Perhaps it's the standard post-vacation letdown, or the fact that my stomach has been in a serious state of disarray for the past week (reasons unknown), or the low-level stress that's run like an invisible but annoying thread through the past several days. It might also be the truly sucktastic "summer" weather San Francisco's been mired in lately, complete with more fog and wind and brutally chilly temperatures that anyone in the northern hemisphere should have to bear in August, or the fact that I woke from a pleasant dream this morning to the realization that it had in fact been only a dream, and thus all of the pleasantness was more or less blown to bits.
Whatever the reason, I've been exceedingly grumpy lately, which makes all of the above even more difficult to put up with than they'd normally be, which in turn makes me even grumpier, and so on and so freakin' on. Here's hoping the tide soon turns, that my whinging interior monologue stops, that I stop cringing every time I get hit in the face with a gust of wind, that I remember that crappy summers are the price we pay here for the ability to hike in shorts come January.
Off now to enjoy our daily half-hour allotment of sun. Dammit.
8.10.2005
8.07.2005
In Season
Val and I went to the Center City farmers' market this morning, where I was somewhat surprised to find a new crop of apples already out on several vendors' tables. Though I'm sure I should've learned otherwise by now, I was fairly well convinced that any apples one might see during the summer were sure to have come from cold storage, while the new ones wouldn't pop up until next month at least.
But there they were: beautifully variegated new apples, their skins taut and matte, their flesh firm under a thumb press, their scent vague but sweet. I picked up a few, considered buying them, thought about how nice it would be to once again be able to toss a piece of fruit in my purse without having to worry about the mangled pulp it would be when I pulled it out again. (One does not, if one is smart, heave a ripe piece of stone fruit into a bag with any other contents.)
There were the peaches, though.
Across from the stand with the loveliest new apples was a table with fat yellow cling peaches, which, as a sign above them noted, were "Almost like mango!" And it's true: they were dense and juicy and a crazy shade of yellow-orange not often seen in the peach world. They had the feel and taste of summer on the tongue. They carried the suggestion that although San Francisco may be dipped in fog, although our moments of daylight may be slowly ticking away, although there's been a slight downward pull to things since I got back from vacation--that despite all of these things, summer is still very much with us, fall still somewhere uncertainly down the line.
The apples were beautiful, and tempting in their new ripeness. But I know they'll be around for months to come, while the peaches, one of these Sundays, will quietly fail to appear, and all of the berries will be gone, all of the plums done for the year.
While there's still time, then, I opt to fill my bag with those hefty yellow globes, to gingerly carry them home so they won't bruise, to lean over the sink as I bite into one, feel the juice run down my hand and splash onto the white porcelain below. While there's still time, then, I hold what will soon--all too soon--be little more than a memory.
But there they were: beautifully variegated new apples, their skins taut and matte, their flesh firm under a thumb press, their scent vague but sweet. I picked up a few, considered buying them, thought about how nice it would be to once again be able to toss a piece of fruit in my purse without having to worry about the mangled pulp it would be when I pulled it out again. (One does not, if one is smart, heave a ripe piece of stone fruit into a bag with any other contents.)
There were the peaches, though.
Across from the stand with the loveliest new apples was a table with fat yellow cling peaches, which, as a sign above them noted, were "Almost like mango!" And it's true: they were dense and juicy and a crazy shade of yellow-orange not often seen in the peach world. They had the feel and taste of summer on the tongue. They carried the suggestion that although San Francisco may be dipped in fog, although our moments of daylight may be slowly ticking away, although there's been a slight downward pull to things since I got back from vacation--that despite all of these things, summer is still very much with us, fall still somewhere uncertainly down the line.
The apples were beautiful, and tempting in their new ripeness. But I know they'll be around for months to come, while the peaches, one of these Sundays, will quietly fail to appear, and all of the berries will be gone, all of the plums done for the year.
While there's still time, then, I opt to fill my bag with those hefty yellow globes, to gingerly carry them home so they won't bruise, to lean over the sink as I bite into one, feel the juice run down my hand and splash onto the white porcelain below. While there's still time, then, I hold what will soon--all too soon--be little more than a memory.
8.06.2005
Up the Creek
Going Upriver, the documentary about John Kerry's experiences both in and after Vietnam, is intriguing and engrossing for a number of reasons: it presents an interesting picture of the time (which I know little about, though I'd like to learn more), draws some parallels (perhaps somewhat unintentionally) between Vietnam and Iraq, and offers a fascinating portrait of both Kerry himself and the Vietnam Veterans against the War movement.
What struck me the hardest, though, was the sense of being thrown back to last summer and early last fall, when it still seemed like the voting populace of the U.S. might do the right thing and oust Bush, when the vibe from the Kerry campaign (and MoveOn, and the DNC) was full of promise and possibility, when I was still able to summon something akin to hope about the state of political affairs in this country.
Granted, the film presents Kerry in an unabashedly positive and unblemished light, and doesn't touch on his life and career after the 70s; it was intended as (and is) a somewhat heroic portrait of a somewhat heroic (though also somewhat flawed) man. But still.
Though it's refreshing to remember what I felt last year at this time--a fairly even blend of hope and doom, perhaps tilted slightly in favor of the former--there's no overlooking the fact that these days, much of the hope is gone. I need to stick more religiously than ever to my media diet: no more than headlines when reading anything about Bush, Iraq, the Republican-led Congress, and a bevy of other blood-boiling topics, and no radio or TV news that might feature any sort of sound clip involving Dubya's voice. Because not only do these stories remind me daily, endlessly, of how misguided the country seems these days, they also serve as unwelcome reminders of what might have been. If only.
