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Friday Slide Show: Lost in Berkeley
3 October 2025
Our argument with the weather turned in our favor late yesterday morning after we published our Indigo sunset story. The forecast was finally for no precipitation. So we drove our old Alfa down O'Shaughenessy and onto 280, merged into 101, made it onto the Bay Bridge and over to 80 and exited at University Ave. to drive over to Channing where our mechanic was waiting to make a few improvements on our old car.
Our concern about rain was partly because we hadn't changed the windshield wipers since we bought the car in 1984. But just as importantly, we were concerned about walking to BART to get home. We preferred not to get drenched.
There was no danger of that on Thursday.
So around noon we walked up University looking for Sacramento and the North Berkeley BART station.
We never found it.
We tried to get some help from Siri but the map was ureadable in daylight. We were close by but we decided to go to the Downtown Berkeley BART station. We knew where that was.
By the time we got home and sat down to read another chapter of Chaim Grade's Sons and Daughers, we had recovered from our grueling ordeal. But what we read seemed a fair description of any old man who had gotten lost. Which happened to ring a bell:
The suitcase he carried grew as heavy as a sack of stones. Time and again he paused, switched the case from hand to hand, and plodded onward. Even with his knitted wool gloves, his fingers went numb. One moment he imagined the town was just up ahead, its homes close enough to touch. The next, it seemed he wasn't in Lecheve at all, that he'd gotten off at the wrong station. A dizziness overcame him. He couldn't say what was happening. Did he have a fever? It was easy enough to catch pneumonia, trudging around like this, and who knows? He might be greeting his dead ancestors any minute now. And well, maybe the time was right?
The difference between us and the rabbi is that where he carried his luggage, we had a camera. So we didn;t mind the diversion. It was, actually, a challenge.
We had thought about bringing the Olympus with us, but decided the phone would suffice. The phone hides in a pocket and the camera needs an obtrusive case. It would have been awkward getting in and out of the car and a liability on the street.
But the phone, with Indigo running, was more than sufficient. We particularly appreciated two features: the multiple focal lengths (we changed a lot) and the app's persistence when we put the phone away between shots. It behaved more like a camera, in short.
But these images, consequently, don't pretend to be a photo essay so much as an exercise in trying to find subjects as we walked up the street to BART. An exercise, not an essay. Some better than others. Every one a challenge.
And don't ask us about the images we didn't take. Like the rusted frying pan lying on the grass full of rain water.
