Mo' letters

This winter was a little lighter, despite the weather, thanks to LetterMo.

Maybe you've heard of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, when participants pledge to write a 50,000-word novel in a month, sharing ideas and support online.

Month of Letters began a few years ago when author & blogger Mary Robinette Kowal extended a challenge: For the month of February, send one piece of personal mail every day that the U.S Postal Service is in operation. That's 23 pieces of mail, excluding four Sundays and one U.S. holiday.

It's a little treat to find something in your mailbox besides unsolicited junk. Plus, the act of hand-writing even a short note is a very different process from composing an email or a text. For me, it's easier to visualize the person receiving the letter, to write as if I'm speaking to her, when I'm putting pen to paper, rather than pounding a keyboard.

For my third LetterMo, I offered to include any Facebook friends who wanted to receive a letter from me. This felt a little heretical, using social media to reference a pre-Internet mode. But the results were pleasing. Our handwritten notes became another point of contact, a small way to know each other a little better.

I mailed postcards, birthday cards, thank-you notes, just-thinking-of-you notes, and a fun flurry of Valentines. Some people wrote back just to say "Thank you for writing!"

Try it yourself, one letter at a time. Imagine the face of your loved one or friend, when he sees your small gift.

My Second Annual Month of Letters

February always sneaks up on me, but I'm going to participate in the Month of Letters 2013, even though I'm off to a late start.

Here's the challenge: Send one piece of postal mail per day, every day that the U.S. Mail is in service. That's 23 letters, notes, packages or postcards. And respond to every piece of personal mail you receive.

Author, blogger, voice actor and puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal isn't just trying to support the postal service. She initiated the challenge last year, to brighten up a dreary month and remind people about the special pleasure of getting something in the mail. More than 700 people participated in the 2012 challenge.

"Email is all about the now. Letters are different, because whatever I write needs to be something that will be relevant a week later to the person to whom I am writing… It is relaxing. It is intimate. It is both lasting and ephemeral," Mary writes in her blog about the challenge.

Follow the Month of Letters on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/LetterMo) or Twitter (#LetterMo, or follow @LetterMonth).

If you'd like some mail from me, let me know in the comments. (If I don't have your postal address, I'll message you.) Or just send me a postcard!

A month of letters

Pin It

One handwritten letter, every day, for a month. That's my plan for February; it's the Month of Letters.

I have always admired a different writing project, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), although I 've never participated.

NaNoWriMo members pledge to write a book during the month of November. They set word-count goals, cheer each other on, and get advice from published authors. It's a spirited group effort to take that novel you've always meant to write and get it off the ground, out of your head and onto the page/screen.

This seems like a great way to combat the isolation of a writer's life while circumventing all-too-easy procrastination.

I'm pretty sure that I don't have a novel in me, but the Month of Letters has an appeal.

A friend pointed me to this blog post by writer/puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal. The challenge for the Month of Letters is straightforward: Post a letter a day.

I will mail at least one item -- that's actual, physical mail, not email or blog posts -- on every day that the U.S. Postal service delivers mail. That's 24 pieces of mail. (There are four Sundays and one federal holiday in February.)

I may go beyond that commitment. A list of potential recipients quickly numbered 29.

Do you have a box stashed in your closet or attic, full of treasured letters from relatives and friends? I do, but if you're younger than me, than you probably don't. I doubt I've added an item to the box in the last 10 years. I'm looking forward to changing that.

Want to join me? Want to get a letter from me? Leave a comment!

Things I didn't notice the first time

I took these photos all within a few blocks of my home. I must have walked by more than once before I really saw them.

On the front porch of a Cowper Street cottage

This dome tops the building across the street from my apartment. Sometimes the window beneath the dome is lit at night. When I researched the dome online, all I found was the Flickr page of a renter in the building, who relayed the rumor that the top-floor apartment was the residence of the building's eccentric owner. Wonder if s/he owns a telescope.

The sushi at this University Avenue restaurant is okay. I like the cranes better.

These fellows are in the front yard of a nearby residence. I find them a little disturbing.

Changing the sound of the train

From my fifth-floor apartment, I hear trains sounding their horns, all day and into the night.

I used to like the sound. It's just a commuter rail line, but those long, low signals reminded me of speed, of my favorite cities, of travel to exciting new places.

