Ramble 29: Target is the Target...

Let's face it, Marge is a busybody. In general, though, she's a busybody who tries to not overwhelm readers with her more...pungent...Points-of-View. She agrees that there is a time to shut up ...and that there's also a time to put up. Today is a time to put up. In this case, it's a time to put up...more pictures. Besides, this is not Marge's first foray into this topic: Target.
Truth in advertising: Marge is not a fan of the up-and-coming Target at Alameda Landing. And, no, hers is not simply a case of NIMBY - at least, not a simple case of NIMBY - for Marge sometimes shops at Target - usually the Emeryville store.
Marge wonders, however, why the City of Alameda - a town of 72,000-or-so souls, not all of whom are regular shoppers - needs its very own 200,000-plus square feet offering Target goodies? For, hundreds of thousands of square footage of the self-same Target goodies are available within a six mile radius of any Alameda exit: El Cerrito, Albany/Berkeley, Emeryville, Hayward, and San Francisco; San Leandro's Target, once located off Davis Street, is now a Walmart. 
Here's how Marge thinks about it: since Americans LOVE to drive and, since Alamedans are Americans, why don't Alamedans drive to any of the surrounding Targets? (Here's a map with directions.)
(What's that you ask? Shouldn't Marge - the proponent of public transportation, promote not driving? Consider this: a round trip, one-person-per-vehicle trip of 12 miles costs about $2 to $3 - even in a clunker like Marge's at, say, $4 per round trip - no toll to Targets on the east side of the bay - is a lot cheaper than selling one's land to a venture like Target that takes over the land, the mentality, and the mindset of residents.)
If Alamedans had come together we could have agreed that the acreage now devoted to Target at Alameda Point could have been dedicated to something more sustainable and life-affirming than Target shopping. Because, it is not only that most of don't really need more "stuff", nor do any of us need more of the by-product that goes into creating, using, and disposing of that "stuff."
For example, think of all the fuel and human creativity that goes into creating "stuff": plastic and synthetic materials used huge amounts of fuels - and give off huge amounts of poisonous vapors, etc; transporting stuff from China to the Target distribution centers and then to Alameda (and surrounding cities with Target stores), human creativity is wasted marketing and promo'ing to persuade shoppers that they "need" that stuff, then packaging and wrapping that "stuff" so shoppers can carry it home, then the oodles of various kinds of energy to dispose of the wrapping...and the stuff itself when we tire of it and toss it out...and go purchase more "stuff." (Check out Annie Leonard's excellent and easy to watch and understand presentations of "stuff" for a deeper look into this.)
Aaaahhh. Mind boggling.
Below is the latest set of photo of Target's "evolution". Or, before looking at this set, see the earlier Ramble with accompanying batch of pix: Target's coming to town. (This slideshow is a running pictorial commentary on Target from October 2011.)

Get used to seeing this logo. It is also the first thing anyone - including first time visitors to our town - sees emerging from the Webster Tube.
To Marge this is THE symbol of what's happening in town as City Fathers and Mothers turn over our once-sleepy town to vast, anonymous corporate interests who funnel our money out of our town...except for the relatively minor amounts of sales tax of which the City only gets a very small percentage anyway.

 The picture above and the next 3 below look north toward the estuary and Oakland's Jack London Square in the background.

 This one looks towards the west, estuary behind Marge; Marina Village to her left.

 Taken from the parking lot of Mariner Square gym looking north toward the estuary. Here, Target is behind the gym and this view shows what will become the edge of the residential area...or parking lot serving Target.

This picture, looking northwest toward Coast Guard Housing, is the location of the future residential area of Alameda Point. Interestingly, it is also the site of the former Navy Fleet and Industrial Supply Center - "FISCA" - a brownfield although no one mentions that, least of all the City Fathers and Mothers.

Ramble 28: Gladly the Cross-eyed Cat

This guy lives next door to Marge and Sergei. They call him/her, Gladly the Cross-eyed Cat.
Recognize the mondegreen? That is, "the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning"?
Here is it:
"Gladly, the cross-eyed bear." From the traditional hymn,   "Gladly The Cross I'd Bear."

