Columbarium Part 1 Walk Around The Rotunda
The Neptune Society Columbarium survived San Francisco's decimation of the Odd Fellows Cemetery it once was a part of. Today it serves at a giant mausoleum as niches and rooms engulf its Rotunda in the middle. I am following the Rotunda all the way around its circumference as stained glass, sculptures and niches with urns surround it.
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From laundromats to lifeguard stations Americans vote in very unusual places
(7 Nov 2012) SHOTLIST
San Francisco, California
1. Mid of statue at Neptune Society Columbarium, where polling station is sited
2. Pull focus from flowers to voter and voting officials in the background
3. SOUNDBITE: (English) Mike Rogers, Director of Operations, Neptune Society Columbarium:
It's been here for over 100 years. It's one of the only cemeteries, if you will, remaining in the city of San Francisco.
4. Mid of voters with stained glass window in background at columbarium
5. SOUNDBITE: (English) Peter Peterson, Elections Inspector:
I kind of like it. The occupants here are very, very quiet. They bother nobody.
6. Wide of voting machines in columbarium
7. SOUNDBITE: (English) Peter Peterson, Elections Inspector:
They're not registered! (referring to the human remains stored at columbarium)
8. Wide of columbarium dome exterior
9. SOUNDBITE: (English) Kristen Sanzari, Voter at Neptune Society Columbarium:
It's actually a very unique place to vote.
Chicago, Illinois
10. Exterior of 43-story condo building
11. Pan from Chicago skyline to voting inside
12. SOUNDBITE: (English) Election official at polling station in skyscraper, no name available:
There are other beautiful views, but there aren't any better. That's how I would put it. So we're up there.
13. Pan from voter to Chicago skyline
14. Laundry spinning in machine
15. Mid of people voting in foreground, machines in background
16. Person getting laundry out of machine
17. Mid of people voting inside laundromat
18. SOUNDBITE: (English) Marialice Zintak, election official at polling station in laundrette:
You really don't pay attention to what's going on back there, although every year I keep saying I'm going to bring my laundry and do it while I'm here. But I never do.
Venice Beach, California
19. Exterior of Venice Beach polling spot at lifeguard station
20. Voters enter station
21. Person voting
22. Wide of beach
23. SOUNDBITE: (English) Mary McNeill, Venice Beach Voter:
This is the best place in the world to vote. I'm so excited to live here and vote right at the beach.
24. Mid of voters at stations
25. Voter and official
26. Wide exterior of station
27. Surfer riding a wave
STORYLINE
From laundromats to lifeguard stations, some Americans had the opportunity to cast their ballots in the 2012 Presidential election in a variety of unusual polling stations on Tuesday.
While most Americans vote at schools, churches or community centres, a handful San Francisco locals get to vote at a columbarium, which is a building housing urns holding the ashes of the deceased.
It's been here for over 100 years. It's one of the only cemeteries, if you will, remaining in the city of San Francisco, Director of Operations at the Neptune Society Columbarium, Mike Rogers, explained.
I kind of like it. The occupants here are very, very quiet. They bother nobody, quipped elections Inspector Peter Peterson, adding they're not registered!
In Chicago, Illinois, polling stations can be found on the top floor of a 43-storey skyscraper offering breathtaking views of the city, and at the back of a laundrette.
You really don't pay attention to what's going on back there, although every year I keep saying I'm going to bring my laundry and do it while I'm here. But I never do, joked Marialice Zintak, an election official working at the laundrette polling station.
Meanwhile, in Venice Beach, California, residents were able to vote at the lifeguard's station before hitting the surf.
This is the best place in the world to vote. I'm so excited to live here and vote right at the beach, said local voter Mary McNeill.
You can license this story through AP Archive:
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Neptune Society Segment - KRON 4
Client: Neptune Society of Northern California
Producer/Editor: Jason Yee
KRON Channel 4 News
Nautilus Society Coastal Scattering
Coastal scattering of cremated remains
San Fransisco - Road Trip
One day if I do go to heaven...
I'll look around and say, 'It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco.'
Herb Caen
Cremation Planning - it just makes sense
Taking time now to address final plans can save your family time and money. Let the Neptune Society show you how families take the first steps to making this inevitable decision easier for everyone.
