Monday, April 7, 2008
Benefits of anti-gravity
I hope that anti-gravity is discovered during my lifetime because I would like to bake a spherical loaf of bread. It'll stay fresher much longer.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Ooh, I got paid to write again!
Hi everybody,
Here's a link to a story I wrote for the Inlander, Spokane's weekly paper:
http://www.inlander.com/localnews/311943940048840.php
It's about parks in the Peaceful Valley. I think I'll get a whole $70 for it. Yow! I might make enough this year to qualify for a 1099!
Here's a link to a story I wrote for the Inlander, Spokane's weekly paper:
http://www.inlander.com/localnews/311943940048840.php
It's about parks in the Peaceful Valley. I think I'll get a whole $70 for it. Yow! I might make enough this year to qualify for a 1099!
Monday, March 24, 2008
Guilt and gifts
I am convinced that plants and books are the most guilt-ridden gifts, but for opposite reasons. With a plant, you have to write the thank-you letter quickly, before the plant dies (as it will quickly, if you are like me) so that you can describe in the letter how lovely it is while you can still remember it. Otherwise, you feel guilty both for the death of the plant and for your vague, schmaltzy description of it.
The book is the inverse. With a book, you have to delay your answer until you have read it. The thing sits upon the shelf, making you aware both of your clodish insensitivity in not thanking its sender and in your incapability to write a meaningful letter including details from the book. Months pass and your cheery little note whithers like a dying plant until it has been almost a full year since whatever occasion prompted the book, and you open your mailbox with dread, looking for a sarcastic note inquiring whether your postman is still living and perhaps his widow might appreciate this year's gift more than you.
The book is the inverse. With a book, you have to delay your answer until you have read it. The thing sits upon the shelf, making you aware both of your clodish insensitivity in not thanking its sender and in your incapability to write a meaningful letter including details from the book. Months pass and your cheery little note whithers like a dying plant until it has been almost a full year since whatever occasion prompted the book, and you open your mailbox with dread, looking for a sarcastic note inquiring whether your postman is still living and perhaps his widow might appreciate this year's gift more than you.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Lent + Romance = Grapefruit + Milk
It’s Lent 2006, and I’m sitting in my bedroom, looking at a little paper sign. It says “The Old Cathedral would be a great place to get married, but it doesn’t #$*!ing matter.” The stars and symbols are really there because I didn’t want to put something that rude on the wall. Above that despairing phrase is the title, “Forbidden Thoughts 2006.”
I put that thought up there because I’d been having it entirely too much. The idea is that if I recognize that this kind of thinking will get me nowhere, I will stop hurting myself with it. (I think a shrink would call this “cognitive therapy.”) It’s like a gardener breaking up the soil with a pick. If he finds a rock that’s too big to be moved, he can keep whacking at it all day under the principle that he has the right to plant tomatoes wherever he wants, or he can leave a stake in the ground to mark the rock, and just go around it. My little paper sign is there to remind me to leave this rock in my head alone.
Why, you might ask, have I got a rock in my head? Well, I’m a bachelor, and I’m 26. I’m not too happy about it, and thinking about how you’d like to get married when you have no girlfriend is going to get you nowhere. The reason that the cathedral is in my head is that I just discovered this wonderful old church in San Francisco, the Old Cathedral of the Holy Virgin. This church was built in the 1880s by Anglicans. It’s a wooden church with Gothic architecture. The priest there tells me that it was built like a sailing ship, with no nails in it.
In the 1920s, large numbers of Russian refugees of the Bolshevik Revolution came across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco. They bought this Anglican church and turned it into their own cathedral, filling it with beautiful icons. They named it after an icon of the Mother of God entitled “Joy Of All Who Sorrow.” (The short way of dealing with this is to call it “Holy Virgin Cathedral.”) In the 1960s, they built another cathedral in San Francisco, an even bigger one, with five gold onion domes that can be seen from the Golden Gate Bridge. That cathedral looks like it was brought by helicopter from Kiev. It’s also named after the “Joy of All Who Sorrow” icon, so there are two cathedrals with the same name in San Francisco (I don’t get this) but one is the Old Cathedral and the other is the New Cathedral.
The New Cathedral is famous enough to get into tourist guidebooks for San Francisco. Most people who walk into the place for the first time are a little overwhelmed by its towering ceilings, walls covered with frescoes, and not a word of English on any of the icons. There’s also the relics of St. John of San Francisco resting in a glass coffin in the cathedral. Yes, a dead person with his dark green hands and feet visible.
The New Cathedral is a popular place for Orthodox to get married, but if you’re going to invite a large number of friends who haven’t been to an Orthodox church, the grandiose, foreign design of the cathedral, and the dead body in the corner can kind of freak them out.
After having lived in San Francisco for a year, I’ve found the Old Cathedral. It’s a church with a few dozen members led by a priest, who, like me, did not grow up in the Orthodox Church. The services are half-and-half in English and Old Church Slavonic (a liturgical language which hasn’t been commonly spoken in 1,200 years). The cathedral looks more American and familiar, the services are long and contemplative, and the parishioners are a friendly multi-ethnic bunch of Russians, Ukrainians, Eritreans and converts. The cathedral is a large building that could hold 300-400 people easily, but we only get 40 or so people now (most of the founding families are going to the New Cathedral). The children of the cathedral take advantage of this fact because they can hide and play in the narthex of the church without disturbing the service going on up at the altar.
Up the street is Alamo Square Park, with its famous row of Victorian Houses, the second-most photographed structure in San Francisco after the Golden Gate Bridge.
So that’s the explanation for the little paper sign on my wall. The Old Cathedral would be a wonderful place to get married, but it doesn’t matter. Getting married is an abstract topic since I’m not seeing anyone, and it’s Lent. Yes, Lent.
Lent is a funny time for romance. Lent and romance are each appropriate in their own way, but together they’re like grapefruit and milk. You can have them together if you really want them, but it usually turns out weird.
Great Lent is the time in which the Church – meaning we humans – enter in to the spiritual condition of the Old Testament, in the words of theologian Alexander Schmemann. We are outside Paradise, outside of the gates of heaven, and no effort of our own will get us back in. But, the Old Testament tells of the coming of Christ, who can transcend that barrier. Our worship in Lent is a re-enactment of the Old Testament – thank God it’s only six weeks long rather than centuries of preparation! The services of Holy Week, which follow, put us in the shoes of the Apostles, who are seeing the most amazing and frightening events of their lives, who are then delighted in the Resurrection of their Master and God.
Father Schmemann calls the mood of Great Lent “Bright Sadness.” We are sad because of our sins but we are happy because we know what’s coming.
Great Lent is a time of prayer and fasting, of giving up non-essential activities such as television and going to concerts or bars, not because these activities are bad (they can be very helpful) but because you’re focusing your soul on the crucified and risen Christ. It’s the spiritual equivalent of boot camp. It takes a lot of focus, and we don’t try a lot of new things. Having a new girlfriend or boyfriend during Lent is like a professional baseball player painting an oil mural during spring training. It can be done, but do you really want to?
I became Orthodox in 2001, and my first Lent was in 2002. It was also my first year of serving in the Peace Corps in Ukraine. It was a wonderful time of spiritual discovery, with each service bringing me a little closer to the Resurrection. Also, I had discovered how Ukrainian dark bread is really good even without margarine. I ate it all through Lent and lost 40 pounds. It was great. When Pascha came around, it was like graduating from high school again or something – we made it!
Lent 2003 was a little harder to take because the Iraq War started in the second week of Lent, and it seemed like every Ukrainian I knew wanted to tell me what an idiot president that we had.
