Wednesday 12/04/2024
First thing today was a hike organized by Joanne. The participants were me, Joanne, another Joanne (Joanne L.) and Erika. The latter two are enthusiastic walkers, and as I’ve mentioned before my friend Joanne is a sturdy and rapid walker, so there was a serious question whether I could keep up with them. We hiked in the Arastradero Preserve, a large piece of hilly California countryside owned by Palo Alto. At the end Joanne L. checked her Apple watch and announced that we’d gone exactly four miles and totaled 700 feet of elevation gain. I did indeed keep up without any special difficulty. I think if I had needed to go further, I could have, after maybe a break and some water.
Idled away the afternoon. In the evening we had a screening of a movie, “Stripped for Parts” about the venture capital firms that buy up newspapers and shut them down. Well made documentary, could have been shorter. Turns out the Mercury News that I get was the victim of such a “vulture capital” buy-out, reducing the Bay Area News Group from 7 papers to 2. Also I learned about the San Jose Spotlight, one of many non-profit journalism outlets formed by newspaper people made jobless by corporate takeovers.
Codgerville 