Native Daughter

I spent the weekend with my Farm Club friends in San Francisco. We stayed at the home of the Native Daughters of the American West, a house on Fulton and Baker you’d almost miss if you didn’t notice the modest plaque and the flags five floors above the street (US and California).

I have mixed feelings about these organizations. On one hand they’re harmless groups of people doing good works like the Shriners and Rotary, involving arcane and zany initiation rites. On the other they are exclusive by gender, race, birth, status, and no doubt other secret criteria.

Fun: We knit and spun and wove in our jammies in a Julia Morgan parlor and ate buttermilk lemon pie for breakfast (I was skeptical, but am a convert). We shared the floors with the Girl Scouts of America scrapbooking club. We explored the basement and the roof, the rooms decorated by individual chapters (also called Parlors, up and down California). We looked at the museum (tiny boots for six-month-olds, fans for grand San Francisco or Pasadena ladies in improbably sized corsets). We looked in the archive room where lists of all pioneer families who made it to California (and some that didn’t) are listed.

We wandered around the neighborhood stumbling across a silkscreening workshop-in-progress (they also offer cheesemaking classes), two excellent restaurants, and not a single Starbucks.

I was born in California, so I technically qualify to join the NDAW. It provides a very cheap way to stay in San Francisco. But San Francisco is easily close enough for a day trip for us and I can’t handle the politics. I am technically qualified to join the Mayflower Society, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Colonial Dames, and the United Empire Loyalists for the Tories among you. I don’t sound like I belong in any of them, but my accent would be seen by all of them as a plus, as opposed to my skin color or last name which can so easily be a minus, a fact which writes them off for me. I left all this behind when I left the UK, I thought, 23 years ago. But no. Exclusion comes in many forms and I am not an excluder.

Colusa Outing

We went on the fairly brief trek today up to the Colusa National WIldlife Refuge, about 55 minutes north of here, attempting to see the Falcated Duck which has been at the refuge since early December. The bird was seen all day yesterday, so we figured our chances were good, but no luck, it seems the bird did not put in an appearance today. Nevertheless, the refuge is a beautiful place, and for some reason we had never been there before. Whenever we’ve headed up north to go birding we’ve either gone to the Sacramento NWR or Gray Lodge, just a bit further north and to the east. A weak storm had blown through today, leaving a very pretty cloudscape. Just to the east of the Colusa NWR lie the Sutter Buttes. When we arrived they were practically hidden by clouds, but as sketched at left, by the time we left the clouds had cleared save a stratus layers just above the buttes.

Encouraged

So long since I’ve posted here…

I am so encouraged by a post (permalink wonky, dated December 13, 2011) by Antonio Muñoz Molina whose blog I’ve been following faithfully for some months now. The part that encourages me:

… la conversación deriva a una defensa de la artesanía como saber modesto, tangible y material frente a los caprichos y a las tonterías cada vez más exagerados de lo que se llama el arte. Le digo algo que pienso hace mucho tiempo, que ahora cualquiera es artista, con solo decir que lo es: lo difícil de verdad es ser artesano.

…the conversation drifts to a defense of craft as modest, tangible and material versus the whims and increasingly exaggerated nonsense of that which is called art. I tell him [Philippe Bataillon] something I’ve thought for a long time, that everyone is an artist now, just by virtue of saying so; what is really hard is to be a craftsman. (Translation mine.)

So much of this resonates with me. Craft seems like something worth perfecting.

1,010,361 and Counting

That’s the number of views on YouTube of the video of students at UC Davis being pepper sprayed at a non-violent demonstration on Friday as of this moment. We’ve made international news: here’s a story on the BBC front page. This isn’t the sort of acclaim one wishes of one’s university; we may have now eclipsed Penn State on the campus hall of shame billboard.

There are many, many excellent pieces and comments on the incident on Friday, and I have spent hours reading these. Here are some that have risen to the top for me.

This MetaFilter thread was posted yesterday afternoon and continues to be lively.

The “Wall of Shame” video. This hasn’t gotten quite as much attention as the first video above, but it may be equally powerful. Yesterday afternoon Chancellor Katehi held a press conference but excluded the students. When she left the building a couple of hours later the students were seated arms linked, allowing her a path from the door to her vehicle. The students say nothing as she goes past, shaming her with silence. She looks shell-shocked. (Linked on BoingBoing).

