Photocosm

Egg Beaters At Ten O'Clock! Egg Beaters At Two O'Clock!

I enjoy looking up when I'm out walking. It gives the spine a gentle stretch and prevents the onset of that painful syndrome, Photographer's Armpits. Here are some recent results from looking vertical. As always, click on the thumbnail photos to see something larger.

I visit Sam's Log Cabin two or three times a month. Open for breakfast and lunch, it's on San Pablo Avenue in Albany, a small town next to Berkeley. The building really is a log cabin, built around the 1930s, I think. Decades ago, you could order log cabins from a catalog, genuine modular housing. Scott told me there's maybe one more in the Bay Area still standing, he heard it's in downtown Oakland. Sam's is a family operation, friendly and informal. That reminds me of the first time I visited Sam's Log Cabin. Scott stopped me at the cash register and said, "We run an informal joint here, mister, take your tuxedo someplace else."

If all you do is walk in and sit down and look at your menu and eat your food, you're going to miss the ceiling art installation. There's a string of egg beaters hanging near the skylights. A couple of dozen, some of them no doubt quite old. The object hanging in the top of the photo is a wind chime. I could not get a good angle to shoot all the egg beaters, but they're up there. Anyway, it's a simple art display, and attractive. And they're relevant to the art of cooking. Less relevant, let's say, would be a display of two dozen hand grenades from around the world. Or maybe two dozen pruning shears. Yes, the egg beaters are fine, and safe.

If you visit Safeway or any other store that sells helium-filled balloons, you will have noticed that some of them get away. The Safeway employee -usually somebody from the flowers section who also fills the birthday and anniversary balloons- hands the balloon string to the customer, where it slips out of the fingers and hits the ceiling. For the next couple of days, the balloon hovers out of sight from most customers.

This balloon, I guess, is a dragonfly. Or maybe a mosquito. Maybe when it's done feeding on human blood, the wings turn completely red. Guess it gave customers the creeps. Nobody was shopping on that aisle. One woman said it looked demonic, like an angel with the head of an insect. I had visited the aisle to buy condiments, but decided there was enough at home. Plus, I always carry a couple of the tiny mustard packs in my wallet.

There's a big construction project at the University of California-Berkeley near Soda Hall. Somebody said they're installing a coin-operated particle accelerator. I photographed a white crane as it hovered above Soda Hall from the other side of the street. This was not the most enjoyable experience. I had to crane my head way back to get the shot, which was the wrong way to move the neck and spine. Gave me a bad case of Photographer's Thumbs, but it's over now.

This may be a double-vertical vision thing here. You look up to notice the sunflowers over your head, and then you look above the flowers to notice the interesting clouds. I photographed this in merry old Emeryville.

My Brush With Fame

There's a local radio show host, Ronn Owens of KGO, who sometimes invites callers to phone in and discuss their "brush with fame."  Here's mine.

I was walking to the grocery today, and it was about ten minutes before they were going to close for the day. However, I came upon a car with a license plate that had NFL in it.  It was parked at the curb next to a meditation ashram. When the driver rolled down the window for me, I asked if he'd played with the NFL.

The driver was Bob Brown, a member of the Hall of Fame, He was inducted at Canton along with John Elway in 2004.  When I walked up, he had been on the phone talking to somebody he was driving to visit in the Berkeley area, but he took a few minutes to chat with me.  Bob Brown turned out to be an easygoing gentleman, relaxed and sunny.  He mentioned going to school at Nebraska, and I used to live in Omaha, so we both remembered the brutal winters there. Bob said his Nebraska uniform number, 64, was retired by the school, only the second time that had been done. Considering the number of great players Nebraska has turned out over the years, having a number retired is extraordinary.

Bob even took his Hall of Fame ring off, so I got to examine it briefly. I put it atop the car to get a photo. Having never met anybody from the NFL, this was a treat. 

I mentioned to Bob how I used to hear his name mentioned now and then on the local sports station, KNBR, or on all-news KCBS.  John Madden or somebody would be interviewed about the latest class of Canton inductees to the Hall of Fame, and he'd mention how they needed to vote in Bob Brown.  John Madden said Bob Brown was the most dominating offensive lineman he'd ever seen.

Since I don't have a television and can't watch NFL games, I don't follow it much until the playoff games on the radio, but even I had heard about Bob Brown.  He played in the 60s and the early 70s.  He was big, but he was light on his feet, and very strong. Bob Brown once hit a goalpost with his forearm, and he broke the goalpost. Selected six times for the  Pro Bowl, seven times to the all-NFL in his ten seasons, Bob fully expected to be selected for the Hall of Fame after the 5-year wait that follows retirement, but the wait turned out to be longer than he expected, 26 years. He was a finalist for the Hall of Fame five times or so, finally getting in with the seniors committee.  Imagine having to wait 26 years for something you know you have earned.

I had to rush to the grocery before they closed, and Bob had a destination to reach, so we shook hands and parted.  Bob Brown is the first NFL player I've ever met, it's a nice way to start.

Mount Tamalpais

I remember the first time I saw Mt. Tam, the highest peak around the San Francisco Bay. It was way back, about 1974, and I was driving down the San Rafael Bridge from the east side of the bay into Marin County.  Mt. Tam and a nearby hill both hovered above the clouds straight ahead, and the view seemed like one of those paintings you see of Chinese peaks in the clouds.  Many people consider it the symbol of Marin.  I always thought that would be a Mercedes, but here are a couple of photos I shot this last month. Maybe I'll include a Mercedes some other time.

The moon sets behind Mt. Tam pretty early in the morning, so I shot this soon after sunrise. The birds were starting to move, so one of the slow-moving blackbirds shows up well here.

There's a fire lookout station on the east summit of Mt. Tam. When the sun rises at the right time of year, the windows of the lookout station mirror the sun's rays. The effect doesn't last long, but it's a brilliant view for a few minutes.

It's funny how relative height matters.  Mt. Tam is so close to the bay, and it rises so steeply, it seems higher than it really is.  I used to hike in the Sierra Nevada range of California, Mt. Whitney is one of my two favorite mountains. The other is Longs Peak in Colorado.  You would have to stack Mt. Tam three times up before you even approached the altitude where the trail begins for hiking up Mt. Whitney.  At 14,495 feet, Mt. Whitney soars more than two vertical miles over the high desert floor of Owens Valley. However, it's nowhere close to the Bay Area, so Mt. Tam is fine.

The steepness of Mt. Tam does have some people concerned. The dreaded San Andreas fault runs near this section of Marin, though it's offshore mostly coming up from the south. Some have speculated that a blind thrust fault may be found beneath Mt. Tam. That could explain the sudden rise of the mountain. An earthquake along that fault could also devastate the northern part of the Bay Area in an earthquake. On the other hand, if it isn't one thing, it's another. We have so many faults around the Bay Area, what's one more?