Wheat and Chaff

The Sierra Sacramento Valley Museum of Medical History and Historical Library is partly described by the AAA guide as having "displays of medical artifacts, including an iron lung." This sounded supremely cool to me, so I stopped there on my way to Reno this weekend.

This museum is a perfect example of how a bad curator can ruin a perfectly good museum.

Dear curator, if you don't have the space to effectively display your entire collection, so that it can be seen and described and understood and appreciated...don't display your entire collection. This is what storage rooms and rotating exhibits are for. Also, when your collection is crammed into the hallways of a 1970's glass and steel office building, leaving no breathing room intensifies the feeling that the museum is an afterthought.

So, all criticism aside, I did get a few really cool pictures, and one even has some text to go with it because it actually had a display card explaining what it was. The rest have to be pretty much self explanatory, because no information besides the occasional label was provided.



This iron lung, used to treat polio victims with paralysis is one of fewer than 20 iron lungs on public display in the United States. The iron lung was widely used during the polio epidemic of the 1940's and 50's to help patients whose breathing was hampered by a paralyzed diaphragm. The patient was sealed into the unit and a pump moved the diaphragm at the end of the iron lung, thereby serving the same purpose as the patients actual diaphragm. Patients could be in such a unit for weeks and some for decades. If electrical power was lost, the iron lung had to be operated by hand. A polio vaccine developed in the 1950's virtually eliminated the disease and the need for such treatments. Polio was the first nervous system disease attributed to a virus.

Human skull and spine, used for teaching purposes



Rectal Dilators, there was something in there about hemorrhoids too, but I couldn't make out the details.



Complete human skeleton



Clutter



Intestinal parasite



Pig and cat fetuses



Field amputation kit



Collection of antique bedpans and urinals



That's it for now. I have pictures of trees and snow and stuff from the trip up, but really, who wants to see that. It's pretty in person, but when it's somebody else's pictures, it's just boring.

It's 1am. It's Donut Wheel time.

It’s 1am and I’m all the way awake. It’s not because my husband is snoring, which is the usual reason. If it was that, I could just go downstairs and sleep on the couch. No, I blame the large mocha that I had while hanging out with some fellow students at Starbucks after class. If I drink coffee at 10am, it puts me to sleep, but if I drink it at 10pm, I keeps me awake for hours. Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to stay awake and eat donuts. Or something like that.



Years ago when I was awake at 1am in Livermore, I used to have a few options. If I wanted to see all of my college age friends, I could go to Lyon’s. If I only wanted to see my brave and culinarily adventurous friends, I would go to Mally’s. If I wanted to be left alone, I would go to Donut Wheel.

Mally’s and Lyon’s are long gone. There is an IHOP, but they’re only open 24 hours on the weekend. Donut Wheel is now the only 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, sit down establishment in Livermore, and one of only two in the Tri Valley area, the other being the Denny’s in Pleasanton. So now I sit in Donut Wheel, just me, my donuts and milk, and a couple of employees making donuts for the morning rush that will start in about 4 or 5 hours. I am deeply appreciative that this establishment still exists. I don’t know where the college age students gather nowadays, though I am told that the hipsters have taken over the old VE Club. Not everyone is interested in hanging out at a bar though. I know I wasn’t and I’m still not. Just give me coffee, something full of those sweet, sweet carbs that I’m not supposed to eat, my laptop and something to write about, and if I'm really, really lucky, the WiFi from the laundramat 3 doors down will still be up.

Sitting in Donut Wheel is a little like traveling back to some other time. You can still get a small cup of Farmer Brothers coffee for 85 cents and donut holes are a dime a piece. For about 2 bucks, after tax, you can have yourself a pretty significant snack. The architecture is pure 60’s glass, steel and concrete and there are still surfaces inside that are covered in real live, honest to god linolium. None of the display cases come anywhere close to resembling each other and the chairs are pure vintage 1950’s Chinese restaurant black frame with red upholstery They actually sell cigarettes. Sure, they’ve got Vitamin Water in the beverage case, but that is just a nod to the modern world.

