She followed them – the eyes -- to the village. There a woman
offered her a bowl of acorn mush, which, of course, was quite foreign to
Olga. The woman motioned to eat and Olga tried it, finding its flavor, well
pretty much like mushy acorns.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got any salt?” which none of the villagers
understood of course, so she ate as much of it as she could with her fingers
in the way the woman had indicated for her to do. When she finished the
woman noted her looking around for something to wipe her hands and motioned
to her to follow and so she did. They went down to a creek and the woman
indicated that here she was to clean herself. Thoroughly.
Somewhat reluctantly, Olga removed such clothing as had survived the shipwreck
and bathed to a greater or lesser degree when she noticed a whole row of
men, pretty much naked with minor exceptions all watching her from the banks
of the creek. Thoroughly humiliated and furious, she hurriedly dressed.
Back to the estuary shore she went to scout along there for any signs of
life. She found none. Only scattered boards, a few shattered casks and some
cloth. Then, because there was no other place to go, she went back to the
village.
She walked about looking at the village and the things in it with a mixture
of listlessness and curiousity and the people there looked at her with pretty
much the same level of curiosity as well although these people seemed not
at all shiftless, for somebody was always engaged in some kind of activity,
whether it be grinding acorns, chipping stones, carving wood, fetching wood,
cutting wood, making dyes, or weaving. These were not indolent “savages”
– there was work going on all around her and everyone was engaged in the
business of living at all times. Nevertheless it was all very strange.
All of the women wore spiderweb tattoos on their faces and
the effect was rather disconcerting.
In one of the huts a man lay groaning on the ground, clutching
his belly. Olga entered and all the village gathered around to watch from
the doorway. The man’s face was deathly pale and beads of sweat stood out
from his face. Olga was no nurse and knew nothing of medicine, so she imagined
that this man was engaged in the process of dying. She felt sympathetic
but there was nothing she could do.
She squatted down beside the man there in that hut far, far away from everything
she knew and knew then she would never ever return. She was lost in some
far away place and would surely die just like this man before her. A tremendous
dispair swept over her and she wept bitterly, turning her face from the
open door with its faces there so that all they could see were the heaving
shoulders and curious sounds and strange hand guestures. She had not even
a decent hankerchief with which to wipe her face now! She noticed a bowl
of water there and dipped her hands in it so as to splash some on her face,
but as she did so she heard someone behind her go, “Tsk!” and then she realized
that the water was meant for the dying man to drink.
Spontaneously, she poured the water over the man’s forehead
and uttered those words meant to secure the passage of one soul from this
world to the next, just as Gregoriy had done for the captain, for the both
of them were born Orthodox Christians.
When she came out, face drawn and pale, everyone stepped back and looked
at her in a different way. For the rest of the day, people seemed to regard
her with some sort of awe and bated breath, as if they were waiting for
something from her. Waiting, but for what? She did not know. That night
she slept with a group of older women who did not appear to have husbands.
In the morning, all the woman awoke before her and filed out
to do their chores – or whatever it was that each of them did, but she lay
there in listless dispair not knowing what to do. What was she to do here
among these people? She did not know anything about acorns or hunting squirrels
with a bow and arrow. She was Olga, the Russian girl! And so lost and far
away from any home or hope of home. Raised in an orphanage and sent on this
journey, she had never had a home or a past. What was the point in living
at all?
She heard a noise and noted that faces were staring at her
from the doorway. She went outside and all of the people backed away from
her with wide eyes. Then, inexplicably, they all fell to their knees pressing
their foreheads to the ground. The woman who had fed her the previous day
approached her with a steaming bowl of food, but this time the woman crept
up to her, handed her the bowl and made as if to dart away when Olga touched
her, nearly regretting that action for the old woman jumped as if electrified
and stared back at her, eyes rolling back in her head with what clearly
was the utmost fear, while several people stood there in a semi-circle staring.
Something clearly had happened overnight.
Olga, to reassure her, smiled and said gently, “Thank you.” The people might
not have understood the words, which they repeated among themselves, but
the smile did the trick and the old woman became almost girlish with obvious
relief as she shuffled her feet and adjusted the animal pelt she wore about
her shoulders.
At that moment Sumuc appeared. Behind him stood the man who
had been dying the day before. Olga had thought he had died and the people
had made some connection between her appearance and his death, but there
he was, quite happy and he was grinning. He was happy because he thought
he had been about to die as well as everybody else. Then this strange woman
had appeared, uttered magical words, and then he had gotten better. Cause
and effect clearly proven: surely she had shamanistic powers.
The truth is that he had not been about to die at all; he
had eaten a bad buckeye and that had made him sick for a while. But he did
not know that and the people did not know that and Sumuc was not sure but
he sure could see the way things were headed.
Sumuc, chief by default of this tribe, was descended – so
it happened – directly in line from the family of the same Yashur Yonit
who had greeted Drake’s crewman John Hogge many years previously, and he
from Humbaba, who saw the fire-in-the-sky omen of 1492, and he of King Nyernt
before him and, our dear irrepressible Oog who started the whole lineage
sometime about the close of the Pleistocene on what is now Coit Hill.
This was the same Sumuc who had witnessed the madness of Miguel Manrique
and the foolishness of the since long-forgotten “Conchoritzo Expedition”
which was frustrated in its search for gold by an unfortunate meal of atole,
chillies and bad water. Consequently, Sumuc did not have any sense of awe
about these people in the slightest, but he did recognize that it would
be politic for certain alliances to be formed. Like many inheritors of Dynasty
before and after him, he had moved his folk from Yerba Buena to Marin when
the place got too crowded. The padres there kept taking members of his tribe
and locking them up until they died and there seemed there would be no end
to it, so he packed his bags and rowed on over the water and that is how
the people of Oog came to Marin.
Although he possessed a fine address now, he had felt the
need for companionship ever since his wife, Queen Caliafa, had departed
in a terrible wax to found that women’s commune up north. Now this shaman
woman had shown up with indications of a good deal more common sense than
any of the other Whites he had encountered previously, and so you see, it
all fits together quite nicely.
Sumuc took Olga’s hand and let her to his hut. She was no longer Olga, the
Russian girl of the Orphanage, she would be Saweeka, although that naming
would come later after she taught them all the gavrotte and the tarantella
and several decent Christian hymns besides. When the time came for the people
to move from this temporary seafood-gathering camp back to its main village
further inland, Olga went with them. For now, after many many adventures,
Olga had found a home.
(Olga spends
several decades among her Chosen People, departing briefly to give birth
to Tiburcio inside the Mission System, only to return when she discovers
that the Missions are a horrible center of disease and death for her People.
We pick up her story again, after some digression with the progeny of the
Aag side, as represented by Xatophec and his issue, living along Sausal
Creek in what is now Oakland and in the Mission San Jose. Next week we describe
an encounter between Olga and Gen. Vallejo which forestalls a terrible massacre
on Xmas eve. )
TIS THE SEASON
"In a perfect world, everyone would have enough to eat
and a warm place to live. At least that should be true in the richest country
in the world. But sadly, that is not the case . . .".
So begins the letter from Rev. Cecil Williams who is once
again begging for help this year to feed some 2,000 folks A DAY at Glide
Memorial Church. Babylon has grown to over 3/4 of a million people crammed
into that narrow peninsula and a large percentage have not taken part in
the bonanza of wealth that has ensued. So if you are a Bay Arean resident,
please consider a contribution to one of the few clergy for whom we possess
the deepest respect and fork on over your tax deductable contribution. Give
until it feels GOOD. Check out www.glide.org or visit in person at 330 Ellis
Street in SF.
First we pray, THEN we eat.
So you want to give some gifts this year and don't want to
put cash in the hands of terrierists and corporate hedgehogs. Herewith we
give the Island-Life Holiday Kosher gift-giving recommendations. Check out
the National Green Pages for recommendations for shopping. Hop on over to
Costco, the National Distributor of goods who does not supply the Odious
Party with funds. Get an REI account and start chipping in with each purchase.
How about dumping that old ATT cell phone and signing on to Working Assets
to make your talk time really work for you.
Lasermonks.com is supplying the devout with inkjet supplies that fund worthy
causes supported by the Cisterian Monesterey, while Pyramid.com and Bits
n Pieces have been doing worthy work for a while. And you can always count
on your local artisan for any number of pottery and textile works that do
not contribute to the military industrial complex. Need music? Check out
Blindpig.com. Live in the Bay Area? If you do not visit Amoeba or Rasputin
or Shakespeare on Shattuck, we shall not forgive. There remain the countless
street vendors on T-graph for any number of unspecified needs and wants.
RING OUT SOLSTICE BELLS!
All the homes have their installations out to startle the
night and even neighbor Strange de Jim has a doorway outlined with tastefully
lit evergreen. From the slogging rain of the past days, we have segued into
a stiff cold that halts the blood. Seems everyone is terribly busy right
about now. There is no time to sit back and take it all in for anybody,
and even the grand blowout for Telecare Corporation out in E'ville at the
Hilton on Saturday evening was sparsely attended due to the necessary requirements
in other areas. Despite quite an elegant buffett at the Hilton.
