In Steinbeck Country.

I happened to be on Cannery Row this weekend for a few minutes. Immortalized by John Steinbeck and now completely gutted of all history and sense of time and place, the conglomeration of "art galleries" (the Thomas Kinkade National Archives, and no, I am NOT making this up, is just a few blocks away), t-shirt boutiques and ice cream vendors are all that stand for what once was.

I had to laugh, sadly. The Thomas Kinkade National Archives made me chortle with incredulity while simultaneously making my stomach turn. (It is a hope of mine that The Painter of Light will disappear into history with the passing of our generation. At least Disney tried to infuse his view of what our saccharine world should be with a bit of humor, and I can't even imagine Uncle Walt establishing his own National Archive in his own lifetime...but I digress.)

But what a very strange, feeble attempt to educate the t-shirt and seashell-buying tourist trade: the prevalence of banners on every lightpost up and down the street, rainbow colored banners sporting folksy caricatures of Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck, the reverse sides of the flags bearing quotes about Doc and Cannery Row.

I don't know about you, but as much as I have loved reading Steinbeck, I hadn't even heard of Ed Ricketts and The Log from the Sea of Cortez until about six years ago, when The Boy took me on a trip. We parked by the ocean and we sat in his vintage Jeep; he read long passages of this book to me while we watched the gulls dip into the waves and kept on the lookout for otters. Since that time, The Log from the Sea of Cortez has become one of my most favorite books. Not because it was read to me aloud, with much love and sense of sharing, but because it's a wonderful book about friends. And science. And the love of learning.

People lurching full-bellied from the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company (to think that the legacy of Hollywood pablum Forrest Gump is a seafood restaurant) to the Thomas Kinkaide National Archives will never know what those flags fluttering above their heads stand for.

Traveling to and from the Monterey Peninsula this weekend, through what I call Steinbeck Country: Salinas, Watsonville, Castroville—reminded me of the reality of what he experienced. What he wrote about. His travels, the poverty, and the love he encountered along the way. I've posted some images on flickr, with the corresponding quotes below. I have to imagine that these quotes, this sort of brilliance will survive all Thomas Kinkades and t-shirt vendors, even if the places he wrote about will never be again.

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“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

“Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.”

“This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.”

“We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say -- and to feel -- ''Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought.”

“A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory.”

Will There Be a Treat After All of This?

Yesterday, despite what else I may have mentioned, I also got a little treat. From my new book friend (who you'll meet soon), a small book-shaped box filled with Hershey's kisses. Totally unexpected and totally welcome.

And how did she know about my Dickens fetish? Somehow I must exude that. Bleak House, with its labyrinthine and gloomy descriptions of the Court of Chancery, is a favorite, as is Nicholas Nickleby and the heartbreaking tale of the relationship between Nicholas and poor Smike. Gosh, I cried my eyes out over the book and the original BBC stage production starring Roger Rees and David Threlfal. (It's eight hours of the purest, most memorable Dickensian experience you can have. And you can own it or rent it because it's on DVD.)

But my favorite story might be Little Dorrit. For some reason, reading about "the child of the place," a little girl who grew up in a debtor's prison and remained a lovely, innocent soul has always stayed with me. I know that Dickens based this character on his own experience as a child, having endured the misery and embarrassment of his father's own economic ruin that brought his own family to the Marshalsea prison. (On my one and only ever visit to London, that pilgrammage to the remains of the Marshalsea was a must-visit for me.)

Anyway, the concept of a dark Dickensian novel containing a sweet treat made me think. Times in general seem quite Dickensian of late. When I watched Slumdog Millionaire recently, I couldn't help thinking that it was an updated version of Oliver Twist, with those poor mudlarks trying to escape a world of cruel poverty.

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Today, it's official. The giant Virgin megastore on the corner of Market and Stockton is going out of business. What's next? Barney's up the street? The new Ferrari store that just opened a few months ago?

So many store fronts are closed downtown. More and more people unemployed.

And this couldn't help catching my attention, not only for its dire warning about stealing and how the poor paper deliverer needs that income, but also because downtown they are giving away the Examiner for free, and the SF Chronicle may cease to exist very soon. Meaning that San Francisco will not have a "real" newspaper of note anymore.

I was eating a can of soup for lunch yesterday and feeling somewhat waifish about it. The fact that I have to decide if I can afford a sandwich just isn't something I thought I'd have to ever worry about. I guess I can say the Global Economic Crisis (or the GEC, as julochka calls it) will have a slimming effect on my waistline, but still... For a long time, I've not had a credit card, and just paid for what I needed or wanted from what I earned, but even that doesn't make me feel too much better.

It's like we all somehow entered the Global Marshalsea together, and I'm not sure how or when we're getting out. I just hope there's a reward for us somewhere, and not just that we survived.

ps.: after embezzling some lunch money, I just read Thomas Friedman's column today. Don't do that while you're eating your purloined lunch.

Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay

Julochka has promised to send a cargo ship to pick me up to bring me to see her in Denmark. I guess we'll bum around Copenhagen first, and then head out to the Galápagos Islands (this all makes sense if you read her post).

Without going into a lot of detail, julochka has the inside track with sailors, so I feel confident that I can get a lift soon.


I stopped by the Pirate Supply Shop at 826 Valencia to get some supplies, in case we run into pirates on the way back. People don't believe me when I say that there's a Pirate Supply Shop in San Francisco, but there is. (Even David Byrne has said that this is "one of the top five pirate stores" he's been to lately.)


Sorry for the blurry photos. You'd have thought I took these photos looking through the viewfinder with my glass eye or that I was holding the camera with my hook instead of my sword hand.

Yes, this is a silly post. I admit it.

But it's Free Friday Eve, so I'm allowed. Har!

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ps.: If you ever want to read some cool books about what life at sea was really like, try Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail by Stephen Brown, or Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age by Marcus Rediker. You can read about Anne Bonny or Mary Read: women pirates, yeah! No joke... pirates were equal opportunity employers. And these ladies were not the Keira Knightley fake pirate types either. Read the book and you'll see.

pss.: The "Have You Got Scurvy?" sign is just one of the many informative, absurd and hilarious signs you'll see at 826 Valencia. In addition to being a kick ass pirate supply store, 826 Valencia is a well-known writing workshop, dedicated to helping kids aged 6-18 develop their skills as writers. They're also the publisher of the awesome new book of kids' letters to President Obama called Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country.

psss.: Photo of Anne Bonny from wikipedia.