Dance, Gynmastics, Ballet?

Contortionist's amazing feat with amazing feet

Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Inka Siefker works on her contortion archery technique at the Royal Russian Kung Fu Circus Training Academy of Heaven Mountain in San Francisco.

By Mike Kepka

August 26, 2013

A recent Friday, 2:31 p.m.: Inka Siefker was packed and ready for a
much-anticipated vacation to Paris when she got the call. A new reality TV 
show featuring potential Guinness World Records challengers invited her 
to try to break the mark for long-distance archery by a contortionist firing 
an arrow with her feet.

The only catch was that she needed to be in Los Angeles in 10 days for a
 taping before an audience of 200 people. And that she'd never tried the 
distance needed to break the record in front of anyone except her training 
partner and teacher.

"I'd never even done it onstage before, let alone a live audience," 
said Siefker, 26.

She took her vacation to Paris, but spent most of it doing something 
few tourists do - shooting arrows while performing handstands.

It wasn't until she was 21 that Siefker moved to San Francisco from a 
small town in Mississippi to learn contortion and circus arts, but the seed 
had been planted early on. When she was 2, she started competitive dance 
class and gymnastics. She also did ballet and played softball and tennis. 
She has been athletic all her life.

Now she makes a living warping her body in strange ways at San Francisco 
clubs like the Monarch in the South of Market neighborhood.

Siefker's basic trick is a mainstay of Mongolian contortion - contortion is big in 
Mongolia - and involves doing a handstand while pulling back a 12-pound, 
recurve bow with her toes, loading an arrow and firing.

The Guinness mark was 18 feet for piercing a balloon fixed to a 4-inch bull's-eye. 
Siefker was going to try for 20 feet.

When she got to the soundstage in L.A., she was nervous. "I've done it at 30 feet, 
but it's just a matter of having Guinness World Record representatives
breathing down my neck," she said.

Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Inka Siefker practices shooting an arrow with her feet, hoping to break her own record.

Siefker has extreme focus when it comes to her contortion practice. She spends as much time warming up, both physically and mentally, as she does actually shooting. Everything has to be calm.

Because she can't look down the line of the arrow while she is standing on her hands - the arrow is at least a foot or two above her 
head - she needs to approximate its 
distance from the target. She has a process, but she won't reveal it - it's "top secret."

And even when everything comes together, Siefker says, she hits the target 
only 1 out of 4 tries.

The Guinness show insisted she get there early in the morning for hairstyling 
and makeup, and then there was a lot of hurry up and wait. Production people 
kept asking how many chances she needed to make this thing happen. 
That only made her all the more stressed.

The show's producers decided three chances was about right. They gave her 
five minutes to check out the target and the stage - then the crew took another 
hour before finally being ready.

"I'm just like standing next to the platform while they're filming all this 
other stuff," Siefker said. "By the time I got on the platform, I was like,
 'All right, I'm ready to go. Let just do it!'

Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Siefker's basic trick involves doing a handstand while pulling back a bow with her toes, loading an arrow and firing.

"I put my hand on the floor and kicked into the handstand," Siefker said. "I'd really practiced so hard. I pulled back the arrow and lined it up. ... I held it there for just another second and released the arrow.

"My heart dropped." Pop! went the balloon.

Suddenly, the girl who ran away from Bailey, Miss., to be a contortionist
and circus performer was a world-record holder.

"Everyone was cheering," she said. "Legitimate cheering 
- it wasn't just TV holding up a 
sign for applause."

She added, "I couldn't believe I had done that."

It was her Uncle David who was proudest of her. 
When she was 
a little girl, he took her hunting in Mississippi and 
taught her most of 
what she knows about archery.

"We would set up all sorts of ridiculous targets and 
shoot at them," 
Siefker said.

Now she is trying to one-up herself. Three or four 
days a week, 
she works out at a club in the Excelsior district - the 
Royal Russian 
Kung Fu Circus Training Academy of Heaven 
Mountain. She's determined
 to beat her own record.

"I can always do more. I'm never settled," she said. 
"The next level is to 
do it blindfolded from 30 feet.

"I just want to make people believe in impossible things."

To see a multimedia production of this piece, go to 
http://blog.sfgate.com/cityexposed. If you have ideas
 for the 
City Exposed, e-mail Mike Kepka at 
mkepka@sfchronicle.com.

