Bookstore barometer

The quality (or mere presence) of a used bookstore tells you a lot about the town in which it is located. On the whole I have found there to be an inverse relationship between the cultural eminence of a given locale and the quality of its used bookstores.  It came as no surprise, therefore, to find a fantastic example of the type in a strip mall in Redding, CA.

But what makes a "quality" used bookstore?  For starters, it sells used books, not new ones.  The famed but ultimately disappointing Powell's in Portland fails for this reason (fine online resource though).  Second, it categorizes its offerings not according to Dewey or the LCC, but as suits its current holdings.  This often produces insights undreamed of by Melvil Dewey and his ilk--see, for example, the photo above--making browsing an education in itself.  Third, you leave with at least a few books you hadn't known about before entering (from Redding:  a Pulitzer-winning history of the King years; Richard Rhodes writing about the American farm; Tom Clancy on the aircraft carrier; and a volume the New York Times claims "takes its place among the great Antarctic adventure stories," a boast I simply must test).  Last, but not least, it has that smell.  No describing it, but you know it when you encounter it.

There is nothing I like better than a good used bookstore.  Now what am I to make of the fact that Fairfax has no bookstore at all?

Garages

Our house in Fairfax is (as mentioned in the previous posting and as suggested in the photo below) a good quarter garage in total.  This does not make for the most attractive facade...

...but life without a garage is now already unimaginable to me.  Really.  We live on the bottom floor and the garage on the far right is ours (and, again, as previously blogged, we have also adopted the middle one for a time).  Its impact on our life, and in particular on my sense of well-being, was and continues to be enormous.

My adult life has been only rarely blessed with utilizable garage space, and never before with one I did not have to share with strangers or which was not already full of someone else's belongings.  It is a luxury of an altogether higher order than granite countertops and vacations in Gstaad.  One can cut on almost anything, and one can have a good time in many places the rich and famous do not frequent.  As space to stick stuff goes a garage trumps all of the clever cubbies we built into our Amsterdam apartment.  Our shed at Wilhelminalaan was but John the Baptist to this, the coming of the True Son of Storage.  And the feeling I get when driving a car--an entire car!--into it and closing the door behind...well, I imagine I know how NASA's boys feel upon successfully docking the Space Shuttle.

Talia's parents visited us over the winter holiday and during a walk on Christmas Day, while strolling through our neighborhood and critiquing the local architecture, I mentioned that whatever our next house might or might not offer the one thing I would insist upon was a garage.  In fact I want two, and if I can get that then the rest of the house may be tacked on willy-nilly.  I meant it then, I mean it now:  a good garage can save a house, but no house, I now realize, can be complete by itself.

It appears I am hardly alone in this predilection. We are currently on vacation and have settled for a few days in a cabin at the end of a new residential development up north near Lake Shasta.  This development is dotted with large houses and each house is blessed with, get this, at least five garage spaces.  No joke.  Here's one:

Note not just the massive garage extension, but how, taken together, the garage volume appears to be fully equal to the total residential space provided.  Here's another:

The building on the right is actually a two-car garage.  What is not shown in this photo are the two additional separate garages on the property, one of which is large enough to hold a 1/2 ton truck.

The house above is noteworthy not only for its gargantuan garage extension--both taller and wider than the rest of the building--but also for the huge masonic square and compass incorporated into its design, as though to suggest King Solomon himself should be jealous of so much storage space.  Certainly I am.

One last example:

What strikes me about this is not just the three-car garage that dominates the facade of the main house, nor the separate two-car garage next to it, but the fact that with a total of five interior parking spaces these people still have to park their boat, two four-by-fours, RV (hidden off to the right), and their car outside!  So what on earth is inside?!?

I'd love to see the car go the way of the horse and buggy, but long live the garage!

Stuff

Our stuff arrived the other day, the end of a journey that started in September, with the packing of Talia's studio and Ons Buiten...

...transport of same to a temporary storage place via borrowed vehicle (thanks again, Marco!)...

 

...and then the boxing up of the apartment itself.

It wasn't an emotional experience, just a trying one. No surprise to those who have done this sort of thing before, but sorting and packing are mutually exclusive activities.  We did our best, but it is so much easier to take it all than to make decisions.  What surprised me, though, was just how much all was.

We rented the house we did in part because it offered a lot of storage:  closets galore, the shed out back, a garage with lots of shelving.  I thought it was enough storage.  In fact, I was so over-confident that when my landlady mentioned I was welcome to store stuff in the second of her two garages (roughly one quarter of the entire volume of the house we share is garage) I thanked her but assured her we wouldn't need it.

