The banns

I am pleased to announce that my beloved Erin has consented to marry me. I would praise her virtues here, but I lack the bandwidth. All I can say is that she’s my hero, and I wish I were more like her.

We spent a nice romantic weekend in San Francisco, where we stayed at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. I was somewhat disappointed. The hotel is very noisy—we had to move to a higher floor because the city noises were so bad, but even in the new room, the hotel sounds were bad—staff moving things, inexplicable door slamming noises, and so on. But it was a nice room, with a gorgeous view. (Breakfast was sixty bucks!)

Then we took the cable cars to Fisherman’s Wharf and caught the ferry to Angel Island, called “the best kept secret” in San Francisco. It’s a wonderful quiet forest island with an amazing view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the city. Angel Island was also the site of an “immigration station”—more like a concentration camp—for Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth century. Immigrants were quarantined there for up to a year, subjected to extreme sorts of examinations before they could be admitted, during the Exclusion era. The immigrants would write poetry about their situation on the walls of the buildings; these poems have been preserved and published.

Then dinner at the Rainforest Café, a sundae at Ghirardelli square, cable cars—all the touristy stuff.  Great fun. As I mentioned some time ago, I love San Francisco. But thank God I don’t have to live there.