Deeds & Words

The wind turbine towers are about 240 feet tall, and the rotor blades can be between 60 and 130 feet long. When you see one rotating in a field, it seems, well, big, but somehow it’s hard to imagine how big. A woman sitting behind me on the interurban train ride said that she had seen flashing yellow lights in her rearview one night when she was driving home. She pulled over into the slow lane. A Long Load warning vehicle and a Wide Load warning vehicle passed her, and then a truck with the behemoth rotor strapped onto the freight car. It was huge.

In the picture, I think the blades are different lengths, and I think this is because there are several generations of turbines in this complex.

They rotate at twenty revolutions per minute. That doesn’t sound all that fast, but the tip of the blade is moving 300 feet per second. That’s the length of a football field. Don’t stick your hands in the fan!

Sometimes the towers line up and the blade rotate in unison; sometimes they are off, and swirl through the air like the arms of the swimmers in the aquatic ballet performances.

According to Wikipedia, the wind-farm in the delta is validated for 300 megawatts of power, enough to provide power to 150,000 homes according to Yahoo and others. (I did not check the Yahoo guy’s math.) That isn’t enough to power an entire city; but imagine if 80% of the buildings in that city were built efficiently; if the tall ones had photovoltaic panels; if people were using enegry efficient technology and got some of their power from a windfarm.

This picture symbolizes the evolution of windmills and turbines. Our “motorman,” a really nice woman named Enid, stopped the train so people could take this picture. We were slightly disappointed because the wind had shifted and the windmill had pivoted away from us, but it’s still a great shot.

So here we were looking at an old-fashioned water-pump windmill in the foreground of the current generation of turbines, just as we rode out across the California prairie on an electric train, like the one that was here in the 1930s, while we discuss the possibility of fast rail, light rail, and hybrid cars to reduce our dependence on petroleum.

Our motel was the Rio Sands, on Highway 12 in Rio Vista, almost to the drawbridge. We checked in shortly before six. The place was practically empty, but it is January. I have the feeling that come summer, with fishing and boating season,  it’s hard to get a room in this motel unless you reserve well in advance. The place is older( but they do have wireless). The room was quite large, with an alcove that had a mini-fridge with a microwave stacked on top of it, a bench  to put a suitcase on, and a nightlight powerful enough to signal airplanes. The bathroom window opened onto a backyard of either a house or the kitchenette apartment the motel advertises. Later, while Lillian and I were watching Grimm, we would hear the rain.

(When we checked in, I asked the clerk if he could recommend a good place for breakfast.  “I usually don’t get up that early,” he said.)

The next morning we could look out our window and see blue skies. We walked  two blocks to the river and took pictures of the river and the two dredges that are moored along the shoreline. Everything looked blue and shiny, and then, two minutes later, it was raining. Then it stopped. I could look up and see a cloud overhead, get rained on, watch it move on and the rain stop; the very definition of “scattered showers.”

Rio Vista has been around since  1858. According to the Chamber of Commerce website and Wikipedia, it used to be at the entrance to Cache Slough. After catastrophic flooding drove them out, they moved up to the location the town holds now. In the 1920s and 30s, Rio Vista was the stopover for people on their way between Sacramento, the state capital, and the San Francisco Bay Area. They also worked the natural gas deposits they discovered in 1936.

When you head east on Highway 12, outside of Fairfield, you start seeing rows of white wind turbines. They’re tall, with large rotors that revolve in a stately manner. In the spring, the fields they stand in are bright green, and in summer you’ll see herds of cows or flocks of sheep grazing. There are hundreds of turbines. From Rio Vista, if you stand near the Sacramento River and look south toward Main Street, you can see the top half of the rotors majestically turning like time-lapsed clock hands. This “wind farm” (I might call it a plantation) has about 760 turbines. It’s hard to get a good picture of a wind turbine when you are on a central highway, but from the Western Railway Museum, which we visited later, we got some great shots.