Lent 2004 is when things started getting complicated. I had just gotten back to the United States, and I was suffering badly from culture shock. (The culture shock of coming home is worse than going there.) And, there was this American Orthodox girl who wanted to spend time with me. She’d studied Slavonic language in university. She was beautiful, brilliant and tall, but she’d been a pretty shy person through high school and college and as a result had learned about men through reading Jane Austen novels.
We started seeing each other a couple of weeks before Lent. I enjoyed talking to her, but I wasn’t too sure about it becoming “a thing” with her. And, I wasn’t too sure about starting a new relationship during Lent in principle. She, on the other hand, was very enthusiastic. Sitting next to her, I thought I could hear the violins playing in her head, a crescendo moving to a climax of energy that could be let loose if we had our first kiss.
I thought we could just talk during Lent and maybe get romantic after Pascha. (And, stupidly, I thought that if I didn’t kiss her, we’d stay friends.) Anyway, it all fell apart a few weeks into Lent and I rarely hear from her now.
During Lent 2005, I met a tall girl at a church conference, and we got to talking about favorite books. She said she was reading Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen. After the conference, we kept writing each other, and she invited me to travel to her town 200 miles away to meet her parents. I was really excited, and I went to the library and checked out Sense and Sensibility to read on the bus. I got through half of this piece of chick lit (the main character was wondering why her suitor had left unexpectedly and was mad that he hadn’t written or called). I met the parents, who really seemed to like me, and then the girl told me her true ambition was to be a nun.
When I got back home, I walked directly from the Greyhound bus station to the library and hurled Sense and Sensibility through the return slot with finality.
Now we come to 2006. It’s Lent again, and, smarting from the embarrassments of the past two years, I swore off talking to eligible women. And, I started attending Old Cathedral, a beautiful place to get married, which brings me back to my original scene of this essay – sitting in my bedroom, I’m looking at that paper sign which bans the use of that dreadfully negative thought.
Let me let the clock run forward some from Lent 2006 now, and I’m going to tell you how my resolutions turn out.
I almost succeed in my efforts not to talk to women during Lent, until I’m at another San Francisco Orthodox church. It’s the evening of Holy Thursday, and I’m in line to go up and kiss the large crucifix that we put in the middle of the church in remembrance of the death of Christ. There, I meet a tall, beautiful young woman with long brown hair who has just moved to San Francisco. We become friends, and I spend most of the next several days with her. She’s very stylish. She says that she likes San Francisco because you can find more unique cocktail dresses in the boutiques and you rarely have to endure the frustration of finding another girl at a party who is wearing the same dress as you.
We go to the Paschal night service together, and then at the feast afterwards, I’m so entranced with the girl that I forget to eat.
That story doesn’t get much further than that, though. Pretty soon, I discover why. I met her on Holy Thursday, but on Holy Wednesday, she went to a dance club called Ruby Skye and met a young man passing through San Francisco. A few months later, she moves to Canada to be with him.
I keep going to church at the Old Cathedral, which, unlike the other church I attend sometimes in San Francisco, has no girls. (I wouldn’t have any problem identifying the other church if it didn’t lead to the identity of the girl I’m talking about.) This is at once a relief and a frustration. It’s a relief not to have to think of the right thing to say.
I go to an Orthodox conference for young adults. There I meet a tall, beautiful young woman from Canada. I tell her a little about my Peace Corps service, and about how I lost weight in Ukraine because the diet is better.
“Now you’re slim,” she said.
“Not quite,” I said. “My ideal weight would be 230.” (I’m six feet nine inches tall.)
“What?” she said incredulously. “That’s how much I weigh. Are you calling me fat?”
That didn’t get any further.
I keep going to the Old Cathedral. One Saturday in July, I’m attending a vigil service, which is an evening preparation service before the next day’s liturgy. During vigil, we have two services combined into one. There’s Vespers, which contains an assortment of readings, mostly from the Old Testament. Then, we move into Matins, which contains the Canon, an assortment of readings about the New Testaments saints that are commemorated that day. It also contains a Gospel reading about the Resurrection. Like Lent, it’s a movement from the Old to the New, from darkness to light.
This particular Saturday, we have some visitors helping out with the service. Rather than the usual one reader to do the responses to the priest’s prayers, we’ve got a real choir director visiting from Boise with her daughter. And, the choir director’s husband is a priest, serving, so we’ve got two priests working together at the service. I hear the lovely singing and reading emanating from the choir’s corner at the front of the church.
The vigil service takes about two and a half hours. At the end, I walk over to the choir’s corner to say hi to the visiting choir director and her daughter. They’re both quite happy to see me. Later on, I ask the daughter out on a date, and rather than the usual “prove you’re worth it” routine that a girl will give you, she says yes.
And, the Old Cathedral turns out to be a great place to get married, and it does matter.
I put that thought up there because I’d been having it entirely too much. The idea is that if I recognize that this kind of thinking will get me nowhere, I will stop hurting myself with it. (I think a shrink would call this “cognitive therapy.”) It’s like a gardener breaking up the soil with a pick. If he finds a rock that’s too big to be moved, he can keep whacking at it all day under the principle that he has the right to plant tomatoes wherever he wants, or he can leave a stake in the ground to mark the rock, and just go around it. My little paper sign is there to remind me to leave this rock in my head alone.
Why, you might ask, have I got a rock in my head? Well, I’m a bachelor, and I’m 26. I’m not too happy about it, and thinking about how you’d like to get married when you have no girlfriend is going to get you nowhere. The reason that the cathedral is in my head is that I just discovered this wonderful old church in San Francisco, the Old Cathedral of the Holy Virgin. This church was built in the 1880s by Anglicans. It’s a wooden church with Gothic architecture. The priest there tells me that it was built like a sailing ship, with no nails in it.
In the 1920s, large numbers of Russian refugees of the Bolshevik Revolution came across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco. They bought this Anglican church and turned it into their own cathedral, filling it with beautiful icons. They named it after an icon of the Mother of God entitled “Joy Of All Who Sorrow.” (The short way of dealing with this is to call it “Holy Virgin Cathedral.”) In the 1960s, they built another cathedral in San Francisco, an even bigger one, with five gold onion domes that can be seen from the Golden Gate Bridge. That cathedral looks like it was brought by helicopter from Kiev. It’s also named after the “Joy of All Who Sorrow” icon, so there are two cathedrals with the same name in San Francisco (I don’t get this) but one is the Old Cathedral and the other is the New Cathedral.
The New Cathedral is famous enough to get into tourist guidebooks for San Francisco. Most people who walk into the place for the first time are a little overwhelmed by its towering ceilings, walls covered with frescoes, and not a word of English on any of the icons. There’s also the relics of St. John of San Francisco resting in a glass coffin in the cathedral. Yes, a dead person with his dark green hands and feet visible.
The New Cathedral is a popular place for Orthodox to get married, but if you’re going to invite a large number of friends who haven’t been to an Orthodox church, the grandiose, foreign design of the cathedral, and the dead body in the corner can kind of freak them out.
After having lived in San Francisco for a year, I’ve found the Old Cathedral. It’s a church with a few dozen members led by a priest, who, like me, did not grow up in the Orthodox Church. The services are half-and-half in English and Old Church Slavonic (a liturgical language which hasn’t been commonly spoken in 1,200 years). The cathedral looks more American and familiar, the services are long and contemplative, and the parishioners are a friendly multi-ethnic bunch of Russians, Ukrainians, Eritreans and converts. The cathedral is a large building that could hold 300-400 people easily, but we only get 40 or so people now (most of the founding families are going to the New Cathedral). The children of the cathedral take advantage of this fact because they can hide and play in the narthex of the church without disturbing the service going on up at the altar.
