small change

taste of honey

I haven’t had much time for writing posts these last couple of days, but I did snap a photo of the sunset (wit my Droid phone camera) on the path by the Corte Madera Creek as we took the dog for her evening constitutional after dinner last night.

Moments like these, with the setting sun brushing the landscape a brilliant amber, the color of honey, amplified by the billowing fog over the coastal ridges is what make me happy and content to call California home.

the other shade of green in marin

I peruse craigslist for job postings every now and then, just to keep up to date on trends in job openings and pay scales. This morning, on the part-time list for the North Bay I came across a listing for a position that required fairly extensive programming skills in areas that cover Apache, Python, DB2  JavaScript, CSS, and so forth. It also called for "superior creative and innovative problem-solving skills."

And the pay for such a resourceful and broadly skilled programmer's services? $15-$20 per hour.And no benefits.

I know of cleaning people and gardeners (who wield leaf blowers for the better part of an hour) who make more per hour than this post is offering.

Then again, I also know that the people who offer this kind of pay for such work can outsource the work itself to India for a lot less than $15 per hour. 

Another posting from today is for an opening as an editorial assistant to the CEO offers $12 per hour and a 30-hour week, with no benefits, of course.

For some time now I had the feeling that wages offered for job openings in Marin are much lower than in the majority of the other counties in the San Francisco Bay Area. Marin is the home of some of the best-paid people, who work elsewhere, or live off their trust funds and investments. Of course, all this is just a hunch, and I would need to crunch some numbers and watch the trends more carefully if I were to make the case as fact, rather than just opinion.

Art by the Lagoon

Marin Arts Festival: the sky through a hoop
Originally uploaded by alembic

On Sunday, a balmy June day, if there ever was one, I told the spouse and younger son that we are going to the Marin Arts Festival. This outing was one way to avoid launching the dreaded decluttering process in the garage. Then again, I was also hoping, rather secretly, that this tour might inspire me to reuse the stuff I’ll have to sort through sooner, rather than later.

The festival is held on the lawn by the Lagoon in the Marin Civic Center. The building is one of my favorite landmarks. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who died before constructions was completed. Every time I drive by it, its golden structure topped with blue domes makes me think of California captured and contained in an idea made concrete. California as an abstraction, I suppose.

The festival was lively and varied. There was art of every sort, from the whimsical to the practical. With two stages located strategically, there was plenty of entertainment too, from belly dancing to blues. And there was food and wine, of course. And there was the crowd, too, some of whom carried on, dressed to the hilt, as if they were their own creation, a piece of living art.

 

If I came away from the festival with inspiration for the clutter, I did not do so knowingly. That’s because, after awhile the bounty of so much visual input shut my senses down in self defense.

At the edge of the festival, by the lagoon, I saw a number of big families enjoying picnics. I can’t even recall how many years it has been since I went to a picnic. So, if inspiration was to move me to do something, it’s to plan another diversion from tacking the clutter, this time with a picnic.

More pictures from the festival posted on my Flickr page.

target practice

I lived in the US for the better part of my life.  But even as a certified American now, there were a couple of quintessentially American things I have never done in all these years of living here. One was a trip to Las Vegas, which got crossed off my list a couple of years ago when I went there to celebrate a relative’s birthday. The other, and an equally exotic destination for me, was an outing to a shooting range. Last night I got to check this item off the list by going to an indoor shooting range for a ladies’ night special.

I went as a guest of one of my yoga buddies. Yes, yoga buddies. In fact, we arranged to go to the range right after our regular yoga class, along with our Pilates instructor, who was to join us in the yoga practice. We are a sporty bunch, what can I say?

At first, in the haze of cognitive dissonance, I asked how weird will it be to load and then fire a gun so soon after getting in touch with our inner peaceful selves in savasana. My friend reassured me that for her, going shooting after yoga makes her more relaxed and at the same time focused on the range. Well, duh, I thought some more, martial arts have a certain balance of peaceful stillness and wild violence built into them, don’t they?

