27 July 06
Morphologies
One of the most interesting things about this past weekend and my enounters with distant cousins was a kind of horror in recognition. Yes, those are my earlobes. Yes, lots of other women in this family went gray at 28 and some of them, like me, stopped dyeing their hair a while ago. Yes, lots of us have crooked lower front teeth despite the best efforts of orthodontists to convince the world to the contrary.
Kinship systems are a field of anthropology and often include, by definition, systems of taboo. What, then, to make of the disowned sisters, one of whom was my grandmother, who each married “wrong” and who caused great scandal, some of it still the subject 70 years later of whispered giggles (hardly so weird; an allegation of an affair between my grandmother and her brother-in-law). But his son, the great sire: 8 children in wedlock, at least another three, but who knows in fact how many else, out of it. And, ladies and gentlemen, some of them were there, along with both ex-wives. It was an amazing gathering, with the backdrop of the hurricane outside.
Genealogy programs tend to be written by and for mormons and exclude gedcom categories like “natural daughter” or “lesbian couple with three children, all with same biological father from sperm bank.” Kinship systems need to catch up, and so do the genealogy codewriters. Those of us needing to record such kinship systems must muddle through on our own, but I guess for the first time I’ve felt really proud to be part of this family. And this, from my mother, walking barefoot through St. David’s cemetery on Sunday: “I think I’ve finally trampled out the terror of this family.” (That, alone, was worth the trip for me.)
I arrived home to a blistering heatwave and some interesting vegetables. I have no idea what this is. It’s in the Armenian cucumber patch but it looks like it got crossed with a honeydew melon.
25 July 06
Saskatchewan to Lake Elsinore
It’s been too hot to play with radios outside (Saturday it got up to 44 degrees C) so I have been doing some AM broadcast band DXing with my little Sony 7600G world band receiver. In radio parlance DXing means to try to listen to distant signals for their own sake. At nighttime AM band signals can carry quite far because they bounce off the ionosphere. So tuning around with even an ordinary AM radio can pull in some surprises. The best catches so far have been CBC Radio One at 540 kHz coming from Saskatchewan (the program at the time was “Northern Lights”) and XEPE (“Cash 1700”) broadcasting at 1700 kHz from Tijuana (though aimed at Southern California). The latter is the broadcaster for the Lake Elsinore Storm, the Single-A minor league team in the California League for the San Diego Padres. As I write this they are losing 3-2 to the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes.
24 July 06
My First Cousin Ate My Ethernet Cable...
... and my thirty or so second cousins introduced themselves in phases, like the “1955 model”—one of my mother’s first cousins was especially prolific.
I was in Philadelphia over the weekend, attending a “symposium” on the family (this couldn’t just be a family reunion; it had to involve papers, poster sessions, name tags, and a list of materials for purchase). There was a lot about boats, which surprisingly didn’t bore this non-sailor. Hemingway rubbing shoulders with Dr. Beebe of the bathysphere fame. (Uncle Edwin didn’t believe in the depression and saw no reason why it should interfere with summer cruises to the Caribbean.)
I’m tired. I’ll say more later. But for now, it is good to be home, even though it’s sweltering in the Central Valley. (But it’s a dry heat…)
23 July 06
Whence the Tour of California
Floyd Landis won the Tour de France today. It’s been a wild three weeks, it being the most open Tour in ages. Landis and Oscar Pereiro exchanged the lead several times over the past week. Most dramatically, Landis recaptured the yellow jersey in the first stage in the Alps, and then collapsed on the final hill of the second Alpine stage to fall to 11th place. All seemed lost for him, but on the third and final Alpine stage, he went on an incredible solo run of the sort not seen since the days of Eddy Merckx to win the stage by over 5 minutes This brought him in striking distance of taking the lead in the race in Saturday’s time trial, which he proceeded to do. He ended up winning the Tour by 57 seconds over Pereiro. On top of all this, a couple weeks ago he reveals that he has an incredibly painful arthritic hip as the result of a crash a few years ago, and is in need of a hip replacement.
Back in February, Landis won the inaugural edition of the Tour of California, an eight-day stage race through the state. Maybe there’s a new rule here—whoever wins the Tour of California will win the Tour de France. Even if not, next year’s Tour of California will be fun to follow, especially since the stage on 20 February 2007 is going to run from Santa Rosa to Sacramento. I plan to catch that one in person!
