1 June 05
Countin’ Churches
We’ve been in the southeast for a week now. A trip to Cape Hatteras and two boat trips, a quick trip to Kitty Hawk, a quick trip to Floyd, a quick trip to Greensboro (John Neal Books), and HUNDREDS of churches later….
Going out on the boat into the Gulf Stream to see unusual seabirds yielded four life birds for both of us: black-capped petrel, Audubon’s shearwater, band-rumped storm-petrel, and bridled tern. There were many Wilson’s storm-petrels and a few Leach’s and a good, close look at two sperm whales, a longer look at Cuvier’s beaked whales. Huge manta rays. The deck hands caught several mahi-mahi and a huge blue marlin.
Numenius had the idea to play a new road game: guess the denomination of the next church. The problem with this is that there are so many, and we quickly realized we had seen more protestant denominations than bird species. So we started to make a list, driving from Cape Hatteras north into Virginia and then basically heading due west; a pretty solid transect. You can do a convincing cultural geography of a place by noticing where, for instance, a presbyterian church makes a sudden entry into the landscape coincidental with well-kept lawns versus a preponderance of churches with the words “apostolic” or “gospel” in their names that tend to concentrate around poor quality bottomland and decaying cars abandoned on overgrown patches of land that is no longer farmed.
We have been so plagued with spam during this past week we’ve had to shut down comments (the server’s been brought down several times, apparently). Sorry. We’ll work to fix this when we get home.
20 May 05
Expanding Vista
There’s been an Airstream trailer outside our back door for the past three months. The landlord’s son who keeps bees has needed a lot of extra help getting new hives built, honey extracted, and bees trucked around the valley (it’s going to be a big year in the bee business, especially for someone who sprayed his bees against mites nobody else believed would be a problem).
The trailer is owned by one Charlie, a laid-back jovial guy who seems curious about everything. He’s not the one who’s been living in it, though: that’s his stepson Taylor, a third-year engineering student who’s been doing the bee work to save up enough money to finish school back in Albuquerque.
Taylor would emerge with a cigarette at roughly the time we were walking the cats on leashes outside. Convention dictates a conversation is required. Nobody really wanted this so early in the morning; normally I still had to get in the shower and eat breakfast.
Charlie picked up the trailer yesterday; Taylor’s gone to Nevada for the next phase of bee work. And our mornings will once again focus exclusively on making sure the cats don’t catch pocket gophers, on the black-crowned night-herons, on the possibly nesting Bullock’s oriole.
14 May 05
Taking Joy in Things of Delight
Today we drove about 45 minutes due west, beyond the hillside where we got married two years ago, and headed into Cold Canyon.
This canyon is part of the UC Reserve System; it’s a creekside hike up a fairly steep trail in places. The rain has made the vegetation very lush; it was warm; I wondered about rattlesnakes a lot but as usual saw nary a one.
You’re encouraged to sign in and are invited to leave an optional comment beyond your name and the number in your party. “Sketching,” said Numenius, below the numerous “hiking” folks that were uphill. (The wags we met on the way out put “trotting” in this category.)
We sketched. We sat by the creek and used pens, pencils, crayons, watercolors, and the new stools I picked up at REI in Boston (okay, Reading) last week.
12 May 05
Feet and Memory
I have small feet. It makes walking hard. I also develop blisters even before I put my shoes/boots/sandals on. It’s genetic.
It’s also ironic, because I love walking.
When I was in Boston last weekend I went to the same usual haunts I somehow always manage to get to when I’m there—Mount Auburn, Harvard Square. It was the first time in probably twelve years I’d been in Central Square, though.
Central Square used to be on the dangerous side of funky. There were gunshots routinely on a Saturday night; walking past the Greek mom and pop greasy spoon would subject you to a cascade of cigarette smoke early in the morning or late at night. I lived down Magazine Street and then down Western Avenue. It didn’t feel very scary, but it should have. It was the kind of place I didn’t give too many details about on the phone to my parents.