What struck me the hardest, though, was the sense of being thrown back to last summer and early last fall, when it still seemed like the voting populace of the U.S. might do the right thing and oust Bush, when the vibe from the Kerry campaign (and MoveOn, and the DNC) was full of promise and possibility, when I was still able to summon something akin to hope about the state of political affairs in this country.
Granted, the film presents Kerry in an unabashedly positive and unblemished light, and doesn't touch on his life and career after the 70s; it was intended as (and is) a somewhat heroic portrait of a somewhat heroic (though also somewhat flawed) man. But still.
Though it's refreshing to remember what I felt last year at this time--a fairly even blend of hope and doom, perhaps tilted slightly in favor of the former--there's no overlooking the fact that these days, much of the hope is gone. I need to stick more religiously than ever to my media diet: no more than headlines when reading anything about Bush, Iraq, the Republican-led Congress, and a bevy of other blood-boiling topics, and no radio or TV news that might feature any sort of sound clip involving Dubya's voice. Because not only do these stories remind me daily, endlessly, of how misguided the country seems these days, they also serve as unwelcome reminders of what might have been. If only.
8.02.2005
Her Hardest Hue to Hold
After exceedingly foofy and delicious cocktails and nibbles at No. 9 Park, Otis and I tripped happily out into the evening (still--to my tastes, at least--wonderfully warm) as my phone rang. It was DaveG, calling from my flat in San Francisco, where he was staying for the weekend while here for a wedding.
So the three of us strolled through the Common and into the Gardens, past the swan boats and the impossibly lush flowers and the grass an otherworldly shade of green, all of it bathed in a Golden Hour light so perfect it almost seemed fake.
Later in the evening, after picking up dinner and wine and consuming both on the roof of the boys' apartment, Otes and I watched the city sink into night (the moon full, the air humid) and had an extended, Pinot-fuelled discussion about memory and forgetting, about Buddhism's dictum that life is suffering and Emism's dictum that it can't possibly be (at least not always), about the way I stack my favorite memories and moments from the past so they're a solid force beneath and behind me when everything else seems to crumble. About how something as simple as the recollection of sitting at the hotel bar in Vancouver with Dave and Otes, drinking Cosmos with floating cranberries and eating far too many spiced almonds and talking about politics--about how this simple moment can be so many things at once: gone, ever-present, treasured, impossible to return to.
At length, when our livers cried uncle and my legs started to sport a lattice of mosquito bites and we couldn't reach any of the west coast friends we'd tried placing tipsy phone calls to, we went downstairs and to bed, another moment--a day full of moments--gone.
But then there was the next day, spent traipsing around the city in search of NPS Passport stamps. There was the sweetness of picking blueberries with Isabella at Twin Chimneys, of laughingly watch her eat two ripe berries for every half-green one she put in the basket. There was dinner on the river in Westerly with Mom, Dad, and Greg, and meeting baby Joseph for the first time, and sitting on the patio at Crispo with Ry and Amy while the city sky went dark and the lights came on around us. There was--as there always is--moment after moment after moment.
Robert Frost, in "Nothing Gold Can Stay," gets it half right:
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower,
But only so an hour.
The leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
But long after the golds and flowers and dawns are gone, there's something about them that sticks around. On my summer vacation, I let dozens of moments come and go. I can't ever have them back just as they were, but that isn't (never is) the point. I know where to find them when I need them.
So the three of us strolled through the Common and into the Gardens, past the swan boats and the impossibly lush flowers and the grass an otherworldly shade of green, all of it bathed in a Golden Hour light so perfect it almost seemed fake.
Later in the evening, after picking up dinner and wine and consuming both on the roof of the boys' apartment, Otes and I watched the city sink into night (the moon full, the air humid) and had an extended, Pinot-fuelled discussion about memory and forgetting, about Buddhism's dictum that life is suffering and Emism's dictum that it can't possibly be (at least not always), about the way I stack my favorite memories and moments from the past so they're a solid force beneath and behind me when everything else seems to crumble. About how something as simple as the recollection of sitting at the hotel bar in Vancouver with Dave and Otes, drinking Cosmos with floating cranberries and eating far too many spiced almonds and talking about politics--about how this simple moment can be so many things at once: gone, ever-present, treasured, impossible to return to.
At length, when our livers cried uncle and my legs started to sport a lattice of mosquito bites and we couldn't reach any of the west coast friends we'd tried placing tipsy phone calls to, we went downstairs and to bed, another moment--a day full of moments--gone.
But then there was the next day, spent traipsing around the city in search of NPS Passport stamps. There was the sweetness of picking blueberries with Isabella at Twin Chimneys, of laughingly watch her eat two ripe berries for every half-green one she put in the basket. There was dinner on the river in Westerly with Mom, Dad, and Greg, and meeting baby Joseph for the first time, and sitting on the patio at Crispo with Ry and Amy while the city sky went dark and the lights came on around us. There was--as there always is--moment after moment after moment.
Robert Frost, in "Nothing Gold Can Stay," gets it half right:
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower,
But only so an hour.
The leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
But long after the golds and flowers and dawns are gone, there's something about them that sticks around. On my summer vacation, I let dozens of moments come and go. I can't ever have them back just as they were, but that isn't (never is) the point. I know where to find them when I need them.
7.11.2005
Vacating
Though I still haven't quite figured out how I'll get from Philadelphia to New York on a Friday evening while avoiding Amtrak (because I refuse to pay $54 for a one-hour trip, and I doubly refuse to pay $81 for the same trip during peak hours), and though I haven't yet tried to butter up my Auntie Paula to ferry me to Logan at 5 a.m. for my return trip to SF (A.P., if you're reading this, you're the best great aunt ever!), my itinerary for my upcoming vacation is set. It goes something like this:
- Fly into Boston next Wednesday, where Otes will fetch me from the airport and I will (of my own volition, though the promise of wine helps) spend the next two days helping him and Sean pack for their impending move.
