8 October 04
Senza Cuore
The second presidential debate, which I didn’t listen to, is over. The Red Sox clinched their way to the American League championship. Numenius is in Ventura at a conference. I had planned to do a piece on a book I once made about Martha Stewart but I don’t have the heart to do this, not tonight.
My mother’s cracked her pelvis. It’s not a bad fracture, but she fell while walking on Bodega Head which makes me hyperventilate. She didn’t ask for help and she didn’t even tell any of us until a week later, at which time we all offered that she might like to consider perhaps going to see a doctor. (Well, my physical-therapist sister-in-law practically screamed, which turned out to do the trick.)
My mum’s an independent gal who doesn’t ever want to leave the ocean again. Since my father died she’s made a life for herself in the town where they spent ten years together, from my perspective their best ten years. But she lives 45 minutes from a hospital, and all of her friends—the ones that are still left—are older than she is; she spends a good deal of time taking care of them. I’m two hours away, which is too far to just drop everything and head over there for this or that purpose… There are some tough choices ahead. My brother and sister and I want them to be made by her, not by us under a time gun.
This all weighs a bit. Sorry if I sound morose. There was a beautiful sunset this evening which I could see because the corn’s been cut down and the stalks turned under, attracting a huge flock of geese (at least fifty, all Canadas).
7 October 04
Urban Swine
Part of my dissertation was about mapping the distribution of feral pigs in California. But I had no idea that wild boars could be an urban species. It seems that Berlin has a population of about five to seven thousand wild boars, their numbers increasing two-fold after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And they cause over 400 traffic accidents each year. After all, I don’t see a crosswalk in this picture.
6 October 04
Three Things
1) I’m very tired, because last night I was in an automotive maintenance class until 11:15 pm (you may wonder what there is to maintain in a brand new car, and you’re right—I should have taken this class with my beat-up old Subaru).
2) I’m wondering whether to recommend that we at least consider Persepolis (thanks K.) for next year’s Campus Community Book Project (really, really important not to set off a new iteration of Iran-bashing), and will they go for a graphic novel?
3) I’m really disturbed by a new trend which says we have to vote online in as many places as possible to say that OUR candidate won a debate we believe was a tie (if we even watched it, which I didn’t, since I was learning to tell a distributor cap from a radiator). This place is getting weirder and weirder, like we’re being told to applaud on cue.
5 October 04
Eyeing The Volcano
Those who want check up on what Mount St. Helens is currently up to should look at the VolcanoCam which is situated on a ridge about five miles from the peak. When I checked it this morning there was a large and ominous cloud tapering away from one side of the summit.
Four hurricanes, a volcano that is becoming feisty, and a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in the past several weeks. Are the gods speaking to the United States, or what?
4 October 04
Writing Words
I’ve been working on a display for the UC Davis Campus Community Book Project which kicks off next Monday with recollections about the Rodney King beatings and riots in Los Angeles following the acquittal of the police officers who were caught in an act of horrific brutality on a neighbor’s video. The display brings together many voices, too, remembering that time.
It would have been very easy to do all this on a page layout program (I use Adobe InDesign) but I’ve been writing them out, longhand. In different longhands, actually. It has made the process much more meaningful for me as I struggle to understand different points of view, to come to terms with my privilege as a white person. There’s a meditative element in doing calligraphy. I slow way down, something I’m generally not very good at. It opens many doors.
This task is miniscule compared to the calligraphic event of the century (actually, of the half-millennium): the St. John’s Bible, which is currently underway by a team of calligraphers and illuminators under the direction of Donald Jackson, the scribe royal. Jackson came up with a new hand for this 7-volume project, a kind of loose Carolingian-foundational with an Italic edge, excellent for doing long patches of text (which, obviously, the Bible is). His team of world-class calligraphers has been working at his scriptorium in Monmouth, just over the Welsh border, since 2000; they’ve completed volume three. I’ve been studying this hand a bit and while I can’t claim to have mastered it yet, it’s definitely working even in its very imperfect form.
Of particular interest to me is that a local natural history illustrator, Chris Tomlin, has included Minnesota flora and fauna in this version (St. John’s Benedictine Monastery is in Minnesota). This is a bible of place. I’m eager to see it—looks like a trip to Minnesota is in my future at some point.
Donald Jackson urges people to get out their pens and write passages of the bible out in longhand in order to come to a closer understanding of the beautiful words. Having spent a mere weekend doing this, although they’re different words, I’m starting to get it. Perhaps this is why writers of graffiti feel such power?
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.”