Speaking of dinner, here we have a family of bears enjoying
a holiday picnic in Pagano's storefront.
Keeping warm remains a theme a few storefronts down the block.
Here inquisitive reindeer kids check out the stove.
A stroll down the street on a nippy evening shows the neighbors
in spirit with a magic circle of glowing trees and a charming trailer-park
Frosty.
Call it Xmas, call it Solstice, call it the Holiday Season,
or call it whatever. Its the Island Way with lights and fun. Because that's
just the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
DECEMBER 10, 2006
LET IT RAIN, LET IT POUR, LET IT RAIN JUST A WHOLE LOT MORE
A soggy front sloshed into the Bay Area to drench the post
Poodleshoot cleanup here. Hope you all enjoyed the multimedia report last
week. That one will be available in the Archives Section -- which we have
yet to build -- and on selected Compilation CD's distributed to Certain
Individuals on the 25th, but only if they have been especially naughty or
nice.
NSSN 2006
As a part of the Family Tradition, we all trundled over in
several cars to the Bill Graham Civic in Babylon for the annual Not So Silent
Night hosted by That Other Radio Station. You know, the one that Big Rick
left because he wanted to be among mature adults.
We know, we know. We should have chosen KFOG's Concerts for
Kids or Neil's Bridge School Benefit, but we were young then -- quite a
long time ago -- and as time passed, we found that NSSN became the well-placed
seasonal thing on which the immature adults and the kids could all agree.
And so the years passed with memories of Courtney Love pouring a bag of
heroin out upon the stage and tossing a guitar out into the audience. Of
the lead singer for Garbage striding across the strobe-lit stage with her
ponytail flying out behind. Of Gavin Rossdale (Bush) bathed in a spot during
"Glycerine." Of Iggy Pop waving his arms, shirtless as usual,
during "Lust for Life". Of Incubus chanting, "Wish You Were
Here". Of the lead singer for Papa Roach spinning around on his back
like a dying version of his namesake. Of David Byrne playing alone up there
with an acoustic guitar way back before acoustic became even a rumor of
popular. And many more memories besides.
This year the angry thrash metal post-punk noise gave way
to a little more style, a little more musicality , and a little more joy,
perhaps in expectation that the times they are a'changin' from the sour
expletive ridden indigestion of the past twelve years or so. Common sense
is on the wind, for once and people are desperate for good tidings after
hard times, nevermind the nonsense of the meaningless "economic reports".
We coasted into Babylon hours after the 5:30 doors opening
to scramble for seating in the General Admission hall, which sold out every
last ticket 72 hours after announcement. Our Island-Life Social Coodinator
managed to secure tix only because she belongs to a pre-sale exposure group.
We slid inside in time to catch the Shins for their entire
set.
THE SHINS
The Shins are a musical group on Sub Pop records comprising
singer and guitarist James Russell Mercer, keyboardist/guitarist/bassist
Martin Crandall, bassist/guitarist Dave Hernandez, and drummer Jesse Sandoval.
The Wickipedia describes their indie sound as deriving from "Beach
Boys, country, and folk", which is certainly not doing much justice
to this far edgier group. Friday night, the feeling was pure no-nonsense
rock with not a trace of pretense. They have also been compared to Pink
Floyd, Love and Moby Grape, with perhaps the latter the most accurate comparo.
It was refreshing to encounter this bit of innovative pop replacing the
thrashing noise of previous NSSN's.
THE RACONTEURS
Jack White is one of those gifted fellows you really want
to do well, even as he falls down into his own vomit in the gutter after
yet another night of hopeless carousal with bimbo models in Paris. For about
ten years, he had presented an uneaven, choppy, frequently tedious bombastic
presence relieved by flashes of sheer genius, for which flashes throngs
stood in line to sell out each and every performance. Fortunately, it seems
he may have just found his best combo, after ducking his hopelessly inadequate
drummer Meg White, who is universally acknowledged as having been the main
drag on Jack with her total inability to learn or employ her instrument
with any degree of ability.
This, in a duo band, is not very good.
White's new band, formed with friend and fellow Detroit musician
Brendan Benson is backed up by a rhythm section of Jack Lawrence and Patrick
Keeler of The Greenhornes, who Jack previously enlisted to play on Loretta
Lynn’s 2004 album Van Lear Rose produced an album titled "Broken Boy
Soldiers", which Amazon.com calls "this is a grit-under-the-fingernails
rock offering, but with an ear for eclecticism that brings to mind classic
rock touchstones from the Beatles’ Revolver to Led Zep’s Physical Graffiti."
At last, Jack has the stuff behind him to back up his best and on Friday
night he had the SRO crowd screaming from the pit right up to the farthest
corners of the stands. And with capable musicians to lock him into place,
his operatic motions were limited to a bombastic opening and unnecessary
screaming into an oddly placed vocal mike placed to the rear left of the
drum kit, forcing the guy to actually play music in some fashion. His seat
was the only set of the entire evening which successfully overcame the hollow
acoustics of the BGC Auditorium.
Their tightest and best crafted song is the poppy "Steady
as She Goes". Any number of critics out there say that Jack White is
unpredictable but here to stay for quite a long time. We think that is a
good thing and his latest project indicates a willingness to let the Rock
Star thing exhale a bit in favor of real performance.
MODEST MOUSE
The Wikipedia states that this band "was formed in 1993
in Issaquah, Washington by guitarist Isaac Brock, drummer Jeremiah Green
and bassist Eric Judy. Since being signed to Sony's Epic Records in 2000,
the band has attained significant popular success. Elements of Modest Mouse's
sound have been likened to or have inspired those of Elliot Smith, Spoon,
Pixies, Radiohead, and numerous other [alternative rock] bands."
The band's name derives from a phrase in a Virginia Woolf
story, "The Mark on the Wall."
The band surfaced in 2004 with the hit "Float On",
but has had recent membership changes and instability due to mental illness
afflicting various members. In performance, the drummer's solidly persistent
8th note kick locks the rhythm more than usually into a very tight ensemble.
All members are multi-instrumentalists and it was a real pleasure to hear
and see the repetitive drum, bass, guitar yield to keyboards, accordion,
and banjo. The vocals from Brock remain curt and snap as that 8th note drum
-- no polysyllabic lyrics here.
The Mouse had quite a challenge to follow the raucous Raconteurs,
but built their set with logical precision into a wonderfully anarchic closer
which had Brock dashing back and forth from monitor to amp to supply feedback
that tied into the melodic line. Neat trick, that one. No opera and no drama,
just straight-ahead rock, and thats the sort of thing we like.
THE KILLERS
This is what Ricky Wright said on Amazon.com about The Killers.
"The Killers match postpunk guitars with a synthesizer overlay that
recalls '80s New Wave without burying their sound in nostalgia. On their
debut, Hot Fuss, frontman Brandon Flowers plumbs his imagination for tales
of murdered lovers ("Jenny Was a Friend of Mine," "Midnight
Show"), voyeurism ("Mr. Brightside"), and sexual confusion
(the single "Somebody Told Me"), Flowers and his mates are obviously
canny students; the total effect is of a playacted obsession, but one made
irresistible by their skillful, catchy songs. If there's an occasional misstep
(the painfully earnest line "I got soul but I'm not a soldier"
from "All These Things That I've Done"), it seems of a piece with
the Killers' influences. As it is, Hot Fuss is one of several recent releases
that bring a diverting faux glamour to the mainstream rock scene."
Friday night, Brandon strode on stage in a tight pinstripe
suit, the epitome of "The sharp-dressed man" and proceeded to
fling every theatrical guesture from stage and talkie screen up there until
the sweat poured off of the man. Can you say, "Brandon, you are soooo
gaaaay!" We knew you could. Notwithstanding stage mugging flamboyance,
the Killers cranked out a full length set that had people scrambling for
the last BART trains past midnight even as the band played on.
If your band had enjoyed pre-band careers like these guys,
you too would play every moment to the hilt. Flowers, who had dropped out
of college, was a bellhop for a while at the Gold Coast Hotel in Las Vegas.
David Keuning, who was originally from Pella, Iowa, dropped out of Kirkwood
Community College, then the University of Iowa, and finally moved to Las
Vegas in January of 2000. He worked there at a Banana Republic store, stating
that it was a terrible job and he finally quit when a new manager was appointed
and he wouldn't allow Dave to listen to music in the backroom. Mark Stoermer
worked as a medical courier, delivering various medical supplies while studying
philosophy at UNLV. Ronnie Vannucci was a student of classical percussion
at UNLV to become a teacher and worked as a photographer at the Little Chapel
of the Flowers and as a pedicab driver at the Desert Passage mall inside
the Aladdin Hotel.
Due to that BART limitation, we had to perforce buck out even
before they approached the song before the encore. Too bad, as it is long
since that the NSSN stage has featured a sense of style rather than senseless
noise.
RETURN OF THAT REDOUBTABLE PAIR, OOG AND AAG.
