Where the outlines are clear

Yeah, it’s been one of those weeks, and it’s only Thursday. I’m going to try some music.

Shadows of the past

These remarkable photographs, via The Guardian, first appeared around the 70^th Anniversary commemoration of the D-Day landings. But I’m still exploring them.

They’re interactive then-and-now photos, with the 1944 image superimposed over a current shot taken of the same location. Click on an image and drag your mouse. The 70-year old picture will fade to front, replacing the present-day one.

I can’t embed the interactive images here, so I’ll just give you a couple of them.

Mechanized hive of activity on Omaha Beach (near Colleville-sur Mer), 1944:

  

And now:

Royal Marine Commandos coming ashore on Juno Beach (I first thought they weren't wearing helmets, but on closer examination, what looked like berets probably are helmets, so, carry on, lads):

And the beach this year:

I love it that photographers went out and took pictures from the same point of view as the ones shot 70 years ago. Not recreating the image, updating it. I also love that so many of the 1944 photos show buildings and roads that have been pounded by artillery and other man-made disasters have been reconstructed and are still in use.

I come from Los Angeles, a place that famously doesn’t much care about the past and regularly rips down residential and commercial structures to build something completely different. So it pleases me to know that the French basically flipped both the Germans and the Allies the bird and rebuilt things just as they liked them.

Yeah, maybe it shows a little trace of reluctance to move on, but it works for them.

(I saw a lot of this in the parts of France that had been leveled between 1914-1918. Arras, Amiens, Verdun, Reims, Soissons: there’s a continuity to their architecture—particularly in Flanders—that is indicative of a refusal to be defined by destruction.)

And I also love that there are applications now that allow these sites to superimpose one image over the other and give the viewer the power to switch between them. Because it's so much more powerful to view the transition between past and present.

The Atlantic also has some of these photos, along with a lot more. Their interface doesn't give you quite as magical a transition, but visit their page and see if you aren’t stopped in your tracks, too.

Eco economy

The board of the condo complex where I live has changed landscape services. I suspect the decision was based solely on cost, because the other guys did a great job. Not only were they efficient at tidying up the common areas and pruning shrubbery around the parking lot, but they also planted and tended annuals.

There was a team of about four to six (depending on activities planned, I guess) out here every Tuesday morning. An hour of leaf blowing, then the trimming and the like, and then on to their next regular gig. On days when they were swapping out the annuals, they’d be here a little longer, but they weren’t running their leaf blowers constantly.

The new service, which comes midday on Mondays, consists of one middle-aged Caucasian guy with a canvas hat, a notepad and a supervisorial attitude, and one Latino with the leaf blower. Because it’s only him doing the actual, you know, work, that roar goes for about three hours, with the attendant gas fumes. I don’t know how it works out, but most of the leaves must be at my end of the area, because it’s right outside my bedroom window for all that time. It's like living in an oil refinery.

I notice that they’ve stopped the practice of putting in the annuals; instead the areas under the trees are just dry patches of hard dirt. Very fetching. Not.

But I’m sure the board got the lowest bid possible, so they must be happy.

Gratitude Monday: Feathered friends

One of the things for which I’m really grateful is that, to a large extent, there’s a co-existence between the various forms of wildlife here in the Valley they call Silicon. By which I mean that you find the furred and feathered set right next to the geeks and freaks.

One example is a pair of ducks that has chosen an office building in Mountain View to hatch its brood for several years. The building (which I’ve mentioned for less feel-good reasons) probably dates from the 70s or 80s. It’s constructed in an irregular fashion around an open-air atrium, which is landscaped with a faux pond and stream. I suppose in flusher times, there was water constantly flowing from the fountain at one end, but I haven’t seen that in the three years I’ve occasionally visited the place. And given our drought, I’m surprised any is left at all, and that the place is not teeming with mosquitos.

But although it’s often sludgy, evidently there’s enough water to suit the ducks, and they can hide their nest in the shrubbery, which probably doesn’t get disturbed that often by any gardeners.

I don’t know when they arrived this year, but in May, I first saw Mama and her seven lovely chicks:

You’ll notice that Mama keeps close tabs on the fuzzballs, and she never once lets me out of her glare. If her wings ran to fingers, she’d be giving me that “I got eyes on you” gesture.

A few weeks later, we were down to six babies, and a while after that, there were only two.

I was sitting on one of the benches across the water one day, occasionally taking pictures of the birds on the pond and listening to one of the office holders blaring into his mobile phone on the balcony—evidently he’s quite the yachtsman and had several outings in the works. Anyway, when he finally hung up, he and I chatted about the seasonal residents.

