After rain, cold rain, warm rain,late rain, and then a hot week, our garden is alive. When I go for a walk in the woods – that seems a little pretentious and wildness seems way too pretentious, but both are more or less true – behind our lot, everything is growing but not much is blooming. But, in the garden, everything seems to be blooming. I am not sure why there is a disparity between the two although most of the stuff in the garden has been picked because it blooms.
When Michele’s dad died, twelve years ago, she bought a dogwood that was blooming so that – each year – it would be a a memorial and this year, our Fremontia – Fremontodendron californicum, a California native – joined it in a big way.
Along with some native irises ( Iris douglasiana) .
And lots of rhoddies whose tags have been lost and their names forgotten.
Spring is my favorite time of year and nothing says death and rebirth as much as a garden.
He actually died last December, but somebody put together a public memorial for him last week. Hitchens was the kind of public intellectual that only France is supposed to have and I will miss reading him and thinking Well that’s crazy, well, maybe only sort of half crazy. He was an atheist but wanted to be know as an antitheist because he didn’t want there to be a god. Apparently, the memorial was crawling with other British ex-pats and one of them, Stephen Fry, said “Hitch thought the four most overrated things in the world were champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics.”
That list appeals to me and I have thought about it – off and on – all week. I can’t think of a better list or anything I would take out – although I would add Lever House – it is just so out of left field and so true.
In my post on my spiffy Big Bamboo hat, I had a footnote tag after Bahrain Grand Prix and then forgot to put in the footnote. That is probably a good thing because it would have been the tail wagging the dog anyway.
This weekend is the Bahrain Grand Prix and I don’t think the F11 circus should be there. It helps legitimize a regime that shouldn’t be legitimized. A regime that called in the Saudi army to help it put down peaceful protests. A minority Sunni regime that suppresses its Shiite majority and, by its own admission, has killed and tortured its own citizens when they protested. It seems to be a case of Bahrain’s desire for national prestige and its willingness to pay for that prestige trumping morality.
As much as I want to think otherwise, that is what Grand Prix racing is all about: money and national prestige. It is an incredibly expensive sport. The top teams pay about a half a billion dollars a year to play. The top drivers are some of the highest paid athletes in the world.2
It brings up the question of, as a fan, how much do I want to support a sport that is amoral at best and probably really – by a lot of reasonable standards – immoral. And, yet, I love cars and so enjoy seeing the best cars in the world race. I have been critical of Giants fans who supported Barry Bonds and I still support Fernando Alonso who once cheated and then tried to blackmail his team owner in an effort to get an advantage. But, man, is he a good driver.
What my mini moral dilemma boils down to is this: I don’t want Formula One to race at Bahrain, but, because they are, I will watch it. It seems that I want somebody else to govern my moral behavior. I don’t think that puts me on the level of a child abuser, but I am also pretty sure that the Buddha would not approve.
1 F1 stands for Formula One, the highest class of racing cars specified by the FIA – Federation Internationale de L’Automobile, the governing body of international auto racing – that race in twenty races a year, each race in a different country.
2 Michael Schumacher is the most successful and highest paid driver, so far making over one billion dollars in his career.
Last Saturday, my Little Brother, Edwin, his mom, and I went to San Francisco State for their Sneak Preview Open House. Edwin has been accepted at SF State but has not yet decided to go there so this was a good chance for him to see the lay of the land. I had taken two psychology classes at SF State, in 1966, so I considered myself somewhat of an expert. Well, I, at least, knew how to find the University, but, it turns out that is about all I knew.
Surprisingly, much has changed since 1966. It is much larger – I think, at least it feels larger than I remember – with an enrollment of about 25,000 and there are a lot of new buildings including a stunning new library.
What else has changed is the general tenor. When I went there – using the term went there in the very loosest sense – San Francisco was the center of the counter culture movement. Cal Berkeley especially, but also SF State were major engines of change. This was the time when protesting students were firehosed on the stairs of San Francisco City Hall for protesting HUAC1 hearings; this was the time of the start of the Free Speech Movement – about a year after Mario Savio was arrested for saying fuck in public – this was two years before the Summer of Love in the Height Ashbury. This was one year after – as the official history of SF State says, brags really – that the Psychology Department’s Psychedelic Research Institute is inaugurated to test the creative power of LSD. Subjects are asked to bring with them professional projects on which they’ve been working; while taking LSD under the auspices of the Institute, one man solves a major design problem of Stanford’s linear accelerator, and another subject manages to complete a set of plans for a shopping center that he’d been commissioned to design.
As an aside. Less than a year before I took those two psychology classes, I had been a sergeant in the United States Army. I don’t remember it being much of a culture shock. End aside.
I want to say that San Francisco State is a more conservative place now, but, in many important ways, it really isn’t. The world has changed. What was radical then is pretty average now. I hope that Edwin decides to go to SF State, it has a great past that it looks like it is building on.
Three years ago, Michele and I were in China – Shanghai to be exact – on the weekend of the Bahrain Grand Prix1 wondering where to go to see the race. A week or two before, we had seen the Chinese Grand Prix in our hotel room near Wulingyuan National Park. Even though I am a Formula One nut, it was not a very satisfactory experience watching the race, alone in a hotel room, in Chinese. Michele suggested that we try a expat sports bar where the energy should be much higher and the broadcast in English. We ended up at the Big Bamboo – Your Favorite Sports Bar & Grill – and had a great time. As sort of a remembrance, I bought a hat which I proudly wore for about two years and eleven months when, somehow, I lost it.
About a week ago, I emailed Big Bamboo to get a replacement and they sent me not one, but two new Big Bamboo hats. Thank you very much! If you are ever in Shanghai drop by, I see that today the Big Bamboo is featuring the St. Louis Blues at San Jose Sharks (game 3) and the San Antonio Spurs at Golden State Warriors. I wish I was there.
