Author Archive
September 15, 2014 by tomdalzell
Bulwinkle in Berkeley
When I told my mentor Sally Woodbridge about my then-nascent plan for Quirky Berkeley, the first thing that she said was “Mark Bulwinkle.” I now know why. To see the work of Mark Bulwinkle is to see just how much a person can accomplish in a lifetime. Especially if he is a genius. And especially […]
September 15, 2014 by tomdalzell
Time/Life Science Library on Drugs
My friend owns – thanks to you know who – all 26 volumes of the Life magazine’s Science Library. When I showed him the Bulwinkle photos, he was reading or at least leafing through the 1967 volume on Drugs by Walter Modell and Alfred Lansing. Lansing had written about Sir Ernest Shackleton’s exploration of […]
September 7, 2014 by tomdalzell
EPIC!
The Berkeley Co-Op sprang from two groups. One was the Berkeley Cooperative Union, an organization within Berkeley’s Finnish community. The other was the Berkeley Buyers’ Club formed by the Berkeley EPIC Club, an outgrowth of Upton Sinclair’s 1934 run for governor of California. As every schoolboy knows (not!), Sinclair started off as a muckraking […]
September 7, 2014 by tomdalzell
The IBM Songbook
When we think of IBM (or – as they used to say within the company, The IBM), we may think of a big bank of computers. Or perhaps we think of electric typewriters. Especially the near-to-perfection Selectric. What a machine! In the 1930s, the emphasis was on tabulating equipment. With the equipment, organizations could process […]
September 7, 2014 by tomdalzell
Still More Murals
When I started creating posts about murals, I had themes. They made sense. Now – not so much. The pithy “not so much” was coined, I think, in the 1990s television show “Mad About You.” Now you know. “Still More Murals” as a title is something of an implicit concession that I have lost my […]
September 6, 2014 by tomdalzell
Murals
Again, murals are not unique to Berkeley, but our murals add to the quirky nature of our city. They come and they go, but when here they inform. Murals that Celebrate Struggle “Struggle” is coded language in Berkeley, or at least it was at one time. Us and them. Good and evil. Damn […]
August 27, 2014 by tomdalzell
Chimneys
As I have walked the streets of Berkeley, I have been impressed by chimneys. They very well may not fit the parameters of my mission, for they are architectural features designed and built before, in almost every case, the time of the current homeowner. Still, they add a certain something to what we see in […]
August 27, 2014 by tomdalzell
American Plastic Bricks
My brother Eric (to his mother)/Ric (to us) left in 1959. We didn’t see him again. In 2006 I learned that he had died in 1972, and that I had been about one mile away from where he died. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which I spent with Lisa Lee and her parents on […]
August 25, 2014 by tomdalzell
Chimneys in Folklore – Chimneysweeps in Reality
Chimneys play a central role in folktales and folk superstitions. The most obvious: Santa comes down chimneys. Even if there is a fire in the fireplace. Even if a house or apartment has no chimney. The folk superstition – a way to explain reproduction of the species without a mention of sex – has […]
August 25, 2014 by tomdalzell