So there we were, the three of us, in our spandex yoga garb, at the indoor shooting range in a warehouse in a quiet industrial park in Marin, waiting in line to get our gear: arms and ammo, when just hours ago, we were waiting in line to check in to our yoga class. Our Pilates teacher wanted to try a shotgun, something with more heft than the 9- millimeter my yoga buddy already owned and brought with her. I was content to just try my friend’s weapon, since eons ago, back when I lived in British Columbia, I had handled a hunting rifle – or, should I say that the hunting rifle handled me, when it first threw me back shortly after I fired it. At some cans, by the way, not wildlife, of which there was plenty around, and which was dangerous, too. I am talking grizzlies and mountain lions here. But back to Marin….

What hit me the most as we stood in line, because ladies night seemed to be a busy time in there, was the sheer number of weapons around me in all the display cases. My yoga buddy was giving me the lowdown on starter guns, which I thought was hilarious. Who knew?

Rarely have I been around a firearm, let alone an arsenal of sorts, all for sport, of course, as was the case at the range. The guns and rifles came in every size,and they looked so ordinary, so plain, so bland, like amorphous stuff in a garage or a workshop. But how scary it all was, as I kept looking at them with a different awareness, unlike the stuff in a garage, which is an affront only to the aesthetic senses, perhaps. For a moment, as we stood there by the cases, I felt vertigo and wanted to bolt from the place. But there we were. Ladies night at the shooting range, and I had to use my yoga wits to stay put. So it was good, after all that I went to yoga class first.

One group of women, next to us waiting to check in, though, looked pumped for action. Literally, I suppose, as a couple of them were teetering on extreme stilettos. There were about five or so in the group. They were also made up to the hilt. A couple of them sported earrings the size of small teacup saucers, which made for a strange look when they donned the ear muffs over them. A little bit as if an alien ship had landed on the side of their head and got tangled in their locks. These ladies were definitely not your usual Marin denizens, not just by the way they dressed, but also by the way they carried themselves, as if they were already armed and dangerous.

Once we got inside the range,  we found ourselves next to these ladies again. They were clearly having a ball, though there were times  I flinched, even as a novice at arms that I am, when I saw the way they were reloading, brandishing those weapons this way and – well, except for one of them, who looked clearly bored and sat, for the entire time, texting on her phone, while bullets were flying all around. I am pretty sure her aim with words, though, was faultless.

We had our own problems in our lane. Our Pilates instructor’s weapon kept jamming, so we ended up spending most of the time loading my yoga buddy’s gun (even as I write this, the cognitive dissonance is pinging in my head). Then, there was that fluttering in my stomach as I aimed and pulled the trigger for the first time, missing the point I selected on the target by a considerable number of inches. Even with the gun cocked. Even with pretending, in the farthest recesses of my imagination, to be Clarice Starling. After firing off a few rounds, I got more comfortable, at least with holding the gun, though not more precise with my target. The fluttering persisted though, perhaps because of the constant shots from the adjoining lanes and the air inside heavy with the smoke and taste of metal.

When we fired off all our ammo and it was time to leave, we met the ladies from our neighboring lane in the waiting area again. They were posing for pictures and discussing where they would go for drinks back in the East Bay, seeing how much they already saved on this little spree that was free, as far the rentals were concerned.

As for us, well, I can only speak for myself; I went home, the smell of gunpowder still heavy in my nostrils.

a walk on the wild side

Along the creek, the harried and hazy winter sun paints a bright patina over mud, gulls, egrets, dogs, and their walkers. It's been ages since I walked this way, and there have been some changes I noted. The most notable, the attempt at a natural meadow of wildflowers, or rather, what remains of it at this time of the year. That, and the dog walkers at this hour, who happened to be mostly men and mostly middle-aged.