How wrong I was.  Here's the truck that brought our worldly possessions:

Needless to say, it's shown here towards the end of  the unloading process.  By this point our living room, bedroom, hallway, garage, and, yes, second garage were all pretty well filled.  I wrote previously about the danger of flooding here in California:  we are, for sure, inundated.

The timing of the delivery couldn't have been better though.  I needed ski clothing for a trip starting Thursday; the truck arrived with the necessary woolens on Wednesday.  Unpacking it took two hours:  the truck showed up minutes after Felix fell asleep for his afternoon nap.  Best of all, Talia's parents came through town some days after the truck and took the boy off our hands just long enough to allow us to process it all, or the bulk of it anyway.

In the end, having unboxed and reboxed, having sorted and discarded, having, in a word, organized, it's not that bad.  The shed is full of dishes and cooking kit that will have to await a future home, also most of what came from Ons Buiten (Talia's beloved push-mower, my beloved Amsterdam city garbage can, our bright yellow stembus, a large box of miscellaneous schuurtje-weet-ik-niet-wat) and a lot of packing material.  One closet is full of clothing and cloth we don't need to see again for a long time.  Another contains four huge boxes of baby stuff.  Our wood storage now holds books, and another nine boxes of no doubt priceless volumes now forms a sort of shelf in our kitchen (doesn't makes sense on paper, so to speak, but it works).  Our most precious possession, the stained glass windows, arrived without a scratch and is safely stored (well packed Marije!).  Our walls are adorned.

To be done:  sorting and storing of personal papers and effects.  To be done, to be done.

And the second garage?  Nitrous apparatus, Japanese cabinet, Dutch bikes.  Not bad.

Water

A few years back I read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.  I wish I could say it is to be read purely for historical interest--it was one of those books (Sinclair's The Jungle also comes to mind, and that one you should read just for fun) that catalyzed an entire movement--but the problem it documents, namely the pervasive presence of pesticides, is at least as great a concern now as it was back in 1962.

I've recently come across http://www.whatsonmyfood.org/ (and here's another one).  Few surprises here, though I was pleased to see that, aside from a bit of DDE, pork fat is usually relatively uncontaminated.  The key lesson, it seems to me, is that if you are concerned about pesticides (and if you're not, can you please explain to me why not?) then organic food is a must.

But one thing really did surprise me:  how bad the water is.  I've long had a strong bias against bottled water.  It simply offends my Yankee spirit to suggest that we should waste plastic, transport energy, and money rather than drinking the all-but-free and incredibly convenient tap product.  I am aware that some homes suffer from questionable piping, but in such a case the cost of replacing those pipes would surely, later if not sooner, be outstripped by drinking water trucked in from upstate, and besides, why should you trust a bottler over your own local utility?  The latter cannot choose to change markets or businesses in a bid to shed a damaged reputation.  No, the people responsible for your tap water have to get it right.  But apparently they don't, or at least not always, or even, if we are to believe PAN, not often.  In fact, PAN's figures show little difference between tap water and untreated water in terms of pesticide levels.  But they do show a big difference between either tap or untreated and what the bottlers produce:  the latter is generally free of pesticides.  Hmmm.

Aside from making me admit the ol' Yankee prejudices can sometimes lead one astray, this information also makes me want more data, specifically about my water.  I drink a lot of it, mainly in the form of barley tea as you may recall, and so does Felix (Talia less so:  her Soda Club machine is still in transit so it's all Calistoga for her).  Obviously, if it's laden with pesticides then all of that organic shopping is to a certain extent an expensive joke.

So I did some research.  The basic report on our local water supply does not offer actual measurements of atrazine or 2,4-D, or any of the other chillingly-named poisons our drinking glass may hold, it simply repeatedly assures the reader that "no contaminants associated with this activity [i.e., farming, recreational use, etc.] were detected in the drinking water."  This leaves (a slightly paranoid) one to wonder if there were contaminants not associated with these activities that were.

I feel a bit ridiculous testing water that comes from such a seemingly pristine source as that pictured here (I mean the reservoir, not Felix).  I feel ridiculous because I find the ever-increasing "hardening" of modern life deplorable--the marginal increase in safety is often not worth the inconvenience, the expense, or the undermining of a social sense of trust generally--and yet here I am, preparing to engage in it.  I'd give up a lot of modern life's conveniences not to have to think about this sort of thing.

