Tue 22 Mar 2011

Writer Jonathan Rowe dies unexpectedly at 65

Posted by DavidMitchell under General News, History, Point Reyes Station
[3] Comments

Writer Jonathan Rowe working at an open-air table in the front of Toby’s Coffee Bar in January 2008. I took the photo just after The Columbia Journalism Review published an article he had written about the ongoing faux pas of Robert Plotkin as publisher of The Point Reyes Light. He was now beginning a socio-economics commentary for Harpers.

Point Reyes Station writer Jonathan Rowe, 65, died unexpectedly Sunday morning after being taken to a hospital Saturday.

He leaves his wife Mary Jean Espulgar-Rowe and his son Joshua, a 3rd grader at West Marin School, both seen at right.

His was a life of achievements: in writing and editing for major publications; in Washington, DC, politics; and in helping guide civic affairs here in West Marin.

Mr. Rowe was a new member of the board of directors of the Marin Media Institute, which owns The Point Reyes Light.

A 15-year resident of West Marin, he was also known here as the host of KWMR’s America Offline program. Mr. Rowe’s being an on-air interviewer was especially impressive because he had a severe speech impediment while growing up but overcame it as an adult.

In addition, he co-founded the Tomales Bay Institute and its successor, the West Marin Commons project in Point Reyes Station.

He had been a contributing editor to The Washington Monthly and YES! magazines and had been a staff writer for The Christian Science Monitor.

Mr. Rowe also contributed articles to Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, Readers Digest, The Columbia Journalism Review, The Point Reyes Light, The West Marin Citizen, and many other publications.

Last year, he contributed a thoughtful essay, Fellow Conservatives, to the Fall 2010 issue of the West Marin Review. In the article, “conservative” is used in the sense of conserving both nature and community traditions.

A 1967 graduate of Harvard University, Mr. Rowe also earned a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971. In the early 1970s, he was one of Ralph Nader’s “Raiders.”

He served on staffs in the House of Representatives and the Senate, where he was a long-time aide to US Senator Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota). He also served on the staff of the Washington, DC, city council.

Mr. Rowe’s sudden death has shocked many of us. “I am grieving a lot myself like many of you,” wrote Elizabeth Barnet on the West Marin Soapbox website. “He was a mentor, a friend, an editor of my writing, an inspiring writer. We co-founded West Marin Commons.”

Jim Kravets, former editor of The Citizen and before that The Light, wrote that Mr. Rowe’s death is “an incalculable loss, absolutely devastating.”

Linda Petersen, advertising manager of The Citizen, wrote, “I counted Jonathan as a dear friend and mentor with a wonderful sense of humor. I would like to see his dream come true of a united community with one newspaper, which we talked about all the time. I will miss him terribly.”

Already, even before the cause of Mr. Rowe’s death has been made public, townspeople are talking of creating a memorial to him. A more civic-minded member of the community would be hard to find, and many of us are thinking of his family in this painful time.

Those interested in reading any of Mr. Rowe’s writings on a variety of topics can find them by clicking here.

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Mon 21 Mar 2011

Some of the creatures that visited my cabin in a single day

Posted by DavidMitchell under West Marin nature, Wildlife
1 Comment

One of the great pleasures of living in West Marin is the variety of wildlife I see around my cabin every day. Here is a sampling of the creatures I saw last Friday, beginning with a salamander. These amphibians have more of a history than one might think.

The second salamander I found on  firewood in one week. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

As someone who heats his cabin with a woodstove, I go out of my way to insure no bugs are sent to a fiery death in the inferno. I’ve gone so far as to dislodge a hibernating yellow jacket before sticking its log in the fire.

A week ago, I was about to toss a piece of firewood into my woodstove when I spotted a salamander hiding in one of the log’s cracks. Much relieved that I had discovered the hapless amphibian in time, I naturally put it back outdoors.

Many ancient Greeks and Romans believed that salamanders are born in fire. Some salamanders inhabit rotting logs, and when the logs were put in a fire, the salamanders would try to escape, leading people to believe that salamanders were created by the flames.

Salamander in my hand. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Finding a salamander in my firewood a week ago made me doubly alert for others, and on Friday I found a second.

I placed the second salamander among some flowers growing in a wine barrel on my deck, only to have a woodrat jump out of the barrel the moment I did so.

Immediately I worried that I had saved the salamander from fire only to feed it to a woodrat. The salamander, however, quickly crawled out of sight, and there was nothing to be done.

