Back in February after my first experience at the San Francisco Symphony, I wrote that if them doing the German Requiem (with SFSO Chorus) didn’t blow my mind, nothing would. Well, it did. What a beautiful concert. For the first half they did Gestliches Lied and Four Songs for Women’s Chorus, which I thought were […]
Category Archives: Culture
Never thought it would happen but…
…I think I’ve fallen for California, or at least for the Bay Area. I fell for San Francisco a bit before I moved here, loving the little houses all packed up in the hills. It reminded me a little of Edinburgh (the city I love best). I also had an affection for BART — the […]
Disposing local
The single paragraph in Garbage Land: On the Trail of Trash that most annoyed me was this one: According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, which made exhaustive studies of consumers’ environmental impacts, the things that make the biggest differenc to planetary health are transportation, housing, and meat eating. It isn’t worth it, they said, […]
Keep us in tofu, and also in bananas?
Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing. –Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle This beautiful expression reminded me of a conversation I had with my dad a while back about spending and saving money. We both enjoy watching money accumulate, and tend not to buy things, even though we […]
I’m not a bird…
…I don’t twitter. But apparently several of you do. I’m curious why. It doesn’t really resonate with me — too much announcement, too little interaction, maybe? It seems like Facebook status on crack, with what is entered becoming a kind of social performance piece to up the entertainment value. It reminds me of the way […]
When More is Less
Back at the beginning of this blog’s existence I wrote some about Barry Schwarz’s book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. Recently I’ve thought that maybe he should have written a bit more about when more is less. He does devote some space to the subject of how meaningless some of our choices […]
Judging Reader
There’s been some kerfuffle around lately after an NYT article on “literary deal-breakers” — that is, what books, or lack of, would make you run away from a date or relationship? Two of the websites I read have a thread devoted to this. Some of the conversation has inspired interesting thoughts about people’s attitude to […]
Accepting peak restrictions
I was looking at a Netflix flier on M’s floor this morning and remarked “Funny they say that the plans start at 4.99 per month when the 4.99 plan really isn’t all that useful.” Then I thought, well, the 4.99 plan is 1 movie at a time, 2 per month. How often do I really […]
Cycletopia
I’ve been paying some attention to the news coverage of the Tour of California prologue that I volunteered for on Sunday, and I’ve wound up pretty disappointed. If the Merc is going to put Ann Killion in the main section, then they should ask her to give a wider coverage of the event and not […]
Lance Armstrong brings attention to all kinds of cycling
I’ve been known to complain about the lack of bike advocacy and neglect of bike commuting by racers, particularly Lance Armstrong, since he’s got such a high profile. But Armstrong is stepping up, opening a bike shop that’ll sell a lot of different kinds of bikes and equipment as well as serve as a bikestation. […]