Saturday 05/13/2023

Went for a moderate walk in the morning. Because I don’t have a saucepan. Or a stove. For fun I ordered some Vite Ramen. They are a small company that developed a complete-nutrition version of ramen. I’d tried some of their stuff back in, oh, 2017 maybe? When I was being an expert on meal replacements. It was good. Recently they had posted that they were back after some supply-chain problems, with new flavors, and just for fun I ordered a sampler pack.

Yesterday it arrove and only then I realized, you make this stuff by boiling the “noods” in a saucepan of water, and I don’t have a saucepan, or a stove to heat it on if I did. All I have is a microwave. Well, I could go down the hall to the communal kitchen for a stove.

So I set out at 8am and walked to good old Ace hardware. Good old, because they open at 8am and always have what I need. It’s amazing how often I go there. Every time, they ask if I have an Ace rewards card. I always say no; they always ask, “Do you want one?” and I always think, I don’t buy hardware often, and say no.

Rather than buying a sauce pan, I bought a 16-oz Pyrex measuring cup. I can heat water in it, in the microwave, and it has a handle that stays cool. Brought it home and made up a bowl of the “vegan spicy seiso” flavor. Oh my, that is actually too spicy for me, I couldn’t finish it.

Anyway my afternoon activity was to help Chuck run his monthly opera presentation. The one he picked this time was Akhnaten by Philip Glass. Unlike previous opera dvds, I actually stayed in the room through this one. This short video gives the flavor of it. Really fine visual stage images. Repetitive music. Silly plot.

I forgot to mention one thing about yesterday. I have been flirting with the idea of a new car for some time. Can’t be bothered to look back and find the references to the Chevy Bolt that I sort of almost bought but didn’t. I still had the Bolt in mind and was thinking I would look again when the ’24 models came out.

Then I found out a couple weeks back, that GM had announced that there wouldn’t be any ’24 Bolts; they were dropping that line of cars. Boy Oh Boy am I glad I didn’t buy one!

But I am still kind of interested in a small, electric car. Unfortunately there don’t seem to be any small electric cars, just full sedans and SUVs. Well, the BMW Mini has a BEV but it has very short range. Anyway poking around a Bolt user forum I found mention of the Hyundai Kona. It is a couple inches shorter than the Bolt, supposedly (164in vs 169in). But I would like to see one up close and perhaps sit in it.

So when I left the Shustek center in Milpitas, I went a couple miles north to the big Fremont Auto Mall where there was a Hyundai dealership. I pulled up in front and got out and walked through their front lot. There were a bunch of cars of various models, not all new (no price stickers). I looked in to the showroom and it was completely empty. Just a big open floor, room for maybe six cars to be displayed but nothing to see except shiny floor space. In one corner was a small round table where a sales person was talking to a couple of people, probably customers. Nobody else in sight.

I felt very rejected. No cars to look at, not even a brochure. According to their website they had at least 3 Konas in stock, but where were they? I went away. Not impressed with Hyundai’s marketing.

Friday 05/12/2023

First thing this morning I had a planned visit from a health care person. This is a service included in the new IBM health insurance package. She came equipped with all sorts of stuff. Gave me the routine questions about my health and mental attitude (three words to remember: ball, flag, tree). Took vitals. Checked my A1C, good news, I don’t have diabetes. She was very friendly and competent. I don’t think the visit accomplished anything. If they offer it next year I think I’ll decline.

At 1pm I left for the museum where I led the 2pm public tour. One of the docent trainees who is taking the on-going docent training came along to shadow me. He complimented me afterward, thought it was a great tour. Separately from that, staff member Jesse thanked me for my service and gave me a Starbucks gift card from the Museum. Nice.

Thursday 05/11/2023

Tidied up the apartment for housekeeping day. Put on my red docent shirt, but packed an ordinary shirt in my shopping bag, and off to give a tour. This was a private tour for what was to be 12 seniors from The Villages, which is a retirement community in south San Jose. In fact there were some dropouts so we were only 8.

As they weren’t pressed for time I gave them the bonus deluxe tour, mentioning the Alto. They seemed pleased.

Then I changed shirts and drove off to the East Bay to join the usual Thursday crew of volunteers for lunch. And then back to the Shustek center to process another box and a half of Sandy Fraser’s papers. This time I was seeing his files of patent applications. He secured a number of patents, allocating most of them to AT&T his employer.

Back home for a quiet supper in my room.