- Head to the Cape on the weekend, either via Greyhound with Jonny D. on Friday night or with Paula (and the rest of New England) on Saturday morning.
- Drive home with Mom, Dad, and Greg on Sunday night, and stay in CT until Wednesday morning, at which point I will...
- ...fly to Pittsburgh to see Rachel, David, and adorable little Joseph for a few days.
- Fly to Philly (alas, Southwest goes no closer to NYC) on Friday afternoon, and somehow (SEPTA? New Jersey Transit? Greyhound again?) deposit myself in downtown Manhattan.
- Ingest as much of New York as I can before Amtrak-ing back to Boston on Sunday night for one last hurrah before the aforementioned crack-of-dawn departure on Tuesday.
It's funny: I keep describing this trip to friends and colleagues as a chance to relax, do no work, and generally lounge around. Of course, it's clearly insane: not even counting my cross-country flights, I must be spending the equivalent of a full day on various forms of mass transit, and I haven't scheduled more than three days in one place.
But I couldn't be happier. This is a vacation I feel like I need more than ever, both because I still feel like I need to keep slathering myself in some sort of balm that will help dull the effects of the various stressful events of the past half-year and because, with the exception of Amtrak's bathrooms and Logan before dawn, I love everything that awaits me: some of my best friends, some of my favorite cities, time with the family that loves me without question and without fail, the chance to pick blueberries from Twin Chimney's bushes and run the Rail Trail in Orleans in the cool of the morning and swim in the Atlantic.
And the chance, best of all, to fall asleep on thirteen cricket-soaked, open-windowed evenings with the smart of heartache, the gut-punch of financial worry, and the tug of uncertainty thousands and thousands of miles away.
7.06.2005
Birthday Wish
Though I'd dig a Bose iPod dock, and would love the security of knowing that business will be as steady going forward as it has been for the past few weeks, and also wouldn't mind a relaxing weekend at Canyon Ranch, what I wish more than anything today is that 31 will be easier than 30.
6.28.2005
How the August Night
The town I grew up in sits on the shore of Long Island Sound in southern Connecticut. It's sleepy and fairly quiet for a good part of the year (or at least it was), but when summer comes, everything in it and about it comes to life.
It's perhaps because of that, and because I'm a July baby (the 6th, just like Dubya, Nancy Reagan, and Sly Stallone), that summer has always been my favorite season, and the one that seems to me the most mythic and full of possibility. I never learned to love the snow or the nostril-freezing temperatures of winter, and spring and fall always felt to me little more than the lead-in and end to summer, respectively. In June, July, and August, I was happiest and most at home in my life.
So when I first read Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnet X, from Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree, it made me feel giddy and lachrymose and punched in the gut and hopeful, all at the same time.
Many of Millay's other poems got me, too--my Auntie Paula gave me a book of them, which I still have, spine broken at the pages I read the most, full of notes and stars next to the pieces I liked best, even a few pencil marks on sonnets whose meter I tried to annotate with that odd series of swoops and dashes. But Ungrafted Tree X was (and remains) the only poem I could recite by heart.
What grabbed me was not only the fact that the poem is fairly exploding with ripe summer imagery--which, in itself, was (and is) often enough to win me over--but also its sly, quiet promise that sometimes, when the moon is right and the crickets loud enough and the circumstances sufficiently mysterious to invite no questioning, sometimes you find what you're looking for.
That appealed to me in an immense and unshakeable way when I spent my summers in Niantic (as my journals from that time can attest). And even now, when my summers are windy and chilly and fog-bound and my skepticism is sometimes sharp enough to poke holes in most notions of romantic promise, Millay's poem holds out a sense of hope like an outstretched hand and a swim-perfect moonlit lake.
Plus, the last line is a kicker.
X
She had forgotten how the August night
Was level as a lake beneath the moon,
In which she swam a little, losing sight
Of shore; and how the boy, who was at noon
Simple enough, not different from the rest,
Wore now a pleasant mystery as he went,
Which seemed to her an honest enough test
Whether she loved him, and she was content.
So loud, so loud the million crickets' choir...
So sweet the night, so long-drawn-out and late...
And if the man were not her spirit's mate,
Why was her body sluggish with desire?
Stark on the open field the moonlight fell,
But the oak tree's shadow was deep, and black, and secret as a well.
It's perhaps because of that, and because I'm a July baby (the 6th, just like Dubya, Nancy Reagan, and Sly Stallone), that summer has always been my favorite season, and the one that seems to me the most mythic and full of possibility. I never learned to love the snow or the nostril-freezing temperatures of winter, and spring and fall always felt to me little more than the lead-in and end to summer, respectively. In June, July, and August, I was happiest and most at home in my life.
So when I first read Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnet X, from Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree, it made me feel giddy and lachrymose and punched in the gut and hopeful, all at the same time.
Many of Millay's other poems got me, too--my Auntie Paula gave me a book of them, which I still have, spine broken at the pages I read the most, full of notes and stars next to the pieces I liked best, even a few pencil marks on sonnets whose meter I tried to annotate with that odd series of swoops and dashes. But Ungrafted Tree X was (and remains) the only poem I could recite by heart.
What grabbed me was not only the fact that the poem is fairly exploding with ripe summer imagery--which, in itself, was (and is) often enough to win me over--but also its sly, quiet promise that sometimes, when the moon is right and the crickets loud enough and the circumstances sufficiently mysterious to invite no questioning, sometimes you find what you're looking for.
