Author Archive
December 2, 2013 by tomdalzell
Caboose Digression
American poet Rachel Lyman Field is said to have started one of her most famous poems after spending a night in an early caboose resort. Early versions of her poems are said to shown this early draft: If once you have slept in a caboose You’ll never be quite the same; You may look […]
December 1, 2013 by tomdalzell
Unlisted Posts
Not all posts are created equal. These posts are not in any directory. Except, of course, this directory which is not an official directory. They are links from other posts. Many, but not all of them, have nothing to do with Berkeley, but are digressions suggested to a digression-friendly mind. In telephony, there are […]
December 1, 2013 by tomdalzell
Narcissistic Digression: Trains and I
Trains have been part of my life. Starting with Lionel Trains. First with my brother Eric’s beginner’s set and then it grew. A few times a year we’d go in to Philadelphia to the Franklin Institute. There were frightening things there – the flash of lightning (Ben Franklin with the key on the kite), […]
December 1, 2013 by tomdalzell
Gabby and Resistance
It is amazing that this was the message of the progressive left. It was. We needed the Women’s Movement. Here is what Gabby wrote about these times in West Philadelphia: I was enchanted by City Hall. From there I found my way to the coffee houses out around the University, the foggy haunts of Rittenhouse […]
November 30, 2013 by tomdalzell
Signs #1 – Just Quirky, No Theme
At the Moratorium demonstration in Washington on November 15th, 1969, I ran into Arlo Guthrie in the celebrity seating area. I was a marshall. I passed him a blanket. That was my second brush with him. I will confess the first at a later date. He was Very Famous at the moment. “Alice’s Restaurant” was […]
November 29, 2013 by tomdalzell
Giant Donuts (not in Berkeley)
As I was writing the Dogs, Donuts etc. page, my research department showed me a photograph of Randy’s Donuts in Inglewood: I was down the rabbit hole. Again. I am a sucker, a complete sucker, for these large pieces of roadside vernacular architecture. In 1973, a caravan of grape strikers from Coachella drove to Los […]
November 25, 2013 by tomdalzell
Gone #3: Collective Communes, Communal Collectives, and Counterculture Icons
For starters, I ask you to look at a lovely brown-shingle on Parker and see Red Sun Rising, a Very Political collective that devoted considerable time and energy to a dispute between the men and women of the collective over whether they should use counterfeit tickets handed out by anarchists to see the Rolling Stones […]
November 16, 2013 by tomdalzell
Food #1: Dogs, Donuts and 2 Dives/Diners
Here, let me spell it out. This is not complicated. This is not Ma and Pa Kettle math. This is simple logic. 1) Food/restaurants are material culture. and 2) Material culture can be quirky. thus 3) Food/restaurants can be quirky. Q.E.D. Quod era demonstrandum. ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι. I have yet to walk the major food streets […]
November 3, 2013 by tomdalzell
Painted Quirkily – 8 Houses
P = Painted. Q = Quirkily. I could not resist. And, by the way, do you think that you know where “mind your p’s and q’s comes from?” Unless you say that you don’t know, you are almost certainly wrong. What do our friends at the Oxford English Dictionary say? The OED discounts the […]
November 3, 2013 by tomdalzell