4 January 06
Davis Walkabout
There’s a story in the Davis Enterprise today about Robert Faber, a 79-year old Davis man who has walked every street, land, and path in town. He started this project after a quadruple bypass surgery in 2001, and has logged about 4000 miles total. “An animal lover, he is regularly greeted by the dogs and cats of Davis. Many cats recognize him, running from half a block away to greet him.”
3 January 06
All the World's a Surface...
I’ll be heading to the San Francisco Center for the Book on Saturday to take a one-day class in gelatin printing for artists books.
Whenever I’m getting ready for a session like this—and I expect we’ll get a LOT of prints made—I go into a week of delicious anticipation, seeing things all over the place I could use or bring. I’ve been looking today at pine needles; yesterday I got some feathers and suede cord. I’m looking at objects that are flat and that might work to have ink rolled onto them.
Looking at the world like this gives you glimpses into other things: this morning as I sipped my tea a stray hair on the counter resolved itself into a woman’s bottom, Rubensesque. I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t been looking slightly to the side, which I’m doing because of this upcoming class.
I’ll post some prints from my class here on Sunday or Monday…
1 January 06
Off To The Hindu Kush
I am now on a reading-about-Central Asia kick, and have just finished Eric Newby’s account of misadventures in Nuristan, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. It all started with reading Peter Hopkirk’s book The Great Game. Next I have to figure out just what Alexander the Great was doing in those parts, but not before finishing Hogfather! (UP GOUGER! UP ROOTER! UP TUSKER! UP SNOUTER!).
31 December 05
Floods
When we got up this morning water was sloshing at the back door with the rain still pouring, howling gales. The field was a lake. This house is pretty watertight but there were drips near the door… I got a yoghurt container under three of them and sat and waited. We had both electricity and a phone line. In these circumstances they’re normally both out.
I’ve been doing well with losing weight and have begun to increase the amount of activity I’m doing to help in this and general health. So when the rain stopped and the sun came out I decided to go out for a bike ride. South… maybe to the church on Tremont, maybe around through South Davis.
A six-inch flood about a half-mile down the road turned me north. The creek had overflowed all the way to the levees, swirling eddies of blood-red water. I headed to West Campus and saw flooding everywhere: in the cow pasture, in the sheep field… and of course the creek wherever I went by it. Heading north up Olive Drive, pinging hundreds of unripe olives that had been blown down in the night, I once again got stopped by a torrent of water going across the road from west to east.
I’ve never lived by a really BIG river. It must be a terrifying thing when something like the Mississippi bursts its banks…
We will not be going to Berkeley tomorrow. I-80 was closed most of today between Vacaville and Fairfield, and we didn’t hear a train all morning. Hunkering seems called for.
27 December 05
Teff Luck
We went to Oakland to meet Ron Sullivan and Joe Eaton to go to the Baseball as America exhibition at the Oakland Museum only to discover they are in fact closed on Tuesday. (Before doing any more long-distance museum jaunts, do check the website!) We regrouped quickly to fetch up at Cody’s and Moe’s books on Telegraph, and then went for an early dinner of Ethiopian food.
We went to Cafe Colucci near Telegraph and Alcatraz, and having almost no exposure to Ethiopian cuisine, didn’t know what to expect. Thankfully, Ron and Joe served as good guides, and explained what to do with the injera pancakes made of teff grain. It’s not a cuisine for the fastidious, but it makes a very yummy vegetarian meal. Our favorite dish of all was the collard greens (gomen).
26 December 05
Resolving
I’ve never much been one for New Year’s resolutions. They seem ineffective for most people and I don’t know why I’d be any different. Last week as I was pondering the solstice, though, I did come up with some things I’d like to do differently before the next one. These aren’t the normal “lose weight read more exercise regularly get fully prepared for disaster” variety, all of which would certainly be a good idea, but things like “Sing on the bike more. Learn spencerian. See the flammulated owl.”
May you sing on your bikes more or whatever your equivalent is! And may the flammulated owl look at you with its deep black eyes and speak to you of peace in the still places of the forest.
23 December 05
Possum Prospects
There’s been an opposum making forays into our backyard in the evenings. Diego and Charlie watch keenly for it and will run from the bedroom window to the living room window depending upon where it heads.
22 December 05
Geese at Night
Blinded in the fog
they call in flight: Here? or there?
... Settled by morning.
(On the occasion of Richard Hall’s last evening in Davis)
21 December 05
The Samson Factor
Boston Red Sox fans are in great consternation over the news that their shaggy-haired leadoff-hitting centerfielder Johnny Damon has just signed a 4-year, $52 million contract with the New York Yankees. Since it is a condition of playing for the Yankees that one has to have appropriately corporate short hair and shaven face, Johnny’s locks will have to be shorn. Whether this will affect his performance we shall see.
20 December 05
“When UC Davis Vice Chancellor Celeste Rose resigned under pressure last summer, the university gave her a new job with a new title, a $20,000 a year raise—and very little responsibility. In fact, Rose, 55, isn’t required to do any work at all.
As part of a secret legal settlement negotiated to avoid a potentially embarrassing [racial and gender discrimination] lawsuit, UC Davis promised to keep Rose on the payroll as the “senior adviser to the chancellor” for two years at an annual salary of $205,000, plus all the benefits of a senior manager, including health care, severance pay and a growing pension.”
—San Francisco Chronicle, 12/19/05
“This administration has been completely open with Congress, we reported to Congress about this surveillance twelve times.”
—George W. Bush, 12/19/05
“As one of the recipients of [Paul Takushi’s] unofficial newsletter [about books of interest to the UC Davis community], I am taking this opportunity to share with you a concern we have with the lead article that was provided in the most recent issue. The lead article contained some commentary about the University of California structure, referencing compensation of top administrators and fee increases for students that have been in the Northern California press in recent weeks. This message is intended to clarify that the communication does not represent the view of the UC Davis Bookstore, or that of the University. In the future, there will be some editorial review for this publication before it is sent out…”
—Jason Lorgan, Book Department Manager, University of California, Davis, 12/19/05
“You and I wouldn’t be here without corruption … corruption is why we win.”
—Tim Blake Nelson’s character, Danny Dalton, in Syriana (released December 2005)