Took a nice stroll in Tilden Park, which is a very dry park. It is in the hills over Berkley. Eventually we walked down to Lake Anza, which is a small lake that charges you 3.50 to go in and I swam a little in it, even though it was quite cold. The graf-Sanford-Hewitts were in town, though sadly, they were on their way out, to move to Brooklyn. But, as always, it was a pleasure to see them. After the stroll, we went to lunch, at a sort of overpriced Italian place, where the waiter may or may not have had a disease that makes you slow witted. I was amused that the parking meter said it was exempt on Indigenous Persons day, which is code for Columbus Day. Notably, it didn't say exempt on Sunday, which was either because it wasn't, or because they didn't think to put something as pragmatic as that.

 

After that we drove to Redwood City, to visit Stan in the hospital. He seemed pretty cheerful, and we brought him some cherrys. Then I drove back at 85 miles an hour. The evening screening of The Best Years of Our Lives was interesting for two reasons. One, it was 170 minutes long, and structured in a very loose story telling style that was totally surprising to me. Two, it starred a guy who I had as a patient in prosthetics, a man who was amputated on both wrists and wore hooks. I highly recommend the movie, which, shockingly, won an academy award when it came out, in 1947 or so. The attitude to the war is pretty surprising, not that it is anti war exactly, but it expresses a surprisingly nuanced ambigiuty to the whole jingoistic thing that I thought was the national mood at the time.

Certainly watcthing Tom Hanks movies, you'd think everyone just went around congratulating each other about being part of the Greatest Generation. Speaking of the Greatest Generation, I really would like to have a Victory garden. The whole thing, with burying carrots in sand in the basement, and stringing cabbage out and all that. It appeals to me, though of course I have to get some land first. And I have to find a way to not have the rabbits eat it. Plus, I 'm a little afraid of the cancer causing water around here, since I read a piece about a guy who put his family and himself on a diet heavily supplemented on his own vegetables, grown organically, and the whole family developed some horrible and rare brain tumors, because of the poisonous run off in the water supply in Northern California from making missles.