What I Saw in California Episode 05: Two Walks

Summer 2003: I walk past the Balboa park BART station, here in the south-central outskirts of San Francisco. This place is not on the maps of the city that you see in the Travel pages or in guidebooks; usually it gets cut off just below the Mission. This is the las stop before Daly City. It is a place eviscerated by freeways, BART tracks, MUNI lines—bypassed, razor-wired, forgotten. But people live here, and on the side streets you can see sherbet-colored stucco bungalows built before World War II. The place is like a jigsaw puzzle made up of mismatched pieces from different boxes. You can’t put it together.

Carl Linnaeus quoted in Curious Universe, from the University of Montreal.

Read more about Linnaeus in this Wikipedia article, or in this tribute from Smithsonian online.

Music from ccMixter: "I Need Something," by copperhead, featuring Admiral Bob, WillemWillem, Norm Peterson, and Robert Siekawitch; and "In the Garden," by snowflake.

You can view the license which governs the music used, as well as this podcast, here.

My instinct, mid-stream in the molasses flow of late-afternoon San Francisco traffic, was to just keep moving. This was getting us nowhere. Mom sat beside me listlessly looking out the car window while I steered us around and around, trying to make out the logic of this neighborhood: a tangle of pockmarked city streets, overpasses, skyways, and gracelessly aging industrial buildings that housed sweatshops and auto mechanics. Here and there an artist had carved out a space in all the late-industrial jumble, but SoMa, that amalgam of material desire and millennial longing, hadn't been invented yet. It was still just South of Market.

Music from ccMixter: "I Need Something," by copperhead, featuring Admiral Bob, WillemWillem, Norm Peterson, and Robert Siekawitch; and "What It Takes To Be Me," by Alex Beroza, featuring FORENSIC and Nicolas Kern.

You can view the license which governs the music used, as well as this podcast, here.

I measure the imported rice, squeeze the plum tomatoes and chop them, chop the flat-leaf parsley and rosemary from the garden, the garlic, the onion. I grate the cheese and dice the celery, drizzle olive oil into a heavy casserole, eyeballing the measure. In go the garlic and celery. Dinner will be tomato parmesan risotto and rabbit with white wine sauce. The rabbit pieces are soaking in cold water in a clear glass bowl in the deep stainless sink. I lift each piece out and let it drip, then put it on paper towels I have spread on the granite counter. When all of the bits of the small body are arranged on the towels, like words in a poem, it makes me feel faintly ill to look at them. But I pat them dry as the recipe directs, then add them to the olive oil, garlic, and celery waiting in the casserole dish. I put the lid on (it makes a muffled ringing sound as it slides into place) and turn on the gas. It lights in a blue-and-orange burst and settles into two concentric blue rings. I turn it as low as it will go.

Music from ccMixter: "More Water," by airtone, featuring Adisa McKenzie; and "I Need Something," by copperhead, featuring Admiral Bob, WillemWillem, Norm Peterson, and Robert Siekawitch.

You can view the license which governs the music used, as well as this podcast, here.

Up at Pulgas Ridge Megadog and I walk the Cordilleras Trail past the multiple-addiction rehab center tucked at the edge of San Francisco Water Department land. This open space, reserved for hikers and their dogs, is flanked by the rehab on one side and the county mental health services on the other. Sometimes we see guys playing basketball out in back of the rehab building, its tile roof and pale stucco walls aging with Katherine Hepburn style under California live oaks. Sometimes we see them tending their garden, where tomatoes still ripen on the vine on into the fall. Occasionally, they are out playing cards in the morning heat, or washing cars to raise funds for the center. Today, no one.

Music from ccMixter by copperhead: "I Need Something;" and by Alex Beroza: "Too Young," featuring snowflake.

View the license under which this music is used.

It doesn’t help that I have PMS on the day my chicken dies. I find her in the backyard coop, one wing drooping out of the nest, her head lolling. I have always told myself that if illness struck my tiny flock of two I would face it with the pragmatic detachment of a farmer, letting nature take its course or, in the interest of humane treatment, helping nature along by whatever means I had at my disposal (but not owning an axe, I’m not sure what I expected I would do: twist the necks of birds I had named “Visions of Johanna” and “Absolutely Sweet Marie”?)

