3 December 06
Messiah With B Mesons
We went on a day trip to Stanford today — we were invited down by our friends Ian and Katrin to hear her sing with the Stanford Symphonic Chorus in their holiday concert. They performed Dvorak’s Mass in D major followed by excerpts from Handel’s Messiah. The concert was in Stanford’s Memorial Church, an impressive venue right at the heart of campus. Afternoon choral performances are great concerts to go to, and we had a lot of fun at this one.
Beforehand, we met an old friend of mine who is working on his doctorate in experimental particle physics and is now doing his research at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. His graduate program is actually at the University of Wisconsin, but the experiment he’s working on is one of these massive high-energy physics collaborations that involves some 80 different academic institutions.
2 December 06
Our morning was spent once again in Cold Canyon. This time we met up with about forty people, at least ten of them under ten (go Girl Scout Troop 1952) to plant native grasses at the homestead, a nice hike in to the canyon of about 1-1/2 miles.
There were 600 grass seedlings to plant as well as quite a few native shrubs and trees (toyon, lotus, gray pine). With 40 people, though, the time passed quickly. Numenius has so far avoided messing about too much in the garden but he was well into it today. We were joined by about 5,000 hatching ladybugs. It was an excellent party.
One of the great pleasures of the day was running into three separate friends. Andrea, in the middle here at left, had some wonderful news to share with us. She’s a lurker on this blog so I won’t embarrass her but hey, gal, congratulations to you and Steve. It was great to see you.
1 December 06
More Index Cards
The hipsterPDA experiment continues to go well, though I’m behind on doing my weekly review. Here’s a Japanese perspective on index cards as a productivity tool, though apparently index cards are hard to find in Japan.
30 November 06
Books
Modal Minority has started an interesting exercise: an inquiry into the best books we read in 2006, regardless of when they were published. I’m still thinking about this.
Today I received word of an interview by my former boss and mentor at Harvard. (Thanks Sue.) This interview reminds me why it’s important to remember that not all the best books were published last Tuesday. On Lindsay’s list of books he’s most proud of having published, I worked on well over half. It doesn’t mean Harvard has published nothing of note since I left ten years ago, but I’m glad some of those great books didn’t get relegated to the dustbin of publishing history…
29 November 06
Digestive Table
Those folks who have trouble getting their dinner leavings outside to the compost pile might want to consider building a digestive table. This project, designed by artist Amy Youngs, is a vermicomposting system built underneath a round dining table — she terms this a “ a convenient, personal waste processing system built into a table.” Construction plans are provided on her site.
(From World Changing)
27 November 06
Eventful Weekend
a) Saw Bobby
b) Saw The Prestige
c) Soaked in the Mud
d) Made pesto with the last of the basil
e) Ate same
f) Yukked it up all weekend with a dear friend
g) Bought two pineapple guava plants
h) Got back to work today to discover that my colleagues at the Oiled Wildlife Care network had their own busy weekend, a mystery spill oiling dozens of gulls with food oil.
They headed up to Arcata on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, spent the next two days finding and collecting birds and then stabilizing them. The birds had apparently gotten into a trailer with discarded cooking oil.
The situation seems under control now with most of the birds either recuperating in recovery pools or waiting to get washed tomorrow.
23 November 06
Happy Thanksgiving
Unlike in this photo from yesterday, the kitties were fiesty today — Charlie went up a tree and Diego insisted on jumping on the clean sheets of our cat-allergic guest. I meanwhile dropped the ‘e’ from ‘Thanksgiving feast’ and didn’t eat all day.
21 November 06
Kitty Playdate
Quina from across the road came over tonight. It was a short meeting, during which she rarely left Mary’s shoulders, but there was no hissing, and if this works out, it might be a good solution to alternate cat-sitting ventures.
A friend is coming this weekend who is allergic to cats; I have lots of cleaning to do to get the house as mellow as possible, though it will be the tent for sleeping, I think…
19 November 06
Home Ground
I haven’t seen this new book yet but it’s on my to read list: Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, edited by Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney.
From the publisher’s blurb for it on the book’s website:
Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape brings together forty-five poets and writers to create more than 850 original definitions for words that describe our lands and waters—terms like flatiron, bayou, monadnock, kiss tank, meander bar, and everglade. The writers, including Barbara Kingsolver, Luis Alberto Urrea, Jon Krakauer, Charles Frazier, Antonya Nelson, and Samantha Chang, draw from careful research as well as on their own distinctive stylistic, personal, and regional diversity to portray in bright, precise prose the striking complexity of the landscapes we inhabit, from Missouri’s woody draws to Virginia’s runs, from the desire paths of cities to the rondes of Midwestern farmlands, from California’s bajadas to Alaska’s pingos and Hawai`i’s shield volcanoes. An advisory board has ensured the scientific accuracy of the prose. Included are one hundred black-and-white drawings by Molly O’Halloran and an introductory essay by Barry Lopez.
Not that I ever listen to All Things Considered but they did a piece on the book a couple of days ago — on that page there are also some excerpted definitions from the book.
18 November 06
A Really Stinking Compost
These days are full. I’ve been seeing dear friends, enjoying the wonders of Cold Canyon again with other dear friends, getting things done. But one of those is not, alas, my novel. I have felt discouraged since the demise of my pen and while that might seem to be just an excuse, I’ve written little since. I’m not giving up, but I can’t get 50,000 words written by the end of November…
Mary dragged over two months’ worth of kitchen scraps from across the street, fetid and rank. She kindly dumped them on my compost pile, where they have attracted so many flies that the black phoebe sitting on the edge needn’t even take wing to get her fill. For a compost maniac such as I’ve turned out to be, this was like winning the lottery.
I turned the compost this evening in the dark, a stinky job, pondering on pens (it’s my niece’s birthday and my present to her was her first fountain pen, a pink girlie job made by Kukuxumusu in Spain, along with purple cartridges and a purple Clairefontaine notebook) and on the World Bank (o evil institution) and on manzanita bark and on small falcons.
A stench like this gets you right in touch with what’s really going on. In your head and otherwise…