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Here In Oakland

Art & Life


   


May 16, 2018

Out

Wednesday. Lights out at ten-oh-six to awaken at just before six in the morning after a decent night's sleep. I'd think. Clearer skies this morning, the temperature warm enough that the eyes behaved and so to breakfast, having the oatmeal, toast, fruit cup and coffee this time.

The papers have been running obituaries for Tom Wolfe who died this week, the author of The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, a book that I and many friends read with great interest and contributed to my moving to San Francisco in 1969 after the army. I mention the book with a lame entry in my 100 favorite books list, something I haven't really looked at now in a long time.

The gas prices up again by four cents. The price of crude has been climbing these last few months and I'm a little surprised the local station has put off raising it for so long. Maybe it doesn't have an excuse with the way California handles its summer gas. Who knows? Mildly curious enough to guess, not curious enough to look into it.

There are clouds scattered about, but sunny walking home to start the laundry after I'd finished posting yesterday's entry. Reading about Wolfe earlier and then seeing what I've been putting down here is sobering. Should be embarrassing, but it doesn't seem cause me to spend the time required to make my efforts any better.

Not comparing myself to Wolfe of course, just that the obits said he typed ten pages a day (triple spaced) on a typewriter through til the end, whether it took him an hour or twelve hours, depending on how easily the words came. I suspect I'd have to spend a month to meet a ten page deadline if coherence was required. I still have a typewriter here in storage. Somewhere.

Ah, well. The past. I had a friend in school who went to work for Cosmopolitan after college who mentioned she'd met him during an interview for the magazine, no small deal when you're young and just starting.

Later. A bus finally to the apartment houses under construction at Valdez and 23rd, the first at 2302 Valdez, the one that had burned last year while still under construction, the second a new one fronting on 2330 Webster, the backside across from 2302 on Valdez. One or two pictures.

A walk then to the City Center where I had a salad and a roasted chicken leg with coffee at the Fountain Café before walking by the convenience store for a small box of Good & Plenty, eating them on the bus home. A decent outing, although I should have taken a dose of the pain meds at noon. Funky head again.

Evening. A email from the local NextDoor app for my area saying the burger drive-in had been robbed this afternoon sometime around four, not long after the time I'd passed it by on the way home from lunch. The link in the email to the NextDoor web site said the post had been taken down, so maybe it's true, maybe not. Rather close to home, though. Not sure I'd like to be sitting by the entrance (and cash register) waiting on a grilled cheese sandwich when someone came in with a gun. But we'll see. Don't really need to feed the paranoia if this is indeed fake news, I get enough paranoia as it is carrying a camera on the sidewalk.

You do go on.

I assume it's reduced with time, but how much time and how much reduced? Ah, well.

Gave up on Midsomer Murders in the middle of the second of the two part episode and went to bed and the tablet. I was curious as to who done it, but not curious enough to find out.

The San Francisco How Weird Street Festival taken with a Nikon D5 mounted with a 70-200mm f 2.8 VR II Nikkor lens.


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