UPDATE A MERE FEW SECONDS LATER:

So, having posted this, I took a break with the New York Times, only to find, there on its first virtual page, an article on exactly this topic.  Better still, I was able to surf from that to the Marin-specific data I was looking for.  Answer?  Pesticides are not a problem:  no atrazine, no 2,4-D (despite a golf course in the area), none of a couple of hundred other baddies.  More radon than one might like, but otherwise only a handful of ppb contaminants, most of which enter in the disinfection process and are, I believe, well studied.

I'll still check for lead, but on the whole I feel better.  On the whole, but not wholly.  I can't help but think of E.B. White's thoughts on the matter:

 I think man’s gradual, creeping contamination of the planet, his sending up of dust into the air, his strontium additive in our bones, his discharge of industrial poisons into rivers that once flowed clear, his mixing of chemicals with fog on the east wind add up to a fantasy of such grotesque proportions as to make everything said on the subject seem pale and anemic by contrast. I hold one share in the corporate earth and am uneasy about the management. Dr. Libby said there is new evidence that the amount of strontium reaching the body from topsoil impregnated by fallout is ‘considerably less than the 70 percent of the topsoil concentration originally estimated.’ Perhaps we should all feel elated at this, but I don’t. The correct amount of strontium with which to impregnate the topsoil is no strontium. To rely on ‘tolerances’ when you get into the matter of strontium 90...is to talk with unwarranted complacency. I belong to a small, unconventional school that believes that no rat poison is the correct amount to spread in the kitchen where children and puppies can get at it. I believe that no chemical waste is the correct amount to discharge into the fresh rivers of the world, and I believe that if there is a way to trap the fumes from factory chimneys, it should be against the law to set these deadly fumes adrift where they can mingle with fog and, given the right conditions, suddenly turn an area into another Donora, Pa.

E.B. White, “Sootfall and Fallout,” Essays of E.B. White (New York:  Harper & Row, 1977; 1956), 92-93.

Hummingbird! (Local Cooling)

Hummingbird!  Note that the lovely purple flowers shown here and photographed a week ago are now shriveled and falling:  we had a cold snap.  I asked a local how many more days of frost we should expect to have and she said "we never get frost here, it's global warming."  I suppose I should alert Copenhagen.

Actually it's no joke.  The local effects do help illustrate the implications of the global threat (as if further evidence was really necessary).  The many food-bearing trees Felix and I pass on our way to his daycare are suffering:  olives shriveled, citrus killed, the persimmons probably more chalky than usual.  And what exactly are the orchards of the Central Valley supposed to do?

I am cynical about the potential for Copenhagen to produce anything like the necessary change in direction.  I simply don't think either the US's political structure or the global framework for decision-making is up to a challenge of this magnitude.  As a species we just aren't that good at government, and never have been.

Beyond that I am extremely skeptical of the ability of regulation and incentive (for example, cap and trade) to produce the carbon-limiting effects thought to be necessary:  my experience with the banks has convinced me that regulation and incentive will be constantly undermined by the venal corporate instinct for gaming the system, especially in the early (which, given the nature of the problem, are also the most critical) years.  And, too, there is the problem of unintended consequence even where things work as "planned."

Not least, I am worried that even the more dire prognoses of global warming's effects are understated (it is the nature of the scientific enterprise to be conservative), and thus the unlikely appearance of a set of good policy decisions with good will supporting them still won't get us to a place of safety.  Not locally, not globally.

None of this is intended as an argument for inaction:  despite our depressing history of doing exactly that (i.e., nothing) it is unthinkable at this juncture.  No, I'm simply saying that in addition to these efforts and plans we are going to have to put a good deal of thought and work into mitigation, both of the source of the problem and of its effects.  A few of the more alert tree-owners on our route have cast netting about their fruits.  As for me, I'm off now to buy a hummingbird feeder.

Ham

 My ham arrived.  It's been a long time coming.  Longer than you might think.

I've ordered three hams from Nancy, the ham lady.  The first, back in '05, was her classic ham.  It was completely delicious.  I ate it while visiting California, distributed a good deal to friends all over the Bay, and snuck some back into the Netherlands.

Coincidentally, on that same trip, we were given another ham (pictured here) as a wedding gift.  This latter ham languished in a friend's closet for a few months before it, too, made the trip to Amsterdam. There it served as the centerpiece of our housewarming party at Saxenburgerstraat.

Europe does not lack for fine ham, but an American country ham is a unique piece of flesh, and as best I can tell such a thing crosses the Atlantic only on very rare occasions. I resolved to smuggle in a second ham a year or so later, and took the opportunity to order Nancy's very finest flesh: a free-range porker she'd cured for a year or so in her swamp-situated smokehouse. To make a long story short they caught me at Schiphol, confiscated my ham, and--I shudder even as a I write--incinerated it.