Now the trains sound mournful, even threatening, and I think about the despair of a boy, a stranger to me.

Two days ago, a 16-year-old high-school student was killed at a train crossing, in what appears to have been a suicide.

As I sat in my car at a red light, taking my son to school, this boy's life ended, a stone's throw away. When I passed the crossing a few minutes later, on my way home, the police cars and ambulances were just arriving.

The Web site of the local newspaper contains an outpouring of shock and grief. Classmates and parents post tributes to the boy, and condolences to his family and friends. All describe him as friendly, funny, bright and caring. Could he not see how much he was valued? Or was it just not enough to hold him here?

I can't get away from the sound of the trains, so I am trying to change the meaning of that sound.

What I'm trying to hear is, simply: stop for a moment. Be here now. Feel the sun and the breeze, hear all the sounds. Gaze at the mountains, taste the food, sit in comfort, write with a pen, dance on strong legs, talk with a friend.

And I keep returning to the words of the boy's high-school principal, in a message to her stricken community: "It is very, very important that we look out for each other... No problem is so big that a solution cannot be found if people ask for help and support. Please look after and take care of each other. Each of you is precious to us."

Late cherry blossoms

Pale petals drop, as
directed by a wind chime:
ding, release, float, fall

This is me, blogging

"Rhymes with Orange," 8/22/07

Thank you, Hilary Price, for a great laugh.

This is a quirky, catch-you-off-guard funny comic strip. Visit her Web site to see more.

Walking at twilight

The restaurant had grown stuffy and noisy, and the kids were yawning. So B and the boys headed for home, leaving me to finish my drink and settle the check.

It was cool when I headed outside a few minutes later, but it felt good after the overheated interior, so I carried my pullover along with my box of leftovers. In a block or two, I’d left the busy retail area behind.

The sky had that particular glow that sometimes develops on a clear evening, when sunlight continues to brighten the horizon for a while after the sun has set. Overhead was still blue, not yet black, many blues shading to light grey and gold toward the west.

This is an urban area, and many of the windows I passed were open to the cool still air, yet it was quiet. I heard crickets, distant car sounds, quiet voices from a balcony as I passed below. Once a jet hummed and groaned from high abovc, banking over the mountains to the west, on a heading toward SFO.

The loudest sound after the crickets was the hissing of sprinklers. It doesn’t rain at all here in summer, and in-ground irrigation systems are common.

There’s a ground-cover plant that’s common here, with small glossy green leaves and star-shaped white flowers. I think it’s a type of jasmine, because it has a strong sweet smell, especially at night. Whiffs of scent leap out at me as I pass, and it’s always a pleasant surprise.

This is the best time of day to walk and wonder about your surroundings. It’s not fully dark, so places still seem familiar, but there’s an anonymity to the people passing by, their faces indistinct.

I like to look at the lit windows and catch glimpses of the lives lived inside. Here there’s a flat-screen TV on the wall, showing a ball game; next door, the wall is bare and the light us harsh. I try to imagine how the room looks from the inside out, how it appears to those accustomed to living within it, and sometimes, for a second or two, I think I can.

Insulted by Shakespeare

"The famous Chandos portrait, the subject of which, although commonly assumed to be William Shakespeare, has never been definitely identified." (Wikipedia)

I've customized my Google page so that each time I visit, I get an insult courtesy of Shakespeare. I don' t know what it says about me that I continue to enjoy this.

My favorite so far: "You shall stifle in your own report, and smell of calumny." (from Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 4)

What do I miss?

Living life out of a suitcase for seven weeks is an interesting experiment. (OK, four large suitcases and four backpacks, total, for our family of four. Not counting the furnishings of our rented apartment, which are more than adequate.)

Once in a while I recall that there is a houseful of stuff in another state, waiting for our return. Do I miss any of it? What part of it is really necessary?

It would be nice to sleep in my lovely firm king-size bed. Or to do laundry without having to scrounge for quarters.

Sometimes I wish for shoes. Right now I have a pair of sneakers, a pair of flat sandals, and sandals with heels. I’m not wearing the latter much, and sometimes I wish I had another pair with me, just for variety.

But these are passing thoughts, not important.