The cap’n thought that crows likely got the small ducklings—other predators wouldn’t be able to get in at ground level, because you need opposable thumbs at height to open the doors, and raccoons or cats would be unlikely to draft on human traffic. Must have been something fierce, though, to overpower Mama.

He also said that they put out oats for the family to supplement whatever the largely absent Papa brings them. “We looked up on the Internet; they can eat oats.”

The surviving ducklings seemed to do well—appear to be females to me, but all I have to go by is that they look like Mama.

They left last month, although I’m told that one more fell victim to some sort of predator, so it was just Mama and one. Kind of a high mortality rate.

But—I have to say that it’s been quite a nice experience to follow the little family for four months, and to know that their human neighbors were looking out for them in a non-invasive NorCal kind of way.

I’m grateful for that.

I was wrong; I'm sorry

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins today at sundown. It’s the day when Jews prepare for the New Year by considering their actions over the past months and making efforts to acknowledge and amend the wrongs they’ve committed. Kind of like steps four through nine of the AA 12-step process.

Part of the amendment element is making an apology to the person or persons you have wronged. Marjorie Ingall has considered this issue for some time—she’s one partner in a blog that analyzes apologies, telling us why they’re good or bad. She summarizes those criteria in this story in Tablet Magazine.

Here are the elements: take ownership of the offense (use first person and name the incident(s) and acknowledge the impact of your actions); you can offer an explanation, but don’t make a Russian novel out of excuses. When you’ve done that, shut up and let the other person respond. And take it without whining or throwing up defenses. Finally—make reparations.

Fairly simple in theory, but not so easy in practice, as Ingall acknowledges; and as we’ve all experienced. She has a much longer list of how not to apologize, and I think you’ll all recognize them, as either the recipient or the perpetrator at various times in your life.

I’d like to add one more to that enumeration: the “are you open to an apology?” non-apology. I’ve written about this before, and it is an empty exhalation of breath. It’s vaguely proposing the theory of an apology without any of the substance of an actual, you know apology.

Plus, by thinking that counts, the only association with “sorry” is to your sad little life that you think you don’t have to own up to your actions, you pathetic excuse for a chordate.

Oh, here's another way not to apologize: posting "To all my friends: It's Yom Kippur and I'm sorry for anything I've done that might have hurt you" on Facebook, or tweeting it. There should be some kind of cosmic bitch-slap for anyone who tries that crap and thinks they've cleared the slate.

I personally believe that apologizing for something you’ve done is easier the less time you let pass between the offense and your atonement. The longer you let things go, the harder it is to swallow all that amassed crow. (At least it is in my experience.) Besides—getting into the habit of saying “I was wrong” and “I’m sorry” keeps you grounded.

But it’s also good to have a once-a-year date on your calendar to take a look back, maybe revisit some exchanges that you might have dismissed at the time but appear a little different after a few months, and then reach out to admit you were a dickhead, and say you’re very sorry about it.

Not “I might have seemed to be a dickhead…” or “I was only a dickhead because…” or “…if being a dickhead ruined [insert occasion here]”. No qualifiers, no weaseling, no drama queen.

I was wrong.

I’m sorry.

Let me do [this] to make it up to you.

There—feels much better already, doesn’t it?

Mild men

I don’t know why I didn’t know about this long before now, but there is an organization called The Dull Men’s Club. Yes there is, and it's real because they have a website.

And later this month they are publishing a 2015 calendar, “The Dull Men of Great Britain”.

This features blokes who collect lawnmowers, traffic cones, milk bottles, bricks and buses; spend five days per week moving rocks; and document drain covers, roundabouts, post boxes and hedges.

And, close to Ms. Language-Person’s heart, there’s the founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society, engaged in the never-ending struggle against the tsunami of misuse of that punctuation mark.

And no, I am not making up a single one of those pastimes.

There’s also a man who’s given his wife the same Valentine’s Day card for 35 years, but I’d categorize that more as sad than dull. She must encourage him, though. Or at least be inured to it.

You’re not going to see any naked torsos in this calendar; that might, after all, be outside the remit of dullness. Or public decency. Besides—the point is more the activity than the actor.

The DMC was founded in the 1980s, in New York City. They claim membership of 5000 around the world, but from their website, it looks as though the power base (if that be the correct term) has shifted to the UK.

