Back to Civilization (?)

Memorial at Port Chicago
see all photos »

Yesterday, we came down out of the clouds, literally and figuratively speaking.  After a lovely week in the mountains and woods, we came back to the noisy and over-crowded Bay Area.  Mainly, we are headed back to the airport and back to Virginia, but we snuck in one last National Park site en route.  Actually, this one is not yet an official NPS unit, but should be one by the end of the year, which, the ranger told us, will make it number 342 in the system.  The place we went to see is Port Chicago Naval Magazine, a site which, from WWII on was used as a loading point for munitions onto ships.  In July of 1944, there was a massive explosion there, and 320 people--202 of them African Americans--were killed.  390 more were injured.

see all photos »

This place is a real study in human fallibility.  For one thing, the reason that so many of the soldiers who died were African Americans was that the military segregationist policy left few opportunities for black soldiers in wartime, and they were relegated to roles like cook and stevedore.  Thus, the proportion of those men loading the explosives onto the ships who were black was unreasonably high.  Secondly, in the haste to get materials to the war effort, way too many corners were cut, and so the men loading the live munitions were not provided with any special training, they were encouraged to compete with each other to see who could get ships loaded the fastest (with incentives to do so), and they were apparently told that the munitions were NOT live.  This lead, completely predictably, to my mind, to fairly cavalier treatment of highly explosive materials.  No one knows exactly what happend, but the best guess is that a bomb got dropped (literally, if by accident), and a whole ship, almost fully loaded, with 4600 pounds of munitions just blew sky high.  Can you say Challenger?    My students, when asked why it is important for them to study history, will glibly respond that we study history in order to avoid the mistakes of the past.  If that is truly the case, then the effort is marked by abject failure.  Either that or the people who are making the big decisions aren't studying history before they make them....

If you melt the butter before you make the Toll House chocolate chip cookies, you get softer, more buttery-tasting cookies.

San Pablo Dam Resevoir
see all photos »

We ended the day on a much more cheery note, with an impromptu dinner with Dad and Liz and Liz' sister Madeleine.  We called and offered to take Dad and Liz to dinner, but they said that Madeleine was already there, and suggested we arm-wrestle for the tab.  (I was all for that, as I can lose an arm-wrestling bout any day of the week!)  As it turned out, Liz and Madeleine, after a long and harrowing day of bargain-hunting in Walnut Creek (an escapade for which I have not got the nerve, especially on a Friday afternoon!), wanted pizza at home, so we ordered in.  I bought the avocado for the salad, which is the cheapest we ever got off on an offer to stand someone to dinner, and I didn't even have to arm-wrestle.  I will invite Dad and Liz to dinner any time!

The visit was thoroughly enjoyable, and not just for the company, which would be fun at any time.  It was also educational.  Spooey facts learned:

1.  "Spooey" is not a word that people outside the Powell circle of family and friends know, apparently.

2.  "Spooey" is sometimes spelled, by those with no class, "spewwie," which we decided really has more to do with an unfortunate overflowing due to stomach flu than it does with spooey facts.

3.  Terry Gilliam was the only American in Monty Python.  That could possibly be Terry Jones, but I think it was Terry Gilliam.  I never watched Monty Python (don't understand the humor), and I already forgot.  Anyway, Tim knew.  Not surprising.

4.  Jamie Lee Curtis apparently has a daughter who looks just like Tony Curtis.  Or possibly it was Carrie Fisher, but since Carrie Fisher's dad was Eddie Fisher and not Tony Curtis, there is something fishy about this story. This has something to do with a waitress in a restaurant from a field trip Dad was on many years ago, but I think I lost something in the translation.

5.  Jamie Lee Curtis is Tony Curtis' daughter.  Who knew?

6.  Precocious teenagers exhibiting "charm" are pretty much the same everywhere, but teenagers in Virginia have a marginally more respectful attitude toward adults than teenagers in Berkeley.  The latter will cuss right to your face; the former only do it behind your back.  Also, upon reflection, not surprising.  NOTE:  "More" is a relative, not an absolute, term.

7.  If you melt the butter before you make the Toll House chocolate chip cookies, you get softer, more buttery-tasting cookies.

8.  If you lend milk to the teenager next door to drink with her chocolate chip cookies, you will have the right to call her up and demand a few cookies by way of return-of-favor.  Now...if I only had a teenager next door......!

9.  There is a new UC Campus opening up, in Merced.  Who knew?  There used to be 9 planets, now only 8; there used to be 9 UC campuses, now 10.  How am I going to remember anything any more if they keep changing all these numbers?

10.  UC Davis was the druggiest school in the UC system during the (mumble-mumble)'s (actual year deleted out of respect for those people who attended UC Davis in the decade under consideration)--even more than Santa Cruz. Hard to believe.

11. Law students are grade-grubbing whiners.  Well, one might have guessed that without being told....

12.  Powells and associates are better off having pizza for dinner at home in the seclusion of the yard than they are going out to dinner because, while it is true that staying home means we are not subjected to people who are, in Liz's words, "too loud with annoying laughs," it is also true that, based on our performance last night, other people would almost certainly think that we ARE the people who are too loud with annoying laughs.

And the pizza was excellent.

So this was our explosion vacation:  geologic explosions caused by the subduction of the earth's techtonic plates, chemical explosions caused by man's belief that he can control massive destructive forces, and explosions of laughter caused by wise-cracking friends and family.  The first are beyond our control and must serve as a reminder that we are not as great as we think we are; the second are within our control, and if we remember that we are not as great as we think we are, we will have fewer of them, and the last are a reminder that we are sometimes surrounded by others who are as great as we think them, and are much to be desired.

I dropped Tim at SFO at 6 this morning, then ate a ridiculously large breakfast at IHOP (too much food even without the pancakes, which I told them to hold), but just as well, I guess, as I have no layover to speak of in Dallas, and I refuse to pay for food on an airplane.  So that meal will have to last me the rest of the day!  I departed the hotel and drove over the San Mateo Bridge, completing a tour of all but one of the area bridges--twice over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, twice over the Golden Gate Bridge, twice over Dunbarton, and once each over the Bay Bridge, the San Mateo Bridge, and the Benicia-Martinez Bridge.  The only one I missed was Carquinez--a new spooey fact in the making:  I am sure I never in my life went over all those bridges in a two week period before, and probably never will again.  That's what vacations are for--new experiences!

I am currently blogging away from inside the Oakland airport, rental car safely returned, luggage checked, security cleared, and on my way home to see my dorky cat, who will no doubt demand attention every half hour for the next three days.

Thus endeth a very enjoyable vacation.