Heat, Drought, Price of Petrol and ‘Going for the Rations.’ 1

Finally, after days of record temperatures, the air is cooling and we are more comfortable. The garden suffered a bit, and since we are under water restrictions, because of the drought, we didn’t water as often as we’d like.

We’re doing all we can to save water and we’re glad we installed low flow toilets and showers. But, we are diligent in cutting down our water use.

Should I start to live the way I did in Buckie, in a house with no bathroom, dishwasher, or washing machine?

We were a household of 4 adults, Mam, Dad, Granny, Granda and myself, the quinie.

The lavy (toilet) was in a wee cupboard in the shed where we cooked, kept the coal and did the laundry, by hand, in the 2 sinks, with the mangle between them.

I stripped washed daily, at the laundry sink, washed my hair once a week and had a full bath in a tub by the fire on Friday evenings.

Food was prepared simply, without the aid of food processors, chopping devices, or blenders. When I had to dispose of the contents of the house for sale, after Dad died, I had to toss the blunt knife that Mam had used to peel and chops all the vegetables she used in the Sunday broth. I am really sorry I never bought her decent chopping knives, but I left home before I knew anything about knives and I forgot about the blunt knife with the broken handle.

Shoes

I wanted/needed summer shoes and sandals, but my search for them was getting akin to finding the Holy Grail.

I was close to getting coconut shells and clopping my way through woods and fields to help in my quest, and I thought I had a better chance of finding a nice shrubbery than footwear.

Stiletto heels are back in fashion as are the contrasting flat shoes and all are designed for young women with narrow feet and who have no concern for their feet or their backs.

Yet, I had a good experience in the Berkeley ‘Walk Shop’, the other day. I asked to have my feet measured, described my shorter right leg, with no ankle bending problem, and the salesman and I worked together to get me shod. This is what I chose; the style is R1702-51. They fitted and I think I’ll limp comfortably in them. They’re pretty!

As we say in Buckie, ‘Better tae be oot the qweets, than oot the fashion!’ (‘Better to twist your ankle than be out of fashion!’)

Bit it’s nae me that ye’ll see on thon stilettos!

Marines in Berkeley

On Tuesday, February 13, the Berkeley City Council changed its mind about sending a letter to Marines who staff a Marine recruiting office in downtown Berkeley telling them they were “unwelcome intruders.” The San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times gave it lots of coverage.

This incident has made the Berkeley City a laughing stock round the country. The home of Free Speech or is it?

I’ve been happy living in this area for the past 30 years. I was thrilled to live in the cradle of the Free Speech Movement. But it feels as Berkeley has been resting on those laurels for too long.

In the last year, we’ve had out-of-town guests and we’d looked forward to showing them and sharing what we love about the area. But when we see downtown Berkeley through their eyes, we have to agree with them. “It’s a dump!” It’s not only the Marines that are unwelcome, visitors feel unwelcome too!

In the 30 years we’ve lived here, we’ve seen downtown Berkeley decline and doorways have become the homes of the homeless. Businesses have closed and moved away. The new businesses that open don’t stay for long and there are just too many vacant businesses.

I’m not unsympathetic to the plight of those who are homeless, but their presence has caused blight in the heart of the city. Or am I wrong? Does the City council simply not care about welcoming everyone to downtown Berkeley?

I like my Free Speech to come with a dose of Common Sense.

Smell or no Smell?

I am enjoying the fragrance of a bunch of narcissi which I placed on the dining room table.

I like to have posies of flowers around the house and when the flowers in my own garden bloom, I will have a great selection of spring flowers to choose from. I’m especially looking forward to the freesias and their cheerful colors. But they have little to no fragrance.

Soon, the jasmine, which climbs along the north fence, will bloom and that is probably the only thing growing in the garden which has a distinctive fragrance. I remember, in my first spring in Berkeley (1979) smelling jasmine everywhere I went.

Eventually, I noticed that I didn’t smell any other flowers or plants in the area.

This was so different from my memories of gardens in Cambridge.

I remember, when we lived in Cambridge, walking home from the Churchill College Archives in the summer evenings. I walked past bungalows with well-tended gardens, with their displays of gnomes and prize-winning roses. The roses perfumed my walk.

Now, thirty years later, I walk around our small town, admiring the gardens. A few have rose bushes, but there is no fragrance, not even after a shower.

Is the climate really so arid here that the flowers have no fragrance?

