I took this picture on the bus the other day as a welcome to the East Coasters that I know will soon be arriving in our fair state. Can’t wait to see Ashley, and Becki, and the Umpa, love you all…
And speaking of the East Coast, Mr. Hirani of Jersey, in response to my verbal harangues, has resumed his ever insightful blog.
http://holsterfungal.blogspot.com/
Just about everyone who reads my blog knows each other, so I thought I would share what some folks are up to.
-Matt recently started a blog and then promptly refused to update it, check it out if you find beauty in golden bikes. http://matbarton.blogspot.com/
He also has a website for his comics which hasn’t been updated for years. http://www.darkdaysahead.com/
-Anna’s blog is always fun if you are into arcane legal conundrums and jcrew dogwear. http://acamp.wordpress.com/
-Jenny recently had a short story published in the Bitter Oleander Press (Vol. 13, No. 2: 2007) entitled “Stella” (It has nothing to do with streetcars but much to do with desire). http://www.bitteroleander.com/index.html
-Becki’s website is up and running. Figurative, abstract, apocalyptic maps, hustler nudes in wax, ballerina tutus…she does it all (sharp work Bartdog) http://www.rebekahkrieger.com/
-Vik had a blog for a while but has since halted production. Send all complaints about the absence of Mr. Hirani’s pithy insights and searing analysis of cultrual and geo-political happenings my way, and I will forward them to Joy’sey.
So my dad has been talking about Mike Huckabee for the past month. At first I ignored him, because I thought that Huckabee was even more inconsequential than Ron Paul (who I also find interesting) as a candidate for the White House.
And then, out of nowhere, in the last week Huckabee is everywhere; the internet, NPR, newspapers, tv news, etc. Huckabee is a conservative Republican governor of Arkansas who has raised a mere 1/100 of the money that Senator Clinton has to date but is nevertheless surging in the Republican primary.
This increased notoriety, for Huckabee, was accomplished primarily through the internet. We often hear that you can’t be president unless you raise hundreds of millions of dollars, which is true, but the internet does level the playing field in allowing us to hear about other candidates and ideas that are not covered in major media outlets.
I still don’t think that Huckabee has a chance at the presidency. However, I do find it reassuring that in today’s America a candidate with very little money or name recognition and possessing only the celebrity endorsement of a B-level 1980’s action star, a weight loss story, and a a good ol’ local boy persona can draw interest and support in a field of media big-names.
I also like that people like Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and Mike Huckabee, despite the fact that they have little support, are allowed platforms to promulgate ideas from the further right and left of the American political spectrum.
The mere fact that who Chuck Norris supports for president matters is a wonder to behold.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/73272
Yoshi’s Oakland is a world renowned jazz club that has hosted top-shelf acts like Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, and Andrew Hill. Yesterday, Yoshi’s San Francisco, a 400-seat jazz club, opened on Fillmore Street. There have been some doubts voiced as to whether there are enough jazz lovers in San Francisco to support a club of that size. Nevertheless, I can’t wait to go and see some jazz greats – and it’s just down the street from Anna’s apartment!
http://sf.yoshis.com/sf/jazzclub
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/26/DDE3TGUMI.DTL&hw=yoshis&sn=003&sc=485
A new study from the National Endowment for Arts shows that literary reading among adults is declining and that reading, in general, among children and young adults is declining even more rapidly. After a child reaches middle school the amount of reading that they do for pleasure begins to decrease.
This is worrisome not only from the perspective of missing out on one of life’s greatest pleasures, but also for the future of conducting American democracy. It’s no accident that a majority of prison inmates in America are illiterate. We already have a government by television sound bites that will only fall deeper into trite name-calling rather conduct than true debate – as we grow precipitously stupider.
The upside? Some claim that we no longer need the kind of nuanced understanding of character, situation, and argument that only books can give us. All we have to do is turn on the computer/tv/radio and we are bombarded with information. In contrast, when you read you have to question, reread, look up a word or phrase, ask for help with a concept. It might be argued that Americans can communicate about their favorite sitcom, chat on myspace, and surf the internet so what is the problem?
Advancements in media and communication technologies seem to be making us intellectually simpler. Whomever the nominees of the two major parties will be in the upcoming election, I can assure you that we will not be witnessing Lincoln-Douglas level oratory or debate of prominent issues. Aren’t we supposed to be smarter now than we were in 1858? Knowledge is cyclical, as the Romans lost much of what they had accumulated with the onslaught of the dark ages, we can lose it as well.