John Paul II Columbarium
Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma, California. The new John Paul II Columbarium is introduced by Monica Williams, Director of Cemeteries for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, and Hal Wilkes of Christy Vault Company.
[See also
This video was produced by Terry Lamb of Videosyncracy [vidacypix.com].
The Castro
SF's gay district in shades of gray and neon; on MisterSF.com.
Artists' Talk: Anne Wilson and Josh Faught
(Talk begins at 15:55)
Artists Josh Faught and Anne Wilson, who both have work on view in Fiber: Sculpture 1960–present, discuss their individual practices as well as the collaborative dynamic of the student-mentor relationship (Faught studied with Wilson at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago) in this free talk.
Wilson is a professor of Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is included in permanent collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Faught lives and works in San Francisco. His work has been included in solo and group shows around the world, including a recent site-specific installation at the Neptune Society Columbarium as part of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s SEA Art Award Exhibition.
Phantom of the Crematorium
New Music Bay Area and Chapel of the Chimes present Garden of Memory 2007: a Columbarium Walk-Through Event at Chapel of the Chimes, a labyrinthine Julia Morgan-designed columbarium and mausoleum replete with gardens, fountains, and stained-glass skylights. This is a popular summer solstice celebration.
col•um•bar•i•um A vault with niches for urns containing ashes of the dead.
mausoleum A large stately tomb or a building housing such a tomb or several tombs.
They all have one thing in common: They're there to have fun. These are musicians at play, having a good time being goofy, spontaneous, experimental, even silly with their music.
By popular demand, Mills College music professor Maggi Payne will be back with her singing orchid, which is hooked up to an electric switch that causes the flower to make musical sounds when people touch it.
And if singing orchids aren't to your taste, how about singing seaweed? That's what you'll find in the Court of Reflection, where Krystina Bobrowski will be playing her Kelp Ensemble.
Professional whistler Jason Serinus will be in the Mediation Chapel, whistling works by Bach, Mozart, Verdi, Brahms, Schubert and Debussy.
Nearby, the Nature Sounds Society will perform the Dawn Chorus -- recordings of birds, frogs and insects greeting the day.
And the Crank Ensemble will play handmade instruments operated by -- you guessed it -- hand cranks. ContraCosta Times
Attendees at this event were a really mixed bag. It seemed that all the
families in Piedmont turned out for the event with their kids, but I also saw
plenty of burners, dreadlocked hippies and at least 200 women who looked just
like my therapist. SF Gate Culture Blog
Music is from artists' samples online, click on their names...
Creepy KOFY Movie Time Slob on the Spot San Francisco Columbarium
Slob returns to Balrock's cave to talk about the San Francisco Columbarium, and how to sneak booze into concerts and sporting events. The Deadlies and Cave Girls all join in the fun!
herb caen on market street
- Randy Shaw‚ Apr. 12‚ 2011
For over 50 years, Herb Caen wrote a daily newspaper column about San Francisco. Among Caen’s most frequent topics was Market Street, which he regularly traversed to and from work (at 5th and Mission) and to his various social meetings. I recently came across Herb Caen’s “San Francisco, City on Golden Hills,” which includes wonderful illustrations by the great Asian-American artist, Dong Kingman. Caen’s 1967 account of Market Street, is illuminating, and reminds us that the new “Twitter” payroll tax exemption follows a series of plans and false starts regarding Mid-Market going back more than forty years.
“Whenever I feel I’m getting out of touch with the city—a fear that haunts all newsmen—I take a long walk along Market Street. This is better therapy than a hot oil rub, picking up a twenty-four-point bridge hand, or flipping a cigarette butt at a cable car slot and watching it go in without touching the sides.
A few minutes on Market will convince anybody, even the oldest native, that he’ll never get to know San Francisco. it’s the street of broken dreams, of frozen screams, of strangers rubbing elbows—a main street a million miles away from the San Francisco the Convention & Visitors Bureau tries so desperately to portray in its magazine ads: the Tony Bennett city of tiny cable cars climbing to the stars that look down on seven-course dinners, nights at the opera, and all that, sort of kitchy-koo.
