Music between the ears

You know that annoying, really grating feeling when you can’t get a song out of your head? Well, let me share what’s been bouncing around my cranium for the past couple of weeks:

New Tricks is a BBC show about three retired Metropolitan Police geezers working for a female superintendent to solve cold cases. It’s actually much better than the theme song.

No need to thank me; it's good to share.

(Hey—it could be worse. I could have reminded you of “It’s a Small World”.)

Bus stop memorial, Pt. 2

I drove past the bus stop at California and Escuela in Mountain View yesterday. That’s where residents had erected a memorial to a man who was killed by a speeding car on 21 June.

That was more than three weeks ago, so I was surprised to find that not only was the bench still a memorial, but the floral and stuffed animal tributes had multiplied.

Says something about Bill Ware that people think it’s more important to remember his life than to sit down to wait for the bus.

It's a small, small world

If you’re looking for an example of the concept of chalk and cheese, I give you a recent extravaganza performed for newly-fledged North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The chalk/cheese juxtaposition comes from a bunch of (unlicensed & unauthorized) Disney characters, including Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and Snow White’s dwarfs.

Dunno how to interpret the Disney display. I do know that about ten years ago Kim’s eldest brother, Kim Jong Nam, was eliminated from the succession of the Dear Leader after being caught by Japanese authorities using a Dominican Republic passport in an attempt to visit Tokyo Disneyland. (And I swear I’m not making that up.)

Frankly, the video doesn’t look to me as though anyone’s having much fun, but perhaps the Kim dynasty is looking to turn the last bastion of Stalinism into yet another Happiest Place on Earth?

(And Disney legal folks, if that phrase about happiness is your trademark, please just consider its appearance here fair use. Okay, thanks, bye.)

Twenty-nine ways

Here's something I found interesting, from Laughing Squid:

Here's what I particularly like about this list:

1. The number 29 is odd, inasmuch as it's not a "set" number, like five, or 20. Like the writer listed as many ways as he thought were legitimate, and didn't truncate or pad them to fit some mystic number.

2. The graphics/animation reinforce the individual instructions.

Good advice, delivered well. See--the Internet isn't a complete time suck.

Picnic in the park, part 2

I’m thinking that the Whisman School park isn’t the only place in the Silicon Valley where people hog the picnic tables by putting out tablecloths at the crack of dawn & then going off to yoga or the bodega for a few hours.

I went over to Vasona County Park in Los Gatos the other morning, around 0600 (there’s not a lot of shade around here & I don’t fancy getting sunburn, so I go early). & looky what I saw at the entrance:

They make it difficult to stake claims in absentia because they also block vehicular access until 0800, which means you’d have to schlep in all your tablecloths some considerable distance from the road if you tried.

Sunnyvale safe surrender

I live about half a block from Sunnyvale Fire Station No. 4—it’s where I voted in the June primary election, & I hear the engines several times a day.

Walking past one day, I noticed that it’s a “safe surrender” place:

I didn’t know there were such places, but it turns out that a number of states have designated such locations—usually fire stations, police stations or hospitals—where parents of newborns can surrender the baby for any reason without criminal charges being filed.

I had never thought about there being a need for such, uh, refuges, much less on a systematic level. But thinking about the battleground that control over a woman’s body has become in this country, I guess it seems inevitable.

Two thoughts:

I’m as surprised as surprised can be that Texas has such a program.

What happens to the babies once they’ve been safely surrendered? Because the political organizations that are most vocally anti-birth control are also the ones that would rather give corporations tax breaks than ensure healthcare & education for the nation’s children.

We hold these truths

In between the picnics and the fireworks today, give some thought to the basis of the holiday: the Continental Congress approving the Declaration of Independence presented by Mr. Jefferson of Virginia.

NPR has printed it for you, but you can also listen to several of their reporters, newscasters and commentators reading it, and it's a document that cries out to be heard.

A beautifully-reasoned and eloquently-stated list of the reasons why--with reluctance--the British colonies along the Atlantic coast feel they need to take the grave step of breaking away from Mother England.

We recognize how serious a move this is, it says; but, given the pattern of abuse by the British monarch, we don't see any way out of it. We know it will cost us, but it's costing us more if we don't do it.

Here are a couple of clauses that really strike to the heart:

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

"We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States."

And--my favorite of all:

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Imagine, if you will, the current denizens of the US Capitol pledging their lives, their fortunes or their honor to anything.

No, I didn't think so.

So go back to the original and really listen. This is where we came from.

Picnic in the park

This being Independence Day, there will be a lot of picnics in a lot of parks. So perhaps today’s the day to post these pictures from a couple of Saturdays ago at Whisman School Park in Mountain View.

These are picnic tables that have been covered in tablecloths.

&, in case you don’t get the point, there are “reserved” signs taped to them. In misspelled Spanish.

Now, of course, nothing particularly wrong with marking your territory.

Except that I took these pix at 0645. & most of the tables in the park had been poached (as you can see in the background of the first shot), so it must have been a hell of a party.

Kind of tough toenails on anyone who showed up at 1100 with their coolers and Frisbees, though.

Sunnyvale sights, Part 2

Another interesting Silicon Valley sight: I was out & about & came across this truck making an early-morning delivery to the Sunnyvale Five Guys.

I got rather a charge out of the tagline. But then I realized that Daylight Foods hasn’t quite grasped the whole URL thing.

Bus stop memorial

Last week I was driving down California Street in Mountain View, when I noticed this ad hoc memorial site at a bus stop:

There were a lot of memorial candles—I mean, a lot.

From the stuffed animals I thought it might be a memorial to a child, but it turned out to be the site of a fatal traffic accident—a developmentally disabled 50-year-old man was hit on 21 June while waiting for the bus by a car going 70 MPH.

Bill Ware, who was a fixture at the Mountain View Public Library, and who appeared at city council meetings, was well known in the community, and will evidently be sorely missed by the people he met regularly. I was there around the 26^th, and the tributes were undisturbed, candles still burning. Which tells me that people in the neighborhood think it’s more important to mark Ware’s life and passing than to sit to wait for the bus.

You see these sorts of memorials around the country, of course, at traffic fatality sites. But the votives with brilliant colors and Our Lady of Guadalupe themes are quite distinctive to this area and I thought it worthy of sharing.