23 December 04
The Modern Working Cat
The other day I went into B & L Bikes downtown and was met by a friendly kitty keeping track of the bright shiny new road and mountain bikes. As remarked upon yesterday, cats also play an important role in many bookstores balancing the astral energies of disgruntled used books. Cats have successfully made the transition to the contemporary workplace in many other venues. Blogger David St Lawrence discusses the vital role cats play in the lives of telecommuters and home office workers:
When you are miles away from the frenetic activity and mayhem of the corporate office, you can get lonely and your productivity will lapse. An office cat will know how to cheer you up and will usually know when to remind you to take a mid morning and mid afternoon coffee break.
The affinity of cats towards technology has often been noted. Cats uncannily home in on computer keyboards: after all, to quote the Jargon File, “it is widely grokked that cats have the hacker nature”. Cats also have an interest in other forms of technology such as radio gear, as the cat pages of the store Universal Radio make clear.
Here is a site dedicated to working felines everywhere, and includes a state-by-state directory to many of these cats.
22 December 04
The Muttering of Old Books
Dale has opened an interesting thread, taken up by Jarrett, on going to a bookstore—perhaps the finest bookstore in the world, Powells—and feeling less than excited, newly so, about the books on the shelves. He describes the “dreary hopelessness” of walking through the philosophy section, an experience that used to be so satisfying.
I suggested this might be a distribution problem—that the really good new stuff is out there, hiding, unpublished and unnoticed because of corporate decisions relating to “the market” (us) and its perceived desires. I think it might not be that simple, though, having thought about it further.
Walter Benjamin spent weeks at a time not talking to other people. Cornel West doesn’t do this. There are demands on his time that are probably getting in the way of some writing that might, in fact, get Dale really excited. If not West, then others. Very few of us know how to be alone.
What are the really important books of our time? Can we know? This is a question that has been asked in different ways by many different bloggers, some of whom appear in the list at left and many more that don’t. Is this also a function of our failure to embrace aloneness and thinking hard? I’m not sure, but I think we need to keep looking. I think we need to keep going to Powell’s. Like Icarus falling unheeded into the drink, we may not know for some time.
I was talking this afternoon with a mentor from my publishing past, who told me that Vicky Nelson, author of The Secret Life of Puppets, puts it this way in answer to someone who was getting less than excited by the books in her high-powered reading group: forget the reading group. Go to the grimiest used bookstore you can find and head for the dustiest section. Something will leap off the shelf at you, and it won’t be what you’re expecting. It might be Icarus.
A childhood friend has recently left the rat race and opened her own used bookstore in Picton, Ontario. Olivia & Co comes with the eponymous cat draped over comfy furniture. It’s not very grimy, at least from the photos I can see on her website, but I’ll bet there are a few gems in there. And at the very least there’s a cat to balance the muttering of old books, as Jarrett puts it.
21 December 04
Black Walnuts In Winter
On this first day of winter I finished one journal and started the next. The campus bookstore stocks sketchbooks made by Pentalic which are wirebound and have 90 pound paper. I have no idea where else one can obtain these sketchbooks. The relatively heavy weight of the paper makes them great for taking washes, much better than the 70 pound paper usually found in this sort of bound sketchbook.
I went on a walk today to the Arboretum to test out the new journal. At right is a sketch of a line of black walnuts on the south edge of the Arboretum. Most of the green in the trees is actually mistletoe.
20 December 04
Prometheus Again
I once tried to paint in oils and egg tempera a painting of Prometheus. My titan was gaunt and almost skeletal, quite unlike some of the renderings I’ve seen of him as a buff gay icon. He faced the viewer in horror as his back was turned to the approaching liver-snatching eagle, which I modelled on the steppe eagle rather than golden. I’d gotten through about three or four glazes before I decided to give up—the drawing was wrong, especially of the man.
The reason I’m thinking about Prometheus again is because of the liver connection. Today I chanced upon a contemporary artist, Elsie Russell, who has clearly put some time into this subject.
I’m always enchanted when I find artists working today who have a) some grasp of drawing and anatomy and b) an interest in their historical artistic and cultural heritage, along with the talent to explore these in a new way. It’s possible in some cases to write this off as postmodern trendiness, though why that’s worse than modernist trendiness I’m not sure. (Notice that a lot of the artists who rail against drawing well, calling it “illustration,” are the ones who can’t draw for beans, like David Hockney.)