You know we promised you a treat and here is the first of
a three part excerpt from the Novel In Progess which is rapidly approaching
completion. In this series we present the distaff portion of Oog and Aag
in the form of Olga, future wife to Sumuc, directly descended of the line
from Oog and Chief of a village nestled along the banks of the San Anselmo
Creek. In this series we will see how Olga arrives from distant Moscova
in far off Russian Estoty to Alta California, joins a Native American tribe
and, on the 24th of December, performs a most remarkable miracle that saves
the lives of her people and will surely astonish one and all.
And now, we present, in all humility, Olga.
CHAPTER 19
1791 - Olga Arrives (Sumuc's Wife)
The story is told that as Vizcaino made his way north around
the place that later would be called Santa Barbara an old woman of the islands
there approached the expedition with two fragments of silk and spoke words
of English to the Spanish explorers. It is unquestionably true that many
ships were sunk along the California coast in those days for the weather
was unpredictable and the pirates were many. Clearly some European survivors
had managed to survive thereabouts, but Vizcaino was made of such stuff
as described earlier in this document and so rather than trying to locate
the castaways, he ordered his men to proceed directly north, for if someone
had been there before him, that someone might tell tales of prior claim
and Vizcaino did not want that at all. Later, when pressed on the issue,
he claimed to be unable to understand the location fully from that ignorant
savage and nearly got lost in the fog which would have hidden everything
anyway.
Here it must be described how Sumuc took Olga as his 3rd wife. Who was Olga
and how did she come to Alta California, you may ask. And no matter if you
ask or not, well, I shall tell you now.
She was born Olga, simply Olga, with none of the extraordinary
flags of diminuatives, nicknames, surnames, and whatnot names so characteristic
of the voluable Russian race, for she had been born and placed into a basket
and that basket placed upon the doorstep of the Hermitage of Saint Anthony
one snowy day in November. Because she had bright eyes evocative of certain
mountain meadows which unfolded billowing scarves of deepest blue each spring
in Russian Estoty - that palimpsest land of renown south of Nuovo Zembla
and the concurrent plains of Siberia, her first nursemaid nicknamed her
Diminiyi-Iris, and so she got her typically Russian list of appellations
after all.
In the strict world of the Monestary and the Convent she learned her Russian
and her English and her French and a few more languages besides, in addition
to music, which she clasped to her heart with all the fervor of a sailor
cast away holding on for dear life to a floating barrel of oakum.
Let it be said that in the waning years of the 1700's, in
Russian Estoty, life partook still of medieval harshness.
Let others tell the stories of those waifs bouncing about
between rectories and nunneries, monstrous monstrums and the fierce skirts
of bearded clergy, for who is to say that this life is worse than what could
have been? She could have been sold directly into prostitution before the
age of eight or eked out a stone existence in the squalid hovel of a serf.
Pandybats and ferrules exercized their fierce dominance over the urchins
for a time. The time came for Olga to make her way in the world, either
within the walls of the Convent or without. And, seeking some warmer place
to rest her uneasy heart she chose without.
Peter the Great had had ambitions at the time of expanding
the economic base of Mother Russia, jumping on the bandwagon of European
Colonialism, yanking her by the ears out of the middle ages into the modern
era of newborn calculus and science and otherwise building a pyramid of
renown for himself to last down through the ages in reputed accomplishments,
accomplishing many of these with significant success by the time of his
death in 1725. Katherina Alexeevna, nee Sophia Augusta Frederica, continued
these advances by deposing her husband in a demonstration of the true power
of the feminine, and wallopping the already crumbling Ottomans, acquiring
the Crimean peninsula in the process, and further expanding the boundaries
of Zembla into that region sometimes demotically referred to as Nuovo Zembla,
occasionally confused intentionally as a granoblastic expansion of Arcadia.
Putting all this far history detail to side, this is all to
say it was Catherine the Great who urged the scientific and economic and
heroic exploration of this New World, which led to expedtions and settlements
in what is now Alaska and Northern California. So it was that modern-style
companies, owned by whiskered men in drawing rooms, assembled and went out
over the long distances so as to accomplish great deeds and it was to one
of those companies Olga attached herself for the published paper distributed
that day in the chilly library promised much and women and young girls were
much desired for these projects.
She made her long way as a servant girl - and potentially
something else besides -- across the Russian steppes with fortune hunters
and members of the Royal Russian Furs Company, in the company of Igor, her
master, and Gregoriy, a cheerful man from Lvov, who liked to sing lusty
songs at night beside the hearth fire, to Nootka in what is now Alaska.
Nootka was a tenuous assembly of rude buildings surrounded by a stockade
that did little to prevent the lean figure of hunger from slinking over
its walls. Supply ships were infrequent as much of the year found the harbor
bound tight in fetters of ice.
There at Nootka Gregoriy found that fueling his nightly songfests
with vodka became a problematic enteriprise and so he had much incentive
for locating alternative pathways. He built himself a kind of distillery
out of casks and a tub in a shed which blew up one night with a great alarming
conflagration and after that he was not allowed access to materials any
longer for the Governor was concerned he might kill all of them.
Finding the weather a bit much up there without vodka, Igor and a number
of other trappers headed down in a ship named with disturbing premonitions,
the Ada, to join the others at Fort Ross. There servant girls and
perhaps that Other Thing could be put to good use, and proximity of Yerba
Buena meant better access to food stores.
On a gloomy day they all trundled down there to the docks
and Olga was taken aback when she saw that some wag had taken a tarbrush
to the pinnace area to change the name of the ship to Moego Ada.
This caused her some distress, although Gregoriy bounded up the gangplank
energetically with his duffel thrown over his shoulder.
After some hours, the ship was made ready and set out with
high wind and high hopes for that strange island inhabited by Amazons, called
Alta California by its owners. Down in Alta California they would find thousands
of beavers roaming among orange groves and they would return loaded with
provisions and all sorts of wealth and Gregoriy brought out his foreign
harmonica to play a hornpipe song as they cast away. Even then, Olga felt
that this enterprise would be lucky to succeed for not a soul among them
had any experience at all in sailing ships for the possible exception of
the captain, who appeared to cross himself religiously each time the ship
came about, with luffing sails and flailing lines snapping about until someone
ran down the decks to tackle the rope in a most unseamanlike fashion. The
Captain claimed he was not in the slightest religious, but only enjoyed
the occasional joke now and then.
Things proceeded this way for some days with nothing but the
usual tedium of seatravel and they appeared on course for proper arrival
at that place that would later be called Fort Ross some twenty years later.
Storms, however, drove the ship far off course and further
south than they had planned and so the Ada found itself berthed,
more or less according to the abilities and fashion of its crew, in Drakes
Bay during a storm.
There is a song that goes, "oh where does the love of
god go when the waves turn the minutes into hours?" The swells smashed
against the ship and canted her over nearly 90 degrees until her long hidden
keel came into view, before swinging wildly to the other extreme as foaming
water torrented over the railings, sweeping anything not tied down, from
barrels to men, right off the deck into the ocean. Ropes thick as a man's
forearm snapped like threads, whipping this way and that.
Sometime after midnight there was cracking and then a blizzard
of splinters as the mainmast gave way to crash down athwart the ship in
a tangle of ropes, pinning the body of Igor beneath. No one could do anything
for anyone for everybody aboveships had to be lashed securely to some fixed
object or be instantly gone. One of the longboats broke loose from its moorings
and perversely sailed for a few brief moments on the river that coursed
across the decks of the ship from one end to the other, its keel tearing
off most of the roof of the wheelhouse and crushing the skull of the captain
standing beside the pilot, before the thing flipped off and vanished from
view.
The pilot, who was Gregoriy, looking at the body of the captain,
felt an odd jerk in his hands as the rudder snapped, letting the wheel spin
idly in his hands. He bent down and using a bit of water there he administered
a perfunctory last rites to the man he had known as Captain Spassibo, for
the captain had been very fond in his lifetime of practical jokes, but not
very religious. Gregoriy then stood up and ran to a secondary hatch, cut
it loose and partly descended to shout down to a pale upturned face, "Abandon
ship!" He then started running along the main deck and that's where
he was when a wave plunged over the side and swept him away and that was
the end of Gregoriy.
And perhaps it was well for him he never saw what happened
next.
The ship turned parallel to the waves as the steering wheel
spun crazily, disconnected from the rudder, which probably had dropped to
the sea bottom by then, and so the doomed Moego Ada began her inexorable
walk towards those cliffs Drake had compared to the white cliffs of Dover
many years ago.
It was near dawn that the Ada, pounded by heavy seas, rudderless,
captainless, and not manned by seamen nearly so capable or experienced as
those of Vizcaino's weatherbeaten crew, who had enjoyed a full two years
of dealing with the kind of Pacific storm in Drake's Bay that now drove
the ship up against the rocks edging those cliffs in a great shattering
of spars and decking, tossing hatches, windlasses, sailcloth and rigging
into the welter of tossing seas and drowning men crying out with any air
left for the mother of god to carry them home.
