13 December 04
Apple Hazelnut Mix
A recent addition to our traditional breakfast of nine-grain cereal, cooked with some sort of fruit and nut gorp, dried apricots, figs, and prunes. The hazelnuts make it very yummy.
12 December 04
Tajine
It’s been foggy here, the kind that sets in for days. Although we got out a little it’s the kind of weather that hunkering down was invented for. My outing last night to Rite Aid produced my first pair of reading glasses, probably two years after I should really have bought some—in preparation for lots of reading. About time: I have a stack of books by the bed.
Today I made my first tajine, a North African stew with dried fruit (ours featured apricots, prunes, and mangoes, which we had to hand). Although we don’t own the beautiful earthenware pot which gives the dish its name, it turned out quite well. Served over couscous with harissa. The house is full of tangerines, a splash of color in our now monochrome world…
11 December 04
Yagi at Rite-Aid
We were on crow duty today, meaning that after sunset we head to the University Mall at Russell and Anderson, turn on the radio, and see how many of the crows are in place roosting in the parking trees, endangering cars and passerbys below. Not that we needed it for checking at the mall, I played with the yagi for the first time. We parked across the street at Rite-Aid, since Pica had to run inside to pick up some stuff. A few observations: the yagi has lots of poky bits. Watch out for pedestrians before you do 360-degree twirlings. The mulched area between the sidewalk and the parking lot proved to be a good spot to turn around in. Second, don’t hold the antenna by the handle, but grasp it in the middle. Your wrist will be happier for it. Finally, be glad you don’t have to visually track down every crow (11 so far). That would take a while.
All crows were accounted for, including our friend 594, who was near our house this morning. But a couple weren’t at the mall, but were flying somewhere else. In particular Crow 113 was somewhere to the south. Since our route home took us that way we stopped about a third of a mile south and checked again. This time the strongest signal was to the west, towards the nearby dorms. We figured 113 was off on a balcony partaking of a keg or two.
10 December 04
Nature and Culture 180
We went this evening to the final presentation by the undergraduate class for Nature and Culture 180—each student had made an artist’s book following a week up at Sagehen in the Truckee River watershed in September. In this class they have written a scientific paper, done creative writing exercises, and made paper from lichens and other natural materials in addition to their final project, the book.
The resulting pieces were surprisingly varied in form. At left is Stacey McCulloch with her piece, Looking Through, featuring an aspen branch with knot-eye. The quality of the work was very high. I hope this means there will be more in the way of book arts in Davis…
Nature and Culture is actually an undergraduate major here. If I were considering college at this point in my life it’s something I’d definitely be interested in doing. No more useless than the degree I actually got (Spanish/French), and from what I can tell, a very great deal more fun.
9 December 04
More Crow Tracking
We now get to play wildlife biologist. The lassies who are tracking the crows at Pica’s work have an extra yagi antenna which we get to borrow. (A yagi is a directional antenna, looking something a TV aerial, that can be used for radio location purposes.) Previously when we hear the crows go beep——beep on our radio all we could do is say the crow is within a quarter-mile of where we are, but now we’ll be able to home in on him. Schlepping around the antenna we’ll look official, or is that suspicious, as well.
One sad note is the lassies relocated the transmitter for the only magpie they have caught so far: it was amidst a pile of feathers.
8 December 04
Ephemera
Growing up in Madrid in the 60s we traded these things called cromos—cards that could be stuck in an album, but only across the top, so you could lift them up and learn all about the item depicted in the image. I don’t even remember what the theme was (probably the natural world), just how Desirable they were, huge swaps going on in the playground with giant stacks of cards, shady deals and so on.
I must be the last person on earth to hear about Artist Trading Cards, which were started by a Swiss artist in 1996. The idea is to hand make an edition of twenty cards or so and send it in, and you’ll get fifteen different ones back. This is a strictly non-commercial unjuried art show, part of Copy Left, intending to get artists to meet each other at Events and subvert the corporate hold on art. At least that’s the impression I get from a random look at the Gallery.