Up the street is Alamo Square Park, with its famous row of Victorian Houses, the second-most photographed structure in San Francisco after the Golden Gate Bridge.
So that’s the explanation for the little paper sign on my wall. The Old Cathedral would be a wonderful place to get married, but it doesn’t matter. Getting married is an abstract topic since I’m not seeing anyone, and it’s Lent. Yes, Lent.
Lent is a funny time for romance. Lent and romance are each appropriate in their own way, but together they’re like grapefruit and milk. You can have them together if you really want them, but it usually turns out weird.
Great Lent is the time in which the Church – meaning we humans – enter in to the spiritual condition of the Old Testament, in the words of theologian Alexander Schmemann. We are outside Paradise, outside of the gates of heaven, and no effort of our own will get us back in. But, the Old Testament tells of the coming of Christ, who can transcend that barrier. Our worship in Lent is a re-enactment of the Old Testament – thank God it’s only six weeks long rather than centuries of preparation! The services of Holy Week, which follow, put us in the shoes of the Apostles, who are seeing the most amazing and frightening events of their lives, who are then delighted in the Resurrection of their Master and God.
Father Schmemann calls the mood of Great Lent “Bright Sadness.” We are sad because of our sins but we are happy because we know what’s coming.
Great Lent is a time of prayer and fasting, of giving up non-essential activities such as television and going to concerts or bars, not because these activities are bad (they can be very helpful) but because you’re focusing your soul on the crucified and risen Christ. It’s the spiritual equivalent of boot camp. It takes a lot of focus, and we don’t try a lot of new things. Having a new girlfriend or boyfriend during Lent is like a professional baseball player painting an oil mural during spring training. It can be done, but do you really want to?
I became Orthodox in 2001, and my first Lent was in 2002. It was also my first year of serving in the Peace Corps in Ukraine. It was a wonderful time of spiritual discovery, with each service bringing me a little closer to the Resurrection. Also, I had discovered how Ukrainian dark bread is really good even without margarine. I ate it all through Lent and lost 40 pounds. It was great. When Pascha came around, it was like graduating from high school again or something – we made it!
Lent 2003 was a little harder to take because the Iraq War started in the second week of Lent, and it seemed like every Ukrainian I knew wanted to tell me what an idiot president that we had.
Lent 2004 is when things started getting complicated. I had just gotten back to the United States, and I was suffering badly from culture shock. (The culture shock of coming home is worse than going there.) And, there was this American Orthodox girl who wanted to spend time with me. She’d studied Slavonic language in university. She was beautiful, brilliant and tall, but she’d been a pretty shy person through high school and college and as a result had learned about men through reading Jane Austen novels.
We started seeing each other a couple of weeks before Lent. I enjoyed talking to her, but I wasn’t too sure about it becoming “a thing” with her. And, I wasn’t too sure about starting a new relationship during Lent in principle. She, on the other hand, was very enthusiastic. Sitting next to her, I thought I could hear the violins playing in her head, a crescendo moving to a climax of energy that could be let loose if we had our first kiss.
I thought we could just talk during Lent and maybe get romantic after Pascha. (And, stupidly, I thought that if I didn’t kiss her, we’d stay friends.) Anyway, it all fell apart a few weeks into Lent and I rarely hear from her now.
During Lent 2005, I met a tall girl at a church conference, and we got to talking about favorite books. She said she was reading Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen. After the conference, we kept writing each other, and she invited me to travel to her town 200 miles away to meet her parents. I was really excited, and I went to the library and checked out Sense and Sensibility to read on the bus. I got through half of this piece of chick lit (the main character was wondering why her suitor had left unexpectedly and was mad that he hadn’t written or called). I met the parents, who really seemed to like me, and then the girl told me her true ambition was to be a nun.
When I got back home, I walked directly from the Greyhound bus station to the library and hurled Sense and Sensibility through the return slot with finality.
Now we come to 2006. It’s Lent again, and, smarting from the embarrassments of the past two years, I swore off talking to eligible women. And, I started attending Old Cathedral, a beautiful place to get married, which brings me back to my original scene of this essay – sitting in my bedroom, I’m looking at that paper sign which bans the use of that dreadfully negative thought.
Let me let the clock run forward some from Lent 2006 now, and I’m going to tell you how my resolutions turn out.
I almost succeed in my efforts not to talk to women during Lent, until I’m at another San Francisco Orthodox church. It’s the evening of Holy Thursday, and I’m in line to go up and kiss the large crucifix that we put in the middle of the church in remembrance of the death of Christ. There, I meet a tall, beautiful young woman with long brown hair who has just moved to San Francisco. We become friends, and I spend most of the next several days with her. She’s very stylish. She says that she likes San Francisco because you can find more unique cocktail dresses in the boutiques and you rarely have to endure the frustration of finding another girl at a party who is wearing the same dress as you.
We go to the Paschal night service together, and then at the feast afterwards, I’m so entranced with the girl that I forget to eat.
That story doesn’t get much further than that, though. Pretty soon, I discover why. I met her on Holy Thursday, but on Holy Wednesday, she went to a dance club called Ruby Skye and met a young man passing through San Francisco. A few months later, she moves to Canada to be with him.
I keep going to church at the Old Cathedral, which, unlike the other church I attend sometimes in San Francisco, has no girls. (I wouldn’t have any problem identifying the other church if it didn’t lead to the identity of the girl I’m talking about.) This is at once a relief and a frustration. It’s a relief not to have to think of the right thing to say.
I go to an Orthodox conference for young adults. There I meet a tall, beautiful young woman from Canada. I tell her a little about my Peace Corps service, and about how I lost weight in Ukraine because the diet is better.
“Now you’re slim,” she said.
“Not quite,” I said. “My ideal weight would be 230.” (I’m six feet nine inches tall.)
“What?” she said incredulously. “That’s how much I weigh. Are you calling me fat?”
That didn’t get any further.
I keep going to the Old Cathedral. One Saturday in July, I’m attending a vigil service, which is an evening preparation service before the next day’s liturgy. During vigil, we have two services combined into one. There’s Vespers, which contains an assortment of readings, mostly from the Old Testament. Then, we move into Matins, which contains the Canon, an assortment of readings about the New Testaments saints that are commemorated that day. It also contains a Gospel reading about the Resurrection. Like Lent, it’s a movement from the Old to the New, from darkness to light.
This particular Saturday, we have some visitors helping out with the service. Rather than the usual one reader to do the responses to the priest’s prayers, we’ve got a real choir director visiting from Boise with her daughter. And, the choir director’s husband is a priest, serving, so we’ve got two priests working together at the service. I hear the lovely singing and reading emanating from the choir’s corner at the front of the church.
The vigil service takes about two and a half hours. At the end, I walk over to the choir’s corner to say hi to the visiting choir director and her daughter. They’re both quite happy to see me. Later on, I ask the daughter out on a date, and rather than the usual “prove you’re worth it” routine that a girl will give you, she says yes.
And, the Old Cathedral turns out to be a great place to get married, and it does matter.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Getting paid for writing and other life in Spokane
Dear Friends and Family,
Recently, I’ve experienced a rare honor in a writer’s life: having an article get published for which one is paid:
http://www.inlander.com/inlandway/74737699488100.php
They pay $.10 a word, and it’s for the local artsy weekly paper. It’s actual work. I think it’s the first time I’ve earned actual money for writing something in about six years. This story is about the zookeeper-training program that my wife participates in. All of the people I interviewed are classmates of Miri’s.
