9 August 09
Field Of Sun
Late this spring they planted the field just south of our house in sunflowers.
2 August 09
Aerial Mayhem
At eight this morning all chaos was going on overhead. First the whooossh of the propane burner of a balloon floating nearby, and then the persistent buzzing of motorized paragliders. I looked outside — there were at least three balloons in the neighborhood, with a couple of paragliders zooming around to inspect. (The paragliders take off from southeast of Davis, the balloons launch from somewhere near Woodland.) One of the balloons then landed right by the levee to the north of the house, and the several vans of the balloon ground crew were parked by the side of the road, the crew running out to take down the balloon. I kept the cats inside until the mayhem subsided.
All we needed to add to the scene was a dragon and the confusion would be total.
28 July 09
Demiamputation
The nectarine tree, burdened by fruit, cracks in half. A Nuttall’s woodpecker drills into not-quite-ripe fruit. The lavender is crushed.
(Submitted for the 38th Festival of the Trees.)
15 July 09
East College
I’m back from my vacation to Brunswick, Maine and Greencastle, Indiana. Here’s a sketch of East College at DePauw University in Greencastle. The cornerstone of the building was laid down in 1870.
11 June 09
Avian Sasquatch
My officemate wasn’t in this morning which means I get to field his phone calls most of which aren’t as interesting as the one today — the gentleman on the other end explained how he had found a flight feather a good bit longer than his outstretched arm (and he is 5’ 7 1/2”) but had lost it and this was up near Klamath Falls and there was an account of such a giant bird from Mexico in 1921 (killed — the 25-30 pound bird probably fed a family for a week) and another account from Switzerland of a different type of bird much bigger than a condor — these are high altitude birds, generally soar at 10-12,000 feet which is why no one ever sees them…
So do look up — you never know what you might spot up high.
1 May 09
The Clade Launched
The Clade is a new community environmental website that holds that the environment is about more than climate change. Join the conversation…
26 April 09
At The Local Airport
UC Davis is the only campus in the University of California system to have its own airport (though UCSB is quite close to the Santa Barbara commercial airport). For the past few years, the University Airport has held an open house in the spring; aviation buff that I am, I try to go to these, usually doing some sketching while there. At today’s open house, I sketched this Rockwell 112A, manufactured in 1975. A note on the sketch: I used gouache here — I recently built up a little paintbox of different gouache colors and this seems to be a good complement in the field to my box of watercolors.
12 April 09
You Know You've Been Standing In One Place Too Long
…when a squirrel runs up your leg. This happened during yesterday’s outing: I was finishing up this sketch of an azalea in front of the State Capitol at the time.
11 April 09
Davis Joins Cooperstown
The city of Davis has just been selected to be the new home of the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame. This hall had been located in Somerville, New Jersey but was forced to relocate due to a redevelopment project. More than 25 communities submitted proposals to be the new home, and the choice eventually came down to between Greensboro, North Carolina and Davis. According to the chair of the selection committee, Bill Brunner, “The distinguishing difference between Greensboro and Davis was that Davis was so bicycling friendly…all those bike lanes and the sheer number of people who use the bicycle as a method of transportation or recreation or sport.” Nobody knows where in town the hall will be permanently located but the city would like to see the hall and museum open in a temporary location in the next six months.
27 March 09
Shops Out Of Time
We went to Berkeley today for a family gathering and early birthday dinner and unexpectedly had a bit of time in the afternoon for some shop-wandering, ending up at two stores that though their contents couldn’t be more different, both seemed like reliquaries rather out of time. The first place was the Lacis Museum of Lace and Textiles. The friendly folks at the Albany yarn store k2tog directed Pica to go to Lacis to find some fine mercerized thread for lace knitting. This storefront and museum, which has been around since 1965, has a fantastic collection of materials, tools, and resources for textile crafts. But not Joann’s Fabrics sorts of crafts. Rather, these are for crafts that are arcane enough that we were both gobsmacked that anybody still practices these. There were the fifty-seven different sorts of tatting shuttles. The doll’s heads for making interesting tassel forms. The horn thimbles. The Battenberg lace kits. And a full range of corset-making supplies, including both plastic and metal stays; the place offers workshops as well and a DVD on corset-making. Pica found her thread, but the true prize was a specially-made wrist yarn holder, good I think for knitting socks while going hiking.
The second store was Al Lasher’s Electronics on University Avenue which has been in Berkeley since 1960 but I don’t think I’ve ever set foot in there before. Electronics components stores are very thin on the ground nowadays, the professional market for these long having given way to mail-order and now online places like Digikey and Mouser. Nevertheless, Al Lasher’s has somehow hung on, and judging from the numbers of customers passing through, still seems to be doing okay. One woman came in there for wiring supplies to resurrect a turntable she found on Craig’s List, the previous owner having been a photographer who didn’t actually play it but rather used it for a backdrop to a photo shoot. Some of the components I think have been in the store since the 1960s, or as they say on their web page, “we tend not to throw things away.” I particularly liked the two tube-testing machines up near one of the front windows (remember those, commonly found in supermarkets and hardware stores in the 1970s). A sign over these said these testers don’t really tell you that much, other than if the tube is shorted out or not, but all the tubes we sell at this store are good. I didn’t buy anything today, but the store has now been added to my places to shop in Berkeley list.
Today, by the way, is the sixth anniversary of Feathers of Hope!