Robert N. Bellah dies - UC Berkeley professor

Megan Messerly, UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus Robert N. Bellah, who died July 30, was best known for the 1985 best-selling book "Habits of the Heart."

Megan Messerly

August 9, 2013

Robert N. Bellah, a UC Berkeley professor renowned for exploring the intimate
relationship between American society and religious identity, died July 30 in Oakland. 
He was 86.

His death was caused by complications of heart surgery, the university said of its 
professor emeritus of sociology.

In his 1967 essay, "Civil Religion in America," Professor Bellah posited the idea
that "civil religion," a nonsectarian, abstract faith, binds together the fabric of American 
society - a concept for which he won acclaim within the sociological community.

"He was moving toward a powerful critique of global cultural experience," said Ann Swidler, 
a colleague of Professor Bellah's in the sociology department at UC Berkeley. 
"He is kind of a demigod in the world of sociology."

Although Professor Bellah wrote or collaborated on more than a dozen books, the 1985
best-seller "Habits of the Heart" leaves perhaps the most lasting legacy in academic and
popular circles.

In the book, which sold almost 500,000 copies in its first decade of publication, Bellah 
and his four co-authors explore contemporary society and the beliefs that shape it
through a survey of middle-class Americans.

On Wednesday, Professor Bellah's four co-authors met at UC Berkeley to partake in 
an annual tradition that began after "Habits" was published, coming together for a couple 
of days to discuss their most recent research.

This year, they remembered Professor Bellah and discussed his most recent work 
- papers that would have constituted core sections of his new book about modernity, 
said Swidler, one of the co-authors.

"There is a line from Aeschylus he loved: 'Time in its aging course teaches all things,' " 
said "Habits" co-author Steven M. Tipton, a professor of sociology and religion at 
Emory University in Atlanta. "The well of the past is deep, and from it Bob drew
 practical wisdom and living water."

Robert Neelly Bellah was born Feb. 23, 1927, in Altus, Okla., where his father was
 the editor and publisher of the local newspaper. When he was 2 years old, Professor 
Bellah's father died and the family moved to Los Angeles.

Professor Bellah's wife, Melanie, died in 2010. He is survived by two daughters, 
Hally Bellah-Guther of Berkeley and Jennifer Bellah Maguire of Los Angeles; a sister,
 Hallie Bellah Reynolds; and five grandchildren.

In 2000, Professor Bellah was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President 
Bill Clinton for his contributions to sociological research on American society.

But for all of Professor Bellah's praise from the academic community, colleagues who
knew him personally say he was a "regular person" who happened to be "smarter than 
most people - and philosophically trained."

Every Sunday, Professor Bellah dined with Bellah-Guther, whose three children often
performed concerts for their classical-music-loving grandfather on the piano and cello.

"Sometimes these brilliant people can be harsh in personal lives, but he was a very loving,
generous, kind person," she said. "Every day, every single time I've been with my dad, 
he inspired me by telling me what he was thinking about what he was reading."

A memorial service for Professor Bellah will be held at 2 p.m. Aug. 20 at All Souls 
Episcopal Parish in Berkeley.

Megan Messerly is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail:mmesserly@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @meganmesserly

Expansion of Major Natural History Museum

Beyond dioramas - nature's new story in museums

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN, New York Times

August 8, 2013

Los Angeles -- - The traditional natural history museum is powerful and familiar, but it is also strange. It is weighty, ponderous, pieced together from relics of lost worlds. It evolved in the 19th century, displaying the geological cataclysms that molded the Earth's surface, the creatures that clambered into habitats and the indigenous cultures that were once considered closer to nature. No other museum genre has changed so glacially.

But the pace of evolution has been quickening. Last month, just in time for its centennial this fall, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County completed a $135 million multiyear refashioning: a transformation that has doubled its program space and added new exhibitions and reworked others, including a mammals hall in 2010 and a compelling dinosaur hall in 2011.

Its new entrance is a six-story-high glass pavilion designed by CO Architects in which a hanging skeleton of a 63-foot-long fin whale is silhouetted by 33,000 LED lights. Outside, a 3.5-acre "urban wilderness" designed by Mia Lehrer & Architects has replaced concrete parking lots. Some 31,000 plantings and a 27,000-gallon pond lure dragonflies and hummingbirds, while a curving stone wall harbors smaller samplings of urban wildlife.

