27 January 04
Abraham and Jephthah
Moving along through Vedic and Hindu tradition, Ahimsa and Buddhism, to their polar violent opposite Aztec human sacrifice, to the revealed religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), the class I’ve been taking on religion and non-violence is getting really interesting. The texts are spare and leave lots of room for interpretation. Consider two: Jephthah (Judges 11) vows to God that if he is victorious in his war against the Ammonites, he’ll sacrifice the first thing that walks out of his house when he returns (it turns out of course to be his only child, a daughter and virgin, whom he sacrifices as promised and has no issue. What was he expecting to walk out of his house? A chicken?). The other is more well known: Abraham (Genesis 22) is told to sacrifice his only son Isaac, which he prepares to do, but his hand is stayed at the last minute by an angel.
The stories of Abraham and Jephthah both involve a test by the deity: will you obey me so far as to sacrifice your only child to me? Both men pass the test. Abraham’s perfect obedience is enough to prevent the death occurring. (This passage is interesting in what it omits: what’s Sarah’s opinion of all this? What’s Isaac’s?) In the mythological continuum that moves from the creation of Eve through the violent removal of Adam’s rib, through the destruction of the world by flooding save for a few chosen souls and propagatory animals, to Avram’s hearing and heeding of the voice of God and departure on his journey as Abraham, leaving his family behind, to the subsequent violence incurred in the Exodus against Egypt and idolator, what we have here is a model of violent action, sanctioned (if not actually perpetrated) by the deity. Jephthah’s vow to God in wartime, to sacrifice the first thing that emerges from his house on his return should he prove victorious, fits well within this model. That the choice in the latter example is Jephthah’s, not God’s, seems less important than the fact that the sacrificial victim is his only child, the thing most dear to him, and the toll exacted for his military success.
What I find really telling is that people I know who are practising Christians tend to disavow this God. The usual line runs “I don’t like/hate the God of the Old Testament.” It’s a curious statement. Both the above stories set up a startling sequence for the birth of Christianity: the sacrifice by the DEITY of his only son. The sacrifice to end all sacrifice; to absolve humanity of sin; to rid the world of violence. A rebirth through a violent act.
What seems to be emerging in the reading I’m doing and the discussion in the class is that there is almost no way to separate the violence that is an essential element in religion from the non-violence that is an equally essential element. It’s fascinating. I’m reading with new eyes.
26 January 04
Magpies In The Morning
There is a little ditch that separates us from the field to the north. A couple of wooden planks serve as a bridge; I just crossed it to toss the kitchen leavings out in the fallow field (the ants were starting to sell tickets to the apple core from our dessert this evening).
We’ve just starting putting these leavings a few meters over to the east, where they can be seen easily from the kitchen window. For birds that are so raucous, yellow-billed magpies are surprisingly flittish, but the windows work well as blinds.
The other day we tossed out on the field some stale, undercooked white rice. The magpies descended upon it the next morning, flying off with chunks so their neighbor bird wouldn’t be tempted to snag their particular chunk.
One is for sorrow, two is for joy. A solitary magpie is indeed a sad thing—they like their social lives after all!
25 January 04
Living Among Jackrabbits
jackrabbit wakes
jackrabbit peers jackrabbit hops jackrabbit hears jackrabbit leaps jackrabbit flies jackrabbit loves jackrabbit sighs jackrabbit flees jackrabbit hides jackrabbit sees jackrabbit’s alive24 January 04
Sketching at the Raptor Center
This morning we went to the California Raptor Center to do some sketching. The Raptor Center is a rehab facility operated by the veterinary school here at UC Davis that treats orphaned and injured birds of prey for re-release. Some of the birds are too injured to return to the wild and become long-term denizens of the center, often getting taken out on educational tours.
It’s a great place to sketch birds, and why we don’t go there more often, seeing as how it’s just up the road from us, is a bit of a mystery. Today when we got there two of the volunteers had taken a ferruginous hawk and a Harris’ hawk out of their cages, and both birds were posing nicely for us. A little down the path, they were hosing out the cage with the turkey vultures, who seemed none too pleased about such activities. The two turkey vultures are named Balzac and Juliet. Juliet used to be called Romeo, but a year ago last summer she laid an egg. Determining the sex of birds can be a challenge.
Above is my sketch of their barred owl.
23 January 04
Rosy-Fingered Dawn
Homer’s repeated rosy-fingered dawns break lots of rules outlined in a list of ten mistakes often made by writers (via Hoarded Ordinaries and Burningbird), but I think Homer had different rules, and aren’t we glad he did?
I woke this morning to a thick tule fog which turned pink as the sun, somewhere out there in the east, rose. I tried to draw the tree outside our kitchen window with my walnut ink. I have altered the hue on the drawing to approximate the hue I saw: it was completely monochrome, just different levels of saturation.
