SUNDIAL 1. Yesterday at around 3 pm, we went to Ingleside Terrace in San Francisco to see the affluent neighborhoods one-hundred-year old sundial, a 28-foot long horizontal gnomon made of marble and concrete. I’ve always wanted to see it since I read a fascinating story about the sundial’s dedication ceremony that took place on October 13, 1913. It was a publicity stunt by the realtors to entice San Franciscans to buy land and move into the area. The ceremony took place at night, which was really strange, considering that the device was dependent on the sun. The timing was also historic. That week, the Panama Canal opened and the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean kissed for the first time. Whenever I think of the enormous technological achievement made during that time, I also think of imperial ambitions, the points of contact between strangers, histories and cultures, and the cost it took for all these to happen. 25,000 people died in building the canal, started by the French in 1881 and completed by the Americans in 1913. Most of those who died were black migrant workers from the West Indies. They died of diseases and rail accidents. They suffocated from noxious gases and were blown to pieces by dynamite blasts. The canal was, in fact, a large-scale burial ground. It all started when the Spanish explorer Balboa first climbed a peak on the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and became the first European to see the Pacific from the New World. Across time and oceans, how did the West imagine those of us in the Pacific? How do you make sense of the death of migrant workers so that the most powerful men of the day could lay their claims on the rest of the world? The 150-acre land in Ingleside Terrace used to be a one-mile oval horse racetrack in 1895. Ten years later, the first automobile race in California was held in the tracks. Of the eight cars that competed, only one made it to the finish line; the others encountered engine problems. A year after the auto race, the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed San Francisco and the track was offered as a refugee camp for the homeless. Joseph Leonard, a realtor, ended up purchasing the land and developed it into an exclusive residential enclave with stringent regulations against objectionable occupation. This simply meant no people of color, no minorities would be allowed to buy land and live there. 2. Joseph Leonard himself acted as the narrator during the 1913 sundial ceremony. The sun had set and the sky was all crimson and gold. 1,500 people sat around the sundial on a tier of seats. The Coast Artillery Band was also present. Above them, pine and cedar trees crowned the terraced landscape. On the other side of the sundial’s sunken garden, one could see Lake Merced and the Pacific Ocean. The sundials garden had four heart-shaped grass plots with paths that lead to four columns located north, east, south, and west. These columns were veiled before the start of the ceremony. They waited until it got dark. “Then softly upon the night air came strains of music and two children, a boy and a girl, dressed in Colonial costumes and as dainty as Dresden china figures, danced up to the dial and released the Spirit of the fountain, a tiny little water nymph (a little girl), who rose from the pool with her filmy, fluttering skirts sparkling and glistening in the moonlight. The little one waved her wand and immediately the sundial park was ablaze with light.” Each of the four columns with urns on top had four distinct western classical designs, Doric, Corinthian, Ionic, and Tuscan. Carved on the urns were allegorical figures that depicted Childhood, Spring and Morning; Youth, Summer and Noon; Manhood, Autumn, and Afternoon; and Old Age, Winter, and Night. Other children appeared and moved across the columns and the garden. Beneath the sundial were two brass seals surrounded by colored lights. It was magical. People started dancing on the clock’s face, 34 feet in diameter and encircled with Roman numerals. 3. In 1841, a Spanish priest built the oldest and most enduring sundial in the Philippines, located near the Baroque church of Tagudin, Ilocos Sur, the home province of my Ilocano ancestors. After the Spaniards left and the Americans came, some of my ancestors traveled to San Francisco in the early 20th century as students and laborers, all of them America’s colonial subjects. There are seven sundials publicly displayed in San Francisco, according to sundials.org. Four of these are in Golden Gate Park. One of them, a ten-inch cast iron sundial, is in the Shakespeare Garden, located under the trees making it difficult to read the sun’s shadows. Doesn’t really matter because this particular sundial isnt accurate anyway. Another sundial in the park is made of bronze, two-feet in diameter, and has raised letters saying, “Amidst the flowers I tell the hours.” A third is near the Academy of Sciences, made of 16-ton granite, with marks that show where the sunlight strikes at the equinox and solstice. The fourth sundial in the park is located at the De Young Museum and is dedicated to early explorers of the California coast. The dial itself is a sliced bronze globe of the earth sitting on the back of a tortoise. The globe is about 2 1/2 feet in diameter with a relief showing California at the center of the earth. Beyond Golden Gate Park, one can also see a 4 x 6 feet sundial on the outside wall of the house of Czech photographer Stan Musilek at 1224 Mariposa Street. The largest sundial in San Francisco is located at the Hilltop Park on Hunter’s ridge. It has a seventy-feet diameter dial with a bright yellow painted steel gnomon that’s 78 feet long. It’s in a bad condition, graffiti everywhere, but because of its size, it still inspires awe. 4. The first time an instrument built to measure time was mentioned in the Bible was in the Book of Isaiah. Hezekiah, the good king of Judah was struck with deadly boils so he wailed and prayed to God. The prophet Isaiah told him to apply figs over his wounds. The king asked for a sign that his life would be spared. And God said (Isaiah 38:8), “I will cause the suns shadow to move ten steps backward on the sundial of Ahaz! Ahaz was the evil father of the king. So the shadow on the sundial moved backward ten steps and the king was given fifteen more years. But as soon as the king recovered he became proud and selfish, and constantly boasted of his armories and treasuries. He even fathered the most evil king ever to be enthroned in Jerusalem. I’m not sure what this means but apparently even God reversing the earth’s rotation couldn’t stop the evil that lurks in the hearts of kings. When they built the sundial at Ingleside Terrace to attract prospective residents, it was touted in 1913 as the biggest sundial in the world. They were wrong, of course. The biggest sundial in the world is in India. For almost half a century, people of color were not allowed to live around the sundial park of Ingleside Terrace. In 1957, the first non-white resident moved into the neighborhood. His name was Cecil Poole, an African-American who graduated from Harvard Law School and became the first black federal judge in Northern California. The media went crazy. Poole had purchased the house at 90 Cedro Avenue, built by Joseph Leonard in 1911, the same man who purchased the area after the 1906 earthquake and made sure it was exclusively white. Poole stayed in the neighborhood even when a cross was burned in his front yard. His family stayed there until 1982. 5. Over the past fifteen years, I’ve had the opportunity to travel to India for work and whenever possible, I try to visit the two sundials in New Delhi and Jaipur. Both instruments have been telling time for almost 300 hundred years. They were built in the early 18th century, part of massive structures designed for astronomical observation. A UNESCO Heritage Site, the Jantar Mantar is made of stone and considered the world’s largest sundial, a triangular gnomon piercing the sky 90 feet high. The shadow cast by the gnomon falls on a pair of marble-faced curving quadrants on the east and west sides of the structure. Because of its huge size, it is capable of telling time with an accuracy of about two seconds. You can see the shadow moving at the rate of one millimeter per second. During one of my visits, I climbed into the giant quadrant and let the curved structure cradle me. The shadow moved across my face and the world turned dark and then bright again. I did not keep still. I kept moving, inch by inch, racing against time to be one with the shadow and the sun. (Thanks again, Jeffrey, for a wonderful afternoon in Ingleside!)
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 23:29:18 +0000
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