The zoo is kind of a cool place. They’ve got 45 tigers and two bears up there, and Miri’s been learning quite a bit about their care. Also, she’s been shoveling an awful lot of snow (we’ve had more than 70 inches this year), giving her muscle tone that’s better than mine, which is a little embarrassing. I have gone up to the zoo a few times to help with the shoveling, on Sunday afternoons. One of the things that makes the shoveling so difficult is that it can’t just be tossed to the side; it has to be put into wheelbarrows and taken to a pile. They now have three snow mountains that are each about eight feet tall.
I got to drive a wheelbarrow around the park last Sunday, and I shoveled snow in front of the exhibit of a lion named Jambo, who doesn’t like me very much. He gives me a death stare and crouches like he’s ready to jump every time I come by.
Jambo is a Barbary Lion, a species extinct in the wild, and he’s about 500 pounds in size. He looks kind of like Scar from “The Lion King.” It’s a little disconcerting having only a chain-link fence (even though it’s 12 feet high) between him and me. The other zookeepers tell me that there’s nothing to worry about; he just doesn’t like tall people.
To get from Jambo’s exhibit to the snow pile, I go past Kalki’s exhibit. Kalki is a leopard, he weighs about 100 pounds, and every time I go past, he makes it very clear that I really ought to be in the three pieces rather than one. He shows his teeth (and he’s got a lot) and he lunges at the fence. No amount of cheerful talking gets him to be nice.
As this article also mentions, the zoo has four Siberian tiger cubs, and they behave like a litter of kittens, except for the fact that they’re 25 pounds each. Miri supervises them on Sundays. They’re very cute, and they are a thundering herd when they’re playing. They’ve batted at my hands and tried to hold them with their large feet. They get cardboard toys to play with and Miri has shot several videos of them demolishing the toys.
I’m hoping to expand my work as a freelance writer to include other stories such as the efforts of a University of Idaho researcher to domesticate the mountain huckleberry. The deal with working for the Inlander is that I’m responsible for coming up with my own ideas, which isn’t easy when you’re new to the area. I’ve been writing to PR people at assorted universities and other agencies asking them for ideas and to put me on their press release list, which, I’m sure is going to get me a whole lot of e-mails telling me what a huge deal it is that they’ve raised $200,000 to build a new center to recognize rich donors. But, it’s a start.
WHERE WE LIVE
Miri and I are living in an apartment on the north side of Spokane, Wash. It’s a spacious two-bedroom apartment, and the rent is very reasonable. In San Francisco, we could have rented a doghouse for this amount, which might’ve made the dog happy; we’ve never had a doghouse. We live next door to our apartment complex’s landlady, and she’s very helpful.
We’d love to have guests. The guest room is cozy and well insulated. It’s also been really fun having our own kitchen, especially with all the cool cookware we got as wedding gifts. I’ve been learning all about cooking pot roast recently, although there’s always leftovers when only two people eat it.
MARRIED LIFE
Being married is neat. Miri is wonderful. I don’t know how to describe it beyond that except to say that I’ve relaxed quite a bit since being a bachelor. I actually go to the library and check out books now! That’s something I never did in San Francisco just because I never felt like I could relax enough to read a book. I’ve been buying the New York Times Book Review on Sundays, and the library has had most of the new books I’ve been interested in:
Some of the books I’ve enjoyed include:
The True Meaning of Smekday, by Adam Rex. This is one of the funniest books that I’ve read in the past five years. Several times, Miri came close to throwing me out of bed for laughing too much while she was trying to sleep. It’s a book about an 11-year-old girl and her cat saving the world from invading space aliens. It’s an obvious jab at America’s Indian policies, and a more subtle jab at our Iraq policies. And, it contains a lot of Huckleberry Finn in it as the 11-year-old girl becomes friends with one of the aliens.
A Mirror Garden, by Monir Sharoudy Farmanfarmaian. This is the memoir of an Iranian artist who created a new art with lots of mirrors. As she wanders through this tale of development of her own artistry, she also conveys a great deal of cultural and historical knowledge about Iran. It’s a charming, engaging story, although it is kind of annoying how she mostly exempts herself from public affairs in her home country (that is, until she gets kicked out in the 1979 revolution). The dust cover says that it’s a grace-under-pressure kind of story, and that the author is sort of a Persian Audrey Hepburn. I guess that makes sense, but the only thing I know about Audrey Hepburn is that she makes middle-aged women think about pretty dresses.
The Abstinence Teacher, by Tom Perotta. This is the story of a New England suburb where a fundamentalist church opens up and starts protesting the sex-ed curriculum in the public schools. The two main characters are the sex-ed teacher and a soccer coach who is a member of this church, and who happens to have the sex-ed teacher’s daughter on his soccer team. I didn’t enjoy the plot because of its moral ambiguity, but the characters are wonderfully written, and are very believable, real people.
God’s Politics: Why the Right is Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, by Jim Wallis. This book is 400 pages of political warmth, if there is such a thing, intended to prove that it is possible to be a Christian and vote for a non-Republican. I liked it, but there was a certain hippie-Jesus element in his religion that unsettled me.
There were several other books that seemed promising, but I never made it past page 50:
Sons and Other Flammable Objects, by Porochista Khakpour. The main characters were just too darn mean.
Arthur and George, by Julian Barnes, a fictional account of the youth of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. Well-written, but too proper and British to keep my attention.
Arguing the Just War in Islam, by John Kelsay. I just didn’t care.
FUTURE PLANS
Miri and I are looking for zoos where she can work, which is almost certain to be somewhere other than Spokane (there’s only one here, and we know the payscale). Places we’d like to go in Washington state include the Point Defiance Zoo, the Woodland Park Zoo, and Northwest Trek. We’ve also thought about zoos in Oregon, Colorado and a few other places. This means that we’re likely to move again before 2008 is over, which I am looking forward to. Hopefully we’ll land someplace with a more interesting job market.
OTHER STUFF
I joined a bowling league, and I actually scored 147 in a game last week.
I went caucusing last Saturday. It was fun meeting some neighbors. A whole 28 people showed up from our precinct, which was impressive.
I’m working on a book intended to make the Orthodox Church seem less weird to outsiders. Maybe the title should be, “Don’t Overlook Us Just Because Our Hymns Don’t Rhyme.” The book is intended to apply the principles of marketing to our efforts to communicate with multiple audiences (right now I think we only communicate to people like ourselves).
I finished all of the thank-you cards for the gifts from the groom’s guests at the wedding. At least I think I did. If you didn’t get yours and are wondering why this clod doesn’t write you, please let me know. Miri is still working on the thank-you cards for the bride’s guests and is threatening divorce over my being too smug about it.
So, what’s been up with you? Any of it worth a story in the newspaper, you think?
Please keep in touch.
In Christ,
Thomas Eric Ruthford
Recently, I’ve experienced a rare honor in a writer’s life: having an article get published for which one is paid:
http://www.inlander.com/inlandway/74737699488100.php
They pay $.10 a word, and it’s for the local artsy weekly paper. It’s actual work. I think it’s the first time I’ve earned actual money for writing something in about six years. This story is about the zookeeper-training program that my wife participates in. All of the people I interviewed are classmates of Miri’s.
The zoo is kind of a cool place. They’ve got 45 tigers and two bears up there, and Miri’s been learning quite a bit about their care. Also, she’s been shoveling an awful lot of snow (we’ve had more than 70 inches this year), giving her muscle tone that’s better than mine, which is a little embarrassing. I have gone up to the zoo a few times to help with the shoveling, on Sunday afternoons. One of the things that makes the shoveling so difficult is that it can’t just be tossed to the side; it has to be put into wheelbarrows and taken to a pile. They now have three snow mountains that are each about eight feet tall.
I got to drive a wheelbarrow around the park last Sunday, and I shoveled snow in front of the exhibit of a lion named Jambo, who doesn’t like me very much. He gives me a death stare and crouches like he’s ready to jump every time I come by.