22 January 04
Abecedarian Fun
An abecedarian sentence, also known as a pangram, is one that contains every letter of the alphabet, such as “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” They are favorite things of calligraphers and typographers, and have a long history. (According to Marc Drogin’s Medieval Calligraphy, an eighth-century one is Te canit adcelebratque polus rex gazifer hymnis [The hymn, oh treasure-bearing king, sings of you, and the pole also honors you.]). When I practice my calligraphy, I often write “Mad brother Jarvis was quickly axed for crazy praying.”
Now it is easier than ever to come up with one, thanks to Mark Simonson’s Pangrammer Helper. My favorite sentence in the thread discussing this tool on Typographica is “Vexed, George W. Bush just zooms like crazy puffs with no I.Q.”.
21 January 04
Peace Through Drawing
Butuki was kind enough to comment on my sketches of the scissor-tailed flycatcher and wondered what my field notebooks looked like… alas, I have none. I should, I think.
Or at the very least I should draw birds more often.
I once took an illustration class where one of the assignments was to illustrate a collective noun (pride of lions, murder of crows, etc.). I chose skein of snow geese, and spent the next three weeks seeking out reference material from which to draw these beautiful birds. Photos. Bird videos I stuck on “pause.” Stuffed specimens in the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. No live birds, sadly; this would be an easy task in Davis in the winter, but not in Cambridge. Yet there was plenty of material from which to draw.
I will never, now, misidentify a Ross’s goose for a snow goose. Why? Because I learned that bird, inhaled it, almost, by drawing it. It doesn’t matter that the sketches, most of them, weren’t very good; it’s the act of seeing that makes the difference. Looking as hard as that at the scissor-tailed flycatcher has made me commune with it in a different way than looking at it through binoculars, and certainly with photographing it. It was like a meditation.
The best part? Since that time on Monday morning I’ve been on a kind of high. I think I should listen to this voice that speaks of the healing power of being with birds long enough to do, say, thirty sketches. They don’t have to be large, they don’t have to be finished, and they certainly don’t have to be any good. I just have to show up with a pencil and sketchbook.
20 January 04
Catfight In Iowa
The Democratic presidential primaries opened yesterday with a stunning defeat of the frontrunner Howard Dean, the caucus being won by Massachusetts senator John Kerry. I haven’t been following the campaigning lately but it seems that Dean and Richard Gephardt fought each other bitterly leaving Kerry and John Edwards of North Carolina to pick up votes. Gephardt has now dropped out of the race. I have been interested in Dean for the past year because of his committed anti-war stance, and am definitely a bit disappointed by these results. It may be though that his rhetoric or tone simply, as they say, won’t play well in Peoria anymore, and I will fall back on ABB (anybody but Bush) logic. Let’s hope the candidate that emerges as the survivor over the next few months is truly the best one to take on Bush in November.
19 January 04
Hijacking a Birder
This morning we spent a good hour with the scissor-tailed flycatcher outside Mrak Hall on the UC Davis campus. I did some sketches; Numenius took a lot of photos (one of which is here) and also managed to catch a short video clip (844 kb, Quicktime) with the digital camera during which the flycatcher regurgitated one of the magnolia fruits it had been eating.
A theoretical ecology postdoc arrived last week from Cambridge University. He was introduced to us as “a British birder.” This is the very best kind: a knowledgeable and highly skilled birder who has nevertheless never seen our common sparrows, much less megararities (such as the flycatcher). So people have been adopting him all week. He had managed to get to 83 new birds this morning by bike alone.
Thinking a nice round number like 100 was probably preferable, some birders hauled him off in a CAR: we joined them for part of the day and saw cinammon teal, marsh wren, song sparrow, and snow geese. Poor guy hasn’t opened a bank account yet or done any laundry since his arrival. Blame the birds, and blame the abducting birders.
Richard introduced us to a British birding term: “papped.” The scissor-tailed flycatcher got papped this morning (from “papparazzied,” photographed to excess).
18 January 04
The Drowning Of The City Of Ys
This is the title of a medieval legend from Brittany concerning a king Gradlon who built a city below sea level for Dahut his daughter. Dahut turned wayward, letting a prince, or perhaps the devil, steal the key to the floodgates of the city and thereupon open the sluices, drowning the city. Gradlon escaped, Dahut didn’t, and to this day fishermen sometimes hear her singing or playing bells below the waters.
We just heard Shira Kammen, accompanied by Tim Rayborn and Jim Oakden, perform a rendition of this ballad in a concert this afternoon at the Davis Community Church. Shira Kammen is a favorite musician of mine, renowned for her performances on medieval bowed instruments (e.g. the vielle). The first half of today’s concert featured songs in Middle English, the second half being the Breton tale with a bit of dancing as well as singing of some of the refrains by the audience.
Medieval music provides the performer very little to go upon. Many of the verses in today’s concert survived without any known melody. But that makes it up to the musician to supply inventiveness and creativity, and there’s nothing wrong with that!