Skip to main content

III. The Heart of Davis

If you wanted to hide a really nice university town, you might name it, "Davis" or "Albert" or something like that, drop it onto the map near Sacramento, for instance, and give it a dog made of old 78s and 45s.  I don't know where Albert is, although I know he has a Royal Hall, but Davis is delightful.  There is a coffee shop right behind Snoop Dawg, and thousands of students right across the street.  We had coffee there the first morning in Davis.

Only two or three blocks away, there is evidence for why Davis became the site for an agricultural university:  a perfect farmer's market; not too large, gorgeous products, and a lovely place to meet and talk.  We went there with Ellie and Dan to buy flowers and small taste delights.

On still another day, Jane walked us through a part of the University, perhaps to convince us that it was as much art and
science as it was sophisticated agriculture.

I suppose one ought to admit that the proximity of Davis to one of the finest wine growing regions in the world has something to do with its charm, and why it does not need to become a football powerhouse.
We did go with Bill and Jane to an airplane-hanger-sized campus burger and bar emporium to watch part of the Warriors-Cavaliers' game.  We bailed early to preserve what was left of our hearing.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

Nice to Run Into You Again

We do not see things in enormous time-frames.  We human beings are fairly new at figuring things out for ourselves.  For instance, some  people today still think of the earth as a newly created thing, perhaps ten thousand years old.  Earth is actually about four-and-a-half billion years old.   That is to say, the earth is 450,000 times older than the Adam and Eve story, and the universe is three times older than that! I recall first hearing that continents were slowly drifting around the earth, and that there quite likely had been several times when the continents were squeezed together.  But people could stand on the edge of their own continents, and not see Africa or Asia getting closer.  It took at least fifty years to figure things out. We called our continent something special. But sure enough, there have been numerous times during several-billion year history of the earth, when supercontinents formed, and eventually drifted off. ...

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...