Pepperoni Ballots

The Davis Enterprise isn’t hurting for advertising these days. Next Tuesday in a local election the town of Davis will decide whether to allow a 1,864-unit housing development called Covell Village on the north side of town to go forward or not. Voices are running high, to say the least. Today’s headlines read “Tactics assailed: Covell Village criticized for ‘smear’ campaign”. The article goes on to describe events in this past week of early voting:

In the past week, Yes on X [the Covell Village project] was stopped from passing out free pizza coupons on the UC Davis Quad to students who gave proof they had voted; a Yes on X campaigner was asked to remove himself from working at the campus polling station; and a complaint was filed with the California Fair Political Practices Commission alleging that Yes on X is underreporting its campaign expenditures.

Not that the No on X folks are exactly innocent. There are a couple of entries in today’s two-page spread of letters to the editor from people who were either for Measure X or undecided on the project who were shocked and dismayed to see their names used in an anti-Measure X advertisement.

Opinions on the project range from it being sensible New Urbanist development to something that will cause horrible traffic problems and will bankrupt the city. Personally, I don’t believe that the housing mix will be very affordable, despite proponents’ claims to the contrary.

Not that we get to vote on the matter, living on the other side of the county border. At least this means we can courteously avoid engaging with those who will accost us tomorrow for votes at the Farmers’ Market.

Sharp-tailed Surprise

I got up this morning and did my usual rounds of blogs, email, work email, news, etc.

My work email is where I get local bird reports. Mostly these are about the arrival or departure of our regular birds.

Not today. A sharp-tailed sandpiper was reported late yesterday afternoon at the Yolo Bypass. This is an Asian species, well off-course. They are known in birding circles as one-day wonders; they usually spend a day somewhere and then move on. It’s not wise to dally if one’s been reported in your backyard…

I duly headed over there at around 7:15, had seen the bird by 7:40. I told the folks who were there I’d report it to the list as having been refound by Michael Perrone.

Tonight, I get home from Hebrew class, and find there is a SECOND sharp-tailed sandpiper at this spot.

Valles Caldera

During my conference in Albuquerque, we went on a field trip to the Jemez Mountains and the Valles Caldera National Preserve. This is the best preserved location of a caldera complex volcano in the world, about 30 miles in diameter. This is a view of one of the volcanic domes in the caldera, Cerro La Jara, which is visible from NM Highway 4.

Rain

I hesitate to celebrate the arrival of rain when it’s such a problem for others, but, well, the rain’s arrived.

The smell of damp earth. Gone are those hot dusty days when you could hardly breathe. The grass alfalfa field has a few rogue sprouts of wheat that have gone bananas.

I got Numenius from the airport this evening. He has many sketches from the Jemez mountains, a place where there’s also very low rainfall.

It feels like time to snuggle and give thanks for the rain.

Tagging the Bay Area

The website Urbanitic provides a setting to tag in a manner similar to del.icio.us your favorite places in the Bay Area and comment on other peoples’ contributions. Tags range from burritos to gentrification. And this being the last half of 2005, there is of course a Google Maps interface to the site.

Urban Spheres of Influence

The CommonCity Map Project is an interesting endeavor to map the cultural boundaries of the United States. There’s a survey on the site which asks what cities both in your local area and in the greater region, you most identify with. The project then uses these survey results to make a map of the boundaries of influences between the major cities of the United States.

A variation of this is to map the boundaries for fans of sports teams, such as for Major League Baseball.

Office Harvest

It’s a fine fall day when one arrives at work to see bins of purple grapes outside, the laden vines being scooped into the 13-foot tall contraption that separates the stalks from the grapes!

Yes, I share a building with viticulture folks.

Hug Your Local Archivist

This is California Archives Week, an occasion perhaps not on most people’s calendars, but in celebration the California State Archives had an open house today in Sacramento. We went to this event, which featured displays from several of the archives in the vicinity (such as Sacramento State University and UC Davis), and then a behind-the-scenes tour through the state archives. My inner librarian comes out at such moments. Archivists are a bit different than run-of-the-mill librarians. For one thing, they think in terms of cubic feet—as in they just acquired 3500 cubic feet of papers from former governor Pete Wilson, but they’re prohibited from looking at them for another 50 years.

For records concerning juveniles the time period is 75 years. The archivist who lead our tour had on display a volume open to documents concerning a lad who ran away from home in 1923. He fled San Francisco bound for Los Angeles, and before being picked up got as far as San Jose entirely on roller skates!

Viral Notes

It is Pandemic Flu Awareness Week, so now is a good time to look at the Flu Wiki.

Meanwhile, there has been a mysterious viral outbreak at a nursing home in Toronto that has killed 10 residents and hospitalized 40. The virus is not SARS, normal influenza, or avian flu.

A New Department for UC Davis?

We can always dream.

This is in fact an art project by a student here. The sign moves about campus in very anarchist fashion, being tracked currently on the Davis Wiki. It looks in every way like the signs you see ubiquitously on campus (UCD stands, of course, for Under Construction Daily).

Goldman Dance Studio? Sacco and Vanzetti Memorial Learning Center? Kropotkin Cafe? Count me in.