In her unpublished autobiography, Malvina described one of the streets she lived on as a child: The times I have been happiest were the rare times when I was one of a gang....I had a kind of gang when we lived on Buchanan Street [in San Francisco]. I must have been seven or eight. We would sit in the light of the street lamp in the evening on the high wooden flight of stairs, a dozen of us, and while the bigger boys played "One Foot Off the Gutter," I would make up long stories to tell the others. I don't remember what the stories were about, but they must have been interesting; I can remember the young voices in the evening, calling me to come out. In her seventies she had lived on Parker Street in Berkeley for a long time, knew her neighbors, but she wasn’t writing about a particular street in this song from 1972, but about the effect a friendly neighborhood has on the people, especially the children, who live there.  I’ve lived on my street, Channing Way, for a long time, too, over twenty-five years. It’s three blocks over from Parker, and I live about five blocks west of where my mother lived. Here’s last Sunday’s walk up Channing to Berkeley’’s main street, Shattuck. The sun is out, the day is warm, so I decide to walk, not drive, to Royal Grounds with my five-and-a-half pound MacBook on my back. I’m glad I did, even though my knee is protesting by the time I get home. First, I see a guy in the street working a widget and looking up--I look up and see a plane, no, a model plane which he brings in for a noisy landing at his feet. Then the house on the corner with the potato vine in your face and English ivy on the fence is getting it all cut back, hooray. I say “Big job,” to the people and we talk about the predatory nature of English ivy. “It’s like an alien!” the woman says and shows me a hairy stem wedged between the fence boards forever. “Maybe you could give it a shave,” says I. “Yeah, a shave, maybe.” In the next block, more yard work. The girl, seven or so, says “Hi!” She’s wearing a Washington tee-shirt so I know she is one of the kids I tell stories to there. I say “Hi,” she says “Hi, Nancy,” because I’m a grown-up who goes by my first name at school. I walk on, wishing I had a tee-shirt like hers, only bigger. It’s pink, and they were out of that color in my size at the school barbecue. Another black tee-shirt I don’t need. The PTA point-man for tee-shirts promised he’d get a pink one made but I haven’t heard yet. Then I stop to admire a shih tzu. I tell its owners I’ll soon be looking for a small dog but fear yappiness. They tell me shih tzus are known for not barking; Periwinkle only barks at other dogs or when people she knows come to the door. Strangers, however are unannounced. Not a good watchdog. We watch a man bicycle by with a kid pedaling behind him and a long trailer attached with about four recycling boxes lined up in it and flags flying. The joy of living on a “bicycle boulevard.” I get an orange juice at Royal Grounds (their lattes are not that good) and log on to their wireless. I correct the typos in my blog pointed out by my latest subscriber, Margret Roadknight, the excellent Australian singer who has recorded some of my mother’s songs. I also have a subscriber in Germany who found Malvina LPs and songbooks in the Munich library. Who knew? Then I proceed to Kinko’s to copy Stuart Stotts’ “So Many Ways to be Smart” to send to Judy Fjell. It’s a song that celebrates the seven intelligences on a kid’s level and I love to sing it in testing season (“Some folks are good at doing their best/But it’s hard to measure on a standardized test...”). Time to go home but I need a bathroom and the library isn’t open yet so I stop at Peet’s for a latte. I’m reading the paper at a table where I can be seen from the street in case somebody I know walks by, and somebody does. It’s Pam, who teaches drumming at the women’s music weekends we go to. She’s in town to see the taiko drummers at Zellerbach. On the way home the pink-tee-shirt girl’s dad is outside too and says “I’ve got your tee-shirt. I’ll get it now!” He is the point-man. Now I have my tee-shirt just like hers only bigger, and all is well. ©2007 by Nancy Schimmel http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~margretr/opening.htmhttp://www.stuart.stotts.com/goodies-recordings.html
 
 
 
 
 
Trees a block down my street, taken by Carole Leita on March 13, 2007
Thursday, March 15, 2007
MY STREET