Wednesday 05/10/2023

Went for a walk. At 11:30 I met with Susan in the auditorium so she could make sure her slides for her July book talk look alright on the big screen.

At 4:45 it was time for the monthly 6th floor meeting. They spent some time discussing proper recycling, and the new fitness system. Dinner afterward, me Patty Elizabeth Trish and Paul. Elizabeth tlked about her recent Road Scholar trip to Botswana and then everybody had to mention their Road Scholar trips.

Tuesday 05/09/2023

Did the gym round. Even earlier, I called the reservation number for Smithsonian tours. I had seen where they were offering a nice little 4-day eclipse tour for 2024. But no, all booked up.

The writers group cue for this week was “A Garden of Eden”. I wasn’t going to write anything because I really couldn’t think of a time of my life, or of any life, that could have the features of that paradise. Then I thought about it some more and realized that the features of Eden were actually contradictory in a deep philosophical sense. So I wrote about that. Maybe I’ll stick it at the end here.

At 2 I went to set up the Activity Room for the Hearing Support Group meeting. The Activity room, which is on the 2nd floor “bridge” to the Lee center, was messed about with a lot in 2020-22. It used to be a nice classroom-size meeting space with good sound and video facilities. Then it was coopted to be a Covid ward, and when it came back from that, all the sound equipment had disappeared. It has been being fixed back up but today I was surprised and please to find the sound amplifier was back and a working microphone, as well as the Zoom Room that was already there.

At 4pm there was a meeting in the auditorium to introduce the new fitness contractor, AgeStrong. I had heard this change was coming as part of briefings for the strategic planning committee. This was its introduction to the residents at large. Basically one full and two part-time fitness people who worked for CH, will now work for the parent company of AgeStrong. All existing fitness classes are to continue, and new ones to be added. Also for the first time ever CH will have on-site physical therapy available, billable to Medicare Part B. The presenter from the company was well prepared and very personable.

I had dinner with the Allens and Ann Marie. Right after I went into the auditorium for the third, no fourth meeting of the day. Our Racial and Social Justice committee had prepared a presentation on “Reparations 101”, explaining the details of, and some of the justification for, the recommendations about to be presented to the state legislature by the state Reparations committee. They had done a good job preparing also and I learned a lot more than the newspaper had been telling.

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(This is how I stayed busy from 9am to 10:30.)

The Dream of Eden

What are the supposed characteristics of Eden?

It must be a place of innocence, of safety, and of freedom from want. For the human spirit, the outcome of these conditions ought to be — must be presumed to be — surely would be — serenity. Right?

Without need to guard against any dangers; somehow provided with food, shelter, and other comforts received without effort; lacking any experience of malice or treachery; the human mind must surely be at peace.

Imagine the people in this Garden: fed, protected, not too cold or too hot or too wet. Are they not happy?

No. They are not happy. They are bored. They have imagination; they imagine more perfect things, and they try to make the things. They dream of huts, and begin to cut trees. They dream of castles, and begin to cut stone.

If there are two people in this Garden, there are inevitably at least three opinions on how the hut should be built. If there are more than two, there are at least six opinions on the proper way to resolve the dispute over the slope of the hut roof. Innocence vanishes with the first argument, the first hurt feelings.

When there are enough people, the slope-roof hut makers split from the flat-roof hut makers, two villages, then more. Reeds for thatching hut roofs are used up, and for the first time there is a scarcity in the land; and sooner or later but as sure as the dawn, a war over that.

We each live out the collapse of the Garden in our own lives when, safe and well-fed and clothed and housed, as toddlers we learn to say “No!” and as adolescents we claim to despise our home lives.

There never was a Garden of Eden; the conditions are inherently unstable. The Bible is wrong: Original Sin didn’t enter the Garden; it was there from the first.

Monday 05/08/2023

Slouched around late since I didn’t feel obligated to take a walk (see yesterday). At 8:30 went down to the auditorium to check on David G setting up for the RA meeting; he had it all well in hand. No exciting news from the RA meeting.

Then back to my room to review the materials for the Strategic Planning committee meeting which was at 12:30. No exciting news there, either, although I did get some insights on what progress staff are making on the various goals our Strat. Plan. set up for them.

Dropped down to FOPAL to give my section a tidy and make it ready for sale weekend. Then fiddled the afternoon away.

Sunday 05/07/2023

Didn’t do much. Took a walk over to the Cal. ave. farmer’s market. A bit over 4 miles for the day. Tomorrow the RA meeting is at 9 so I won’t feel obligated to take a walk then, or feel guilty for not.

