I have not written much about politics here. I think that there are other people out there who are actually in politics, or cover the subject professionally, that are much better equipped to comment on such things in a methodical and effective manner. I’m glad they are doing so.

As for me, I believe the intentions of the Bush administration are misguided, and their resulting policies are failures. I believe the executive branch is not exempt from common sense and, much more importantly, from the law. I believe it is wrong for the goverment to lie, invade and occupy under false pretenses and profit from doing so, torture, kill, leave citizens affected by natural disasters to die, engage in illegal wiretapping on citizens, spend the peoples’ tax dollars irresponsibly and enact policies based on greed, intolerance, moral policing and hypocrisy.

I really think it’s time for people to stand up and say enough is enough and we’re done with this now. Especially those of us that don’t normally do so.


Like This? Share It!
Pinterest Facebook Twitter Google LinkedIn Reddit StumbleUpon Tumblr

I’d like to see if I can develop a better voice for this blog.

Lately I have been underwhelmed by the writing that I have been doing here. Don’t get me wrong, I really am a fan of exploring San Francisco Parks, but I’d like this to be more.

If you read back far enough you’ll find some major time gaps and a lack of theme that goes back several years. The entries prior to 2006 were lifted from the journals and blogs I kept before this one; the deeply personal items did not make it to this public space.

On this site it’s a challenge for me to balance sharing too much about my day to day life versus writing in a way that shares virtually nothing of my real feelings and opinions. I tend to do the latter, which ends up being rather lifeless.

I would like to achieve a better balance.

Very few folks read here at the moment, but if anyone has comments, I’d love to hear them.


Like This? Share It!
Pinterest Facebook Twitter Google LinkedIn Reddit StumbleUpon Tumblr

Buena Vista Park image

This is one of those “I’ve lived in San Francisco for years and I can’t believe I’ve never been here before” places: Buena Vista Park. The Haight is just north of this hilltop park, and the Castro is to the southeast on the other side of the R Museum. The N-Judah runs underneath it in one of San Francisco’s transit tunnels. The park is really astoundingly scenic, with huge full-grown trees from decades of Arbor Day plantings. The views of The City are framed by those trees; the top of the Golden Gate Bridge can be seen Northward and Point Bonita is visible past the Richmond District.

I went up there for the first time a couple weeks ago on one of my “urban wander-walking” excursions; I hiked through again this morning with a friend to excercise, get another look and take some pictures. It’s a dog-friendly park and a lot of them were out and about this morning — what fun.

As usual, I went online for some more information. Buena Vista Park was created in 1867 — originally called Hill Park — which makes it the oldest park in San Francisco. This is less of a neighborhood park, and much more of a landscape design showcase, if I may use such a term. The Neighborhood Parks Council has much more historical information on their site.

As for me, I really recommend checking it out.


Like This? Share It!
Pinterest Facebook Twitter Google LinkedIn Reddit StumbleUpon Tumblr

I was reading Wikipedia tonight and, as often happens, ended up bouncing from article to related article for awhile. I started reading, somewhat randomly, about the Apple ][ and from there went through pretty much the entire line of pre-Mac computers — Apple ][e, ][c, //gs, etc.

Seeing a picture of the original Apple floppy drives really took me back. We had those in elementary school, and I remember the “clunk-click” sound those drives would make when you closed them. They were big and had metal cases and it seemed like a big deal to fit 144k (or whatever it actually was) on a five and a quarter inch floppy disk. Ironically, I didn’t have a whole lot of interest in computers when I first laid eyes on an Apple ][e sometime around the third grade. My best friend Oliver walked up one day, held out a floppy disk and said something to the effect of, “these are going to change everything.” I can only assume that Oliver went on to attend MIT or to work in particle physics or invent time travel. Smart kid.

When I was in perhaps sixth grade my Dad bought a used Commodore 64 from one of his buddies. Like the Apple ][s, it had a five and a quarter inch floppy drive; Dad’s buddy gave us his entire collection of games and programs that filled two giant disk boxes. I pored through all of those programs, played some of the games and tried to figure out if I could do anything “useful.” I managed to find an address label program to automate my paper-route receipts, and eventually got GEOS running.

Needless to say my Wikipedia roamings led from the Apples to the Commodores to GEOS. I also stopped to read about some of the significant related machines like the VTech Laser128 (Apple ][ clone), the Commodore PET, the C128 and the VIC-20.

In junior high we had Apple ][e computers with color displays. I had what must have been my first “computer class” and in that class all of the kids were playing Oregon Trail nonstop. I wasn’t all that interested in the games (never have been) but I do remember trying to program the screens to display my own “art” creations. The school also had some Kaypro 2’s, which we used for word processing for the school newspaper.

High school had some IBM-compatible PCs and one Apple //gs, the last “old school” Apple I remember seeing in use. We published our school newspaper on IBM PS/2 machines running this newish thing called “Windows,” connected to a very primitive network to share a laser printer. I used the money I had saved from the junior high paper route to buy my first 386 PC. I discovered Bulletin Boards and the Internet; my first Internet roamings were via telnet through an open modem pool at the local university.

It occurs to me that my ongoing dislike of proprietary systems may go back to my Commodore 64. At some point my Dad and I found a deal on a C. Itoh dot matrix printer that was much more capable than the simple Commodore printer we had been using. I wanted a printer with a standard parallel port, but this one plugged in to the Commodore’s proprietary data port (a big DIN connector) and daisy chained to the floppy drive. I was able to get graphics to print at twice the resolution as the old printer, but it was not as high-res as the more standard parallel dot matrix printers.

Still, it was hot stuff at the time.


Like This? Share It!
Pinterest Facebook Twitter Google LinkedIn Reddit StumbleUpon Tumblr

I’ve walked down Buchanan Street many times, passing what looks like a very small community park at Page Street. The other day I walked in to that small park and found a great deal more of it was on the other side, including a community garden running down the hill.

I was walking through early in the morning, so the ground was wet and the leaves of the plants were covered in dew. It was fiercely quiet and peaceful; I could hear my feet crunching on the dirt paths. The planting boxes form terraces of sorts, with paths around them descending gently and then curving back up to the garden’s gate.

I did some web searching to find out more about Koshland Park. That brought me to San Francisco Beautiful, which awarded a beautification award, under the theme, “Civic Engagement: Meeting the Challenge,” to the park in 2003. Koshland Park is maintained by the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Parks Group, which meets to work on the park on the second Saturday of the month from 11am to 2pm.

More of the Parks that have received awards from San Francisco Beautiful can be found on their site.

Another group that works on the parks in San Francisco is the SF Neighborhood Parks Council. They describe themselves as, “a coalition of community-based park groups actively involved in improving neighborhood parks throughout San Francisco. Since 1996, NPC has grown to include 120+ park groups and 4,000 park volunteers, establishing itself as San Francisco”™s premier park advocacy group.”

One of the many reasons I love living in San Francisco is the combination of amazing things, such as the parks, and the community interest and actual people that give their time and energy to maintain those things.

I’ll be adding entries about more SF parks and places as I come across them.


Like This? Share It!
Pinterest Facebook Twitter Google LinkedIn Reddit StumbleUpon Tumblr