As we were walking, the “scattered showers” became less scattered and a little more like outright rain. We went down to Main Street, which has some great buildings from the 1920s. I accosted a man who was walking to his car and asked if he knew a good breakfast place. He recommended Tortilla Flats, which he said was back on the highway. Lillian employed her iPhone and found the location, so we checked out and drove about half a mile to the restaurant. Many thanks to our anonymous Man-on-the-Street guide! The place was cheerfully decorated with Mexican-themed things and SF 49er paraphernalia. Our chipper and friendly waitress told us the specials. The menu is huge, and mostly (here’s a surprise) Tex-Mex themed. We each ordered a Mexican hot chocolate. Lillian had the special omelete and  I ordered chiliquiles. First of all, the plates were huge! We both got boxes and brought some home. The food was hot, nicely spiced for gringas, meaning plenty of flavor and not too much heat. Some people love heat and I’m sure they are used to making the food more spicy. I went up the get change at the counter and got a look at their efficient, sparkling clean kitchen. It turns out that this is Tortilla Flats 3, and the original is in South San Francisco, the second one in Chico.

I should mention that it had stopped raining and the wind had tattered the clouds, and we had blue skies all the way to the Train Museum.

Forty minutes into our road trip to Locke and Rio Vista, my front driver’s side tire went flat. I rolled off Highway 12, onto the shoulder, and got out to take a look. The tire was pretty flat. As I got back into the car to call AAA, a pickup truck pulled in ahead of us. Ray, who works for an auto glass company, saw we were in trouble and stopped to help. He had an air compressor and offered to put air into the tire. He did, and we both could hear the hissing as it rushed right back out.  He also offered to spray a can of tire sealant into my tire, but then, he said, he saw the hole, and realized that wasn’t going to work. I called AAA and in about thirty minutes Miguel showed up. Young efficient, and friendly. He towed us to the Les Schwab in Napa. Miguel grew up on Vallejo but he lives in Napa now. He said the first rain of the season had led to a busy a day for him, including pulling a pickup truck out from under a power pole it hit. The pole cracked like a matchstick and fell on top of the truck.

A little more than an hour at Les Schwab, and we were on the road again, with a patched tire. Everyone, from the complete stranger Ray who stopped to see if we needed help, to Miguel, to the friendly and efficient folks as Les Schwab, were great.

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This put us about an hour and a half behind schedule and it was starting to rain heavily as I drove out across the delta. The Sacramento River was pewter gray as we went over the Rio Vista Bridge.

Locke is now a state park. The town was founded in 1915 by Chinese laborers who had worked on the levees. In 1915 there was a serious fire in nearby Walnut Grove, burning most of the houses where the Chinese workers lived. Chinese were forbidden to own property, but they could own the buildings that they built on the land. The community made a deal with the Locke brothers, to lease an orchard they weren’t working. The laborers built houses and the town was born.

Over the decades the town thrived and ebbed, and in the 1970s and 1980s it was practically a ghost town. Once again the community got together and started rebuilding.  They created the schoolhouse museum. eventually the state converted it to a state preserve, and now it is actually a park. There are three museums now on the two blocks of Main Street; the old casino, the Chinese Cultural Society Museum and the school house, which is flanked by a bust of Confucius and one of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. The pictures below are from the casino.

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The town has a large number of sleek and well-fed cats, many of whom have cropped ears. The lady who ran the Chinese medicine shop told us those were feral cats. They were pretty friendly — a gray and white one followed Lillian down the block and then came up to her again later. I’m sure the town of Locke is ninety-nine percent mouse-free.

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The man who waited us on in the shop across from the school house owns the Locke Art Center. He was just helping out a friend.  He is from Guanzhou (we used to call it Canton), and sells imported Chinese goods.

