Yes, Sint, we've moved, but we haven't escaped you. Even now, I struggle with my own poem, set to the tune of "Berend Botje":
Felix en Talia zijn weg gegaan
Later heeft Alec 't zelfde gedaan
And 5 December nears....
Sunday, November 29, 2009
The Traveling Sint
Post arrived with a letter from Sinterklaas. It seems he and Piet wasted an afternoon looking for us at the Saxenburgerstraat and were quite annoyed not to find us there. Still, they were kind enough to forward us our annual Christian indulgence (hmmm, maybe not the best word to use), a Postcode Lottery advent calendar. This gives us a good opportunity to test Felix: the New Yorker had an article recently that claimed a child's ability to postpone gratification was an indicator of future success in life.
Yes, Sint, we've moved, but we haven't escaped you. Even now, I struggle with my own poem, set to the tune of "Berend Botje":
And 5 December nears....
Yes, Sint, we've moved, but we haven't escaped you. Even now, I struggle with my own poem, set to the tune of "Berend Botje":
And 5 December nears....
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Survival
Residents of Marin county, we are warned, are subject to fire, flood, landslide, and earthquake, and had best be prepared for same. It is a challenge I welcome: scope difficult to determine, candidate solutions unending, deadline as soon as possible, budget minimal. I've been looking forward to this since before our move, though it wasn't until I read in Felix's daycare manual that he is required to have an emergency kit stored in his cubby that I made much of a start.
Years ago (er, twenty years ago) I was on a Search and Rescue team. Among other things it gave me a healthy respect for the casual and merrily baroque ways in which the environment can kill you. (I remember in particular the hiker who, while walking on a level path on a sunny afternoon, tripped on a pebble, hit his head on a rock, and rolled down an embankment into a nearby stream a few inches deep in which, unconscious, he drowned.) Also applicable, it gave me some medical and back-country skills, though both are sorely in need of refreshment. So I have somewhere to start, and about a million pages of Internet material to guide me further ("stop, drop, and post" appears to be the survivalist mantra).
We live on the ground floor across from the local fire station (also town hall and police department: Fairfax is small) so aside from the usual smoke alarm and fire extinguisher preparations I'm not going to worry about fire (though in truth I worry about it quite a bit: our house's wiring is from the Stone Age). There is a slope above our backyard that could well give way, but I don't think there's any scenario under which it would actually sweep our house away, so let's not concern ourselves with that, either.
Flood is a more urgent matter, especially with winter coming on. We live across the street from the San Anselmo Creek which, when it isn't wholly dry, is a nice place to go for an hour's stone-throwing with the boy. Under normal conditions it is inches deep at best. But sometimes it gets out of control (December 2005 being the most recent and notable example) and if and when it overflows its banks it will most assuredly overflow us, too.
More urgent, but a good friend lives up the hill from us, alone in a mansion, and above any conceivable flood level short of a 2012 scenario. Assuming he's happy to provide sanctuary for a day or two, and assuming likewise that we keep our necessaries--photos, computers, vital papers, Thomas the Tank Engine thirty-two-thousand piece train set--in good enough order to evacuate at short notice, I think we may consider this fairly well under control.
And then there are earthquakes. To say we are living on the San Andreas Fault is to exaggerate, but not by much: its northern stretch runs something less than 15 miles from our house at its nearest point. Besides, earthquakes are not strictly confined to faults, nor is the San Andreas the only one that could give us a good shaking. And, of course, the Bay Area is famously overdue for something really catastrophic.
There is something about our house that suggests prostrate vulnerability to even a mild tremor. I take little comfort from the fact that it is old and has presumably survived some shaking. Yes, surely, but it wasn't here in '06, and there are no signs of seismic retrofitting. Unsecured hot water tanks, unbracketed support pillars, plasterwork that somehow communicates itself as structural...architecturally speaking we're totally unprepared. So here's a question: as a renter who doesn't want to be crushed to death in my sleep what do I do about this?
