18 April 06
Wild One In Phoenix
The Giants just beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 10-9 in a wild game. At one point the Giants led 7-0, only to fall behind 7-9, and then the Giants caught up and took the lead in the top of the 8th and 9th. Despite having the worst team batting average in the major leagues, and a complete lack of production from Barry Bonds, the Giants are somehow managing to win games at this early point in the season.
16 April 06
The Pandemic Vegetarian Cookbook, Preface
Assumption #1: There will be a pandemic that will disrupt the food supply (and require everyone to stay home for a week or two, entirely self-sufficient. It may be longer.)
Assumption #2: You’re not going to be shooting game in your yard, or squirrels, rabbits, or dogs or cats.
Assumption #3: You’re not willing to sabotage your immune system in order to avert a cytokine storm.
Assumption #4: You’ll have built up a good supply of whole grains and beans. These will keep you going for a good while.
Assumption #5: You’ll organise your entire life around a supply of sauerkraut. (And stored chocolate, rationed in tiny pieces…)
Recipes will follow once I start following different length scenarios. Stay tuned.
16 April 06
Flu Symposium Day
Thanks to the efforts of Pica and many others, the avian flu symposium that the Yolo Audubon Society organized for today was a great success. Over two hundred people packed the Davis Senior Center for five hours worth of presentations and discussions. We can all use education in risk evaluation: even without a human pandemic, people will be reevaluating their interactions with birds, both domestic and wild. It seems quite likely that the high pathogenicity strain of avian flu H5N1 (not as yet mutated into a form capable of causing a pandemic) will arrive in North America shortly, perhaps this summer. Once this virus establishes itself in local bird populations, people will be reacting in sensible (washing hands more thoroughly) and not-so-sensible (in Italy, tens of thousands of poultry farmers are now out of work because people scared of avian flu have stopped eating chicken.)
The last speaker, who spoke about planning in the private sector, provided a link to an excellent mailing list that gives day-by-day reports on avian flu and other infectious diseases. This is ProMED-mail, sponsored by the International Society for Infectious Diseases. There’s a pretty high volume of messages on this list, but it’s fascinating stuff.
14 April 06
Go Ags
The best college team in baseball in the United States is, at the moment, Cal State Fullerton.
They probably have major league scouts crawling all over their dugouts, all the time. We’ve seen them play here at Davis. They are frightening.
The UC Davis Aggies beat them yesterday, 2-1. The first time the Ags have defeated any No. 1 team in any sport, ever..
14 April 06
Lakewood Rabbit
Here’s one of the sketches of the cooperative rabbit (and Federal employee) I saw Tuesday.
12 April 06
Dreaming
While Numenius was away the catalog came for the San Francisco Center for the Book. There was a week-long class I thought he’d be interested in taking, Mapping as a Creative Strategy. He always ends up with a lot more vacation time than I do. (If I had a week to spare I’d probably take the Weeklong Letterpress Intensive.)
Encaustic painting, pochoir, surface techniques, Turkish marbling, flag books, nature-print books with hidden hopenings: I want to take them all. Some are during the week in the evenings which is not practical and helps weed out some, but not enough.
I am left with longing and difficult choices…
11 April 06
Prairie Dog Companion
My workshop has been at the Denver Federal Center, which is a 670-acre site in Lakewood, very spread out, with lots of open space between the buildings (one of which is 19 acres in size!). Walking back to the hotel yesterday, I saw my first prairie dogs! I’m not sure which species they were, of the three in Colorado, but I’m now quite a fan of the genus. On the way back today, I sketched several, along with an extremely cooperative rabbit: I’ll post a sketch or two when I return.
10 April 06
Letters From My Adolescence
In boarding school, in Derbyshire, we were corralled every week to write letters home. I enjoyed writing them, I think. I know I wrote often, more often than the weekly corralling.
Looking back on these letters now, if I can bear to (oh you’re not supposed to READ them, says my mother, who had handed them to me in bound packets the week before), I see a lot of experimentation: inks, papers, hands. Not much experimentation with what I said, because it was all in what I DIDN’T say (this was a co-ed boarding school, it was the seventies).
Am I that person, unrecognizable? Yes. I’m thinking of ways to contain her, this adolescent so frightened of authenticity. Collage with paint over it, my current handwriting, different calligraphic hands.
Another project. Like I need any more of those…
9 April 06
Not What I'd Fly In For
I’ve just arrived in Denver for a training workshop the first part of the week. On the shuttle to my hotel, there was a couple who had flown in from Seattle just to see the Body Worlds exhibit at the Denver Museum of Science and Nature. A German anatomist has come up with a technique for impregnating tissues and organs with various polymers so as to preserve them for “didactic eternity”. 200 human specimens are being presented at the museum. I never was much of an anatomist—I’ll stick to mapping, thank you!
In other health profession news, it turns out there were dentists 9000 years ago.
8 April 06
More Packing
Got back from the coast this afternoon having delivered another carload of things from my mother’s house to various points. We had a good time: managed to watch some video in the “toss” pile of Northanger Abbey, which was a good silly gothic thing to do among the rubble. I managed not to forget the iPod this time so I sang all the way there and all the way home. I’m tired but singing is good for the soul and it reminds me I should do this more.
In Davis we were able to catch up with Ron of Toad in the Hole and Joe and a friend of theirs who had come up for the UC Davis Arboretum plant sale. Some good Swainson’s hawk sightings with them, including two copulations. Ron is encouraging me to plant in half-barrels… out of the reach of gophers, and easy to tent against spraying.