We asked if there were restaurants in town. He said there were two:  Al the Wop’s Place (yes, that is the real name, and Al named it that) and “a Chinese place up the block.” Lillian had read about Al the Wop’s, which serves steaks and burgers. By now we were pretty wet and pretty cold, and a burger was sounding good. We went into Al’s, which opens into a dark bar that had about eight guys in it. Across the bar was the dining room. The burgers were good, cooked medium (we weren’t asked, that’s just how they came) and served on grilled sourdough bread, not a bun. The salad came with a house dressing that was somewhere between Thousand Island and Russian; tangy and sweet, not too thick and with none of the relish you sometimes find in Thousand Island. For most of our meal we were the only people in the dining room, but as we were finishing up, two couples came in.  The jukebox started playing;  ”Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman. Really?  It was followed by “Walkin’ After Midnight” by Patsy Kline, followed by not one but two Grateful Dead songs.

When we went outside (the gray cat greeted Lillian) it was twilight.

Before we stopped for dinner, we went into Strange Cargo, an antique shop/thrift store/ used book store with a huge collection of antiquarian California history books. Two men were hanging out, one behind the counter and one on our side, talking about fighter jets. Thomas and Ernie, they said, introducing themselves. They talked about the town a bit. Thomas is the owner of the book collection, and also part of the Locke historical society. Ernie is an artist and a musician. Thomas showed us two of Ernie’s landscapes (one done in chalk on black paper, very rich and atmospheric). Ernie said if we wanted to see a real artist Twe should go down the block to Ning Lu’s studio.

So after dinner I walked down there, but it was closed. Ning’s pictures were on display in the window, and they were lovely. He has a panoramic painting of the  rim of the Grand Canyon.

Thomas and Ernie also gave us the history of the memorial park.  A building close to the school house caught fire and burned down. Because they are in a state park, it is complicated if not impossible to build a new building. Originally they decided they would just do a small park with a picnic bench, but the more the townfolk talked about it, the more they decided they wanted something more, including the memorial and an arbor.

Of all the people who live in town now, only about ten of them are Chinese.

Locke in the rain looks worn and mysterious, a little bit as if you are stepping back in time.

If Syfy’s new series Lost Girl can maintain the intensity and the quality of production values it had in its opening episode, it could be the best show the channel has ever shown. I was going to say that it’s the best show the channel has had since The Dresden Files, which is not a surprise; both shows are Canadian.

Lost Girl is urban fantasy, pure and simple, and whoever wrote the opening episode understands urban fantasy. Maybe they’ve even read some. Or written some. The beauty of urban fantasy is that you don’t really need a huge special effects budget to make it work. Some gritty back-street locations, some generic “city” interiors and you can be good-to-go.

Bo is a sexy brunette who wears a lot of leather and drifts from city to city. In the opening scenes, we see a Bad Bad Man hit on her in the hotel bar where she is working. We know he is a Bad Bad Man because he roofies the drink he buys for her. She rebuffs him politely, so he finds another victim, a youngish neon blond. Bo follows them to the elevator and when Bad Bad Man jumps the swooning victim (who’s actually an accomplished pickpocket and the soon-to-be human sidekick), Bo intervenes and sucks him dry with a kiss. (When she does this, her dark eyes turn bad-contact-lens blue and blue light wafts from the victim’s mouth to hers.) He dies, but he looks really happy. That’s the first five minutes.

For those of you keeping score at home, using a one-to five rating, here’s what we’ve got:

• Leather: 5 out of 5
• quirky human sidekick: 4
• powers used against evil: 4

After the break:  Two unusual cops show up. Their expositional dialogue informs us that they are used to supernatural killings. They go talk to a guy. The guy is someone important in some shadowy, supernatural network. Meanwhile, Bo provides just the sufficient amount of back-story and exposition to Quirky Human Sidekick Kensie. (Best moment, Kensie says, “Some things are just too stupid to ask out loud,” and hands Bo a questionnaire written on a paper napkin that says, “I am an A ( ) Alien, B ( ) Demon.”) Bo seduces the waitress into forgetting about her bill (and leaves without tipping!  Bad form!  Unless the rush she gives the waitress when she strokes her arm is supposed to be a gratuity). Outside, they are jumped by the two mysterioso cops and knocked senseless by super-sonic whistling. One cop mentions an interview with “the Ash.” The sidekick is left behind.

