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Friday Slide Show: Touching Earth
26 September 2025
Every six months we take advantage of our old neighborhood tire guy's offer to balance and rotate our tires at no charge. He swears it prolongs the life of your tires and two years into our initial purchase of a set of four, we can't argue.
"Forty-five minutes to an hour," he promises after confirming our phone number. We gave him the keys, told him where we parked and where the wheel lock key was. That's all he needs to know.
To kill the time, we wander over to the library a block away on Ninth Ave. to see if one or another title we have in mind is available. And if it isn't, we wander over to the bookstore by Sixth Ave. to see if they have a copy in the used books section.
The library didn't have Chaim Grade's Sons and Daughters. But we'd never have gotten through it before it was due. Even if we were able to renew it a few times. It's a long novel.
But outside the library we stumbled across a sculpture of the city. We looked for our favorite spots and all the places we've lived and decided to take a few shots of it.
There are actually two of these sculptures, one on each side of the entrance to the library. One is of the Bay area before the bridges were built. But we only noticed the other one that maps the city. Both are concrete containers covered with bronze epoxy domes.
Entitled Touching Earth, the sculptures are the work of Scott Donahue. Embedded in the discs are medallions with photos illustrating things like the 38 Geary bus or the Golden Gate Bridge to illustrate how everyone (or their families) got here. He himself arrived in the city on a bike.
We took a few photos of the relief map of the city. The detail is a little lacking but it's amusing to see how the city is characterized. Twin Peaks looks like the Sierra Nevadas. Downtown looks like empty boxes from an Amazon delivery. The Golden Gate Bridge seems to be a peaked tunnel.
We snapped a few shots trying to avoid casting our shadow over the artwork before we continued to the bookstore.
We struck gold at the bookstore. The long $35 novel was available in pristine condition in the used section for $18.
Funny though how a routine maintenance chore can lead to some art appreciation. And a bargain at the bookstore.