A Hogmanay Tragedy

On December 31, 2007, Richard and I were driving to North Berkeley to buy Dungeness crabs from Andronico’s.

As we drove east on Marin Ave, a police officer diverted us away from the area. There were a lot of police cars.  We could tell it was a serious situation and the police cars and diversions were still there when we drove home.

A neighbour told us traffic was still being diverted that evening, but nobody knew why.

I forgot about it until January 4, 2008 when I picked up a copy of our local free newspaper, the Berkeley Daily Planet.

A report of the incident was on the front page. According to the reported time of the incident, we had just missed witnessing a horrific traffic accident.

Marin Ave is not really pedestrian friendly, and although there are crosswalks, traffic usually goes faster than it should.

A woman, on her regular morning walk was in the crosswalk, and was struck and killed by an elderly driver, who was turning right onto Marin Ave. The driver claimed that the sun was in her eyes and she did not see the victim.

This tragedy was made even worse by the fact that the victim was carrying only her house and car keys and had no identification.

Police officers knocked on doors and tried to activate cars, hoping for an identity clue, but were unsuccessful.

The newspaper report said that the victim’s husband called police at 5:30pm that evening to report her missing.

I don’t know what to say.

She went for a walk, as she always did.

The sun was in the driver’s eyes. The victim has now been identified as a well-known, local, psychiatrist.

The driver, age given as 79, will have forever the burden of the sun in her eyes.

What a tragedy.

Cultural Faux Pas

Richard and I enjoy our weekly Japanese lunch at Yammy Sushi in El Cerrito Plaza. We always order the lunch combination, which is presented with a mound of rice. I don’t like rice so much and I absentmindedly stuck the chopsticks into the rice to ‘hold’ them.

I noticed that the waitress looked upset and she eventually came to the table three times to ask if I was ok. She didn’t ask, as waitresses usually do, if the food was ok, but only if I was ok!

Richard and I talked about it on the way home and concluded that her consternation was related to my putting the chopsticks in my rice and that, perhaps, it was an offensive gesture.

As soon as we got home, I googled “Chopsticks stuck in rice.”

The response was http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2039.html

Now I know that chopsticks are only stuck into rice at funerals.

I will never do that again and I will apologise to the waitress for my mistake and lack of understanding.

We live in a culturally diverse area. We Bay Area residents can learn a lot from each other.

Our Thanksgiving Walk

Before we dined on the Thanksgiving haggis, we walked, as we usually do on Holidays, at the Berkeley Marina.

This was the first time we had been there since 58,000 gallons of oil spilled into the Bay when a container ship ran into the Bay Bridge.

In many ways, it seemed a typical day at the Marina. The kite-flyers were there, joggers, people with their dogs and the wonderful mix of accents from people from all over the world, who were enjoying the clear, crisp day.

Someone had brought a Thanksgiving treat of peanuts in shells for the local ground squirrels, who were merrily nibbling and casting shells all over the rocks. They were squealing with delight.

The waters of the Bay sparkled and the pointy buildings of San Francisco were ‘over there.’

But there were remnants of the yellow ‘Off Limits’ tape and signs forbidding us and our animals to climb on the rocks or to get near to the water.

Aquatic birds were bobbing over an oil slick that was moving with the tide. We didn’t  see any dead birds, but the beach and rocks had already been cleared.

There will be no local Dungeness crabs this season.  A lost livelihood for the crab fishermen and others affected on our coast.

Life in Berkeley

On Saturday, November 17, I went to Blow Salon for my regular cut and highlights.

For years I vowed I’d never have my hair coloured, but once I met Jil, the owner of Blow Salon, she persuaded to try it and do it for fun. Now I’ve no idea how grey my hair is below all the shades of red.

Jil has recently moved into a new apartment and had decided to get rid of possessions she no longer had use or room for. So, on Saturday, she held a garage sale in a room at the back of the salon, tended by friends.

I was in the cutting chair, laughing and talking with Jil and I looked in the mirror, not at myself, but at the rest of the salon, behind me.

I saw a familiar person  approach the reception desk and ask where the garage sale was. It was Professor Zadeh!           

We came to Berkeley because of Professor Zadeh. He was Richard’s mentor and professor when Richard was a post doc at UC Berkeley.

We knew that Professor Zadeh hadn’t come for a haircut cos he has little to cut, but we know his hobby and passion are garage sales.

He doesn’t need the stuff, but he loves the barter and exchange.