Jambo is a Barbary Lion, a species extinct in the wild, and he’s about 500 pounds in size. He looks kind of like Scar from “The Lion King.” It’s a little disconcerting having only a chain-link fence (even though it’s 12 feet high) between him and me. The other zookeepers tell me that there’s nothing to worry about; he just doesn’t like tall people.
To get from Jambo’s exhibit to the snow pile, I go past Kalki’s exhibit. Kalki is a leopard, he weighs about 100 pounds, and every time I go past, he makes it very clear that I really ought to be in the three pieces rather than one. He shows his teeth (and he’s got a lot) and he lunges at the fence. No amount of cheerful talking gets him to be nice.
As this article also mentions, the zoo has four Siberian tiger cubs, and they behave like a litter of kittens, except for the fact that they’re 25 pounds each. Miri supervises them on Sundays. They’re very cute, and they are a thundering herd when they’re playing. They’ve batted at my hands and tried to hold them with their large feet. They get cardboard toys to play with and Miri has shot several videos of them demolishing the toys.
I’m hoping to expand my work as a freelance writer to include other stories such as the efforts of a University of Idaho researcher to domesticate the mountain huckleberry. The deal with working for the Inlander is that I’m responsible for coming up with my own ideas, which isn’t easy when you’re new to the area. I’ve been writing to PR people at assorted universities and other agencies asking them for ideas and to put me on their press release list, which, I’m sure is going to get me a whole lot of e-mails telling me what a huge deal it is that they’ve raised $200,000 to build a new center to recognize rich donors. But, it’s a start.
WHERE WE LIVE
Miri and I are living in an apartment on the north side of Spokane, Wash. It’s a spacious two-bedroom apartment, and the rent is very reasonable. In San Francisco, we could have rented a doghouse for this amount, which might’ve made the dog happy; we’ve never had a doghouse. We live next door to our apartment complex’s landlady, and she’s very helpful.
We’d love to have guests. The guest room is cozy and well insulated. It’s also been really fun having our own kitchen, especially with all the cool cookware we got as wedding gifts. I’ve been learning all about cooking pot roast recently, although there’s always leftovers when only two people eat it.
MARRIED LIFE
Being married is neat. Miri is wonderful. I don’t know how to describe it beyond that except to say that I’ve relaxed quite a bit since being a bachelor. I actually go to the library and check out books now! That’s something I never did in San Francisco just because I never felt like I could relax enough to read a book. I’ve been buying the New York Times Book Review on Sundays, and the library has had most of the new books I’ve been interested in:
Some of the books I’ve enjoyed include:
The True Meaning of Smekday, by Adam Rex. This is one of the funniest books that I’ve read in the past five years. Several times, Miri came close to throwing me out of bed for laughing too much while she was trying to sleep. It’s a book about an 11-year-old girl and her cat saving the world from invading space aliens. It’s an obvious jab at America’s Indian policies, and a more subtle jab at our Iraq policies. And, it contains a lot of Huckleberry Finn in it as the 11-year-old girl becomes friends with one of the aliens.
A Mirror Garden, by Monir Sharoudy Farmanfarmaian. This is the memoir of an Iranian artist who created a new art with lots of mirrors. As she wanders through this tale of development of her own artistry, she also conveys a great deal of cultural and historical knowledge about Iran. It’s a charming, engaging story, although it is kind of annoying how she mostly exempts herself from public affairs in her home country (that is, until she gets kicked out in the 1979 revolution). The dust cover says that it’s a grace-under-pressure kind of story, and that the author is sort of a Persian Audrey Hepburn. I guess that makes sense, but the only thing I know about Audrey Hepburn is that she makes middle-aged women think about pretty dresses.
The Abstinence Teacher, by Tom Perotta. This is the story of a New England suburb where a fundamentalist church opens up and starts protesting the sex-ed curriculum in the public schools. The two main characters are the sex-ed teacher and a soccer coach who is a member of this church, and who happens to have the sex-ed teacher’s daughter on his soccer team. I didn’t enjoy the plot because of its moral ambiguity, but the characters are wonderfully written, and are very believable, real people.
God’s Politics: Why the Right is Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, by Jim Wallis. This book is 400 pages of political warmth, if there is such a thing, intended to prove that it is possible to be a Christian and vote for a non-Republican. I liked it, but there was a certain hippie-Jesus element in his religion that unsettled me.
There were several other books that seemed promising, but I never made it past page 50:
Sons and Other Flammable Objects, by Porochista Khakpour. The main characters were just too darn mean.
Arthur and George, by Julian Barnes, a fictional account of the youth of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. Well-written, but too proper and British to keep my attention.
Arguing the Just War in Islam, by John Kelsay. I just didn’t care.
FUTURE PLANS
Miri and I are looking for zoos where she can work, which is almost certain to be somewhere other than Spokane (there’s only one here, and we know the payscale). Places we’d like to go in Washington state include the Point Defiance Zoo, the Woodland Park Zoo, and Northwest Trek. We’ve also thought about zoos in Oregon, Colorado and a few other places. This means that we’re likely to move again before 2008 is over, which I am looking forward to. Hopefully we’ll land someplace with a more interesting job market.
OTHER STUFF
I joined a bowling league, and I actually scored 147 in a game last week.
I went caucusing last Saturday. It was fun meeting some neighbors. A whole 28 people showed up from our precinct, which was impressive.
I’m working on a book intended to make the Orthodox Church seem less weird to outsiders. Maybe the title should be, “Don’t Overlook Us Just Because Our Hymns Don’t Rhyme.” The book is intended to apply the principles of marketing to our efforts to communicate with multiple audiences (right now I think we only communicate to people like ourselves).
I finished all of the thank-you cards for the gifts from the groom’s guests at the wedding. At least I think I did. If you didn’t get yours and are wondering why this clod doesn’t write you, please let me know. Miri is still working on the thank-you cards for the bride’s guests and is threatening divorce over my being too smug about it.
So, what’s been up with you? Any of it worth a story in the newspaper, you think?
Please keep in touch.
In Christ,
Thomas Eric Ruthford
Friday, December 14, 2007
28 is the Perfect Age
28 is the Perfect Age
Dear God,
I’m 28. Thank You!
Thank You for all of the tidbits of other people’s lives I’ve been able to live. They have saved me time in determining my own.
Thank You for sending me on the press bus when Bill Clinton did his big tour through Washington in ’96. It was a great experience to have, once. By the end of the day, I’d heard him give his stump speech eight times and was bored to tears. My only real accomplishment was making a Secret Service agent smile. It taught me not to try being Wolf Blitzer.
Thank You for the Korean Neo-Confucianist-turned-Methodist pastor who taught me that I am not a Protestant.
Thank You for the extroverted, depressed and talkative girl who kept me as her “reserve boy.” Thank You for showing me the consequences of choosing one’s friends by breast size, and for not making me pay for it too much.
Thank You for two years in the Peace Corps to teach me that I am not Margaret Mead.
Thank You for two years working in a homeless shelter to teach me that I am not Mother Theresa. And, thank you for my psychotic but altruistic co-worker who taught me that regardless of the quality of an organization’s mission, I’ll never be happy unless I get along with the people in the office.
Thank You for the school shooting, which taught me never to try being a character from “Law & Order.”
Thank You for my large body and slow legs, which taught me never to try being Ricky Sanders from the Redskins.
Thank You for the 30-40 dogs I knew growing up, who taught me the joy of having one dog who will actually bring back your Frisbee.
Thank You for the shy, studious young woman who finished college at the age of 19. She was brilliant, but she learned about men from Jane Austen books. Thank You for teaching me the dangers of wanting a girl just for her brain.