A couple of years ago, when I walked this “beat” regularly, the only people out in the early afternoon were the old with their dogs and the younger women with their children. I don't think these men were self-employed and in charge of their schedule. I think that they were, like the few wildflowers still seeding, men who have lost their jobs and seething int heir own quiet way. But then, what do I know?

Besides, all this speculation about men gone to the dogs could have been nothing more than the glare of the sun carving depth into the shallows of speculation.

sound off

Last night we went out to dinner to one of the fancier restaurants in our neighborhood. Not that you can't go there dressed in casual wear, but since the tables are sheathed in linen and you are given real linen napkins, and the waiters wear ties, there is a sense of formality, even if the fare is Californionized French bistro cuisine. Oh well, that was quite a mouthful, but let me say, in case of the actual food, quite tasty.

It was quite amazing to be able to snag a table without much forethought on a Friday night. The economy, in spite of the rosy words from Wall Street, is tanking even in this county, where there are still quite a few people who are profiting through their investments or running companies that keep amazing the pundits with those steady jobless growth spikes in income statements.

Even before we got to our dessert, not even by 9 pm, the restaurant was more than half empty. All of which gave me an excellent view of the couples and small parties at the various tables. About 90 percent of the tables, laden as they were with drinks, plates, and bread baskets, also had a menage of iPhones or other smart phones in plain view.

I half expected that waiters would arrive with trays of small chargers for the phones, ready to feed them choice electricity, to keep them humming along. But lucky for us, these phones were all lethargic, reluctant to go off or even grab their owner's attention away form the company or the food. Still, there they were, even in stealth mode, erasing distances as much as making closeness a faraway concept.

reach

This morning, when I headed out, I grabbed my camera. But when I walked across the parking lot at my destination, lit up by the tender November morning sun as it was, I lost my nerve for photography. I had in mind to document something from the day as part of the commitment I made to post every day. Without the images, I have only words to speak of that slice from the day that contained my arrival to the shopping center in Larkspur Landing in Marin. Larkspur Landing is a gateway of sorts, as well as a small self-contained community of shops, offices, and apartment and condo complexes. In this it is both a destination and a point of departure.

The ferry to San Francisco departs from across the shopping center and heads into the (most of the time) balmy bay, shortly after it makes a turn at San Quentin prison. The Marin Airporter picks up and unloads travelers near the cinema complex. A local microbrewery, kitty-corner across from a 24-Hour Fitness gym dispenses beer and provides a place for musicians to show their talent. A small Thai restaurant serves up delicious fare, down the corner from a Starbucks, which, in turn is only a few steps from a wine store with a regular schedule for tastings. A Bed Bath & Beyond store has everything to satisfy one's need to nest in a limited space with a limited budget – or not, as the case of one's finances may be.

If I were young and single, and with a job in the Financial District in San Francisco, and if I also had a penchant for living near the water with biking and hiking trails within reach, without having to get into a car, and if it mattered  to me that my commute be fun and different and leisurely at once, I would have jumped at the chance to live at Larkspur Landing, even if the one thing the area lacks is a grocery store. But if I were the kind of person I just described, I wouldn't be spending much time in a grocery store anyway.

I have been coming to the Larkspur Landing Circle shopping center at least 3 to 4 times a week for over three years now. Not to shop, or work, but to “work out.” The yoga studio where I take classes is located here. Until YogaWorks bought it and transitioned the programs into its structure of offerings, the YogaStudio, as it was called before had its own loyal, but probably slowly aging following.

Under the new management, much has changed at the studio. The most obvious change was in a structuring of classes that would appeal to a younger and trendier crowd than the one that has been the core group of the old studio. The business of yoga, from this standpoint, is not yoga's business. It's a fine distinction, but one that makes sense to me. It makes sense because it allows for the generation of cents, which in turn guarantees that yoga thrives in its many forms, regardless of arguments about the legitimacy of those forms.