That appealed to me in an immense and unshakeable way when I spent my summers in Niantic (as my journals from that time can attest). And even now, when my summers are windy and chilly and fog-bound and my skepticism is sometimes sharp enough to poke holes in most notions of romantic promise, Millay's poem holds out a sense of hope like an outstretched hand and a swim-perfect moonlit lake.
Plus, the last line is a kicker.
X
She had forgotten how the August night
Was level as a lake beneath the moon,
In which she swam a little, losing sight
Of shore; and how the boy, who was at noon
Simple enough, not different from the rest,
Wore now a pleasant mystery as he went,
Which seemed to her an honest enough test
Whether she loved him, and she was content.
So loud, so loud the million crickets' choir...
So sweet the night, so long-drawn-out and late...
And if the man were not her spirit's mate,
Why was her body sluggish with desire?
Stark on the open field the moonlight fell,
But the oak tree's shadow was deep, and black, and secret as a well.
6.19.2005
Digitalia
Thanks to JDS, I am now the proud owner of a free Flickr Pro account. This is somewhat amusing, as I don't actually own a digital camera yet (though my intentions to purchase one post haste are absolutely good--would that I had done so while I still had the guidance of my technical advisor at my disposal) and thus have to rely on scanning and uploading old-school photos. (As a side note, what do we call these? Analog photos? Offline photos? Normal photos?)
Anyway, despite the laughable amount of labor involved in getting my stuff prepped to be posted, I've been doing plenty of precisely that over the past few days, and now have a decent photostream in place, which you can (and should) visit at http://www.flickr.com/photos/emwilska/.
With Flickr, as with my iPod, I have no excuse for coming to the party so late (and not fashionably so, I'm afraid), and I can't claim to be on the cutting edge of anything. I guess that by nature I'm inclined to go the low-tech route, and it takes a while before I can really see the appeal of the digital alternative in many realms.
But once I do, damn if I don't go whole hog on the thing.
Anyway, despite the laughable amount of labor involved in getting my stuff prepped to be posted, I've been doing plenty of precisely that over the past few days, and now have a decent photostream in place, which you can (and should) visit at http://www.flickr.com/photos/emwilska/.
With Flickr, as with my iPod, I have no excuse for coming to the party so late (and not fashionably so, I'm afraid), and I can't claim to be on the cutting edge of anything. I guess that by nature I'm inclined to go the low-tech route, and it takes a while before I can really see the appeal of the digital alternative in many realms.
But once I do, damn if I don't go whole hog on the thing.
6.16.2005
From the "Yes, You Read That Correctly" Department
Leonard Nimoy Hosts the Arab-Jewish Ensemble of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Monday, June 27, Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco
6.09.2005
What I was trying to say
William Least Heat-Moon's River-Horse: Across America by Boat is a much longer and much sloggier read than his Blue Highways, which I inhaled over the course of a few days when I first read it. River-Horse has taken me, oh, three months of before-bed reading.
Though I find it too long, way, way, way too detailed, and lacking in the tight and fascinating storytelling that makes Blue Highways so brilliant, it does have some seriously impressive moments.
The gist of the book is that Heat-Moon undertakes a cross-country voyage by boat, often following in Lewis and Clark's footsteps (or, well, boat wakes, I suppose) but also making some out-of-the-way turns that will allow him and his small crew to stay on the water for as much of the journey as possible, save for a few unavoidable portages.
On a stretch of the Missouri River in South Dakota, Heat-Moon lies on the ground in the sunshine:
He goes on:
And finally:
All of which is essentially a much more lyrical and thought-provoking (and, in some ways, heart-rending) way of saying what I was trying to get at in my post on my eighth San Francisco anniversary. Heat-Moon has put the words down better than I ever could; to one such as me, for whom finding written proof that someone understood what's in my head before it actually got there is like striking gold, that alone is worth the effort of soldiering through 502 dense pages.
Though I find it too long, way, way, way too detailed, and lacking in the tight and fascinating storytelling that makes Blue Highways so brilliant, it does have some seriously impressive moments.
The gist of the book is that Heat-Moon undertakes a cross-country voyage by boat, often following in Lewis and Clark's footsteps (or, well, boat wakes, I suppose) but also making some out-of-the-way turns that will allow him and his small crew to stay on the water for as much of the journey as possible, save for a few unavoidable portages.
On a stretch of the Missouri River in South Dakota, Heat-Moon lies on the ground in the sunshine:
"I thought how far I was from where and when this journey began, how I was so distant from that fellow passing for me twenty months ago, the one so eager to learn the secrets of river passage. Could he--the me of that moment--and I sit down together, he would want to know what I knew and absorb what I had experienced, and he would regard me enviously, just as I do those men who have returned from the moon."
"But there would be forever a difference between him and me: I went and he did not. He set the voyage in motion, but he could not take it. Just as I, who lay on the Dakota hill, could not know whether Nikawa would ever reach the Pacific, he could never see the outcome of his preparations, unless somewhere, on some far other side, time permits us to meet our past selves, all those we have been. Our physical components change every seven years, so our brains are continuously passing along memories to a stranger; who we have been is only a ghostly fellow traveler."
And finally:
"As for me, what might I learn from him who laid out the voyage or from all those others I once was? ... What a report I might deliver to them about where they have sent me! ...They could redraw the faded lines on the long map of my journey here, point out clearly where it was I took a road other than the one they intended, and they could tell me whether they found it a good one or rankly stupid. Were human memory total and perfect, perhaps I'd be only one person from start to finish, but forgetfulness cuts me off from who I've been so that hourly I am reborn."
