just in time to see that our resident owl is still there. 
Category Archives: Around home
On the way to Tahoe
On the way to Tahoe for the weekend, we passed through San Francisco. Thin whips of fog had just started to blow in and the new skyline, anchored by the Sales Force Tower, put on a great show.
Baby Artichokes
Yesterday was Election Day here and, from my point of view, it was a mixed bag so I want to change the subject. Let’s talk about baby artichokes. A couple of weekends ago, one of our favorite Farmer’s Market vendors suggested we try his baby artichokes. We got a couple and steamed them. We let them cool, peeled off a couple of the hard outer leaves, bit in. Wow!, it was an unexpected delight, the bottom 3/4s of what is left is all editable and delicious. If you get a chance, check it out.
A tree in memory and dying three times
We have a lovely dogwood in our backyard and while it seems young because it is so spindly, Michele got it eighteen years ago to memorize her father’s death. It blooms every year, reminding us, each spring, of Michele’s father, Kurt Heath. Kurt was born Kurt Hoenigsberg and he escaped Europe to the United States as Europe was falling into the Nazi abyss in 1939. Actually, the escaping started when his family escaped Romanian pogroms under Premier Ion Brătianu by moving to Germany, about the beginning of the last century. Then, as Hitler came into power, they escaped Germany to France. It was a time of fear and loss that I can’t even begin to imagine and it left Kurt a difficult man, especially for his three kids. Having a tree that blooms so brightly, even on cold overcast days, seems like a great way to remember him.
I was listening to a radio program a week or so ago and the program was touting several short essays on death. The only one I remember was an essay – a paragraph, really – on how we really have three deaths, rather than only one. The first time we die is when our heart stops beating, we all know that one, it is the date and time on the Death Certificate. We die a second time when we are put in the ground. The third death, which takes place in the future, is the death that most moved me. The third death, the last death, takes place when our name is said for the last time. When nobody remembers us, when we have disappeared into the flow of history, then we have ceased to exist.
A thought while trying to visit the new Apple building
A couple of weeks ago, on a cold Saturday, Michele and I went down to Wolf Road in Cupertino to buy some pu’er tea. As an aside, Cupertino is pretty famous for being the home of Apple but, what is less known is that it is the home to a large Chinese population. Starting in the late 70s, Chinese immigrants started settling in Cupertino, drawn by its excellent schools. Now it is a haven for good Chinese restaurants. End aside. The turnoff on 280 to Cupertino at Wolf Road has now been enlarged to two lanes to accommodate the increased traffic to the new Apple Park, but that doesn’t mean that just anybody can get into the main building. It is impossible to get close enough to even walk around the outside (and I don’t think I know anyone who can get me in).
But, just from driving around, it is easy to see that the attention to detail is extraordinary. Look at the perimeter fence in the two lower pictures above, the pickets are steel tubes, close to ten feet high, cantilevered up from the ground. There is no top rail, each one stands on its own and has to be strong enough to stop a big guy if not a small car from getting through. They were probably prefabbed in a shop somewhere with cheap labor, but, still, that is an extraordinarily expensive fence.
A couple of weeks after the tea run, I went back to Wolf road to go to the Visitor Center to get a better look. 
The Visitor Center, as well as the main building, was designed by Foster + Partners, mostly Norman Foster, really, and it is exquisite. The design and the detailing, or lack of detailing, is perfect for Apple. It is a great monument to Apple, and that is the problem. 
I love architecture but, unfortunately, when a company builds a monument to itself it usually means that its best days are behind it. When General Motors built its magnificent Technical Center – designed by the great Eero Saarinen – in 1956, General Motors was the biggest, most profitable, company in the world with 51% of the total auto sales in the United States. When McLaren built its spectacular Technology Centre – designed by Foster, like the Apple Headquarters – in 2004, it had been the previous’ decade’s winningest Formula One Team, last year it was second to last only beating out a Swiss Team that is run, more or less, as a hobby. Maybe that is the good news, the world keeps moving, sliding into a veiled future. Apple, like Sony, and IBM before, that once imagined their way through that vail into that future and changed the world. Apple, like Sony, will still be a major technological and design force but their world-changing days are probably over and this is a monument to that wonderful past.