I'm a lasagna boy!

Think globally?

File under "another one bites the dust":

The strong-willed Chinook bookshop in Colorado Springs, CO will close forever on its 45th anniversary.

When I was a wee lad, I often wandered down to the underground Pinocchio Books a few blocks from my parents' house in Pittsburgh. A few months after the first mega bookstore (a Barnes & Noble, which we had previously known only as a catalogue-based seller of remainders) moved in, Pinocchio closed. A store that sold Winne Ille Pu and a large assortment of Tintin comics, as well as a spectacular selection of children's books, I loved walking down there to browse and sometimes buy.
The shop moved to Boston, where it fared little better.

My way or the highway?

This morning, a signal failure on MUNI meant that the N-Judah was stuck at the entrance to the Market St. Subway for several minutes, while other trains (J-Church) piled up behind us, and two other Ns and the K-Ingleside idled in front of us. I reached the Caltrain station just as the 8.37 pulled away from the platform, noticed that three of the five MUNI vending machines are still broken, that two of the three TransLink readers are out of order, and then heard that a gas mains break was delaying Caltrain down the Peninsula.

I gave up and called Danan for a ride.

Soup to nuts, getting in to work this morning took four hours.

UPDATE:
The ride back was equally exciting. The 5.25 express arrived several minutes late, with the conductors waving cyclists away. Turns out one of the doors to the bicycle carriage was broken, and the conductors didn't think that a bicycle could fit through the other.

The delays were due to the cyclists aruging with the conductors. Of course the bike could fit through that door. Wait for the next train. But we've validated our tickets for this train; they won't be valid for the next. Just explain to the next train conductor. Etc.

Onboard, a placard advertised an obscure government web site; a similar paranoid message (" ... if something doesn't seem right, call 911") appeared on the information displays at the San Antonio platform. The information displays did not, however, note that the trains were running late.

A ticket to ride?

Kate arrived Sunday mid-day at San Francisco airport. She had left my instructions for taking BART from the airport to my place (one change, to either a local bus or to a taxi), and stopped at the Information desk.

"What is the best way to Scott Street from here?"
"You should take one of the door-to-door vans." ($13 - $17)
"Hasn't the transit link opened recently?"
"Yes ... but you've got luggage, it's too complicated, it'll take too long."

One discouraging conversation later, she boards a shuttle rather than the BART.
No wonder BART is having trouble meeting revenue goals.

Effervescing?

I wish that I could push a button.

I'm often irritated by narrative written in the present tense. The tense doesn't immediately turn me off a novel, though: I really enjoyed Michael Frayn's Headlong : A Novel, with the immediacy of the protagonist's plunge into obsession captured by the tense. And now that I'm again re-reading Tunnel Vision, I realise that it, too, uses the present tense for most of the frantic narrative (the thing that irritates me about this book -- you know there has to be something -- is that it's set in a sans serif type).
Tunnel Vision tells the story of a tubespotter (think trainspotter, but with an obsessions focussed on the glorious London Underground) who bets his wedding and honeymoon that he can journey all 260-odd stops on the Tube in one day. With a drunken tramp as his Virgil and the dodgy signals of the Tube as his nemesis, our hero desperately tries to beat the clock in order to meet his fiancée at the Eurostar.

Pulpo fiction.

Anar's "landlady", thrilled to hear that I enjoy the eating of the sausage, gave us a big rope of homemade chorizo. She applies the chorizo to many household tasks, including greasing the pan for pancakes.

From a row of Turkish cafes, I supped at Gallipoli, drawn in part by the "grilled garlic sausage" item on the menu.

Catch, Twenty-two!

Stanford University, amongst others, refuse blood donations from people who have spent more than three months in the UK over the past two decades (!!) . This is because of variant Creuzfeld-Jacob ("mad cow") disease, for which there is no blood test.

... but there isn't a blood test because vCJD is transmitted through spinal matter, not the bloodstream (-- insert gag about blood sausage here --).

Running 'round in circles.

The Page St. circles fiasco is coming to a head. After nine months (three times the intended evaluation period), residents of the Lower and Upper Haight will have the opportunity, once again, to voice their opinion on the traffic circles placed at 11 intersections. One of the traffic-irritating circles is at the intersection of Scott and Page, where I used to enjoy watching eastbound cyclists blow through the stop sign, self-righteously yelling at motorists who didn't anticipate their lack of courtesy (oh yes, and disregard for the law).