Thank You for the crazy professor who led me up Pinnacle Peak, the top 300 feet of which are a cliff full of footholds that can be used by people with smaller feet than mine. Thank You for teaching me that it’s easier to climb up than down. Thank You for saving my life that day, for teaching me that by slow scooting, a large butt can grip what wide feet cannot, and for saving me from another expensive hobby. My Mom sewed up the shorts.
Thank You for the cheerful Cambodian boy who drew pictures of smiling people who were missing arms and legs. When I realized that they were land-mine survivors, I learned to be thankful for what you have, whatever you have.
Thank You for my current job paying bills for a non-profit too quirky to describe. Though I while away the hours typing things like “kumquat” into Google just to see what happens, I am sure someday I will understand why I had this experience.
Thank You for the former sorority president with long brown hair whom I met at church two years ago. I got such false hopes about her that when she turned out not to like me, I ran across the neighborhood to attend church at the parish with no girls in it. A lovely young woman came to help with the choir one day, and I married her.
I’ve had all these wonderful experiences, and now I’m 28, the perfect age. I know it’s perfect because 28’s divisors equal 28, see: 1+2+4+7+14=28. My next chance at this is 496.
I’m certainly glad I got to do this, especially while I was young enough to enjoy it and before I developed a standard of living. But, I want to ask You, what do I do next? What’s it all add up to? I wish all these parts of my life added up as well as 28.
Dear God,
I’m 28. Thank You!
Thank You for all of the tidbits of other people’s lives I’ve been able to live. They have saved me time in determining my own.
Thank You for sending me on the press bus when Bill Clinton did his big tour through Washington in ’96. It was a great experience to have, once. By the end of the day, I’d heard him give his stump speech eight times and was bored to tears. My only real accomplishment was making a Secret Service agent smile. It taught me not to try being Wolf Blitzer.
Thank You for the Korean Neo-Confucianist-turned-Methodist pastor who taught me that I am not a Protestant.
Thank You for the extroverted, depressed and talkative girl who kept me as her “reserve boy.” Thank You for showing me the consequences of choosing one’s friends by breast size, and for not making me pay for it too much.
Thank You for two years in the Peace Corps to teach me that I am not Margaret Mead.
Thank You for two years working in a homeless shelter to teach me that I am not Mother Theresa. And, thank you for my psychotic but altruistic co-worker who taught me that regardless of the quality of an organization’s mission, I’ll never be happy unless I get along with the people in the office.
Thank You for the school shooting, which taught me never to try being a character from “Law & Order.”
Thank You for my large body and slow legs, which taught me never to try being Ricky Sanders from the Redskins.
Thank You for the 30-40 dogs I knew growing up, who taught me the joy of having one dog who will actually bring back your Frisbee.
Thank You for the shy, studious young woman who finished college at the age of 19. She was brilliant, but she learned about men from Jane Austen books. Thank You for teaching me the dangers of wanting a girl just for her brain.
Thank You for the crazy professor who led me up Pinnacle Peak, the top 300 feet of which are a cliff full of footholds that can be used by people with smaller feet than mine. Thank You for teaching me that it’s easier to climb up than down. Thank You for saving my life that day, for teaching me that by slow scooting, a large butt can grip what wide feet cannot, and for saving me from another expensive hobby. My Mom sewed up the shorts.
Thank You for the cheerful Cambodian boy who drew pictures of smiling people who were missing arms and legs. When I realized that they were land-mine survivors, I learned to be thankful for what you have, whatever you have.
Thank You for my current job paying bills for a non-profit too quirky to describe. Though I while away the hours typing things like “kumquat” into Google just to see what happens, I am sure someday I will understand why I had this experience.
Thank You for the former sorority president with long brown hair whom I met at church two years ago. I got such false hopes about her that when she turned out not to like me, I ran across the neighborhood to attend church at the parish with no girls in it. A lovely young woman came to help with the choir one day, and I married her.
I’ve had all these wonderful experiences, and now I’m 28, the perfect age. I know it’s perfect because 28’s divisors equal 28, see: 1+2+4+7+14=28. My next chance at this is 496.
I’m certainly glad I got to do this, especially while I was young enough to enjoy it and before I developed a standard of living. But, I want to ask You, what do I do next? What’s it all add up to? I wish all these parts of my life added up as well as 28.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Groom's Guide to San Francisco
You’re a relative or friend of mine, and you’ve decided to come some umpteen thousands of miles to my wedding. I’m honored! If your personal budget is at all like mine, the cost of your ticket plus those lovely “just married” mudflaps you’ve got in your suitcase probably don’t have you enthusiastic about blowing $14.95 on the fish and chips basket at Fisherman’s Wharf (drink not included).
This guide is intended to help you have fun, see interesting and special stuff, save money, and pretend that you know the town when friends of yours from work fly here for their vacations to the West’s biggest tourist trap.
First, some cost-saving tips:
1. We have three airports in the Bay Area, all of which are sort of close to a rail station. Go to orbitz.com and run a search on flights from your home to SFO, and click the box “airports within 80 miles” and you might find some deals. (Don’t go to Monterey.) One caveat, though – the Bay Bridge is going to be closed over Labor Day weekend for earthquake upgrade stuff. If you want to get from Oakland to San Francisco, you’ll have to take the BART (underwater subway train).
2. Think about buying a Muni Passport. This is a special pass that gets you unlimited use of the buses and cable cars. A one-day pass is $11, a three-day pass is $18, and a seven-day pass is $24. You don’t have to specify which days until you actually start using the pass.
http://www.sfmta.com/cms/mfares/passports.htm
Or, if you want a little more fun, think about a City Pass, which gets you seven days on the buses and cable cars, and admission to your choice of one of several museums, and you can also go on a boat tour of the bay. It’s $54.
http://www.citypass.com/city/sanfrancisco.html
Now, stuff to do, most of which does not require a rental car:
Socialize with some of the other wedding guests. There are two nearby restaurants that are great for this (motel has no lobby). I would like to suggest Asqew, 3348 Steiner, a shish-kebab grilling place, and Mel’s Drive-In, 2165 Lombard, a classic-style American diner with heavy food that should be eaten slowly. (Public restrooms are often a challenge to find in San Francisco.) One delicious exception from the “heavy food” category – the Tuna Ahi steak sandwich. These two are within a block of the hotel.
See the Wild Parrots of San Francisco. Somebody made a movie about them. I’ve never seen it, but the parrots are real. There are two colonies of them that I know about – one on Telegraph Hill in the trees surrounding Coit Tower, and the other at the Lombard Gate of the Presidio (military base turned into housing and office space). The latter is a mere eight-block walk from the hotel. To get there, walk out of the hotel and cross Lombard at Steiner Street. Go one block to Greenwich and turn right. Walk until Greenwich ends at a T intersection at Lyon and turn right. Go one block to Lombard, turn left and go through the gate with the big cannons by it. The parrots live in the eucalyptus trees up above the park. They have red heads and green bodies, and a wonderful, musical cawing. You’re most likely to see them around sunrise, which will be 6:40 a.m. on Labor Day weekend, but I’ve seen them out at 8 a.m., too.
If you want to go to Coit Tower, which provides a lovely view of both bridges, it’s a 2.5 mile walk. Or, you can take the No. 30 inbound bus, which stops one block to the north of the hotel at Chestnut and Pierce. Take that bus to Washington Square, and get off. From there you can walk up the hill to Coit, or you can wait for the No. 39 bus to come get you and take you to the top. Even if you have a car, this is a good strategy because the parking lot at the top of hill is usually very full.
