Category: Bay area, Calif.

Morning fog in the Coastal Range

When I first started looking at classical Chinese landscape painting seriously, I never thought of it as realism: those steep fantastical hills, the mists that so conveniently provide a sense of distance and perspective, none of that looked real to me. But when you live on the Pacific Rim, you see that much of classical Chinese landscape painting is realism.

For the past couple of days, I have been staying at a retreat center on a steep hillside in a redwood grove in the Coastal Range of northern California. This morning the mist drifted in the valley below us, and this is what I saw when I looked out my window at about eight o’clock:

The first rain

Camp Meeker, California

As I drove up here to where the ministers meeting would take place, it started to rain. By the time I arrived, it was raining steadily. I got out of the car, and it smelled like rain and wet ground. It was the first rain I had seen and felt and smelled since last spring. I took a deep breath.

This evening, Carol texted me: “Where do we have tarp for rowing machine?” This summer, Carol bought a rowing machine for ten dollars, and we had set it out on our little second floor deck so we could sit outdoors while we were using it. But now it was getting wet. I texted back: “Crap. Look in basement.” I hope she managed to find the tarp and protect the rowing machine from the rain.

Silicon Valley wins again

A Silicon Valleyite has gotten another distinguished award. Yesterday, John Perry of Stanford University was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which states: “To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that’s even more important.”

Perry’s original research was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education in February, 1996. Perry did not go in person to receive his award, which is no surprise since the awards were given out at Harvard University.

Berkeley fog

I had to drive to a meeting at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley (UUCB) yesterday, and because I had to drop Carol off near the Rockridge BART station in Oakland, I wound up driving over Grizzly Peaks Boulevard. This was the route I drove to get to work for a year in 2003-2004: from north Oakland up over Grizzly Peaks to UUCB. It is the most dramatic route I have ever commuted along: a section of Grizzly Peaks Boulevard is a winding mountain road through Berkeley Hills a thousand feet above the cities of Oakland and Berkeley. On a regular basis, I would pull over during my commute to enjoy the view: the sun setting over the Golden Gate, the play of light on San Francisco Bay, the view down into the wooded canyons along the ridge.

As I drove along Grizzly Peaks Boulevard this morning, a huge bank of fog was moving in through the Golden Gate from the Pacific; it had mostly covered the city of Berkeley, and was at the foot of the Berkeley Hills. It was so beuatiful, I had to stop, even though I was a little late for the meeting. Looking out I saw the brilliant white of a thousand-foot high fog bank stretching out across the bay, and looking down I could see ridges and cnayons covered with live oaks and eucalyptus trees, and I could see one little corner of the city of Berkeley before the fog blocked my view.

By the time I drove back up over Grizzly Peaks Boulevard three hours later, the fog was swirling up over the peaks, and there was no view of anything except white fog.

October 2 sermon topic: discuss….

My title for this Sunday’s sermon here in the Palo Alto church is “Liberal religion, Silicon Valley style.” I’m a big believer in the notion that any religious organization will be influenced by the immediately surrounding community. Therefore, Unitarian Universalism in Silicon Valley should have some distinctive features. So what are some of the most important of those distinctive features, and how do they affect the way we do religion here? Here are three possible answers:

(1) One distinctive feature of Silicon Valley life is the ethic of hard work: here in the Valley, people believe that the harder one works the better off one will be. By contrast, Thoreau’s famous book Walden, an important book for many Unitarian Universalists, extolls the virtue of spending less time working hard, and more time contemplating Nature. I’d say Silicon Valley liberal religion extolls the virtue of lots of hard work, and tends to ignore thinkers like Thoreau.

(2) Another distinctive feature of Silicon Valley life is that we live in a truly multicultural and multiracial place. Santa Clara County is a white-minority county with no dominant racial or ethnic group; this is what the rest of the United States will look like within a generation. And while our congregation is 85-90% white, that also means that we are 10-15% non-white, and we’re all so used to living in the multiracial, multicultural world of Silicon Valley that it seems to me we’re pretty relaxed about becoming an increasingly multicultural congregation.

(3) Now add another distinctive feature of Silicon Valley life: the engineering and entrepreneurial drive which lead us to believe we can fix anything if we put our minds to it. I think Silicon Valley is going to be the place where liberal religion figures out how to be truly multiracial and multicultural. Here in the Valley, multiracial doesn’t mean there are both black and white people in the congregation, it means there are whites, blacks, East Asians, and South Asians; and people who were born in several different countries (Russia, India, Taiwan, etc.).