These former four-way stops have been replaced with haphazard, ineptly-designed, and poorly-maintained roundabouts. The placement of the roundabouts increases the threat to pedestrians from cyclists and motorists, and undercuts the notion that pedestrians (the most fragile of the three groups) come first when planning high-traffic residential intersections.

The advocacy groups WalkSF and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (of which I am a long-standing member) heartily endorse the circles, while acknowledging that they are imperfect. I've pasted their last email salvo below.

To sum the reasons:

• limited line of sight: cars travelling at speed can't see pedestrians for R turn

• eyesore: if the city couldn't maintain the test circles, how will they maintain real ones?

• belief that drivers will slow down is mistaken, and only partly addresses the problem. Many drivers on use Scott St. as a shortcut to the traffic and turn restrictions on Divis, or as a path to the freeway (Oak / Fell Sts). These drivers are in a hurry, and don't slow down.
  The other part of the problem is that

• limited turning radius, ambiguous rules
  this is significant, and doesn't only affect large emergency vehicles. This means that older, larger cars (and new SUVs) have trouble navigating the narrow circles, and infringe on the pedestrian crosswalks. If these circles are primarily about encouraging calm traffic, the don't ease the passage of larger cars. For many cars, these circles bring the interaction of the 2 tons of steel even closer to the trandition linear pedestrian crosswalk. These circles constrain the turning radius of cars in a way that impedes the flow of traffic.

• cyclists don't need to slow down; I've seen plenty of near misses. No incentive for them to slow down at STOP signs, anyway

• unclear signs; lack of driver recgonition of sophisticated traffic circle. Fully 10% of cars during a Saturday did not obey the rules for a traffic circle (cite CVC)
  

Subject: Page St. Traffic Circle Hearing TOMORROW
From: joshua@sfbike.org
Date: March 17, 2004 1:30:06 PM PST

Dear SF bicyclist,

The 9-month long Page and Waller Traffic Circle Pilot program is coming to a
close, and the Department of Parking and Traffic is holding a public hearing
TOMORROW, THURSDAY MARCH 18TH to hear from residents and users of the
street. This is your chance to voice ideas, concerns, and opinions about
this traffic calming experiment. Each of the 11 proposed circles will be
voted on by residents living within a block, and voting will conclude March
25th. The circle receiving the highest percentage of votes (over 50%) will
be installed on a permanent basis, with consideration for others that also
receive 50% or more of the vote.

The meeting will be held:

6:30pm-8pm this Thursday, March 18th
Park Branch Library
1833 Page St. at Cole

The SFBC supports the concept of the traffic calming circles, but shares the
concerns of many other residents and neighborhood groups, including Walk SF
and the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council, that:

1) there was not sufficient neighborhood outreach or involvement prior to
circle installation

2) more education and public outreach is needed to users of the street to
convey safe and legal behavior at the circles

3) pedestrian right-of-way is being compromised with the current circle
design

Although we don't think the current design is perfect, we are encouraging
our members and other residents living along the Page and Waller corridor to
VOTE YES to give the circles a chance to be improved upon.

BICYCLE BOULEVARDS

Given the right education, signage, and enforcement, we believe the circles
will benefit the neighborhood and cyclists by being the first step toward a
true bicycle boulevard on Page St.

A bike boulevard is an innovative bicycle facility that is often applied to
residential streets that parallel major arterials. It consists of three
design elements:

1. stop signs placed only on side streets to give priority to the boulevard

2. traffic circles installed in at least some of the intersections to slow
cars down to 10-15mph while allowing bikes to maintain momentum

3. diverters, barriers or forced turns that prohibit automobile through
access on the bike boulevard while continuing to allow cyclists,
pedestrians, and emergency vehicles through.

A bicycle boulevard treatment applied to Page St. could dramatically reduce
the volume and speed of traffic, and reduce or eliminate stop signs, making
bicycling along Page much easier, safer, more efficient and pleasant. It
would not "close" the street to cars- drivers would still be able to access
every point along Page, but using this neighborhood street as an auto cut
through would be a thing of the past.

Although the DPT is not considering a full bicycle boulevard currently,
Thursday's meeting will be a good chance to voice your support for this
concept, and build support among local residents.