A woodrat on the leg of my picnic table last Friday.

A gray  fox on the railing of my deck Friday night. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Foxes and raccoons have become regular nighttime visitors on my deck, as has been noted in several postings.

Also on the railing Friday night was this raccoon.

The two are not fond of each other, but after I spent several weeks conditioning them, they learned to get along in order to share in the peanuts I scattered outside my kitchen door. My technique was one I’d previously used in convincing a possum and raccoon to dine together.

Initially I put out two piles of peanuts several feet apart, one for each species, and over the course of several nights moved the piles closer together until the critters were eating nose to nose.

A possum, fox, and raccoon share a nighttime snack.

On Friday night, this conditioning reached new heights when a possum, fox, and raccoon all showed up. By placing peanuts fairly close together, I was able to get all three critters to eat nose to nose without squabbling.

Afterward I wondered if they were as amazed as I at what had just occurred. It was the perfect culmination of a single day spent watching my smaller neighbors.

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Tue 15 Mar 2011

Finding small absurdities in the midst of major crises

Posted by DavidMitchell under General News, History
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With so many crises underway around the world, writing a less-than-grim posting about current events seems almost impossible. But that won’t stop me from trying.

As was first reported here four years ago, soot on the glass door of my woodstove sometimes creates an apparition of either Jesus or Moammar Khadafy. Back in 2007, I wasn’t sure which one, but with the the flames in my woodstove now resembling the fires burning throughout Libya, the ghostly image must be Khadafy’s.

By the way, Khadafy is fairly easy to write about because, as my friend Dave LaFontaine pointed out last week, it’s virtually impossible to misspell his name: Khadafy, Qaddafi, Qazzafi, Qadhdhafi, Qaththafi, Gaddafi etc.

The variety of spellings results from Arabic having letters and sounds that aren’t found in English, from differences between various dialects of Arabic, and from differing transliterations (the way words originally written in one language are written in another).

Members of Japan’s Self Defense Force hunt for survivors of Friday’s magnitude 9 earthquake and resulting tsunami. The disaster has killed more than 14 thousand people, destroyed ships, roads, buildings, and crops, and has caused explosions and fires at four nuclear reactors. Photo by Yoichi Hayashi of  Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.

There is certainly nothing funny about the crisis in Japan, but some of the reporting on the disaster has sounded absurd.

Remember your high school English teacher warning you about misplaced modifiers? For example: Walking around a corner, a tall building came into view.

It’s an easy mistake to make, and India’s national daily newspaper, The Hindu, happened to make it last Saturday in reporting on the disasters in Japan: “The coastal city of Rikuzentakata in Iwate Prefecture was also devastated by a tsunami wave,” The Hindu reported.

“Traveling inbound at speeds upwards of 500 kilometres per hour, the city was completely engulfed.” That sounds like one fast-moving city.

The Ohio River four feet above flood stage in Pomeroy, Ohio. Photo by WSAZ.

Meanwhile, some areas in the United States, particularly along the Passaic and Raritan rivers in New Jersey and along the Ohio River in Ohio and Kentucky, have also been underwater this past week.

In Covington, Kentucky, the Ohio was so high that a riverside restaurant, the Waterfront, which is on a barge, pulled away from its moorings. “One cable remained in place and kept the restaurant from colliding with the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge,” Yahoo News reported.

The mishap required “everyone on board to be rescued using ladders and ropes for a makeshift gangplank,” Yahoo noted. Another news site, however, quoted a customer who seemed to be thinking of 1969 when an abundance of pollution in Ohio’s Cuyahoga River caused it to catch fire.

Said the diner, “I was so happy when we got wedged under the bridge, certainly saving us from the toxic waste and the fire.” Say what?

Amanda Weisal and John France on the Today Show.

And now for an update on the household dangers of Facebook. A Jan. 25 posting here described how Facebook led to a wife in Cleveland accusing her husband of bigamy.

As was revealed last August, the wife, Lynn France, had suspected her husband John was having an affair with another woman, Amanda Weisal, so she logged onto Facebook and typed in Weisal’s name. Not only did she find photos of her husband with Weisal, the pictures showed the two of them getting married.

My posting about Facebook went on to discuss the case of Craig Carlos-Valentino (right).

Last November, the 51-year-old Antioch man halted westbound traffic on the Oakland Bay Bridge for an hour when he stopped in the slow lane and told officers via a cell phone that he was armed with guns and explosives.

