1 August 07
Laissant Rouler les Bons Temps
Beausoleil played at the UC Davis Quad this evening. The series of free summer concerts continues. Frisbees and hats and lots of lolling on blankets. And then the dancers…
29 July 07
Wonder When I'll Start
These words: I wrote them at age 12 in a red five-year diary you could lock with a key, given to me by my grandmother, who was a great diary-keeper. In the event I had less than a year to wait for menarche, for the encounter with gauze-covered cotton pads that were what was available in Spain in the early 1970s.
My mother and sister have both had hysterectomies, depriving me of family data. My approach of menopause has therefore been just as fraught with uncertainty, and this week I had what I was almost certain were my first hot flashes (I developed a sore throat following two plane journeys home from Maine and wondered whether I might not be having a fever at 1:35 every afternoon in the air conditioning until it hit me).
Wow. It’s sort of interesting. If this is all it is, it’s nothing that can’t be cured by carrying a fan around (and I own many, many of these). If it grows to be more problematic, we’ll see…
12 July 07
Off to the Mugglefest
I’m leaving early in the morning for Maine to visit family, in particular my nine-year-old niece who’s read all the Harry Potter books and wants me to go with her to the Mugglefest in Portland next Friday. I didn’t need too much persuading.
For what it’s worth: I think Harry’s a horcrux, I think he’ll need to be destroyed* because he’s storing part of Voldemort’s soul, I think Neville Longbottom will do it, I think Snape will die heroically in the Last Battle, I don’t know much about whether Hermione or Ron will make it (but poetically one of them shouldn’t), I think Dumbledore will be a portrait in a locket worn by Harry throughout, coaching him along.
(In non-Harry Potter events, I’ll also be looking for the spruce grouse and Philadelphia vireo, catching up with my mother, catching up with my sister, catching up with my friend Linda, and generally getting overdosed on green, which we don’t see too much of in the Central Valley in July.)
*This doesn’t necessarily mean killed, as in he might lose his magical powers…
31 May 07
Bear at Bandelier
I’ve been immersed in the Santa Fe Science Writers workshop this week. It’s intense and I’ve learned a lot.
This afternoon we went to Bandelier National Monument, our first extramural excursion. Poking around the petroglyphs was a black bear cub. His mother was nowhere to be seen but later on we learned from the rangers that he’s alone — and though he’s thin he’s managing to find food, of sorts.
I made some sketches I’ll post when I get home…
16 May 07
I'm Pressed
I’ve been the newsletter editor of Yolo Audubon Society for what — five years? Six years? As of tonight, I’m President.
I no longer know what I’m doing. Instead of making sure nine issues get out per year, I have to answer questions about bird boxes as Habitat for Humanity projects. And show up to things. (I’m perennially late; this will be interesting.) It involves waffle.
The good news is, it’s only two years. The much better news is, the board is made up of wonderful, dedicated, energetic people. It’s going to be fine…
14 May 07
7 May 07
Best of Bloggery
Peter of Slow Reads and Dave Bonta of Via Negativa are co-editing the new qarrtsiluni theme, Greatest Blog Hits. As they put it:
“The blog form is now ten years old. How better to celebrate that anniversary than with a “Greatest Blog Hits” issue? From now through our deadline of June 15, we’re reversing our long-standing prohibition against previously blogged material: we want ONLY previously blogged material, at least one year old. It may take any form – fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art, photography, audio, cartoons – and there’s no restriction on length (though excerpts will also be considered). We simply want your best posts.
The editors for this issue are Peter of Slow Reads blog and Dave Bonta of Via Negativa (also one of the two managing editors of qarrtsiluni). This theme is a natural outgrowth of our own blogging: both of us have “best of the blogs” sidebar columns on our sites, and we share an interest in rescuing great posts from the near-oblivion of blog archives. We each have our own favorites that we’ll be looking to get permission to republish, but there are a hell of a lot of well-written blogs out there, and we can’t possibly read them all. So please help us out by circulating this notice far and wide and encouraging other literary, artistic, or simply thoughtful bloggers to exhume their best posts and send them our way. As always, please direct all correspondence to qarrtsiluni [at] gmail [dot] com.”
Send in your stuff, everyone…
27 April 07
Which Side Of The Road?
A third of the world’s population drives on the left, according to this definitive reference. A map and list of countries is here.
29 March 07
Alternate Career Universes
I just finished Remember Me by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, a sort of update on Jessica Mitford’s American Way of Death, not so acerbically anti-funeral industry but with lots of interesting titbits.
I’d make a good funeral director, I realize. These people are now called upon to be events planners as baby boomers age and want personalized sendoffs, not the wake-funeral-interment patterns of the past. Families don’t want ashen-faced purveyors of small kindnesses, they want some creativity to come alive while they are in a state of numbed shock. They want someone to take charge, make something happen that will be a gift to the living and a heartfelt tribute to the dead. They don’t want expensive going-through-the-motions (and the latter can, my friends, be REALLY expensive).
As a former denizen of Mount Auburn Cemetery, I warmed to this project. It’s silly, of course. I will never be a funeral director. But I could: I have the right combination of empathy, organizational skills, zest for throwing parties in other people’s houses, and fascination with, let’s face it, death. There are now death midwives and once-in-a-lifetime marriers (we had one for our own wedding, the Reverend Doctor Nicole Honey). If you need a once-only funeral director, send me an email…
26 March 07
A Love Affair with Gloves
I’ve been shoveling a lot of manure over the past two weeks; if I didn’t wear gloves, I’d have some serious blisters. My gardening gloves are alternately sopping wet or crusty-dry. I wear gloves to drive, to bike (let’s hear it for terrycloth), to walk; to do calligraphy (a jerryrigged military dress glove with the thumb, forefinger and middle fingers cut out — the idea is to avoid putting grease from your hands onto the paper); I have gloves in the pockets of all my jackets. I have lots of leather gloves mostly bought in Spain (a pair my father brought me back from his last trip there, for instance). When Numenius isn’t looking, I use them to clean my binoculars on rainy days. There’s a box of vinyl gloves under the bathroom sink. (These come in handy for when you have to move a dead magpie to the freezer in the women’s room at work.)
I don’t think there’s an oven mitt in the house, so I burn my hands on the few occasions I fetch something out of the oven; and even though I own a pair of rubber gloves, I rarely use them.
The best gloves I’ve ever worn, though, are temporary: paraffin dip. Heat, moisture, perfect fit…