4 December 05
Many superb posts in response to Blog Against Racism Day. If you haven’t had a chance to blog about this yet, it’s not too late.
Here’s the most helpful thing I’ve found so far, by Ampersand in Alas (A Blog):
3 December 05
Champagne Valley
I’m finding discussion of the housing bubble to be quite entertaining. While practically everybody on two feet in California and many other parts of the country has been scheming to get rich through buying a house (or two or three…), we’re happily renting contrarians who think these boom times will not last. A favorite blog of mine nowadays is The Housing Bubble 2, full of housing bear talk.
Nowadays I’ve been looking at housing prices more systematically. A good data source is the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight House Price Index. Above is a graph I made showing the value of this index for the Sacramento metropolitan area. Note how things were comfortably trundling along at a 5% growth rate until the year 2000, at which point house prices take off in this area at about a 15% appreciation rate. To my eye, this looks completely unsustainable and likely to fall back to the historical line of increase.
It is interesting to compare appreciation rates over the past 30 years to recent growth rates, say since 1999. At right is a map I made that depicts this. What is plotted is the growth rate since 1999 divided by the historical growth rate (since 1975). Red is high, a ratio of 3 or above, bright green is a low ratio (between 0 and 1). What was a bit surprising is that the frothiest region in California (by this definition of froth) is not the Bay Area, is not Los Angeles or San Diego, but is in fact the Central Valley. Welcome to my home.
2 December 05
Blog Against Racism Day
... was yesterday, but it wasn’t my turn to blog.
Thanks to Chris Clarke of Creek Running North for getting us going on this. I haven’t had a chance to read the 100 or so blog posts linked to on his entry and comments so far; I hope this is not merely duplicating what twenty other people have already said, but if it is, it means it’s a common experience.
Through an accident of history my skin is white. (Well, okay, pink.) People who share my skin color have a disproportionate share of the world’s wealth and power. This is partly an accident of history and partly of our own making. In the United States, being white means having privilege that is CONTINGENT on others not having it. Not having had it historically, not having it now. The rise of this economic superpower would simply not have been possible without slavery.
This is not to say that there are not an awful lot of white people here who are poor and miserable and who will die this winter from cold and malnutrition and a lot of other things that shouldn’t exist in a land with this many resources, but on the whole, being white in the United States means having privilege. Unearned. Unbought. Unperceived.
So: Being white means I can drive a car and not be worried that I’ll be pulled over just because of the color of my skin. I can go in a store and not worry that I’ll be arousing suspicions of security guards. I can apply for a mortgage and be sure that the only thing that might get in my way would be an apparent inability to pay it (though with the housing craziness of the past few years that wouldn’t be much of a barrier either). Being white means I can go where I want and if I get lost I can ask a cop to help without fear. I can do a thousand things I and people who look like me take for granted, every day.
White privilege means I can say things like “anyone can make it in this country” and “why don’t you want to come and live in my nice, white, neighborhood, so we can have a little more diversity” and be completely oblivious to the fact that for people who are not white, just getting out of bed in the morning is a huge ordeal. Dealing with us. With our white world. White privilege is about having the right to continue to be clueless, because after all it’s no skin off our nose.
White privilege is about not noticing that even when well-intentioned, our efforts to help people of other races are patronizing and will not lead to change.
White privilege is about expecting our brothers and sisters of color to explain to us, one more time, the millionth time, why they don’t want our pity or our affirmative action programs or our welfare or our charity. They just want to be treated like people. And the most we can do, the most and the least we can do, is have this conversation.
Not with them. They are sick to death of it, are tired of our good intentions that always somehow leave them where they were. No, with other people who look like us.
Thanks, Chris.
Postscript, Saturday, December 3: It’s not the most we can do, it’s just the least. The most we can do is give up our unearned privilege. We can also speak up when we see a racial slight, a racial injustice, hear a racial joke in a cab. We can demand that our employers treat everyone fairly, even if it’s really hard and costs them money, money that might otherwise make its way into pay raises for us. We can demand a real level playing field, not a cosmetic one.
