Of the Firehose and Steady Drips

A friend of mine in England deals with personal health issues, much of them derived from a long-known but little-understood virus, and blogged about life during the early stages of the Coronavirus pandemic:

I keep thinking to myself that I could manage all this better if only the world would shut up about it for a bit. There is constant chatter and no real news and for people like me who are anxious and readily self-isolating, far too much frightening stuff designed to rein in the cavalier and the rebellious.

A while ago in talking to a friend about the mass media and the internet I mentioned that the difficulty isn’t finding information, it’s dealing with the firehose of messaging coming at you and filtering out that which is not only useful but true.

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Orderly Books, with a Nod to Dewey

Books, the bodies of reading, were fascinating for me early in life, and I’m fortunate enough to have had parents who, after I left for college, saved many that I had as a kid. The oversized Dinosaur picture book, the scholastic book service biographies I ordered in school, the heroic war stories, the Vonnegut novels. The whole collection fit neatly on shelves built in over my bed.

The book shelves of my first apartments were also easily ordered. After a decade and a half in San Francisco, I moved, following a job across the bay that kept me busy for months. But one Saturday morning I woke with the usual to-do-list, which was interrupted by the realization I’d never properly sorted my books. Many simply came out of the boxes, which I’d filled by size and shape, not subject.

It was a nice weekend—my recollection is it was blustery outside, but inside I stacked piles of books, moving between bookcases in my living room, kitchen, and bedroom. American fiction, travel guides, a stack for Anne Tyler, movie references, et cetera.

I respect the decimal system of Dewey, but my categories are more organic. A History of Eating in America next to a Chinese cookbook; the collected Grantas shared space next to Graham Greene because they fit well.

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Tinker Toys, Erector Sets, and Time

You, small male child: build things!

I got these Tinker toys as a Christmas gift, perhaps in the hope of encouraging my engineering skills. And there I was, with my nose stuck in a book.

Looking to pare down possessions, I look at this stuff now and wonder if anyone might want it, before I toss it out.

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darned socks

I took a year off from college once and traveled around the country. For a while, I stayed out on the farm where my grandmother had been born, living with my great-aunt.

I was helping my grandfather paint houses. I came home one day to find that my great-aunt had darned a couple pairs of my socks.

Really: she took needle and thread and created these deft cross-hatchings that patched holes. I remember I was touched.

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Really, why did the infamous “they” fix what wasn’t broken?

I just sent this email to my coworker, who wants to go get coffee this morning:

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Minneapolis’s skyways

On our last day in Minneapolis, we checked out of the Normandie Inn (which we had enjoyed), and decided to go for a walk before I drove the missus to the airport. During prior visits I’d wonder at how quiet the sidewalks downtown are. In San Francisco’s Financial District, the sidewalks are always busy. Okay, perhaps there aren’t as many people in downtown Minneapolis; I don’t know how many white-collar workers per square yard each city has. I just know the sidewalks midday had seemed eerily deserted, even during my visits between May and September. It took me a while to realize they are all using the skyways. 

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Further Setbacks in the War for Couth

I’ve stopped using BART regularly for my morning commute. Whether or not our so-called economic recovery has been jobless, my anecdotal experience is that the BART trains are now regularly packed with commuters headed somewhere, so much so that when I went in early one morning last week, on the train at 6:15 a.m., it was already standing room only into the City. SRO? At 6:15?

My feet, knees, and ankles are no longer what they were when I ran cross country all those years ago,  and years of standing on buses and trains have taken their toll. I need to sit. So I’ve been doing the casual carpool thing. Most often it’s quiet and uneventful, but every so often there’s a livewire.

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Remembering the Gold Dust Lounge

Too many years ago, I moved to California with six friends. We had met working in restaurants and a German class at the University of Minnesota; some of us had other friends out here already, and as all our circles of acquaintances rippled outward and overlapped, we enjoyed getting to know our new home. The whole world may not have been our oyster, but San Francisco was quite enough.

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Pop goes the thought stream

Sure, we all complain about commercials. I channel surf away and still can’t escape them — this evening while I fiddled around online a rum commercial came on in the background that made me turn the TV off.

But not because I disliked it. Rather, I heard it through for the background music, Iggy Pop’s The Passenger, which made me want to hear that song again.

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The Wrecking Crew

I just saw a wonderful documentary. It began with an item in the local weekly newspaper about a movie called The Wrecking Crew showing at the old theatre out on the former naval air station.

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