I think back to our stay on Kawai last month. We were at breakfast one morning at a lavish buffet set on a beautifully landscaped patio, next to a waterfall and a koi pond, with white swans gliding by. One of my sons asked: If you could live here for free, would you do it? I said that although the resort left little to be desired, it would be too far away from our friends and family, all the people we love.

Turns out that’s the only thing I really miss. Sure, e-mails and blogs keep us in touch, convey the facts, even some of the emotions. But when a friend called the other day, it was such an unexpected joy to hear her voice, to share a joke in real time and hear the laughter. And even a cell phone only goes so far.

It’s these connections that reel us back in from our travels, not the house or the car, or the shoes.

Denver was closed

Frozen rest stop, I-70, near Hays, Kansas, 12/22/06

WaKeeney, Kansas is exactly half-way between Kansas City, Missouri and Denver, Colorado. I didn’t know this on the morning of December 20th, when my family's scheduled flight from Baltimore to Denver was cancelled. The biggest snowstorm in three years had shut down the Mile High City, and our holiday plans were up in the air, unlike the planes.

(I was hoping for a good story to explain the unusual name of this little town in the middle of a lot of land. Alas, it is nothing exotic: a contraction of the surnames Warren and Keeney, two land speculators “looking for wealth in the middle of the `Great American Desert,’” according to the town’s Web site. Wouldn’t Warrenkeeney be a bit more graceful?)

B and I were determined to get to Copper Mountain before Christmas: there was a beautiful rental house and a family reunion waiting for us. We quickly booked another flight the following day, which had us changing planes in Kansas City. Within hours, there wasn't a seat to be had on any flight to anywhere in Colorado. Thousands of people spent that night at Denver International Airport.

On Thursday morning, Denver airport was still closed and our flight from Kansas City to Denver was cancelled. It's only a nine-hour drive from Kansas City to Denver, we told ourselves. We packed the portable DVD player for the kids and rented an SUV in Kansas City...

















I-70, near Lecompton, Kansas, 12/21/06

... where there wasn't a flake of snow.

But we didn't quite make it to the hotel room we'd reserved in WaKeeney. We drove for about an hour and half, enjoyed the magnificent sunset... and pulled off the road in Salina, Kansas, obeying the flashing highway signs insisting that the highway ahead was closed by ice and snow. We found a motel and vowed to start early the next morning, hoping for the best.

In the space of half an hour or so, I-70 turned from dry pavement to scattered dustings of snow to hard-packed snow under the tires. Glittering ice coated every vertical surface. Wire fences lining the road looked like tinsel, topping meringue snowdrifts.

It's obvious how Grainfields, Kansas got its name, but Hoxie? Gove? Mingo?

















I-70, near WaKeeney, Colorado, 12/22/06

For all the ice, the driving wasn't bad at this point. Soon we were passing through Denver, and our destination was in sight.

















Village of Copper Mountain, Colorado, 12/25/06


















Christmas morning on Copper Mountain, Colorado


















The little shredders head down Kokomo, Copper Mountain, 12/27/06

My "freshman 10"

Here’s a not-so-top-ten list from Deborah Spinney, executive director for student development at the University of Indianapolis. Any of these sound familiar? I wish I'd seen this list twenty-something years ago.

10 Mistakes Freshmen Make

1. Assuming college is an extension of high school
Many students aren’t prepared for the quantity and complexity of college work, and rely on high-school study habits to get by. A good rule of thumb: Spend the same amount of time studying for a course each day as you spend in that class. If you need help with study skills, seek help from your university’s academic support office right away. Don’t wait until you’re mired in midterms.

2. Saving money by not buying the books
Don’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Get the books right away and stay on top of your reading and related assignments. There are many bargains to be had, either in your own bookstore, from classmates who’ve had the class before, or over the Internet.

3. Being overly ambitious
A heavy course load in high school may have been manageable, but it could overwhelm you in college. Set yourself up for success by taking 12 to 14 hours your first semester, and give yourself time to acclimate.

4. Ignoring e-mails
As connected as students are, too many don’t read their e-mail regularly. They miss important messages from professors and other announcements that could make their life easier. Remember that parking ticket you got? Chances are you didn’t see the message about the temporary parking ban.