Scorecard:

• Leather: -2 (she burns a jacket! First of all, why? Secondly, I don’t think leather burns that quickly.)
• Mysterious enforcer/cops with supernatural ability: 4
•  sexy magic: 4
• powers used against evil: -3 (she didn’t tip the waitress she stiffed)
• escalating danger : 5

After the commercials:  Bo, shackled, is interviewed by an incredibly beautiful dark-skinned man (Cle Bennett) who asks her what clan she is. She doesn’t know. He asks her what side she’s chosen; she doesn’t know. Mention is made of The Morrigan. Seconds later a skinny, stylishly dressed sarcastic woman walks in. Did you think she was the Morrigan?  You would be right. With her is another woman. The non-whistling cop growls, bares fangs and challenges one of the Morrigan’s hench-people. They take Bo off to a convenient medical lab. The woman who was with the Morrigan tells Bo that she is a succubus. The other woman is a human doctor who works for the Fae or Fey or however Syfy is going to decide to spell it. Bo tries to put the whammy on the doctor, but is thwarted by the fang-baring cop (I wrote “fang-bearing,” first).  Mention is made of one who has been “hidden from them all these years.” Ash decides Bo must be tested “the old way.”

Score:

• Human character to provide needed exposition about the Fae as the series progresses: 5
• Reference to a destiny or a prophetic element: 3 well done, but not necessary
• Escalating danger: 5

When we return:  Quirky human sidekick is yelling into her smartphone in Lithuanian or Czech. She is demanding that her cousin help her run a license plate (she took a picture of the ratty van that hauled Bo away). “If you don’t help me I’ll tell your mother you were mean to me,” she threatens. E Voila! Vehicle information. Bo, still tied up, is in some kind of abandoned warehouse…why, yes, it is at the waterfront! The Morrigan approaches her with the “elevator speech” about the Fae; there are Light Fae and Dark Fae; you have to choose; they set you up to live successfully among humans in a way that benefits them; if you don’t choose you’re going to be in a world of hurt. First though, you must fight two Fae warriors to the death. Hmm.  As they take her out to the arena, fang-baring cop starts giving her all these tips. “They’re stronger but you’re faster, they won’t expect that.” He tells her to kiss him. She objects (people die, remember?) but he insists and they kiss. And he…doesn’t die. Plus Bo has a really good time. Fang-baring cop informs her that he just gave her some energy.

Sidekick cleverly finds her way to the warehouse. To be honest, I’m not quite sure how she did this. She finds a way inside and walks past the dwarf who is cleverly hidden in the shadows.

Bo has Fight Number One, the Physical Struggle. The adversary is a creature with an ugly tongue and he might have had horns, I don’t remember. She out-maneuvers him. Fight Number Two is more subtle; Bo finds herself in a pleasant forest with a kindly man in a monk’s robe who offers her tea. He says he can “take her pain away.” Back at the arena, we see it’s some kind of early Star Trek creature with long talons that are stuck into Bo’s brain.

Sidekick reaches a place where she can see the arena.

The dwarf approaches and the Ash and the Morrigan and they have a portentous discussion about Bo. The dwarf reassures them that they can always kill her later.

Quirky human sidekick interrupts and Bo breaks free of the brain-eating monster. Bo has triumphed in the Mental Struggle. She has won the challenge!

“Choose a side,” Ash says, “Dark or light?”

Bo clenches her fists.  “Neither! I choose human!”