Then there’s the counter lady. She’s always there. It doesn’t matter what time of day or day of the week that I come in, there she is. She is an utter mystery to me. She wears very thick makeup on her face, so much so that it is impossible to tell what ethnicity she it. She talks as little as possible, but one cannot tell if that is because she speaks limited English or because she is simply a quiet person. She has a tummy that looks like she is pregnant, only it’s been that way for years, so one assumes that she is not. I want to know what is behind that mask of makeup.



In addition to the simple act of existing, Donut Wheel’s other contribution to the community is the performing arts window. Any performance of any kind can be safe in the knowledge that they can at least advertise at Donut Wheel. And Panama Bay, but that’s another post…and I’ve run out of donuts.

Taking in the Fall Foliage...in Livermore?

Livermore isn't exactly the first place that you think of when you're considering checking out the leaves turning. People usually head for the mountains, make a day of it, have lunch at a little cafe, maybe stay at a Bed and Breakfast. Or eat at Denny's and stay at Motel 6 if they have failed to plan properly. But I'm here to tell you that you can get your Fall Foliage fix without driving all the way to Yosemite or Tahoe or Santa Cruz, and without spending an arm and a leg on hotels and restaurants. Those trips are all absolutely wonderful when you have the time and the money, and I'm even going to cover those places here, eventually, but what if you've only got a few hours? Here's the lowdown on Fall Foliage in Livermore.

Murrieta Boulevard

Start your trip by exiting the Portola offramp from Interstate 580. Taking this off ramp affords you your first sightseeing opportunity. Once you have exited 580, make a right hand turn onto Murrieta Blvd. and keep your eyes peeled. Some of the most beautiful trees in the valley are on the median strip and sidewalks of this boulevard. Unfortunately my photos don't really do these trees justice, as the best views are from the middle of the road, not the sidewalk, but I was able to get a couple of really great shots of the vines that grow on the soundwalls facing the boulevard.









Sunset Office Plaza

This is another spot that would not generally be on your list of places to play tourist, but believe me, it's worth it.

Continue driving down Murrieta Blvd until you get to Holmes. Make a right on Holmes and go about 5 or so blocks. You will see Granada Shopping Center on the right side of the street and the Sunset Office Plaza on the left. Make a left into the plaza. There is a road that circles the plaza, so you don't have to weave in and out of the different buildings.









Granada Shopping Center

Not a place to take in foliage, but a good place to take in some calories. The next stop is Sycamore Grove, so the Lucky's or the Subway are good places to pick up a picnic lunch to eat at the park. Or, if you feel like a sit down meal, I strongly suggest a waffle at Country Waffles, they're the best I've had, and you only need one. I have heard that their biscuits and gravy are good too. These are all across the street from the office plaza.

Sycamore Grove Park

The most obvious place on my list, most local people at least know of Sycamore Grove Park and would possibly think of it as a place to see the leaves turn. In fact, the park has a special ranger led tour of the fall colors in the park tomorrow afternoon (Saturday, Nov. 8) at 2pm. If you are leaving from Granada Shopping Center, turn right on to Holmes. Follow Holmes until you come to Wetmore Road. Make a left on to Wetmore and the park is just a short way down on the right. Unlike the first two destinations, this one you'll want to get out of your car for. You can do some serious hiking at this park and still barely scratch the surface of all it has to offer. For more information about monthly Sycamore Grove happenings, go to http://www.larpd.dst.ca.us/open_space/documents/valleywilds.pdf







Bonus Anomolous Fruit Stand, now with more sheep!

After a bit of hiking and some lunch, you may want to head out towards Del Valle Recreation Area, or you may want to save that for another trip. I didn't get any photos of the park because I didn't have enough cash left to pay for parking (bad me! bad!), but I did get some photos of rural Mines road along the way, and some produce at what is quite possibly the last open roadside fruitstand in several counties (Brentwood probably still has a couple open, but that's another post entirely). There were also sheep. Unfortunately, the photo of the sheep did not come out, so there are no sheep pictures. I am terribly sorry. I will try harder to get sheep pictures next time.

From Sycamore Grove Park, turn left from the parking lot onto Wetmore, turn right onto Holmes. Continue on Holmes as it becomes First Street. Make a right turn off of First Street onto South Livermore Ave. Follow South Livermore Ave until shortly after the Civic Center for the fruit stand, slightly further for rural Mines road.