Though much has changed in terms of the structure of the classes at the studio, the place itself looks the same, even if to most of us old-timers it seems that a certain lovin' feelin' is gone, gone. Luckily for us, most of our teachers also made the transition into the new studio, so when we gather in class, not only is that old feeling the same, but thankfully the actual practice as well. And, after all, this sense of the practice is what we are after.

Which reminds me that, though I went looking for something exciting and different to post today, in my search for the new, it is the discovery of a familiar that thrilled me the most: the recognition that some changes, the wider they reach, the deeper they can root you in the one place that sustains your own reach.

glazed over

On Sunday, we went to the farmers' market at the Civic Center in Marin. I was still in the mood to cook, or rather to feed people and so share more conversation in their company, as I had done in New York so recently that the tastes of the meal my friend and I cooked for mutual friends lingered still on my tongue.

And so I cruised through the aisles of our splendidly bountiful market, each heaped to the gills with organic produce that shamelessly seduced the senses while making quite a cogent plea with the mind over the shameless prices it asked us for the pleasure to consume them. Of course, I had to remind myself, one doesn't go to this market to save one's health or the environment, for that matter. One goes, because, well, it's the market in a sense in which it evokes nostalgia about how life once was or could be some day: immediate but seasonal, unpredictable but deeply satisfactory for the senses, local and sustainable, and all sorts of other juxtapositions that can't be made about supermarkets.

Within 20 minutes of going from aisle to aisle, we were loaded down with bags of produce, bread and cheese, and fish, all of which we hauled to our car. During the drive home, I planned the menu, now that I had the ingredients. In the afternoon I cooked and cooked, and when dinnertime came around, well the son living with us had no interest in the dishes I made and cobbled together a meal of his own, the husband sat down with his plate at the counter with the newspaper spread out, and I retreated to the couch with my plate and turned on the television. That we all sat like this in the same room, made it the more absurd.

It's not that I forgot to invite people for dinner. It's more that the kind of impromptu meal we had in New York, where we went from having one person invited over for dinner in the morning to having four more come as the hours went by as an impossible event in the space of the suburbs where I live. That Marin used to be known as a New Age capital of sorts, with spontaneity ranking high on the list of crazy things seems ironic to me, because its never something I ever experienced here. Arranging dinner dates with people here seems to be a complicated affair that requires super skills with synchronizing calendars, all of which infuses each dinner I manage to organize with an element of formality that spoils both the cooking and the conversation for me, in spite of the great ingredients, the lovely climate, and the spacious dining room – elements that didn't feature so prominently in similar events I had when I lived in Vancouver or all the times I went to see my old friends, originally from Vancouver, in New York.

a matter of taste

While I have been putting in double duty in the fitness area by going to the gym with spouse (as well as pursuing my regular yoga practice and classes), I have also been cranking out healthier meals to help the afore-mentioned spouse get healthier and shed pounds. This dinner I cooked the other night, happened to taste pretty good, but more than that, it also pleased my eyes, besides appeasing the palate. The cauliflower, purple to start with, turned a deeper shade through steaming, and the asparagus went a deeper shade of green through the same process. The local black cod, cooked with turmeric, took on a bright yellow glow. All these colors played off each other beautifully (well, at least for my eyes) on the pristine white plate. That every bite also tasted great was a bonus, for the eyes! That I chose to photograph the meal with a copy of the magazine, aptly titled “Marin: Extraordinary Living,” is a bonus of sorts for you guys to dismiss this whole thing as one of those moments that give Marin county in California its particular and peculiar reputation.

snow - continued

Yep, this morning, when the sun came up, there was proof positive that snow fell on Mt. Tamalpais yesterday. Not that those tiny white slivers on top there have much chance of lasting, given the power of the sun, but it's cold enough, if not to freeze off those proverbial orbs, at least enough to have left thin sheets of ice on decks and stairs still out of the reach of sun.