3 October 04
The Beast Is Wounded
It was a disappointing weekend baseball-wise, the last games of the season. The Giants played well for 26 out of the 27 innings in their final set with the Dodgers; alas their spectacular collapse in the bottom of the 9th in yesterday’s game would mean they aren’t going to the playoffs. And the A’s played as if their heart wasn’t in it in their final decisive set with the Angels.
But I’m optimistic about the election, and that more than makes up for baseball disappointment. I didn’t watch or listen to the Thursday’s debate—studying for that evening’s Spanish exam took precedence—but I’ve read through the transcript and have been following the aftermath. It’s clear that the dynamic of the race has changed, and Bush is beatable on his greatest perceived strength, foreign policy. On Daily Kos, kid oakland has a couple of diary entries arguing that George W. Bush is toast. Not that we can afford to be complacent now: far from it. Rather, Bush is in a Catch-22. Bush is losing voters, and needs to run a positive campaign to keep them. But the only card he can play is to make strong negative attacks on Kerry. Bush’s credibility gap is catching up with him, and Kerry is calling him on it.
What most heartens me is the work on the ground, especially in the swing states. We’re mobilized. I think we’re going to see the Democrats pull the biggest get-out-the-vote campaign in history. Completely bottom-up, of course: there are an awful lot of desperate progressives in this country anxious to make a difference. My officemate for one: without even trying very hard, he raised over $3000 to send to Democratic campaigners in three different swing states. Or as kid oakland puts it in his diary, we are the October surprise.
From Kos I gleaned another idea for helping out the campaigners. What these folks need is nutritious food. The volunteers who are spending long hours going door-to-door or working the phone banks would love to see hot, delicious stew or chili come their way: much better than take-out pizza!
A couple of bumper stickers to close with. Somebody spotted a Republicans for Voldemort sticker, and immediately ordered some. Scarily, he
discovered that the sticker appeals to actual Republicans as much as it does to Democrats! As for the second sticker, this one will warm the heart of any editor.
2 October 04
Gog and Magog
This is the feast of Sukkot in the Jewish calendar—a time to celebrate that the harvest is in, and to remind ourselves of the ephemeral nature of all things by building a rickety structure outside and sitting in it for a bit. (And eating, always eating.)
I’m not Jewish, and Numenius and I rarely go to services, but the local congregation has just moved into a new and wonderful space from intimate but somewhat cramped quarters. This whole weekend is full of events celebrating this move, which started before the high holidays. We chose to go this morning on what we thought would be the lowest-key event of the weekend.
It WAS low-key, if three hours of hebrew (gosh I’m rusty) can be so described. Lots of things happened that made me wish we went more often. In no particular order:
The Brooklyn accents; the beauty of Virginia’s voice; the feeling of rassling with a language that goes back farther than anything else I know, to the dawn of what makes us a people; our invitation to display and bind the Torah, even though the rabbi and cantor both knew I wasn’t Jewish; the tears shed by those called in aliyah to the Torah, many of whom have waited for years to be in a space like this; the fact that there were no guitars (I have a horror of guitar music mixed with religion), that all the singing (and there was a lot of it) was a capella; a pleasant surprise at how many of the melodies and words I remembered; the conversation afterwards with someone who describes himself as Buddhist and realizing that his own tradition really is all about love after all, if you just READ the stuff; the reminder that much of Catholic (and Christian) ritual comes directly from Judaism, proof of how connected we really are; the awareness that the transcendant really IS here, nearby, and that it just takes ears to hear; hearing the story of Gog and Magog in hebrew, chanted, and realizing that “protection” is both more of a metaphor and a reality than George W. Bush would have us believe; the reminder that in Jewish tradition the WORD has its own mysticism and power, something we’d do well to remember outside; and, well, that life is ephemeral and best to live it well and to the full.
Numenius’ last name is the same as that of a rabbi here in Davis in the 1950s, and it prompted a heartfelt recollection by one of the old timers of those days, when he was cynically against religion in all its forms. Look where we are now, he said.