And just to show you that it's not just trees that turn pretty colors, here is a small vineyard that I braved barbed wire to get a photo of.



That's it for trees for this year. Maybe next year I'll feature old town Pleasanton. Or maybe I'll make it up to the mountains.

Chocolate

If you take the Ashby exit in Berkeley off of interstate 580 west and then turn left onto 7th avenue, after about two blocks you will come to a small, unassuming brick building on the right, on Heinz street, that houses the Scharffen Berger chocolate factory. The building is solid brick and it’s construction was briefly interrupted by the 1906 earthquake.




Walking into the gift shop, you are assaulted by the scent of chocolate, to a degree that is very nearly unpleasant, but which is partially mitigated by the immediate cheerfulness and politeness of the shop staff.
Myself and two other people were there for the tour. After signing in, we were gathered up by Stephanie, our tour guide, to get started on the tour.
My cohorts and myself found ourselves in a small classroom, fully prepared to learn everything there is to know about making chocolate that can be learned in an hour. And Stephanie was fully prepared to teach us.
Cacao beans are grown in a very specific band around the equator. The trees can be grown anywhere that is reasonably warm, but they will only flower and fruit in these regions.
Chocolate begins it’s life as a tiny, orchid looking cacao flower roughly the size of your finger tip on the Theobroma Cacao tree. This eventually turns into a fruit roughly the size of a football. The inside of the cacao fruit is much like a pumpkin or cantaloupe, in that it has a thick, husk like skin, but inside that skin is a pulpy, edible fruit, said to taste much like lychee or passion fruit, and within that fruit are cacao beans.
The pulp and seeds are removed from the husk and placed into a bin, covered with banana leaves and allowed to ferment anywhere from 3-7 days. This process imparts a fruity quality to the cacao beans along with some of the natural astringency being leeched out. The beans are then dried in the sun so that they will not mold while being transported and so that they will not pick up any unwanted flavors from being dried using other types of heat. This is the form that the chocolate factory receives the cacao beans in, as a raw agricultural product.
The beans are then roasted in a large, old looking machine that was once a coffee roaster (the process for roasting coffee and the process for roasting chocolate are identical) for about an hour at 300 degrees, which gives them a mellow flavor.



The equipment used to produce the chocolate is vintage European equipment, sometimes cobbled together from more than one machine because the machines simply aren’t made anymore, artisinal chocolate having given way to mass produced chocolate.

The beans then go into a machine called a winnower, which cracks the beans and separates the husks of the beans from what are called the nibs, which are the seed bits that remain after the husks are blown away. This is the first time that the bean smells or tastes like chocolate, and it is the part of the bean that is used to make chocolate.



The cacao nibs are approximately half cocoa solids and half cocoa butter. In order to release the cocoa butter in the nibs, they are put into a machine called a melangeur (mixer) , which crushes the nibs between two 600 pound wheels, extracting the cocoa butter and mixing it with the solids and creating a substance called cocoa mass or chocolate liquor. This is also the point at which the product stops being considered cacao and starts being cocoa or chocolate.



At this point, the cocoa mass is still gritty and has not yet been refined to the point necessary to make what we think of as chocolate. It also is still unsweetened. Further refining and the addition of other ingredients, such as sugar, vanilla beans and soy lecithin (as an emulsifier), is done in a conche, a machine invented in Switzerland by Charles Lindt, which makes chocolate as we know it possible.
The conche grinds and aerates the cocoa mass, sugar and any other ingredients together until they are made into a smooth liquid, with all of the cocoa mass and sugar particles coated with cocoa butter.



After the chocolate is finished being conched, it is put into the tempering unit, where the temperature is repeatedly raised and lowered at very specific intervals until the chocolate has a crystalline chemical structure that allows it to be solid at room temperature.



The chocolate then goes to the molding line, where it is poured into specific molds for either commercial or consumer use, passed through a refrigerated tunnel to harden the chocolate and then packaged according to the market in which it will be sold.



Chocolate was brought to Europe from Central America by the Conquistadors. They learned of it from the Aztecs, who considered it sacred.
The Spanish were the first to add sugar to chocolate in order to make it sweet. Prior to that it was made into a beverage and drunk purely as a stimulant, much like coffee or tea. The British were the first to make candy out of it but it wasn’t until the industrial revolution that chocolate was created in the form that we know it today.