You can find out more about bicycle boulevards at:
http://www.odot.state.or.us/techserv/bikewalk/planimag/ii1e.htm

DPT's web page on the circles is at
http://www.sfgov.org/site/dpt_index.asp?id=13573

Because of vocal opposition to the circles, it is particularly important for
people to come and speak at the hearing about the benefits of traffic
calming and a bicycle boulevard along Page St. For more information,
contact me (using the information at the bottom of this e-mail).

TALKING POINTS FOR THURSDAY'S MEETING

- There are problems with the implementation of the circles, but the concept
is good. We need better signage (yield to peds pop-up signs, and stops
where appropriate)

- A full bicycle boulevard (including side street stop signs, circles, and
diverters) will dramatically reduce car traffic on this residential street,
prioritizing the street for cyclists and pedestrians.

- Vote yes on the circles!

Thank you for supporting YOUR Bicycle Coalition and an improved bike
network!

Check the record.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition have posted mock-ups of the Jefferson St. bike lanes.

Living too late?

Utility undergrounding in San Francisco moves at a snail's pace: one or two miles per year, at a cost of $3 million per linear mile. This doesn't include the thousands of dollars that homeowners must pay out of pocket.

DPT and PG&E plans call for 390 (of 920) linear miles of San Francisco streets to have underground utility cabling complete by the end of 2004. Expect homeowners all across our 47 square miles to rejoice on New Year's Eve, 2219.

Happily, my block in the Lower Haight boasts underground electrical connections. No pretty retro streetlamps, but no flyer-papered utility poles, either.

Planned streetcar-suburb communities such as Schenley Farms in Pittsburgh made underground wires a part of their design; in San Francisco, where digging is more complex (and thus, more expensive), utility poles sprouted like weeds.

Knuckle down.

Aram, logorrheic author of fixed-gear field studies, pointed out this 1925 Retrodirect cycle.

Round-up and update.

This morning I used Aram's translink card to get me to work.

One of the main reasons I wanted this card was that it covered the entire public-transit segment: if I take the N-Judah to connect to Caltrain, then I can avoid the constraint of having to board at the first car when paying a cash fare. I was thwarted, however: a nice morning, so I cycled to the Caltrain terminal. Once there, I tried convincing the Translink reader that I held the smartcard, but the reader itself wasn't working. I ran across the station to use the other reader, which charged me the full fare rather than the discount 10-ride fare. On board, the conductor only smiled when he came to check tickets and I presented the card; later he explained that he saw me swiping it at the station. I had hoped that he would use the handheld validator to check the TransLink card.

Three of the five MUNI fare vending machines at the Caltrain station are still broken; it's been more than a week. One is entirely on the fritz, with a fuzzy screen; one has stickers indicating that it is out of service; a third has a blank screen. For additional inconvenience, the fourth doesn't accept bills. That leaves one (of five) fully-functional.

If only MUNI made tokens (or single-fare rides, or even round-trip/day passes) more widely available; that the vending machines sell a single type of ticket is very frustrating.

Oh yes: and Caltrain running the baby bullet? Or on weekends? Their home page still optimistically claims "Weekend train service returns in Spring 2004", but the agency now internally plans to launch in June. Possibly. Signal installation has delayed the service.

These are the people that you meet (Pt. Three).

While working 'round the house this morning, I was seated deep in thought when I heard the doorbell ring. A lycra-clad figure in dark glasses waved up at me: lo and behold, Matt had ridden around the south part of the city and stopped in on his way back home. We sat out on the stoop and watched the neighbourhood roll past, this lazy, unseasonably warm and sunny Sunday. When Mark and Jeremy from the café walked past, I started: was it already past one? Indeed.
I dashed off to the furniture shop down the street, mindful that I absolutely had to get something in the way of a cosy guest bed before I split town on Weds. The man behind the counter was basking in the sunshine streaming through the shop windows.
Did he have such-and-such model in stock? Indeed. And could he deliver today? Happily. Don't you charge for delivery, I asked, pointing to the sign on the wall. No, he replied; you're just up the street.
As I was signing the paperwork, he nodded towards the new Indian restaurant across the street.
Have you tried that place?
No, but I'm going there tomorrow. I'm looking forward t

When he delivered the boxes and mattress, he was still cheery and smiling. Have a good time at Naan'n'Chutney tomorrow!

