31 August 11
White Waterfalls
Driving back from the Sierra on Monday — into the sunset, as we had driven into the sunrise; at least our reward was the green flash — we passed a Bridal Veil Falls. There must be hundreds of waterfalls so named throughout North America.
We had walked in 3+ miles only to find out we had way overshot our trailhead, and had to double back. We found our party — a group trapping an alpine relative of rabbits named a pika — and proceeded to follow them around glacial boulder-falls trying to photograph them. Two colleagues, two students: this was the perfect setting for photos that were to illustrate “training,” something I’m called upon to do a lot in my work. (Good thing, because they didn’t catch any pika, though we did see one and heard several.)
At some point during the day, though, it hit me. In earlier centuries, I’d be “going blind.” I used to have better than 20/20 vision, could identify a hawk at enormous distances, read roadsigns that would leave fellow travelers incredulous. Now the white waterfall descends on my right eye and will follow on my left.
I don’t mind, much. Not as much as I thought I would. For one thing it’s an easy outpatient surgery these days, but this is part of what it is, growing older. I shouldn’t expect to have the eyes of a 16-year-old, where something I spotted could cause Francisca to exclaim “Hay la vista que tienes, Dios te la bendiga.” No: whatever surgery they perform will never return me to those times. At this point, according to my opthalmologist brother-in-law, it’s all about minimizing decline. Gone, gone, gone beyond: gone beyond beyond.
Waterfalls. I have a new appreciation.
29 April 11
Hats
The dress was lovely and all, but really today’s been all about the hats, about Victoria Beckham’s superglued-to-the-forehead hat to mimic her pregnant bump (she looks so sour ALL of the time and who can blame her with that double whammy) and the astonishing blue vulva hat and the revival of the Fascinator. But the prize goes to Princess Beatrice’s concoction which I’ve read of today as a reincarnation of Cthulhu, Mickey Mouse on acid and the Eye of Sauron, to mention just the tip of the iceberg.
My poor father would be rolling in his grave if he knew I was paying attention to any of this. From the north of England and of staunch anti-monarchical stock, he was of the opinion that all queens did was sit around and look beautiful, that they were sucking the coffers dry and a disgrace to democracy.
And yet… I had to wear a hat once. To Buckingham Palace. A dark green faux Russian faux fur hat, it was, something we picked up at Selfridges on the way, because you needed to wear a hat when your father was getting an OBE. (You didn’t, it turned out.) We arrived at the palace in a borrowed jag with Bob the borrowed chauffeur and emerged to lines of waiting and lines of recipients of the royal pleasure. I have no idea what went through my father’s head as he waited in morning dress in the antechamber before heading out to meet HM who referred to him in the document received as “our most beloved and loyal subject” but I did get an overwhelming sense of the number of people it must take to get this kind of thing to run smoothly on a daily basis, quite a bit more involved than just sitting around and looking beautiful, in the end.
These kinds of people were apparently absent when Beatrice was getting dressed this morning because her Cthulhu hat facebook page now has more than 50,000 fans. People are saying it’s Fergie’s way of flicking the vees/flipping the bird at the palace. Who knows. I wish I owned more hats than just baseball hats and straw gardening hats and chullos for birding in cold places, though, even if I never had anywhere to wear them. Maybe I need a Cthulhu hat after all.
25 October 10
Weaving for the World Series
I had a two-day weaving workshop this weekend at Meridian Jacobs with Robin Lynde (who also taught me to spin). Robin took one look at my Giants Ishbel and handed me some black and orange yarn to weave with. There wasn’t quite enough of the orange to make a scarf-length piece so I added some gray at either end (all of the wool is from Robin’s Jacobs sheep).
My mind is still spinning with the language of weaving and the giddy sense of how fast it moves in terms of fabric length. I tried several patterns (plain weave, twill, broken twill, and pebble weave, settling on broken twill for the scarf). The warp is all black except for four strands of gray either edge.
I got home just in time for the first pitch on Saturday night, having woven about 5-6” of orange. Orange and black. The Giants won their game and the pennant, moving on to the World Series. I went back yesterday and finished my scarf, which I now have to full (wash and agitate a little to get the wool to settle).
Go Giants. (And thanks, Robin, for an excellent weekend and for these photos.)
13 August 10
The Small Red Triangle
It came upon me while I wasn’t looking, this thing. Someone I know knows someone who does therapy and by the way she also teaches qigong. What I knew about qigong was that it’s a great Scrabble word and is somehow related to, but not the same as, tai chi, which I’d seen someone’s Shanghaiese mother doing outside Dryden House in Cambridge. It looked strange and flowing and mesmerizing and sure, I’ll go.
Breathing. The medical set. Hitting (it our case it’s a lot more like tapping). Sequences I still haven’t memorized but that become familiar as C. describes the pathways, the flow. The end of our session often — always? — consists of sitting, of meditation. We are an unruly lot of women who’d mostly prefer to be moving about rather than facing whatever it is that sitting still for five minutes will reveal; C. knows this and she just works it in at the end, when we’re all pliable, when there’s no ducking out.