All of which is essentially a much more lyrical and thought-provoking (and, in some ways, heart-rending) way of saying what I was trying to get at in my post on my eighth San Francisco anniversary. Heat-Moon has put the words down better than I ever could; to one such as me, for whom finding written proof that someone understood what's in my head before it actually got there is like striking gold, that alone is worth the effort of soldiering through 502 dense pages.
6.01.2005
To Dana on Her 30th Birthday
As your elder, I'd like to share with you a few things 30 has taught me:
- Sometimes life throws up on your shoes, sort of like George Bush Sr. once did to the Prime Minister of Japan.
- Ruined shoes (figuratively speaking), emotional potholes, and other curveballs are much easier to deal with when you have good friends and good (or, hell, any) booze at your side.
- Now and well into your 30s, you're still allowed to do things that are silly, immature, and sometimes outright dumb.
- The Burton snowboards ad from 1989 was right: the more you live, the less you die.
5.30.2005
5.18.2005
Improving Web forms
In his Techno Files column in last Sunday's Times Business Section ("Finally, Sisyphus, There's Help for Those Internet Forms"), James Fallows notes that technological advances as evidenced in Google Maps, for one, are helping to lessen the pain of dealing with interactive Web forms. Rich Internet Applications/Rich Web Applications/Ajax/call the developments what you may have made Web sites much smarter and much better able to anticipate (and act on) what the user will do next.
Improving the bone structure and the central nervous system of Web technologies is indeed an awesome development, and can go a long way toward mitigating the frustration that's still such a large part of so many online interactions. But what Fallows doesn't touch on, and what seems to me equally crucial, is the need to keep improving the "skin" of Web sites: the layouts, the look-and-feel, and, of course, the text. Because even the most brilliant backend can be nullified if the user can't understand what's happening up front, or runs into an error that's too frustrating or too complex to overcome.
I admittedly know little to nothing about the whole "rich" phenomenon, so it's entirely possible that attention to front end details is part and parcel of it. In any case, it's worth remembering--as countless tests on sites from the simplest to the most complex have shown--that brilliance behind the scenes can't, on its own, make up for weak text and bad design. The three need to work together if Web forms (including error messages and shopping carts) are ever to be as good as they can be.
Improving the bone structure and the central nervous system of Web technologies is indeed an awesome development, and can go a long way toward mitigating the frustration that's still such a large part of so many online interactions. But what Fallows doesn't touch on, and what seems to me equally crucial, is the need to keep improving the "skin" of Web sites: the layouts, the look-and-feel, and, of course, the text. Because even the most brilliant backend can be nullified if the user can't understand what's happening up front, or runs into an error that's too frustrating or too complex to overcome.
I admittedly know little to nothing about the whole "rich" phenomenon, so it's entirely possible that attention to front end details is part and parcel of it. In any case, it's worth remembering--as countless tests on sites from the simplest to the most complex have shown--that brilliance behind the scenes can't, on its own, make up for weak text and bad design. The three need to work together if Web forms (including error messages and shopping carts) are ever to be as good as they can be.
5.10.2005
Can't we all just get along?
As one who, for years, did not use any Apple products (indoctrinated in the ways of Windows as I was, and too addicted to right-clicking to do without it on a Mac), I was spared the full ridiculousness of the Apple/Microsoft bickering for a long while.
And then I got my iPod, installed iTunes on my (Windows-based) laptop, and started to twig to the full scope of the incompatibility between the two camps. The iTunes installation was messy and clunky, and though it eventually succeeded, it was a marked pain in the ass, which I'm told it's markedly not on Apple machines.
This afternoon, I made the mistake of falling for the Buy 1 Song/Get 5 Free offer MSN Music is currently running. (I'll save my comments on the perplexing and convoluted design of the site for another post, but will only say for now that clearly last year's exodus has had some repercussions.) I downloaded a Neko Case song--which involved an inordinate number of steps and a needless dearth of feedback (but again, that's another post)--confirmed that it was saved to My Music folder, closed WMP (which opened automatically, to my annoyance), and then tried to import it to iTunes, as one is wont to do.
But I should've known better. I should've known that files from MSN Music come not in any format that anyone else on the face of the planet would ever use, but rather in some crazy proprietary format that is, of course, incompatible with iTunes. MSN's answer to "How do I transfer my downloads to my iPod?" is basically "You can't, at least not until Apple agrees to support our file format."
I mean, come on now. Even if every other MP3 player on the market supports your wacky WM format, how far are you going to get if iPods don't? And why be stubborn to the point of almost inviting failure just to stick it to Apple? (I suppose the reverse also holds, but history seems to suggest that MS is the bigger bully by far.)
There has got to be a point at which cross-platform compatibility becomes more important than this incessant and ridiculous proprietary sparring. In the realm of online media services and serious innovation, MS has been playing catch-up for years now, and I can't imagine that releasing a music download service that doesn't allow for any compatibility with a device that is so clearly miles ahead in the market will do anything to help the cause.
I'm not quite ready to jettison my Windows-based machine (both because I just shelled out for it last year and because I'm still hooked on right-clicking as one fluid motion), but my disillusionment with the stuff coming out of MS is growing. Who knows? By the time this laptop bites it, I may well be ready to return to my days as a Mac girl. In the meantime, I've learned that even $0.99 was too big a gamble to take on MSN Music. It's back to iTunes and Amazon (and every other online music store that offers iPod-compatible downloads--which is to say, ALL of them).