Mark Juergensmeyer, author of Gandhi’s Way, has said that the way to level the playing field here in the U.S. would be to have 100% inheritance tax.
Now THAT would be giving up some of our privilege. Not all, but it would be a good start…
1 December 05
More Plant Maps
I’m keeping my computer at work well-employed by cranking out maps of California plant species. This is a species richness map showing the number of native species. In the color scheme, red is high (about 750 species), yellow is intermediate, and blue is low numbers of species. My next challenge is going to be figuring out how to put some 7800 of these maps up on the web.
30 November 05
Made Up Recipe
Steam or bake equal numbers of beets and yams. Peel and cube.
Chop large handfuls of basil, tarragon, and parsely; add to bowl with vegetables.
Make a garlic vinaigrette by crushing one clove, mixing it in with a teaspoon of dijon mustard, 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar, 2 teaspoons tablespoons (or more) of extra virgin olive oil, and salt or tamari to taste.
Toss.
29 November 05
Epsilon
This year’s record Atlantic hurricane season comes to a close with yes, yet another storm. Tropical Storm Epsilon is the 26th named storm of this season, the most ever recorded. It is in the mid-Atlantic and not expected to reach land, unlike Tropical Storm Delta, which last night slammed into the Canary Islands.
28 November 05
Ouch
While changing the 5-gallon water bottle at work today I somehow dropped it onto my hand. I thought it was just going to turn into a spectacular bruise but I suspect, now, I’ve done something to one of the ligaments or tendons between my fore- and middle fingers. I’m off to the doctor in the morning.
So this post will be brief. I can’t even indulge in some pen magic with the shipment of Clairefontaine paper that arrived today…
27 November 05
Art Around Lunch
Conveniently, the art store was right across the street from where we had lunch in Berkeley. This was the Blick Arts store, down near 5th and University. The lunch was at an Indian place. We found the ox gall, but no Derwent Signature watercolor pencils. I still don’t know if this Winsor & Newton ox gall is synthetic or actually made from bile of cow.
Later on the in the afternoon, we went up to the UC Botanical Gardens to sketch a bit. This is definitely one of my favorite spots in Berkeley—I should get there more often.
26 November 05
Galling
While travelling to Boston in May I left a pencil case at an airport gate. Nothing in it was really irreplaceable, and I quickly bought a few pens, pencils, and Caran d’Ache watercolor crayons to replace my Derwent Signatures on an interim basis.
I still haven’t picked up new Derwents but plan to tomorrow on a trip to Berkeley. And as a wetting agent, instead of water, I’m going to try to find ox gall, a medium made from the bile in bovine gall bladders, normally used in marbling and lithography, which supposedly makes a much smoother blend than water.
I’ll let you know how this all goes.
25 November 05
Lost In The Rain
We had a nature and culture outing today in Davis and Sacramento with Pica’s mom. Our plan was to go birding in the morning with a field trip starting in southeast Davis at 7:45 AM, and then split off from the trip to go to the Crocker Art Museum and then to a movie. The field trip didn’t quite go as planned. We met the folks at the start of the field trip, headed out of the shopping mall parking lot, and promptly didn’t know who to follow. We thus ended up setting a new record in getting lost during a field trip.
What we had heard was that several folks were interested in going to Slide Hill Park in Davis to look for a stray mountain chickadee. We thought that was where the group was headed, so we birded there for a little bit, with no sign of the group or the chickadee. The most interesting creature there was a small furry dog that looked like a pig. We then went our own way to the Yolo Bypass wildlife refuge.
The shorebirds and waterfowl were quite happy in the rain there. We saw 4 American bitterns there, maybe 20 common snipe, and had a good look at two lovely long-billed curlews. Then we went over the bypass to the Crocker, where there was a exhibition of paintings by the early 20th century American artist Marsden Hartley.
At the end of the day we went to see Good Night, and Good Luck, playing back in Davis. It’s an excellent movie, a focused little vignette on a episode in history I didn’t know much about. But I remembered that I had heard of Edward Murrow and Fred Friendly as a kid because we had several record albums from their Hear It Now radio series—the recording of the radio announcer describing the Hindenberg disaster stands out in my mind.