Calla Lily
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Cannery Row
Things always get messy where the land meets the sea. Such was the case yesterday, when we visited Cannery Row in Monterey. Once the center for the local fishing industry, Cannery Row in now a tourist mecca. Anchored at one end by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, it is home to a host of shops and restaurants that vary from the high end to the ticky-tacky. The canneries are mostly gone now, except for their concrete bones that still remain. The poor immigrants who used to work in these smelly fish factories are gone, only to be replaced by modern day immigrants who are reduced to panhandling on the street.
It is a picturesque place to walk. Even the ruins of long dead canneries, now lost is some legal limbo still add character to the place. We were walking past some of these ruins when we happened upon two people having an altercation. They were a young man and woman. The woman was emphatically telling the man to go away. She would turn away from him, but he would always get back in her face. We watched this go on for about five minutes, rising in tension as it went. At some point a sidewalk vendor interceded, telling him no meant no, but he was not having any of that. She pulled out her phone and threatened to call the cops, when he grabbed it away from her. It was at this point that Anne called the police. An officer soon arrived, eventually followed by two more. They interviewed the couple and us and then told us that this was not their first dealing with these two. With everything seemingly under control, we left.
Decades ago, I encountered a similar situation. I was in Monterey on business. I had rented a bike and was riding the path that encompasses the peninsula. It was early morning, predawn, before work. I was biking along when a naked woman appeared on the trail. Distraught, she was walking the opposite way. This was before cell phones, and I continued on until I reached the end of the trail and then turned around. When I returned to where I had seen the woman before, the place was a hive of police activity. A little while later I saw the woman again. She was now clothed in only a blanket, but this was enough for her to escape.
Sand + Silt in a Carmel Stream Bed
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Liquidators
In Carmel, we stopped at one of its many art galleries. This was not one of the commercial ones but rather had a show. For much of the work, the artist had taken old magazine pages and then used them as canvas and painted various items on them. On this piece a Barcelona daybed by Mies Van Der Rohe had been painted. This furniture was made for Knoll in the 1960s. We happen to own one. It is among the furniture that we are selling, because when my parent’s house in Monterey sells, there will be no room for it anymore. We have hired a liquidator, TLC.
Justin and Joe from TLC came to the house, checked everything out and began going through all of our stuff. They will return and do a detailed inventory, then eventually, pick everything up and cart it all away to be sold. For this effort they will get half of all the sales. This is a lot and last summer when we first met them it was rather off putting, but this seems to be the way it works. They are quite knowledgeable and should be able to get us top dollar. Plus, this is one less thing that we have to worry about now. Aside what this business calls itself their other oddity is the euphemism that they use to describe creepy items, “dark”.
Sea Foam
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Carmel Beach
We spent yesterday afternoon in Carmel. Half the time we were traipsing through jewelry stores trying to figure out what value my mom’s old jewelry had. The answer was not much. Afterwards, we headed down to the beach. It was a lovely beach day. We spent hours there pounding sand, walking up and down the beach. Along the way, we found a kelp root ball that had washed ashore. Crawling over it were some small sea stars, relatives to starfish.