5. Working too hard
We’re talking about paid jobs here. As important as they are, if they demand too much time away from your studies, you need to reevaluate. For undergraduates, especially first-year students, working more than 20 hours a week while maintaining a full course load is a recipe for D-saster.

6. Looking for help in all the wrong places
Universities offer a wealth of resources for the struggling student—from professors’ office hours to math and writing labs, tutors, and workshops on topics such as study skills. You won’t be the first student who needs help; that’s why these supports are in place.

7. Thinking the professor is God
Their teaching may be divine, but professors really are quite down-to-earth and generally reasonable in dealing with students. But it’s a two-way street. They expect you to let them know when you have to miss a session (be sure it’s unavoidable), come to class prepared, and participate in discussions – in short, go the extra mile for maximum return on your education.

8. Over-socializing
If you’re thinking about parties more than your assignments, your newfound independence may be getting out of hand. Remember: With independence comes responsibility. Don’t jeopardize your long-term goals for short-lived pleasures.

9. Under-socializing
Just as there’s such as thing as too much social time, the other extreme is not wise, either. You’re missing out on the complete college experience if you isolate yourself from campus life. Clubs and volunteer service projects are a great way to connect with others who have similar interests.

10. Choosing the wrong career
Many students don’t know what they want to do when they enter college, and there’s nothing wrong with figuring that out once you get there. However, many declare a major with nary a thought to whether it’s the proper fit for them in terms of their academic preparation or strengths, and they proceed to waste considerable time and money before discovering the mismatch. Your campus career office is a good place to start. It should have resources and tests that can help you narrow the options.

My college experience would have been immeasurably different if I’d managed to avoid some of these mistakes. I struck out in 6 of 9 areas. (It’s only 9 because e-mail wasn’t the factor that it is now. Yes, it's true, I predate the Internet.)

I didn't learn effective study skills in high school, despite earning straight As. My high school prided itself on its college-preparatory program, but I don't recall anyone ever suggesting that college-level work required an hour of studying each day for every hour of class time. I don't know if I would have followed that advice, as a know-it-all 17-year-old.

I took something like 18 credit hours my first semester, because everyone else did. When I found myself floundering in a class, I tried to tough it out. I was too shocked and embarrassed to respond when a professor wrote "See me" on my test paper. I had never failed an exam before.

I let a friend "help" me with a few assignments. If there was a party, I figured I could study later. I allowed friends to talk me into skipping class, then skipped some more because I was ashamed to face the professor.

Things improved a little after freshman year. At the insistence of my parents, I lived at home sophomore year and improved my grades before moving back to campus. I changed majors, got closer to figuring out what I wanted to do, and really found my niche in graduate school. But I still regret the wasted time and energy.

I kept taking higher-level math and science classes, to the detriment of my GPA, even after it became clear to me that a research career was not in my future. I'm not sure why I did this. I was interested in the ideas, to some extent. But part of it was sheer stubbornness. I just didn't want to admit that some courses might be, well, more than a stretch for me.

Most of my college friends majored in sciences or engineering, and there was a pervasive bias at this university against the liberal arts. When I switched majors from physics to English, at least one person commented, "Oh, couldn't hack it, huh?" I spent a few years walking around with a chip on my shoulder before I began to value my own skills.

Lucky day

I wasn’t looking for luck. I was just trying to take apart the place where we’d spent six weeks of the summer, cramming it all into boxes and suitcases. All except the Woosh. The donut-shaped flying disc had landed on the roof a few nights before, to the dismay of my sons.

I couldn’t do anything about the Woosh, but I had to get all of our other belongings across the continent somehow. The deadline was an early plane flight the following day. The luck came in small doses, from unexpected directions.

I arrived at FedEx/Kinko’s with two large suitcases, four large boxes, and two smallish helpers. The silver-haired man behind the counter looked us over stoically and handed me a stack of forms to complete. He was patient with the boys’ hijinks and, to his credit, didn’t bat an eye when I realized midway through the process that I would save some money if I opened a new account. “Well, I’ll have to start over, then,” he said, gently enough.

By noon, amazingly, the packing was complete and the boxes were dispatched. I felt light as air, free to play.