Maybe all of this is outdated, and we should just raise kids to endlessly text each other all day. Only time will tell…
http://www.nea.gov/news/news07/TRNR.html
http://www.nea.gov/news/news04/ReadingAtRisk.html
Scott Usher paid a visit to Baghdad by the Bay the weekend before last. We met up at smoke-filled (there’s a few left in California) establishment on the Tenderloin/Tendernob border, between gentrification and despair, that is Geary Street. Scott was pretty warmed up by the time I arrived at Whiskey Thieves and -God bless him- had a running tab. It’s always a pleasure to see an old friend and catch up, especially one that has an endless supply of stories about the land he loves – old LA. That place of noirish Chandleresque skid-row despair, but also of pueblos, and streetcars, and Bunker Hill, and palm-trees, and sunshine, and of course….Mexican girls.
Oaxaca 1925, by Kenneth Rexroth
You were a beautiful child
With troubled face, green eyelids
And black lace stockings
We met in a filthy bar
You said
“My name is Nada
I don’t want anything from you
I will not take from you
I will give you nothing”
I took you home down alleys
Splattered with moonlight and garbage and cats
To your desolate disheveled room
Your feet were dirty
The lacquer was chipped on your fingernails
We spent a week hand in hand
Wandering entranced together
Through a sweltering summer
Of guitars and gunfire and tropical leaves
And black shadows in the moonlight
A lifetime ago
The largest earthquake since the 1989 Loma Prieta quake occurred 9 miles north of downtown San Jose last night. I was in class at the time. We felt a rumbling that felt like a thunderclap coupled with some shaking of the building for about 10 seconds and then it all subsided. Afterward, everyone left class to rush out and check the internet on their laptops for news!
Anyways, no one was hurt and there seems to be no property damage also. Luckily the epicenter was in an unpopulated area. The greatest danger now seems to be how it might have effected other nearby volatile faults. Like my dad said last night, you are taking your chances whether you live with hurricanes in Mississippi, fires in Southern California, tornadoes in Kansas, or blizzards in the north. All you can do is prepare for the worst and be thankful, that for now, all is well.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/31/MNCAT3RA1.DTL
One of the largest solar cell manufacturers in the world is relocating their headquarters to San Francisco. While I was interning this summer they were one of the companies I dealt with, so it was exciting for me to read this news. In economic development you get many inquiries but most don’t pan out. It’s great to hear that such a cutting-edge “clean tech” company is moving to SF.
Why does this matter? It matters because this company could have just as easily located in Dallas, San Jose, or Denver. High growth companies like this often “incubate” (get their start) in big cities and then move out to the ‘burbs where costs are lower. This was especially true in the 1990’s tech boom in which many companies started in San Francisco and then as they grew often moved south down the peninsula or across the bay to Oakland. Companies that locate in San Francisco, or New York, or Chicago, or Boston make a conscious decision to put themselves in an environment (albeit a more expensive one) with a highly educated workforce and a political climate that supports the type of business they do.
It is a positive trend, in my opinion, to see young companies like Google, Wikipedia, Suntech, etc. doing the opposite of many older companies and moving some of their operations to San Francisco after they have become well known in their respective industries. This growth in old-line city employment might not seem at all odd to us now, but in light of the trends of the past 60 years, in which major corporations fled from major cities, this could be the beginning of a shift towards once again relocating corporations in certain older cities.
San Francisco, a city which once boasted over 50 Fortune 500 companies now has a paltry 9 remaining. However, as our cultural attitudes about global warming, transportation and housing choice, and economic growth have begun to shift in favor of some older 19th century cities, rather than the sprawling metroplexes of the post-war era, we might begin to see more and more influential companies locating in cities.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/23/BUGOSUAF0.DTL&hw=suntech&sn=001&sc=1000
I recently discovered a series of free San Francisco walking tours and went on one, a few weeks ago, along with Stasie and Jordan. The tour explored the history of Pacific Heights. It was very interesting, there are many foreign consulates located there that date back to the 19th century.
Often there is more history around us, than we imagine, and going on a simple walking tour can take us back and help us to remember how much things can change in a short 100 years.
The parentals are in town this weekend, and I’m going to take them on this tour, should be fun…
http://www.sfcityguides.org/desc.html?tour=20