In the morning, on the beach of Drake's estero, the sole survivor,
our very own Olga, opened her eyes much as John Hogg had done near that
same spot long ago, and the troubled Miguel Manrique some years after that,
to see a pair of quizzical brown eyes staring back. Well, we have quite
a tradition now.
[To be Continued nest week]
THERE IS A PHONEBOOTH IN HEAVEN
The rain pours steadily down after a miserly misting of a
beginning and all but four browning dahlias remaing on the lines. Its been
a quiet week on the Island, our hometown. Survivors of the Pearl Harbor
attack that launched the US into WWII on December 7, 1941 gathered on Coast
Guard Island, which sits in the estuary between Oaktown and The Island itself.
Others gathered to commemorate the death of John Lennon which took place
on December 8th, 1991. Outside Pagano's Hardware folks talked about the
signpost events of their lifetimes. For some it was John Lennon's murder.
For others, it was the death of JFK in Dallas. For others, the day M.L.King
was shot. Each age has its particular infamy.
All the storefronts and even many yards are unrolling the
string lights to gladden the holiday skies for a while. Next week we will
toss our two cents in on where to buy tchotchkes and stoff for your loved
ones without putting dollars in the pockets of Evil Ones. Start with the
National Green Pages for a start and a few art things from locals and you
are on your way.
A gathering of The Island-Life Illuminati took place this
Saturday in Babylon, a collection of gray-beards and false-teeth bridges
and brilliant minds that is what is left of life in geodesic domes, tie-dye
attempts to change the world, youthful indisgressions passing from one hot
tub to another, and vigorous challenges to What Is. The flickering candlelight
of One of Us was the occasion and it does appear that next year, there will
be another place empty at the table come time for the Holiday Feast.
Old Man Winter blows down from the north a great wind and
rain and the People of the Adobe say that the world will soon change. Already
the days end sooner and darkness hides the dawn until late. The oak leaves
have become embers, in colors of red and gold, burning like moonbeams in
our eyes. Someone said they saw us, swinging the world by the tail, dancing
over the white clouds; but we were just killing the blues, bein' killin'
the blues.
And yet ringsome about the tablelight, eleven faces gathered
with yet another present and hovering above, all were exhuberant and full
of all the life that is, full gusted laughter blowing gales across the seas
of time and love, yes, love, earned and paid and the mark of a live well
lived for that is the only measure of a man or woman, the love that is left
behind.
Meanwhile that phonebooth in heaven, pinged by the rainfall
and surrounded by puddles among uneven brick, is ringing and ringing. Perhaps
waiting for one of you to pick up. But you will have to be there to do so.
And on that day, what will you have to say, and to whom?
That is the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
DECEMBER 3, 2006
ISLANDLIFE EXCLUSIVE
Recognizing that this everchanging world requires constant
adaptation to circumstances IslandLife has responded by starting up its
Multimedia News Outlet, supported by Dan Rather, whom we found standing
in line at the EDD about to apply for benefits after his unceremonious dismissal
from That Other Station.
Herewith, we include a Special Report, hosted by Dan Rather
and featuring Hollywood Celebrities behaving as usual at the Annual Island
Poodleshoot.
This report is downloadable as an MP3, playable on your I-Pod
of choice.
Click on the graphic to download the Special Report.
SOUTHERN CROSS
Nobody played the old Steven Stills classic, but they did
whoop it up all along the Estuary as the annual Lighting of the Yachts Parade
took place Saturday night and there was magic and spirit enough all down
by Wind River Park. Had a lively chat with a pair of bilingual urchins attached
to visitors from the Old Country. "Guck mal, Mutti! Es gibt Sankta
Nicholaus auf'm Schiffdach!"
Actually, die Kinder were for the most part more interested
in Pizza than the long Island tradition of parading the boats from the marina
back and forth along the estuary for several hours.
Still, the ships came down the passage fully bedeckt as hundreds
clapped and cheered all along the estuary and there was much whooping and
singing from all aboard and we suspect that much libation was ingested prior
to departure, for the tacking appeared somewhat erratic on the come-about.
Well near one hundred ships took place this year in a long
parade of lights on a weekend of extensive celebration, newly let loose
come the news latterly that the times they are a changing. And that can
only be a good thing.
WAY TO GO, OHIO
Only the developer is puzzled at the turn of events that put
the kibosh on his plans to erect an elaborate waterfront modeled upon the
City of Venice, a city not having much in common with this Island, last
we determined.
Developer Peter Wang had hoped to secure exclusive development
rights for a 22-acre site along the city's northern waterfront. But at a
meeting in late November, the City Council thwarted the request.
Council members left the window open for striking such a deal
in the future, but said they first wanted more details, greater public input
and assurance that developer Wang's project fit into the city's broader
goals for its northern waterfront.
Exclusive development rights would have been key for Wang,
because it would have been easier for him to secure financing for a future
project, he said. One of his challenges is that he does not own all of the
property on the 22-acre site.
One 6.7-acre chunk is owned by the state Tidelands Trust.
The Alameda Unified School District, Pennzoil and Wind River
Systems also own property in the area, said Leslie Little, city development
services director.
Yes, well, we have seen the effects of when developers rely
on land gifts to finish projects in California, and none of it has ended
pleasantly.
BUT MARLEY, YOU WERE ALWAYS GOOD WITH BUSINESS
Bob Marley finally realized, a little too late, that Mankind
was his business. Appears a Homeowners Association in Colorado has learned
that lesson belatedly only after national protest.
A subdivision has withdrawn its threat of $25 daily fines
against a homeowner who put a Christmas wreath shaped like a peace sign
on the front of her home.
Homeowner Lisa Jensen told The Associated Press on Monday
that the board of directors of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association had
apologized, called the incident a misunderstanding and had withdrawn its
request for the wreath's removal.
Jensen was ordered to take the wreath down when some residents
in her 200-home subdivision saw it as a protest of the Iraq war. Bob Kearns,
president of the board, also said some saw it as a symbol of Satan.
The homeowners' association demanded Jensen remove the wreath
from her house, saying it doesn't allow flags or signs that are considered
divisive. But a peace symbol?!
Jensen, a past association president, said she was overwhelmed
with hundreds of calls of support and offers to help her pay the $1,000
fine that would be due if she kept the wreath up until after Christmas.
"We would like to thank everyone who has contacted us
with moral support and offers of financial support. We are grateful to hundreds
of complete strangers who felt so moved by this story they contacted us,"
she said.
"It seems whenever someone tries to say 'Peace on Earth'
it is met with so much resistance," she said. "The incredible
amount of support we have received over the last couple of days really is
proof to us of how many people believe in peace and in our right to say
it."
What kind of idiots consider the peace sign a symbol of Satan?
ONE NIGHT IN AMERICA
It's been a quiet week on the Island. Paganos has changed
its famous storefront to match the season. Pix coming up. Ms. Morales has
not been seen since the infamous event of the Student Essays. Bear remains
deep in his garage, tinkering on yet another modification to his beloved
Harley. The wall at St. Charles was silently and abruptly repaired in the
dead of night during a manic episode of one of the managers released from
Villa Fairmont and so no rats have gone scampering down St. Charles for
a while. Mr. Peepers appears well on the mend.
His treehouse went through quite a renovation, as the Old
Man endured another trimming and we have the photos to prove it.
Here we see an enterprising fellow out on a limb.
Its night now on the Island. The racoon family is chirring
in their den under the Julia Morgan house. Stray Jack is curled up under
the old utility shed, dreaming of nice tasty mice. Mayor Beverly sleeps
and dreams of flung confetti and parades and RW&B bunting on a grandstand
in a city where everybody loves her -- without any exceptions at all. President
Shrubb tosses and turns in his bed, dreaming of The Inquisition. Donald
Rumancoke sleeps peacefully for the first time in years, the weight of executing
ludicrous policies under nonsense conditions gone at last after his resignation
from Secretary of the Bum's Cabinet.
In far-off Newark, soldiers sleep the dead sleep of exhausted
men and women suffering through their fourth tour of duty in a combat zone
while buddies patrol the perimeter with itching eyes and roving searchlights.
The Angry Elf does not sleep, for he never does, but lays
on a wooden bench at The Crucible with his fists clenching and unclenching,
for he is the Angry Elf.
Eugene Gallipagus dreams of the perfect poodlehunt. Der Governator
Arnold dreams of firing anti-aircraft missles from the back of his modified
Hummer at Air Force One in a California where a huge oil deposit has just
been discovered right under Orange County.
About 51 newly elected Bums sleep and dream of an America
where we can do better than we have been doing. Down at the cutout on Atlantic
near Buena Vista, Officer O'Madhauen sips a cup of coffee in his cruiser,
watching for speeders at midnight. The fellow who carelessly left his pistol
out for the child to find with such tragic results here on the Island now
sleeps in jail, caught during a routine traffic stop.