Plainly, Dark and Light are relative terms in the world of the Fae; much like Jim Butler’s Summer and Winter courts, and the Seelie and Unseelie courts that show up now and then in works of fantasy fiction. Light certainly isn’t better than Dark, at least not in Episode One, except that their arena killer was gentler.
Final Score:

Use of Leather: 5 minus 2 for wardrobe burning. Net score: 3

Quirky Human Sidekick: 10

Human Expositional Character (doctor): 5

Supernatural cops: 8

Escalating Sense of Danger: 10

Powers used against evil: 4 minus 3 for not tipping, Net score of 1. This could become a serious problem. Bo, if you’re going to rip off restaurants, at least tip the staff.

The picture-perfect capture of urban fantasy sensibilities is pretty impressive, but it isn’t paint-by-numbers. There is real energy behind this. Anna Silk, who plays Bo, has good intensity and can act. Ksenia Solo, who plays Kensie, the human sidekick, plays her wild-child role right up to the top without going over. The fang-baring cop is quite appealing.

I probably won’t be able to stay up to watch this. Because of the violence, and frankly, probably the sexual content, it’s on at ten. Maybe I can catch up on the website. I want to love this show. I only hope they can keep this momentum going.

Kathleen and I went to the Copperfield’s Used Bookstore in town yesterday. They offered cake and coffee; the cake had pictures of all three bookstore cats that have graced the store in its twenty years. Sally, the current bookstore cat, was a little distracted.

They also offered 25% off on the remaining stock.

Kathleen found some excellent books on California history, including a gem; a book written by the editor of Forbes Magazine, in 1923, about the business movers and shakers of California (including the founder of the Bank of Italy, better known as Bank of America).  It will be fascinating to see what the pre-Depression perspective is.

I am not as discerning or disciplined as Kathleen, so my finds were more modest, but I made up for it in volume. For Spouse, I found a book about civil war soldiers called Hardtack and Coffee, by John Billings. For myself (research) I got an illustrated book on the history of Alcatraz, and a book on the ecology of the Pacific coast.

I picked up an anthology of modern Native American poetry, and No Rooms of  Their Own; Women Writers of Early California, edited by Ida Rae Igli.

Some other finds:

• The Cloud Pavillion by Laura Joh Rowland
• Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle
• The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (originally written in 1919)
• The Professor Challenger Adventures by Arthur Conan Doyle
• Cruel as the Grave by Sharon Penman

Kathleen found a set of booklets on local California native tribes. The entire set comprised 23 books, and they had about 17. I couldn’t afford all of them, and our local tribes — Pomo, Ohlone and Miwok — weren’t represented, but I picked up several including the ones on Yurok and Hoopa.

The space was two-thirds empty, and they had lots of customers. Most people weren’t coming in for cake. Comments included things like, “They’re closing the only store I come into town for.”

My comments on the Swedish horror novel Let the Right One In are posted on fanlit. I never reviewed this book on my site, so this is a brand new review. Enjoy! (Well, it’s a a bleak vampire novel, so perhaps “enjoy” is not the right term!)

Part of my Sunday routine was to browse Copperfield’s Used Books after I left the farmers’ market. I would visit Sally, the bookstore cat, and usually share a bit of chard or kale with her. I’d visit with the clerks and I’d almost always buy a book. After January 25, that will come to an end. Their lease is up 1/31/12 and somehow, despite the fact that this county is drowning in vacant commercial property, they can’t seem to find a place on or near Main Street in town.

Over the years I’ve bought many books and many types of books at this store. I’ve purchased a lot of cheap fantasy, science fiction, horror, mysteries and classics. I’ve bought nonfiction and specialty books. Here’s a brief list of the books I’ve found there:

•  After Dark by Haruki Murakami
•  Around the World in 80 Days, and Paris in the 21^st Century, by Jules Verne
•  A book on the Japanese tea ceremony
•  8 children’s book that I gave away for All Hallow’s Read
•  2 farmers’ market cookbooks to raffle off for a work event
• a tomato cookbook
• a pear cookbook
•  A beautiful book of garden photographs for my stepmother
•  The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, by Victor Pelevin
•  Dead Famous, a Mallory mystery by Carol O’Connell

Paul Jaffe, CEO of Copperfield’s, checked into getting a space at the Barlow, the empty cannery complex that is currently being developed, but the Barlow is behind schedule. He apparently talked to Jonathon, who is retiring from Incredible Records, but the rumor is that Jonathon plans to sell the business or the space. There is also an open storefront in the Redwood Shopping Center, but that didn’t work out either.

