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March 22, 2015
chapter 2 - Hydrogen
[Young Primo and his friend gain access to the friend’s older brother’s primitive chemistry lab and use electrolysis to liberate hydrogen and oxygen gas from water. They celebrate this bit of science with an explosion.] p27 We left, discussing what had occurred. My legs were shaking a bit; I experienced retrospective fear and at the same time a kind of foolish pride, at having confirmed a hypothesis and having unleashed a force of nature. It was indeed hydrogen, therefore: the same element that burns in the sun and stars, and from whose condensation the universes are formed in eternal silence.
[A “foolish pride” the creators of the first fission and fusion bombs would in time share.]
Hydrogen (H 1)
"Hydrogen gas was first artificially produced in the early 16th century, via the mixing of metals with acids. In 1766–81, Henry Cavendish was the first to recognize that hydrogen gas was a discrete substance,[10] and that it produces water when burned, a property which later gave it its name: in Greek, hydrogen means "water-former"." -Wiki
Rebirth
It is like spring here in San Francisco. I say “like” because the weather and trees and birds are a little in advance of the calendar. But while I admire the vibrant new green foliage on the maple tree out my window, and struggle to prevent the pigeons from nesting in the light-well of our building, what I actually have in mind here is the spring-like rebirth of the city itself.
These days the city skyline is remarkable not so much for our buildings as for the forest of cranes. Large buildings I’ve hated for almost 40 years have been beaten to rubble and hauled away. Building sites I’ve designed intensive uses for in my mind (multi-use most often with as many residential units as one can slip by the codes and nay-sayers) are now either active construction sites or the location of projects that are either planned or newly completed.
I have reservations about many of these buildings, of course, but they are almost always an improvement on what they replace. There is justifiable outcry about the lack of affordable housing as more and more luxury or at least market-rate units go up. The problem with below market-rate buildings is that they are rarely the kind of structures that will continue to be desirable in 50 or 100 years. Especially given the seismic and wind tolerant requirements of this area, wealthy people are useful for paying for construction that is truly appropriate to the circumstances. If anything, this is even more true when it comes to rehabbing existing buildings.
The other day I took a quick peek at what they’ve done to the Western Merchandise Mart building. When I lived across the street, I loved to walk down into the bowels of that half-block sized building to the little post office hidden inside. The mistress of the place was a lovely young woman of color who was often watching soap operas (it was never busy whenever I was there) and who could not carry a tune, though she loved to sing along with the radio. The place was still a furniture mart at that time, though clearly not as active as it had been in the past. I loved the patina of decrepitude and hint of a nostalgic past. When I drove a taxi here for a few months I just happened to hit what I believe was the last of the furniture trade shows there. For a couple days I ran eager sales people and buyers to and from downtown hotels -- there is a zone of despair and danger in-between which discouraged walking (now that zone, too, is in transition, though it is too soon to tell to what).
There is now a food market and a variety of upscale food vendors in one end of the ground floor while Twitter is the tenant with naming rights. I like what they’ve done with the ground floor: Saving some of the grander architectural details of the past while stripping much of the rest down to the actual concrete structure. The brutal concrete is softened in places by veneers of wood recycled from elsewhere in the building. Much of the space is still blocked off and I couldn’t get to the area where the old P.O. had been. There are around eight large-scale residential or mixed use developments either just completed or under construction within two blocks. The city here is doing what cities do best: Recreate themselves for changed times, either transforming the existing built environment or replacing it with more appropriate structures. At least this is what a city will do if the people and politicians let it.
I fled this neighborhood 20 years ago because the street life was just so bleak -- which it still is today. Will it change when all this construction ends and all the new residents settle in with their easy access to public transit? I’m not convinced that it will, but at least now there’s a chance. There remain anchors for the agents of disorder that have dominated the area all these years, one of which is San Francisco's Civic Center governmental complex, which Jane Jacobs noticed 50 years ago (in The Death and Life of Great American Cities) was bound to be a vector for blight as long as it existed.
So much of the money now being invested in the Tenderloin and the neighborhoods adjacent to it, is probably, if not entirely, wasted; doomed to have less than the transformative effect many (but not all) people hope for.
Pork Store Cafe
Under the influence of my diet (which I’m hardly following at all) or possibly the influence of spring -- with the maple out my window, so recently swept clean of ragged leaves by what passes here for winter blasts, now suddenly bristling with the greenest of new formed leaves -- or possibly the justification of my allergies from the orgiastic rioting of other trees now in bloom all over town and driving me nuts with their pollen; from some or all of these or maybe just a sudden craving for garlic, I returned to The Pork Store this morning for my usual tofu & spinach & tomato & mushroom delight... and I didn’t skip the hash browns or the toast, as I should have done. It is also in the mid 70’s F and rather humid, for here. At any rate, it is done and I won’t regret it until next Friday when I weigh myself.
As if all that wasn’t enough of a reminder that spring is just on the horizon, I just now signed up for my first three Greening shifts of the new Event season -- another Cherry Blossom Festival to start this year’s truncated season of sorting and hauling trash. (Truncated due to the vagaries of income limitations for people collecting Social Security while under 65.) This year I’ll only be working the truly backbreaking events that are worth my few precious available hours.
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