Carlos-Valentino also threatened to jump off the bridge. Eventually he surrendered to authorities. No explosives or guns were found in his car, and his 16-year-old daughter, who had also been in the car, was unharmed.

What was going on? Carlos-Valentino told officers he was upset that his wife was going to leave him. And why did he think that? She’d revealed it on Facebook.

Two weeks ago, Carlos-Valentino pleaded guilty to felony child endangerment and making a false bomb threat. He is scheduled to be sentenced at the end of this month, and prosecutors have said he faces one year in jail.

One might think that couples would realize the problems inherent in dealing with their disputes via Facebook, but many obviously don’t.

On Feb. 28, Hernando Today, an online version of The Tampa Tribune, reported that a couple living in Brooksville, Florida, got into a physical fight over Facebook.

Following the fracas, Hernando County sheriff’s deputies arrested Thomas Gannon, 35, and his girlfriend Tina Cash, 31, (pictured above) at their mobilehome. Both of them were charged with misdemeanor domestic violence.

Gannon said Cash while drinking had become upset and removed their relationship status from her Facebook page. She also “unfriended” him on Facebook.

When Gannon confronted Cash about this, she began throwing things, he said, and hit him in the face with a picture frame. She denied it and claimed he punched her. He denied that.

The incident was bad enough, but because it involved Facebook, it gave the Internet world an opening to snicker. One reader wrote, “White trash at its finest.” Another quipped, “He was framed.”

With so much misery in Japan and Libya these days, it’s easier to endure flooding in New Jersey and Ohio, a breakaway restaurant in Kentucky, accusations of bigamy in Cleveland, a distraught husband stopping traffic on the Bay Bridge, and a Facebook fight in a Florida mobilehome.

These are all serious matters, but they’re not all equally grim.

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Mon 7 Mar 2011

Bolinas exhibition takes an artistic look at the world

Posted by DavidMitchell under General News, History, Marin County
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Artist Sue Gonzalez of Point Reyes Station stands at one end of a large oil painting of hers. The painting is part of a new art exhibition that opened Saturday at the Bolinas Museum.

Sue’s paintings might best be described as impressionistic realism. As has been said of the style of artist Gustave Courbet (1819-77), hers “is not photographic; it shows a keen sense of selection of what to paint among the details of nature to give the essentials of [the] subject.”

Sue’s subjects are inevitably large expanses of water. Although most painters would be challenged to make the unbroken surface of a tranquil bay interesting, Sue is such a master of light and shadow she is able to reveal the subtleties of seemingly simple scenes.

While “there is minimal but recognizable reference to place, Tomales Bay here in Coast Marin,” the museum comments, “this art is about planet water.”

Sue attended the University of Wisconsin and graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute. She also took classes at Sonoma State and Indian Valley College.

Stinson Beach and Bolinas Lagoon (circa 1902) by Arthur William Best. Also on display through April 17 at Bolinas Museum is a selection of art from the museum’s permanent collection.

View of Mountain Cottage by Ludmilla Welch, 1890. From the permanent collection.

The Dreamers. Photo by Kevin Brooks from the permanent collection.

Classic Torso with Hands by Ruth Bernhard.

The photographer (1905-2006) is best known for her nudes of women. “If I have chosen the female form in particular, it is because beauty has been debased and exploited in our sensual twentieth century,” she wrote. “We seem to have a need to turn innocent nature into evil ugliness by the twist of a mind.

“Woman has been the target of much that is sordid and cheap, especially in photography. To raise, to elevate, to endorse with timeless reverence the image of a woman has been my mission.”

Krishna and Radha by Gajari Devi.

Also showing at Bolinas Museum is an exhibit titled Sacred Walls, Dieties and Marriages in Mithila Painting.

“For centuries, perhaps for thousands of years, women in the ancient cultural region of Mithila in Eastern India, have been painting on their floors and the inner and outer walls of their family compounds,” the museum explains.

“With vibrant color and complex design, their art celebrates, protects and makes sacred or auspicious space in their homes for family rituals and events. Though there are a few male contemporary painters, this is primarily an art tradition handed down through women from generation to generation…..

“Encouraged to expand their creativity to painting on handmade paper, their art has become a source of desperately needed income and attracted international attention to their work.”

Fresh Killed Poultry by Lewis Watts. Part of the permanent collection.

Salud Compadre, Peru. By Steven Brock.