South of town, but still on Main Street, there are open storefronts in the Basso Center, but the person who owns the building they are in now is the same landlord, so I guess that’s not a good option.

It isn’t fair to blame Jaffe for this “lost our lease” closure, but he certainly knew this was coming. I’m just a customer and I’ve known for over a year that the lease was up.

Copperfield’s started in Sebastopol, but recently, all the focus has been on making the Petaluma store the flagship. That store is expanded with a huge magazine section and a basement used-books section; and most of the author events. Plainly, even though we were the home town where the business started, Jaffe doesn’t feel a tremendous amount of loyalty to us. Of course, he is a businessman, not a bookseller, why should he? It isn’ t fair to complain too much, since he has kept his business operational through the recession. I guess I’m just sad that there wasn’t enough commitment to the used bookstore to start working on the problem earlier– or, maybe there was, and the Barlow was/is a viable option, and it is just behind schedule. We’ll see if he reopens there. If he does, I suspect the three greaet staffers I see in there every day will be working somewhere else.

I will miss the staff, I will miss the cat and I will miss the books. They are going to start having sales next week, and I will definitely hit those, but that will be a bittersweet experience.  Main Street won’t be the same.

Now that the urban fantasy wave has crested in the print media – this doesn’t mean it’s going away, in fact it’s still a golden marketplace, just that it’s past the new-and-edgy point – it has found its way, or found its way again, onto TV. I could argue that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a decade ahead of its time in TV urban fantasy, or I could just say that it, and the sibling show Angel, were merely really good TV. Perhaps those are topics for another time.

Network TV has two offerings right now; Grimm, on NBC, and Once Upon a Time on CBS. I’ve only seen Grimm.

Grimm is like the adorable contestant on American Idol, who can sing but isn’t the strongest, but is the one that everybody likes. I’m sure Grimm will grow into its intriguing premise, but it isn’t there yet.

The premise of Grimm is that there are people – grimms — who can see the otherworldly creatures who live among us disguised by glamours. Many of these creatures are not harmful to humans, but the grimms are charged with killing the ones who are, or as a grimm character explains, “the bad ones.” Our grimm is named Nick Burkhardt and he is a detective in Portland, Oregon. Nick is an orphan (there’s a surprise) who was raised by his Aunt Marie. In Episode One, Aunt Marie, who is dying of cancer, pays Nick a visit. While the two of them are out walking they are attacked by a creature, a creature Marie tells Nick is a “grimm reaper.”

This is the first Nick has known of his supernatural destiny, and the show goes on from there.

The actor who plays Nick (David Guintoli) is good-looking. Actually, he is pretty, with big, deep blue eyes and shiny black hair. He may be a little too pretty for the role. He has a clever African American detective partner named Carl who is still alive (yaay!) after seven episodes, and a pretty veterinarian fiancé who shows up as eye candy for male viewers, and to drop helpful swatches of exposition about animal behavior since most of the monsters have an animal component (wolves, pigs, bears, rats and goats . . . You may see a pattern emerging.) She isn’t dead yet either, and Aunt Marie wasn’t dispatched until Episode Three, so that alone makes Grimm unusual television.

Aunt Marie left Nick an Airstream trailer filled with grimm weapons and a book, a handwritten Young Grimm’s Guide to Monsters, that gives information about various creatures. If you ever watched a TV show called Charmed, this book will seem quite familiar. I always like magical books though, and I would have been disappointed if Aunt Marie had left her data on a blog, for instance, or a flash drive.