Once I got over my stupefaction at seeing the Gap and Starbucks as I made my way from the bus stop to the Cambridge Zen Center last Friday, my feet took over.
They remembered the bricks. The sidewalk on Magazine is mostly brick, with a little cement in front of the Greek Orthodox Church parking lot. All of the eight blocks home were buckled from the roots of sidewalk trees that had grown too big for their housings and eventually been cut down but nobody leveled the sidewalk. I knew all the buckles, or rather my feet did.
I trust my feet. They have memory. Sometimes, as during practice at the Zen Center that evening when they had gone to sleep, they have more memory than sense (try standing up on a leg that is 100% asleep; it doesn’t work). But they took my shivering self through the Dell, down the Harvard Square bus ramp, over the hills and dales of the Magazine Street pavement.
Here’s to feet, and the hard work they do for us…
10 May 05
Slowly Edging Back Into California
I’ve been slowly uploading some of the sketches I did while in Boston (and on the way there). This may take a little while but there are about six of them here. [Postcript, Thursday May 12: a few more are now loaded, including one of the curious and animated discussion taking place across the courtyard which qB snuck over to listen in on…]
I met my father-in-law for lunch yesterday in Berkeley on the way home. We talked about some wonderful things, including the excellent series on race over at Abdul-Walid of Acerbia. Not content to call it quits on my trip, I continued sketching all the way home on the train.
As someone who tending not to process much but dash about from experience to experience, I’m rather savoring everything that happened over the last week. I’m also fading. I may add to this post in the morning.
Heads-up to Davisites, though: David Neiwert of Orcinus will be speaking in our town about the recent hate crimes here (wot? Davis? NEVER!) on Thursday evening.
8 May 05
Soggy Days
Yesterday was extraordinary, spending time with such congenial people in such congenial places (S&S deli, Gardner museum, Middle East restaurant). I will write more about this when I get back to Davis.
Today I went with my friend Linda to Plum Island by way of Newburyport (blue grosbeak, Nashville warbler), Ipswich (blue heron, which we didn’t see), Rowley (wilson’s phalarope, ditto), and lots of wind and rain.
I’ll be heading out tomorrow to California. I have a lot of sketches to complete on the plane. More then.
7 May 05
Whole Earth Days
The Whole Earth Festival is back on campus this weekend for the 35th year.
6 May 05
Boston
Mount Auburn. The warblers. The stones. The sketchbook. The tower. The children. The sister. The mother. The zoo. The art store. The frigate. The dinner. Mount Auburn. The birders. The editor. The T. The Copley. The library. The ivory-bills. The T. The Coop. The cartridges. The surprise. The friend. The nap. The blogger. The buddhists. The chanting. The crumpling. The saag. The bus.
The bed.
5 May 05
That Was Fast
There’s already a book out on the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker. It is entitled The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and it’s by Tim Gallagher, the editor of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s magazine Living Bird who was one of the observers of the woodpecker in the Arkansas swamp a year ago February. Coordinating the release of the news of the rediscovery must have been an interesting feat.
4 May 05
Spring Migration
I’m heading east. In a few hours I will take a train over the Creek Running North, get on a different train that goes under the San Francisco Bay to the airport, not quite take off over (but still see) where naming is knowing and on the other side where words are distilled, fly over where Andi Ditched the Raft just yesterday, over the Middle West, over where Cassandra, Lorianne, Rachel, Leslee and Paula pore over their keyboards just as I’m doing now.
The last time I was in Boston during spring migration was in 1996; I have probably forgotten most of the songs (here in California you learn to tell warblers apart by their call notes, not their songs, since here in the Central Valley they mostly aren’t singing much before they get on territory). I have done no preparation for this avalanche of color and song that awaits me. I hope also to see a few migrants other than birds. Blogging opportunities will be sporadic but Numenius will be here…