MondaviCenter.Com

A view of the Mondavi Center on the south edge of campus, quite a landmark from the freeway. It’s about to start its second season of performances. Maybe I’m just uncultured, but it’s hard for me to see the center as anything other than a $60 million dollar vanity project to benefit a completely different clientele than the students attending the university. This student’s letter expresses a similar view.

The White Cliffs of Davis

They aren’t really cliffs (nor are they really white), but the walls of the latest campus monstrosity have the merit of acting as cliffs to dozens of migrating white-throated swifts. These birds nest in desert cliffs and crags and seem to use the sheer walls of the Mondavi Center to catch trapped insects at speeds that defy reason.

If you click on the above link, you will not be shown an exterior shot of the building—I’ll try and take one tomorrow. This is because it looks like a cross between a prison and a nuclear reactor. Inside it’s gorgeous, without question. But the building is completely out of scale with its site, with the campus, and with Davis.

On Cartophilia

This is an entry for the Ecotone wiki topic on maps and place.

Maps etch my life. The tale goes that I learned to read from maps, associating familiar placenames with words on the mapsheet. When growing up I prized my map collection. I would become lost in the world of maps: one game I would play would be to take a street map, start at some intersection, and trace sequences of turns—left-right-left-right—and see where I ended up on the map. Exploring that way was a lot less work than trying the experiment on foot. Another time I went to the long-gone Berkeley store Lucas Books, which had an excellent natural history section, to buy my first USGS topographic maps: I wanted to seek the source of Wildcat Creek in nearby Tilden Park, an expedition I would think about but never undertake.

Much later on I would become a geographer, and dabble in making my own maps. My thesis was on how to make maps of the distribution of animal species. There I glimpsed a bit of the mystical nature of maps, for who can ever be certain where a species isn’t? All territories look vast when you start to make your own maps.

Maps are talismans. Even a map of the most familiar of spaces reveals new things: a forgotten street name, an unvisited urban park. A map collection, small or large, is a blessed thing, for it promises a feast for the imagination. Adventures to unknown places beckon, whether they are in the same town, county, or in the antipodes. And every once in a while we take the map in hand and follow the paths to that beckoning place.

A Map Book

The Ecotone Wiki is running a collective post today on Maps and Place. Please stop by and check out all the entries and please feel free to participate either by linking to your own post about maps and place or by joining the discussion!

Below is the text of an artist’s book I made a while ago as a present for my father, who loved maps and the understanding they conveyed. He could study a map of a place he had never been (Spanish military maps were superb, almost as good as the British Ordnance Survey Maps) and decide that THIS place would be a good spot to camp in (we wildcamped throughout the 1970s and 1980s in rural Spain). He was always right, down to the abundance of firewood he predicted just by looking at an unfolded sheet of paper.

We had our moments, my father and I, but talking about maps always makes me realize how much I miss him…

Map Book

I never told
anyone
THE SECRET
that Jennifer
& I looked
for years
in the Casa
de
Campo
on horseback
& amid the
ruins of
countless
Castilian
castles
for
an iron
RING
we were certain
would lead us
to buried
TREASURE
but we had
NO MAP

It took years
to discover
that the
Treasure
lies in the very
art of being
able to read
a map
at all.
(Thanks Dad.)

The San Marcos Trout Club

At the end of June 1997 Numenius and I moved into a leaky cabin from the 1930s that nestled in a tiny hidden community in the mountains above Santa Barbara. Called the Trout Club by the inhabitants and the US Postal Service and “the old fish farm” by the few Santa Barbarans who knew about it, it was originally set up as a place where well-to-do doctors and lawyers could ride their mules or horses up to in the summer months to fish (and escape their families and the oppressiveness of Fiesta, it seems). They built cabins and had themselves a rustic, peaceful, male time nestled among the oaks that bordered San Jose creek.