Along the garden fence, the opossum scampers for one last
bit to eat before retiring for the winter while out on the sward at Crab
Cove the Canadian geese all tuck their heads under their wings in a huddle.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
NOVEMBER 26, 2006
THE 9TH ANNUAL ISLAND POODLESHOOT AND BBQ - DAY ONE
The Annual Poodleshoot opened under sunny, clear blue skies
and everyone commented they had not seen such delightful poodle-shooting
weather for many a year. It all began as usual when Padraic got up at the
crack of Dawn. That is to say, failing in rousing the man with shouts and
imprecations, Dawn O'Reilly gave Padraic a mighty whack upon the pate and
set him off down the boreen with a keg of the official Shoot beverage, Wild
Turkey shortly before sunup.
The day began quietly while a selection of musicians calling
themselves the "St. Charles Atonals" performed at the main stage
bandstand located in the middle of the baseball diamond. A spirited rendition
of "Sha-boopie" done with Jew's Harp and oboe turned out to be
a real crowd pleaser . Musical accompaniment was provided by Rex Suru on
tuba, Josh Bennett on harp, Professor Schickele on Hardart with Inflatable,
Robert Fripp on broomstick-washtub bass, and Ken Collins of St. Charles
on the Banjo-Bandsaw Anomaly. Mr. Collins' 20 minute solo on the Bandsaw
Anomaly can only be described as "unique".
Padraic took a few moments to read the Rules and introduce
the Special Guests for this year's event: The Fremont L7 Choir and Shooting
Club, consisting of the best LGBT crack shots in the East Bay bar none.
Event organizers had long realized that belching, farting, cursing and firearms
display should not be limited to the male gender and so Padriac was sent
to the L7 Clubhouse as emissary bearing formal invitations and the tender
offering of a cheeselog as token gift.
So it was that Vicki, Veronica, Velma, Violet, Vanessa, Vivian,
Valentina, Vashti, and Susan showed up strapped to the nines with bandoliers
and full of that honest American red-blooded poodle-shooting spirit.
Expected later in the day was the annual White House Representative,
this time to be none other than the Vice President himself. "Buckshot
Dick" is known to have such a love of hunting that he sometimes rushes
out into the field before the license formalities have completed. It was
thought that last year's contretemps involving the President's Chief Advisor
would be avoided by sending someone who has demonstrated greater awareness
and care with firearms.
With a jolly crescendo from the horn section of the Hoophole
High School Marching Band and Classical Orchestra, the line of hunters then
moved out into the field under a blue sky -- annual Island Poodleshoot and
BBQ had begun. Soon, the merry sounds of the hunt drifted across the Island:
shouts of "Poodle there!", the sharp crack of freshly oiled Winchester
rifles, the occasional sputter of automatic weapons and the frequent Whump
of percussion grenades adding to the Holiday Cheer.
The L7 group made their mark by bursting into a rousing chorus
of Der Rosenkavalier after a particularly good hit by Veronica on
a male Russian Silverhair. Veronica terrified the normally macho Eugene
Gallipigus no end by her excited cries of "Prairie oysters on the barbie!"
Eugene took this time to set up a poodle blind on the far side of the Island
and he was not seen at all by anyone for the rest of the hunt even though
Vashti tried to assure him with, "Don't mind Von -- she's a Separatist,
but she has a good heart."
One would think that these new circumstances would have led
to a terrible disaster in which the much ballyhooed "War Between the
Sexes" would have caused a general degeneration of the whole affair
into chaotic sniping at one another among the hunters, but it was only Eugene
who seemed to have a problem and he went off to be by himself. In fact the
L7 group proved to be extremely capable during a skirmish between the Hunters
and the Island Dogwalkers Association who once again picked Crab Cove as
the area in which to launch a sortie against one of our platoons.
The platoon was advancing cautiously past the baseball field
when the DWA swooped down on them with impermeables and flintlocks, tossing
smoke grenades and firing RPG's from across the Memorial Sward that lay
before the Cove HQ building. You know the building -- its the one with the
cute tidepool display. Things would have gotten serious if Vicki had not
stood her ground like one of Queen Caliafa's Amazons of yore, firing an
explosive tipped crossbow dart right into the middle of the RPG unit, messing
up their hairstyles real bad and sending the DWA yapping back into the trees.
In general the first day ended well, with most parties bringing
in either hearty catches or very colorful stories meant to enliven the fireside
for at least three generations. Lynn Depaul, an L7 Associate, experienced
significant success with her Therapy Darts fashioned from syringes and IV
tubing. Nancy and Sean of St. Charles Street, a heartwarming mother-son
couple, used an electrified net strung between two trees and a 9-Iron for
final dispatch.
Marin's Paul and Marybeth employed blackpowder rifles and cavalry swords
in the Old Tyme Weaponry Division, bagging a pair of Blues, while Suan of
the Marin L7 contingent employed a morningstar flail with halberd to great
effect during a melee by the boathouse.
Visiting guests, Dee Plakas, Donita Sparks and Suzi Gardner
of the "slash-metal" group "Camel Lips" performed on
stage at sundown to an approving, if somewhat bemused crowd. "It aint
exactly Nashville, but they're okay," commented Jim Kitson of Santa
Clara Avenue. "It reminds me of a cross between a gang of chainsaws
combined with the sound of a squadron of P16's divebombing into the Pacific
Ocean."
POODLESHOOT - DAYS 2, 3 . . . AND 4
No one knows exactly what went wrong for the rest of the Shoot,
what happened there at the evening concert, or how it all happened at all
despite the best of preparations. Some think that one of the nefarious DWA's,
or perhaps even a member of Osama Bin Lassie's outlaws snuck something into
the Official Keg, for an empty bottle labeled"Warning: Contains Genuine
Spanish Fly Extract. DO NOT MIX WITH ALCOHOL!" was found nearby. Several
witnesses mentioned later they noticed a suspicious person wearing a trenchcoat
loitering by the keg, who was only deemed "suspicious in retrospect,
for everyone loitered near the keg, as it dispensed whiskey bought and paid
for already by the entrance fees. Some others said they saw this person
run off on four legs.
In any case, the following day began desultorily. Every once
in a while a mortar would go off and an Uzi would tear loose, but the Island
seemed suspiciously quiet. In the evening everyone came back, laughing and
rosy-cheeked from the cold, to the pit at the Ferry Landing, but the catch
seemed rather small in comparison with previous years so that Padriac was
forced to break out the frozen Ahi to add to the BBQ that night and no one
seemed to mind.
The following day, almost no explosions were heard and only
a couple blasts from a Mossberg echoed over the Island. But still, the hunters
returned, laughing and chatting and joking amongst themselves as usual.
Entirely empty handed.
For the gloomy and overcast Sunday, the final day of the shoot,
the hunters were offered premiums for the biggest or most inventive catch
and the morning passed with silence across the land. Padraic quizzed the
spotters and rulesmen, who reported that all the hunters had disappeared.
Padraic left the Command Post to see for himself. In disbelief, while standing
on the corner of Otis and Grand, an Island Dogwalker passed him by merrily
leading a prancing pom-pommed Motley French, who waved at him cheerily.
The unarmed Padraic fled in terror across the field, falling into a poodleblind
set up improbably and quite obviously to all upon the uncamoflaged pitcher's
mound. Wherein he found Victoria and Verne in an advanced state of dishabille
upon a cot. And they were not hunting for poodle by any stretch of the imagination.
Around the corner he went to step over Marybeth -- who was
on top of Paul more or less in a bivvy sack -- to bump into Veronica and
Velma, who were going at each other like crazed weasels with their lips
locked together in the corner of the schoolhouse where a few bushes blocked
the wind. They were not hunting for poodle either, at least not in any canine
sense. In the distance he noticed a Cabela's Blind planted out in the open
and rocking back and forth as if set on the pitching deck of a ship.
Out by the Strand he found one of the Officials. And Vice
President Richard Cheney. And a phalanx of men in dark suits who kept speaking
into their lapels while looking about them constantly through dark sunglasses.
Despite the overcast heavens. With them, carrying a Mossberg 12 gauge, was
the Archbishop of Boston.
It was inquired of Padraic about where the rest of the hunters
might be. "Other men with guns." One of the men in dark suits
said flatly.
"Ahhh!" Padraic said, smacking his forehead. "We
thought all about security. This section of the hunt is Reserved for the
Vice President. The others have been . . . retired for the day. Out of respect
and deference you know."
"Good!" said the Veep. "That's the way it should
be."
With many excuses Padraic dashed back to the Command Center,
leaving the Official, Mike Ramsey, in charge of guiding the VP and his escort.
All along the 8th Street area he noted blinds of every description setup
without any care to disguise or camouflage as if the people had been in
terrible haste to erect their, um, constructions. In the normal year, one
might find one or two of these things set up by newbies, but this time it
appeared as if every last hunter had secured one for him and herself. Back
at CP, Padraic called over to Big Five Sports to inquire about blinds .
. . .
"What's going on out there? We sold every last one from
this store and the store in San Leandro over the past 48 hours. Nobody would
take a special order though." Said the salesperson.
That's when Padraic noticed the bottle beside the keg. And
that is when, tears pouring from his eyes, he took up Suan's morningstar
flail -- god knows where she was and what she was doing at this point without
her weapon -- and with a mighty swing, stove in the side of the keg with
a shattering of oak and an eruption of whiskey. Dawn came tearing around
the side of the BBQ trough then shouting, "What in god's name are you
doing you omadhaun! Have you taken leave of your senses?"