I’d promised the boys a round of miniature golf at a large entertainment complex we’d glimpsed from the highway. The GPS unit was uncharacteristically vague about where to turn. Then it ran out of power before I could examine the map. But when I found a place to pull over, I realized that the golf course was just a stone’s throw away. We laughed about how I’d accidentally managed to go the right way.

I spent the first few holes trying to keep my young partners on the correct green, giving them directions, making them take turns. Then I took a deep breath, stopped expecting them to play by the rules, and started to have fun. E managed a hole-in-one, and C showed some finesse with his shots. They begged for another 18 holes, but one round’s my limit, so I lured them away with arcade-game tokens.

Almost immediately, E scored on a game of chance and won 50 prize tickets, to his delight. C chose another game, trying to make a large superball bounce into the high-scoring slots on a roulette wheel.

I noticed a pair of adults next to us, playing an identical machine. They’d been there for a while, judging from the mound of paper tickets on the floor. I thought some patronizing thoughts about why an adult would spend time and dollars at a mindless game, for trinkets.

Then C hit the “jackpot,” and a stream of paper tickets burst from the machine. C was as thrilled as any Vegas tourist hitting the slots. Our neighbors cheered for him. “One hundred dollars!” C hollered gleefully. “No, they’re just tickets,” I corrected him. But the man next to us said, “It’s a hundred dollars to him.” Of course it is, I thought, sheepishly.

Another man must have noticed the boys’ excitement. He appeared at my side and handed me a huge fistful of tickets, muttering something incomprehensible but clearly gesturing at E and C. The boys stared at him, then whooped and danced and high-fived.

Our benefactor came back twice, solemnly handing me dozens of tickets and receiving our thanks with barely a nod. He seemed almost embarrassed. He was large and round and vaguely threatening in appearance, and I would have avoided him under different circumstances.

Instead of taking home a cheap plastic toy, the boys left the game room clutching large glittery superballs, a ninja figurine, and a two-foot-long, wildly psychedelic stuffed frog.

E said, “I wish we could thank that man MORE somehow.” I explained the idea of paying it forward, and they understood right away. Someday when they’re older, I hope they find a similar way to make another child's day, and perhaps they'll think fondly about a quietly generous man and a fluorescent green frog.

Late that night, I found the wayfaring Woosh on the patio near our front door. A fortuitous gust of wind? A helpful neighbor? Somebody or something came through at just the right time.

Datelines

When I started my first job out of graduate school, as a writer at a group of medical trade newspapers, I posted this list of cities on the cubicle wall above my typewriter.*

Atlanta Baltimore Beijing Berlin Boston Chicago Cincinnati Cleveland Dallas Denver Detroit Djibouti Geneva Gibralter Guatemala City Havana Hong Kong Honolulu Houston Indianapolis Jerusalem Kuwait City Las Vegas London Los Angeles Luxembourg Macau Mexico City Miami Milwaukee

Minneapolis Monaco Montreal Moscow New Delhi New Orleans New York Oklahoma City Ottawa Paris Philadelphia Phoenix Pittsburgh Quebec City Rome St. Louis San Marino Salt Lake City San Antonio San Diego San Francisco Seattle Singapore Tokyo Toronto Vatican City Washington

* Yes, a typewriter! We used electric typewriters and actual carbon paper for the first few years I worked there. Cut-and-paste was meant, and done, literally. No, I am not that old. It was an antiquated office.

The list comes from the style book of the Associated Press, an industry standard. These cities stand alone in the dateline of a news story, without being followed by the state name or country. Presumably these cities are known well enough that the average reader doesn't need any more information

Every time I visited a new city on the list, I'd check it off. I wondered how many of these cities I would ever visit.

Nearly 20 years later, my updated list shows that I have been to 30 of the 57 cities. If you just consider American cities, it's 23 of 30.

I would like to check off at least 5 or 6 more.

Seen and heard @ the Palo Alto Farmers' Market

It’s a cliché, but it really does make a difference to see the faces of the people who produce the foods that you eat. I want the kids to know that farmers aren’t just Old MacDonald. They are young and old, male and female, families with young children and grandparents. There’s little satisfaction in buying shrink-wrapped veggies at the grocery store, much more in choosing from heaps and baskets of colorful fruit and knowing that it’s come straight from the field.