Return to Pirate Cove

... sounds like a Hardy Boys mystery title, doesn't it? For Anna's birthday hike, we went over to Muir Beach and met a good group of hardy walkers. Up the hill and over the ridge we traipsed; on the beach we walked; and up a rock for a little picnic overlooking the quiet surf of Pirate's Cove.

Afterwards we came back home and had some cake and tart. With rhubarb sorbet! Happy Birthday Anna!!!

Manuscripts never burn.

Unlike Jorge at the spetacular conclusion of Eco's "The Name of the Rose," the crazed idealist at the end of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita declares that "Manuscripts don't burn."

Saw the A.C.T. production of ditto; the staging was magnificent, and the themes of the novel resonated clearly. A little on the long side (3+ hours, with intermission -- coffee! mints!), the play was quite liberal in its interpretation of Bulgakov's witch- and satanic imagery. I didn't notice the sign reading: "Caution: This play contains adult content. Nudity." until leaving the theatre.

Filet of soul.

Dave Blood committed suicide yesterday.

Punk rock is what we make it.

We've got questions / in our school!

This afternoon I took off from work and headed up to Jender's high-school classroom. She had asked me and Aram to speak with one of her classes, to talk about our jobs and careers. She student-teaches at a charter school which has since become a part of the San Francisco Unified School District.

As you know, I am currently student teaching as I make my way toward a teaching credential slated to be in hand come June . As part of that process this semester I am solo teaching for 8 weeks. Right now I am at the International Studies Academy High school in San Francisco in Potrero Hill teaching Advanced ELL (English Language Learner) classes. Most of my students are 17 to 19 and have been in the US for 2 to 5 years.   My eight week unit this semester is about work, why we work, the jobs we do and how we navigate work in our lives. Since many of these students are new to the world of work in the US and they will be soon trying to determine their future careers, one of their unit projects is interviewing someone about their job and creating a paper from that interview. These students need lots of practice before actually leaving the classroom and doing activities on their own. I want them to interview a person in class as I class before they venture out into the cruel world. That is where you come in. I need two brave volunteers to come into my class and be interviewed by my students. Don't worry, these students are more intimidated by you then you could ever be of them and I will supply you with a list of possible questions before hand.  I, personally, think all of your jobs are interesting and believe that my students would enjoy talking to you

Many years had passed since I last walked in the halls of a high school: it was nice to hear Aram's familiar voice echoing against the tile when I walked in.

The English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) class asked me lots of questions. They were practicing for their current assignment: interviewing someone with a job, and writing an essay on that person's background, daily routine, challenges, and rewards.
The very first question I heard, right after I wrote my name on the board, was, "Are you Indian?" A few more questions on the subject of race: "Do people at your job ever make fun of you because of your ethnicity?"

The questions made me reflect on how much I do like my job, and also offered a different perspective on what I do. I work in a for-profit industry, so our projects are concerned directly with the bottom line and with making money over the long term.

Parkin' in the 'hood.

The SF Neighborhood Parks project now uses Park Scan technology:

ParkScan volunteer observers visit their parks on a regular basis (at least once per month). Using handheld computers loaded with an aerial image of their park, along with routes to follow, they observe park features and rate their condition. In addition, the volunteers use digital cameras to photograph park conditions they observe, both good and bad. Survey results and photos are sent to a central database at the Neighborhood Parks Council. Dangerous conditions noted in the survey are immediately forwarded to the responsible Managing Agency (most often the Recreation and Park Department) for attention. Other unsatisfactory conditions are returned to the observers to have the importance of each condition prioritized. The entire survey is then forwarded to the Managing Agency. Survey results are available to the public on the ParkScan website ...

I noticed this information posted on a new signboard in Duboce Park, which frequently smells like hot dog shit. On days like today, more humid than most, it smells like steaming poop. If anyone ever claims that San Francisco is "European", point them at the Parisian piles of poop in the parks.

Point out the massive homeless encampments in the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park; or the irritating and massive feral cat population throughout the western end of the city.

106 beets, that.

I spilled beet juice all over today's newspaper. Or, more precisely, I had cut and marinated beets to use in a salad, and wrapped the faulty Tupperware container in the morning newspaper. The front-page obituary was marked with beet juice, and a corner of my commuter Timbuk bears a deep maroon stain.

It's just down the freeway.