And before he could stop her, she took up a flagon, filled
it with the draining whiskey and downed half of it as Padraic cried out,
"No!"
"I'm not going to let it all go to waste. And that is
no way to treat daycent water o' life. What did you do that for?"
"It's pizzened," said Padraic who dropped dejectedly
onto a bench.
This statement caused some concern in poor Dawn. "That's
why we hear no shots anymore. The lot of them, poisoned!" She looked
at the flagon from which she had just gulped a pint of poisoned whiskey.
"What's going to happen to me?! Will it be quick?"
"Noooo." Padraic said, shaking his head. "The
Poodleshoot is all destroyed."
Dawn shrieked something in Gaelic. "God save my soul,
I'm murthered!" And she sank down beside him on the bench.
"Tell me how the others looked. Sufferin' and agonized like? Was there
pain?"
"Noooo." Padraic said. "They all looked pretty
happy."
"And you tried to save me by staving in the keg. Me dearest
chum-chum Padraic." She snuggled up against him. "Give us a kiss
before we die, a long hot one."
"O, we've been married twenty years and more and I do
not think you are ready for what's coming." With that he stood up and
drank down the rest of the flagon on the table there, dipped it into what
remained of the whiskey in the shattered barrel and drank that down too
as Dawn protested and clung to him.
"Do ye want to be like the rose and the briar, now?!"
She said.
For answer, Padraic said, "Make love, not war."
And he kissed her just as the heavens opened up with torrents of rain, sending
all the Ruleskeepers under cover, including the Vice President, and putting
an end to the day's official activities. As the Officials ran this way and
that a peace descended upon the Island such as it has not seen for many
a year and there was an end to all the war making and shooting, and although
the rain put out the coals in the Pit, a number of embers continued to glow
well into the night elsewhere.
In truth, every participant, save perhaps for Eugene, who
spent the entire four days all by himself in his blind, reported perfect
satisfaction with this year's Shoot. Or it may be nobody would cop to what
went on. Even old Buckshot Dick came away with a nice kill of a surprised
Motley French down on Shoreline. And he only managed to slightly wound the
Archbishop in the buttocks in the process.
And that is the way the 9th Annual Island Poodleshoot and
BBQ came to an end, so help me god in truth.
TIS THE SEASON -- TO BE SAILING ON THE SEAS OF CHEESE
We note local Les Claypool will be hovering about here this
season at the Berkeley Community Theatre (this Saturday). Then he is up
to Sacto to do a gig at the Memorial Theatre there before returning to San
Jose as a warm-up for NYE at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. The Taj Mahal
Trio is back to Yoshis for a run this week to December 1, and rumor has
it they will be back at the NYE . The Great American Music Hall shows its
jazz style with Al di Meola on Tuesday, followed by the New Riders of the
Purple Sage on Thursday (how can that be the old New Riders?) and then KPIG
hosts James McMurtry -- he of the free online "We Can't Make it Here
Anymore" on December 4. And there is much more, which you can check
out at www.musichallsf.com.
The amusing Barenaked Ladies pair with ex-Soul Coffin Mike
Doughty at the Bill Graham Civic on Tuesday. And if you were not at the
Fillmore tonight, you missed a suddenly out front Cat Power. But there is
still Ozomatli Wednesday through Saturday under the purple chandeliers.
Monday, the pride of Baltimore, John Waters will tow his annual John Waters
XXXmas into the same venue. Mr. Waters happens to be the proud possessor
of the "ruby slippers" that so famously ferried Judy Garland back
home from Oz.
As gigs become known for the NYE bash, certainly to be more
than usually celebratory around here, we will let you know.
TIS THE SEASON -- TO LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH
The Army Corps of Engineers has decided it no longer has any
interest in the estuary between Oaktown and the Island, and so presented
its plan of giving the water passage to the Island, entirely gratis, with
the Fruitvale Bridge. As well as all the lovely costs of retrofitting the
bridge for earthquake and for dredging the channel to allow deep draft tankers
to pass.
This proposal went over as well as the proverbial lead balloon,
as the Island needs not the cost of dredging nearly 2 miles of waterway
for the sake of tankers that grant Oaktown significant revenue, especially
as the budget gorilla in the room gets more and more restive.
If the City refuses the offer, the Army will then drop it
into the lap of the County, essentially saying, "Take this Bridge and
Demolish It". Which would effectively halve the Island's access to
the mainland while Oaktown completes its 9th Street Project on its own time
and leisure.
In other Island news, a Blogger named Lauren Do has run afoul
of an unscrupulous and extremely rude person who has crossed the lines of
decency. The working mother has a site called www.laurendo.com that covers
various local activities, and which apparently aroused the ire of one David
Howard, who runs a site called www.keepmeasureA.com. Howard found Do's position
on revising the antigrowth initiative somewhat objectionable and claims
that the blog resorted to personal attacks. The original intentions of the
blogs have vaporized amid mutual recriminations and accusations of getting
personal over politics.
Politics is a nasty, mean, dirty business and no place for
wide-eyed folk to wander in without sufficient epidermis to take a few slings
and arrows, and claiming to be a mother of a child or a sincere person with
honest intentions is no defense here. A lot of money is involved and people
do get killed over it, from time to time. So don't claim to be a wide-eyed
deer in the forest surrounded by evil dark things. You take a position out
there, you get a little rough, and you know what, nobody will treat you
well. They can burn down your house, take your baby and take your husband
and take your job. That is politics today, so don't pretend, lady, you are
innocent. And that photo spread of your kids toys placed next to your computer
screen is a laughable joke and an obvious photo op subject to anyone's hardball
technique. You are trying to work the system and your opponents know it
and that means they will hit you really hard with no excuse.
LET IT RAIN LET IT POUR
It's been a quiet week here on the Island, our hometown. With
the possible exception of the Poodleshoot, which turned out to be quieter
than in years past. It was almost as if the spirit of Jerry Garcia descended
here to walk among us and encourage us to practice love in the face of war.
And after so many troubles it does seem that such a spirit does walk among
us once again. And once again hope for peace rises among all of us. While
the nation gradually pulls back from its terrible flirtation with the Dark,
we all wait to see what the new year will bring.
Meanwhile the rain pours down in buckets, heralding a new
season of weather. And as Strange de Jim says, you can hear the trains more
often when it rains.
That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
NOVEMBER 19, 2006
LIKE THE WEATHER
Been waking up these mornings to chill fog shrouding the Island
rooftops in a delayed dawn that slowly reveals dripping bushes and spiderwebs
cupping the spare light. The bright dahlias are slowly yielding to the winter
fungus, but not without a battle of exploding orange and yellow flaming
blooms. We've had some rain already. A few days of desultory drizzle that
left the crumbling levees in peace.
In addition to the Annual Island Poodleshoot and BBQ, long-time
readers have some particular delights in store as we report from the Work
In Progress with an excerpt that describes the first Thanksgiving in California.
After the Poodleshoot, we will continue with music reports during this Holiday
Season, including a first-hand report on the annual Live 105 Not So Silent
Night. We will include some helpful tips on Green Shopping for gifts direct
from the National Green Pages and finally we have another set of excerpts
from the nearly completed WIP describing the adventures and arrival of Olga
to California, culminating in a very special Xmas story for the entire family.
Stay tuned to this space for further developments.
SO DAMN HAPPY
Tried to make it out to one of the many election celebration
parties that took place around here, but found all of the significant ones
booked up. Glorious parties sprang up spontaneously all over NorCal, and
we counted some 384 affairs taking place within 20 miles of this location
-- referring only to those published online with open attendence. Which
means last weekend thousands upon thousands of people waved their arms,
danced, sang and got really drunk with joy. It does appear that our national
flirtation with fascism may be coming to an end. Finally.
On a troubling note, our Florida Remote Correspondent showed
up here at the Offices in person to report on the Sarasota chicanery that
took place there this time around in which some 18,000 votes were inexplicably
"lost" within paperless voting machines, resulting in the claimed
victory by the GOP candidate by a margin of 384.
Closer to home, Alameda County performed excellently well
under the pro-tem leadership of David McDonald of the County's Information
Technology Department, with Thomas York providing capable computer backbone,
while our Elaine Ginnold guided Marin through her first year there with
no substantial complaint.
And per the famous "SF values" sneer, we see our
own lovable -- and very capable -- Nancy Pelosi placed solidly in charge
as Speaker in a history-making appointment, with DiFi set in place as powerful
chairperson on the best and most significant Senate committees.
T FOR TROUBLE
Latest flap down at Silly Hall is all about how the cable
subsidiary of the Island Power Company (AP&T) has accumulated a $45
million deficit from internal fund transfers in addition to $40 million
in bond indebtedness with no clear plan towards retiring this massive debt.
The City's CFOs are furious and calling for sale of the cable
outfit to stop the debt from increasing beyond its already impossible level.
As one official stated, "If we managed to sell service to every household
on the island we still would not be able to retire this debt within fifty
years."