Classical myths endure because they tell us something fundamental about the human condition. I suppose I’m entering a phase where I’m willing to try and work out what this particular one might be for me. Regeneration? Endurance? Being punished for doing the right thing or for knowledge? In this dark time of the year in the northern hemisphere, images of light are particularly appealing to me. In this dark time we are entering for the world, how much more appealing they become. How much more worth the defiance of authority, even when those who benefit from the great act are unworthy or worse, ignorant.
Liver. Live. Love. Fegato. Fe. Foie. Foi. Higado. Hidalgo.
Live.
19 December 04
The Scourge of Arial
A brief history of the parasite font that dates from around 1989. There is also a sidebar highlighting the differences between Arial, Helvetica, and Monotype Grotesque 315, Arial’s ancestor.
18 December 04
Christmas Bird Count
Tomorrow is the Putah Creek Christmas Bird Count. I’ll be joining about 40 other people scouring a circle which is about 15 miles in diameter, trying to count every single bird in our area.
Today was foggy all day, which doesn’t bode well for raptors or anything other than possibly waterfowl. Tonight we heard geese flying through the dark and the fog, honking to keep in radio contact. We’ll be taking our radios too…
17 December 04
Two Lumps
As it’s catblogging Friday, here’s a cartoon featuring two cats who seem awfully reminiscent of certain ones we know. Definitely fun.
16 December 04
Oil Spills Near the Solstice
The ship that is breaking up off Unalaska has my colleagues on alert; if a lot of oiled animals start coming in and they need a vet, somebody’s going to have to work over Christmas.
The problem is, there are only six hours of daylight. The spill seems not as bad as feared, and it’s possible they’ll blow up the ship and release the oil in a controlled manner, as long as they get good weather, which is in short supply in the Aleutians in winter, along with the light.
Long nights. Getting off work and it’s already dark. My brother and sister-in-law who live in Juneau get this darkness thing a lot worse than we do, yearn for the snow because at least it brightens up the long darkness.
The darkness, though, makes the light so much more welcome when it returns. I’m not sure I’d enjoy the tropics with sunset at six year-round. How then can you drink cocoa?
Written for the Ecotone’s Solstice Place.
15 December 04
Feliz Cumpleaos!
My Spanish class ended yesterday with a set of skits all about where should we go on vacation. My group portrayed a family: let’s go to Hawaii! No, I want to go to Alaska. No, Alaska is cold and boring, I want to go to Disneyland. Then Mom said, no, that’s no fun for the adults, instead let’s go to Iguazu Falls, it will be very educational. After crunching out his finances on his calculator Dad concluded: why I know someplace that’s much cheaper and just as fun, and we can drive to in our car. Let’s go to San Jose! We can stay at the grandparents, we’ll go to interesting places like the Center for Beethoven Studies, we’ll eat at fine restaurants like Appleby’s and Olive Garden, and we’ll go shopping at Border’s and Pottery Barn. Vamos a divertirnos!
All of which reminds me: tomorrow is Beethoven’s birthday. He is turning 234 so wish him a good one!
14 December 04
Letters of Complaint
Inspired by Natalie of Blaugustine’s recent complaint regarding some boots she’d bought that didn’t, um, work out, I decided to send in a letter of complaint to Canson, a French paper manufacturer whose American subsidiary is based in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
The substance of my gripe is that some layout bond paper I bought for calligraphy is defective, or rather every other page is. This every other page bleeds when ink is applied. I won’t go into the paroxysms of how this feels when you’re trying your hardest to render the perfect Roman capital “Q” and it fuzzes out like wine on cotton wool, but basically I’m not happy. I have suggested in my “letter,” above, that this might have been a fluke, a bad pad of paper. I’m not going back to Berkeley to try to return it; you can’t buy this stuff in Davis or even Sacramento.
My hope with such a missive is that they’ll fix it, or at least be aware that we’re going to notice if they start cutting corners, quality-wise. At worst they’ll throw it in the bin, but I’ve been gentle: maybe they won’t.
Maybe, Natalie, they’ll give me store credit?? Hah.