24 November 04
Thanksgiving
We do not do Thanksgiving Dinner. People around me ask, jokingly yet accusingly, whether I’m not thankful. Yes, I say, every day, but I’m a vegetarian, and it’s all about turkey, and I just don’t understand what connection there is between being thankful and stuffing my face over the course of hours at the expense of my mother’s back and tranquility and overall mental health, which is how I recall this from the time when we DID do Thanksgiving Dinner, in Spain, when nobody else was, a little island of American tradition where most of the people at the table were more English than American, a tradition we then repeated a month later, only this time with presents.
Once we were invited by some friends—he was in the US Air Force—to Thanksgiving Dinner at the Base southeast of Madrid. (This was the Torrejn Air Force Base, but it was just called “The Base” by all non-base English speakers, a place which, during the height of the Cold War which this was, would be the launching point for an airborne nuclear attack in the European theatre, which we never thought about at all being only nine or ten. To us the Base was a place where you could get American candy and American comics and where there were lots and lots of people who never emerged at all, never saw Spain, never learned even a word of Spanish, carried on their own little version of military life that would have been identical in Germany, or Japan, or the Philippines but which always included lots of liquor. There were exceptions, such as the friends who had invited us. They seemed very, very rare.
What struck me about this dinner at the Base was how formulaic it was. Our Thanksgiving dinners at home were similar—similar ingredients—but were special, probably because we were the only family within three miles to have the oven on at 5:00 am; I enjoyed making the crosses on the stems of the brussels sprouts like some minor benediction, waiting for the inevitable o’clock when my mother would cut herself badly with one knife or another. (Blood everywhere. Every time.) At the Base, by contrast, there were literally hundreds of people getting the same mashed potatoes, the same turkey, the same gravy—the uniformity, the sheer number of slices of turkey, made it so much less and at the same time so much more. It was excess, my first real inkling of it on this scale. The food was good. It was just that there was so MUCH of it.
The past few days I’ve been pondering on the emptiness of this culture. The paradoxes abound: there’s way too much of everything, of food, of STUFF. Obesity is an epidemic linked to poverty, of all things; antidepressants are now the number one class of drug prescribed in the U.S. When will we say, as a culture, enough? Enough stuff? Enough of this emptiness? We have so much now, can’t we just be thankful for THIS? Can’t we share? Can’t we just be?
So I will get up tomorrow morning and be grateful for the white-crowned and golden-crowned sparrows that sing and scratch at our back door, for the rock wren hiding in the bee boxes, for the color of the dawn, for the mist that glides over the levee, for my health, for my friends, for my family, for my love. Then I will go and BE in this instead of eating for hours followed by slouching comatose in a chair watching a game of American football.
And on Friday, I will not shop till I drop. It’s Buy Nothing Day. You’re invited.
15 November 04
Perplexed
I pay almost no attention to football, but have to wonder what on earth is my alma mater the Cal Bears doing with a football team that is currently ranked number 4 in the country? I mean, finishing the season with a winning record, preferably after beating Stanford across the Bay, is all we’ve historically ever had hopes of. This is a team that hasn’t been to the Rose Bowl since I’ve been alive, last won said game in 1938, and whose most noteworthy moment was one year recruiting the Stanford band. Cal, a football power? Naaah—this year must be an aberration.
14 November 04
Endurance
Another one-sentence post…
So I’m on the phone with my good buddy DocRock this morning saying I’m going to Mass for the first time in God I dunno months probably Ash Wednesday and she’s just listened to Gomes from Memorial Church on the Harvard radio station over the web and he (deep bass brilliant black gay Baptist) says Memorial Church is all about peace not war then she tells me about this amazing Shackleton thing she’s been reading and how they only had wool socks (no Polartec in those days) that got soaked and cold and they stayed cold for what five years but every last one of them survived and how we should be grateful and I get to Mass across the causeway hoping for what I’m not sure peace or nurturing or something but the young Franciscan guy gets to the sermon and what does it turn out to be about but Shackleton and endurance and how we are not to despair but go for the long haul and I blink and wonder what this means as in whether it’s a sign I should get ready to go to Antarctica or at least somewhere bloody cold or be grateful for central heating or maybe just consider coming to Mass more often.
21 October 04
In the Zone
I’ve written earlier about a project my Wildlife Health Center colleagues have been undertaking to try and catch corvids, take samples, and radio collar them to track the spread of West Nile Virus in the Central Valley. This is easier said than done: crows, magpies and jays have resisted repeated attempts at capture by a net gun, by large traps, by small traps, and anything in between.
Yesterday, though, was different. They caught three crows.
I watched as these women worked almost silently, dancing around each other with a calm and clear purpose. Their confidence quieted the crows they were handling. It was like watching a rite, a ritual: the tone was reverential.
This was, in essence, women doing science. I’ve never seen anything like it.
8 October 04
Senza Cuore
The second presidential debate, which I didn’t listen to, is over. The Red Sox clinched their way to the American League championship. Numenius is in Ventura at a conference. I had planned to do a piece on a book I once made about Martha Stewart but I don’t have the heart to do this, not tonight.
My mother’s cracked her pelvis. It’s not a bad fracture, but she fell while walking on Bodega Head which makes me hyperventilate. She didn’t ask for help and she didn’t even tell any of us until a week later, at which time we all offered that she might like to consider perhaps going to see a doctor. (Well, my physical-therapist sister-in-law practically screamed, which turned out to do the trick.)
