Lake Merritt
Tidal lagoon in central Oakland, California.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| How to Do Nothing — Reader’s Companion | Jenny Odell | turning point | After the election Odell reroutes her walk home from the bus to pass a pair of black-crowned night herons that perch outside a KFC near the lake. |
| How to Do Nothing — Reader’s Companion | Jenny Odell | setting | While walking the lake, school children with clipboards ask how long she has been part of this community, and one boy reframes Oakland’s challenge as ‘care’. |
How to Do Nothing — Jenny Odell (2019)
Source: How to Do Nothing — Reader’s Companion · How to Do Nothing · Readwise highlight
The KFC is near Lake Merritt, a man-made lake in a completely developed area that, like much of the East Bay and the Peninsula, used to be the type of wetlands that herons and other shorebirds love.
- Role: turning point
- In the book: After the election Odell reroutes her walk home from the bus to pass a pair of black-crowned night herons that perch outside a KFC near the lake. She finds them reassuring and sees them as ghosts of the older marshland.
- Why it matters: The herons are her first example of attending to specific individual animals as a way back to physical reality.
How to Do Nothing — Jenny Odell (2019)
Source: How to Do Nothing — Reader’s Companion · How to Do Nothing · Readwise highlight
I was walking around Lake Merritt, thinking about the role I might be playing in gentrification by having moved to the place I did, when I did.
- Role: setting
- In the book: While walking the lake, school children with clipboards ask how long she has been part of this community, and one boy reframes Oakland’s challenge as ‘care’. It makes her question what it means to belong versus merely live somewhere.
- Why it matters: The lake is the setting for a turning point in the argument about caring for neighbors and community; the question could arise elsewhere but is anchored in Oakland’s gentrification.