22 May 08
Excess
the love of it
the Schumann of it
the oceans of tea of it
the wine and baked brie of it
the overflowing basket of cards of it
the clucking everyone round a table of it
the isn’t chicken a vegetable at Passover of it
the flour up to the elbows making playdough of it
the determination to walk with no pain of it
the teasing of nuance in the fingers of it
the effing the ineffable in Bach of it
the Sunday New York Times of it
the steep steps up or down of it
the antiquated beam look of it
the three damn pianos of it
the love, the love of it
O, the love in it
For S., with love
13 May 08
Gray-haired, Gaunt, Giddy
I see it. The reflection in the mirror. The face of my great-aunt, of my grandmother, of my mother’s cousin. We are one, across the years, across the barriers that seem at this point artificial.
Death will unite us. I hope between now and then, for me, I will cause enough mayhem for these hellraisers to be proud of me. And if they forget themselves and sniff instead, a silly nod to their perceived station, I’ll take it up with them on the other side…
23 March 08
Five-year Retrospective
Last week was the five-year anniversary of the start of the disaster in Iraq. We started Feathers of Hope shortly afterwards. The blogosphere was teeming with political commentary; we elected not to do much of that, but to focus on our little spot in this part of the Central Valley. It doesn’t mean we’re not political or don’t read (still) political blogs, but our choice (much like Beth’s, I think: Cassandra Pages turned five a couple of days ago) was not to write much about politics.
I still think that was the right decision. What can we add? The words still fly fast and furious and we’re still in the middle of the disaster in Iraq. We are hoping for a change this November. I think Obama’s speech on Tuesday is the most important I’ve heard in my lifetime (possibly with the exception of King’s, though I was nine and living in Madrid at the time). Whether he can prevail through the crud that will undoubtedly be hurled his way first by the Clinton campaign and then by the Republicans will remain to be seen.
There are California poppies in bloom outside. Today I saw the first Western Kingbird of the year. The Swainson’s hawks have been back a week and have sent most of the red-tails to the foothills already. I can still look and take delight in these things despite the stress/funk cycle that I’ve been mired in.
Thanks for sticking with us for all these years.
15 March 08
Procrastination
I have dozens of things that need to get done. I seem unable to finish any of them. It’s a spiral that’s not good to go down…
5 March 08
Reason #431 Why I Love the Coop
We’re standing in line at the checkout waiting to pay having seen Jim and talked about canning tomatoes and having seen Ann and talked about Kilimanjaro and the lad with the strawberry blond hair and beard greets us and takes the yoghurt container full of prunes and mutters numbers and then I tell him I have ten gallons of water and he says okay then I hand him the card and he says Agh brain overload then quickly apologizes and says I just got handed a note by a pretty girl.
Discretely, he says.
He goes bright red almost like his hair, smiles from ear to hear, pulls the note out of his pocket and reads it again.
(I feel oddly honored that he should have divulged this to me. Tickled.)
Oh, and Brian finally started a blog. About time, monsieur le philosophe.
29 January 08
Prothonotarian Spycatcher
At a meeting of the Yolo Breeding Bird Atlas committee tonight it was mentioned that Alger Hiss was proved to have had association with Whittaker Chambers because he had once seen a prothonotary warbler on the Potomac in the 30s, which Chambers remembered. The person whose career was launched on the House Un-American Affairs Committee through this accusation of perjury in 1948 was none other than Richard Nixon.
This is why you need to subscribe to Birds of North America, folks. You learn all kinds of things.
27 January 08
The Story of Stuff
There was a front page post today on Daily Kos highly recommending a new video called The Story of Stuff. Annie Leonard, an activist who has been researching the flow and waste of materials through our consumer society, came up with the idea to present this tale in cartoon fashion overlaid with footage of her narrating. The 20-minute video is viewable at the link above.
In good simple living fashion we bicycled to Pica’s office this morning to watch the video (no broadband at home, it’s not worth it.) It is humorous and thoughtful, capable of entertaining five-year-olds and provoking those an order of magnitude older into thought and action.
We do pretty well here in avoiding accumulating and consuming stuff, though of course there are lots of little things to work on improving. One needn’t scratch very hard to find such critiques of consumerist society going back a long ways, but how will the values of simple living and frugality ever make it back into mainstream culture?
24 January 08
Viva Nicholas
I don’t know what led me there today maybe it was the bells or the gray weather we’re having that’s so like Bodega Bay’s or maybe the memory of Dad discretely pointing out the boy’s father at the post office but not wanting ever to intrude in that English way on the deep pain of losing a child so absurdly in a case of mistaken identity while driving to Sicily then suddenly thrust into the spotlight so much that even the Pope wanted to meet them all just because they said on brain death simply and without much reflection we’ll donate his organs and the whole of Italy reacting in tearful love and shame taking this family as theirs and the story of his grave at St. Teresa’s in Bodega where still now there are flowers and I think of Dad’s ashes that were scattered over the cliff not five miles away and sing with the pain of it all of love and death and of falling rain.
6 December 07
Dogma
I was driving back from Santa Rosa in December 1999. My father was dying in hospital. I was exhausted (but kept reminding myself that my exhaustion was so minor compared to my mother’s; a little like the minor exhaustion I have felt during this oil spill when I was practically keeling over after a 3-hour stint in stabilization, compared to the 16 hours some of the others were putting in. It’s good to get this kind of perspective sometimes).
They were interviewing Kevin Smith on the radio about his then-new film, Dogma.
Absurdity in the face of tragedy. A laugh where it seems almost impossible. Alanis Morissette as God, not at all implausibly. This is what keeps us going, I think, when despair would be a more obvious response.
Dad, your favorites was Jacques Tati and Charlie Chaplin. May wherever you find yourself now be filled with delightful absurdity.
22 November 07
Venturing into Starbucks
I’m not a coffee drinker. But even if I were, I don’t think I’d spend half my salary on Starbucks coffee — it’s too strong, yet even their strong espressos don’t taste good like Spanish ones to me. I make my tea, by the gallon (I think I need a samovar), and drink it. No need for Starbucks.
This morning the oiled bird caregivers were giving their orders to Ann, the volunteer coordinator, because Jay had a raft of donated Starbucks gift cards (about $50 worth). I offered despite my better judgment to drive and help carry back twelve sloshing cups, individually marked (under the cup holder). Venti (invariably pronounced Ventey by customers whose second language is Spanish not Italian). Grande. Latte. Frappuccino. It’s such a caricature of itself, Starbucks. Precious. Pompous. Pretentious. It makes me nuts.
It took twelve tries, folks. The cash register can’t do more than about $20 on a gift card (but then won’t do it a second time). The total came to $42 and change. Two baristas and a bunch of spent and re-spent gift cards later (and a host of impatient people behind us, waiting junkie-like for their fix before heading off to face impossible relatives over dinner), we emerged with various concoctions to spill all over the Honda Element.
Connecting people with their coffees was another trick: no food or drinks in the stabilization room, hot chocolate in the trailer, where’s Rebecca, she’s a mocha, no, that was Sandra … I don’t know how anyone ever gets anything done in Starbucks-land.
Added, November 29: Lewis Black’s Starbucks rant.