Picture a small red triangle, smaller than a pea, she says. Draw a line from your cranium through your center to three fingers below your navel. The triangle sits there. Red and luminous. Focus on the triangle. (She knows unruly minds will race and she is trying to keep us here, rather than thinking about what we will have for dinner or the laundry or the paintings we want to paint or the words we want to write. Think about the triangle. Here. Be present.)
The dreaded five minutes come and go and still we sit, moving the energy up into our hearts and back into the circle where it is offered back out to the suffering world…
11 July 10
Gané,
Ganaste, ganó, ganamos, ganasteis, ganaron.
(I’m still in shock but we are back from Oregon where we saw Rana Rachel and Dan get married in the most gorgeous spot, had a lovely Thai lunch with Dale prior to a focused expedition to Powells, met the Knitting Rabbi as Numenius mentioned, and watched two football matches. One of which was very, very key. It involved my wearing a red shirt and I’m afraid I made a bit of a spectacle of myself in a bar at the Portland airport, but I may well get over it.)
7 July 10
Superstition
Spain face Germany in a few hours. Like Maradona and his rosary beads, elaborate wardrobe shifts, and no doubt favorite drawers, I am filled with the irrational urge to don a red shirt, but wonder whether that will jinx the team.
Many athletes have elaborate superstitious rituals some of which border, like Maradona’s, on the theatrically absurd. Fans do as well. I’m trying to resist, trying to talk myself out of it. But what I’ve noticed for sure is that my syntax has become more British in the fast three weeks. It’s something to do with the language of football and I don’t think it’s a superstition, it’s more elemental.
So do I believe Paul the Octopus in his prognostications? do I believe they are always flawed when he is pitching Spain against Germany? Sigh. To any non-soccer types reading the blog, at least it will all be over soon, one way or the other.
23 May 10
Maker Faire
This year we split up to cover the areas we wanted to see independently. Numenius spent time at a couple of panel discussions — including open source hardware — and looking at electronics. I spent time with the fiber folks and paper people. We both liked the robotic gamelan. I wanted to buy a geeky sketching canvas kilt you could ride a bike with. I learned how to knit a klein bottle (3 dimensions only, not 4). We bought this amazing stuff called Sugru (a silicone-based substance you can use to repair or enhance things, like ergonomically sculpting handles — it dries overnight with exposure to air).
A long day. Now we find a bee swarm in one of the guava bushes, which are flowering copiously…
19 May 10
A Visit to Sacramento
Racing off to the station this morning on my bike, I got on the train to Sacramento to represent the Oiled Wildlife Care Network at State Scientist Day, an event where 3,000 children come to the State Capitol to see scientific initiatives by California.
Water, pollution, lead, of course oil, endangered species, geology — I wasn’t able to visit all the booths but it was a good sampling and there was lots of enthusiasm.
Interacting with kids doesn’t come easily to me (there’s a reason I never had any) but this was an oft-repeated schtick, what happens to animals that get caught in oil, what we can do to help… the parents and teachers engaged more closely in the conversation because, I’m assuming, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is present on their minds. It’s on ours, too: my colleague Mike’s been there for three weeks, trying to set up the marine mammal and turtle response (well cataloged on the owcn blog ).
People: people who were short, people who were dressed up as bears (Smokey and Warden Grizzly were two I spotted), and this one guy dressed in 500 plastic bags.
We had a smattering of rain and it was, at length, over. I sketched. I took the train back to Davis, biked back to the office into a headwind with the miraculously recovered OWCN banner on my back. (It’s heavier than you’d think.)
7 May 10
Into The Merry Month of May
The Whole Earth Festival is this weekend on the Quad on campus. This is the 41st year it’s been run, and we’ve attended a good many of them in the 11 years we’ve been in Davis. By now the Whole Earth aesthetic is quite ingrained in us, and we were able to satisfy the annual need for it with a brief session this evening. (I may have to return on Sunday for the annual chocolate-covered banana however).
May has turned into quite a hectic month for us. The Whole Earth Festival starts off the events of the month. Tomorrow we are headed to Berkeley to meet friends and then in the evening we are going to West Sacramento to catch a River Cats game. A week from tomorrow is the Davis Double Century for which we are scheduled to provide radio support. The following weekend is the Maker Faire in San Mateo; we will be going down on the Saturday, and expect to be overwhelmed as we were last year.
No wonder I need a vacation. Which I am taking this upcoming week! Time to catch up on projects before I get to the Maker Faire…
1 April 10
The Rescued Shoe
When I was visiting my sister’s 1902 house in Maine last week, they showed me a child’s shoe that had been found in a wall they were taking down between the kitchen and the living room. I love these kinds of hidden treasures and wonder how it got there. I drew the shoe right before my nephew’s land shark hamster, Obi-wan Kenobi, bit me. The shoe, not the hamster, is my contribution to Illustration Friday’s theme, Rescue. Maybe I should have been rescued from the hamster.