Did some testing of the new 11th floor microphones. Turns out if you get the mic more than about 30 feet from its receiver, the audio starts dropping out intermittently. This is probably the result of buying a cheap, $150 Chinese knock-off system. But now that we know that limit, we can live with it.

On my walk I saw a very pretty succulent.

Saturday 05/06/2023

Basically a clear day, while next week is the pre-sale week at FOPAL, so I thought I’d get ahead. I spent a couple of hours down there generally tidying up my section.

Back at CH I took a tech squad call to help Walt. He has a new Macbook Air that he said, wasn’t connected to the internet. Actually it was, but I think it maybe had been using his cell phone as a hot spot. I got it to connect to the house wi-fi and made sure he could read his email.

That was about it. After supper I got involved in writing something for the writers group and next thing I knew, it was 8pm and I had failed to attend Spongebob the Musical at Palo Alto Players. Damn! And I really kind of wanted to see that, too. Plus, in the morning I had reviewed by calendar and made a note of the fact that I had a play this evening.

Friday 05/05/2023

Went for the standard walk this morning, all good. Then sat down at the desktop Mac to work on videos.

The first job was to convert the recording I had made of the Peninsulaire Pirates. Very little editing to do on that. All I had to do was convert it to a more compact form than the 57 gigabyte file that QuickTime had created for a one-hour recording.

Then I realized there were a dozen musical numbers in it, and that it should have chapter markers in it so you could jump to the start of any song. So that is done with another app, and scrubbing through the video to find the starting point of each number. I had allocated 90 minutes to do this and it was more like 3 hours before I finished and put it in my Dropbox and sent the link to the Peninsulaire guys.

I also sent it to Lenny for her to post it to our Vimeo account. Shortly after got an email from the Peninsulaire guy saying, remember, we don’t have ASCAP rights to all those songs we cover, so do not make that video public. Oops, call Lenny, don’t put it on Vimeo.

Meanwhile I had a second video to set up, the Zoom recording of a lecture from Wednesday night. This was techncally more complicated. I have two complete hour-long streams, one of the speaker and one of his slides, and I merge them so the video is mostly the speaker but cuts to each slide as he puts it up. Got that done in a couple of hours and off to Lenny.

At 5:30 I joined Patty and Joanne and go out for dinner, again to Indochine Thai, where they hadn”t been. Nice supper gossiping about CH stuff and people.

Thursday 05/04/2023

The main activity today was to drive with Jean to the City, to meet up with cousin Darlene and Jessea, and tour two exhibits at the de Young art museum and possibly another at the Legion.

Jean showed up as planned just before 9, and off we went. Traffic was smooth on 280 and not really congested on 19th avenue and we were into the Park and to the Music Concourse parking garage by 10. We went into the de Young and waited around for Darlene. No cell signal on the lower floor but eventually I got a message, she was running a little late, go in without her. Also Jessea wasn’t coming.

So we went in to tour the “Ansel Adams in our time” exhibit. This had a lot of his pictures arranged roughly chronologically, plus pictures by current photographers inspired by him or in the same locations. Everybody’s seen Adams’ pictures but there was one that was new to me and I thought was the best in the whole exhibit, although neither Jean nor Darlene agreed. And my cell phone pic of it doesn’t do it justice.

The actual print has such depth and the shapes of the tree and the rocks just jump out, so beefy and real.

The other exhibit was “Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence”. Wiley’s specialty is rendering black people in the same classic sculptural and painted style as the renaissance masters used for saints, Jesus, or Roman warriors. I liked his sculpture.

Not so much his giant oil paintings, not because of the figures but because of the floral backgrounds they all had, which I just didn’t get at all. If you want to do classical, and he clearly can do, then paint a classical background, not wallpaper.

We had lunch at the de Young and then drove in our separate cars to the Palace of the Legion of Honor where we ran into a problem: there was no parking to be had. They have a small lot and then parking on a winding drive that goes down a cliff face overlooking the ocean, and every damn spot was taken. Darlene got the last spot. We conferred and decided that Jean and I would bail and head home.

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And now for something completely different. From 5 to 7 I helped the Peninsulaires, a large male barbershop-style choral group, set up in our auditorium. They brought their own sound man, so my only job was to turn the system on and stay out of the way, except that I was also going to record the event.

It was all corny fun. They guys sang very well, and hammed up the pirate thing, and great time was had. In the middle I took a short video, first looking at the screen of my MacBook to show what I was recording, and then panning around to show the audience from my little corner.