Music from ccMixter: "Our Father," by Alex Beroza, featuring FORENSIC; and "I Need Something," by copperhead, featuring Admiral Bob, WillemWillem, Norm Peterson, and Robert Siekawitch.

Three o’clock in the afternoon, and Shirley, of Shawnee Memorials, just across Harrison Avenue from Fairview Cemetery, was not taking any shit off my dad.

We had come here at my urging; Dad had mentioned that he still needed to order a stone to mark the plot where Jenny’s and Edith’s remains were buried together. I could see that if I didn’t push a little, it wasn’t going to happen any time soon. And the grass in the Rose family plot, though a bit dry and thatched in patches, covered their grave so smoothly that no one would ever know they were there.

Actual memories by Tom Fenley.

"Coals" by Kristin Hersh: kristinhersh.cashmusic.org or www.kristinhersh.com

The sound of pistons pumping, a lawn-mower pulse and wheeze, comes up behind her, and she looks over her shoulder to see the VW coming up fast: black and chrome, some of the shine worn off and anyway looking duller in this flat November light. She keeps her thumbs hooked under the leather of her backpack straps, walks backward and keeps her gaze straight and sober toward the driver of the car. It pulls over a few paces ahead and stops at an angle on the gravel margin. Under her boots the gray gravel rasps and she doesn't slow down or speed up but keeps up her trudge toward the car. In one version of the story she opens the passenger door herself; in another, the driver pushes the door open and it swings out in front of her like a gate, so that if she had wanted to keep going she couldn't; but she doesn't want to keep going.

Translation by Johan Sussenberger

Music by Kristin Hersh: kristinhersh.cashmusic.org or www.kristinhersh.com

"I serve with the German Armed Forces. My garrison is Hardheim, where I am stationed at Carl-Schurz-Kaserne. At present, I attend the Bundeswehrfachschule in Tauberbischofsheim.

"On Friday, 5 November 1971, I was driving in my VW...from Tauberbischofsheim to Hardheim between 12.20 and 12.30 o'clock. About 200 meters past the stone works on the B 27 I saw a young woman walk on the right-hand side of the road. She did not use the usual signal to indicate that she wanted a ride, but she turned around to face my vehicle. To me, this meant, she wanted a ride, so I braked and came to a halt at some distance ahead of her. When she reached the car, she opened the passenger door and said: 'To Bietigheim.'..."

Translation by Johan Sussenberger

Music by Kristin Hersh: kristinhersh.cashmusic.org or www.kristinhersh.com

Terminal burrowing can be identified in reports of hypothermia deaths, but has only recently been given a name. It is a behavior pattern observed in the last stages of hypothermia whereby the afflicted will enter small, enclosed spaces, such as wardrobes, cupboards, and closets.

Outdoors, the victim may burrow into piles of leaves, the crevices between rocks or fallen trees, or into culverts. Searchers must be aware of the possibility that the missing persons may be thoroughly hidden and too hypothermic to respond to their calls.

It is most often observed in moderately cold conditions, when the victim's body temperature falls slowly. These conditions would be found during power outages, or when someone is lost in chilly, but not freezing, weather.

See also Paradoxical undressing

--from Wikipedia

Translation by Johan Sussenburger

Music by Kristin Hersh: kristinhersh.cashmusic.org or www.kristinhersh.com

She's six years old
All she sees are dirty walls around her
Men coming in and out the front door
She wants to run cry and yell
But there is nobody there to help
She sees many different faces
Touching them in all the wrong places
Hearing the door open and close
She follows him because she is the one he chose

--Gabriela

I spoke with Gabriela, Bernardo, Heriberto, Santiago, Escarlet, Esmeralda, and Aldo on Friday, May 21, 2010. Listen.

Music by airtone: sometimes instrumental mix; and Petitjardi: Sin Sentido, featuring Carmen La Puerta; both from ccMixter. Visit Creative Commons to view the license under which these works are used.