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Here In Oakland

Art & Life


   



January 2, 2016

The Shelf

Saturday. It was lights out after eleven, if I'm recollecting correctly, awake at seven-thirty, a good time to get up and have more than enough light to walk comfortably to breakfast. I had a somewhat longer conversation with myself before setting out, whether or not to drive, but walking won when I left the car keys on the dresser. We have our little tricks to get us out the door without the car.

Walking back I took but one picture of a shop entrance. Not sure what happened there. Most of the take out food seems to be uneaten, but a discarded hat and an empty (or almost empty) bottle of gin? Or whatever the label says it was, I wasn't going to poke around to find out.

The farmers market well underway when I walked by, but no potential pictures popped out demanding I raise the camera. Either that or my ears weren't working, not broken, just closed and ignored. Sloth. You can fix sloth. They say. Sometimes all it takes is pressing a finger against a button when you're raising a camera. They say.

Later. A last minute look at a Facebook entry reminded me there was a Tamir Rice demonstration scheduled for noon today at the Oakland City Hall and so out the door and on the bus with two minutes to spare and two cameras in tow. Cold. Should have added the padded goose down top over the sweater if I'd been thinking.

Off at 12th Street and through the City Center, taking my first picture of the Christmas tree, reminding me I haven't been there in a while. Nothing open downtown and evidently no noon hour demonstration either, arriving and finding it essentially empty. I did mention it was cold, that I was cold? Sensible others deciding not to show?

Five people passed me by with protest signs as I was waiting at the bus stop, obviously on their way to the demonstration. So some people were now arriving, but not enough to turn the tide against the cold. Small gathering versus warm apartment? Vote. Back to the apartment. Still, Facebook had said over four hundred people responded to say they were going. But later? Fashionably later? My inconvenient phobia against arriving late the problem?

Home now, the farmers market still underway, did I want/need anything there? Pictures? Overcast outside, probably even colder than earlier. We'll contemplate this while watching the second half of a movie we started last night on the tablet.

Later still. From the pictures I'm seeing on Twitter right now it appears a large number of people did finally show for the #BlackLivesMatter, Tamil Rice, demonstration, but I'm not fretting my missing out. My principles defeated by the cold, by my not dressing warmly enough? Would you say? I guess I would.

It was cold.

I know. But not a glimmer of embarrassment?

Evening. Back and forth between this and that on television, some similarly failed attempts with the tablet before I stumbled across that second and last chapter of The Hound of the Baskervilles about fifteen minutes after it started. The bad guy ended up sinking into the quicksand of the fog shrouded moor not to be seen again, otherwise I'm not too clear on the rest except Holmes got his man. Been a while.

How long since you've read it?

Probably not since I was twelve. My parents had an old well worn three volume set of the Conan Doyle stories sitting in the house since they and perhaps even their parents read them when they too were twelve. Been a while since I've seen one of the movie treatments as well, although I have the DVE Basil Rathbone version up on the shelf.

The photo was taken today at the Oakland City Center with a Nikon D4 mounted with a 24-70mm f/2.8 G Nikkor lens.


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