Glenn Greenwald writes in Salon about the roots of the UC Davis pepper spraying, setting the incident in the broader context of the history of police violence.

The Davis Wiki is providing continual on-the-ground coverage as events unfold.

In the above MetaFilter thread, one member of the MetaFilter community who is a professor somewhere shares the following letter he wrote to the President of UC, Mark Yudof:

Dear Chancellor Yudof,
Having familiarized myself with the details of the pepper-spray assault carried out against peaceful, nonviolent student demonstrators at UC Davis on Friday by Lt. John Pike and other officers under the orders of Chief Anette Spicuzza and, ultimately, under the responsibility of Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi, and having watched the several videos of the incident in question that have been widely disseminated, and having heard the nonsensical explanations and excuses proffered by Katehi, Spicuzza, and other Davis spokespeople, I have come to the conclusion that a serious crime was committed by UC Davis police, and ordered and abetted by their superiors. It is unconscionable that a university in the United States would deploy such disproportionate use of force against its own students for acts of conscientious civil disobedience that were completely non-violent in spirit and execution.

As an academic myself, I resolve to do no business of any sort with any branch of the University of California system until
a) Chancellor Katehi is fired or resigns
b) Chief Spicuzza resigns, is fired, or faces significant discipline
c) Officer Pike and any others who used pepper spray in the above-described incident are fired and/or severely disciplined, and criminally charged if appropriate
d) Students who were assaulted receive apologies and compensation for their injuries

Until these things happen, I won’t serve on any UC dissertation committees, I will not act as a tenure referee for any UC system tenure cases, I will not recommend any students for graduate programs in the UC system, and I will not give any talks or attend any conferences at any UC campus (which means, among other things, canceling an upcoming talk at [UC Campus XXX]). Nor will I review any manuscripts for UC press or its journals. Many of my colleagues at [XXXXX university] and around the country are considering similar stances. It is incumbent on the UC system administration to take vigorous control of this situation, require Chancellor Katehi’s resignation, investigate promptly, discipline all the perpetrators of this assault, and apologize to the victims of this assault as well as compensate them fairly (including expunging any arrest records related to this protest).

Sincerely, etc.

Other academics across the land are reacting with outrage as well. Cathy N. Davidson, who is a neuroscientist and former vice-provost at Duke University, writes on Why this is a Gettysburg Address moment for higher education.

President Yudof steps up to the plate. His statement released this afternoon pleases me. Of course what the UC Office of the President says and does are two different things, but it sounds like there will be substantial pressure coming down from the top.

Given that last statement, my hunch is that Chancellor Katehi will end up having to resign, though I doubt immediately. Her leadership may just too be compromised at this point for her to manage the den of ants that is a university campus.

More important is will any reforms emerge concerning the practice of policing at the University of California. It would be all too typical bureaucratic behavior to throw a couple of bad actors in the police department under the bus, make a minor procedural change or two, and declare the matter done. This solves nothing since the problem is a matter of deep culture within the police department.

Next up: there will be a rally and general assembly on the quad at noon tomorrow. Chancellor Katehi is planning to address the students at that time.

Updated 8:20 AM, 22 November 2011

I attended a bit of the rally yesterday. The crowd was ebullient, the energy positive. This concluding paragraph from “Jonathan Eisen’s post” on the event sums up my feeling as well:

Overall the day was exhausting. But exhilarating too. I did not agree with everything everyone said or did. But that was not the point. The power and the passion of the protestors and the people of the University. That was the point. I left feeling good about UC Davis again. Not sure what will happen tomorrow. But the people on campus have risen above the pepper spraying. They have shown strength beyond what I could have ever imagined. The world is certainly watching now. But I am not too worried. I like what I see.

And I was particularly thrilled by the balloon! My geography grad student colleagues Michele Tobias and Alex Mandel used a helium balloon as a lifting platform to take aerial photographs from high above the crowd. Michele’s research involves using kite-aided photography to study beach vegetation, so this was a variant on her basic platform.