"Every place in L.A. is twenty minutes!", or, as Duane Delacourt (once Carter's Secretary of Symbolism) put it, "It's just down the freeway." This is California: beautiful, but congested with cars.

While driving (!!) through a pleasant suburban town's main street, I saw plenty of attractive sidewalk cafés, broad pedestrian passages, but all faced with cars, parked and moving. The café tables looked at parking meters and busy streets; pedestrians must needs wait upon cars.

Although the Doonesbury archive no longer provides a free search, alas, I can recount the strip following Duane's relocation to La-la-land. He and his wife are sitting on the deck, about to dip into the ubiquitous Jacuzzi, when he says, "I'm going to the store for some chips and guacamole." "O.k." "I should be back in 3 days." "What?" "It's just down the freeway." This coloured my initial impressions of California; this strip, and the early memories of watching a dragon dance in Chinatown, of riding a cable car (must have been the Hyde St. line, as I remember one particular broad curve).

Cultural differences: ask a Catalonian how the distance from Reus to Barcelona, he'll say "80 km"; ask a San Franciscan the distance from the Mission to the airport, and he'll answer "25 minutes ... depending on traffic conditions."

Here's Johnny.

After many, many years, I finally watched the Stanley Kubrick adapation of Stephen King's novel The Shining.

The book that Jack was writing contained the one sentence ("All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy") repeated over and over. Kubrick had each page individually typed. For the Italian version of the film, Kubrick used the phrase "Il mattino ha l' oro in bocca" ("He who wakes up early meets a golden day"). For the German version, it was "Was Du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf Morgen" ("Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today") For the Spanish version, it was "No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano" ("Although one will rise early, it won't dawn sooner.")

Pittsburgh news is always the weirdest.

David Warnes, 37, of Bethel Park, was terminated from his bagging job at the grocery chain's Village Square location for taking a doughnut off a shelf and eating it in January 2002.

Last October, the U.S. Department of Labor honored the grocery chain with a New Freedom Initiative Award under a program started by President Bush for "outstanding employment practices toward people with disabilities," according to a news release.

Giant Eagle Must Pay For Doughnut Firing

Fri Mar 5, 6:54 PM ET

A mentally challenged man will receive an undisclosed settlement from Giant Eagle after a federal jury found that the company was wrong to fire him, Channel 4's Whitney Drolen reported Friday.

David Warnes, 37, of Bethel Park, was terminated from his bagging job at the grocery chain's Village Square location for taking a doughnut off a shelf and eating it in January 2002.

Warnes' mother, Carol, filed a lawsuit claiming a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act. She said her son acted on impulse and didn't understand the consequences of what he did.

Rob Borella, Giant Eagle director for communications and sports marketing, said the incident was the final straw in a series of job performance-related issues involving Warnes. He said Giant Eagle employs hundreds of disabled people and will continue to do so.

Punctuate this burger!

Despite the unruly punctuation of Phyllis' Giant Burger, they make a fine mushroom bacon burger.

I need a kamera.

I live in a beautiful city, and I have lots of cameras.
My first cameras were all digital, but lately I've been buying Polaroids in various sizes, LOMO multi-lens cameras, and now I have a hankering for a traditional SLR.
But were it not for lo-tech, would I have made a cameo appearance in a photo blog?

Yo
warning: 400k image file

How to buy a MUNI ticket, part I.

At the 4th Street transfer point between MUNI and Caltrain, five ticket vending machines provide their mechanical services to riders.
Correction: two do, but only one accepts bills.
One of the machines (CT-5) has been wearing an Out of Service sticker for more than two weeks; another (CT-2) has a fuzzy screen; a third (CT-4) had a handwritten "Out of Order" sign that came off yesterday, although the machine is still broken.
Which means that someone who wishes to purchase a MUNI ticket at this busy transfer point must wait in a queue for one of the two working machines; if you are in the wrong queue and end up in front of the machine that doesn't accept bills, you might well miss your train.
MUNI doesn't provide a convenient way to purchase single-ride tickets ahead of time: all tickets sold through vending machines are stamped with a 90-minute lifespan. Tokens are available for a reduced price ($1.05 instead of the full $1.25), but through select and obscure vendors only (tobacconists in the Tenderloin). They are not typically available at MUNI stations.