Here are other mondegreens:
    "There's a bathroom on the right."
       "There's a bad moon on the rise."
       Bad Moon Rising, Creedence Clearwater
    
    "Excuse me while I kiss this guy."
       "Excuse me while I kiss the sky."
       Purple Haze, Jimi Hendrix
"Woman, take me in your office"
"Woman, take me in your arms..."
Rock your Baby, George McCrae

    "Dead ants are my friends; they're blowin' in the wind."
       "The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind."
       Blowin' In The Wind, Bob Dylan
    
    "Midnight after you're wasted."
       "Midnight at the oasis."
       Midnight at the Oasis, Maria Muldaur
    
    "The girl with colitis goes by."
       "The girl with kaleidoscope eyes."
       Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, The Beatles
    
    "Sleep in heavenly peas."
       "Sleep in heavenly peace."
       Silent Night, Christmas carol
    
    "I blow bubbles when you are not here."
       "My world crumbles when you are not here."
       I Try, Macy Gray
    
    "I got no towel, I hung it up again."
       "I get knocked down, but I get up again."
       Tubthumping, Chumbawumba
    
    "She's got a chicken to ride."
       "She's got a ticket to ride."
       Ticket to Ride, The Beatles
    
    "You and me and Leslie."
       "You and me endlessly..."
       Groovin', The Rascals
    
    "Sont des mots qui vont tres bien ensemble; tres bien ensemble."
       "Sunday monkey won't play piano song, play piano song."
       Michelle, The Beatles
    
    "I'll be your xylophone waiting for you."
       "I'll be beside the phone waiting for you."
       Build Me Up Buttercup, The Foundations
    
    "Are you going to starve an old friend?"
       "Are you going to Scarborough Fair?"
       Scarborough Fair, Simon and Garfunkel
    
    "Baking carrot biscuits."
       "Taking care of business."
       Takin' Care Of Business, Bachman-Turner Overdrive
    
    "Donuts make my brown eyes blue."
       "Don't it make my brown eyes blue."
       Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue, Crystal Gale
    
    "Got a lot of lucky peanuts."
       "Got a lot of love between us."
       Let's Hang On. Frankie Vallee and the Four Seasons
    
    "What a nice surprise when you're out of ice."
       "What a nice surprise bring your alibis."
       Hotel California, Eagles
    
    "Hope the city voted for you."
       "Hopelessly devoted to you."
       Hopelessly Devoted to You, Grease
    
    "I'm a pool hall ace."
       "My poor heart aches."
       Every Step You Take, The Police
    
    "Just brush my teeth before you leave me, baby."
       "Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby."
       Angel of the Morning, Juice Newton
     

Related Pages

Ramble 27: Pictures Worth More than a Thousand Words

Thanks to Sergei and his trusted camera for most of the pix shared here, an assortment of scenes from an early Sunday  afternoon ramble.
Updates on feathered friends... 
Perhaps the string of young 'uns pictured here - 28 of them watched over by 4 adults on a sunny Sunday afternoon at the pond near Crown Beach - are the same pictured in an earlier posting?
At any rate, Sergei captured them in the pond....

then up the banks of the pond ...and heading toward greener pastures...

... then snacking to their hearts content.
Here the brood samples grasses near Crown Beach public facilities.
View through the trees across Crab Cove and toward Ballena Bay yacht harbor in the distance.







Terns are back!

The terns are back...both the Least Tern and the larger version - are they called "Greater"? - can be see all over the coves and along the shorelines.
(Later Sergei corrected Marge: "Marge, they're Caspian Terns. True, "Lesser" and "Greater" are terms often used to distinguish our feathered friends but, in the case of terns, the term is Caspian!) Anyone spotting terns - Lesser or Caspian - at this time of year will see displays of feathered  athleticism and hear calls of high-pitched purity - all in service of increasing the tern population.
Speaking - well, writing - of tern populations, seems Veterans Affairs is giving the nod to the tern breeding site continuing - at least for now while the publicity continues - on the former naval base.(Read background.)

Mallard displays evidence of feathered largesse...or something more blatant?
This mallard female has 6 or 7 chicks that look like chips off the old block...then there are the 3 blonde chicks that look like the milkman.
Is this an example of duck largesse - is she fostering a sister duck's offspring?
Or is this an example of blowback from a duck tryst in the reeds?
Speaking of mallards, Marge and Sergei have witnessed several  incidents of what can only be called, to put it nicely, "sexual harassment"  of female mallards by male mallards.
On more than one occasion we've witnessed gangs of male mallards targeting one female and bullying her until she succumbs. We've seen it happen in water (3 males attacked one female) and aloft (3 males hijacked one female, in flight, harassed, yelled, and ganged up on her - all while she squawked in alarm. Perhaps duck for "no" has not yet reached the male mallard ear?
Or identity politics - and politicians - have not yet arrived in the mallard population?)
Perhaps these "blondinees" duckings are evidence of other duck species noting that female mallards are...well, sitting ducks... for easy-enough implantation and propagation of their species?