20 July 06
Triangulating San Francisco
This week I’ve been taking a class at the San Francisco Center for the Book entitled “Mapping as a Creative Strategy”. The first half of the class was a look at traditions of mapping, including a field trip to the maritime library at the National Maritime Historical Park to look at many old maps of the California coast, North America, and San Francisco Bay. This latter half we’ve been working on our own projects. Most of the other students are San Francisco residents, and it was interesting for me to try to work with the perspective of being a visitor to the city, and not being intimately familiar with its neighborhoods.
I started out by making a list of the dozen places I’ve been to in San Francisco these past few years, and penciled these in on my street map. One of the themes that came up in discussion was making a map of places you’ve never been. So I came up with the idea of triangulating several of these places to wind up in spots I’ve never been before. The familiar landmarks were the San Francisco Center for the Book, the S.F. Public Library, the Maritime Library, and the Sutro Library (a bookish selection, to be sure). Finding the midpoints between these landmarks, I came up with a set of 4 new locations to go to.
Today I did my grand tour of the city. At each stop I made a sketch on bristol board. I started out north of the Civic Center, headed west to Haight and Lyon, circled Buena Vista Park to Roosevelt Way, then wound up at Noe and 20th. It was a long outing, but it was wonderful to explore the city this way!
19 July 06
Pen With Attitude
(The result of a conversation with a new pen in the afternoon)
18 July 06
The Pen With The Transparent Barrel
Saturday’s outing in Portland was the second such pen show I’ve ever been to. Unfortunately, the pen I’d like to find, though out of manufacture, I think is too plebeian to be at such an event. This was a $6 Pentalic fountain pen that had a transparent cylindrical barrel with a green ink converter inside. This pen had a wonderful nib. I discovered it in college, and went through several of them, either losing or breaking them in the end.
I did find a pretty nifty pen though at the show. This is a Sailor Super Script fountain pen. The nib of this pen is bent back at an angle, allowing one to make lines that are extra fine to bold depending upon what angle one holds the pen. I picked one up for $15—I think it is great for sketching. It too has a transparent barrel.
17 July 06
The Black Pen
As Numenius mentioned, we were in Portland this weekend. We found out after we’d booked tickets that the Portland Pen Show was going to be taking place while we were there. I’m not a pen collector, as such, not the kind that goes looking at the condition of bakelite through a lupe, but I always like a pen that works well.
This one called me from across the room. It was, it is, a Pen With Attitude. It was made in 1910 or thereabouts, hard rubber, but it was the nib that caught me by the jugular, a flexible italic. A contradiction in terms. A hybrid, a bastard.
I started to make lines with it. No, it said, not like that, like this. I want to do more loops, because I’m half copperplate. I felt wrenched by the power of this thing, unworthy to wield it, unable to stop.
Both Dale and the young Canadian red-haired man who was trying to sell me this pen with me were sort of in shock at what was going on. I’m afraid I was oblivious. I said anything, didn’t let the pen from my hand, kept caressing the paper with these lines from Somewhere Else.
I didn’t buy the pen. I have no business paying $125 for a pen, not when I have others in my drawers I hardly ever use. I went out for a cup of tea and came back, almost buying a lesser Levenger item.
But not.
The next day, after that damn thing had yakked at me all night, the insistent patter or scolding or seduction hollering or whispering, we went back.
I now own this pen. Or it owns me. I’ll let you know. Thanks to Dale and Susan (and Masha and Erik) for insisting I go back. I’d have regretted this one if I’d passed it up…
16 July 06
Herman, Fup, Mango, and Chocolate
We just got back from a weekend trip to Portland, where we visited our blogging friends Dale and Susan. They were grand hosts, and they introduced us to Dale’s old buddy Herman the 10-foot sturgeon at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery, Susan’s faun-colored kitty Mango, her affectionate tortoiseshell cat Bit, and her ball-obsessed dog Joey. I also learned that Oregon is a fine state for chocolate, starting with the Moonstruck Chocolate café downtown, and moving south to Dagoba chocolate made in Ashland. At Powell’s, where I spent about three-and-a-half hours all told, they were having the 18th birthday party for Fup, the store cat at the technical bookstore two blocks from the mother ship.
All in all, Portland is a wonderful place.
14 July 06
Working Where I Do
This is what you find lying around the place:
Happy Friday.