Let's leave aside for the moment the question of the initial survivability of a quake. Let's focus instead on what the aftermath might look like and how to prepare for it. There's no shortage of official advice and though it is dispensed by a byzantine complex of authorities it all comes down to the same thing: have three days' supplies at hand. Here, in the land of eternal Burning Man readiness and Costco runs, it is hard to imagine that most pantries aren't already up to that standard. We're campers, too, and have just bought a station wagon, so our basic shelter needs can be taken as covered.
Or am I being too blase? We do have a camp stove...but not, at the moment, any gas to fuel it. The car has a 600 mile range, but that's on a full tank of course, and there's no diesel to be had in the neighborhood nor, yet, stored in our garage. Yes, we have days and days of food, but that's assuming we're happy to eat dry pasta with raw tomato sauce (which Felix would be, "hard pasta" being a frequent snack request from him). We can survive on limeade, but not wash with it. I bought medical dressings last night, but no medical tape. And all of this stuff resides in the above-mentioned fragile house so the safe bet is that any earthquake bad enough to require its use will also bury it under a pile of rubble.
The right answer is to have disaster-specific stocks, and to store them somewhere safe. Fortunately, we have a ready-made solution: our woodshop, an extremely quaint structure in our backyard that our landlady, uninterested in working wood, has placed at our disposal.
It, too, would likely collapse at 6.0 or above, but there's not much to it so getting at its contents post-quake would pose less of a challenge. Also, unlike the house, it has no gas lines running to it so fire is less likely to strike there. I don't think it ever gets cold enough here to freeze 5 gallon jugs and assuming the food packaging is mouse-proof then I think this will work.
And no, DHS, we will not be preparing for a bio-terror attack.
Years ago (er, twenty years ago) I was on a Search and Rescue team. Among other things it gave me a healthy respect for the casual and merrily baroque ways in which the environment can kill you. (I remember in particular the hiker who, while walking on a level path on a sunny afternoon, tripped on a pebble, hit his head on a rock, and rolled down an embankment into a nearby stream a few inches deep in which, unconscious, he drowned.) Also applicable, it gave me some medical and back-country skills, though both are sorely in need of refreshment. So I have somewhere to start, and about a million pages of Internet material to guide me further ("stop, drop, and post" appears to be the survivalist mantra).
We live on the ground floor across from the local fire station (also town hall and police department: Fairfax is small) so aside from the usual smoke alarm and fire extinguisher preparations I'm not going to worry about fire (though in truth I worry about it quite a bit: our house's wiring is from the Stone Age). There is a slope above our backyard that could well give way, but I don't think there's any scenario under which it would actually sweep our house away, so let's not concern ourselves with that, either.
Flood is a more urgent matter, especially with winter coming on. We live across the street from the San Anselmo Creek which, when it isn't wholly dry, is a nice place to go for an hour's stone-throwing with the boy. Under normal conditions it is inches deep at best. But sometimes it gets out of control (December 2005 being the most recent and notable example) and if and when it overflows its banks it will most assuredly overflow us, too.
More urgent, but a good friend lives up the hill from us, alone in a mansion, and above any conceivable flood level short of a 2012 scenario. Assuming he's happy to provide sanctuary for a day or two, and assuming likewise that we keep our necessaries--photos, computers, vital papers, Thomas the Tank Engine thirty-two-thousand piece train set--in good enough order to evacuate at short notice, I think we may consider this fairly well under control.
And then there are earthquakes. To say we are living on the San Andreas Fault is to exaggerate, but not by much: its northern stretch runs something less than 15 miles from our house at its nearest point. Besides, earthquakes are not strictly confined to faults, nor is the San Andreas the only one that could give us a good shaking. And, of course, the Bay Area is famously overdue for something really catastrophic.
There is something about our house that suggests prostrate vulnerability to even a mild tremor. I take little comfort from the fact that it is old and has presumably survived some shaking. Yes, surely, but it wasn't here in '06, and there are no signs of seismic retrofitting. Unsecured hot water tanks, unbracketed support pillars, plasterwork that somehow communicates itself as structural...architecturally speaking we're totally unprepared. So here's a question: as a renter who doesn't want to be crushed to death in my sleep what do I do about this?