Curry and Jello

“Naan and Curry” is an Indian/Pakistani fast food restaurant with locations in San Francisco and Berkeley. If you happen to be in the Telegraph Ave region of Berkeley, near the campus, maybe for a show at Zellerbach, then this is the best place you could possibly eat. Hopefully, it will not be the best Indian food you have ever eaten, but it really is quite acceptable, all things considered. The restaurant is very close to the campus and is the first sit down restaurant that you come to after hitting Telegraph Ave. when parking in the student union garage. On a side note, I highly recommend parking in the student union garage. It can be a bit expensive, as much as $15 flat if there is a special event going on, but your car is much safer than if you parked it on the street, and you don’t have to drive around in circles for half an hour looking for a parking space. It’s worth the splurge. Besides, dinner is only going to cost you about $10 per person, entrée, drink, tax and tip.

Back to the food. I have eaten there twice, once with Mr. Shoe Leather and once on my own. The first time it was the middle of the Friday night dinner rush, making for a high intensity dining experience. I had the lamb curry and a plain naan. The spouse had chicken vindaloo and a garlic naan. My lamb curry was pretty good, nothing to spew praise about, but totally acceptable. The naan was soft and hot when I received it, but it cooled and became hard very quickly, causing me to think it had been precooked and then microwaved. According to my husband, the chicken vindaloo was “not very spicy” and the garlic naan was “fine”. Our joint impression on our first visit was that it was quite solidly “O.K.”.



Last night when I got to the restaurant it was completely dead. Which can be expected at 5pm on a Friday night. I got the chicken tikka masala, which the counter guy said was the same thing as butter chicken (though I am not certain that it is), plain naan and an order of gulab jamun (fried milk dough balls soaked in sugar syrup, one of my new favorite things). By the time I had gotten my drinks and silverware and made my way back to my table, my food was there. Which I suppose should be expected an hour or so before dinner rush starts, but it did not bode well for the quality of my meal. I was disappointed with my chicken, as the butter and the cream in the sauce had begun to separate, which told me that it had been sitting for quite a while before it was served to me. It certainly got to the table far too quickly to have been cooked to order. Even the butter chicken at the lunch buffet at Sansar in Livermore does not get to the point where the two dairy ingredients are separating from each other, even though it sits for at least a couple of hours. Also, the naan was definitely microwaved this time, as it was rubbery while hot and then crunchy after it cooled down. I eat Indian food close to the way one eats Ethiopian food. With my bread. I dunk my naan in the sauce and eat that until all of the sauce is gone. Then I eat the meat with a fork; but most of the eating experience for me is dictated by the quality of the naan. Naan should be neither rubbery nor crunchy and I was seriously unhappy about the state of my naan. The gulab jamun were stale, and I discovered on my way to the bathroom that a large number of small containers of them were stored in a display refrigerator for self service, so they probably had set for quite some time before they made their way to my table.

So, overall, my experience was regrettably unimpressive. The quality of the food left a lot to be desired, but the atmosphere was funky Telegraph Ave at it’s best, especially during the dinner rush, and they let me sit at a table tapping away on my laptop for about an hour after I finished my meal, so it wasn’t all bad.

The next and last stop for the day was to be a Green Party rally featuring Matt Gonzalez and Jello Biafra at 8:30pm. Around 7:30pm or so I decided that it was time to start trying to find my way to the venue so I packed up my stuff and headed back out to Telegraph Ave. The street vendors had mostly packed up for the day, which decreased the funkiness factor of Telegraph considerably, but I still got to play “student or homeless person?”, a game taught to me by my wondrous hubby, who spent a few years there getting his degree.

I got back to my car, pulled out my laptop, which had the directions to the “Valley Life Sciences” building on it, consulted my map of Berkeley and decided that I knew what I was doing. I pulled up to the little booth at the exit to the parking garage, gladly paid my $6, left the garage and promptly got lost.

Well, not immediately, as the street that the garage lets out onto was a one way, so I couldn’t possibly go the wrong way there, and I actually turned the right direction on to the right street. My primary problem was that the entrance that I was supposed to use to get onto the campus was closed due to construction. I did not realize that until my second time around the campus though, as I went around once having no idea where I should be turning and spent a large amount of time driving around the opposite side of the campus on what I am pretty sure were bike trails.

