Indian Rock

An entry for the Ecotone Wiki’s topic on Stones and Rocks.

Berkeley, in addition to its fame as a center of development of California cuisine (the town’s radical past now usurped by the gourmet ghetto on Shattuck Avenue), is also noteworthy as one of the original training grounds for modern rock climbing. In the 1930s, the California mountaineers who would go on to do many of the first ascents in the Sierra Nevadas, among them Dick Leonard and David Brower, would practice their bouldering techniques in North Berkeley where there is a set of crags composed of rhyolite.

Indian Rock is the most famous of these boulders. It got its name from nearby mortar basins in the rock used by natives for grinding acorns. It is less than a mile from my old house, and I would often go there on a walk. It has a great view from the top, and as can be seen from the steps in the photo, you don’t have to go up the steep side with ropes to get to the top.

Sign Of Spring

The first fruit tree to blossom here is the almond, long before it leafs out. This tree is in our backyard, and I think its blossoms opened on Wednesday.

But a weak storm has come through today, and it has been overcast with some showers. No astronomy tonight!

Bird Names

Some names for birds seem perfectly obvious: red-bellied woodpecker, for instance, gives a fairly detailed description of the bird, while hoopoe approximates its name. Thanks to Richard for drawing my attention to the meaning of the word “phainopepla,” which is the only species of silky flycatcher found in North America. It comes from the Greek meaning “shining gown,” which is a great name for this beautiful bird. “Pyrrhuloxia” means flame-colored plus crossed (oblique) bill.

The names I like best, though, are the “descriptive” ones that aren’t helpful at all. The yellow belly on a yellow-bellied sapsucker is really a stretch. The bristles on the thighs of a bristle-thighed curlew are NOT a good field mark…

Northern California Surfing

I went for a little bike ride Saturday south and east through the farmlands of Solano County. I scarcely had gone a mile when, on the opposite side of the road, astride a muddy irrigation ditch, I saw a large silver Toyota pickup, with one person outside of the vehicle. When I passed the truck, I looked behind at it and was rather startled to see the truck towing something resembling a bodyboard, the college-aged guy in shorts perched on top of it, moving at a steady modest speed though the mud of the irrigation ditch.

I guess if you can’t get to the ocean, you have to improvise.

Cheese, Gromit!

We went today to an event put on by the Slow Food Society: a tasting of homestead, artisanal cheeses, all from California, all raw cow’s milk. It was held at the R.H. Phillips (warning: unnecessary Flash introduction) winery in north Yolo County.

Favorites of mine included Serena, which was billed as evoking a fine Parmesan or aged Gruyere (which have nothing at all in common in my opinion, but I thought it a lot closer to the Gruyere); Black Butte Reserve, a full tasting hard cheese made in the manner of Gouda, where most of the whey is washed out; and St. John Natural Rind, a sharp, grainy cheese in the Portuguese style. They gave us bread from the Village Bakery in Davis, Viognier white and Syrah red wine to taste, almonds, walnuts, and apricots. It was a beautiful afternoon; bright sun. The almond blossoms are about to burst all over northern California.

This was definitely an elite foodie crowd… I’m all for slowing down over dinner but hope a BMW isn’t a requirement!

Everybody’s Favorite Planet

At least to look at in the telescope. Wednesday evening we had clear skies and I did some imaging with our digicam through my 7” reflector, looking at the Orion Nebula and Saturn. The 7” Dob has no tracking so I’m limited to very short exposures, a maximum of 1” second before star trails are evident. With those exposure times, the Orion images were too noisy to be usable for anything, but my imaging of Saturn was more successful. Here is a composite image of Saturn made from 13 stacked exposures (1/60th and 1/125th second), at the original resolution. I’m looking forward to trying my hand at Jupiter as it nears opposition early in March.

The Literate Insect

This bug was on our kitchen countertop last night. I think he’s working on his undergraduate application to UC Davis.

Food Capitals Of The World

A note for the Ecotone Wiki’s entries on Food and Place.

I think it’s a peculiarly American thing to name many a town and burgh the world capital of something or other. Not surprisingly a large fraction of these are food-related. Evidently Sacramento, not far from here, is the almond capital of the world. (Perhaps this makes Governor Arnold the Almond King?) Chico, a little farther to the north, isn’t daunted by this proclamation and also claims this title.

Perhaps most famous in California is Gilroy, south of the Bay Area, which is the garlic capital of the world, and nearby is Castroville, the artichoke capital of the world. A few miles to the south is Watsonville, the strawberry capital of the world. Throw in a bit of Santa Cruz county wine, and you have the makings of a good meal there.

As in the case of the almonds, sometimes there are several claimants to a title. Three towns in the Southern U.S.—Belzoni, Mississippi, Savannah, Tennessee, and Des Allemands, Louisiana—call themselves the catfish capital of the world.

Many of the capitals have food festivals associated with them. Gilroy has a garlic festival the last weekend in July that draws well over 100,000 people. Garlic fiends that we are, this sounds a good bit more appetizing than the annual Shrimp and Petroleum Festival held over Labor Day weekend in Morgan City, Louisiana.

Not For Vegetarians…

This entry is part of the Ecotone Wiki’s joint post on Food and Place

Travelling back to Spain in early December made me realize just how much pork the Spanish eat. Even things that are ostensibly “vegetables”-peas, artichoke hearts, green beans-have bits of ham in them. Not chicken, or beef, but ham. Ham legs, cured in the Spanish manner (jamn serrano), hang in every bar, along with various cured sausages, ready for cutting into tapas or sandwiches or for omelettes or for the peas and artichokes.

There’s nothing about Spanish geography that makes the pig a more likely farm animal than, say, a goat, which is certainly eaten in other Mediterranean countries. But there’s plenty in Spanish history that has given pork such a prominent place in the cuisine. For one thing, it was outlawed for about six centuries under Moorish occupation. The forbidden food took on the aura of a battle standard.

Food is never just food, is it? The prominence of pork in Spain recalls an earlier, darker time, following the explusion of Jews and Muslims in the fifteenth century, when it was a test. Are you really one of us? Or does your refusal to eat this forbidden meat reveal you as a convert in name only? The Inquisition lurks around the tables in taverns, watching, watching.

Dabbling In Moon Imaging

The first-quarter moon is good to look at in the telescope, since the craters are well-highlighted, and I am more wont to be skygazing in the evening than in the wee hours of the morning (which is when you see the third quarter moon). Tonight I thought I’d try my luck at imaging the moon through my 7” reflector using our digicam. The results are at left. I’m interested in an astrophotography technique called image stacking, where you take a large number of frames of a single object, align these, and average them to try to sharpen the image. This was my first try at this technique, using the movie clip feature of the digicam to get my stack of images, and then specialized software (Keith’s Image Stacker is the one I tried out) to help align the frames. I don’t think this first attempt improved things much, but there’s a lot yet to learn here.