Another spot worth stopping at in this neighborhood: The Italian-French Bakery at Grant and Green (1501 Grant). It’s one of the few San Francisco bakeries where they still bake bread on site. A small roll costs $.60
Let’s go fly a kite! Crissy Field is a nice, wide, grassy field along the bay with excellent views of the Golden Gate Bridge. Some serious kite flyers like to bring large stunt kites that are fun to watch here. Also, if you’re the type of guest who would bring a wet suit and a sail board to a wedding (and I know one) this is your place to launch. Just be careful at low tide – the current going out of the Golden Gate is strong and getting sucked out to sea sucks.
Getting there. Leave the hotel and walk north on Pierce St. Turn left on Beach, right on Scott. When you get to Marina Blvd., you’ll see Marina Green, which is a very pretty field, too, but you’re not quite there yet. Turn left on Marina. Go to the right at the funny fork in the road, and go through the Marina Gate of the Presidio. (Now you’re on Mason St.) If you look left, you can see the Exploratorium and the Palace of Fine Arts. (Also neat places to go, but we’re flying kites. Focus, please…) Keep walking on Mason, go past a lagoon, and on the right will be a big field, and a beach after it.
Other beaches: There are two other large sandy beaches in San Francisco, Ocean Beach, which unsurprisingly is on the west edge of San Francisco facing the Pacific Ocean. There’s an area where bonfires are allowed. You can walk for about two miles on the beach, and then when you run out of beach, you’re near the San Francisco Zoo. To get to Ocean Beach, walk to Fillmore St. and catch the No. 22 bus going uphill. At Geary Blvd., transfer to the No. 38 Ocean Beach bus going outbound (left-to-right). Make sure it says “Ocean Beach” on the front, as there are several varieties of the 38. Take it to the end of the line (next to a Safeway) and walk into the wind.
And there’s Baker Beach, with its excellent view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s got bigger waves, and a few rocks you can climb on. To get there, use the above directions to walk to Crissy Field. At Mason St. and Halleck, wait at a No. 29 bus stop. Get on there. (Make sure you’re headed towards the Golden Gate Bridge.) Watch out the right window for signs for Baker Beach, and walk through the parking lot. One caution: as you walk towards the north end of the beach, you might see a fellow off in the distance who’s wearing a brown suit. Um, he’s in his birthday suit. That end of the beach is a favorite place for the fabric-free.
If you feel obligated to act like a tourist, you can go to Fisherman’s Wharf via the No. 30 bus mentioned above. At the end of Pier 39 (the singularity point at the center of the tourist black hole) there is a salt-water taffy shop worth visiting. Also, in that same neighborhood is In-N-Out Burger at 333 Jefferson. The burgers here are the best around in my opinion, and they’re cheap! If you’re a chocloholic and you feel drawn to Ghiradelli Square, it’s a fine place to look around, but if you want to actually buy chocolate, go to a drug store or grocery store anywhere in San Francisco, and you’ll find the same products for 20 percent less.
The other cool thing you can do in the Wharf is hop on the F Street Car, which is an historic streetcar line that runs on the surface. It’ll take you through the Embarcadero, and past the Ferry Building, where there is often a farmers’ market. From there, it goes down Market Street all the way to the Castro.
The other super-touristy spot in San Francisco is North Beach, although there are a few places worth seeing there, too. My favorite of them: Café Tosca, 242 Columbus. Order the House Coffee, which is really hot cocoa, steamed milk and brandy. It’s $5. Café Tosca was around back in the Beatnik poet days, so Jack Kerouac would’ve been drinking there. Spec’s 12 Adler Museum Café is nearby at 12 Saroyan Pl. It’s neat just for the signs on the wall. Two others worth visiting: Vesuvio, 255 Columbus, and Caffé Trieste, 601 Vallejo, is where Francis Ford Coppola took his typewriter for 8 hours a day and sat writing the screenplay to The Godfather. If you’re from Pittsburgh and feeling nostalgic, check out Giordano Brothers’, 303 Columbus, which is an almost exact copy of Primanti Bros. This bar/restaurant is famous for putting coleslaw and fries onto Italian sandwiches. (Odd but tasty.)
Nob Hill is also worth strolling around, and there are two spots up there worth seeing: The Top of the Mark, at California and Mason, which is a jazz club on top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel, has excellent music and great views of the city. It became famous with a photograph during World War II of servicemen saying goodbye to America there before they shipped out.
http://www.businessimagegroup.com/sfimages/history/NobHill.html
Grace Cathedral is a gorgeous gothic church at 1100 California St., and in it is a carpet labyrinth that will keep you occupied for some time. Maybe not as good as the one Tom designed in the snow one year at Christmas, but definitely worth trying. Take off your shoes.
Down towards my neighborhood, you can find a few places worth visiting. Tommy’s Joynt, 1101 Geary Blvd., is a restaurant/bar that has very well prepared and tasty meat dishes for less than $10. If you’re set on fish and chips in San Francisco, try Piccadilly’s Fish and Chips at 1348 Polk St. They’re cheaper and better there than the Wharf, but eat them slowly. And, last in this group is Saigon Sandwich at 560 Larkin, the best value in San Francisco, where none of these tasty Vietnamese sandwiches cost more than $2.50. (It’s open 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.)
Getting to all of the above involves a 1.5 – 2 mile walk or getting on a Southbound bus on Van Ness.
Finally, two more gorgeous spots: Holy Virgin Cathedral, at 6210 Geary Blvd., is a beautiful, beautiful church with five gold domes. To get there, follow the directions to Ocean Beach but get off at 25th Street, and walk to the tall Russian Orthodox church there. (Side note – this church shares the same name as the one where the wedding will be. The congregation moved from the Old Cathedral, 864 Fulton St., where we’re getting married, to the New Cathedral, which is, in my opinion, the most beautiful Orthodox church in North America.)
And, I want to put in a plug for the Mt. Lick Observatory, which is a two-hour drive from San Francisco, but it is a really, really neat place where you can get a tour of the telescopes, look at a whole bunch of neat astronomical photographs and see a magnificent view of the Silicon Valley. Here’s a link:
http://mthamilton.ucolick.org/
I hope this guide has been somewhat useful to you. The paper announcements will be going out in a few weeks!
Love,
Thomas Eric Ruthford
This guide is intended to help you have fun, see interesting and special stuff, save money, and pretend that you know the town when friends of yours from work fly here for their vacations to the West’s biggest tourist trap.
First, some cost-saving tips:
1. We have three airports in the Bay Area, all of which are sort of close to a rail station. Go to orbitz.com and run a search on flights from your home to SFO, and click the box “airports within 80 miles” and you might find some deals. (Don’t go to Monterey.) One caveat, though – the Bay Bridge is going to be closed over Labor Day weekend for earthquake upgrade stuff. If you want to get from Oakland to San Francisco, you’ll have to take the BART (underwater subway train).
2. Think about buying a Muni Passport. This is a special pass that gets you unlimited use of the buses and cable cars. A one-day pass is $11, a three-day pass is $18, and a seven-day pass is $24. You don’t have to specify which days until you actually start using the pass.
http://www.sfmta.com/cms/mfares/passports.htm
Or, if you want a little more fun, think about a City Pass, which gets you seven days on the buses and cable cars, and admission to your choice of one of several museums, and you can also go on a boat tour of the bay. It’s $54.
http://www.citypass.com/city/sanfrancisco.html
Now, stuff to do, most of which does not require a rental car:
Socialize with some of the other wedding guests. There are two nearby restaurants that are great for this (motel has no lobby). I would like to suggest Asqew, 3348 Steiner, a shish-kebab grilling place, and Mel’s Drive-In, 2165 Lombard, a classic-style American diner with heavy food that should be eaten slowly. (Public restrooms are often a challenge to find in San Francisco.) One delicious exception from the “heavy food” category – the Tuna Ahi steak sandwich. These two are within a block of the hotel.
