6 February 04
Haircut in Davis
I just accepted a new job at the Wildlife Health Center which is part of the Vet Med department here at UC Davis, and located about five minutes’ walk from where we live. Just hate those tough commutes. I start on February 23 and my lunchtimes are filling up fast; all my lunch buddies are starting to panic as if I were abandoning them. I’m not. I never miss lunch and I plan on biking in often. Memorial Union food is too good to give up on.
Still and all, it doesn’t leave much time for chores over the next two weeks, so I dashed over to Angie’s Beauty Salon, haircuts $12, before lunch today.
Ana Mara usually trims my hair (it takes about five minutes). However, today she was having a “weave” done. This involves foil, dye, incantations, and lots of minutes under the hairdryer. I told her she looked like a “reina,” a queen; she said it was more like “un hombre del espacio.” Angie started on my trim instead.
A Japanese student with moderate piercings wandered in. He wanted not only a weave, but a weave like THIS (he produced two magazine photos) and a haircut like THIS (another photo). While Sonia started preparing foils and potions he animatedly explained to Ana Mara, who half emerged from the hairdryer so she could hear, how he had tried but failed to dye his hair yesterday; it hadn’t worked, and where could he get toner? (I had to whisper to Angie to ask what toner was and what it did.) And he was going home tonight to San Jose and wanted his hair to be done. I was fascinated. And pleased that the connection he seemed to have with all of them was similar to mine. It’s a great place to get a fix of—of what? Girliness? Hardly, after today. Fix of focus on hair, I guess.
An Anglo with long gray hair, three Mexican American hairdressers with weaves, one Japanese man, ten minutes.
5 February 04
The Literate Insect
This bug was on our kitchen countertop last night. I think he’s working on his undergraduate application to UC Davis.
4 February 04
American Prophet
All my education was in the British, rather than American, system, so we read Milton, Shakespeare, Thackeray, and Hardy rather than Emerson, Melville, or Thoreau. For my Religion and Non-Violence class we recently read Civil Disobedience by Thoreau, which I had never read before. His name is pronounced by many Americans almost in a whisper; he is prophet to several generations.
A lot of what is said in this essay is about resisting government, taxes, and slavery; since there’s something in here for everyone, everyone uses Thoreau’s classic text to bolster their ideas, whether violent or non-violent resistance during the Vietnam war, to hatred of taxes, to blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma City. Much like the accounts of far earlier prophets, this one can be used to argue just about anything. Even by presidents.
While Thoreau may have been arguing for an informed resistance against the bits of government one finds unpalatable, he didn’t bargain, perhaps, with the wholesale abandonment of “informed” anything. A uniform press that is a lackey to the status quo (the current bleating about Janet Jackson’s nipplegate fracas should silence doubters that this culture is still truly puritanical) is not likely to lead to an informed public. Yet those of us who wish to become informed and act on this information would do well to read Thoreau: his challenge to follow the lead of our conscience resounds loudly today, as we contemplate tax season and the announcement of the increase in the U.S. “defense” budget…
3 February 04
Democratic Astrology
The New York Times today has a column giving the astrological profiles of the seven remaining Democratic candidates for President. An example: “John Edwards, born on June 10, 1953, is a Gemini with the Moon in Gemini. There is much in his horoscope that makes him the puer aeternus, the eternal boy. His mind is playful and rich with ideas. However, his chart shows him to be a true son of the messenger and trickster god, and so capable of exceptional dualism.” It’s probably as good a guide to political character as anything else one can find.
(From Calpundit).
2 February 04
The Name “Pica”
During a very interesting conversation this morning that revolved around blogging and mountain lions, a third meaning for the name “Pica” was drawn to my attention. I chose this as a screen name because Pica is short for Pica nutelli, the yellow-billed magpie that lives around this part of California (and nowhere else). A pica is also a measurement in type: twelve points to a pica, twelve picas to an inch, and as a typophile it seemed to fit well.
What I learned this morning is that it is also the name for a particular eating disorder... eating dirt (and other non-food items). I assure all you faithful readers that I don’t indulge in this particular culinary extravaganza. Really, honest. I know some pregnant women sometimes have odd tastes but I’m not pregnant and hope to get through life without ever having this particular craving.
Apparently the term does derive from the Latin for magpie, whose eating habits are said to be indiscriminate. Our magpies choose only the tastiest morsels out here on the field, I should add, so they must have been thinking about black-billed magpies…
1 February 04
Food Capitals Of The World
A note for the Ecotone Wiki’s entries on Food and Place.