Let's leave aside for the moment the question of the initial survivability of a quake. Let's focus instead on what the aftermath might look like and how to prepare for it. There's no shortage of official advice and though it is dispensed by a byzantine complex of authorities it all comes down to the same thing: have three days' supplies at hand. Here, in the land of eternal Burning Man readiness and Costco runs, it is hard to imagine that most pantries aren't already up to that standard. We're campers, too, and have just bought a station wagon, so our basic shelter needs can be taken as covered.
Or am I being too blase? We do have a camp stove...but not, at the moment, any gas to fuel it. The car has a 600 mile range, but that's on a full tank of course, and there's no diesel to be had in the neighborhood nor, yet, stored in our garage. Yes, we have days and days of food, but that's assuming we're happy to eat dry pasta with raw tomato sauce (which Felix would be, "hard pasta" being a frequent snack request from him). We can survive on limeade, but not wash with it. I bought medical dressings last night, but no medical tape. And all of this stuff resides in the above-mentioned fragile house so the safe bet is that any earthquake bad enough to require its use will also bury it under a pile of rubble.
The right answer is to have disaster-specific stocks, and to store them somewhere safe. Fortunately, we have a ready-made solution: our woodshop, an extremely quaint structure in our backyard that our landlady, uninterested in working wood, has placed at our disposal.
It, too, would likely collapse at 6.0 or above, but there's not much to it so getting at its contents post-quake would pose less of a challenge. Also, unlike the house, it has no gas lines running to it so fire is less likely to strike there. I don't think it ever gets cold enough here to freeze 5 gallon jugs and assuming the food packaging is mouse-proof then I think this will work.
And no, DHS, we will not be preparing for a bio-terror attack.
Breakfast is served
Back in the US, back in California, back in a small town. (The Beatles, Otis Redding, Dream Academy, who captures it best?) Things have changed hereabouts, and a fresh glamour has attached itself to whatever hasn't. America is beautiful and monstrous (not least at breakfast time) and while I didn't exactly forget that while away, my awareness of it faded (just as Amsterdam's brick-and-fog beauty now grows mistier with the day). I would not have willingly returned much sooner than I did, but I am happy to be here now.As well: back to marginal employment, and watching my pennies but not my clock. It's been a while, but more of my life has been spent this way than not and all in all I prefer it so. I've never been one for a budget: if income is limited then the only thing I know to do is create a fixed list of expenses and try not to stray from it. It's not exactly a return to my Coop days--start-up costs in moving to Ithaca were probably under a thousand 1995 dollars, whereas getting settled in Fairfax will cost us something like $50k before the year is out, to cite only the most indicative example--but in the most important respects it is the same: the unending world of consumptive possibilities is hereby held at bay and my time is once again largely my own (when it isn't Felix's of course).
So things are new and old alike, but above all they are different from what, these past several years, they have been. I write in mid-November, under bright blue skies, in 67 degree (20 Celsius) weather. I write from my bed, where I work, when I work, and confer with my colleagues only when I wish and never in person. The problems, or even existence, of gargantuan banks are of no further interest to me, and Science News arrives on time and reliably. Inside I am surrounded by space, artificially and delightfully empty space (though day by day our shipment from Amsterdam draws closer, threatening to end this relatively clutter-free existence). Stepping outside I find enormous trees and small mountains at my door, dry rangelands and great waters a short drive further. I buy the groceries, I cook dinner, I clean, washing dishes by hand. I travel by foot and, when I have to, by car. I live without stairs. This is not how it was in Amsterdam.
More than any of this, leaving Amsterdam means leaving a small life's worth of people behind. I won't pretend otherwise: many, perhaps most, of those I knew there will write a last few wistful emails before disappearing for good. It is not as one would wish it to be, but most of the characters in the Play of Life in retrospect turn out to have inhabited bit parts; who will assume a lead role is one of the more interesting questions this turn of page raises. I'm neither author nor director, just another actor really, so my say in these matters is limited. I write this blog to let those who would continue to share participation in each others' plays at least keep track of how mine is unfolding. Comments have always been welcome and always will be.
Fairfax
November 2009
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