Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. - William James
Everyday life
2006, March 13
You Go, Vermont
Reminds me of something the town council of Berkeley CA would do.
Here is a link to a most interesting entry in SCOTUSblog,
From a village green...
2006, February 11
Robins and Ravens
Spring? The Celtic calendar says yes, it starts midway between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox, about February 5th.
Kate at CiderPress Hill heard a robin on Thursday, February 9th and thought about Spring.
Yesterday I saw a robin on the wire outside the window, and two days ago saw a pair of ravens in a short version of their mating flight. The mating flights of ravens are truly wonderful, they dive and separate, come together, zoom upwards, fly in tandem then separate again, rise up and dive, over and over as if they heard music in the wind, not audible to us.
For Celts and the birds, yes, Spring is here.
2005, December 29
Elephant Seals at Christmas
Elephant seals on the beach near San Simeon at Christmas.
My daughter and son-in-law took their 14 month old daughter to the beach at San Simeon on Christmas to see the Elephant seals. But she was frightened of the them, they were so close and so large. I think she showed good sense.
2005, November 04
Patterns in Architecture
A language for towns, buildings and construction.
If you look around in the northern part of the East San Francisco Bay at the housing that was built by developers in the forties and fifties, as well as most of what is being built today, you would think that no one has ever given any thought to planning, livability, or simple attractiveness. This is not so.
A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, et al, was published in 1977 and is now in its 26th printing. It is the second of a series of three books; the first is A Timeless Way of Building, and the third is The Oregon Experiment
The book, A Pattern Language is carefully organized and addresses the architecture of rooms, offices, waiting rooms, small houses, large buildings, villages, towns, cities within the social context of how people live their lives.
Though it presents a theory of architecture and construction, the book reads like a series of meditations on human life, a social architecture. You can start at the beginning and read through, or start anywhere and read as much as you want.
These ideas are available to architects and developers. Why are they ignored?
Christopher Alexander's Website
Discussion of work by C. Alexander
2005, September 14
Road Trip - Arrival
Arrived safe and sound in Maine on Monday.
She arrived safe on Sept 12 after a two week trip across the country. Five days were lost with car trouble, a crushed fuel filter had to be replaced over the holiday weekend and she got a tank of gas with a lot of water in it. Apparently this is a common problem in Indiana and Ohio where the humidity is 88 per cent on 90 degree days. So she not only moved but learned a lot about the car.
She got a lot of long distance help over the telephone from our wonderful mechanic here in the Bay area, even though he knows she was moving and probably won't be a customer any more. I am so thankful he was able to give her helpful suggestions.
Her cat was safe, and so happy to land in permanent quarters. Now comes the unpacking and settling in, another adventure in itself.
2005, September 03
Road Trip
I-80 across the US
For the past two weeks I have been busy helping to plan a trip from San Francisco to Maine. This has taken all available time so I have not kept up with posting. I hope to return soon.
This is the first long drive for my daughter, and she did not have a true idea of the magnitude of the undertaking. But she is beginning to appreciate the actual size of the country. In a time when we can get from SF to NY in less than a working day, it is easy to forget how large the country is. Driving at night, through a seemingly endless, seemingly empty land, brings home the real size of the US.
She is driving at night because she has her cat with her and it is too hot in the daytime for his safety. She does get to see parts of the country where she is stopped for the day for sleeping. People have ranged from very helpful to very unhelpful, human nature everywhere. She loved Utah with its canyons and colors, and Wyoming with its open sky and cold mornings.
But she will especially love getting to her destination, home in Maine.