This heartless treatment broke my smuggler's spirit, and for the rest of my stay in Amsterdam I forswore American meats.  It did not, however, in any way temper my lust for the Kentucky pig's salty flesh; the reader will not be surprised to learn therefore that one of my first acts upon returning was to email Nancy for the largest, ripest, free-rangingest ham in her house.  She was happy to hear from me--we have a very collegial relationship--and October being the season of slaughter (and thus, a year later, of harvest) it shipped right away.

[VEGAN WARNING:  GRAPHIC PHOTOS BELOW!]

I was happy to receive it.  Happy, and frustrated.  These hams are big, and mine was large even for its type, some 8 kilos of unassailable meat.  Unassailable, I say, because I only packed three knives for our new kitchen (the rest are on the boat), and of those three I broke the largest sawing into a wheel of Dutch goat cheese soon after arrival (it was worth it:  excellent cheese, lousy knife).  In short, I had nothing with which to work, and so the ham sat on top of my fridge like some unattainable pig-part god, showering its smoky blessings on our kitchen but not deigning to share of its flesh.

Then came Thanksgiving.  We had a small one this year, and lacking both a dishwasher and a hot tub at our house, we settled on Yaron's place instead (even though he and Erica were in Philadelphia for the celebrations).  In addition to the dishwasher and the hot tub, their place also boasts a full set of knives and even an electric one, a technology I'd never before tried.  I brought the ham along--it's a highly desirable addition to stuffing--and went at it with the electric knife, shown here.  The device proved up to the task of carving out a few pieces of the softer meat, though in the end I resorted to the traditional chef's knife.

Having broken into the ham it was necessary to butcher it further:  large as an American refrigerator is, the ham left whole would have taken up an undue portion of ours, and once opened it cannot be allowed simply to sit (though with its hide unpierced a properly cured ham can last months or years if hung in an optimal atmosphere).  No kitchen knife will cut through a pig's shank so I went searching for a saw.  No such luck, but necessity, spawning, as ever, invention, led me to the branch cutter shown at left.  This did the trick.  Not pretty, and the sound it made as it cleaved bone was off-putting to some, but boy, did it do the trick.

I'm home now, and the ham is too.  I keep most of it in the freezer with a bag of bits in the fridge for the occasional snack.  I eat it mostly uncooked--it's not exactly raw--and most often with the evening's borrel.  In fact, I'm going to go do that right now.  Thanks for reading.

My Marin

By way of introduction, here's the current map of my life:

(View My Marin in a larger map...)

The various blue bulbs indicate points of interest (to me, anyway), but perhaps more remarkable is the general lay of the land. Zoom in a bit and you will see a string of towns--Mill Valley, Larkspur, Kentfield, Ross, San Anselmo--leading out to Fairfax, and then, beyond...nothing.  (There are some names on the map--Woodacre, San Geronimo--but these are really not much more than names on a map.)  It was this nothing, or rather easy access to it, that convinced me Fairfax was the best place to land.  That, and the fact that getting back through all of those towns to San Francisco is such an unreasonable proposition that I don't have the slightest temptation to look for jobs in the Financial District.  I'm done with that, and want to make sure I stay done.

Switch to the satellite view and you'll note another attractive point about the area where we live:  it's green.  Very green.  The hills are covered with trees, and even in the dry season there's some water around.  To the north and east it gets brown--range land, quite beautiful--but here it's mostly green.  And, of course, you'll note the ocean's proximity, though it's a good half hour to get there due to the mountains that lie between us and it.  You'll see those most clearly in the terrain view, which will also explain why there is nothing much to the north of us:  too hilly.  This view, in close-up, also illustrates why I am so happy to live at 19 Park Road:  we're on the flats, not the slopes, so it's easy to get most places on foot or bike.  This has made living without a car (as I do:  Talia takes it with her on her commute) an entirely reasonable and pleasant fact of life.

Red man, White man

Walk signals in Amsterdam and, I think, most of the rest of Europe, are, like traffic signals, red and green. We trained Felix to recognize these signals, admonishing him at every corner to look for "green man." There is no green man here. There is a white man instead. No obvious reason for this, but no obvious problem either. Not at first glance, anyway: Today, waiting for the light, Felix next to me on his loopfiets. Light changes, Felix zooms into the crosswalk screaming "White Man"! Black man crossing in the other direction raises an eyebrow.

Now what?