Public Comment

Friday night Susan arrived by rented car. She’s driven from Ashland Oregon and wanted to walk. I’m game for it. Weather-warm. Crowds-thin. Students-absent. We could no doubt have our pick of seats from a half dozen very good restaurants on Shattuck. 

A downhill stroll from Euclid is an architecture geek treat. It’s like a garden of buildings where the featured theme is variety. Like flowers, each house represents or tugs at a specific set of emotions. To me at least they are physical expressions of feelings. They entered this world through the heads and hands of local architects and craftsmen-most long gone and in the ground. These people left us a suburban bouquet of remarkable redwood, brick and stucco structures. What I like most is how the shapes and selection of material in each place is unique. It's one characteristic that distinguishes Berkeley from other American towns. After decades here my gawking gland is still stimulated. 

We wind up at Corso’s, a solid Italian restaurant with outdoor seating. Other couples seem to be celebrating a family-free Friday night. Thanksgiving was the night before and we’ve all survived. Over drinks we experience another typical event, interaction with a passing street dweller. He stops to deliver a comment to Susan. It’s actually something we’ve heard twice before from a store clerk and a waiter. “ You look just like….the actress who plays Beth in “Yellowstone.” He goes on in clear, educated tones, to list movies, films, screenwriters and directors tying into the themes the show embraces and suggests we Google his sources. Then pushes his high piled shopping cart past, leaving a wake of rotting rags and stale body fluids.  

The couple next to us caught my eye, “Thank you so much for moving him on”. To which I crack “ There goes the fruit of a liberal arts education” or something like that. This immediately launches us into conversation. The guy admits his degrees are all in the sciences and asks me of mine. “Liberal arts of course” Soon the four of us are off into a warm and engaged discussion. Education in general. Specifically, the benefits of a public institution like UC Berkeley. We all agree that a university fertilizes thought, and it’s a positive thing. I’m able to express a long held opinion: that if curiosity is a type of hunger, and discovery and knowledge its food, then this is where the true gourmets can gather. Or I at least think I have. To me this confluence of ideas and shared perspective between us strangers is itself what makes me cherish where I live. Then his table mate comments that they’re out celebrating his recent award of a Nobel Prize. The momentum of chatter carries me along a few yards. Then the news makes it to my mouth’s control room. “Nobel Prize?” 

For some reason it doesn’t overwhelm the initial innocent bonds we’ve established. But now I really want to know my fellow diner’s inner life. I’ve often referred to a single fact when asked why I think this town is so great: UC Berkeley has a rather large number of parking spaces reserved for Nobel Laureates. Our new acquaintance admits it’s among the things he’s thankful for. But he does insist-I believed this- that what he has always done since he was 19 years old is work. The recognition the prize confers is welcomed, but unnecessary as a motivator. 

The work itself animates and propels his actions. By this time I’ve dialed myself from yappi to n to listening mode. The guy tells a good story, ranging from an influx of fan letters from Germans to how they handled pandemic life (kept going to the lab every day). There is one thing he said, and it was as much the way he said it, that stamps it in high relief. There was a moment,he explained, in the hours after midnight, after years of toil and experiment, where he saw something and understood that it was new. It was without precedent and that he was the only person on this earth that was aware of it. We listeners offered a wealth of silence. After a pause he added “ Maybe”. Which made me like him even more than admire him. 

If there’s an instance where the pot is worth more than the jack it contains, I had it firsthand from this couple. I’ll accept that as yet another perk along with the public schools and parks our taxes support. Around this place even the sidewalk serves as a classroom.