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by Fran Marsh Move over IS&T. Adam, 13-year-old son of Graduate Division staffer Barbara Mount, wants a bicycle. So in addition to the things most kids do, like washing the car and cleaning out the back yard, Adam has started a business. He creates custom web sites. Complete with moving images, color, etc. Adam is also a talented writer whose latest novella is titled "The Chronicles of Equilibrium." Feeling obsolete? Do As We Say. One of those old movie-lobby ashcans-the cylindrical concrete canister with beach sand-was chock full of cigarette butts at the entrance to the state health department building, Oxford and Berkeley Way. Dog Days of Summer: Murphy, a mixed breed belonging to graphic designer Linda Currie, spent several days this summer contentedly curled up in his mistress' cubicle while she worked. Murphy was a well mannered dog. Clucked over and petted by the staff, he stayed where he should, looking on with doleful eyes and making not a sound more than an appreciative pant. Until a fire engine screamed by. Murphy, being a dog, couldn't resist an urge to howl along. Fast forward to a few days later to find staff quietly tapping away in their cubicles. No Murphy there this time. But here comes a fire engine, siren blaring, and from each cubicle arises a coyote-like arrghoooooooooooo. Gotta Get Away. Sometimes the urge to travel hits. But what if you're spending most of a low-budget summer on campus? First, a little travel planning. A visit to your travel agent, the TRiP store, ends with purchase of a ticket (like at the airlines, but with a twist.) Then hop aboard the shuttle for an almost free trip to...Richmond Field Station. For only $1, you're in a different world, if only for an hour or so. Your driver: James Buie, philosopher, travel guide and linguist. Buie greets his passengers (RFS staff, occasionally faculty and Albany Village students) in Hindi, Chinese, Spanish and German. "I enjoy learning from different cultures," he says, so he speaks greetings and parting words in each tongue. "People should take transit more seriously. We're in love with our cars. But we should be in love with the bus," says Buie. And his bus was filled with budding international romance. (Chatted one young man to a young woman: "Can I look you up when I'm in France? I hate to do the usual touristy things, and I don't speak any French....)" The Richmond shuttle's been around 25 years. Buie's been driving it three years now. At RFS, he narrates a rolling tour: the Northern Regional Library Facility (infrequently checked out books); a soon-to-be lunch place for the staff; the Forest Products Lab, Earthquake Engineering Lab, and the Richmond Sewage Treatment Plant, over which one has a grand city view. Red, White and Zen. Here's to July 4th bride Jacquelynn Baas, director
of the Berkeley Art Museum, who married Stephen Walrod at Bernard Maybeck's
First Church of Christ Scientist in Berkeley in a Buddhist ceremony. |