11 February 05
Proving You’re Alive
Is what I took my mother to San Francisco today to do.
She could have done this herself, of course: she is, or at least she was at 2:30 this afternoon, alive. But the Spanish government in the person of a woman named Mara Josefa needed to see her, in person, along with a passport and a driver’s license, to put a bureaucratic stamp on the whole thing in person, called a fe de vida. Spanish bureaucracy terrified my mother for 25 years and still does, so I went along too. (It is, admittedly, pretty terrifying.)
When my father died in ‘99 we had to sort through pensions from employers in three countries along with the social security systems of each. It was a long, slow, tedious process. But I’m glad we persevered with the Spanish one, even though it took three years to sort out, because it’s a steady source of income that makes Mum less freaked out about the world in general.
We celebrated our success-and her newly-certified life-by having an early lunch together and then heading our separate ways before the Bay Area Friday exodus could give either one of us ulcers. This evening’s rainbow has reminded me once again how great it is to be alive.
10 February 05
Milestone
The odometer on my bike computer hit 10,000 miles last night when I was coming home from my Spanish class. I’ve had this computer since 1997, when Pica and I moved up to the Trout Club some 1200 feet above Santa Barbara. Commuting half the time by bike, I wanted a bicycle computer with a built-in altimeter, so I got this one. Most of the time it has lived on my red hybrid, but several years ago I started swapping it onto my road bike whenever I would ride it. Living in a place as flat as Davis is, the altimeter function isn’t terribly useful here, but at least it gives some indication of the passage of weather fronts.
As for the mystery of what happens after the odometer turns over from 9999.9, it went to 10000, with no decimal points forevermore.
9 February 05
Almond Blossoms—Retry
After last night’s hijacking of my sprig of blossoms, I went out and got another. Here’s a drawing done on one of my new sheets of Canson Mi-Teintes. I realize using colored pencils on this paper can’t quite work the same way, so I think next time I’ll do the entire drawing in white tempera before I start adding color.
These blossoms smell intensely like honey. It’s a wonderful thing to have them out your back door. (Except in our case it’s our front door, but we’re at the back of the other house.)
8 February 05
Flower Fiend
The almond tree is in blossom. Pica brought in a branch to draw but Charlie sniffed it and started munching on the blossoms! He didn’t let go either, and ran off with the branch, muttering possessive growls along the way.
7 February 05
On Again, Off Again
Readers of Feathers of Hope will notice that Numenius and I take turns posting. This works for us: daily posts would seem like an ordeal, but it’s possible to write or draw something for posting every other day, which may or may not have anything to do with what one of us posted the day before.
So Numenius posted three consecutive days, and people are wondering where I was.
It has to do with birds, and here’s a very partial list:
Plain chachalaca
Crimson-collared grosbeak
Elegant trogon
Golden-crowned warbler
Groove-billed ani
Black-throated green warbler
White-tipped dove
Cactus wren
Muscovy duck
Great-tailed grackle
Blue bunting
Roadside hawk
Rose-throated becard…
6 February 05
5 February 05
Library Cats
For those folks losing sleep over where to visit working cats in their milieu, here is a map and directory of library cats past and present.
4 February 05
Portage
Picture a highway bridge over a small river in central Wisconsin. The land is flat, mostly open, marshy in bits; on one side up a slope is an old farmhouse. The only clue to anything unusual about the vicinity is that it has perhaps more than its fair share of historical markers. Two of these commemorate Fort Winnebago, formerly on the site of the farmhouse. The second one is a small monument in red granite, erected around 1925 by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The wording on the copper plaques is terse; on one side there is a list of officers who served at the fort. To the modern viewer, all the names on the plaque are likely to be unfamiliar except for one, a Lieutenant Jefferson Davis.
So began the environmental historian William Cronon last night in a talk he gave in the Alumni Center on campus. He was reading from the first chapter of a book he has been working on for ten years, and is likely to be published in three, a local history of a town named Portage. “This is a place with ghosts”, he said. Three of these ghosts are important figures in American environmental history who spent formative years near the spot: Frederick Jackson Turner, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold.
And once upon a time the spot was a major transportation nexus. Due to an accident of physical geography, the Fox River, over which the bridge passes, here lies only 1.28 miles from the Wisconsin River. The Fox drains into the Great Lakes and hence is connected to the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Wisconsin drains into the Mississippi and ultimately into the Gulf of Mexico. In the era when canoes reigned, when waterways were the chief means of transportation into the interior, this portage spot, at the border of two great watersheds, was key.
There are many stories to be told about this place. But that is so about all places. The process of placemaking, Cronon contends, is the process of storytelling.
3 February 05
Canson Replies!
On December 14 I sent a letter of complaint to Canson paper in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
Today I got a reply along with six different gorgeous pads of Canson Mi-Teints. Apparently the pad of layout bond I was using was an aberration (I suspected as much—their paper is usually fabulous). In addition, I was suspected of being a former Crane Paper sales representative (I’m not, though my step-sister-in-law’s partner is related to the Crane Paper people, I’m not sure in what way). In any event I was asked to consider that if I were interested in submitting “some of your projects for consideration for display at Canson trade shows we would certainly welcome this.”
Not bad for a morning’s fulmination which was far more fun than anything else… make art, not war, should be my new motto.
2 February 05
Signs of Spring
In honor of the holiday of Brigid, celebrating awakening from winter’s deep, yesterday after work I went to the cooperatively-run Experimental Garden on campus to find and sketch a newly-blooming flower. I ended up drawing this lavender. While sitting in the garden, I heard a familiar metallic ping—ping—ping. Baseball practice! The UCD baseball field is nearby, and the baseball team was practicing in their batting cages. Their season begins next Tuesday. Signs of spring indeed—the weather is beautiful as well.