Heads are going to roll on this one.
THAT TRAIN DONT STOP HERE NO MORE
The Island won an important dispute over 22 acre parcel once
owned and operated by a railroad, and which is now an abandoned strip hosting
only a few decrepit buildings, weeds and a family of racoons.
The land had originally been sold in the 1920's by the city
to a railway under an agreement by which the city could buy back its land
at 1924 values. The buyer, Alameda Belt Line, disputed the contract terms
which were revealed by a local who delved into the paperwork and history
when the city began negociations to repurchase the land. No trains have
run on that line for many years and rails have long since been torn up.
Current valuation approaches $90 million, so the 1924 price
of $9 million has sent a bright ray of sunshine into Mayor Beverly's offices.
Plans are to make the land into a park.
YOU ARE A MEAN ONE MR. GRINCH
The folks in Silly Hall must be in quite a state, what with
the Navy balking at paying for some toxic cleanup at the old Base and digging
their heels in over sale price of the land, rising public resistence to
insertion of a Target big box store at Southshore Mall, stiff resistence
to the Cineplex Imbecility, the AP&T debt revelation, and the looming
financial blowout that seems to concern mostly Frank Mattarese and the Auditors.
Oy, those accountants just refuse to let the numbers be forgot.
Now the City's largest sales tax revenue source is pulling
out, just to add to gray hairs on Mayor Beverly. After 42 years of supllying
new and used cars, Ron Goode Toyota is moving house to Oaktown. Employees
have been informed their services will no longer be needed after December
17th. Wow, what a holiday gift for 85 people!
Reasons for this event feature yet another botched negotiation
between business owner and Silly Hall reps. And this comes on the heels
of several of these lapses. In this case, demands from Toyota Corporate
HQ had put Ron G. between a rock and a hard place. Mr. Goode sought to expand
his business by asking the City to help by seizing the property of three
neighboring businesses through Eminent Domain -- to benefit himself, of
course. The City refused such a blatantly Old School procedure and so Ron
upped and left in a tiff.
There is much here that could have been done otherwise to
preserve the business here, but none of it was pursued by any of the parties
involved, and the end result is the loss of some $1 million in tax revenue
just when things are getting really bad. Which no Target ever will replace.
The loss of Goode Toyota will produce a massive physical hole right near
the Bridge at the entrance to the main commercial center of the Island,
which is only one block wide, mind you.
THIS INSTRUMENT KILLS FASCISTS
Old Woody Guthrie would probably appreciate Neal Young's patriotism
in allocating a significant amount of space on his personal web page to
"800 Songs Against War". The space features fully free and downloadable
music rivalling Napster in scope, except all artists have freely offered
their work with no strings attached. Within minutes of arriving, we had
a CD worth of music, including stuff by Eric Idle (Monty Python), Bob Dylan,
Crosby & Nash, Dar Wiliams, James McMurtry, Luka Bloom, Robert Cray
and many others. The hyperlink is http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/lwwsongspage.html,
so go and get yourself some music, man. Music elevates the soul, promotes
moral hygiene, benefits starving artists everywhere, enhances the community
and social life generally, and besides, its good for you.
KFOG BENEFIT
More on music: KFOG has released its annual benefit for Bay
Area foodbanks. This year's Live Archives #13 contains tasty life tracks
from concerts by T Bone Burnett, Goo Goo Dolls, Jack Johnson, Leo Kottke
w/ Mike Gordon, Robert Plant and Bonnie Raitt among others. That session
with Leo Kottke really tore up the place, and Bonnie Raitt seems to be getting
better and better, hotter and hotter with every day she continues to step
on stage.
Live from the Archives consists of the best live concert material
from the world's most talented artists who come to the Bay Area, and each
year the CD is eagerly awaited by collectors and average people looking
for gifts to give during the holiday season. The CD typically sells out
in a couple weeks. Looking at this year's list, we expect this year will
sell out in a matter of days.
In the past, when the CD was offered through a now defunct
national music chain store, lines would form outside before store opening,
and radio reports would distribute notices of which stores in which locations
still had the precious CD still on sale. You can now order the CD online
at http://www.KFOG.com or go to the single brick and mortar store Virgin
Megastore in SF.
THE FIRST THANKSGIVING IN CALIFORNIA - RETURN OF OOG AND AAG
Long-time readers know that we have followed the adventures
of Oog and Aag, the original progenitures of the Bay Area. With the ancient
holiday of Thanksgiving we return to those jolly gentlemen and their progeny
in the Golden State, featuring
one descendent of Oog, several generations advanced of course from 20,000
BC. Herewith we present our humble offering which indicates that the origin
of Thanksgiving was, contrary to popular expectation, Hispanic in origin.
CHAPTER 52
West of the Mississippi, nobody ever heard of the Pilgrims,
and if they did people would rightly consider the bunch to have been a pack
of tight-ass ingrates who cheerfully murdered those who had offered life-saving
substance only a few years previously, and who had gotten kicked out of
Europe in the first place because of their intolerant and pinched view of
life.
Nevertheless we do celebrate the Thanksgiving as a way of giving a nod to
the Cosmic Whatever for allowing us to get this far and to count the blessings
with which we are gifted. The story of the First California Thanksgiving
is a fine one, and all the better for its freedom from religious zealotry.
And who should have begun this august institution here west of the Sierra
but, you guessed it, the descendents of Oog and Aag, for it was Tiburcio
who occasioned the event that propelled the holiday to its honored place
in the Golden State.
The first "official" thanksgiving took place on
November 30, 1850 at the decree of then Governor Burnett, and it is assumed
by many that the celebration occurred largely because of the enormous contingent
of New Englanders who had swarmed over the Sierra as part of the '49 Gold
Rush. It seems the platillo enjoyed in the mining camps consisted largely
of jackrabbit, as few turkeys are to be found up in those hills. Truthfully,
deer having been hunted out of the hills long ago, and bear having become
largely mythological even as early as 1850, any sort of meat at all was
hailed as a good god-damn god-send.
In fact, Thanksgiving in California had occurred much earlier
and records go back quite a ways. Even before the Pilgrims had landed, in
fact. There is record of one Spanish explorer Don Juan de Oñate,
who, according to documented Spanish historical records, celebrated the
first Thanksgiving day in El Paso del Norte, right by the river banks in
1598, roughly fifty years before the first Anglo Saxon Pilgrims arrived
in Plymouth Rock.
Of course, that was in a locality defined by the boundaries
of modern-day Texas, which everybody knows does not count unless you are
Lyle Lovett.
Before we get ahead of ourselves here, lets talk about how
Tiburcio came to be trudging about the Sierra foothills panning for gold
and such. After the owner of the California Star newspaper finally cracked
open the fact that gold could be had in the hills in typically melodramatic
fashion by parading up and down the streets swinging a sack of gold dust,
roaring drunk, and shouting all about the riches to be found just lieing
around, nobody wanted to hang around The City anymore doing day labor. The
place emptied out and for a while nobody could get clothes dry cleaned,
or wet cleaned or even buy a pair of pants for all the tradespeople had
packed up their shingles. Everybody – even the squatters – all headed up
there to become fabulously rich and this seemed like a good idea to copy,
so Tiburcio did the same.
On the day he left, sitting astride Trumpet, the mule, he
reached down and gave the precious locket from his mother to his wife for
safekeeping, intending that she give it at the appropriate time to the girl
that would become Jacinto’s wife, Maria, for by the swelling of the moon
he could see that he would be a grandfather before long. Originally from
the village at the head of Sausal Creek, Maria was a half-Spanish, half-Mandan,
half something else entirely, but she had straight black hair and a good
strong back. She did not know the old songs but had a few of her own and
she had learned a number of things in the Mission. In time there would be
time to teach her those things. Once he had remembered them himself.
The unfortunate fact of the matter was that his own father
had not the time nor the inclination to learn the boy proper and had entered
late into the boy’s life. And so Tiburcio had never ever absorbed the old
ways, but had been thrust helter-skelter into the new without preparation
-- except that from Father Duran, a different sort of Father entirely. In
fact, the more he thought about it, that Maria had more of a Native American
in her than he himself, and she – unlike that Runakason – did well by it
with dignity and grace. Age 14 was an excellent age to marry, for it would
become clear quickly if survival lay in the cards, there would be time to
find another mate if it did not, and by the time rolled around to have children
the couple would know each other pretty well. Oh, as for childhood, he never
could recall ever having had one himself and people did not pay much attention
to the modern habit of prolonging an artificial existence. If you could
pick up an ax, you chopped wood. If you could carry a load, you carried
adobe brick. That was the way and the only way he had ever known. And it
did seem the girl would survive. He did not think he would see those dark
eyes glaze over in deathly sickness. Something about those eyes, the eyes
of a fourteen year old girl evoked in him . . . a half-remembered feeling
of another, older woman, a ghost woman who had given birth and disappeared.
So he gave his wife the locket, looked into her eyes and held
her clasped hands for a long while beside the buckeye tree. Then off he
went.