The photography in the current exhibition is from the Helene Sturdivant Mayne Photography Gallery, which is part of the museum’s permanent collection.

Bolinas Museum may be small, but it represents some of the best art in the world, as the current exhibition attests. It will continue through April 17, so you still have plenty of time.

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Wed 2 Mar 2011

A fox at the table

Posted by DavidMitchell under Point Reyes Station, West Marin nature, Wildlife
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The ad manager of The West Marin Citizen, Linda Petersen, a week ago asked Lynn and me to take care of her Havanese dog Eli for three days while she was away. Lynn and I had done so before, and since Eli is a fun dog, we readily agreed to take him again.

Eli is always happy to see me and often hops into my lap when I sit down, perhaps because I give him an excessive amount of petting and scratching. Eli reciprocates by frequently cleaning my beard. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Although he’s almost always inside the house when foxes arrive on the deck each evening, for three days Eli managed to drive them off with his barking. The raccoons, however, were more nonchalant and stood outside the kitchen’s glass door looking him in the face.

Eli’s big adventure of the weekend occurred after I had let go of his leash and he discovered a flock of wild turkeys in my pasture. Barking as he ran, Eli scattered the flock. Most of the turkeys flew across a small canyon while several others flew to the top of a fairly tall pine tree. I had never before seen a turkey on the wing make such a steep climb.

Once Eli was gone, the foxes felt safe in returning. Ironically, eating nose to nose on my deck with one or more raccoons bothered them less than being on the deck when Eli was inside this glass door.

Most wild animals on this hill act as if my cabin were my cage. The moment I get out of it, they get skittish, the foxes more than the deer, as can be seen.

When I’m inside, however, foxes feel comfortable coming up to the door even when it’s open.

A fox sits on a woodbox outside my dining-room window and surveys the dinner table.

The raccoons around my cabin often do the same thing. (Photo by Linda Petersen)

Is a fox shy or fierce?

It’s ironic that we tend to think of foxes as shy. Their reputation was much fiercer in the past. There is a legend about a hungry boy in ancient Sparta who stole a fox he intended to eat.

When the boy encountered some soldiers, he hid the stolen fox under his tunic and answered their questions. Although the fox was chewing into his stomach, the boy endured the pain without flinching to avoid being exposed as a thief.

Sparta, of course, had its own code of conduct. In Greek legend, the boy was not dishonorable for stealing the fox but admirable for his stoicism.

Unlike Eli, I’m on generally good terms with the foxes. I can hand feed them slices of bread, but I’m not about to scratch their bellies or let them clean my beard.

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Tue 22 Feb 2011

The common people are revolting

Posted by DavidMitchell under General News, History, West Marin nature, Wildlife
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The Age of Revolution once referred to the years from 1775 to 1848 when absolutist monarchies were forcibly replaced by republics or constitutionalist states. These upheavals included the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and revolutions throughout Latin America.

After World War II, a second Age of Revolution occurred in Africa as colonies freed themselves from their European masters. Most of these revolts were in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

Twenty-six wild turkeys two weeks ago marched for food in Point Reyes Station.

Now a third Age of Revolution is sweeping the world. It all began last month when street protesters in Tunisia toppled the 23-year regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. That, of course, helped inspire street protests which earlier this month led to the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after a 29-year rule. An estimated 365 protesters had been killed by the time he left office.

Immediately protesters in Yemen demanded that President Ali Abdullah Saleh resign after 32 years in office. Saleh has said he won’t seek reelection in 2013, but protesters want him out now. Nine protesters have been killed so far.

Street protests also spread to Bahrain where seven people have been killed in demonstrations against the prime minister, Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al Khalifa, over economic problems in the island kingdom.

Other street protests in the region are occurring in Libya (1,000 or more protesters killed), Morocco (five killed), Algeria (two killed), Kuwait (some reportedly tortured), and Jordan (eight injured).

Elsewhere street protests have been cropping up against authoritarian regimes in China, Russia, and…. Wisconsin?

A fox on my deck last week looking for bread.

The street protesters in Wisconsin, who are upset with their anti-union governor, Republican Scott Walker, are reminiscent of women strikers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a century ago. Their demands back then? “We want bread and roses too.”

Nor is the fox alone in its desire for more bread, along with roses. Three raccoons showed up tonight to join in the demonstration.

Even a possum waddled onto my deck to take part.

The fox, the raccoons, and the possum all want bread but prefer peanuts. By offering them a few goobers, I was able to convince them to pose with a rose for these portraits.