There is a through-story developing, with a police captain who is more than he seems, and a gorgeous blond woman who is a hexenbeast in her spare time. The best character so far, though, is Monroe, the other sidekick, the werewolf who adheres to a rigid twelve-step program. Monroe does Pilates and collects clocks, plays cello and tries to remain calm – although he does fall off the wagon when his smokin’-hot bad-girl werewolf ex shows up.

Another plus, for me at least, is setting the story correctly in the Pacific northwest. They are doing a fine job of using beautiful coastal Oregon as a set, even if the show isn’t filmed entirely on location.

Right now, Grimm is trying too hard to connect each story to one of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales. This is the show being clever; the brothers who collected the tales actually covered up the grim (pun intended) reality the original stories addressed; werewolves, billy goats gruff, thinking rats. Also, Nick needs to take the spotlight more. I am delighted that his cop partner and his life partner aren’t dead yet, but between Carl and Monroe, pretty-boy Nick can frequently phone it in. I think one fix for this is to put Life Partner Girl in jeopardy without killing her, or, alternately, to let us discover that she is a spy for the paranormals. Or, what the heck, surprise me.

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The best candidate for urban fantasy TV premieres in two weeks; it’s Lost Girl on Syfy.  I know, I’m amazed too. Lost Girl’s world has the look of Harry Dresden’s or even Seanann McGuire’s, and the idea that the fey girl who “won’t choose” is a succubus is a fine one.

We’ll see how they do with it.

I saw the woman who wears the Yoda mask at the intersection the other day. I walked over to get a coffee at Peet’s. There was a person talking energetically to another person, both standing next to the streetlight pole, and a sign lying on the wheelchair ramp. I looked at it as I walked past. It was neatly lettered, probably stenciled, and said something like, “City of Sebastopoodle City Council—White bread, not green!” There were words underneath it but I didn’t catch what they were.

“Sebastopoodle” is a pun on the town of Sebastopol. While I understand the meaning of “white bread,” I’m not sure “green bread” is the image you really want to go for… unless you are referring to money.

I was actually closer to Peet’s door when I realized that the owner of the sign could only be the Yoda-mask woman and I looked back. She had her back to me but the mask is one that covers her entire skull, and I could see its smooth green cover hiding her hair. She wore knitted leg-warmers in purple, yellow and white, with a crocheted ruffle at the bottom, leggings, and a purple tunic-like top.

She turns up periodically at this intersection with a sign. Several years ago when I first saw her, she had an anti-war sign. During the crash of 2008, she had a sign equating bankers with robbers. She also had a different mask a couple of times back then, a lavender wolf-mask. I also think I saw her once with a Creature from the Black Lagoon mask, but I can’t be sure.

Sometimes she dances, usually at the city busses as they go by. One day she ran alongside the bus for a few yards, brandishing her sign.

I have talked to her a couple of times. I don’t know what she looks like (the mask) but I do know she has curly gray hair. She has kind of a husky voice, and speaks English with no accent. One day she was dancing, in her Yoda mask with her Bankers=Robbers sign, to Elvis, who sang from a small boom box she had near her. I commented on Elvis. She said, “Elvis is the king.”

“I know,” I said, because really, what else is there to say?

One day I commented that it was beautiful morning, and she agreed.

She may commute all around the city with her signs for all I know, but I imagine her using that intersection as her Facebook page.  I sit in my warm house with my laptop, the remaining ten minutes before I have to head off to work, and type in some observation or comment that I share with a circle of friends, and sometimes, because of how Facebook works, with friends of those friends and people I don’t even know. She painstakingly stencils messages (correctly spelled, I might add) on wooden signs and walks the square of the intersection. Her statements are seen by her friends, maybe, and mostly by people she doesn’t even know. Sidewalk social media.

My comments about John Burnside’s literary horror novel The Glister are up at Fanlit.  If you read my comments here, you will find the fanlit review pretty similar, but a little shorter. Posting it reminded me what a good stylist Burnside is.