On Trumpet he rode up along the river that now bore the name
of his old friend Estanislao – dead now from the sweating sickness that
turned so many villages into vacant places for ghosts. From the places where
that river tumbled out of the hills into a spreading sine wave he followed
creeks up into ravines where his companions, Pedro Amoldovar and Burpee
Cortez, told him that sporadic floods would have cut away the banks to the
load-bearing quartz.
All the gringos believed that gold just grew in the water
and one needed to simply find sufficient water to conduct mining, which
resulted in the whites collecting shoulder to shoulder along the banks of
the river itself. But Pedro and Burpee, whose real name was Juan, had come
from a line of miners from Sonora who, after the Aztecs had been thoroughly
robbed, had gone into the earth to pull the stuff out in a way that didn’t
involve directly killing someone. One obtains better gold that way. They
knew that gold was just another rock and would be naturally found with other
rocks.
A lot of guys from down south had come up on word of the new
discovery, and these men began to set up proper mining outfits, resulting
in an international hodgepodge of folks from all over, clustering and swarming
and jabbering in every language under the sun all over the sweet redwood
draped Sierras.
Along the way they noticed a disturbing pattern. Here and
there a group of Mexicans or Argentinians or Chileans would set themselves
up and quickly get in business with their deeper knowledge of just how to
go about mining, often taking over claims which had been thought barren
by the gringos. The group would start pulling out gold hand over fist, but
it would not be long before everybody would be run out and the claim taken
over by bands of aggressive whites.
The three of them decided to stay away from the congested river and the
permanent flows to follow incidental streams off of the beaten track.
Up one of these creeks the little group found some diggings
which had been recently abandoned, a roofless cabin, and a note that stated
flatly “No gold here! You kin have it.” When they got down to look, they
found a bluish silty clay which made Pedro quite excited.
Gold? No. Even better. The ground was saturated there with
quicksilver. The same stuff used heavily by miners who had a little more
knowledge than the average joe to extract gold from crushed ore. Leave the
gold to the gringos to find and claim; those whites would just run them
off any claim anyway. The trio would get rich selling needed stuff to the
already rich.
And so they and their mules settled in near the town of Hapless Camp, and
as it happened, a camp of “Celestials” lay not far off. The Chinese, having
sailed several thousand miles of ocean to hack away at Gum Lung with everybody
else found themselves quite unwelcome and experiencing severe disadvantage.
Many of them turned from mining to providing services, such as laundry,
realizing that any gold profit taken would almost surely get them all killed.
So the trio were doubly grateful for the blessings granted
them in the form of a profitable claim no one wanted and in clean trousers.
But this is not what occasioned Thanksgiving in California.
What really happened what this: In the town of Hapless Camp,
the memory of which has now dissolved from the history books, there lived
46 would-be 49'ers, plus two female, mostly-Chinese, cooks named Nellie
and YoYo, who pleasured the miners with food and other fine things, and
their poodle, named Cheesin-Lo, of undetermined gender despite its name.
Cheesin-Lo’s chief talent lay in that it could devour an old boot in about
45 seconds and could yap in time to most of the works of Toscanini. And
perhaps Schopenhauer, although nobody was precisely sure about that and
opportunity to test the assertion never arose.
About August, end of summer, a particular flea bit a particular
miner, named Dumpster McCoy, and he subsequently expired of a terrible fever
that featured these obnoxious swellings all over his body. These swellings
are called "buboes" and this thing he died of is called commonly
"Bubonic Plague". This disease has been described in a previous
chapter. Unfortunately, McCoy was not overly fastidious in his household
arrangements and a whole host of fleas enjoyed his syrup before he went.
Well, to make a long, really sad story short, the entire population
of Hapless Camp died of the Plague, leaving one, flea-ridden Cheesin-Lo
left in search of poodle kibble or whatever he/it could scrounge.
Only god, or Satan, knows what it is that makes poodles free
from the plague’s effects. It may be their single virtue for I cannot conceive
of any other. In any case, Cheesin ambled down the road toward China Camp,
dead set on getting more feed and unconsciously dead-set on infecting the
entire population of the Sierra with the dreaded Plague, for China Camp
was at that time the nexus of activity through which all of the Gold Country
traffic traveled. Had Cheesin reached China Camp, he/she/it would have sent
the contagion on across the valley to San Francisco and beyond.
Here it was that Fergus McOog, passing along with his blunderbuss,
happened to discover the animal, a clear shot, right in the middle of the
road. Keep in mind that in this time, with no deer, no bear, no jackalopes,
no cows in the hills to speak of, any sort of meat was heartily welcome.
So it was that Oog shot Cheesin square between the eyes, ordinarily a very
good thing for a poodle. Then, he hauled up the flea-bitten carcass on his
shoulder and trudged off to find a place to skin the thing and eat it.
Now here our tale becomes somewhat questionable, we understand.
Why Fergus would have turned aside from the main path back to his cabin
so as to find a better place to roast a dead dog, history does not record.
Perhaps he noticed some secret sign on a tree now long since cut down for
BBQ briquets or perhaps he simply wanted to gut and clean the animal away
from his dwelling. Perhaps he did not want to share a morsel with his cabinmate,
Tinky Winky Miner. Tinky Winky wore a suit that had turned purple with age
and fungus and bad washing and would wake up every morning singing an inane
song that made you want to commit murder. He was not exactly a man you wanted
to be close to and Fergus often wondered about him. Who knows? In any case,
Fergus wandered from the main path and soon fell, poodle and self, into
a long shaft at the end of which he landed with a thump that broke his leg.
As he lay unconscious, several fleas took this opportunity
to bite him. This was not a good thing.
After he was finished being unconscious, he woke up. Then,
his next step was to regret being awake for the pain in his leg was most
excruciating. With his handy flintlock tinder he lit a small fire so as
to see where he had ended up in agony. In fact, he lay upon a chest, quite
smashed by his fall, of thousands of gold coins. And to the side lay a skeleton.
In the boney hand of the skeleton was a piece of paper. On this piece of
paper were written the following words, "This be the long lost Mariposa
Treasure. If'n you find this 'n me, remember me. Mah name is . . . ".
Unfortunately, the rest of the note was illegible.
Fergus made a kazoo out of the paper and the comb he never
used for its intended purpose. Out of Cheesin-Lo, he made a BBQ and a hat.
Many hours, perhaps days, passed before Fergus heard a voice
at the top of the shaft. "Halloo! Enybody down thar?"
It was Tiburcio. Out for his constitutional after his ritual
mudbath and Native American sauna. Relaxed and alert, he found this shaft
at close of day, from which a strange light emitted along with a kazoo rendition
of “Sha-Boopie”. Fergus had taken to burning pieces of the treasure chest
for light and company and cooking poodle and his knowledge of music was
not large.
In short order, Fergus communicated the essentials: That he
was a miner with a broken leg at the bottom of a shaft with an half-eaten
poodle on top of a veritable mountain of gold and would offer two-thirds
or more to anyone who would get him out. Two-thirds of the gold, that is.
Sounds fair enough, but, as a Golden State native, Tiburcio
was always alert to "the Catch".
Unwisely, Fergus added that he had a terrible fever going
on and it seemed there were these "swellings going on" all over
his body.
Now, Tiburcio was no dummy. He knew about the Plague. He knew
what it meant for the relative capacity of science in his day. He remembered
the periodic plagues which had swept the Mission where he had grown up.
And all he knew about catching it was from hearsay, which said, "You
so much as breath near such an infected person and you gonna DIE in pain
fur sure!" And he thought about the thousands of men who had swarmed
over the Sierra crest now all living close to one another.
"Okay," he said. "I'll be back." In truth,
he was. With the first mechanical "bulldozer" ever seen. He got
two bulls from a paddock and built himself a flatboard with a backwards
hitch on it so that the bulls could push this thing forwards. He then mounted
the contraption on the tailings from the old mine and then drove the bulls
forward, shoving about a half-ton of earth over the old mine shaft hole.
Then he did it again and then went away and had a very nice lunch.
The best we can say about the poor feller under about a ton
of gravel and dirt is that Fergus probably died of suffocation before the
buboes really got him. And that the entire population of the Sierra survived.
The following day, Tiburcio held a great feast to give thanks
to the Great Kuknu and the gods and to whatever for having saved the entire
population of California from a terrible fate, for such was the habit among
his folk whenever some miraculous event managed to secure the well-being
of the populace. And there you have it, the real and absolutely true story
of how Thanksgiving came west of the Mississippi River. All the other mining
camps up there took up the practice as well, for the life of a wannabee
gold miner was difficult and fraught with mountain lions, poor diet, bad
mud, nervous jumping up and down and, generally, very little gold. So these
fellas working up in the hills thousands of miles from home dearly loved
a party with drinking and carousing and good eats and raucous music. Which
brings us to the beginnings of rock n roll, but that is another story. Shortly
after this, Tiburcio returned home, a much wiser man.
As it turned out, the gringos really got more and more irritated
with life as they laboriously came to realize that simply fetching gold
from water was far more difficult than previously imagined. Then it was
that so much gold did get found that wholesale inflation gripped the region
