Category: Bay area, Calif.

Fog

I had to drive up to San Francisco early this afternoon. When I left Palo Alto, it was sunny and warm. Heading north on highway 101, when I got to San Mateo I started seeing low clouds to the north. By the time I got to San Francisco, the sky was gray, and some people were driving with their headlights on.

In San Francisco, it was cloudy, damp, and down to 60 degrees, a good ten degrees cooler than it had been in Palo Alto, with a bracing northwest wind. You could sense the huge old mass of water in the Pacific Ocean just a few miles away.

At 4:30 I drove back to San Mateo along Interstate 280, around the Pacific Ocean side of San Bruno Mountain, and then up into the hills of the Coastal Range. Fingers of fog were creeping over the mountains, winding down through the tree-covered hills around Crystal Springs, but the sun evaporated them before they got very far.

When I arrived home in San Mateo, it was sunny and warm. But almost as soon as the sun set, the fog drifted over the Coastal Range, and became low clouds that now cover the sky above us. The temperature is down to 60 degrees, and outside it feels like it did in San Francisco this afternoon: cloudy, damp, and cool.

A pastoral concern

Mike Cassidy writes the “Silicon Valley Dispatches” column for the San Jose Mercury News. He is feeling a wee bit cynical these days. With unemployment still high, Cassidy is wondering how the recent federal deficit reduction actions by Congress are going to promote job creation by American corporations:

It’s not a lack of money that is holding companies back from hiring. Collectively, corporations for months have been sitting on record levels of cash, reaching about $1.9 trillion today. Remember the recent headlines about Apple (AAPL) having more cash than the U.S. government?

And profits are up widely. The Wall Street Journal’s David Wessel was on the radio recently citing an analyst’s report that found that the first 100 of the S&P 500 to report quarterly earnings saw profit increases averaging 12 percent. Meantime, Wessel’s own paper was reporting on a new wave of layoffs at American companies.

So if you think further fattening corporate coffers with tax breaks will spur hiring, think again. — “Politicians and corporations are playing us for fools”

As someone who’s working in Silicon Valley, and as someone who knows a lot of people who are out of work or in danger of losing their jobs, I’m with Cassidy on this one. We have some of the richest companies in the world here in the Valley, and we saw 10.5% unemployment in June in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metropolitan statistical area, which means some 94,300 people classified as unemployed (that doesn’t count the underemployed, or the people who have given up looking for work).

Speaking as a minister, I wish Congress and the president and CEOs would realize this isn’t about getting political points or pleasing shareholders.

How to annoy someone from Indiana

My older sister lives in Indiana. We were talking on the phone yesterday when she idly asked, “So how’s the weather out there?”

“Oh, you know,” I said. “Just so-so. The fog stayed in longer than usual in the morning so I don’t think it got above seventy-two degrees yesterday. And last night it was down in the fifties, so cold I had to close the window.”

“Augh!” she said, or at least she said something that might have been spelled that way. “I hate you! It’s been over ninety here for days, and it doesn’t get any cooler than about seventy-eight at night!”

That’s how to annoy someone from Indiana.

Cookie blog by a UU

Someone introduced me to My Cookie Project. This isn’t a recipe blog, although blogger K. Grober provides links to the recipes, usually on the Martha Stewart Web site. I’d call it a documentary blog: using photos and text, the blog documents baking process, ingredients, cookies, taste and texture of the cookies, and sometimes the positive reaction of the local soup kitchen upon being given the gift of dozens of cookies. Of course a Unitarian Universalist blogger would give cookies to the local soup kitchen.

Barstow to home

I awakened sometime in the middle of the night, and had a hard time getting back to sleep: too much caffeine too late in the day. So I listened to the freight cars in the railroad yard behind the hotel. As the cars were moved around the yard, their wheels gave off flute-like, almost musical, tones. First a tone held for three long beats, the basic tone of which was maybe as high as the C above middle C; then it would change in pitch, shifting suddenly to a higher note or notes. I began listening to the change in pitch, using standard solmization syllables to determine the rise in pitch. Do, re, mi, no not quite mi; a slightly flatted third, like the blue notes in jazz or blues. Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti; that’s a major seventh. The notes began to blur into each other, there were chords, I was fast asleep.

The next morning, we took a long walk along the Historic Route 66 in Barstow. The sun was incredibly bright, the air clear and very dry, and because it was so dry we didn’t feel uncomfortable walking through the desert heat. We went down a short side street where there was a big sign that read “Barstow Classification Yard,” and another sign that read “BNSF Barstow CA.” Carol stood around waiting while I took some photographs of the rail yard beyond. We walked past that, taking photographs of the motel and restaurant and other signs next to or on buildings along the highway: “Palm Court American-Chinese Food”; “Yahweh Flooring”; “Entrance /Low Rates / Office,” with an arrow pointing, and a Hindu “Om” symbol; “Route 66 Motel / Vacancy / Free WiFi — Round Beds — HBO — Remodeled Rooms — Best Prices”; “Robertiroz Mexican Food / Open 24 Hours 7 Days a Week.”

On one side of the highway, side streets led to neat modest homes; on the other side of the highway, beyond the Barstow Classification Yard, we could sometimes see the desert. If this strip of highway, with its big bright signs and bright gaudy roadside architecture, was anywhere else, it would have looked gaudy. But the highway was competing with the intense desert sun, and the glare, and the hot dry air, and it was no competition at all for the sun and glare and dry air won handily.