No doubt authoritarian potentates from Vladimir Putin to Moammar Khadafy to Gov. Walker wish their problems could be solved for peanuts. But they can’t, which is why they find common people around the globe to be revolting.

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Mon 14 Feb 2011

How two resourceful women coped with crises

Posted by DavidMitchell under History, Personal
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In the last couple of weeks, I have received two emails from women who survived crises where they live. One incident in particular could have easily had a far worse outcome.

The youngest stepdaughter from my last marriage, Shaili, who will turn 18 next month, lives in Guatemala. Her location sometimes worries me even though her home is in a good neighborhood of the capital, Guatemala City.

Unfortunately, the country has become so dangerous for women and girls, an average of two are murdered each day, that the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco last year ruled immigration judges must consider that fact when deciding whether to grant asylum to Guatemalan women. The country’s murder rate is 3.5 times the rate in violence-plagued Mexico, The New York Times reported last July.

Shaili reading by my woodstove two years ago.

On Feb. 3, Shaili wrote me, “I usually don’t walk in the streets near my house anymore, but yesterday afternoon seemed like a pretty day. I decided to leave my cell phone in the house, just in case. I went to my friend Alvaro’s house and spent the whole afternoon there.

“We were walking back to my house at about 6:20 p.m., so it was getting pretty dark. Alvaro never lets me walk home alone. Anyway, during our way to my house, I had many ‘bad feelings’ when seeing some people, a particular car etc. Something just didn’t feel right.

“I was very close to my house when an all-black car pulled over, and two men came out. The car quickly left, and when I saw the look on the men’s faces, I knew they were going to try to mug me, which was precisely what happened.

“The two men walked over to us and showed us their guns. They told us to give them everything we owned. Luckily, as I said, I was having a bad feeling that day, so I had put my money inside my underwear. I told the guy that I didn’t have anything.

“He heard a jingle in my pocket and asked, ‘Are you SURE you don’t have anything?’ I took four quetzales [the equivalent of 50 cents] out and said, ‘Would you like four quetzales?’ I couldn’t help sounding a bit mocking, just so he would feel stupid. He said no.

“Then the other guy told Alvaro and me to head back towards where we came from. I refused to do that, of course, because I refused to walk in the direction that I knew they were going. I was just so terrified at that moment that I didn’t think. So I said, ‘No, I live here!’

“This was so stupid of me, but the good thing is that I never really specified where I lived, but they now know I live close by. Anyway, they let me go, so I ran until I got to my house. I had never felt as scared. My legs were trembling.

“When I ran straight to my house, I accidentally forgot about Alvaro, but then I turned around, and he had already crossed the street to the other side, so I yelled for him to come, and he did.

“Alvaro’s cap got stolen, and it had sentimental value to him, but he wasn’t as affected as I was because it had happened to him before. For me, it was new and just very scary.

“I cried a lot after that because I was scared. Nothing really happened to me, and nothing of mine got stolen, but still I just hate to think I actually came face to face with two men who are exactly the reason why Guatemala is in such a disgusting situation.

“I had trouble sleeping the nights after that because I kept on dreaming about it,” Shaili later told me. “Now I feel much better. I’m just very paranoid right now. As always, I am being very cautious when leaving the house, and I definitely won’t ever walk here again.”

Second story: A Jan. 25 posting on this blog concerning Facebook prompted a Feb. 9 email from Sheila Castelli, formerly of Point Reyes Station and now living in Taos, New Mexico.

“I saw this post on the Taos Police Department Facebook page,” she wrote, “and chuckled and thought of your blog post. ‘Crews are at Wal Mart,'” the police noted, “‘and will follow you home to get you lit up. Let everyone know.’

“Here is the context. We in Taos County are coming to the end of a non-natural disaster,” Sheila (at right) wrote.

“Since last Thursday [Jan. 20] there has been no natural gas here. The gas supply was intentionally shut off by New Mexico Gas as a preemptive move to save the gas supply in other parts of the state.

“Temperatures here at night have been well below zero.”

The Feb. 10 Taos News explained, “Early last week, El Paso Natural Gas, the company that oversees one of the pipelines from the Permian Basin for New Mexico Gas Company, said it was stockpiling as much gas as it could in anticipation of the frigid weather….

“When it became apparent that the gas supply was dwindling, New Mexico Gas Company said it advised large consumers like the Questa mine and Los Alamos National Labs to cut back gas usage. Other major gas users across the state were also asked to reduce operations. But it wasn’t enough.

