Month: March 2008

World Without Cars, Amen.

I’m thinking about cars a lot lately because I’m in them a lot lately.  When I’m not in one, I’m dreading the next time I’ll have to be in one.  I’m tired of automobiles.  The affair is over.

I have a very nice car that takes me places and plays my music and feeds me news, holds my coffee cup, warms or cools me, and does everything else a car can do to help a person get around, but there isn’t a car special enough to make me fall in love with driving again.

No offense to my perfectly fine vehicle, but I dream of a walking life – some modified version of the olden days when there was a central business district and houses began right there at the edge of town.  A person could walk to accomplish most daily errands.  For longer trips, there was a family car, but it wasn’t in use all day, every day.

We keep making more people and more cars, but no more space.  We’ve already covered so much of the space we have with highways that saturation is nigh.  I’m speaking specifically of my beloved state of California.  There’s no way we can keep up with the population and the multiple vehicles each family owns.  If we cover any more of the earth with highways, there’ll be no place left for us to drive to.  

It seemed so natural, the ways in which automobile travel evolved, how new vistas opened the minute we were old enough for a driver’s license, how we defined ourselves by what we drove.  Over the past decade or so, something’s changed for me and driving doesn’t resemble freedom in the slightest.  What feels free is not driving.  That feels independent and progressive and even adventurous.

Will there come a time soon when people will look back at single-person car occupancy as a quaint and uninformed period in our history?  Maybe our descendants will laugh at our naivete and wonder at how we ever thought it could work.

Is there on the near horizon a form of mass transportation we haven’t heard about, that can function without creating a new blight on our imperiled landscape?

I expect the future will include mandatory controls about who can drive alone in a car and when.  Of course we won’t let go voluntarily, so it will likely be made into law.  Giving up the right to drive is such a fraught topic, I don’t expect to live to see a practical solution.  Maybe my daughter and granddaughter won’t see a solution either, but I do believe one is on the way. 

Ó By Anita Garner 2008

 

No Good Deed

I gave away my favorite pants by accident last week.  It was bound to happen.  When I’m cleaning the closet in a self-righteous Spring-induced charitable mood, things move fast.

I piled clothes on the bed in categories:  Things I don’t wear, new things I wish I’d never bought, (A hanging price tag is a reproach) and the biggest bunch of all, things that don’t fit anymore.  

While bundling all of this together to donate to the Family Service Thrift Store, I spotted a blouse that was a maybe – a great color – it might still work.  Better try it on before giving up on it.  I grabbed my favorite sleek black pants from the closet and put on the blouse.  Nope, still not a fit.

So, two giant armloads of clothes into the back seat and two giant armloads of clothes dropped off, and I went about my other errands.

Next day I went to the closet for my favorite pants and they weren’t there. You can see where this is headed.  Back to the thrift store.  Since they were nowhere in the house, that’s where they were likely to be.  I had delivered my custom tailored pants for resale and not on purpose.  Who does something that dumb?

A lot of people do, judging from the reaction of the volunteers at the thrift shop.  I’m happy to buy them back, I said. They were sorry, but they had already tagged last week’s merchandise, which was now hanging in the store.  Just go out there and find them.

There was half a hope my pants would still be in the store.  I’m a tough fit – very long legs.  Those pants wouldn’t interest just anybody. I looked.  I’d know my pants anywhere, and they weren’t on the racks.   Already sold.  I started to grieve immediately.  A woman and her favorite black pants – that’s a serious relationship.  

Not only did I not get a chance to say goodbye, not only did I not leave them on purpose, but because they’ve now left me and moved on to another owner, they seem so much more important in retrospect.  I tell myself it’s best to let go of the past, forget I ever knew them.  But I know I won’t. Every time I pass a woman with long legs wearing sleek black pants with a certain fit, I’ll do a double-take.   Because by now, of course, those pants have become, in memory, the best pants in the whole world and I am convinced I’ll never love any other pants again in exactly the same way.

Ó By Anita Garner

Fine Day For Ducks

Near my house there’s a footbridge over Corte Madera Creek, where I say hello to the duck families.  The ducks appear whenever they feel like it at different levels on the water, depending on the rain. Some move right along without stopping.  Some swim in slow circles under the bridge, obviously accustomed to passersby,  and some glide to a strand of rocks that’s exposed in the creek, where they waddle around for a while.  Some days the ducks aren’t there at all and I wait in vain, wondering why they’re not anywhere near as interested in us as we are in them.

The bridge curves up slightly in the middle, like the ones in storybook illustrations.  I stop at the very center, in the best duck-watching spot.  Coming toward me on the path is a young boy with a white-haired lady close behind.  He’s small, with a mop of dark hair and a handsome face highlighted by Harry Potter glasses in a bright color, with a professorial band around the back to hold them in place.

He speaks up like a person very much at home in the world.  He says hello and takes a spot next to me at the railing.  I move over a bit so he can have the center.  I mention I haven’t seen any ducks today.  

He says, “My name is Oscar. The ducks were here earlier.”  He adds, in a wistful voice, “Maybe they’ll come back later.” He brightens and announces,  “We’re having burritos for lunch.”

The woman with the pretty white hair approaches and the three of us watch the water. 

Oscar says,  “We’re eating at the burrito place because they’re so big.  It’s hard to walk home with them.”

The lady nods, “That’s right.”