Amen, say I. Look.
1 October 04
Change Of Scenery
A note for the Ecotone Wiki topic on Plants In Place.
They’ve started to cut the corn. When I returned home in the evening, the edge of the field near the road was down and the harvester had just started cutting a swath into the interior. Before we settled in to listening to baseball for the evening, Pica and I walked up the road to the levee. Pica mentioned that it would be time for the coyotes, and on cue, they started howling. Several of them. Two trains were passing, and as is their wont, the coyotes howled at the trains. Walking back to the house, we saw one of them trit-trotting out into the alfalfa field to the south, looking in fine fettle. They know there’s feasting to be had once the corn is down. The crows meanwhile will get their own surprise. Two of Pica’s coworkers brought down a fancy new live trap to catch crows as part of ongoing research on West Nile Virus. The trap is right now near the English walnut tree in our yard, but will be moved out into the field once the corn is down.
And soon we’ll have our view back.
30 September 04
Another One
Trapped another cat this morning. This one’s black, gorgeous green eyes. Doc Rock decided his name was Othello (we didn’t know what to do if it turned out to be a she, or rather I put Desdemona down as a question mark at the vet’s this morning, when I took it/him in to get fixed, where he got designated a him).
I don’t know what to do with this one. He’s ten months old, almost certainly too old to be tamed properly. People don’t want black cats much except for cult followers and people seeking halloween accessories, much less semi-wild black cats.
I’ve been lucky again to be surrounded by so much support, Debbie of Feline Lifeline and Catlin and all the folks at work and everyone else too. Thank you all. They’re going to cut the corn tomorrow which will be almost more stressful for the cat than staying inside the crate, so I think we’ll opt for the crate (I might even take it to work to get it out of the hubbub). And though it pains me, a birder, to do this, I think we’ll release him eventually. I might try keeping him for a few days to see how he does, but this requires more time than I have at the moment.
29 September 04
Hope and Dissent
“To hope is to gamble. It’s to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.”
— Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit is a favorite author of mine: she’s an environmental historian and art critic. One especially enjoyable book of hers is Wanderlust: A History of Walking. At Tom Engelhardt’s site TomDispatch, she has a piece about Thoreau, dissent, and the Republican National Convention. Or as the sign of a protester there said: “No, you can’t have my rights, I’m still using them.”
28 September 04
A New Word for Today: “Bleh”
Feathers of Hope was born when the blogosphere was overwhelmed with political blogs: in the leadup to the war in Iraq we were both reading lots every day. For one reason or another, although our banner says this is a blog about nature and place, the design arts, politics, and baseball, we don’t write much about politics. I tried to articulate why in Where Are My Words?—my feelings of outrage were trumped by my feelings of helplessness.
We’re there again, but for other reasons. For the past few days I’ve been writing letters to single unregistered women in swing states through MMOB—not that I’m Mainstreet or a Mom, but they’ll take anyone.
Turns out even this might be the wrong target; soccer moms have become security moms, apparently, believing that Bush will keep their kids safer than Kerry will.
I can’t promise them that he won’t. But the world is certainly less safe because of this adminstration’s unforgivable excesses of power, greed, arrogance. It will take decades to restore our standing in the world, so forget about one presidential term.
Whoever wins this election—and of course I hope it’s not Bush—will have the biggest mess to fix since the Great Depression, or possibly ever at least in terms of foreign policy. It’s practically hopeless.
Numenius thought the security moms thing sounded like something cooked up by the Republicans as explored by George Lakoff in his latest book, Don’t Think of an Elephant, which we first read about on Daily Kos. Sounds like a must read, particularly with regard to the Republican hijacking of rhetoric about the family. One more for the list…
27 September 04
The Hordes Arrive
The students are back for the fall on campus. Classes begin Thursday—relatively late, but we’re on the quarter system, and move-in day was yesterday. Lots of freshman all over the place, carrying large cardboard numbered boxes from the Memorial Union full of orientation goodies and pre-ordered textbooks. A clutch of students bearing said boxes meet in the hallway of the MU, all of the programming each others’ number into their cell phones. Long lines at the Coffeeshop bakery during my 3 PM cookie run. And the terror of barely competent cyclists meeting their first campus roundabout during the noontime rush hour.
