16 May 07
I'm Pressed
I’ve been the newsletter editor of Yolo Audubon Society for what — five years? Six years? As of tonight, I’m President.
I no longer know what I’m doing. Instead of making sure nine issues get out per year, I have to answer questions about bird boxes as Habitat for Humanity projects. And show up to things. (I’m perennially late; this will be interesting.) It involves waffle.
The good news is, it’s only two years. The much better news is, the board is made up of wonderful, dedicated, energetic people. It’s going to be fine…
16 May 07
14 May 07
11 May 07
Wiki Across The Causeway
A couple of Davis transplants over the causeway to Sacramento were inspired by Davis’s best online institution, the Davis Wiki, and have started the Sacramento Wiki. It’s still young in its life — let’s hope it grows to be as successful as the Davis version.
10 May 07
Morning Mudpie
I’ve planted okra
[dead fish my father said]
and corn and squash
in dung
[my nails are black]
and my friends are bracing
for the onslaught
of curcubitaceae
[he hated those too]
to come and
as I dipped a pointed pen
into walnut ink
this morning
a Swainson’s thrush
exhausted from a night of dodging
cellphone towers
slammed into the
[unwashed] window
and bounced into
the leeks
I wrapped it in
[I hoped] a premature
shroud and
hoped and
yes
!
it rose up
after a time
into the mulberry
where the Wilson’s warbler
and Bullock’s oriole
and black-headed grosbeak
wove a trio of
Spring
in the
Central
Valley.
Postscript, 1:48 pm, Thursday: a Swainson’s thrush just flew into my window at work. It seems fine, flew into the locust tree… I wish I knew a good way to stop them from doing this. I never wash the windows, so that’s not really the problem.
8 May 07
Going To The Horses
Embedded in many sidewalks around Portland, Oregon are rings for tying up horses. The equine species no longer figuring much in Portland’s transportation plan, these rings were mostly forgotten until artist Scott Wayne Indiana tied a toy pony to a ring in the Pearl District. Thus was born the horse project — dozens of toy horses may now be found hitched up all over Portland.
7 May 07
Best of Bloggery
Peter of Slow Reads and Dave Bonta of Via Negativa are co-editing the new qarrtsiluni theme, Greatest Blog Hits. As they put it:
“The blog form is now ten years old. How better to celebrate that anniversary than with a “Greatest Blog Hits” issue? From now through our deadline of June 15, we’re reversing our long-standing prohibition against previously blogged material: we want ONLY previously blogged material, at least one year old. It may take any form – fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art, photography, audio, cartoons – and there’s no restriction on length (though excerpts will also be considered). We simply want your best posts.
The editors for this issue are Peter of Slow Reads blog and Dave Bonta of Via Negativa (also one of the two managing editors of qarrtsiluni). This theme is a natural outgrowth of our own blogging: both of us have “best of the blogs” sidebar columns on our sites, and we share an interest in rescuing great posts from the near-oblivion of blog archives. We each have our own favorites that we’ll be looking to get permission to republish, but there are a hell of a lot of well-written blogs out there, and we can’t possibly read them all. So please help us out by circulating this notice far and wide and encouraging other literary, artistic, or simply thoughtful bloggers to exhume their best posts and send them our way. As always, please direct all correspondence to qarrtsiluni [at] gmail [dot] com.”
Send in your stuff, everyone…
5 May 07
Anticipation
Never mind silly things like home run record chases, there’s nothing in baseball quite like the anticipation of seeing a much-heralded prospect make his major league debut. On Sunday Tim Lincecum is scheduled to start for the Giants in their game at home against the Phillies, taking the place of Russ Ortiz who has been put on the disabled list. Lincecum was their first-round draft pick in 2006 and so far this season he has been mowing down batters at Triple-A level, allowing just one run in 31 innings pitched, for an ERA of 0.29. How well will he adjust to the big leagues? Will he get fazed on Sunday by the likes of Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins??
3 May 07
Le Cru et le Cuit
How do you feed a cat? This was a question I asked, literally, when four five-week-old feral kittens ended up in our bathroom, badly in need of feeding. I had never owned a cat. Since I work with a lot of vets, all of whom have pets, I got a lot of advice quickly. This brand is middle of the road, fine, better than this one but not as expensive as this one, top of the line. Mush up the kitten food with water, really make sure they’re getting plenty of fluids. No, you don’t need to supplement milk; at five weeks, they’re practically weaned.
I went to a talk last night at the Co-op about feeding your pets raw food. Diego’s been vomiting again, and this is worrying me since the hypoallergenic food he was prescribed by the vet was recalled just before we got back from Colorado due to the melamine pet food scandal. (I am really, really glad we always mixed it up with a lot of different dry foods, all of them wheat- and corn-free; if he was exposed, it was to tiny amounts.)
There was a lot of interest, predictably, in the wake of the melamine thing (one horrifying thought is that all the tainted food is now going to be combined with hog feed, here or abroad, and there’s no way to stop it or even trace it under current regulatory practices. This poison is headed for the human food chain, folks…). Postscript: actually, it already has: see this story
This is a vegetarian household. Cats are carnivores. Kibble’s easy, but what the hell is in it? (A hint: if it says “beets” it means “sugar.”) And why on earth is Hills filling its expensive white-coat-sanctioned food (think Clinique of the pet world) with corn, something as humans we should be eating a lot less of, but is basically indigestible for carnivores? Got it in one: it’s cheap. (Just like buying wheat or rice gluten from China is cheap. This has been a personalized crash course, for me, in the consequences of a global economy…)
I don’t know if we’re moving towards feeding the cats raw food or not. (To Numenius’ great dismay I did buy a bit with my friend Mary, beef heart with chicken; the cats turned their noses up at it this morning.) But I’m definitely interested in learning more about animal nutrition. One place I won’t look, probably, is any school of veterinary medicine whose funding for nutrition research comes primarily from the pet food company with the white coats. Sad, since I work for one of the most prominent such schools in the country…
1 May 07
Sag 10
We’ve received our assignment for helping out with the radio communications during the Davis Double Century 200-mile bike event, which is two weeks from this Saturday. First, we’re off to run the radio station at Rest Stop 1 at the bright and early hour of 5:30 AM. That’s all right, we’ve had plenty of practice of getting up at oh-dark-thirty during our Colorado trip. We then change gears, go mobile, and start following the course, having turned our Honda Element into a radio-equipped sag wagon (“Net control, this is Sag 10.”), and finishing our duties around 5 in the afternoon. A long day, but hardly as long as what the riders end up doing.