Feminine Street Names Pamela, Phyllis, Camille, and Barbara— feminine street names greet me as I walk to catch my bus each day and while shopping. While living for fifteen years at Cypress Lodge studio apartments, I've not encountered any female street names in my neighborhood but after moving two miles and thirty blocks south last year, I wonder whether these names honored some old matrons of Mountain View. Not able to find any connections, I turn to literature and mythology to make sense of these feminine names thrust upon me— Sir Philip Sidney invented the name Pamela meaning "all sweetness" for his novel Arcadia and there's a butterfly Perrhybris pamela. Phyllis was a Thracian princess changed by gods into an almond tree that blossomed when her lover Demophoon returned and clasped the tree in tears. Camilla was a Volsci maiden warrior for goddess Diana— she was so swift running across the sea without wetting her feet. St. Barbara of Nicodemia was a martyr and patron saint of explosives— her name is invoked in time of lightning & thunder. Virgil escorts Dante through Hell and Purgatory but only Beatrice could guide Dante across the spheres to Paradise for Virgil represents the intellect while Beatrice the feminine intuition is better in leaping to the transcendent. After a lifetime writing Faust, Goethe ends his magnum opus with "the Eternal Feminine leads us above." Not since living on Ithaca's Catherine Street at Cornell have I been so close to the Tao— surrounded by the Spirit of the Valley.         — Peter Y. Chou             Mountain View, 1-8-2013

Phyllis Avenue & Pamela Drive Street Signs, Mountain View, CA Phyllis Avenue & Camille Court Street Signs, Mountain View, CA Barbara Avenue & Miramonte Avenue Street Signs, Mountain View, CA 109 Catherine Street, Ithaca, NY My Cornell apartment (1964-1970)