But in my windowless interior office, I barely notice it all.
26 September 04
L.A. in a Day
I flew down to Burbank this morning to see my high school English teacher. My high school in England, that is, the progressive co-ed boarding school I fetched up in when my parents got too frightened by the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll at my school in Madrid (it was there with similar prevalence at Abbotsholme, but by then I was committed to the long, cold, damp Derbyshire winter, and decided to worry them no further).
This teacher has recently retired as head of an even more prominent, progressive co-ed boarding school in England and has decided to take an M.A. through York University on 18th century theatre. We spent a lot of time today at the Huntington Library, just beyond Pasadena.
It’s something when you get to enthuse over the Ellesmere Chaucer—the real one, not a facsimile—with your high school ENGLISH teacher, the one who, 25 years ago, read The Knight’s Tale in a convincingly Chaucerian accent (though, what did WE know about authentic Middle English accents?), to have him take you on a pilgrimage to see Reynolds’ portrait of Mrs. Siddons, to share the joy of blooming cacti. It was a great day.
25 September 04
Seven Games Left
This evening Pica called with delight from the other room—“oh wow!”. She was checking the score of the Red Sox-Yankees game just after the Red Sox had scored seven runs in the bottom of the eighth. The Red Sox went on to win it 12-5. The Yankees are assured of a playoff spot, and I don’t think the Red Sox are going to overtake them to capture the division title. But they’re in very good shape for the wild-card race.
More bottom-of-the-eighth heroics in San Francisco this afternoon. The Giants very much needed to win today to stay in the playoff hunt, both for the wild-card and the division race. We were running errands this afternoon and were catching bits and pieces of the game. For lunch we stopped at El Mariachi: on the telly the Giants already down 2-0 to the Dodgers in the first inning and I was distressed. Happily Ray Durham hit a leadoff home run for the Giants in the bottom of the first to make things closer. Later on it was 4-2 Dodgers—we grew disgusted so we turned the radio to KDRT, Davis’s new low-power FM radio station. When we finally headed home after shopping at the co-op we turned on the radio and had just missed a grand slam by Pedro Feliz. Giants were up 9-5, and they held on to the lead in the top of the ninth to win.
Back east, the Cubs blew a 3-0 lead in the ninth and lost to the Mets. The Cubs are the Giants’ chief rival in the wild-card hunt, the Giants now only a half-game back of the Cubs, and 1 1/2 games back of the Dodgers in the division race. More excitement to follow, for sure.
24 September 04
Fall’s Coming
I heard our first Say’s phoebe of the winter on Monday, its single plaintive cry echoing off the beehives. And the white-crowned sparrows are starting to come in—within two weeks there will be hundreds. They sing all winter long.
They have STILL not harvested the corn out back. It’s now a light wash of burnt sienna in color, if not in mass. When you go near it the weight of every single ear produces a rustle, so even when there’s no breeze you hear a permanent crackling. No wonder so many phantasmagoric movies involve cornfields. I’m not worried about phantasms, but cats do still seem to be emerging. The latest is a gray tabby kitten with spots, lovely to look at, with the long-legged gangle teenager affect.
I set a trap on Tuesday, pretty half-heartedly I must admit (what am I going to do with THIS one?). In the morning I saw I’d caught something—surely the kitten? No. It was a teenage possum, which promptly played dead when I tried to let it out. It played dead for about 1/2 hour after I’d gone back inside, its mouth open in a less than credible tooth-filled rictus and its eyes looking glassy and gone. But it slipped out while I wasn’t looking. Given the chances of catching a skunk so near the house, am I going to continue to try to catch the gray tabby?