And then I got my iPod, installed iTunes on my (Windows-based) laptop, and started to twig to the full scope of the incompatibility between the two camps. The iTunes installation was messy and clunky, and though it eventually succeeded, it was a marked pain in the ass, which I'm told it's markedly not on Apple machines.
This afternoon, I made the mistake of falling for the Buy 1 Song/Get 5 Free offer MSN Music is currently running. (I'll save my comments on the perplexing and convoluted design of the site for another post, but will only say for now that clearly last year's exodus has had some repercussions.) I downloaded a Neko Case song--which involved an inordinate number of steps and a needless dearth of feedback (but again, that's another post)--confirmed that it was saved to My Music folder, closed WMP (which opened automatically, to my annoyance), and then tried to import it to iTunes, as one is wont to do.
But I should've known better. I should've known that files from MSN Music come not in any format that anyone else on the face of the planet would ever use, but rather in some crazy proprietary format that is, of course, incompatible with iTunes. MSN's answer to "How do I transfer my downloads to my iPod?" is basically "You can't, at least not until Apple agrees to support our file format."
I mean, come on now. Even if every other MP3 player on the market supports your wacky WM format, how far are you going to get if iPods don't? And why be stubborn to the point of almost inviting failure just to stick it to Apple? (I suppose the reverse also holds, but history seems to suggest that MS is the bigger bully by far.)
There has got to be a point at which cross-platform compatibility becomes more important than this incessant and ridiculous proprietary sparring. In the realm of online media services and serious innovation, MS has been playing catch-up for years now, and I can't imagine that releasing a music download service that doesn't allow for any compatibility with a device that is so clearly miles ahead in the market will do anything to help the cause.
I'm not quite ready to jettison my Windows-based machine (both because I just shelled out for it last year and because I'm still hooked on right-clicking as one fluid motion), but my disillusionment with the stuff coming out of MS is growing. Who knows? By the time this laptop bites it, I may well be ready to return to my days as a Mac girl. In the meantime, I've learned that even $0.99 was too big a gamble to take on MSN Music. It's back to iTunes and Amazon (and every other online music store that offers iPod-compatible downloads--which is to say, ALL of them).
5.08.2005
The People's Temple
One of the greatest theaters in the Bay Area, hands down, is the Berkeley Rep, where I've seen Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul, the premier of the Tectonic Theatre Company's The Laramie Project, and, most recently, the same company's brilliant, balanced, and heartbreaking The People's Temple.
Though it's nearly impossible to be an American with any knowledge of late 20th century tragedies and not know anything about Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple (or, for that matter, of what happened in Laramie), most of us probably have a fairly one-dimensional view of the subject: horror, revulsion, and disbelief at how more than 900 people could be duped into going along with such a crackpot.
Which is why The People's Temple is so amazing: told from the perspective of Jonestown survivors, Peoples Temple defectors, family members, and reporters who covered the story at the time, the play makes clear both the madness of what happened on November 18, 1978, and the utopian dream gone awry that led up to it.
In its early days, Jones' church was a model of integration (at a time when the US was anything but), providing social services, acceptance, political activism, and a seemingly infallible model of socialist idealism come to life. People joined the church for any number of reasons, but one of the foremost among them was that it offered a vision of a society they could find nowhere else. What comes through in the play, just as strongly as that tragedy that was to follow, is the joy that members of the Peoples Temple found first in Indianapolis, then in Northern California, and then, at least for a short while, in Guyana.
The People's Temple makes no apologies for Jones or anyone else; instead, it uses source material, interviews, and the memories of those who were there to create an intensely moving, understandable, and well rounded version of a story that's been told so often it long ago descended into myth. In doing so, it not only brings a troubled and ultimately tragic piece of history to life, but also goes a long way toward answering what must be the most commonly asked question: Why?
Though it's nearly impossible to be an American with any knowledge of late 20th century tragedies and not know anything about Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple (or, for that matter, of what happened in Laramie), most of us probably have a fairly one-dimensional view of the subject: horror, revulsion, and disbelief at how more than 900 people could be duped into going along with such a crackpot.
Which is why The People's Temple is so amazing: told from the perspective of Jonestown survivors, Peoples Temple defectors, family members, and reporters who covered the story at the time, the play makes clear both the madness of what happened on November 18, 1978, and the utopian dream gone awry that led up to it.
In its early days, Jones' church was a model of integration (at a time when the US was anything but), providing social services, acceptance, political activism, and a seemingly infallible model of socialist idealism come to life. People joined the church for any number of reasons, but one of the foremost among them was that it offered a vision of a society they could find nowhere else. What comes through in the play, just as strongly as that tragedy that was to follow, is the joy that members of the Peoples Temple found first in Indianapolis, then in Northern California, and then, at least for a short while, in Guyana.
The People's Temple makes no apologies for Jones or anyone else; instead, it uses source material, interviews, and the memories of those who were there to create an intensely moving, understandable, and well rounded version of a story that's been told so often it long ago descended into myth. In doing so, it not only brings a troubled and ultimately tragic piece of history to life, but also goes a long way toward answering what must be the most commonly asked question: Why?
5.03.2005
Attack of the iPod People
Since getting my sweet green iPod Mini last month, I've started taking it with me everywhere. (Sorry, Josh!) And I've also started noticing something: I'm very much not alone in this.
Now, I realize I'm miles from being an early adapter on the MP3 player front, and I'm sure there were dozens and dozens of people walking around with the tell-tale white earbuds sprouting from the sides of their heads long before I ever put mine in for the first time. But I swear, I never before noticed them. And now they're everywhere.