“Grandson?” I ask.

“Yes,” she smiles and Oscar says,

“Granny, we better get going.” 

He turns back to reassure me.  “Maybe the ducks will be here when we come back.”

For a second I’m puzzled at why such a young boy with a pleasant smile is so serious today.  It occurs to me that he’s repeating answers he’s heard in response to questions he must have asked many times.  Can we go see the ducks?  Can we eat at a table outside today?  Will the ducks be there when we come back?  Can we have one of the big burritos?

My granddaughter, who’s three, has questions every time we ask her to go get her shoes.  She’s learning that the world can be complicated.  Just because you set out on a walk with your grandma to see the ducks, that doesn’t mean the ducks will always be there.  Just because you like to eat at a table outside, where the birds will pester you for part of your lunch, that doesn’t mean an outside table will always be open.  

I ask the departing Granny, “Does Oscar live close to you?” She says yes, just across the bay in Berkeley.  I tell her how lucky she is and add, in the way that all fairly new grandmas do when talking to strangers, how much I miss the little girl who lives a few hundred miles away.  She says, “Yes, I am lucky,” and she makes a circle with her arms, “Oscar is close enough to get my arms around him a couple of days a week.”

Normally this would make me sad, but not today.  Next weekend is Easter and my girl is coming to visit.  The first thing we’ll do is put on our walking shoes and go looking for ducks.

Ó By Anita Garner 2008

Writing Credits For Starbucks

Evidently my entire town runs on coffee.  With a population considerably less than 20,000, we have three Starbucks and a bunch of other specialty coffee places.  In the village alone, you can buy a different kind of brew every few yards.

I visit them all.  On days when I want comfort and no surprises, Starbucks is the place to be.  I like that it’s predictable.  It’s very clean and cozy.  The staff is kind and I like the music and the coffee tastes good and I like the way it smells and the small tables by the west-facing windows feature views of Mount Tamalpais.

A blogger writing about writing, cautioned “Don’t be caught with your laptop out, working at Starbucks.  It’s geeky.  It’s not cool.”  I have a couple of thoughts about that. 

1)  I’m not sure anyone,  anywhere can define what’s cool.  

2)  I don’t have a laptop.

However I am guilty of writing at Starbucks.  I’m writing this at the one around the corner from my house.  Writing it by hand on a yellow pad with my favorite Pilot Prestige pen with the extra fine point and blue ink.  When I’m done with my tall non-fat latte, I will tuck all of this back into my tote bag and meander on home and no one will have ever mistaken me for a writer. 

No one will say look at that writer with her laptop out in full view.  To the untrained eye, I am just another person making a grocery list.  Which is also true. But today I have, during the course of one latte, messed around with the outlines of several writing projects that are due, and I did it all right here, working undercover.

I’ll bet many writers owe a credit to Starbucks.  Geeky or not, my playbill should read:  The part of the angst-and-coffee-soaked location will be played today by the Starbucks at the corner of Miller Avenue and Camino Alto.  The part of the writer will be played by:  To-Be-Announced – when we discover his or her true identity.

Ó By Anita Garner

Netflix Guilt

My own private Jane Austen Film Festival took place in my living room over the course of several months.  It wouldn’t have been possible without Netflix.  I worked my way through every adaptation of Jane Austen’s work and then into obscure British television documentaries about her life.  As soon as the movie, “The Jane Austen Book Club” came out on DVD,  I watched it too.

I’ve been feeling a bit guilty about not patronizing my local theaters.  We have several nice ones nearby, but I haven’t been lately.  I thought I’d miss the companionable experience of seeing a story unfold along with a roomful of other people, but so far I haven’t. 

It’s clear why fans of special effects blockbusters choose to see them on big screens,  and friends who work in the movie industry maintain that comedies are best seen in theaters, where communal laughter enhances the funny, still I find all kinds of rationale for watching at home. 

We’ve heard it all before – about how the inconveniences outweigh the once-shared theater experience.  I love movies as much as ever, but the theater experience itself has been diluted, with multiple (smaller) screens and multiple distractions inside, so it’s rarely an experience equal to the nobility of the old movie houses.  Theater owners blame movie-makers.  Movie-makers blame – well I can’t keep up with the list of all the people movie-makers blame. 

I worry about historic theaters and will do whatever I can to help preserve the architecture and honor their place in our nation’s history.  Once preserved, these buildings need to be re-purposed because the movie industry won’t be able to keep them alive.

Future media is here, with growing audiences who watch on various small screens, including hand-held devices.  Whatever comes next in the area of personal delivery of entertainment content, it doesn’t appear that traditional theaters will be a major force.  It’s an uphill battle.  They make much of their profit from concessions and we hear nothing but complaints about the price of the food and drink.  They add commercials to run before the feature, and we hear complaints about the commercials. 

We’re fast approaching the time when all new movies will be released simultaneously via several media, with theaters only one of the choices. It is crucial that everyone connected with creating entertainment – movies and television and music and all other kinds of performances and educational content – be compensated for all the ways we choose to watch.

Right now, waiting a few months for the DVD to come out works just fine for me.  When I hear about something I want to see, I immediately go to my computer and add the title to my Netflix Queue.  But on any given afternoon when I’m sick of my own company, there’s still the matinee around the corner.  I wonder how much longer that option will exist.

Ó By Anita Garner