just the wind had changed. It was now blowing from Sonoma to us. We still have no power and I am expecting the situation to remain unchanged through tomorrow. The dividing line turns out to be Spruce Street runs parallel to Euclid only  four blocks further down the hill. Peet’s was packed this morning with hordes coming down for coffee, wifi and a chance to charge their phones.

I am sure that there are still those who don’t believe PG&E should have shut off power. But then, perhaps they are not paying attention to the brush fires this afternoon along HWY 24 near Walnut Creek. Or the continuing spread of fire in Sonoma. Or all the trees down along the route we took from Berkeley to Richmond (California) due to the high winds.

Practically speaking, all of us are going to have to make changes. It isn’t just the US. Or some areas of Canada. There were massive wild fires last year in Sweden destroying millions of acres. There have been fires across huge swaths of Russia. My intrepid friends in Australia note that fire season now starts two months earlier. There are fires burning in New South Wales and Queensland.

We can also hold our politicians accountable. Yes, I moved back to a country with a leader who epitomizes the “everyone for themselves,” attitude. Who has cut safety funding, who has cut both education and senior citizen services and benefits. And doesn’t believe that it is anyone’s responsibility to leave the world in a decent shape.

Me? I am reading regulations, I will vote, I will play my part. But I believe in leaving the world a better place than what I found it. I won’t pat myself on the back for reducing my carbon footprint this past year – my decreased travel was not voluntary. But it has made me stop and think about waste, cost, and where I spend my precious dollars as well as who I want representing me.