A Beautiful Day for the Subjunctive

It's our first warm sunny day of spring, and the 100th anniversary of the great SF earthquake and fire today. That quake and fire is something that haunts everyone here all the time, but particularly today, when the subjunctive case-- "if this then that"-- is on everyone's lips.

So they decided to have a parade, which some think is weird, but on what other occasion do you get emergency services and trade unions all lined up to receive appreciation?

I got to clap for the SF police chief Heather Fong, and her mounted police escort. I got to clap for the firefighters, marching in dense formation ("formation"), replete with tiny children in arms, dykey types galore, and a very sweet but mangy looking black and white australian-shepherd-ish search dog. That will be the most beautiful dog on earth if I'm looking at him/her from under a pile of earthquake rubble, that's for sure.

I got to clap also for a sweet, earnest, out of tune junior high school band from Pacifica. The empathy that gushed out of me for those kids! I mean, the part of me that loves the Triplets of Belleville (the movie), the part that is so deeply touched by small acts of sheer absurdity, futility and earnestness, it just broke all open at their small, earnest out-of-tuneness. I even shed a tear at the beauty of it. As Eliot said "for us there is only the trying." Most perfectly embodied by a little tiny out of tune provincial marching band of prepubescents.

I got to clap for the long line of contingents of trade unions behind a single big banner "WE REBUILT THIS CITY." And the ILWU drill team, with their tap-adorned steel-toe boots and shiny chrome loading hooks.

As I walked away (the parade still going) I looked back to see the Red Cross marching by. As with the police and army and the firefighters who came before, when I'm standing holding my little tabby cat outside the burning wreck of my old 1920's apartment building after the next big disaster, I will be MOST grateful to see those uniforms.

At the tail of the Red Cross contingent was an old truck with the label "Red Cross Horse Ambulance." Right now, reading the Guns of August and getting a sense of the horse-dependency of the 1900-1920 era, I can imagine that truck was a welcome sight on many San Francisco street corners after the quake. But being an old horse person, some part of me saw that ambulance and felt that earthquake in an all-too-real way, imagining and quickly banishing the image of a burned animal.

So, both happy-gushy and provoked into disturbing thoughts by the sights of the parade, I returned to the office in time for a presentation by a visiting scholar showing us his horrible evidence of the vast recession of the glaciers since 1950. The ice core record showing exactly how human-made impacts are mounting (in terms of sulfates and other pollution evidenced in the core). Basically, after those firefighters, police, army and red cross workers do their best, and we still perish off the face of the earth, the other-worlders who come here to investigate what happened will have no doubt about what killed us.

A beautiful day with a very creepy aura.

[Note to the organizers: GET THE GAYS TO ORGANIZE THE PARADE IN 2106! If there's one community that knows how to organize a parade, it's them. And note to locals: did you notice the long hold ups and delays in this parade? This is how emergency services organizes a parade! Be afraid! Start those emergency kits NOW!]