Indoors, other examples of the region's creatures - including tarantulas, harvester ants and rats - appear as part of a new interactive Nature Lab that readily attracts parents along with their charges. And in what may be the greatest departure from archetype, "Becoming L.A.," a permanent 14,000-square-foot exhibition - the largest in the museum - surveys the history of Los Angeles.

But what kind of evolution is this, and what does it portend? Unlike the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, the Los Angeles museum has not embraced the style of the contemporary "science center." Under the guidance of the institution's president, Jane G. Pisano, its natural history heritage is preserved as well as transformed.

A T. rex and a Tourist

The stunning dioramas that were mounted in the 1920s and '30s remain graciously intact. So do the museum's greatest fossils. The original 1913 Beaux-Arts rotunda still makes its antique promise of nobility and grandeur. What natural history museum, though, would display, as we find here, one of the first crucifixes to make its way to California in the 18th century? Or the carefully scuffed shoes and torn clothes of Charlie Chaplin's tramp from "City Lights"? And while we would expect to see the skeletal remnants of a baby Tyrannosaurus, why the chassis of an equally extinct Tourist, a 1902 wooden car that was the best-selling automobile in California before World War I?

Including those items is part of the museum's effort at redefinition, although the curators were drawing on an eccentric set of collections that were never really part of the natural history tradition. 

To read more:  

http://www.sfchronicle.com/science/article/Beyond-dioramas-nature-s-new-story-in-museums-4715681.php

Igniting Youthful Interest in Science and Technology

Bringing out minority youths' Hidden Genius

Ian C. Bates, The Chronicle

Matthew Wardenaar of Tagged (right) gives Mohammed Abdulla a hand with Google Glass during a session of the Hidden Genius Project, formed by technology professionals, nonprofits and educators to give underrepresented minorities guidance in moving toward STEM education and the tech sector.

By James Temple

July 28, 2013

On Friday morning, a group of black teenage boys sat around
a conference-room table in North Beach,
MacBook Airs open, as they debated the
best way to code the Fibonacci Sequence.

It's a classic problem of computer science,
figuring out an algorithm that spits out
a series of numbers generated by adding up
the two preceding ones: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8,
13, 21 and so on.

The lesson wasn't simply designed to teach
the high school students the Python
programming language they were working in.
It was calibrated to get them to think logically,
so that they can eventually work in any
 language.

Their mentor, developer and entrepreneur
Kurt Collins, guided the discussion with a 
delicate blend of sarcasm, wit and tough love.
At one point he made Johnnel White, going into
his sophomore year at Vallejo High School, 
erase the formula he'd carefully transcribed
from his laptop onto the whiteboard.

"If you understand the logic, you don't have to
memorize it," he said.

The students are members of the Hidden Genius
Project, an initiative formed last year by nine
technology professionals, nonprofit executives
and teachers who wanted to steer more minorities
into the growing and often lucrative industry.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/technology/dotcommentary/article/Bringing-out-minority-youths-Hidden-Genius-4691049.php

Use the link above to read more about this
education offering for teenagers.  But now,
back to the problem:

Let's have the Haggin Museum docents and 
friends consider the implications here, then 
we'll take a stab at the problem.  John Dierking
could probably weigh in on this too.

Solving the problem:

To create a program that produces the Fibonacci
series of numbers, advise your teenagers that they 
should always ask a question like this of their 
programming instructors.  "What should our 
program OUTPUT look like?"  The output is simply 
a printout of the results after the program runs 
and finally arrives at the step to print out a sheet 
of numbers.  You'd be surprised how some 
instructors forget to tell you what output is desirable 
as the final product.  Let's assume that we want 
a sheet of printed numbers like the one above:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so on.  Or, printed 
vertically down the page as we will choose to do here.

In programming languages, your student is allowed 
to "declare a variable".  This puts a God-like power 
in your student because a student can simply say, 
"The variable X now exists!"  or "The variable, 
RESULT, now exists!"  Let's continue with RESULT.  
If you say RESULT exists, it therefore does exist 
simply because you said so!  In a running program, 
the human speaks commands to the machine, 
sort of like this.  "I have written the command,  
RESULT=0."  The machine responds, upon reading 
your command, by reserving a place in its memory 
called RESULT.  It stays silently hidden from view
in the memory and carries a value of 0  (zero).  
Now let's try to imagine the program as it might look 
while actually working:

FIRST NUMBER = 0

SECOND NUMBER = 1

RESULT = FIRST NUMBER + SECOND NUMBER
(Notice here that we just created a variable called 
RESULT simply by saying that it's name is RESULT 
and that it has a value equal to 0+1,  which is 1.)