I think it’s a peculiarly American thing to name many a town and burgh the world capital of something or other. Not surprisingly a large fraction of these are food-related. Evidently Sacramento, not far from here, is the almond capital of the world. (Perhaps this makes Governor Arnold the Almond King?) Chico, a little farther to the north, isn’t daunted by this proclamation and also claims this title.
Perhaps most famous in California is Gilroy, south of the Bay Area, which is the garlic capital of the world, and nearby is Castroville, the artichoke capital of the world. A few miles to the south is Watsonville, the strawberry capital of the world. Throw in a bit of Santa Cruz county wine, and you have the makings of a good meal there.
As in the case of the almonds, sometimes there are several claimants to a title. Three towns in the Southern U.S.—Belzoni, Mississippi, Savannah, Tennessee, and Des Allemands, Louisiana—call themselves the catfish capital of the world.
Many of the capitals have food festivals associated with them. Gilroy has a garlic festival the last weekend in July that draws well over 100,000 people. Garlic fiends that we are, this sounds a good bit more appetizing than the annual Shrimp and Petroleum Festival held over Labor Day weekend in Morgan City, Louisiana.
31 January 04
Not For Vegetarians…
This entry is part of the Ecotone Wiki’s joint post on Food and Place
Travelling back to Spain in early December made me realize just how much pork the Spanish eat. Even things that are ostensibly “vegetables”-peas, artichoke hearts, green beans-have bits of ham in them. Not chicken, or beef, but ham. Ham legs, cured in the Spanish manner (jamn serrano), hang in every bar, along with various cured sausages, ready for cutting into tapas or sandwiches or for omelettes or for the peas and artichokes.
There’s nothing about Spanish geography that makes the pig a more likely farm animal than, say, a goat, which is certainly eaten in other Mediterranean countries. But there’s plenty in Spanish history that has given pork such a prominent place in the cuisine. For one thing, it was outlawed for about six centuries under Moorish occupation. The forbidden food took on the aura of a battle standard.
Food is never just food, is it? The prominence of pork in Spain recalls an earlier, darker time, following the explusion of Jews and Muslims in the fifteenth century, when it was a test. Are you really one of us? Or does your refusal to eat this forbidden meat reveal you as a convert in name only? The Inquisition lurks around the tables in taverns, watching, watching.
30 January 04
Dabbling In Moon Imaging
The first-quarter moon is good to look at in the telescope, since the craters are well-highlighted, and I am more wont to be skygazing in the evening than in the wee hours of the morning (which is when you see the third quarter moon). Tonight I thought I’d try my luck at imaging the moon through my 7” reflector using our digicam. The results are at left. I’m interested in an astrophotography technique called image stacking, where you take a large number of frames of a single object, align these, and average them to try to sharpen the image. This was my first try at this technique, using the movie clip feature of the digicam to get my stack of images, and then specialized software (Keith’s Image Stacker is the one I tried out) to help align the frames. I don’t think this first attempt improved things much, but there’s a lot yet to learn here.
29 January 04
More About Pens
Pendemonium has come through as a source for the retractable fountain pen I wrote about in Pen Fetish, the Stypen. Based in Iowa, they also have an exhaustive line of inks, cartridges, the luscious Clairefontaine notebooks and stationery, and for you collectors out there they also have plenty of antique inkwells, pens, and blotters. Sam has been very responsive. I placed an order last week; should arrive soon. A caveat on their website reads “Many parts of the US are experiencing extremely cold temperatures. Ink and freezing temps do not mix very well. Rest assured that we are watching the weather where you are and we will make every effort to insulate your ink. If we think there is a chance of the ink freezing and the bottles shattering, we will let you know that we are holding your shipment and waiting for the sun to shine. This happens every year just about this time and we’re happy to say that we’ve never lost a bottle of ink to the cold!”
I bought a notebook for my class on religion and violence at the campus bookstore here and it’s inadequate: when I take notes the ink shows through the page. Grr. I’m also on the lookout for the ideal field notebook, so I make up my own grail quests as I go. This is a way to make myself crazy, but I blame it on January like Maria does in Alembic.
Ecotone wiki topic for February 1: Food and Place.
28 January 04
Take Me Out To SBC Park?
Granted at one level it is just trading one corporate name for another, but I can’t get used to the fact that the San Francisco Giants’ ballfield will now be called SBC Park. Pac Bell Park has a much better ring to it, no pun intended, given the park’s proximity to the Pacific Ocean. The unsurprising story to the name change is that the Pacific Bell phone company got bought out a couple of years ago by SBC, a phone company whose initials formerly stood for something but now don’t.
Oh well. SBC still has a reputation for lousy DSL service, ballpark sponsorship notwithstanding.