“With almost no warning, the gas was disconnected in 14 communities across the state….

“It wasn’t just a matter of pipeline physics. At some point, a decision was made to shut the valve serving rural communities. In an emailed statement to The Taos News, New Mexico Gas Company said it had to move fast when deciding who would be cut off.

“‘The decision to shut off the gas line valve to Española, Taos, Questa, Red River and other northern New Mexico towns was made quickly because the actual valves were in areas accessible and were able to be shut down quickly.'”

Sheila wrote, “I heard of the gas outage on the radio here, and I also heard they were opening a Red Cross shelter. As I have trained as a shelter manager, I called and offered my services. Trinidad, the Red Cross head here, was overjoyed as Taos had never opened a shelter here before.

“So I have been at the shelter since then. I dragged myself home yesterday.

“All the gas meters had to be shut off until the lines were re-pressurized, then all homes visited and [pilot lights] re-lit.

“The National Guard have been here in full force, along with plumbers from all over the country, and they were very perplexed with Taos’ crazy roads and streets. They thought they had been to every home, but it appeared that only 54 percent were back with gas.

“They just couldn’t find a lot of these homes, so they were at Wal Mart, and people were supposed to go grab a crew and lead them to their homes.

“Luckily I don’t use natural gas, so I was fine, but I attended to many freezing folks coming into the shelter. I met lots of new people from the mayor to the homeless and spent several hours playing cards with Taos policemen.”

Sheila wrote that helping others at the shelter was “good therapy for me,” and Shaili wrote that her frightening experience “taught me a good lesson: whenever I have a gut feeling or some kind of intuition, I need to trust it.”

Neither of them expected she’d have to cope with a crisis, but both came away stronger for having done so.

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Tue 8 Feb 2011

Have a happy and trippy Valentine’s Day

Posted by DavidMitchell under General News, History, West Marin nature, Wildlife
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Valentine’s Day will be Monday, and here are some thoughts for the occasion. The first is from Kaiser Permanente, which sent out a mass mailing this week noting that dark chocolate is good for your heart and that “some say it even mimics the feeling of being in love.”

While on the topic of hearts, here is my annual Valentine’s Day greeting from a flock of Canada geese flying over Inverness Ridge, as seen from my deck.

Romantically inclined gentlemen have traditionally given their ladies flowers for Valentine’s Day. Here Mrs. Raccoon, who works part time at Flower Power in Point Reyes Station, shows off a particularly nice bouquet.

How men respond to feminine beauty is to some degree, of course, a matter of culture, as we could see when an attractive young woman dropped what she was carrying during the G8 countries’ summit in Canada last June.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was too preoccupied with his own appearance to notice, and President Barack Obama remained all business while French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi admired her comely derriére.

By now Valentine’s Day is often associated with greeting cards called Valentines, which are typically printed with saccharin
messages or a bit of doggerel: “The rose is red./ The violet’s blue./ The honey’s sweet,/ and so are you.”

The origin of that line, by the way, can be found 420 years ago in Edmund Spenser’s poem The Faerie Queen: “She bath’d with roses red, and violets blew,/ And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.”

By the early 1800s, Valentine’s cards were being assembled in factories, and with the development of modern printing in the years that followed, printed messages replaced handwritten notes. The woman holding this large, pink Valentine was photographed about 1910.

There must be something trippy about this time of year. If you’ve never experienced an acid trip, the following kenesthetic hallucination will give you an idea of what it’s like.

Here’s what to do: click on the link at the end of this posting, then “click me to get trippy,” then stare at the center of the screen for a full 30 seconds, then look at your hand holding the mouse without moving it away from the mouse. You’ll be amazed at the result: Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Tue 1 Feb 2011

Quotes Worth Saving III

Posted by DavidMitchell under General News
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This blog periodically carries postings consisting of clippings from my file labeled “Quotes Worth Saving.” The idea for the file originated with the late San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, who once wrote that he kept a file of items he could use on slow days.

Prompting this latest installment was a Jan. 26 Matier and Ross column in The Chronicle: “After a three-week trial, at a cost we can only imagine, a San Francisco jury has determined that a 47-year-old Cotati man was not, in fact, masturbating when he was moving his hands inside his pants as he stood on a Tenderloin corner looking at a 10-year-old girl.