PRINTOUT FIRST NUMBER    (a zero gets printed)

PRINTER GO TO THE NEXT BLANK LINE DOWN 
AND WAIT

PRINTOUT SECOND NUMBER    (a 1 gets printed)   
Now we'll skip the commands to the printer and 
assume we go down a line after each number is printed,
otherwise it's tedious to say all that here.  Look back 
at the Fibonacci numbers to realize that we are trying 
to make the machine work its way from left to right 
and also actively create the next rung in its left to right,
increasing, ladder.

FIRST NUMBER =SECOND NUMBER  
(FIRST NUMBER is now 1 and no longer zero)

RESULT = FIRST NUMBER + SECOND NUMBER
so RESULT is now 2.          (1 +1=2)

FIRST NUMBER = SECOND NUMBER   (1 is still 1)

SECOND NUMBER = RESULT  (SECOND 
NUMBER now 2)

RESULT = FIRST NUMBER + SECOND NUMBER  
or 1+2=3)         RESULT has a value of 3.

FIRST NUMBER=SECOND NUMBER  
( FIRST becomes 2)

SECOND NUMBER = RESULT  (Second is now 3)

RESULT = FIRST NUMBER + SECOND NUMBER 
(Test this as, 2 +3=5            RESULT now equals 5.

FIRST NUMBER = SECOND NUMBER    
(FIRST is now 3)

SECOND NUMBER = RESULT  
(SECOND NUMBER now 5)

RESULT = FIRST NUMBER + SECOND NUMBER    
or 3+5=8)         RESULT has a value of 8.

FIRST NUMBER=SECOND NUMBER   
( FIRST becomes 5)

SECOND NUMBER = RESULT   (8)

RESULT = FIRST NUMBER + SECOND NUMBER 
(Test this as, 5 +8=13     RESULT now equals 13.

This process then continues to infinity  or until 
your printer runs out of ink or paper.  
The clever younger programmer can then add a few
twists to this.  Once he learns how to declare a 
DOWHILE loop, he can command the computer 
to stop this endless process once some kind of 
"counter" variable reaches or exceeds "one thousand" 
printed numbers or some such limit. That way, 
it reaches a stopping point and you won't have to 
pull the plug on your runaway computer.  In coding 
the above example, it becomes clear that it is possible 
to make errors in logic because the variables 
are constantly changing chameleon-like or 
like some Cheshire Cat.  
The "I'm not there anymore" quality of the variables 
can cause you to lose your way, so concentration is 
very necessary.  You can also compress this process 
by looping back after RESULT is made and go back 
to the top of the sequence and proceed through again. 
This saves on a lot of typing at the keyboard. 
Might as well invent some shortcuts!  Finally, computer programming 
teachers will advise the young 
programmer to "de-bug" your 
program by 
stepping through it with a note pad and 
writing down 
the numbers just to see that they change as you 
want them to.  Okay, that's enough demonstrating 
for now.  

Encouraging Your Student

First, it is sometimes necessary to inform 
middle-school and high-school students about 
computer programming and how to approach it 
as a subject.  Tell students that computer 
programming IS NOT math.  Even if it can be used 
to solve math problems, programming is more
a skill and even a craft involving logical thinking, 
organizing and some visual presentation craft.

It is a subject that both boys and girls can become 
excited about once they realize that it becomes 
fun to do and work to complete programs.

One metaphor that can describe programming 
is that of putting an electric train down on a hard floor.  
You lay down tracks for the train to follow.  
In a program, you lay down a track for the computer 
to follow, doing one step after another.  Train sets 
can have other tracks on the side or even inside 
loops of tracks which can be constructed within 
the larger layout.  Programming languages have 
entire lexicons of commands allowing you to 
make use of pre-constructed "tools" that perform 
work in your programs. Students can become 
excited to see how many tricks they can perform.  
If you discover an error in the above logic, 
by all means post your comment to advise of the error.  