There is no such Event anywhere near here soon, but I might send in a set to Sister Trading Cards. I make such things often in any case: for me it’s part of recycling what’s lying around. Having it make sense on a 3.5” x 2.5” card is a new challenge.
7 December 04
Light Rain in the Evening
Two successive fronts have come through in the past day. Overnight we had 0.80 inches of rain. No rain throughout the day, though not much in the way of blue sky sky either, and light rain started again late in the afternoon. My bike commute to Spanish (alas no longer conveniently on the UC Davis campus) is maybe a six mile journey all told and so far I have avoided becoming soaked on the ride. It’s mostly a matter of wintertime luck, but it helps that we rarely get soaking showers. Nothing a pair of rain pants and a good rain jacket can’t handle, which I both had tonight.
6 December 04
A Southern Hemisphere Sojourn
The fork-tailed flycatcher, there called tijereta: that’s what I remember most clearly.
And the meat.
I once managed to get myself on a Rotary-funded exchange program from Cambridgeshire in England to Buenos Aires province. This was in 1988, not too long after the Falklands/Malvinas war, and there was a push to improve relations. Young women (25-35) who spoke Spanish and who could take five weeks off at short notice were chosen from each country to visit the other. We were the return trip, so we met the women who had been to England.
I stayed with nine different host families over the course of the five weeks. Every single place we went, without exception, served us an “asado,” which roughly translated means entire cow roast on a spit. It was great… except I was a vegetarian. First course, kidneys and sausages. Second course, steak. Third course, steak. Fourth course, steak. On to about course # 8, which was salad. (I managed courses two and eight. Usually. I muttered simple prayers to the god of vegetarians.)
I learned that the spanish I spoke categorized me as a “gallega,” a person from Galicia but the Argentine term for all Spaniards; I learned to drink mate from a gourd (and essential part of digesting courses 2-7, above); I learned how people cope with 400% annual inflation; I walked on the Plaza de Mayo and thought about the disappeared and tried not to think too much about the disappeared; I pondered on the unseemly Reaganite relish with which Thatcher had taken on the generals, now looking almost quaint in retrospect; I watched argentine films with women my age and twice my age; I flew in a Piper Cessna over flooded ranchland, being careful not to tread on the nest of a black-necked stilt on the way to the plane. Sting was playing in Buenos Aires toward the end of our stay. We all watched it on television, along with healthy dubbed doses of Miami Vice and whatever else our host families tuned into.
I saw a mate gourd for sale at the Co-op the other day. I almost bought it—the one I bought in Tandil started leaking a while a go and I threw it out. Then, yesterday, an argentina commented on a post I had written about Master and Commander. Brings back memories of tijeretas and roasting meat…
5 December 04
Lunch With Cat
Charlie here is, as always, interested in food, preferably ours rather than his. The sample of the apple proved to be particularly purrworthy.
Our cats are strictly indoor cats, but we’re getting them used to being on a harness and leash, so they can at least sauter a bit outside. Diego is taking to the effort with a lot more enthusiasm than Charlie. Today he explored a patch of grass on the field outside our house.
4 December 04
Crow Duty
The Wildlife Health Center’s crow monitoring project is going quite well; after weeks of catching none, my colleagues have now caught a total of ten crows (almost all juveniles) and three yellow-billed magpies. Two of the crows managed to ditch their transmitters, somehow, and the third is completely missing, but the remainder are tracked daily.
Numenius has a small ham radio, so we often turn it on in the morning when there are foraging crows on the field to see who’s out there. (It’s usually crow # 594.) But to get them all, we need to go over to the University Mall at nightfall, where an impressive nightly roost yields lots of radio signals and an awful lot more guano. (BAD place to park overnight.)
This evening we volunteered to check, and heard crows #333, 594, 473, 454, 194, 113, and 652. Five minutes of work. This time last year, folks, I was writing articles about nonresident tuition. Now I count crows on Saturday evenings…