“Jurors instead decided that the accused, who has no history of crimes against children, had been trying to retrieve his heroin, which had fallen down his pants. Since he wasn’t facing drug charges, the defendant walked.”

Lest you think this could only happen to a man in San Francisco, here’s an item from the police blotter of The Lewisboro (N.Y.) Ledger, as quoted in the May 26, 2008, New Yorker: “Sex offense reported at the Cross River Plaza in Cross River.

“A driver complained to police that a woman was touching herself in a car. Police spoke to the woman, who said that she had just been listening to the Beatles before shopping.”

It could have been tragic. The Gulf News in Dubai reported on Dec. 12, 2008, “Actor Daniel Hoevels accidentally slit his neck onstage after he mistook a real knife for a prop at the Burgtheater in Austria.

“Hoevels… was supposed to be using a knife blunted for use onstage, but the knife had been switched with a sharp one for the show on Saturday night.

“Vienna police said Thursday they were investigating ‘bodily injury caused by negligence.’ The theater company said the original prop knife was damaged and that instructions to blunt the replacement and been ‘carelessly’ disregarded.

“Hoevels received stitches for his injury at a hospital and was back on stage… the next day.”

A headline in the July 18, 2010, Chronicle, rather than the accompanying story seemed to be the real news: “Hamas Bans Water Pipes.” My God, I wondered, will power lines be the next public utility Hamas prohibits? In fact, it turned out that Hamas in imposing conservative Islam on Gaza had banned the smoking of Arabic hookahs (known as shisha) in public.

Was the word really supposed to be gratuitously, meaning done in an uncalled-for manner (e.g. gratuitously violent movies)? Or gratefully, meaning done with gratitude? Whatever the case, a reader last Sunday could sense a poignant story behind the following classified ad.

From Personals in the Jan. 30 Chronicle: “Does anyone remember EX-PFC USMC Oak Knoll-Menlo Park? Any response gratuitously accepted. (Highly & introspective, sensitive, neurotic). Mail response to: 1390 Market St. #1820, SFCA 94102.”

Gallery owner Claudia Chapline (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

An apt aphorism quoted in a Dec. 10, 1992, news release from the Claudia Chapline Gallery in Stinson Beach: “If you have no troubles, buy a goat.”

I’d think the answer would be self-evident. From Dear Abby on Dec. 29, 2010: “My husband travels a lot, three to four days a week. Sometimes when he’s intoxicated and we’re having sex, he acts as if he doesn’t know who I am.

“I asked him once, ‘Are you married?’ He said, ‘No…’ Another time I asked, ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ and he said, ‘No, but you’re fine…’ The next day he has no idea he said any of this. Should I be worried?”

Grim news from the Palmetto State in the Oct. 10, 2009, Chronicle: “Officials say an alligator bit off part of a golfer’s arm as he leaned over to pick up his ball at a private South Carolina course.

The man, who is in his 70s, was retrieving his ball from a pond when the 10-foot alligator bit him at Ocean Creek Golf Course in Beaufort County.

“His golf partners were able to free him. Wildlife workers killed the alligator and retrieved the arm in the hope it might be reattached.”

Law enforcement run amok? The Associated Press reported on Oct. 9, 2008: “Police in Newark, Ohio, have arrested a 15-year-old girl on juvenile child pornography charges for allegedly sending nude cell-phone photos of herself to classmates.

“The girl was arrested Friday and held over the weekend. Her defense filed denials in court Monday. Police did not identify the girl by name, and prosecutors promised a statement with details later Wednesday. Authorities were also considering charges for students who received the photos.”

We’ll end with a sentimental report from the Aug. 19, 2008, Chronicle: “A lost humpback whale calf has bonded with a yacht it seems to think is its mother, Australian media reported. The calf was first sighted Sunday in waters off north Sydney, and on Monday tried to suckle from a yacht, which it would not leave.”

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Tue 25 Jan 2011

Facebook, the bizarre culmination of mass communications

Posted by DavidMitchell under Dave Mitchell, General News
[6] Comments

Mass communications began after a German goldsmith named Johnannes Gutenberg in 1439 borrowed money to produce souvenirs to sell at a religious festival only to have the festival postponed for a year.

Unable to repay his investors, Gutenberg (left) offered to share the proceeds of a “secret” with them and during the next 10 years devised a printing press that used movable type. The invention led to the printing of the Gutenberg Bible and eventually mass-produced books in general, as well as newspapers and magazines.

