12 March 06
Tracking Sea Critters
The OBIS-SEAMAP site is a repository for observation and tracking data for marine mammals, sea turtles, and seabirds. What is neat is that the site lets anyone go in and look at maps of the observation data, so if you want to see where a short-tailed albatross can cruise to, you can.
11 March 06
Teapots and Bras
Not the first two things that probably roll into people’s heads when they think about New York.
We went to Ripplu, a place Barbara Anderson put me onto: the Japanese bra store. My friend Sue was brave enough to get herself manhandled into a size she’d never even heard of… but they did let me sketch and actually set up a chair for me. Next, Takashimaya, a Japanese department store on 5th Avenue, more museum than shop. We walked all the way down east 59th past the Tassel Store to Terrence Conran’s, where my sister loaded up on Pantone colors and kids’ toys, and where I drew teapots and Phillipe Stark’s alien lemon squeezers. On to Zabar’s on Broadway for cheese and cinammon rolls. Then a different kind of bra fitting experience at Victoria’s Secret. I volunteered for this one. Jeez. We were glad to get home for a cup of tea and a game of Monopoly (we all got creamed by Richard, who didn’t join us on this excursion, lucky for him).
9 March 06
Four Hundred Billion Pixels Of California
In the next week or so the State of California will make available for free download color aerial photography covering the entire state at a 1-meter resolution. Watch the California Spatial Information Library for details. This is a massive dataset—the mosaic for Yolo County alone is 1.5 gigabytes in size. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it but I’m already salivating over getting bits and pieces of this imagery on my computer.
8 March 06
Full Days in New York
Yesterday, the Guggenheim, the Empire State Building (a great sketching location), lunch at Otto's, the New York Public Library; today, the American Museum of Natural History. All day. I have had tropical butterflies fluttering around my person as I tried to sketch them (the atlas moths were easy because they were locked in a prolonged embrace, immobile); heard Kenneth Branagh tell me about the Galapagos, Harrison Ford tell me about extraterrestrial life, and Maya Angelou tell me about the Big Bang; sketched birds and skeletons and generally tried to avoid the large crowds of obnoxious schoolchildren. Tonight I'm going to go and stay with a friend from uni for the next few days. My sister joins us tomorrow. Different gear set required...7 March 06
Oscars With Kitten
Sunday, before Pica hopped on the redeye flight to New York, we went over to Susan’s to watch the Oscars. I’m not a big fan of the Oscars but I tagged along since a) Jon Stewart was hosting and b) Susan has a sweet several-month old kitten named McCovey. McCovey was very mellow this evening and spent much of the time dozing on Pica’s lap, as in the sketch here.
6 March 06
Lunch with an Old Friend
When you get all hot and bothered that the man they choose as pope is the former head of what became of the Inquisition, it means you still care about the Church. On this, we could agree. I had lunch today with a Paulist priest I used to know in Santa Barbara. He has become the head of Vocations at the "mother ship":http://www.stpaultheapostle.org/ here in New York. His job's hard. There are very, very few young men in the United States willing to give up a lot of options, including sex, for a life devoted to prayer, mission, giving. Of those few, the main competition for the Paulists are the Domincans (love that swishing white habit and searing mind) and the Jesuits (love that intellectual worldliness). Guys come to the Paulists -- a particularly American order -- if they want community but not too much. Want to preach in a parish. Want to reach out to apostates like me or college students. Over portobello mushrooms and mozzarella with him I pondered this. What was it that drew me to the Catholic Church in the first place? I ask because I have several friends (notably "here":http://www.cassandrapages.com/ and "here":http://mulubinba.typepad.com/mulubinba_moments/) who are deeping thinking, questioning Episcopalians, a religion into which I was baptized. I find myself wondering why I left THAT, as opposed to why I left at all (which is a different question). It all comes down to the Eucharist, for me. Strayed though I am, and trouble that I have with most of it, in Catholicism, everything, everything revolves around this: Eat me. I am the body and the blood. Ingest your deity. It's a lot for the squeamish, but it doesn't lack cojones. I see women who embrace Rome but not its nitwittedness, abandoning the Ratzinger cliques and becoming womenpriests. I would like to meet them. Sophia, benedicta tu. Cojones and then some. I was hesitant about bitching about th pope with Ed. Why, he said. We do it all the time. We agreed that there probably a lot of things in the world that warranted the attention of the Church more than whether or not some priests may or may not be gay. I did go to Mass today with him, the first time in a long while. The church of St. Paul the Apostle is the third largest in New York, after the cathedrals of St. Patrick and St. John the Divine. What can I say: I felt right at home. I write this because it's one of the subjects about which I rarely blog: my faith. It's tattered and torn and somedays I wake up railing against what God may or may ot be there but it has to be mentioned, sometimes: I felt right at home in this place.4 March 06
Looking Up
Another winter storm is coming through—Putah Creek is flooded east of the bridge, and should slosh up again to the levee soon. And far above, Jupiter has a new red spot. It’s a storm that’s been around since 2000, is now half the size of the Great Red Spot, and has just started turning red itself.
3 March 06
Disparates
This word is truly a faux ami, a false friend, English/Spanish. In Spanish it means crazy, outlandish things, while in English it just means things slightly off kilter.
I’m ready for a week of disparates, in either language, as I head off to New York on Sunday. Three days of this will be on my own, satisfying a tiny part of me that is unequivocally urban. I want to walk in crowded streets, smell the New York subway, be hustled and bustled and totally anonymous. Then I will meet up with my sister, who similarly has a tiny urban kernel though she’s a mommy in a small Maine town. We will walk miles and look at 19th century interiors and talk and catch up and be sisters.
There are so many things to do in New York. I will not be taking a camera, mine having disappeared in early January: but I finished binding a journal last night for my trip, a sketchbook in Sundance Felt and Canson Mi-Teintes. I might be looking for disparates (Spanish) to do in order to get some interesting sketching opportunties…
2 March 06
Fogbow
We saw what we think was our first fogbow yesterday morning. We were out walking the cats on the field, and there was a thin tule fog, as there often is after a winter rain. Blue sky overhead, and the sun was rising in the east. The fogbow appeared as a white dome fairly low to the ground, like a rainbow but without any color. The absence of color is because fog droplets are much smaller than raindrops.
1 March 06
Illustration Friday: Tea
Here’s my submission for this week’s Illustration Friday theme, Tea.
More can be found about the Zawadi tea project here.