2.17.2022
the great san franciscobicycle protest of 1896
https://archive.org/details/processedworld2001proc/page/64/mode/2up
3.30.2021
Trashed Article about UC Berkeley garbage and one tired gardenereabout UC Berkeley
https://eastbayexpress.com/trashed-1/
4.18.2020
Atherton Report on Police Graft in San Francisco March 17, 1937
https://archive.org/details/AthertonReportText.
3.28.2020
Mary Chapot - A perspective - this isn’t the first time I’ve lived through times like these.
I woke up this morning and made some connections that are helping me to understand why I’m so upset about Covid-19; maybe more deeply so than many around me. This environment, the dawning reality of a pandemic, this isn’t the first time I’ve lived through times like these. To many people younger than me and to those who were lucky enough to be living outside of the affected communities, the AIDS epidemic was something that happened to other people. Everyone became aware of the disease and it changed the way we interact as a community and as individuals. But, being aware of while living outside of and living within an epidemic are clearly different experiences.
Today I’m reliving the memory of how frightening those years were, especially when we didn’t know why people were getting sick, there was no effective medical treatment, and the people I loved were dying. My brother, my father-in-law, my best singing buddy, my next door neighbor, dozens of friends and acquaintances; they all died. I did what I could to stay balanced emotionally. Coincidentally, I moved away from San Francisco during the early years. But ultimately, there was no escaping it simply because of who I knew and loved, my family, our gay friends, all the beautiful creative gay people in the arts communities.
The level of upset I’ve experienced in the last few weeks has shown me that the strategies I developed in the AIDS years, distancing myself emotionally, gritting my teeth through the funerals, knowing that I (probably) wouldn’t die, didn’t end my fear; it just buried it. That epidemic slowed down as drugs were developed and behaviors changed, when the disease became a chronic illness rather than a death sentence; when we reexamined our post-WWII arrogance that antibiotics would take care of all the inconveniences of living in a human body.
I remember poignantly my brother Hank, who didn’t die, telling me of his realization while standing at the intersection of Castro and Market Street in San Francisco, when? Maybe a decade after the first waves of deaths began. He realized looking down Castro Street that the middle generation was gone, only young and old men were left.
A whole generation of men died, beautiful men in the prime of their lives. This virus, Covid-19, is picking off the people you would expect it to, the gazelles at the edge of the herd, those older and sicker. I don’t mean to offend; I’m one of those gazelles now. Evolutionary, that is as it “should” be. But, of course, the personal surrender, the giving up of an individual life with grace, without struggling against the overwhelming desire to continue in the realization all of our plans, great and small, this is real sorrow, real grief and suffering.
I imagine our medical geniuses will find a vaccine in a year or two. In the meantime, I will sit with my memories and try to develop a better strategy for accepting what is always true about living: life is short and precious, even if we live to be a hundred. I will turn my heart toward gratitude for each day, for the sun rising, and the rain falling, for the springtime with flowers and birds and beauty; for music and love, friendship and caring. I want to remember, remember, remember that nothing else, nothing else really matters. Mary Chapot mchapot@sonic.net
Today I’m reliving the memory of how frightening those years were, especially when we didn’t know why people were getting sick, there was no effective medical treatment, and the people I loved were dying. My brother, my father-in-law, my best singing buddy, my next door neighbor, dozens of friends and acquaintances; they all died. I did what I could to stay balanced emotionally. Coincidentally, I moved away from San Francisco during the early years. But ultimately, there was no escaping it simply because of who I knew and loved, my family, our gay friends, all the beautiful creative gay people in the arts communities.
The level of upset I’ve experienced in the last few weeks has shown me that the strategies I developed in the AIDS years, distancing myself emotionally, gritting my teeth through the funerals, knowing that I (probably) wouldn’t die, didn’t end my fear; it just buried it. That epidemic slowed down as drugs were developed and behaviors changed, when the disease became a chronic illness rather than a death sentence; when we reexamined our post-WWII arrogance that antibiotics would take care of all the inconveniences of living in a human body.