Massive Wild West Collection of Artifacts To Go On Auction Block Monday July 15

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Wild West collection faces auction hammer

By Michael Sadowski | Reuters – 7 hrs ago

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  Reuters/Reuters - Teddy Roosevelt's three-barrelled rifle is pictured in this undated handout photo courtesy of Rubenstein Public Relations. REUTERS/Rubenstein Public Relations/Handout via Reuters

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By Michael Sadowski

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Thousands of Wild Westartifacts, collected by a former mayor for a museum that never materialized, will be auctioned off next week by the capital city of Pennsylvania to help pay down more than $300 million in debt.

The long-awaited auction is part of Harrisburg's efforts to recoup some of the city funds spent by former Mayor Stephen Reed to acquire the rare artifacts for a tourist-drawing Wild West museum. Featuring items ranging from the very valuable to knick-knacks, it is scheduled to start Monday and continue through the week.

Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey's auction house in New York City, said the sale was the largest of its kind. "I've said it a few times, that it's the largest auction of Wild West items ever, and no one has challenged me on it," he said. "So we're sticking with it."

Joanne Grant, the auctioneer who cataloged each item, said about 6,700 people had signed up to bid online(www.proxibid.com). By Monday, she said, that number could be as high as 10,000. That does not include people who will be at the live auction at Harrisburg's City Island from Monday through July 21.

Bidders will see a warehouse packed to the rafters with vintage Wild West artifacts and other items related to the 19th Century conquest of the American West and figures like Buffalo Bill Cody, Wyatt Earp, Jesse James and Doc Holliday.

There also are artifacts from Native American tribes, a collection of pieces relating to the Battle of Little Big Horn and more than 500 vintage firearms, as well as a Stetson hat belonging to former President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Other historical items to go on the block include Teddy Roosevelt's three-barreled rifle, hand-written notes from George Washington and John Hancock and the uniform worn by General George Patton in World War Two.

Arnold Duke, owner of the Ruidoso River Museum in Ruidoso, New Mexico, flew to Pennsylvania for last week's public preview and was flabbergasted at the selection.

"The collection is vast. It's staggering," he said. "It would have made an incredible museum. I'm not sure the best place for it was Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but it would have been impressive."

Reed's huge collection was stored in warehouses at the Harrisburg Department of Public Works.

The auction is not expected to solve Harrisburg's massive debt problem, caused by a costly and mismanaged incinerator project. Ettinger, the auctioneer, would not say how much he believed the collection to be worth. What it can bring is an end to the long-debated Wild West museum idea.

"It will be closure for a lot of people for a project they never really understood," said Brian Enterline, 38, a Harrisburg collector who viewed the selection on Thursday. "By next week, hopefully we can all put this behind us and focus on moving the city forward."

(Reporting by Michael Sadowski; Editing by Arlene Getz and Dan Grebler)

History With A San Francisco and Stockton Connection

Unpretentious spot with a gory history

Gary Kamiya

Published 8:33 pm, Friday, June 14, 2013

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  An undated picture shows two muzzle-loading dueling pistols believed to be the weapons used in the famous, if pointless, Broderick-Terry duel. Photo: Associated Press

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One of San One of San Francisco's more surreal historic sites is actually located a few yards beyond the city limits, near the southern end of Lake Merced in Daly City.

Down a little dead-end street, near an unexpected gated community and just beyond a forlorn picnic area, there's a small ravine. In this obscure spot, at 7 a.m. on Sept. 13, 1859, the chief justice of California, David Terry, shot and mortally wounded U.S. Sen. David Broderick in a duel.

Two old stone obelisks mark where the antagonists stood, terrifyingly close to each other - the site of one of California's most pointless tragedies.

The death - some called it murder - of David Broderick felt disturbingly preordained.

San Franciscans talked about the likelihood that he would be killed long before he actually was. Broderick himself was aware of his impending doom: Six months before Terry shot him, as he was leaving Washington to return to California, he told a friend, "I feel, my dear friend, I go home to die. I shall be challenged, I shall fight, and I shall be killed."

Yet, with an inevitability that recalls Greek tragedy, the 39-year-old senator did nothing to avert his doom.

Irish roots

Broderick was the kind of San Franciscan found throughout the city's political history. The son of a stonecutter, he grew up in the tough Irish neighborhoods of New York City, where he learned to play hardball Tammany Hall politics. Drawn by gold fever to San Francisco in 1849, shrewd and ambitious, he quickly became the city's political boss - mastering the arts of patronage and strong-arming.