See the Wild Parrots of San Francisco. Somebody made a movie about them. I’ve never seen it, but the parrots are real. There are two colonies of them that I know about – one on Telegraph Hill in the trees surrounding Coit Tower, and the other at the Lombard Gate of the Presidio (military base turned into housing and office space). The latter is a mere eight-block walk from the hotel. To get there, walk out of the hotel and cross Lombard at Steiner Street. Go one block to Greenwich and turn right. Walk until Greenwich ends at a T intersection at Lyon and turn right. Go one block to Lombard, turn left and go through the gate with the big cannons by it. The parrots live in the eucalyptus trees up above the park. They have red heads and green bodies, and a wonderful, musical cawing. You’re most likely to see them around sunrise, which will be 6:40 a.m. on Labor Day weekend, but I’ve seen them out at 8 a.m., too.
If you want to go to Coit Tower, which provides a lovely view of both bridges, it’s a 2.5 mile walk. Or, you can take the No. 30 inbound bus, which stops one block to the north of the hotel at Chestnut and Pierce. Take that bus to Washington Square, and get off. From there you can walk up the hill to Coit, or you can wait for the No. 39 bus to come get you and take you to the top. Even if you have a car, this is a good strategy because the parking lot at the top of hill is usually very full.
Another spot worth stopping at in this neighborhood: The Italian-French Bakery at Grant and Green (1501 Grant). It’s one of the few San Francisco bakeries where they still bake bread on site. A small roll costs $.60
Let’s go fly a kite! Crissy Field is a nice, wide, grassy field along the bay with excellent views of the Golden Gate Bridge. Some serious kite flyers like to bring large stunt kites that are fun to watch here. Also, if you’re the type of guest who would bring a wet suit and a sail board to a wedding (and I know one) this is your place to launch. Just be careful at low tide – the current going out of the Golden Gate is strong and getting sucked out to sea sucks.
Getting there. Leave the hotel and walk north on Pierce St. Turn left on Beach, right on Scott. When you get to Marina Blvd., you’ll see Marina Green, which is a very pretty field, too, but you’re not quite there yet. Turn left on Marina. Go to the right at the funny fork in the road, and go through the Marina Gate of the Presidio. (Now you’re on Mason St.) If you look left, you can see the Exploratorium and the Palace of Fine Arts. (Also neat places to go, but we’re flying kites. Focus, please…) Keep walking on Mason, go past a lagoon, and on the right will be a big field, and a beach after it.
Other beaches: There are two other large sandy beaches in San Francisco, Ocean Beach, which unsurprisingly is on the west edge of San Francisco facing the Pacific Ocean. There’s an area where bonfires are allowed. You can walk for about two miles on the beach, and then when you run out of beach, you’re near the San Francisco Zoo. To get to Ocean Beach, walk to Fillmore St. and catch the No. 22 bus going uphill. At Geary Blvd., transfer to the No. 38 Ocean Beach bus going outbound (left-to-right). Make sure it says “Ocean Beach” on the front, as there are several varieties of the 38. Take it to the end of the line (next to a Safeway) and walk into the wind.
And there’s Baker Beach, with its excellent view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s got bigger waves, and a few rocks you can climb on. To get there, use the above directions to walk to Crissy Field. At Mason St. and Halleck, wait at a No. 29 bus stop. Get on there. (Make sure you’re headed towards the Golden Gate Bridge.) Watch out the right window for signs for Baker Beach, and walk through the parking lot. One caution: as you walk towards the north end of the beach, you might see a fellow off in the distance who’s wearing a brown suit. Um, he’s in his birthday suit. That end of the beach is a favorite place for the fabric-free.
If you feel obligated to act like a tourist, you can go to Fisherman’s Wharf via the No. 30 bus mentioned above. At the end of Pier 39 (the singularity point at the center of the tourist black hole) there is a salt-water taffy shop worth visiting. Also, in that same neighborhood is In-N-Out Burger at 333 Jefferson. The burgers here are the best around in my opinion, and they’re cheap! If you’re a chocloholic and you feel drawn to Ghiradelli Square, it’s a fine place to look around, but if you want to actually buy chocolate, go to a drug store or grocery store anywhere in San Francisco, and you’ll find the same products for 20 percent less.
The other cool thing you can do in the Wharf is hop on the F Street Car, which is an historic streetcar line that runs on the surface. It’ll take you through the Embarcadero, and past the Ferry Building, where there is often a farmers’ market. From there, it goes down Market Street all the way to the Castro.
The other super-touristy spot in San Francisco is North Beach, although there are a few places worth seeing there, too. My favorite of them: Café Tosca, 242 Columbus. Order the House Coffee, which is really hot cocoa, steamed milk and brandy. It’s $5. Café Tosca was around back in the Beatnik poet days, so Jack Kerouac would’ve been drinking there. Spec’s 12 Adler Museum Café is nearby at 12 Saroyan Pl. It’s neat just for the signs on the wall. Two others worth visiting: Vesuvio, 255 Columbus, and Caffé Trieste, 601 Vallejo, is where Francis Ford Coppola took his typewriter for 8 hours a day and sat writing the screenplay to The Godfather. If you’re from Pittsburgh and feeling nostalgic, check out Giordano Brothers’, 303 Columbus, which is an almost exact copy of Primanti Bros. This bar/restaurant is famous for putting coleslaw and fries onto Italian sandwiches. (Odd but tasty.)
Nob Hill is also worth strolling around, and there are two spots up there worth seeing: The Top of the Mark, at California and Mason, which is a jazz club on top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel, has excellent music and great views of the city. It became famous with a photograph during World War II of servicemen saying goodbye to America there before they shipped out.
http://www.businessimagegroup.com/sfimages/history/NobHill.html
Grace Cathedral is a gorgeous gothic church at 1100 California St., and in it is a carpet labyrinth that will keep you occupied for some time. Maybe not as good as the one Tom designed in the snow one year at Christmas, but definitely worth trying. Take off your shoes.
Down towards my neighborhood, you can find a few places worth visiting. Tommy’s Joynt, 1101 Geary Blvd., is a restaurant/bar that has very well prepared and tasty meat dishes for less than $10. If you’re set on fish and chips in San Francisco, try Piccadilly’s Fish and Chips at 1348 Polk St. They’re cheaper and better there than the Wharf, but eat them slowly. And, last in this group is Saigon Sandwich at 560 Larkin, the best value in San Francisco, where none of these tasty Vietnamese sandwiches cost more than $2.50. (It’s open 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.)
Getting to all of the above involves a 1.5 – 2 mile walk or getting on a Southbound bus on Van Ness.
Finally, two more gorgeous spots: Holy Virgin Cathedral, at 6210 Geary Blvd., is a beautiful, beautiful church with five gold domes. To get there, follow the directions to Ocean Beach but get off at 25th Street, and walk to the tall Russian Orthodox church there. (Side note – this church shares the same name as the one where the wedding will be. The congregation moved from the Old Cathedral, 864 Fulton St., where we’re getting married, to the New Cathedral, which is, in my opinion, the most beautiful Orthodox church in North America.)
And, I want to put in a plug for the Mt. Lick Observatory, which is a two-hour drive from San Francisco, but it is a really, really neat place where you can get a tour of the telescopes, look at a whole bunch of neat astronomical photographs and see a magnificent view of the Silicon Valley. Here’s a link:
http://mthamilton.ucolick.org/
I hope this guide has been somewhat useful to you. The paper announcements will be going out in a few weeks!
Love,
Thomas Eric Ruthford
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