The Pond - site for myriad activities?

If the pond is the site for social transgressions of the feathered  variety... it is also the site of transgressions of the not-feathered variety.
Not too far from the duck nursery, on the banks of the pond, someone (or someones...Marge hopes that, if transgressions occur, they do so in atmospheres of friendship and bonhomie and, in this case, more than one party-ier participated - else it feels kind of...sad, lonesome, depressing, anti-social...) had a Lime-Rita party.
As you see, the party-ier or party-ers lined up the dozen empties very neatly.
Marge and Sergei passed by after noon and only one can had fallen over by then; Marge hopes that's a metaphor for the kind of party it was...

"Jack LaLanne's Boat"

Red hot pokers  create a lovely foreground for a view of what Marge calls "Jack LaLanne's Boat," (center right of pic) and Poopy Point (left, background).

Early in his career Jack Lalanne worked feats of athleticism and daring-do at Alameda's public baths.
A local historian mentioned that LaLanne once "lived on a boat in Sunny Cove". (Sunny Cove - picture here - was the site of Neptune Beach Baths.)
Marge likes to think this was Jack's boat, fallen on hard times since Jack's departure (both from Alameda and the planet). Read on article in local paper about LaLanne...then listen - as long as you can stand it - to his All-American  views on the American flag.
 



(Left)
Marge at Poopy Point...
and...





(below)...
long shadow evidence of a happy pair...
Marge and Sergei at the end of a long and lovely day bidding you a fond farewell - until our next ramble and report...

Ramble 26: The Twelve Faces of Seaweed

A gorgeous summer day  in Alameda - over 75 degrees F at 3pm in the afternoon! - and Sergei and Marge had a wonderfully warm and relaxing ramble along the shoreline.
Certainly feels like summer's here.
As usual Sergei carried his camera. And, as is becoming more usual, Marge carried her cell phone/camera. Sergei's camera is far better quality than anyone's cell phone but Marge finds that the flexibility of having her own camera allows her to point and shoot at will.  (Marge does have a small Nikon but, frankly, she finds it a pain to find, carry, keep charged, etc and the picture quality, while better than the cell phone, isn't that much better. (A bad worker often blames her tools, eh!) Here's Marge's question:  why manufacture cell phones with cameras that offer crappy resolution of 75 at 25 x 25 inches? Why not offer resolution of, say, 180 at 8 x 8 inches? After all, small pix with high resolution use about the same file size/memory and large pix with low resolution. Maybe, as it the case with so many consumer goods, there's a pact between the cell phone and camera manufacturers not to mess with one anothers' markets?)
Alas Marge digresses.
So there they were, Marge and Sergei, rambling along Crown Beach shoreline.
The tide was way out so rocks and shoreline that the tide would normally cover at higher low tides were exposed.
Marge was struck by the quality, quantity and, yes, sheer diversity of sea weed.
She shot these pix in an attempt to capture that quality and diversity. Too bad the quality of the camera flattened and washed out the seaweed-y colors - as well as the texture of the plants that, in real life, shows the action of the receding water over the seaweed.
Astonishing in real time.