So liberal religion in Silicon Valley is characterized by a strong work ethic; by multiculturalism; and by a can-do attitude. This raise the interesting question that I’m going to try to address in the sermon: Does this mean all we’re going to do in our congregation is work our asses off? Because if all we’re going to do is to work our asses off (or work our collective ass off, whatever), even if it’s for a good cause, I’m just not interested. There has to be a better way to do religion….

‘Tis the day to talk like a pirate, arr!

Ahoy there, me hearty, ’tis “International Talk Like a Pirate Day.” Avast with that landlubber talk! Hoist up a dipper o’ the finest, strongest grog and drink it down wi’ a wannion, for when ye’re three sheets t’ the wind, ye’ll find it easy enough to belay that landlubber talk. By the Powers, ’tis great grand thing t’ have the the Jolly Roger flyin’ on the yardarm above while ye say “Shiver me timbers!” t’ the parrot perched on yer shoulder.

Arrrrrrr!

On the edge of summer

We have had a chilly summer. Of course, summer doesn’t really come to the Bay area until September; that’s when we get our hot days. But summer this year has been cool even by Bay area standards, with below normal high temperatures for June, July, and August.

This past week has been the first week that has felt like real summer. We still haven’t had any really hot days, but at least the high morning fog blowing in off the Pacific has burned off early enough to allow the days to warm up a little bit.

And just in time for summer, some of the trees are starting to turn. Some of the leaves on the trees across the street from us are beginning to curl up and turn yellow and brown. I drove by a sweet gum tree in Berkeley early this week that was completely red. And the trees around the parking lot at the church are beginning to be tinged with red.

Earthquakes

My friend and fellow blogger E wrote a brief post on the magnitude 5.8 earthquake that hit Washington, D.C.: nothing was broken, the cats were scared, a few things fell. And as I started reading her post, sure enough Carol and felt a small magnitude 3.9 earthquake* here in San Mateo: there was a little bit of a noise, the house shook noticeably for about five seconds, and it was over. E ends her post by saying: “What a great reminder that we cannot change much of what happens, but we have a choice in how we behave in response.”

* Later downgraded to 3.6.

Fog

I had to drive up to San Francisco early this afternoon. When I left Palo Alto, it was sunny and warm. Heading north on highway 101, when I got to San Mateo I started seeing low clouds to the north. By the time I got to San Francisco, the sky was gray, and some people were driving with their headlights on.

In San Francisco, it was cloudy, damp, and down to 60 degrees, a good ten degrees cooler than it had been in Palo Alto, with a bracing northwest wind. You could sense the huge old mass of water in the Pacific Ocean just a few miles away.

At 4:30 I drove back to San Mateo along Interstate 280, around the Pacific Ocean side of San Bruno Mountain, and then up into the hills of the Coastal Range. Fingers of fog were creeping over the mountains, winding down through the tree-covered hills around Crystal Springs, but the sun evaporated them before they got very far.

When I arrived home in San Mateo, it was sunny and warm. But almost as soon as the sun set, the fog drifted over the Coastal Range, and became low clouds that now cover the sky above us. The temperature is down to 60 degrees, and outside it feels like it did in San Francisco this afternoon: cloudy, damp, and cool.

A pastoral concern

Mike Cassidy writes the “Silicon Valley Dispatches” column for the San Jose Mercury News. He is feeling a wee bit cynical these days. With unemployment still high, Cassidy is wondering how the recent federal deficit reduction actions by Congress are going to promote job creation by American corporations:

It’s not a lack of money that is holding companies back from hiring. Collectively, corporations for months have been sitting on record levels of cash, reaching about $1.9 trillion today. Remember the recent headlines about Apple (AAPL) having more cash than the U.S. government?

And profits are up widely. The Wall Street Journal’s David Wessel was on the radio recently citing an analyst’s report that found that the first 100 of the S&P 500 to report quarterly earnings saw profit increases averaging 12 percent. Meantime, Wessel’s own paper was reporting on a new wave of layoffs at American companies.

So if you think further fattening corporate coffers with tax breaks will spur hiring, think again. — “Politicians and corporations are playing us for fools”

As someone who’s working in Silicon Valley, and as someone who knows a lot of people who are out of work or in danger of losing their jobs, I’m with Cassidy on this one. We have some of the richest companies in the world here in the Valley, and we saw 10.5% unemployment in June in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metropolitan statistical area, which means some 94,300 people classified as unemployed (that doesn’t count the underemployed, or the people who have given up looking for work).

Speaking as a minister, I wish Congress and the president and CEOs would realize this isn’t about getting political points or pleasing shareholders.