When I finally got myself somewhat oriented as to where I needed to go, I discovered that the street that was quite clearly marked on my map as a regular street was, this time, definitely a bike path, as it was completely blocked off to cars. There was also no parking anywhere to be found, which told me that this part of the campus was not car friendly. I could have found a parking space on the street and then walked around campus until I found the Life Sciences building, but, frankly, at that point I had lost my “party”, I was tired, I was cranky, and I just overall wasn’t having any fun anymore. I decided that I would have other opportunities to see Jello Biafra, since he lives in San Francisco, and that my best bet at that point was to just to go home, type up my first installment of Shoe Leather Tales and get some rest.

The Bone Room, Berkeley CA, 10/24/08

I was supposed to go to the Scharffen Berger chocolate factory today, but events conspired against my getting there in time for the tour that I had made reservations for. By events, I mean that I slept too late and then I left the house in such a hurry that I forgot my wallet. Given all the crap that I need to haul with me on one of these outings, I suppose that it’s inevitable that I will forget stuff, at least the first few times, until I get used to it. Luckily I had decided to stop at the AAA office on my way out of town to get a map of Berkeley just to be safe. Which required that I show my AAA card. Which was in my wallet.

Theoretically it could have been much worse and I could have discovered my wallet's absence somewhere around, well, Berkeley. That would have been 8 different kinds of suck. But since I usually make a soda stop somewhere at the beginning of a road trip, I probably would have figured it out at the 7-11, which is 5 minutes away from home. However, I still had to turn around and go back, find my wallet and start over.

So I just went with it and headed over to The Bone Room. It is one amazing place. When I asked if I could take pictures, the proprietress asked me if they were professional. I told her they were for a blog and she said that was borderline. I assured her that it was just for my friends and family to read and that I wouldn’t be selling advertising space or anything and she reluctantly let me take them.


PS-If anyone knows what the HELL is wrong with my pictures, can you please shoot me an email? They look fine on the image hosting site and on the preview, just now on the published part. Help!

The first picture is a set of three fully articulated genuine human skeletons. They had lots of signs on them saying things like “I’m REAL, Don’t touch me!” There weren’t prices attached to them, but given the prices of other things in the shop I’m assuming that if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.



This is a shelf of casts of unusual human skulls. They go all the way back to Australopithecus, through Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal and up to modern man. The modern skulls often have interesting defects about them, like trepanning holes and skull fractures.



Not realizing it was so prominent in this picture, I have no idea what kind of bug is in the box. But the skeleton is the head and neck of a camel. Which you may or may not be able to tell by the placard around his neck that says “I’m a CAMEL”.



The top shelf is titled “cat bones”. The second shelf is titled “dog bones”. I didn’t look at either of them very closely. It’s weird, I didn’t mind the human bones, and, in fact, bought a real human rib bone to put on my bookcase, but the dog and cat bones weirded me out. It’s probably a fairly common reaction, to have more of a sense of sanctity towards a companion animal than towards our fellow man. In general, our pets don’t hurt us anywhere nearly as much or as often as our people can.



This is a taxidermied tortoise and hare. Hardy hardy har har.



Baby llama skeleton. Labeled “Not for sale”. I should have asked why, they couldn’t possibly be that rare, since people raise llamas all over the place in the U.S.



Saber toothed cat skull mold. REALLY BIG TEETH. Nuff said.




Emu egg, purchased to go on my bookcase. I used to collect eggs, but my whole collection was lost in Denver. Now I’ve got two, so I guess I’ve started my collection back up again.



Water Buffalo bone beads and Hematite beads. These have made a super cool bracelet for moi. The picture does not do it justice at all.



Cool looking snail shell, also for the bookcase.



Human rib bone. One of the only real human bones I could afford. It was that or a couple of metatarsal bones.



And so ends my adventure at The Bone Room. For more information, their address is 1569 Solano Ave, Berkeley, California 94706, their phone number is (510) 526-5252, and their web address is http://www.boneroom.com/

Next time-A review of "Naan and Curry" and the brief story of how I almost got to see Jello Biafra at a Green Party rally.