Category Archives: Bay area, Calif.

Summer Sunday school

This summer, here in the Palo Alto Unitarian Universalist church, the theme for Sunday school has been “UU World Travelers.” People from the congregation who have been to another country, or lived in another country, come into the Sunday school and share something about that country with the children. The person who was scheduled to lead the UU World Travelers program this Sunday had a last-minute crisis and couldn’t come, so I said I’d lead the program. But what country could I talk about? I haven’t been overseas in thirty years, and the last time I was in Canada was quite a few years ago. But I realized I had lots of photographs and information about New Bedford, so that’s what I did in Sunday school today — told the children about New Bedford.

The best part was teaching the kids how to say “New Bedford” with a New Bedford accent. “Say it like this,” I said to the children, “Nu Befit.”

“New Bedfod,” they replied, raggedly.

“No, more like this,” I said, “Nu befit.”

“Nu Befit,” they said in chorus.

“And these,” I said pointing to a photograph of marine crustaceans with claws, Homerus americanus, “are lobstihs.”

“Lobstihs,” they said, grinning at me.

A little more practice, and I think I could teach them how to speak in Nu Befitese.

Upcoming event in the Bay area

The San Francisco Bay Area Labor Heritage Rockin’ Solidarity Chorus, which I recently joined, will be singing at the San Francisco Unitarian Universalist church on Sunday, September 6. They’ll be performing a musical biography of Pete Seeger, that great Unitarian Universalist folk musician and labor advocate. I’ve heard some of it in rehearsal, and it sounds pretty good, so if you’re in the San Francisco area over Labor Day weekend, check it out. (I won’t be there, alas, since I’ll be at my own church.)

Weather

I’ve been reading Weather of the San Francisco Bay Region by Harold Gilliam, who says that in this area, if you don’t like the weather, you can walk or drive a short distance to find weather more to your liking. “Fishermen along the fog-shrouded coast of Marin County on a summer day may be shivering in the low fifties while people in San Rafael, ten miles east, bask in comfortable 70-degree weather,” writes Gilliam, “and residents of ranches at the edge of the Sacramento Valley, another 40 miles east, mop their brows as the thermometer hits 100 — a temperature difference of 50 degrees in 50 miles.”

I have noticed that it is generally cooler at home in San Mateo than it is at church in Palo Alto. At our apartment in San Mateo this morning, it was perhaps 60 degrees, with low stratus clouds overhead, and a chilly breeze blowing. I put on my fuzzy fleece jacket and walked over to the train station. After a 30-minute ride, I got off the train at the San Antonio station in Palo Alto, 17 miles to the southeast, and it was sunny and in the 70s.

Weather

At a meeting the other day, some of the other people in the room were complaining about the weather here. “It’s so hot,” said one (it has been in the mid-80s, but windy and dry so it’s very comfortable). “Miserable weather,” said another.

At some point, one of them looked at me, and suddenly realized that I have just moved to the Bay Area from a place that is currently beastly hot, in the 90s and humid, a place which just had destructive rainstorms and flooding — that I have just moved here from a place that has blizzards and ice storms and hail and hurricanes and thunderstorms. “Well,” she said, “the weather here is not so bad compared to New England, is it.”

“No, the weather here is pretty good,” I said.

“The weather here is actually perfect for human beings,” someone said.

“But human beings just like to complain about the weather,” said someone else.

Seasons

I remember from the last time we lived in the San Francisco Bay area that there are two seasons here: winter, when most of the rain falls, and summer when very little or no rain falls. I feel that the terms “winter” and “summer” are misleading, though: “winter” comes from Old English, and the season it describes has little or no resemblance to winters in old England. I tend to think of the two seasons here as the green season — because when the rain falls, the plants start to grow, and the hills turn green — and the brown season — because after the rains stop, eventually the plants dry out, and the hills turn golden brown.

We are in the middle of the brown season now: the hills are brown, the soil is dry, the air feels dry. I was walking through a residential neighborhood a couple of days ago, and some of the home owners let their front yards turn brown: either they let their lawns dry up and turn brown, or they had something other than grass growing, or they just had bare ground or pea stone for their yards. But the majority of home owners feel the need to have bright green lawns year round. As I walked through this residential neighborhood, I couldn’t help thinking how odd it looked to have lush green lawns during the brown season. It would be as if New England home owners had snow-making machines, and tried to cover their front lawns with snow during the hottest days of August.

House hunting

We’re here in California looking for a place to live. It is not a particularly pleasant task. You call about an apartment, and people don’t call you back. You talk to someone who says the apartment really isn’t for rent yet, but it will be soon, and they can’t show it yet, but they can show it soon, and it’s all very vague, and you realize that this person wants to make sure that only The Right People get to rent in this building, like probably only white people who seem “respectable.” You go to see an apartment in your price range, and it’s in a building that is well-maintained but was originally poorly built. We’ve always been lucky in the past, and have always found a good landlord renting a decent apartment at a fair price — but every time we go house-hunting, we realize that our experience is probably not the norm, which seems so sad.

What I’ll miss

As we get ready to move to California, I’ve been thinking about what I’ll miss. Of course I’ll miss my dad and sister, although they live just far enough away from here that I only see them about once every two months. Of course I’ll miss eastern Massachusetts culture and accents (that’s plural on purpose), since I’m used to cold undemonstrative people who speak God’s own English.

While I was taking a long walk today, I realized that I will also miss eastern Massachusetts birds. I’m used to the eastern Massachusetts ecosystems. I’m used to watching Common Grackles come back each year (no grackles in California). I’m used to hearing the song of Northern Cardinals (no cardinals in California, except a few feral escapees). It’s a whole different ecosystem out there, with completely different birds. It will be fun learning a whole new ecosystem, but I’ll still miss this ecosystem.