Although—interestingly (again, if you can apply that modifier to an organization devoted to dullness)—they purport to have an “International Committee of Dull Men”, which meets in London and…wait for it…Washington, D.C. I would purely love to know the story about that.

And, uh, interesting (?!) again: their last nomination for “Dull Man of the Year” appears to have been in 2011. Is it possible that they’re actually living such fascinating lives that they don’t have time to keep this very important honor updated?

But the notion of making Keith Richards an honorary DM is totally, um, you know, inter…

Boom

Here’s something to get you going on this October morning—or any time, really:

And here’s what I always think about when I hear The Iguanas:

Homicide: Life on the Street, one of the best dramas ever produced on US TV. The particular episode closes at midnight ushering in 1997, the squad is called out to multiple murders, because: New Year’s Eve, America, like that. And “Boom, Boom, Boom” over the montage.

And  I also think of The Barns at Wolf Trap. One of my colleagues, whose romantic relationships never lasted more than a couple of months, had optimistically bought tickets for The Iguanas about three months out. The performance hit during that awkward period between breaking up with the one woman and finding another to ask out for that kind of date. So another colleague and I went to the show. Sweet.

So turn up the volume, step away from the device and move!

Space availble

As long as I’m on the subject of people who think they’re entitled to more than everyone else (at least in matters vehicular), here’s a new (to me) variant:

Leaving a bicycle in a parking spot. In a multi-office building’s parking lot. Which is full. (Note: the space next to the Subaru was blocked off from use because of some surveying work going on.)

When, by the way, there are bike racks next to the various building entrances.

The car that typically parks in that area is a vintage T-bird, and I noticed it (and its middle-aged male driver) leaving as I pulled carefully into the lot around noonish. I say carefully, because the lot has poor traffic flow design to begin with, and a seasonal pumpkin patch installation in the next lot has screwed things up even more than usual.

So I’m wondering if the bike was left there to save “his” spot. (And it’s all unassigned parking. That building houses startups when they’ve got too big for the garage but haven’t yet either been bought by Facebook or gone down in flames, so the tenant population ebbs and flows.)

If so, I hope someone in a BMW SUV pulled into the spot (which is pretty blind from one direction) and crushed the sucker.

Special delivery

The other day I was checking Staples in Cupertino for something. But before I got into the store, I was astounded to see a USPS truck just pull right into a Handicapped space smack in front of the store.

There were three cars in the entire lot, so it’s not like the letter carrier was strapped for open places to park. In fact, there was a vacant slot right next to him.

And he wasn’t carrying armfuls of packages, so he wasn’t burdened with weight.

No, he was just being a brass-plated, government-issue self-important, arrogant schmuck.

Gratitude Monday: Arts and techs

Today I’m grateful that a friend recommended I go to the Allied Arts Guild in Menlo Park, and to the Church of the Nativity, also in MP. She said, “They’re nice places to take pictures.

Well, she was right, of course. The Allied Arts Guild is this enclave about half a mile off the edge of the world, in a residential neighborhood, which you reach by going down a wooded road that you’re convinced is going to end up at a gingerbread cottage. Instead, you turn right, and there you are—houses on the right and artsy place on the left.

Turns out it’s a cluster of buildings housing studios and meeting places, interspersed with gardens and patios. A couple of studios were open when I was there, so I got to talk with the artists in a very relaxed setting. There was some kind of mom-and-me-singing play date in one of the rooms—a lot of high-end strollers parked outside, and “Up-up-up-up-up-down-down-down” wafting out the windows to the tune of “Greensleeves”. I expect there was appropriate movement attendant upon that.

Anyhow, it really was a great find, and right at the back door, so to speak, of Sand Hill Road, which is your basic Via de los Venture Capitalists.

Then off to the Church of the Nativity. I fired up my smartphone to find the address and for the very first time since I got it (in April), I noticed the little microphone jobber in the boot-up screen search box.

And when I tapped on it, ditto, for the first time, the little hint in the search box.

  

Well, “Okay, Google” and “Church of the Nativity” got me the one in Bethlehem, so I tried again: “Church of the Nativity Menlo Park”. And blow me if it didn’t come up!

This is a great thing—so great, I’m almost able to ignore the “Ok” instead of “Okay”, or even “OK”. Would it really have cost them so much to make it two capital letters? Do they not realize that “Ok” is essentially a single syllable sounding kind of like the tree?

No, no—I said I’d let it pass, and I will. But I’m going to have fun searching for just about everything now.

Oh—and the Church of the Nativity was very nice, too.

So I’m grateful for a recommendation that resulted in two new places and a whole new world.