The Four Finger String Band was here again: folk music, a woman playing violin and men playing banjo, bass and guitar. I tend to think of the banjo as an older-man’s instrument, perhaps because my father used to play, so it tickled me to see a young barefoot tattooed guy picking away like mad. A market staffer buying the musicians drinks at the Mexican food stand commented, “The fish guy says he sells more fish when they’re here. (The band members) want to know if they can put that on their Web site: `Our music sells more fish!’”


What went home in my market bag? I bought late apricots from a grandma (she was talking about her grandsons with another customer) who advised me to leave them out on the counter for a few days to ripen. I picked out a small cantaloupe at another stand; “We have bigger ones,” the farmer pointed out, wanting to make sure that I felt I got my money’s worth. Also a seeded sourdough baguette, peaches, grapes, and strawberries. We’re going to have shortcake tonight. Maybe for dinner.

















A glimpse of a woman walking by reminded me so much of my late maternal grandmother that it was like a poke in the stomach. I don’t know why she affected me so. She didn’t really look that much like H. It was something about her unaffected smile, and her summer gardener’s tan.


There’s a German bakery stand that sells poppy-seed and nut rolls (not quite as good as the ones Grandma used to make) and bienenstich, or "bee-sting cake," a custard-filled yeast bread topped with honey and almonds.

The stall where I bought bread (they must have two dozen varieties, at least) also makes a spiral sweet roll filled with raisins, dried cranberries and/or chocolate chips that they call an escargot. Cute and delicious; E’s favorite thing in the market. C is partial to the blueberry-cream cheese Danish.

Ah, the crepe stand. Two blocks away from the market, a woman passing by looked at the buckwheat crepe I carried on a paper plate and sighed, “Those are SO good.”

When B and I lived in Paris on Rue Mouffetard, a market street, there was a sidewalk crepe seller just steps from our door. That summer I overdosed on crepes filled with Nutella; I haven’t been able to eat the stuff since. (This was in 1995.) But I’ll take a lovely crepe beurre-sucre any day. Just hot thin pancake, sweet butter and sugar. This morning, since I hadn’t had breakfast, I indulged in a crepe filled with crabmeat, avocado, sliced asparagus, cheese, and a light lemon sauce.

I also bought a cup of hot Oaxacan Mexican chocolate, not too sweet, all foamy milk chocolate and cinnamon. The stand sold three types of agua fresca: fresh cantaloupe, blueberry-blackberry, and horchata, a mixture of rice, almond and cinnamon. I wanted to try them all, but chocolate won out.

Looking @ Google

I'm sitting in a plaza between the four striking modern buildings that make up the Google campus. B is spending one or two days a week here, for a six-week mini-sabbatical in the Bay area. I've had lunch and a tour, and I have to echo the question I heard from another visitor: "Does anyone ever voluntarily quit here?

Yellow electric scooters are parked in several spots, available to anyone who wants a quick jaunt across the yard. They seem more popular than the Segways, which I haven’t seen in action yet. There’s something incongruously solemn about the scooters, something about the way the rider glides along so upright and still, but at the same time goofy. (Dude, you’re, like, flying!)

The list of employee benefits goes on.

- Valet parking and on-site oil changes while you work.
- A hair salon in a motorhome, which seems to be parked on campus one or two days a week. The side of the camper reads, "Onsitehaircuts.com – Get in. Get out. Get on with life.”
- Boxes for dropping off dry cleaning.
- Lots of giant bean bag chairs, grouped for conferences or working alone.
- A adjustable-current swimming pool, complete with lifeguard. (That's got to be a boring job - watching a single person swimming in a single lane, never going anywhere.)
- Ellliptical machines and recumbent-bicycles strategically placed near plate-glass windows, scattered throughout the buildings instead of isolated in a health club.
- Very complicated massage chairs.
- Restrooms with Toto toilets. I won't go into detail about what makes these fixtures luxurious. Follow the link if you're curious. I'll just say that this is the first time I'd encountered one in real life, and I am ready to renovate my bathroom.
- More food than you can imagine. There seems to be generous kitchen areas on every floor, all stocked with goodies. The common element is a wall of plastic snack dispensers, the kind of display you see in the bulk-goods aisles of grocery stores. Have a protein bar? A chocolate-covered fig? A bowl of a certain "magically delicious" sugar-coated cereal?

