2008 - January 31, 2013

I didn't start doing a year-end summary in this blog until 2010.  I thought I might go back and review the years before.

In January, I wrote about a dvd set of documentaries about early sound and color movies.  Pacifica suffered from flooding during big storms.  Our SamTrans bus shelter was badly damaged.  Oscar Peterson died.  I wrote about Batman and Robin, a 1949 serial which I watched on dvd.  I started my yearly series about Catholic Schools Week and wrote about two of my old teachers who had died.

In February, I started my series of photos of early aviators and airplanes.  During the presidential primary, I voted for Senator Barack Obama.  I started the 22-part series "Reminiscences of an Active Life," the memoirs of Doctor Peter Henri Van Der Weyde, the man who gave this blog its name.  Representative Tom Lantos died.  We had another big storm.

In March, tearing down the building at Howard and Hawthorn exposed a ghost sign that had been hidden for many years.  I took the photo above on 13-March-2008.  Pacifica's Seaview Theater got torn down.  I wrote about a dvd edition of The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Lon Chaney.  I wrote about how people figured out how to play some of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's phonautograms.  At the Stanford Shopping Center, we found that both Books, Inc and the Oakville Grocery had closed.  The Giants celebrated 50 years in San Francisco.

In April, the Olympic torch run passed through San Francisco.  I wrote about the first two volumes of Leslie S Klinger's The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes.  We celebrated the 100th anniversary of the New York to Paris round-the-world race. I wrote about The Feel of the Rope, a dvd about cable cars.

01-May-2008, was the 125th anniversary of the Giants' first game.  I saw a duck in the Yerba Buena Gardens.  We attended a family graduation at San Francisco State.  I wrote about the first part of a Kino dvd, Houdini the Movie Star.  The Giants turned their first triple play in the new park.  Omar Vizquel set the record for games played at shortstop.

In June, I saw defending champ Leonard Oats win the 46th Annual Cable Car Bell Ringing Contest in Union Square. Matthew Bruccoli died.  I started a short series of photos of posters representing scenes from The Maltese Falcon.  I wrote more about the Kino dvd, Houdini the Movie Star. On the first anniversary of the blog, I started a practice of listing all the current labels and their counts from the blog.

In July, we took a cruise from San Francisco to Alaska.

In August, Isaac Hayes died.  We flew down to Disneyland.

In September, I wrote about a Flicker Alley dvd set, Georges Méliès First Wizard of Cinema.  We celebrated the 100th birthday of the Ford Model T.

In October, Good Shepherd School celebrated its 40th anniversary.  Muni rolled out the 74X Culture Bus.  The presidential debates grew ugly.  I wrote about Livy's The History of Rome from Its Foundation, Books XXI-XXX.  I saw some disgusting racism from people who were opposed to Barack Obama.  I started a series about the Giants Wall of Fame.  Merl Saunders died.

In November, John Fell, my old film professor, died.  Barack Obama won the presidential election.  I was and still am proud of the United States for electing (and later re-electing) a man of African descent.  Tim Lincecum won the National League Cy Young Award. I did a walking tour for people who won me in the auction for the community support campaign at work.  We visited the new home of the California Academy of Science but found it terribly crowded.

In December we took some young relatives downtown and had a nice time.  PG&E installed a Smart Meter at our home.  We cut our Christmas tree at Santa's Tree Farm in Half Moon Bay.  Eartha Kitt died. We had a stretch of very cold weather.