By 1857, Broderick had maneuvered his way to a seat in the U.S. Senate, where he became an outspoken opponent of slavery.

Terry was also a classic San Francisco character, but of a type that did not endure.

In the city's early years, its "better classes" were dominated by Southerners, many of whom regarded New York Irish like Broderick as lower-class rabble and subscribed to a code of honor under which duels were an acceptable means of righting a personal wrong.

Terry himself was a veritable caricature of a proud, thin-skinned Southerner. The Texas native stood 6-foot-6 and weighed 250 pounds, and claimed to have killed a Mexican officer during the Texas Revolution with a bowie knife to the heart. The claim is dubious - Terry was 13 years old when Texas fought its war for independence - but his later career was filled with more than enough bloodshed to make up for that stretcher.

In one infamous incident, Terry stabbed a man in the neck, later shouting that it was outrageous that someone of his stature should be arrested "merely for sticking a knife into a damn little Yankee well-borer."

He came to California in 1849, established a law practice in Stockton and was elected to the state Supreme Court in 1855. Two years later, he became chief justice.

Promoting slavery

Terry was a member of the so-called "Chivalry Democrats," derisively called the "Chivs" by their opponents. As the country was convulsed by the issue of slavery, Terry and his fellow "Chivs" were determined that California would become a slave state.

That put Terry on a collision course with Broderick, and eventually he lashed out at the senator in a speech. Terry said his political enemies were "the followers of one man, the personal chattels of an individual whom they are ashamed of" - Broderick.

Broderick was breakfasting at the International Hotel in San Francisco when he read what Terry had said. Ashen with rage, Broderick shouted, "I have said that I consider Terry the only honest man on the Supreme bench, but I now take it all back!"

When Terry got wind of what the senator had said, he immediately challenged him to a duel. Broderick, who had had time to reflect, now decided that he was the target of a political plot, and declined the challenge on the grounds that he was engaged in an election campaign.

Persistent challenger

But Terry was determined to fight Broderick. As one historian put it, "For the next three months, Terry stalked Broderick as a hunter pursues a stag."

He announced his intention to challenge his enemy again as soon as the election ended. And Broderick, unwilling to "dishonor" himself, depressed and reportedly ill with pneumonia, acquiesced like a lamb going to the slaughter. When Terry challenged him again, he accepted.

Terry, Broderick, their seconds and 80 spectators met at a dairy farm near Lake Merced. The weapons were two Belgian pistols.

Terry had been practicing with the guns for two months. The distance was 10 paces. When the call "fire one" was given, Broderick raised his gun, but his shot went into the ground. At "fire two," Terry took careful aim and shot Broderick through the chest.

The senator collapsed and was carried to the Haskell House at Fort Mason, where he died three days later. (The house still stands at the foot of Franklin Street.)

The fatal encounter turned Broderick into a martyr and made a pariah of Terry. In an ending that also seems preordained, Terry himself was shot to death near Stockton by the bodyguard of a U.S. Supreme Court justice in 1889. Terry had been feuding with the justice, and a chance encounter in a train station led to a violent confrontation and Terry's demise.

Dueling out of favor

The San Francisco tragedy's only positive outcome was that it spelled the end of dueling in California. Broderick's death turned popular sentiment against the practice, and the Legislature eventually outlawed it.

Editor's note

Every corner in San Francisco has an astonishing story to tell. Every Saturday, Gary Kamiya's "Portals of the Past" will tell one of those lost stories, using a specific location to illuminate San Francisco's extraordinary history - from the days when giant mammoths wandered through what is now North Beach, to the Gold Rush delirium, the dot-com madness and beyond.

Trivia time

Last week's trivia question was: What animal-related incident factored heavily in the creation of Golden Gate Park?

Answer: Inhospitable sand dunes were the biggest obstacle to creating the park. When a horse's feedbag of barley spilled and quickly sprouted, workers realized they could use barley to stabilize the sand.

This week's trivia question: At the very end of the Beatles' last concert, on Aug. 29, 1966, at Candlestick Park, John Lennon teasingly played the opening bars of what song?

Gary Kamiya is a freelance writer and Bay Area native. His new book, "Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco," will be published by Bloomsbury in August. E-mail:metro@sfchronicle.com