Driving west, we climbed up towards the Tehachapi Pass, through the high desert with Joshua trees here and there on either side. Erle Stanley Gardner, in one of his detective books, writes about driving through the desert at night and seeing “the weird Joshua trees on either side”; they do look weird, they look vaguely humanoid, but to me they have a friendly and very satisfying look to them.

Once in Tehachapi, the humidity set in. Visibility dropped, distant hills looked blue, the most distant ones disappeared in the haze, and I kept wanting to polish my glasses so I could see again. We began feeling the heat more. All during the long drive through the Central Valley, the air was blue with humidity, and the heat felt uncomfortable, even in the air-conditioned car. Finally we wound through the Coastal Ranges, and arrived at home near the shores of San Francisco Bay, where at last the air felt cool and comfortable.

from July 2, posted July 3

Duckling update

The Mallard who is nesting in the basement stairwell of our building had six ducklings two days ago. Carol has been supplying the mother and her ducklings with water and food (greens and rolled oats), but sometime yesterday two of them died of unknown causes. Just now I heard the mother quacking furiously, and I ran out onto our balcony in time to see a white-and-gray cat scramble up over the fence with two ducklings in its mouth. The mother duck followed the cat out to the street and kept quacking in the direction the cat disappeared.

Carol and I met one of our downstairs neighbors in the yard. We all looked down into the stairwell: the mother duck was there with just two living ducklings, and there was blood on the concrete path at the top of the stairs. While I’m sure the mother duck feels safe down in that cosy little stairwell, staying there means that her babies are (as Carol pointed out) sitting ducks for any cat hunting in the neighborhood.

Post script to cat owners: This was no feral cat that caught the ducklings; it was plump, well-fed, and clean, and obviously someone’s pet. I wish cat owners would keep their pets indoors:– it’s better for the cat, since indoor cats are far less likely to get feline AIDS, or to become coyote snacks;– and it’s much better for the birds of the neighborhood, who won’t become cat chow.

Further update: Carol finally called the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA, who sent an animal control officer. It was pretty clear that in a neighborhood full of cats, the remaining two ducklings wouldn’t last another day. Olivia-the-Humane-Officer arrived at about seven in the evening; the mother duck flew away (apparently a common occurrence), so Officer Olivia had to take the two ducklings with her. In thanks, we made a donation to the Humane Society in honor of “all humane officers.”

Nesting

Carol discovered that there is a female Mallard duck with ducklings living in one of the stairwells that lead down to the basement under our building. When she took the photo below, she didn’t want to get any closer for fear of disturbing the mother duck. The babies are hiding under their mother’s breast.

Carol left some greens and a dish of water for the ducks.

I’m not sure where the actual nest was. It doesn’t look like it was down in the bottom of the stairwell; perhaps one of the babies fell down the stairs, and the mother is down there protecting them.

Bike party

We came out of the theatre at about eleven o’clock and looked to see if it was safe to cross the street. A whole passel of bicycles was coming at us. “Bike party!” said one of the bicyclists as they came near. We watched for about five minutes as clumps of bicycles passed by. There was a break in the bikes, and I scurried across; Carol wiated for another couple of minutes for another break in the bikes before she got across. There were enough bikes that we weren’t going to be able to get the car out easily, so we stood on the sidewalk and watched. Hardly anyone seemed to be talking to one another, except that everyone once in a while someone say, “Bike party!” A few of the bikes were playing recorded music ranging from rap to norteno to classic rock. Two daredevils rode too fast and weaved in and out of the other bikes, but most people just rode along fairly sedately. It looked a little boring to me, but then I never was one for making long bike rides in a group. Finally, along came two motorcycle cops, a few stragglers on bikes, and that was it. We got in our car and drove home.

Nests

At lunchtime, I went for a walk at Baylands Nature Preserve along the Bay in Palo Alto. One of the first things I saw was a baby American Avocet, still with downy plumage, sweeping the water for small invertebrates. American Avocets are a precocial species, so this little baby was pretty much on its own; there were no adult birds nearby.

A little further on I saw a line of Cliff Swallow nests on a building. The swallows pick up some mud in their bills, then fly up and apply it to the nest, gradually building the structure out so as to completely enclose the nesting birds except for small entry holes. The two nests closest to the camera are darker around the entry holes; that’s where mud has been recently applied, and the damp mud is darker than the dried mud.

I kept walking out the dike along Charleston Slough, past other birds that are I guessed were nesting, though I didn’t actually see a nest or babies: Forster’s Terns, Marsh Wrens, a Northern Harrier, Snowy Egrets, Mallards. About a mile and a quarter from the parking lot, I could finally see the California Gull nesting colony. The gulls were screaming and flying in swirling circles above the colony, and as I got closer I could see why: two researchers had kayaked out to the colony, and were walking around with clipboards checking out the nests. The gulls were divebombing them, and through my binoculars, I could see that the researchers were wearing helmets and jackets for protection.

I watched for a while; I like watching gull nesting colonies, and the addition of the invading researchers made it even more entertaining. Then it was time to head back to work, so I walked back to the parking lot, my mind completely emptied of everything except for birds, sun, mud, and nests.