17 April 05
Imaging A Treasure Trove
Classicists are rejoicing now because a new infrared imaging technique is enabling scholars to decipher a massive and previously illegible collection of papyri of Greek and Roman texts. This collection of 400,000 fragments was found at the end of the 19th century in an ancient rubbish site in a town in central Egypt. It is possible that deciphering these texts will lead to a 20 percent increase in the number of classical works in existence.
16 April 05
Picnic Day Duty
Today we spent most of the day at the Wildlife Health Center booth at Picnic Day, folding and distributing Cootie Catchers (we were left with about five at the end of the day, so about 250 of these things are wending their way to preadolescent bedrooms as we speak) and posters and magnets and teaching children how to clean oiled birds (they were practicing on rubber duckies that had a good coating of nontoxic black paint on them).
Numenius’ sister and her boyfriend made the trip up from Berkeley with Hooper the dog, so we had a great visit. They were unable to join us for dinner at Davis’ newest restaurant, the New Delhi Chaat Caf, which was a shame, because it was a pretty good answer to Berkeley’s Vik’s Chaat House, famous all over the Bay Area.
15 April 05
Brush Pens
One of the things our teacher had us do in our workshop last weekend was to experiment with a brush pen. The first exercise in our journal was to make brush depictions of ponderosa pine needles. Later when we got outside, she had us using them to sketch the midribs of leaflets and leaves.
I’ve decided to learn my way around brush pens better and have since bought two of the six-pen sets of Faber-Castell Pitt brush pens, the landscape color set and the shades of gray set. Here is a little tryptich I did this evening — that’s Charlie in the window on the right.
14 April 05
Tango
Natalie of Blaugustine has recently started selling her art online through Photobox. I bought this GORGEOUS print and it arrived a few days ago from the UK. I don’t have my tango gear any more but here’s a photo of a photo of a print of a painting of Boca by the goddess of color, halfway around the world.
13 April 05
Eyas
— an unfledged or nestling hawk (WordNet)
All four of Gracie’s eggs have hatched! She is the peregrine falcon nesting on top of the PG & E building that we have been watching excitedly through the webcam set up by the good folks at the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group. The chicks are difficult to see in the webcam since the adults brood them almost constantly to keep them warm, but there are pictures of them here in the nest diary.
12 April 05
On Seeing More Butterflies
Spaghetti-strapped, I see them flutter by
Their nasal twangs submerged in pony tails
They yearn for depth, these quiet butterflies.
They clutch their tomes, where passion’s in supply
An exercise routine beyond the pale
Spaghetti-strapped, I see them flutter by.
From Donne to Plath, they read, they sink, they sigh
The bell jar beckons with its lonely veil.
They long for depth, these quiet butterflies.
They see the book. They smile. They pay. They buy.
The vortex draws them louder than a gale:
Spaghetti-strapped, I see them long to die.
Profundity ensnares them: mirror, spy.
The oven-abyss calls – it’s so female.
They whisper “death,” these quiet butterflies.
I rail, unheard, against the sylvan lie
Whose petulance bores into wings so frail
This yen for depth will kill my butterflies:
Protruding ribs, preparing soon to die.
11 April 05
Bike Basket Inventory
A list of items in my bike basket — it’s good to do one of these every now and then!
- Today’s Davis Enterprise, front page headline reading “Picnic Day nears”
- A copy of Programming PHP, by Rasmus Lerdorf and Kevin Tatroe, that I was going to return to my office today but forgot
- A plastic grocery bag in which I was carrying around the PHP book
- A Kryptonite bike lock
- My charcoal grey light fleece sweater
- An apple
- An old washcloth used primarily to dry the bike seat on rainy days
- A Cateye bike light
- A 700×20/28C bike tube, Presta valve
- 2 blue Uniball Signo pens
- One green Uniball micro pen
- One Bic ballpoint pen
- 2 medium binder clips
- A Park micro toolkit for the bike
- A Park 36mm headset wrench
- A copy of the Discworld reading order guide
- An Amtrak ticket jacket
- 3 AA and 3 AAA alkaline batteries, state of charge unknown
- 1 pencil
- Scratch paper with conjugations for the verbs conseguir, tomar, and cubrir
- A black Pilot G2 pen cartridge
- A rubber band
- And a twist tie.
10 April 05
Grokking Grids
Thumbnails; sketches; writing; paintings: the grids we devised yesterday got a workout today. We studied the different gestures made by leaves, branches, treetrunks; the geometric space of irises; the greens in a redwood grove and how they change in the dapple light.
At left is the last exercise we worked on this afternoon in the South African section of the Arboretum: zoom in, zoom out then pick a sketch and work it up a little more.
My mind is racing with possibility. I am ENTHUSIASTIC. (See Blaugustine on this topic for April 8.)
9 April 05
Artist’s Journal Class
We went to the San Francisco Center for the Book today to take a class with Andie Thrams on creating artist’s journals. In our afternoon session we learned about gridding up a journal page. The handy trick we were taught is to make a grid template by poking holes on the grid intersections on a stout piece of paper, allowing one to quickly layout the journal page.
Tomorrow our class goes to the field — we’ll be spending all day sketching, painting, and writing in Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park.
8 April 05
Friday Afternoon Activity
Next weekend is Picnic Day when over 50,000 people throng through campus seeing sheepdog trials, cockroach races, barrel making contests, and the like. I’ll be there at the Wildlife Health Center and this afternoon was working on a twist to the quiz for kids: a folded paper game that I learned today was called a “cootie catcher.” I remember playing with these as a kid in Madrid but never knew they had a name.
This may be a way for us to engage the imagination of kids who will be here in numbers next Saturday. Swainson’s hawks and island foxes need all the help they can get, and we don’t need kids growing up thinking that the best thing to do with a mountain lion is to shoot it. Some folding seems to be in my future…