The Trout Club is now prime real estate. It houses an odd mixture of alternative lifestyle folk who shrewdly bought when they could, early Microsoft investors, and professionals. We were going to rent a cabin from one of the first of these while they travelled for a year to Cuba, Mexico, and Belize. The appeal was great: apart from the beauty of the spot overlooking the Channel Islands, there were forty fruit trees, including four avocados, an outdoor shower with solar-heated water, and a bike commute that went through at least five ecosystems (which led to the most incredible “birds on the way to work” list I ever expect to have in my life, as well as the best bicycling fitness).

It wasn’t pure Eden, though. There were problems, like the proliferation of rodents around all that fruit; the local snakes had their work cut out for them. It was the wettest winter in over a century, and the mountain threatened to fall down around our ears at any moment; the constant rain deprived us of a lot of solar-heated water. But it was exciting and reminded us it was still possible to live simply; that one’s surroundings and the wildlife that inhabit them constitute ample entertainment; and that this might be the kind of place we might consider living—provided we found it before it became trendy and expensive.

August Storm

We were up at 5 AM this morning, and took a peek outside to look at Mars in the southwest and the third-quarter moon in the southeast. Both were shining intermittently through partial mid-level cloud coverage. There were winds from the south most of the day, and by the afternoon it was overcast. Some thunder, and then a shower, rare for August! This also meant it was time to unplug the computers.

This evening there was another thunderstorm, with lightning to the west and north, looking like it was mostly over the Vaca Mountains. On the radio listening to the Giants game we heard lightning-induced static frequently, sometimes identifiable with particular flashes. There was a little more rain, giving us a total of 0.14” for the day. It’s enough to wash down some of the dust, at least.

Tomato Season

Trucks like the one at right are a common sight these days around Yolo and Solano counties. Not all the tomatoes stay in the bin, and road intersections are dotted with the carcasses of tomatoes that flew off from trucks making the turn. The squished fruits will make for a nasty slick on the road come the first rains. The scent from a tomato field is a slightly evil one: they are, after all, nightshades.

Not every tomato is engineered to survive mechanical harvesting and transport at the bottom of these bins. But this is also the time to find luscious organic tomatoes in the Farmers Market and the co-op. People’s gardens are burgeoning as well: yesterday Fernanda brought us over some delicious cherry tomatoes from hers.

The Transformation of the Logbook

Another post on Weblogs As Place for the Ecotone Wiki...

In June 1997 Numenius and I moved into a 1930s cabin in the hills above Santa Barbara. Neither of us had ever lived anywhere like it and we decided to keep a journal, a logbook, of the house, not unlike a ship’s log (this is when we both started reading Patrick O’Brian which might have had something to do with it). We were left with copious instructions about watering the 40 fruit trees (an inventive mixture of graywater from the outdoor and indoor showers and bucketing plus drip irrigation), so this made some practical as well as romantic sense. It was also the dawn of the biggest El Nio for 100 years, and looking back on the logbook we kept for that time (the year stretched into two), the drawings we made of the passiflora and the Channel Islands we could see from bed, the accounts of the arrival of the hooded orioles to nest in the banana tree, not to mention the account of the landslide that closed Highway 154 for weeks, it was the chronicle of an incredible time. Yet it also made us aware that all time is incredible, even when it’s spent in somewhere less inherently interesting than the Trout Club.

This logbook was emphatically not our journal-which we each still kept, individually, not for public or even each other’s consumption-and while there are some cryptic references (the hooded orioles we named Horace and Sally, for instance, might need some explaining to outside readers), it was a sort of halfway house between journal and weblog. We made entries on alternate days, logging rainfall (plenty in that year of floods) and the activities of the copious local rodents.

We continued with our logbook after we moved to Davis, and we continue it still—it’s hard to shake the habit. The logbook is always a black bound unlined sketchbook (we’re now on our fourth), still recounts the activities, birds, and other notable events of the day as they pertain to the HOUSE.

The weblog has extended this place somewhat, but I feel they are related. While anyone is able and welcome to read our logbooks, nobody ever does, because they are physically bound, literally and figuratively, in our living room. Feathers of Hope extends the space that this shared activity has created and also the scope of our joint writing. The weblog is a place where I can write something-this, for instance-and know that at least fifteen, and probably many more, people than that will read it. One of them lives in Davis; another in Sweden; another few in England; another in Australia. Many are in North America.

