8 April 07
Salty Balty
The Giants won one game this week. They played six games — at home. Tomorrow they set out on the road.
Giants fans are miserable, already, one week into the season. Hard to see how anyone could be more miserable than Salty Balty, who calls in regularly to the postgame wrap, bemoaning the geriatric lineup and calling for heads to roll — a refrain that was taken up by caller after caller.
Today I did more gardening than I probably should have, given how my back is feeling, but it was fun to listen to the game (though not fun to hear them lose).
Peppers, chiles, leeks, fennel, squashes — all went in today (all the melons went in yesterday). It may be a little early. Oh well. We’ll see… Maybe Salty should take up gardening.
7 April 07
Botanic Garden
We met Ron and Joe at the Botanic Garden in Tilden Regional Park in Berkeley on a drizzly morning today. The Botanic Garden is exclusively devoted to California native plants. I realized as we went through the collections that I don’t think I’ve been there since I took my classes on California plants in 1992 back in grad school at UC Santa Barbara. The plant species seem to be a lot more familiar than when I was there last.
Ron and Joe related that this garden led to the origin of the California Native Plant Society, which is the most important organization for the conservation of the California flora. The garden dates to 1940; in the early 1960s there was a plan to expand the 9-hole golf course across the road over the garden. Local citizens objected, and the organization that grew out of this eventually became the CNPS.
Above is a sketch of Trillium angustipetalum, a plant collected from Humboldt County. It is in the lily family, but as Chris Clarke relates , who knows what that means any more.
6 April 07
5 April 07
Blogger Bioblitz
Jeremy Bruno of The Voltage Gate has come up with an excellent way to participate in the National Wildlife Federation’s National Wildlife Week. He has announced the First Annual Blogger Bioblitz, “where bloggers from across the world will choose a wild or not-so-wild area and find how many of each different species – plant, animal, fungi and anything in between – live in a certain area within a certain time.”
This is not meant as a hard scientific project, rather it’s a fun way to “highlight little pockets of biodiversity across the world.” This event runs from April 21 – April 29. For the first couple days of that period we’ll be on a birding trip far too fast-paced to serve as a bioblitz, but after that I should be able to find some nearby nook to survey.
4 April 07
Geezers and Young Ladies
I got referred to on the air on Monday night as a “young lady,” something I haven’t been called for years, and probably only ever by my father. But it’s standard radiospeak for “woman ham,” even if the woman in question is 95. Strange and patronizing, though not altogether unpleasant — like learning morse code, it just feels jolly retro.
We attended a meeting last night of the local ham group. I was, as usual, the only woman there. They were kind and argued about this antenna and that battery and why something wasn’t working (all total gobbledegook) and I felt acutely self-consciously alien. (This is a good thing: not a problem to be reminded that this is an experience most African Americans, say, have not just in meetings, but ALL THE TIME, here in Davis. Damn but it must wear you down. Oh. Then try doing calculus…)
There’s a certain sense in radio gatherings — many of these guys are gray, some of them hams from the 30s — that I’m hanging out with clones my grandfathers. One, in particular, is 85; got his license as a teenager in 1938, went to Berkeley. Like other hams in those days, all Tom’s equipment was stuff he had made himself, flinging wires out from the second-floor of his boarding house for antennas.
Also like other hams in those days, and still today, Tom sent out cards to those with whom he made contact, listing the time, frequency, his call sign, report of signal strength and clarity — a QSL card. These cards are often a wonder (more often, a curiosity) of graphic design and in aggregate they can tell a ham’s life story. (One such story was the basis for Danny Gregory’s Hello World.) Tom had never kept any of these first cards, but one showed up in a box of QSL cards that were heading for the dumpster from an estate sale when they were rescued by Rob, who recognized Tom’s call sign. Tom and his card were reunited.
More stories from Alien Radio Planet will follow, I’m sure…
2 April 07
Opening Day
None of our teams won today (the Giants open tomorrow), but the new season is underway! In this thread I learned that Detroit Tigers broadcasting great Ernie Harwell would open up the new baseball year with a verse from the Song of Songs:
For the autumn has passed and the rain is over and gone. The flowers are seen in the country, the season of the songbird arrived, and the sound of the turtle-dove is heard in our land.
1 April 07
Spencerian Weekend
I just got back from a two-day intensive workshop in Spencerian script. This is really the only truly American calligraphic hand, reaching its heyday in 1860 or so. It differs from its copperplate predecessor by having more oval shapes than round, a smaller x-height, some truly quirky capitals, and much less thick-thin variation.
I’ll post my final project tomorrow when I gather my wits. But it was about Feathers of Hope turning four today… The blotch you see on the feather is, well, a blotch, Dr. Ph Martin’s Bleedproof White, to be precise. I’m still learning this. But you get the picture…
30 March 07
Kingbirds Are Back
Today was a holiday and I had lots of pottering opportunities. I went into town for a bit and then late in the afternoon I was out near the garden tinkering with the radio setup. I heard in flight and then later confirmed by sight two western kingbirds, the first I’ve seen this spring. They are very cheery sorts — always singing ‘dah-DEE-didi-dah’.
29 March 07
Alternate Career Universes
I just finished Remember Me by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, a sort of update on Jessica Mitford’s American Way of Death, not so acerbically anti-funeral industry but with lots of interesting titbits.
I’d make a good funeral director, I realize. These people are now called upon to be events planners as baby boomers age and want personalized sendoffs, not the wake-funeral-interment patterns of the past. Families don’t want ashen-faced purveyors of small kindnesses, they want some creativity to come alive while they are in a state of numbed shock. They want someone to take charge, make something happen that will be a gift to the living and a heartfelt tribute to the dead. They don’t want expensive going-through-the-motions (and the latter can, my friends, be REALLY expensive).
As a former denizen of Mount Auburn Cemetery, I warmed to this project. It’s silly, of course. I will never be a funeral director. But I could: I have the right combination of empathy, organizational skills, zest for throwing parties in other people’s houses, and fascination with, let’s face it, death. There are now death midwives and once-in-a-lifetime marriers (we had one for our own wedding, the Reverend Doctor Nicole Honey). If you need a once-only funeral director, send me an email…
28 March 07
KDRT In Trouble
Our local low-power (all of 83 watts) FM community radio station, KDRT is about to be stomped on by a big and bad commercial station. KMJE, a 6-kilowatt station 73 miles north of here on the same frequency as KDRT, has filed with the FCC to move their station to within 3 miles of Davis, which would annihilate the signal from KDRT and put it off the air.
KDRT has been on the air for a little over two years, and has established a diverse program lineup ranging from Davis gardening (Pica’s favorite show) to Bollywood music. Though modest in power, their signal comes in quite well here, south of town.
The term for such a move is encroachment. Unfortunately, low-power FM stations are second-class citizens on the FM spectrum according to FCC regulations, and even though KMJE clearly would be the bully in this event, it is the low-power station that has to yield to the full-power station. Moreover, a recent change in FCC procedures has reduced the time it takes for a full power station to change its community of license from several years to a couple of months.
KDRT is now looking for support in the form of donations to pay for lawyers and engineers to make their case as well as informal letters of objection to the FCC.