Ramble 25: Another Plug for Little Library

(Didn't see the first plug? Here's the link - with photo and location )
There's something about having a library within easy walking distance that warms the cockles of any book lover's heart. Sure, Alameda's main branch library is within walking distance - Marge walks there often enough - but it's not exactly "easy" walking. (The carrying back of the books will wear you out if you're like Marge whose library visits frequently culminate in several big and heavy books; these soon become cumbersome when walking more than 5 blocks or so.)
True, the West End Alameda branch (788 Santa Clara Avenue) is even closer to Marge's neighborhood than the Little Library is. (Actually, Marge had forgotten this library. Past visits there went well. And now that she remembers it, she plans to revisit.)
But...there's just something about the Little Library....
Besides is location, the Little Library is ...well, little. What ya see is what ya get. It's also a treat not to have to create a book list so you don't get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of volumes at the "real" library.
LLib offers just two short, small, handmade shelves of books to choose from; if nothing suits or if you've already read the current selection, come back soon. Certainly Marge and Sergei have returned home empty-handed after a trip to LLib.
Their recent trip, a week or so ago, turned up some real gifts.
Highly recommended:
Julian Barnes: The Sense of an Ending. A lovely, well-written, unusually non-linear story. Also non-American (British) and the author doesn't seem to feel the need to insert guns, violence, overly-explicit-therefore-too-directive sex scenes or simplified and reductive relationships.
So-so recommended.
Rita Mae Brown: Hounded to Death. Seems RMB returned to her roots after Rubyfruit Jungle and now writes fox hunting mysteries; according to her author photo she hunts too.  Not great; not terrible, just a bit...y'know, ordinary and oriented towards teaching readers about hounds and the hunt... and the elite who can afford this lifestyle. Yawn.
Amy Tan: The Bonesetters Daughter. Talk about an author finding and exploiting a formu la for writing success! Some readers love Amy Tan, some readers hate her. Marge? Well, Marge is just    b  o  r   e d   by the formula now. Yawn squared.
Marge and Sergei dropped off a few books although the only book Marge remembers dropping off was James Joyce's The Ambassadors. (Marge owned this book for years, re-read it a few times and had been carrying it around in her vehicle - along with about 40 other books - meaning to drive 'em to the Internet Archive in SF where they're engaged is digitizing every book in the world and offering 'em, free, from their online library. Yikes! Big job...and one well worth supporting.)
Sergei recently introduced Marge to Ian Rankin, Scots writer of detective-style stories. Marge likes 'em.
Then there's Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger. A well-written, surprising, unusually non-linear story. Back cover description: "Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how to came to be a success in life - having nothing but his own wits to help him along."
The White Tiger is definitely a worth-it read. (This book did not come from the Little Library but from Sergei's well-stocked library. And it'll go back there. Despite lives full of books and their recognition that some books must go live in other homes, both Marge and Sergei recognize that some books must stay in their home. The White Tiger is one of these.)
Also found at the LLib: Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins' Left Behind. Marge was curious about the hoopla surrounding this book - the entire series - and what's in 'em that so many find entrancing. Well, she still doesn't get it. Badly written, trite conversation that fills up pages with words but doesn't say much or do anything other than chit chat. Another formula churning out what works rather than what's entrancing. Amy Tan's formula is several cuts above LaHaye/Jenkins formula; to each his/her own, eh?
Marge is ploughing through 5 or 6 fiction books per month these days. After the last decade reading only non-fiction she revels in reading decent fiction. What a treat.
Sergei reads both. He still reads heavy-duty non-fiction - U.S. defense budgets, arms treaties and so on. Just hearing about this drives Marge further into the pleasant denial that reading fiction provides.
Her advice?
Visit the Little Library, drop off a book or two, take a book or two.
It's magic, it's manageable, it's neighborly, it's user-friendly, and it's free.

Ramble 24: Wha'ts good for the gosling

It's spring and Canada Geese are turning out Canada goslings! Lots of 'em....and it's only the beginning of the season.
The mom pictured here had 17 young'uns under her wing. Sergei snapped this shot as he and Marge strolled around the pond at Crown Beach.
The pic below shows the sentinels looking out for the large family.
As Sergei snapped that family another set of parents brought their goose family to the pond too.
This one is a smaller family, just 3 goslings, but, think of it: two Canada Goose pairs created, between them, 20 goslings!
If the first mom finds herself overwhelmed with gosling-care, the second mom can, y'know, help out.
At this rate, imagine how many goslings there'll be pecking and paddling around the beach in a few more weeks. (Be sure that Sergei will follow and report on their progress with his trusty camera.)

More goose news
Update for readers who followed last summer's saga of the Canada Goose with the injured leg:  Good news! (New to the saga? Get caught up with Ramble 17: Duck, duck, goose.)
Marge noticed that, when the 2013 summer's soft- /baseball season opened, the injured goose had to share her territory - the outfield at Washington Park along Central Ave., with assorted batches of similarly dressed and disparately coordinated players applying bats to wildly unpredictable balls.
Rather than contemplate the most dire reason for the goose's disappearance - she'd succumbed to her injury and died - Marge mulled over an assortment of other possibilities including 1) her leg had healed and she was doing what other geese of her generation and evolutionary imperative were doing - laying or hatching eggs or frolicking with her brood in the pond or... 2) as any other self-respecting goose who'd rather abandon contested territory than insist on staying (and risk a kid's bad aim breaking her other leg...or a wing...or another body part) she'd moved to a spot more conducive to feeding while sitting on her belly.

Today, after their ramble to the Little Library to return and borrow more books (See Ramble 2: Little Free Library...), Sergei and Marge rambled along the 8th Street border of  Washington Park...and there she was...

 

...on the grass between the sidewalk and the basketball hoops, north of the kids playground.
Sergei took her picture - the first of 2013.
Doesn't she look... terrific...for a goose that has had to adjust to the vagaries of fate?
Marge suggests her theme song is "I will survive":
...At first I was afraid I was petrified.
...Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side....
Listen to Gloria Gaynor's version.