28 August 05
Like in the Pueblos
Last night we had our first party at this house, or more precisely, in the area out back which is used mostly for keeping bees, keeping beekeeping equipment, old machinery, and barrels full of old combs which congeal in these temperatures.
We can’t move the equipment, so we strung lights around the perimeter to keep people off the danger zones.
It looked like an old fashioned fiesta in a dusty Spanish or Mexican or Colombian or Puerto Rican town with these lights.
Salsa dancing, bluegrass from our own Chicken Tractor, good food, a nice look at Jupiter + 4 moons in the dob: a fiesta, Pica and Numenius style. With a LOT of help from Tamara. Qué chévere.
27 August 05
Mt. Mondavi
It is one of the truths of the universe that if you dig a pit, the dirt has to go somewhere. This is the construction site of the forthcoming Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Studies, just across the way from the Mondavi Center concert hall. It is now the tallest hill in Davis. I expect to see some renegade mountain bikers cruising up and down it any day now.
This institute will be the new home for the Department of Viticulture and Enology. The only claim to fame of Wickson Hall, the building where I work, is that it houses said department. So when they leave to occupy their new digs, I don’t suppose there’s any chance at all I’ll finally get to move to an office with a window?
25 August 05
More Lettering Fun
A package containing two wonderful books arrived today from John Neal Bookseller. The first is Logo Font & Lettering Bible by Leslie Cabarga, something I wonder how I’ve lived without this past year. The second is the book of a show we saw in San Francisco in 2001, Calligraphic Type Design in the Digital Age (an exhibition in honor of the contributions of Hermann and Gudrunn Zapf).
Both these books risk derailing me from myriad other tasks, pleasant and otherwise, over the next few days…
25 August 05
Monster At The Door
I’ve just finished reading The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu, a new book by urban critic Mike Davis. It’s a quick, excellent, and terrifying read. I think it’s the first popular book to focus specifically on the threat of the H5N1 flu virus. A quote that’s a good synopsis of his view:
In the face of the peril of avian influenza, as with HIV/AIDS earlier, world public health resources are organized rather like the lifeboats were on the Titanic: many of the first-class passengers and even some of the crew will drown because of the company’s skinflint lack of foresight; the poor Paddies in steerage, however, do not even have a single lifeboat between them, and thus, they are all doomed to swim in the icy waters.
23 August 05
On This Day
I am seeking to slow down. I am looking to find those moments of calm, cling to them, cherish them, savor them.
I am seeking a state of quietness.
Of being in quietness.
Besheket.
21 August 05
Contentment
Let it never be said Charlie doesn’t know how to relax.
20 August 05
Gadding Round the Getty
I’m in Los Angeles for the weekend, seeing a dear friend. We hit the book arts show at the Getty today. It was fun to see recent Russian homages to early Soviet book arts, El Lissitsky’s One Only Kid, and a fabulous silk spool construction. A favorite was a single page printed 184 times, torn at a slightly further away spot each time, so the book formed a triangular wedge and the page was just legible.
Christina is a print artist of extraordinary talent and we have spent much of the day in breathless conversations about the possible. (And dreaming about unlimited studio space.)
20 August 05
All Ready To Go
Last Saturday we took Diego to the vet for a checkup and shots (he didn’t like the experience one bit). This meant getting the cat carrier out from its storage place disassembled in my closet. Upon its return Charlie decided the carrier was a nice place to hang out and he has taken to dozing inside, as shown at right. Diego ventures inside it too, though he usually doesn’t stay as long.
18 August 05
Squeam
When my sister was about 11, she was bitten in the left leg by a neighbor’s German Shepherd as she dove into a swimming pool. (The dog was trying to “save” her and ripped a nice gash all down her calf muscle.) My mother, superb in any emergency, lashed her leg with a silk dressing gown and drove her to the hospital with a white hanky flying from the window.
I went along a few weeks later to watch them take out the stitches. I fainted dead away. The doctors all left the stitch-removal table and lifted my legs high over my head. I was mortified, of course: I was twelve.
Last night I got a call from the landlady that there was a “sick” magpie in their yard. I went over there with gloves, a box, and a towel, and got the magpie out of the dog-filled yard and over to the Wildlife Health Center.
Magpies have been dying in their hundreds, probably thousands, with this year’s West Nile virus outbreak. My colleague Yvette was still working at 6:30. She wanted to take some samples of the bird before it died. These will help with identifying not just the exact reason for death (it could, after all, have been poisoned) but also can give us important genetic data about this endemic species.
Getting blood from a bird so close to death, where dehydration is a given and there is almost no blood pressure, was a challenge. I held the bird while she tried to draw blood from the jugular, then the leg, then finally the wing.
The wing part did it. Sweat was pouring down my back and although I couldn’t see my face in the mirror I knew I was pale as a ghost.
Guess I didn’t grow out of that one, then. I buried my head between my knees and gave thanks for the life of the magpie (Yvette euthanized it at this point).
18 August 05
Balloon Invasion
While walking the cats this morning, we saw a flotilla of four balloons moving southwards quite nearby. One floated almost overhead on the way to a landing in the field to the south. Alas the propane burners did frighten the kitties: Charlie doesn’t spook easily but he did this time. All four balloons landed within a kilometer of the house.