I remember poignantly my brother Hank, who didn’t die, telling me of his realization while standing at the intersection of Castro and Market Street in San Francisco, when? Maybe a decade after the first waves of deaths began. He realized looking down Castro Street that the middle generation was gone, only young and old men were left.
A whole generation of men died, beautiful men in the prime of their lives. This virus, Covid-19, is picking off the people you would expect it to, the gazelles at the edge of the herd, those older and sicker. I don’t mean to offend; I’m one of those gazelles now. Evolutionary, that is as it “should” be. But, of course, the personal surrender, the giving up of an individual life with grace, without struggling against the overwhelming desire to continue in the realization all of our plans, great and small, this is real sorrow, real grief and suffering.
I imagine our medical geniuses will find a vaccine in a year or two. In the meantime, I will sit with my memories and try to develop a better strategy for accepting what is always true about living: life is short and precious, even if we live to be a hundred. I will turn my heart toward gratitude for each day, for the sun rising, and the rain falling, for the springtime with flowers and birds and beauty; for music and love, friendship and caring. I want to remember, remember, remember that nothing else, nothing else really matters. Mary Chapot mchapot@sonic.net
1.13.2019
Tree falls at UC Berkeley, Alex Grant, 32, killed
Published an editorial about an unfortunate death under a huge tree at the UC Berkeley campus, where I spent time on the grounds crew.
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2019-01-11/article/47299?headline=The-Death-Tree-at-UC-Berkeley-Why-Did-It-Happen---Hank-Chapot
1.19.2018
Interview with Labor Video Project on privatization at University of California
Interview with Labor Video Project on privatization at University of California
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnSpdfM8434
4.03.2017
4.02.2017
8.06.2015
What May Happen When Robots Do All The Work. Hearst's 1938 American Weekly Sunday Magazine
Special Laws to Make You Responsible For Their Behavior,
The more they approach perfection the more likely to betray their masters...And probably will turn out to be nature's weapon of punishing man for trying to conquer her.
12.19.2014
12.07.2014
5.28.2014
another Chapot family photo July 1970
Okay, one more family shot. I'm digitizing my pics, okay?
This photo was on my birthday, 7.22.70, our last summer in Millbrae. In October, Henry moved his family to Potrero Hill.
Henry's kids; Mary, Paul, Hank, Stephen, William and John.
This photo was on my birthday, 7.22.70, our last summer in Millbrae. In October, Henry moved his family to Potrero Hill.
Henry's kids; Mary, Paul, Hank, Stephen, William and John.
5.27.2014
A few years after our mother Mary Rita Chapot died, my father Henry...
top row; Henry, Doris. her daughter Sandra, my brother Bill,
front row; brother Paul, best-sister Vicki, dog Smokey, sister Mary, brother John, me with a front tooth missing and brother Steve holding his pet rat.
2.27.2014
Can you identify this Photographer Club from the 1890s?
Just look at those cameras. Just look at them. Can you identify this photographer club? I found this photo at the Berkeley Ashby Flea Market a few years ago.
2.24.2014
California Green Archives goes to Stanford's Hoover Library
Strange bedfellows is a cliche.but it works here. I've been volunteer archivist for the California Green Party since my beginnings in 1988, officially since 1999. Last week two nice archivists from the Hoover Library at Stanford came up to north Oakland and carted off my collection; 8 linear feet of metal-edge storage containers, 8 l.f. of records boxes full of candidate lit, publications, our first fifty press releases, videotapes, cassettes, three flat boxes of ephemera (buttons, bumperstickers, ancient storage media), full sets of voter guides and newsletters and three oversize folders of green candidate and global green posters.
It will be a few weeks in quarantine, a few months in processing and then its yours. I talked to archivists around the state. The Hoover Archives, being the largest political archives in the west and holder of a huge graphics collection, is an excellent, if incongruous, match.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Green_Archives
http://www.cagreens.org/history/archives-project
It will be a few weeks in quarantine, a few months in processing and then its yours. I talked to archivists around the state. The Hoover Archives, being the largest political archives in the west and holder of a huge graphics collection, is an excellent, if incongruous, match.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Green_Archives
http://www.cagreens.org/history/archives-project
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