I write this with a cast on my left leg, on a laptop (which is conveniently on my lap), looking out the back window to oleander bushes which despite the increasing heat are still miraculously blooming. The space makes it seem as though these fifteen (or more) people are in the room with me. The weblog seems to be an extension of my living room. It is always in need of some tidying, but hey, everyone’s welcome anytime. The kettle’s on the stove. I’d get it for you if I could get up…

A Place In Cyberspace

This is a post on weblogs as place for the Ecotone Wiki.

Writing this weblog has really been my first endeavor in online community. I have been on the Internet ever since 1990, but would only post very occasionally to places like various mailing lists or Usenet, and never hung out for very long in IRC-land. Nor have I been inclined to participate in web communities such as Kuro5hin or Slashdot, though I lurk omnivorously. There I sense my identity would get lost in the tumult of voices, whereas this weblog is more my own home, a place where my own sensibilities can emerge.

Is there something special about weblogs that make them possess more of a sense of place than other online fora? Place has always been an important metaphor for the Web—witness the use of “home page” and “web site”—and perhaps the combination of the graphic design elements of the Web and the prominence weblogs give to the individual writer’s voice enables a strong sense of place. And a weblog is happiest when other people stop by—it is always reaching towards community.

To turn the metaphor about, a weblog feels like a home on a street with neighbor bloggers who frequently visit, or at least check if your cat is outside. From outside your neighborhood, people occasionally drive through and comment on your choice of house paint. Outside your town, the world of bloggers is vast, growing unfathomably, but all share a desire to create their own little nook in cyberspace.

O.R. As Place

Yesterday was one of those extraordinary days that was supposed to be awful and turned out to be just amazing… I was scheduled for surgery at 9:45 am and had to be in two hours earlier, not having eaten or drunk anything after midnight. There’s a lot of paperwork and different rooms to go and sit in in a kind of ritualistic sequence. But a morning with no tea for someone who drinks two or three pots before work is definitely starting off on the wrong foot (the left one, in my case).

First unexpected thing: they let my mother come in and sit with me in the pre-op room. The anesthesiologist shows up: he’s an affable, chatty guy who after a couple of jokes tries to talk me into a spinal block as opposed to a general anaesthetic. No way, I say. I don’t want to hear, smell, feel, or see anything. That’s what they all say, he says. He explains how he needs to get the muscles REALLY relaxed and in order to do that with a general he’d have to put me way under, which would make me very, very sick. But he can give me an out-of-body experience, half and half, so I’d be like a centaur. Now I’m interested—shades of Harry Potter. He’s selling me this like it’s a truffle.

Second unexpected thing: the surgeon shows up, instantly wants to talk to my mother, wants to make sure I’m okay, wonders if I have questions, is fine with my emailing him. The anaesthesiologist hands him a line and says “hook that up there, will you R—?”-and explains that he has known R- since R—was twelve and that he used to send him all over the Operating Room to get things. They have a very comfortable interaction. I’m instantly intrigued and forget, frankly, to be nervous.

When the time comes to wheel me in to the O.R., after R—explains that he needs to go and get into his pyjamas, the nurses cluck sympathetically to the story of the jig on my wedding day (I am getting a lot of mileage out of this) and then THEY start bantering with the anaesthesiologist, whom I’ll call Dr. F.—and everyone wants to know what music I want to listen to (even though I’m assured I’ll be out cold). Not heavy metal, say I.

The Operating Room, a forbidding, scary, and chilly place I last saw at age seven when I was having my tonsils out when syringes were the size of walking sticks, is now a cozy, mellow haven where Beethoven is welcome. I didn’t ask for Beethoven but nodded an assent when they asked “Classical okay?”. The minute I came to, I was totally alert. They were still joking, two hours later. And I felt elated, elated to be alive, to have gotten through this ordeal, and to have been part of this almost coffee klatsch (even though I was asleep through most of it).

I didn’t hear, feel, smell, or see anything, I say to Dr. F. That’s because I’m your anaesthesiologist, says he, and disappears off into the C Section in the next room.