My mum’s an independent gal who doesn’t ever want to leave the ocean again. Since my father died she’s made a life for herself in the town where they spent ten years together, from my perspective their best ten years. But she lives 45 minutes from a hospital, and all of her friends—the ones that are still left—are older than she is; she spends a good deal of time taking care of them. I’m two hours away, which is too far to just drop everything and head over there for this or that purpose… There are some tough choices ahead. My brother and sister and I want them to be made by her, not by us under a time gun.
This all weighs a bit. Sorry if I sound morose. There was a beautiful sunset this evening which I could see because the corn’s been cut down and the stalks turned under, attracting a huge flock of geese (at least fifty, all Canadas).
6 October 04
Three Things
1) I’m very tired, because last night I was in an automotive maintenance class until 11:15 pm (you may wonder what there is to maintain in a brand new car, and you’re right—I should have taken this class with my beat-up old Subaru).
2) I’m wondering whether to recommend that we at least consider Persepolis (thanks K.) for next year’s Campus Community Book Project (really, really important not to set off a new iteration of Iran-bashing), and will they go for a graphic novel?
3) I’m really disturbed by a new trend which says we have to vote online in as many places as possible to say that OUR candidate won a debate we believe was a tie (if we even watched it, which I didn’t, since I was learning to tell a distributor cap from a radiator). This place is getting weirder and weirder, like we’re being told to applaud on cue.
2 October 04
Gog and Magog
This is the feast of Sukkot in the Jewish calendar—a time to celebrate that the harvest is in, and to remind ourselves of the ephemeral nature of all things by building a rickety structure outside and sitting in it for a bit. (And eating, always eating.)
I’m not Jewish, and Numenius and I rarely go to services, but the local congregation has just moved into a new and wonderful space from intimate but somewhat cramped quarters. This whole weekend is full of events celebrating this move, which started before the high holidays. We chose to go this morning on what we thought would be the lowest-key event of the weekend.
It WAS low-key, if three hours of hebrew (gosh I’m rusty) can be so described. Lots of things happened that made me wish we went more often. In no particular order:
The Brooklyn accents; the beauty of Virginia’s voice; the feeling of rassling with a language that goes back farther than anything else I know, to the dawn of what makes us a people; our invitation to display and bind the Torah, even though the rabbi and cantor both knew I wasn’t Jewish; the tears shed by those called in aliyah to the Torah, many of whom have waited for years to be in a space like this; the fact that there were no guitars (I have a horror of guitar music mixed with religion), that all the singing (and there was a lot of it) was a capella; a pleasant surprise at how many of the melodies and words I remembered; the conversation afterwards with someone who describes himself as Buddhist and realizing that his own tradition really is all about love after all, if you just READ the stuff; the reminder that much of Catholic (and Christian) ritual comes directly from Judaism, proof of how connected we really are; the awareness that the transcendant really IS here, nearby, and that it just takes ears to hear; hearing the story of Gog and Magog in hebrew, chanted, and realizing that “protection” is both more of a metaphor and a reality than George W. Bush would have us believe; the reminder that in Jewish tradition the WORD has its own mysticism and power, something we’d do well to remember outside; and, well, that life is ephemeral and best to live it well and to the full.
Numenius’ last name is the same as that of a rabbi here in Davis in the 1950s, and it prompted a heartfelt recollection by one of the old timers of those days, when he was cynically against religion in all its forms. Look where we are now, he said.
Amen, say I. Look.
19 September 04
Xocolatl
This week I tried some exquisite dark chocolate stocked at the Davis Food Coop, made by Dagoba Organic Chocolate of Oregon. This bar, xocolatl, has chilis in it, making for a bit of an afterkick! The darker the chocolate the better, as far as I’m concerned, and this bar is very dark with a 74% cacao content. The label is attractive, too.
17 September 04
Delicious
Once again, I fall behind the times. It is only this week that I discovered the site del.icio.us. The author of the site describes as a social bookmarks manager. Basically, it’s a website where you can store your webpage bookmarks. This is definitely useful if you use multiple computers since you can have access to your bookmarks from any computer online.
But what makes the approach of the site novel is that you also have access to everybody else’s bookmarks. On the front page, there is a list of the most recently added bookmarks to the system by anybody, and on the side there is a list of the popular topics by keywords. When you post a bookmark, you may enter a list of your own keywords to describe it. It’s intriguing how the whole community starts to converge on using the same keywords for common topics.
It’s a great way to find new webpages on themes you’re interested in, as well as folks who track the same topics you do.
16 September 04
Mojo Crow
My colleagues at the Wildlife Health Center have yet to catch their first crow—a live one, that is. (There have been plenty of dead ones brought in testing positive for West Nile Virus.) Crows are highly intelligent and not easily duped into captivity. So today Yvette set up Mojo Crow in one of the straw bales outside my window.
Mojo Crow is a plastic, life-size battery-operated crow whose wings rotate manically like those plastic flamingoes you see on people’s lawns.
Within five minutes of Mojo’s epileptic frenzy, there were over 200 crows circling high and cawing. They continued to caw as they landed in the eucalyptus trees nearby. But they didn’t come anywhere near, figuring that whatever had gotten to poor Mojo was probably going to do them in too. Mojo might have to be retired and something else will have to be tried. I’m glad I’m not the one having to catch them: this is really tough.
In other wacky news today, a Dodger baseball fan spent $25,000 buying out all the seats in a section of Dodger stadium beyond right field on the off chance that slugger Barry Bonds might hit his 700th home run there later this month (in which case the ball would be worth a great deal more than the $25,000). Well, Barry’s likely to get there well before then, so our enterprising fan has been selling the tickets for well over three times what he paid for them.