The connection of Chancellor Katehi to events at Athens Polytechnic in November 1973 has taken a deeply troubling turn. She was a student at that university when the regime used military force to suppress campus dissent, killing many students. The backlash from this event led to the fall of the regime some months later. Katehi referenced Athens in her brief speech to the crowd, saying “I was there”.

But — tthis post at Crooked Timber from today is revelatory. A couple of excerpts:

Among the legacies of the uprising was a university asylum law that restricted the ability of police to enter university campuses. University asylum was abolished a few months ago, as part of a process aimed at suppressing anti-austerity demonstrations. The abolition law was based on the recommendatiions of an expert committee, which reported a few months ago…

Among the authors of this report – Chancellor Linda Katehi, UC Davis. And, to add to the irony, Katehi was a student at Athens Polytechnic in 1973.

Shearing Day Coming Up

I’ll be helping out on Saturday at Meridian Jacobs for Shearing Day, which is an intense but lovely transformation of shaggy, probably soggy-tipped (it’s going to rain tomorrow) gray animals into piebald fairy creatures. Apart from a couple of them which are a prized lilac color; a lilac fleece may well come home with me.

Just learned about In Sheep’s Clothing, a short silent film from 1932 about gathering in Shetland sheep, rooing their fleeces (primitive breeds like Shetlands shed their fleeces and can be plucked, or rooed), spinning and knitting fair isle sweaters. It was a sunny day — wonder how long they waited for that — and despite the well-combed hair and smiling faces the crofter’s life was obviously VERY hard. (Still photos from the Shetland Museum archives can be found here.)

This all goes well with my nightly sheep study (I got a copy of Carol Ekarius and Deb Robson’s Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, which has me counting sheep at night.)

A Dab of Tolstoy

I just finished reading War and Peace for the first time. It’s a delicious book — not a slog at all, though I started it well over six weeks ago. There’s something very evenhanded about Tolstoy’s writing, how he’s able to move seamlessly from historical narrative to the lives of his characters. The historical narrative is what got me inspired to read the novel: I had just finished reading David Chandler’s definitive one-volume history The Campaigns of Napoleon and thought that War and Peace, the quintessential novel about the Napoleonic era, was the perfect follow-on. That the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation was on our bookshelves helped matters. As for why I read the Chandler, this was a result of our calligraphy workshop this summer. Our teacher Sheila Waters designed and calligraphed the maps for the Chandler book back in 1965, and I was able to see many of the mylar originals!

The next work of fiction I’m going to read shouldn’t take me as long: Terry Pratchett’s new book Snuff.

Batty

I’ve been using my new drum carder. A LOT.

Cat On The Windowsill

I’m taking a silkscreening class right now at the campus craft center and find myself needing a bit of black-and-white artwork from which to make a screen. I haven’t done much black-on-white art so I sketched Charlie sitting on the windowsill with ink and a Chinese brush.

Stolen Children

The scandal that’s been brewing in Spain for some time — that over the course of 50 years the Catholic Church stole babies and sold them to couples wanting to adopt — has moved outside the country. The BBC is going to air a documentary on the subject. There’s a crazy figure of up to 300,000 stolen children being thrown around.

I suppose nothing should surprise me any more about the abuses carried out in the name of fear (that the children would grow up in subversive households) or greed (on couple paid 200,000 pesetas for a baby, which at the time was a fortune, it would have bought an apartment).

This one’s close to home, though. I know at least two people who might have been adopted under these circumstances. Tim, if you’re reading this, you’re not one of them, but you might have inspired Mari and Tito to adopt.

These photos are making me very, very quiet…

Point Reyes in Fall

Sunday was the fall Yolo Audubon Society trip to Point Reyes. The birding was pretty slow, with nothing more exciting than several palm warblers, and I spent a good bit of time sketching. At left is a little watercolor of the view of the Point Reyes North Beach from the Point Reyes Lighthouse. Next at right is a bright yellow-and-black caterpillar we saw chowing down on a willow leaf by Drake’s Beach. Looking it up I think it’s from a Spotted Tussock Moth (Lophocampa maculata). Finally, at bottom is a sketch for the antenna book. It is part of the HF antenna farm at the old RCA communications site. In times gone by this was an important location for radio communications with merchant ships in the Pacific.