The first newspaper in the American colonies was Publick Occurrences, published in Boston in 1690. Its first and only issue was printed on a hand-powered press like Gutenberg’s. The newspaper, however, had not been officially authorized, and it was immediately shut down, its press run confiscated, and its publisher arrested.

The first paper to survive was The Boston Newsletter founded in 1704 by the postmaster. In the 1720s, two other newspapers were launched in New York.

By the start of the Revolutionary War, there were a couple of dozen newspapers in the colonies. By the end of the war, there were 43.

Virtually all were weeklies with circulations of roughly 500. Using Gutenberg technology, that was about all that a print shop could produce in a week. When the First Amendment guaranteed Freedom of the Press, newspapers such as these were what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

By the 1830s, improving technology allowed for creation of mass-circulation newspapers, and by the 1890s, two New York City papers, The New York Journal and The World, were each selling half a million copies per day. The day after the 1896 election of President William McKinley, each paper sold 1.5 million copies.

Then along came radio broadcasting, which began in Holland in 1919 and in the US in 1920. Suddenly newsmakers and entertainers could speak directly to audiences everywhere. Radio, of course, was only the beginning. From 1928 to 1931, the first television stations began broadcasting in different parts of the US.

Back when I was studying Mass Communications in college half a century ago, the news media consisted of magazines, newspapers, radio, and television.

The next medium to come along was, of course, the World Wide Web, which was launched in 1990. Soon organizations ranging from small businesses to the news media were creating websites to promote themselves. Meanwhile individuals such as I began putting blogs online. (The word blog, by the way, comes from web log in the sense of a ship’s log.)

In 2004, a new type of website devoted to “social networking” went online when Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook. Facebook allows users to post vast amounts of text and photos online at no charge. The company makes its money selling advertising on the site.

It all sounded simple enough at first. Friends and relatives used the site to let each other see what they’d been doing and read what they’d been thinking about. But then some strange things started happening. For example:

Last August it came to light that a wife in Cleveland, Lynn France, had suspected her husband was having an affair with another woman, Amanda Weisal, so she logged onto Facebook and typed in Weisal’s name.

John France and Amanda Weisal France on the Today Show.

Not only did she find photos of her husband with Weisal, the pictures showed the two of them getting married. Lynn France then accused her husband of bigamy. John France, however, denied it, claiming his marriage to Lynn in Italy back in 2005 was invalid although he acknowledged fathering two children by her.

Now that’s social networking. Or how about this?

Last November, a 51-year-old Antioch man halted westbound traffic on the Oakland Bay Bridge for an hour when he stopped in the slow lane and told officers via a cell phone that he was armed with guns and explosives.

Craig Carlos-Valentino (at right in CHP photo) also threatened to jump off the bridge. Eventually he surrendered to authorities. No explosives or guns were found in his car, and his 16-year-old daughter, who had also been in the car, was unharmed.

Carlos-Valentino is now in jail awaiting trial, but what in the world was going on? The suspect told officers he was upset that his wife was going to leave him. And why did he think that? She’d revealed it on Facebook.

Nor is the issue merely a matter of indiscreet postings. Much in the news this past three weeks has been the 1987 kidnapping of Carlina White. A woman posing as a nurse had stolen White, then a newborn, from a Harlem hospital.

The kidnapping suspect, Ann Pettway (at right in a North Carolina Department of Identification photo), had raised the girl as her own.

But Carlina White came to wonder if she were really the woman’s daughter and eventually found her actual parents via a missing-children’s website.

With all the publicity over the girl’s being reunited with her true family, Pettway disappeared for 10 days, but on Sunday, she turned herself in to Bridgeport, Connecticut, police. And how was that arranged?

Sunday happened to be police Lt. David Daniels’ birthday, and when he logged onto Facebook to see who had wished him a happy birthday, he found a message from Pettway saying to call her.

Communications have come a long way since Gutenberg, but so far I’ve declined friends’ and relatives’ invitations to stay in touch with them on Facebook. To me it just seems like a waste of time since I have no plans for bigamy, leaving a spouse, or surrendering to Connecticut police.

It’s not that I have no interest in self-promotion. While talking with my friend Lynn Axelrod Saturday evening, I began balancing a cup of coffee on my foot. To my disappointment, she failed to notice, so after 10 minutes I finally pointed out my balancing act.

Lynn quickly snapped a photo with her cell phone, and now the world can see that I too have a story to tell. It’s not, however, sordid enough for Facebook.

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