I take the 49 ten blocks up Van Ness, and during that trip, there are no fewer than five of us on the bus listening to iPods. I step out of my new garage yesterday with Mini in hand and have gone literally twenty steps when an iPodded boy walks out of the building I'm passing. On the streets, on BART, in the post office, in the library--everywhere. Everywhere I've been with my iPod, I've seen others like me.
Were I not so attached to this thing (and how did that happen, technologically retarded as I am?), I might decry the iPodization of the city, might be inclined to think it a shame that we're all so involved in shuffling songs and blocking the rest of the world out of our ears.
As it is, though, I feel like I finally get the appeal of the whole thing. And so I, too, propel myself through the streets of San Francisco with my ears full of music and a tiny slip of metal in my hand.
I'm one of them now.
Now, I realize I'm miles from being an early adapter on the MP3 player front, and I'm sure there were dozens and dozens of people walking around with the tell-tale white earbuds sprouting from the sides of their heads long before I ever put mine in for the first time. But I swear, I never before noticed them. And now they're everywhere.
I take the 49 ten blocks up Van Ness, and during that trip, there are no fewer than five of us on the bus listening to iPods. I step out of my new garage yesterday with Mini in hand and have gone literally twenty steps when an iPodded boy walks out of the building I'm passing. On the streets, on BART, in the post office, in the library--everywhere. Everywhere I've been with my iPod, I've seen others like me.
Were I not so attached to this thing (and how did that happen, technologically retarded as I am?), I might decry the iPodization of the city, might be inclined to think it a shame that we're all so involved in shuffling songs and blocking the rest of the world out of our ears.
As it is, though, I feel like I finally get the appeal of the whole thing. And so I, too, propel myself through the streets of San Francisco with my ears full of music and a tiny slip of metal in my hand.
I'm one of them now.
4.12.2005
How Keen Was My Valley
Due to the seemingly interminable Octavia Boulevard project, Hayes Valley has been what can only be described as a gigantic, confusing, ever-changing mess for months now.
It was amazing and wonderful to see the Central Freeway off-ramp come down, and though the same can't be said for watching work crews tear up Octavia Street and denude it of all greenery whatsoever, the excitement of what was to come made the mess somewhat more bearable.
But that was many moons (and bulldozers, jackhammers, dump trucks, traffic cones, mud pits, chain-link fences, and ripped-out curbs) ago. The war zone that is the center of our neighborhood has grown seriously tiring, especially after copious winter rains that turned the street into five blocks of brown puddles, litter, and dirt.
It's just possible, however, that things are finally starting to move. Workers have casted (or whatever one does in concrete) the fixtures that will be the center of what (hypothetically) will be Hayes Green. It seems like everything that needs to go either under or in the street--pipes, drains, cables, and so forth--has been put in place, which means (hypothetically) that final grading and paving can't be too far off. And it's been claimed that at least part of the project is scheduled to be completed by the time the UN conference comes to town in June, so there's at least a touch of flame under at least an ass or two.
So though I've more or less grown used to living among some degree of constant chaos, neighborhood-wise, I'm seriously thrilled that there's an end in sight. Soon enough, we'll have some actual green space, the traffic on Hayes Street will abate somewhat (I hope), the Linden terminus will cease to be an open garbage pit, and I'll have somewhere to sit while I sip the artful and extraordinarily good lattes I plan to get from the new Blue Bottle Coffee Company kiosk on a far-too-regular basis.
Things are looking up.
It was amazing and wonderful to see the Central Freeway off-ramp come down, and though the same can't be said for watching work crews tear up Octavia Street and denude it of all greenery whatsoever, the excitement of what was to come made the mess somewhat more bearable.
But that was many moons (and bulldozers, jackhammers, dump trucks, traffic cones, mud pits, chain-link fences, and ripped-out curbs) ago. The war zone that is the center of our neighborhood has grown seriously tiring, especially after copious winter rains that turned the street into five blocks of brown puddles, litter, and dirt.
It's just possible, however, that things are finally starting to move. Workers have casted (or whatever one does in concrete) the fixtures that will be the center of what (hypothetically) will be Hayes Green. It seems like everything that needs to go either under or in the street--pipes, drains, cables, and so forth--has been put in place, which means (hypothetically) that final grading and paving can't be too far off. And it's been claimed that at least part of the project is scheduled to be completed by the time the UN conference comes to town in June, so there's at least a touch of flame under at least an ass or two.
So though I've more or less grown used to living among some degree of constant chaos, neighborhood-wise, I'm seriously thrilled that there's an end in sight. Soon enough, we'll have some actual green space, the traffic on Hayes Street will abate somewhat (I hope), the Linden terminus will cease to be an open garbage pit, and I'll have somewhere to sit while I sip the artful and extraordinarily good lattes I plan to get from the new Blue Bottle Coffee Company kiosk on a far-too-regular basis.
Things are looking up.
4.05.2005
Eight
On April 5, 1997--eight years ago today--I finished the last jag of my drive up Highway 1, which itself was the final leg of my cross-country journey, and drove into San Francisco.
My first day here seems both sharply clear and lost to the blur of memories: I came to the house on Cesar Chavez, where I'd live for a few months (thanks to Kristin) before fleeing for the Castro (thanks to the unbearable polyamorous, high colonic-giving, New Age drivel-spouting, selfish and mean-tempered housemate who drove me out). K helped me unpack my car and set up my tiny little room as best as possible, given its lack of furniture. That evening, we went out to Barney's with the Vassar crowd, and I left soon after dinner, tired and achy from the drive, to make my way through the quiet Noe Valley night and back to my new home. Beyond that, details are gone.
I've heard it said that your body essentially regenerates itself every 7 or 8 years, given the way cells grow and die. If that's true, the me that arrived in San Francisco in 1997 is literally a different person from the me sitting here and typing this post.