One kitchen had three types of coffee-delivery devices: a regular old drip machine, a traditional espresso machine, and a super-automated machine that offered a variety of brews. B sniffed at my choice, French vanilla, claiming that it “didn’t smell like coffee.” I was testing the massage chair, which was doing some funky shiatsu that made my entire torso jiggle in an unflattering manner, so I didn’t respond to this jibe.

The main cafeteria had at least 8 different stations, all self-serve. It took me several minutes to read the menu posted at the entrance and figure out which goodies I’d most like to try. I ended up with black-bean cakes topped with avocado chunks and drizzled with fluorescent carrot-habonero pepper sauce; from the salad bar, marinated ahi tuna with more avocados (hey, I’m in California), a sorrel salad; smoky black beans, a large piebald type of bean I’d never seen before; a mango smoothie; and a demitasse of extremely rich chocolate mousse with a fresh raspberry on top.

You can tell this place is populated mostly by 20-somethings. I could not work somewhere that provides unlimited It’s-It ice cream treats. I would gain 50 pounds. Even with the swimming pool.

I had to take an It’s-It for the road. The original is the best: two chewy oatmeal cookies, good vanilla ice cream in the center, and dark chocolate over all. I find it fiendishly addictive.

Later I found out that this treat was Google's very own It's-It, and it's healthy, too! Well, healthier than it could be. Check it out on the Google blog.

Biking in Baylands

This part of the Peninsula, near Mountain View and Palo Alto, is the only place I've been where it seems as though one is surrounded by mountains: foggy green to one side, sandy brown on the other.

The Palo Alto airport is nearby, and student pilots are making lazy loops overhead.

I followed a biker's map to find a pedestrian overpass crossing Highway 1o1 toward the Baylands Nature Preserve. The bike bridge is incredibly long, stretching over eight lanes of cars and a few on/off ramps. It makes a chain-link tube, vine-covered at both ends.

It's a strange, superior feeling to travel unimpeded over the tops of speeding cars. A two-lane bridge for cars was just a stone's throw away. This offered an interesting perspective: cars moving both parallel and perpendicular to me, beside me and beneath me, while I rolled safely through the see-through tunnel. As the path tilted down on the other side, all at once the cars were above my head.

Past the highway, an office park and the airport is a small, weatherbeaten nature center ("bay camp" going on inside, noisily), a tiny rangers' station, and a launch area for sailboards and kayaks. There's also a surprisingly large duck pond; it was created as a saltwater swimming area decades ago, but that didn't prove popular.


I wondered about an abandoned building at the edge of a marsh. It was obviously meant to look like a boat, with porthole windows and metal railings along a deck. A restaurant? A nature center? A quirky home? It wasn't on the map, and it bore no signs, just boarded-up windows.






A little farther down the road is the result of a collaboration between the city of Palo Alto and a group of landscape designers: Byxbee Park, public art on the site of a former landfill. (Once a landfill, always a landfill? At least on the human time scale.) Concrete berms form chevrons pointing down the hill. Telephone poles of varying heights are spread about six feet apart to cover another side of the hill. I'm not sure what to make of it. It's a man-made structure dropped into a natural space, obtrusive and demanding of attention. But the abstract forms don't immediately put ideas in your head, so they go with the flow of their surroundings more than a traditional sculpture would.

Along an asphalt path heading back to the highway, I kept getting hits of a licorice-like scent. Was it the head-high yellow flowers that looked like Queen Anne's lace? They had feathery leaves that reminded me of fennel.

The path was so humped and cracked that I wondered if I was seeing earthquake damage. Perhaps I'm too affected by the book I just finished, John McPhee's "Assembling California."

The highway hum grew stronger. In McPhee's latest book,"Uncommon Carriers," he describes the noise, heard while canoeing, as "the surf of highways we could not see." It's not hard to turn this sound over in my imagination and make it into a watery pulse. Are cars the waves, or just the foam?

When I was a child, lying awake in bed on a summer night with the windows open, the only sound in that quiet suburb was a barely audible drone, occasionally swelling and subsiding. It was the rumble of tractor-trailers on the Ohio Turnpike, just a few blocks away. Until I was old enough to understand, I thought this late-night surf sound was what people meant when they talked about silence.