Although I feel a sentimental attachment to each of the varied shape of paper transfers MUNI sells, I'd much rather suffer through the availability and convenience of an electronic fare card.

Stop that talking.

Reading Ben Brantley's Theater Review in today's paper, I learned a new word.

... this oddball speculation has been given amusing flesh in the Second Stage Theater's production of Charles L. Mee's "Wintertime," the logorrheic romp of a sex farce that opened last night.

You're it!

Six years of taking digital photographs of local graffiti, and I plumb forgot to snap a picture the first time my building was tagged.

Props to my next-door neighbours for sending me email about this: I read their note on the way home, marched straight into the basement to get the house paint and a brush, and bob's your uncle.

The sticker is its own reward

I encourage my neighbours, colleagues, and friends to vote: one great way is by wearing an "I Voted Today" sticker, a simple and direct reminder that we're participating in the electoral process. Another way that casting one's vote is made easier in San Francisco is through the provisional voting: a voter may participate at any polling place, as long as they present proper ID. I've brought some of my colleagues, who might have otherwise lingered too long at work, to my polling place.
But the poor organisation of polling places combined with the lack of training or uniform instructions for officals at the polling places leads to an offensive voting environment.

Today I suggested to Anna that we go vote together, and then get a cup of coffee to celebrate. However, the officials at our local polling place turned her away because it wasn't her regular polling place. She and I both knew that this wasn't right, but I've never seen a fruitful discussion take place at a polling place (which in this city and county are not necessarily public locations such as schools, libraries, or civic buildings, but cafés, private basements, church offices, and the like).

The process with which I'm familiar in San Francisco is a slightly tedious but usefully redundant one: one polling place official (PPO) checks my address and name against a printer roster, and then nods to another PPO, who finds the name on a second roster and has me countersign. I then receive a blue privacy folder with the ballot sheet(s) in it, and retire to a plastic booth where I connect the dots. The process is synchronous: all of these steps must complete for each person before the PPOs begin processing the next voter.
Today was a demonstration of how little training the PPOs have. As I showed my ID (State Driver's License) to the first PPO, a second began collating the ballot sheets for me:I had to tell him my part affiliation, so that he could put the correct primary sheet into the folder. He then got up and went away from the table, leaving two other PPOs to finish up. The first had found my name on the first roster, but the second couldn't find my strongly-ethnic name, and was at the point of giving up when I pointed to it. She then spent some time comparing my ID with the printed name, and just as she realised that the two matched, couldn't find a pen to tick off my name.
They abandoned the folder that the first official had prepared, and began assembling a new one ("I'm a registered Democrat", I repeated). When I got to the booth, I found that I had two primary ballots, one Democrat and one Independent, but no ballot for state and local propositions and offices. The officials didn't grasp my position, and finally insisted that we start over. I pointed out that they needed to give me one from that stack, and one from that stack, and then made my way back to a booth. I don't know what happened to the first set of ballots I started on; they took them back, but I don't know whether they were physically discarded or simply put aside.

Anna reported that a polling official at the church where she voted couldn't find her name, either. One of the PPO responsibilities is helping voters understand instructions and ballots; how can they accomplish this, when they can't collate the ballots or alphabetize unfamiliar names?

In the state election last November, I cast ballots twice; the first round were invalidated (the PPO placed it in a paper envelope, which he in turn labelled INVALID with a marking pen). The second batch I fed into the Eagle computer.

Ramblings from an un-named state in the West.

Began reading Truman Capote's Music for Chameleons. Now I wonder: the deliberately-titled "Nonfiction Account of an American Crime" novella which marks his entreé into the nonfiction novel genre (did he create that? as he more-or-less claims in the Introduction) bears the mark of verisimilitude as does, say, Fargo, which starts off with the title "Based on a true story." And of course it wasn't.
Never mind that the incident which sparks all the crime is a land-grab for water rights.

I would like to find a nice, short biography of Capote. I never finished either Rexroth's Autobiographical Novel or the biography which I have started several times in the past six years -- and Rexroth has long fascinated me, in his writing and in his life. He lived just down the street, on the same block as I live now.

She had nut-painted arms.

The suggestive power of media: all the talking, the opinion columns, the cinema marquees have embedded a certain word in my mind, and with that word a certain shade of its meaning. And that's why I have "The Passion of Lovers" by bauhaus in my mind.
Thank goodness for the ipod, which has soothed this desire.