I'm not sure how much stock I put in that, but I do know that the figurative differences between Then Me and Now Me certainly hold. Amazing, isn't it, what 2,922 days' worth of watching friends come and go; feeling like you couldn't possibly be happier, then sadder, then happier again (before deciding that something more in the middle is a bit more sustainable); falling into and pulling yourself out of pits of heartbreak; finding and leaving jobs (then finding and leaving them again); seeing your city change around you; developing a set of street smarts with a distinctly California tinge to them; and all the while exploring, tasting, questioning, wanting to know and feel and think and do and see as much as possible--amazing how all of this can change you.
And though I sometimes long for life as I lived it in my early days here--back when work often seemed like silly fun, when the Odwalla was free, when it didn't occur to me that I'd eventually watch so many of my friends leave, when the heaviest parts of the adult world hadn't yet hit me--I know that, given the choice, I'd opt to stay here, with eight years of San Francisco behind me and thousands and thousands of days unfolding somewhere just ahead.
My first day here seems both sharply clear and lost to the blur of memories: I came to the house on Cesar Chavez, where I'd live for a few months (thanks to Kristin) before fleeing for the Castro (thanks to the unbearable polyamorous, high colonic-giving, New Age drivel-spouting, selfish and mean-tempered housemate who drove me out). K helped me unpack my car and set up my tiny little room as best as possible, given its lack of furniture. That evening, we went out to Barney's with the Vassar crowd, and I left soon after dinner, tired and achy from the drive, to make my way through the quiet Noe Valley night and back to my new home. Beyond that, details are gone.
I've heard it said that your body essentially regenerates itself every 7 or 8 years, given the way cells grow and die. If that's true, the me that arrived in San Francisco in 1997 is literally a different person from the me sitting here and typing this post.
I'm not sure how much stock I put in that, but I do know that the figurative differences between Then Me and Now Me certainly hold. Amazing, isn't it, what 2,922 days' worth of watching friends come and go; feeling like you couldn't possibly be happier, then sadder, then happier again (before deciding that something more in the middle is a bit more sustainable); falling into and pulling yourself out of pits of heartbreak; finding and leaving jobs (then finding and leaving them again); seeing your city change around you; developing a set of street smarts with a distinctly California tinge to them; and all the while exploring, tasting, questioning, wanting to know and feel and think and do and see as much as possible--amazing how all of this can change you.
And though I sometimes long for life as I lived it in my early days here--back when work often seemed like silly fun, when the Odwalla was free, when it didn't occur to me that I'd eventually watch so many of my friends leave, when the heaviest parts of the adult world hadn't yet hit me--I know that, given the choice, I'd opt to stay here, with eight years of San Francisco behind me and thousands and thousands of days unfolding somewhere just ahead.
4.02.2005
Upshot
For some reason or other, dinner and iPod sharing and plenty of wine with Eric this evening leaves me thinking a number of things, foremost among them this: I miss the Boy more than I can say.
That statement goes against every bone, muscle, and cell in my body that tries to be strong, reasonable, and logical. No doubt I'll want to delete this post tomorrow when the muscat has worn off and the rational part of my brain has once again taken the reins. But for now, when my defenses are utterly down (to the point of being almost nonexistent), I can admit to being human, can say that I battle with these feelings of sighing emptiness, can admit that listening to "If Everything Fell Quiet" on the aforementioned iPod while standing in the middle of my kitchen last night made me sink into tears, so much did the song remind me of him (since it came from him in the first place), of us, of things at a better point.
But when will I learn? When will I understand the upshot of loss, what it's like to have your heart pulled out of your chest, julienned, and unceremoniously stuffed back in, so that it doesn't fit quite right, so that it strains against its boundaries, so that it aches for the parameters it once knew? When will my slow mind--and even slower heart--twig to the fact that us/we/nous is no more, however strong my flare-ups of longing and wishing might be?
For now, sadly, it's still often beyond me. I open my hands for things I can't grab, open my heart for things I can't truthfully feel, reach for a full comprehension I'm (evidently) not yet meant to have.
And all the while, I make the most heart-rending calculations: what I wouldn't give for some contact, though I don't know that it would do me any good. What I wouldn't give to cast back six months, back to when my worlds (both internal and external) seemed like different places altogether.
That statement goes against every bone, muscle, and cell in my body that tries to be strong, reasonable, and logical. No doubt I'll want to delete this post tomorrow when the muscat has worn off and the rational part of my brain has once again taken the reins. But for now, when my defenses are utterly down (to the point of being almost nonexistent), I can admit to being human, can say that I battle with these feelings of sighing emptiness, can admit that listening to "If Everything Fell Quiet" on the aforementioned iPod while standing in the middle of my kitchen last night made me sink into tears, so much did the song remind me of him (since it came from him in the first place), of us, of things at a better point.
But when will I learn? When will I understand the upshot of loss, what it's like to have your heart pulled out of your chest, julienned, and unceremoniously stuffed back in, so that it doesn't fit quite right, so that it strains against its boundaries, so that it aches for the parameters it once knew? When will my slow mind--and even slower heart--twig to the fact that us/we/nous is no more, however strong my flare-ups of longing and wishing might be?
For now, sadly, it's still often beyond me. I open my hands for things I can't grab, open my heart for things I can't truthfully feel, reach for a full comprehension I'm (evidently) not yet meant to have.
And all the while, I make the most heart-rending calculations: what I wouldn't give for some contact, though I don't know that it would do me any good. What I wouldn't give to cast back six months, back to when my worlds (both internal and external) seemed like different places altogether.
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