24 July 07
Landing Gear
I’ve been home for two days, having finished the new Harry Potter book on the way home. (I only know one other person who’s finished it and am biting my tongue.) The okra’s continuing to be devastated by pocket gophers; I’ve harvested most of it to make a bindi masala tomorrow in the solar cooker. We won’t get much more, I don’t think.
I’m acutely aware of how far away the rest of my family is. Mostly I don’t pay attention. But these kids are growing fast, and seeing them once a year, briefly, doesn’t really work. I had a lump in my throat embracing my sister, my mother, my niece…
Flying over beautiful blue Lake Tahoe (at least until the first rains of the fall turn the fireswept mountainsides into mudsloshes), and into the parched Central Valley, I was reminded how much I like to see green, yet how quickly it becomes oppressive, too much. Perhaps it’s what you’re used to. My palette is still ochre/sienna/ultramarine…
22 July 07
Opening
Thursday evening found me listening to the 20 meter band on my transceiver. At this stage in the sunspot cycle — we’re at the bottom — 20 meters is basically a daytime and early evening band. The propagation is best on 20 meters over daylight portions of the earth. I am tuning around the Morse Code section of the band and copy the callsign LZ1MS from a signal that is booming in. I know a prefix beginning in L is not a US station; I don’t have the table of prefixes memorized but think “L — that’s probably Argentina, right?”
The table of prefixes is at hand though, and I look up LZ1. It’s Bulgaria (I was close on Argentina though — its prefixes are LO-LW). This is a strange location to have signals coming in from, since it’s mostly nighttime between here and there. Other people are contacting this station and he disappears before I have a chance to contact him on Morse Code.
I go to the Web where I look up the current long-distance ham radio activity (there is a system in place where hams briefly log to the Net current long-distance contacts) and find that LZ1MS has moved to the voice portion of the 20 meter band, alas in a section I don’t have privileges to transmit on. I tune around the voice portion and hear folks transmitting from Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, and Estonia. In my short 6-month career on the high frequency bands I’ve not heard anything like this opening to Eastern Europe before.
Not that I managed to contact anybody there. But I did have luck in the opposite direction, and had my first contact on voice into Japan that evening!
18 July 07
Grousing
Philadelphia vireo? Yes. No spruce grouse, though, despite many hours of looking and six moose and about eight snowshoe hares. Many species of warbler I haven’t heard for over ten years and whose songs came back to me in a blinding flash. My buddy Linda joined my mother and I in the spruce caper.
I’m now in Brunswick again having collected my brother in Boston this morning. We’re heading back to Norway, Maine, tomorrow; the Harry Potter festival is in Portland on Friday.
It’s raining. It’s heaven. Numenius tells me there was the unheard-of rainshower this morning in Davis; I’m sorry to have missed it!
15 July 07
Why Flies Go One Way And Grounders Go The Other
A tale in hitting geometry.
12 July 07
Off to the Mugglefest
I’m leaving early in the morning for Maine to visit family, in particular my nine-year-old niece who’s read all the Harry Potter books and wants me to go with her to the Mugglefest in Portland next Friday. I didn’t need too much persuading.
For what it’s worth: I think Harry’s a horcrux, I think he’ll need to be destroyed* because he’s storing part of Voldemort’s soul, I think Neville Longbottom will do it, I think Snape will die heroically in the Last Battle, I don’t know much about whether Hermione or Ron will make it (but poetically one of them shouldn’t), I think Dumbledore will be a portrait in a locket worn by Harry throughout, coaching him along.
(In non-Harry Potter events, I’ll also be looking for the spruce grouse and Philadelphia vireo, catching up with my mother, catching up with my sister, catching up with my friend Linda, and generally getting overdosed on green, which we don’t see too much of in the Central Valley in July.)
*This doesn’t necessarily mean killed, as in he might lose his magical powers…
10 July 07
Salsas Of Yore
While on the topic of chili peppers, a study to be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined food remains found in two caves in southern Mexico dating from around 1500 years ago. The scientists found parts from at least 10 different cultivars of chili peppers, which were used both fresh and dried (fresh and dried peppers show different breakage patterns). As the lead author Linda Perry puts it: “You don’t grow seven different kinds of chilies unless you’re cooking some pretty interesting food.”
8 July 07
Illustration Friday: Geeky
I finally got around to making my radio QSL card, prompted by the Illustration Friday theme of Geeky.
Not shown in great detail behind the antenna is the vegetable garden, now producing in great quantity, including the pink okra which I imagined doomed:
6 July 07
Why Chilis Are Hot
Coturnix sums up the evolutionary reasons for this here. Short version — this is a mechanism by chili peppers to deter mammal herbivory in favor of bird herbivory, since seeds that pass through avian digestive tracts are fertile, but seeds that pass through mammalian digestive tracts are not. It turns out birds lack nerve receptors for capsaicin, the chemical that makes peppers hot.
5 July 07
Nestling Break
The gals were working on some black-crowned night-heron babies whose nest had failed. It was hot today — 105 degrees — and the babies got samples taken in the air conditioning. They’re going back this evening.
5 July 07
Breeze
We knew it was going to be hot for today’s holiday, and we wanted to go for a hike, so we headed to the East Bay this morning in search of cooler temperatures. We went to Wildcat Canyon Regional Park and hiked up along the crest of San Pablo Ridge. It was sunny but not hot and especially on top of the ridge there was a nice breeze coming up from San Pablo Bay. It was lovely to stretch our arms out and cool down after the climb. Good birds too — we saw a horned lark and numerous lazuli buntings and grasshopper sparrows.
It got to be 102 degrees F today in Davis. No wind either.