We live within a few hundred feet of the gas main that blew up in San Bruno last year, obliterating homes and lives. We got a letter officially notifying us of that and to call PG&E if we should see dirt bubbling up. (Uh, no. 911. Thanks.) The letter also mentioned that using a cellphone or driving your car out of there could spark the leak if you did.

This is what we live with.

Pipeline 132 blew up again today, 100 yards away from any houses this time, mud erupting across two lanes of freeway.  A knitting friend of mine happened to be right there in her car with her small daughter. I’m so glad everybody’s okay, and thank heavens it was a Sunday and not at rush hour.

They still insist it’s safe and want to increase the pressure in untested lines. It was already such a hot-button subject for me–it’s way too close to home.

So. Much more in the spirit of a good Sunday evening, may I offer this link to a glass music artist. (Notice his keyboard graphic at the top!)

We once got to listen to a concert by a man who had an array like that of crystal goblets filled just so with water; he had a small tray alongside the front for him to dip his fingers into, then he would run them in circles or half-circles along the rims of the goblets.

He had started with a few, gotten into it like a knitter hooked on qiviut, and by the time we met him courtesy of our friend Russ, he estimated he had spent $100,000 to get his set of perfectly-pitched glasses across the octaves: the ones that are are rare and must be searched for and discovered.

And then celebrated!

I asked him if he’d gotten his MacArthur Genius Grant yet. He fervently wished–please, go ahead, nominate him, please! If only.

I asked him how loud he could make one of them. He sheepishly admitted he’d been curious to know exactly that, once, and had kept at it and at it till he’d shattered one–his face in telling me the tale a mixture of the adult rueing the expense and waste and the fact that he had had to search for a replacement (there was a factory he traveled to in, I believe, Germany) and the little-boy impishness in his delight at discovery: he couldn’t not know, now, come on.

I wish I could remember his name all these years later. I was delighted to find someone else doing this too now. Go listen. It’s good for the soul. Beautiful.