This is the week of Thanksgiving. Professor Zadeh and his wife, Fay, invited us to share the celebration when were newly arrived.

What a happy, cosmic, Berkeley, experience to see Professor Zadeh walk into our hairdresser’s to ask directions to a garage sale.

I’m going into the Tardis now….. Whee Wheee Wheeee

Public Transportation

I wish I could use it, but our local public transportation isn’t easily accessible to me and I find it to be dangerous.
Our local transit company, AC (Alameda County) has a fleet of fairly new buses. A Belgian company, ‘Van Hool’, has supplied these.
Berkeley has always been proud of the fact that not only is it a completely accessible town, but also has been a pioneer in the disability rights’ movement. So it’s a terrible shame, if not a disgrace, that my first and last trip on such a bus, recently, was nerve-wracking!
I no longer have the knees to climb the steep steps into the bus, but the bus driver lowered the steps so that I could get on more comfortably.
But once I was aboard my experience was terrifying! The driver started off before I had put my money in the box and I lost my balance. The bus was shoogly and unstable. (That’s probably redundancy.) I didn’t fall, but I did stagger about a bit, probably looking more drunk than spastic to people who don’t know me. I was very afraid of falling and hurting not only myself but also anyone else I might have fallen on. I’m particularly afraid of falling and breaking my teeth and having done so in all my life, I believe I have now more crowns in my mouth than there are on the thrones of Europe.
I clutched a pole to stop myself flapping about and potentially poking someone in the eye with my cp hand and saw that I had to hoist myself into a seat that was a step up. Seating for ‘senior ctizens and people with disabilities’ is in the MIDDLE of the bus, not directly behind the driver as was the configuration in the old fleet. So people who have mobility and balance difficulties have to access those seats usually while the bus is moving.
I didn’t feel comfortable or safe as the bus swayed north along Shattuck Ave and then west on Solano Ave. An elderly lady, holding her bags of groceries, fell on her back as the bus lurched to a halt. The driver didn’t come up the aisle to check on her. He didn’t seem to notice and ignored the concerns of the passengers who picked up the lady and helped her off. She was more concerned about her broken eggs than the possibility of broken bones.
My stop came near and I located the donger thingie to ding, but I couldn’t reach it. It was behind me and on my right side. No good. I called to the driver, but he chose to speed up and when I tried to stand up, the force thrust me back into my seat. I screamed at the driver to stop and let me off and he did so, but didn’t lower the steps so I could exit gracefully.
I believe this driver was an exception, but ought he to have been driving a bus?
Last year I met an AC bus driver at the gym and described the situation to her. She expressed sympathy and said that she and other drivers hate the buses. But they are under great pressure to be on time and to reach the terminus for their scheduled break. If they are late, they often have time only for a bathroom break and no food.
I’ve participated in a letter writing campaign to AC Transit and copied, as many others have, to a Berkeley bi-weekly newspaper, in which I’ve seen letters describing ‘Van Hool’ as ‘Van Hell buses.’
I’m not the only one who fears to ride the bus.

Our Personal Columbus Day

Richard and I arrived in Berkeley on October 12 1978. Richard had recently gained his Ph.D. in Cambridge, England and had been awarded a NATO fellowship to study for two years in the EECS department of UC Berkeley.
We arrived at SFO on a balmy evening, a huge contrast to the cold wind and rain we had left behind as we took off from Heathrow. But it couldn’t have been only the weather that made me fall in love with the Bay Area immediately the plane taxied to the gate.
Perhaps it was because I am prone to fall in love at first sight. I fell in love with Richard as soon as I saw him and we’ve been married 34 years. So I fell in love before we collected our luggage and I simply knew that I had come home.
The following day was Columbus Day and we had no idea that it was a holiday. We wanted to notify our parents that we had arrived safely, but neither set had a telephone so we decided to send a telegram. The Post Office was closed, of course, but someone directed us to the Western Union office on University Avenue.
We walked there from the Durant Hotel to send “Arrived Safely. STOP Weather nice. STOP,” or something similarly absurd!
We walked all the way back to meet Richard’s mentor, Professor Lotfi Zadeh, for lunch on the campus.
When I walked onto the UC Berkeley campus, I felt as if I’d run away to join the circus! There was the spotted man with a gas mask, performing tai chi movements; there was the man who couldn’t sing, standing on a box, with a microphone, singing off key.
Nothing made sense. It still doesn’t, but it’s home