In many ways Market is the most sophisticated street in town, if by sophistication you mean weary, worldly, and aloof. Its warmth is its coldness: you’re alone, but so is everybody else. In a city that in too many ways is like a small town, it is blessedly impersonal. You can walk from Sixth to the Ferry without seeing anyone even vaguely familiar, and a foolish friendly smile gets exactly what it deserves: a darting glance on ‘the edge of suspicion.
Market is teeming with San Franciscans you’ll never get to know. It is quite clear that they don’t want to know you, either. Nothing is given, nothing is expected— a truly civilized arrangement.
Market Street is the city in all its desperate vitality and glorious vulgarity—the Alcatraz of streets. It’s there, but nobody knows what to do with it. Every traffic plan runs up against it and falls back, defeated. The dreamers talk vaguely of pedestrian malls and islands of shrubbery, but there is doubt even in the pretty drawings; they will end up in the files (or the wastebasket) along with a thousand other plans bravely titled, ‘What to Do About Market Street.’
It is wide, long, stubborn, and unregenerate— a true brute of a street. A dead end with a life all its own.”
A tribute to the great San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, who died in 1997, can be found here.
EVP October 2009 San Francisco Columbarium - Voice To Voice EVP #10
I have visited this San Francisco landmark, tucked away in a neighborhood, many times, here is a collection of EVPs from one of my very first visits. Please stop by the blog and read the articles related to my posts and give me your thoughts, I would love to hear and discuss them.
voice2voiceevp.blogspot.com
Steven Brent Deppe (1958 - 2014) Memorial set to Steve's Mass For The Dead (circa 1989)
Many photos (and some video snippets) provided by Steve's family and friends set to the 1989 revision of Steve's Mass for the Dead.
A Memorial Service will be held for Steve at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, August 8, 2014, at the Neptune Society of Central California, 1154 W. Shaw Avenue in Fresno, California. I produced this video to be shown and hopefully heard before, during, or after his service.
About Steve's Mass for the Dead (a.k.a. Requiem):
This recording of Steve's epic masterpiece represents the state of this song in 1989 when Steve and I shared a rented rehearsal/recording studio in Whittier, California. Steve had already been working on this song for 2-3 years by this time. Steve would continue to compose Mass for the Dead even up until the time of his death in July of 2014, at which time the complete song had more than doubled in length from the 22 minute version you hear on this video.
We recorded this performance using Cakewalk for DOS running on an IBM-compatible PC with an MPU-401 interface as Steve played a single MIDI keyboard (perhaps my Casio or his EMAX, I don't remember) and I watched in amazement; Steve was not looking at anything other than his fingers through-out the performance (no notes or sheet music). The resulting sequence file was only edited slightly for minor quantization or velocity errors and the occasional finger slip. This sequence was later played back (in the early 1990's) through my Kawai Digital Piano 330 using the pipe organ setting and the stereo analog audio output from the piano was sampled (using a Tascam DAT recorder) into the audio you now hear. Unfortunately, the first few milliseconds of the first sampled note were lost in the process (resulting in obvious distortion), so the audio was faded in at the very beginning of the video to compensate.
Although newer and higher quality recordings of portions of this song are known to exist (I have posted one 5 minute string septet sequence onto sound cloud already), no recording or sequence of the entire final piece is yet known to exist. If I can locate the original or newer MIDI sequences, I will try to get them into beautiful recorded renditions that the world can enjoy.
I have a deep fondness for this song, especially as it was performed in the context of a 4+ piece rock band (keyboards, guitar, bass, and drums). However, even this raw pipe organ version still stirs my emotions and inspires me. I'm especially fond of the second half, beginning with the canon at 11:29 and I recall fondly the times that Steve spent teaching me my favorite parts of this song (though I'm a drummer by nature, not a keyboardist). There are lyrics and vocal melodies for a few of this song's segments as well, but I don't know of any recorded rendition of them at this time.
Although, I personally consider this song to be Steve's masterpiece, reportedly, he wanted to be remembered for his Taedet Animam Meam, which was performed live by the Torrance Chamber Singers in 2000:
Herb Caen Quotes
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Who is Herb Caen?
was a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist working in San Francisco.