28 December 03
Christmas Bird Count—A Bit
Every year a bird census is taken in winter during a two-week period around Christmas. It is the largest volunteer data collection activity in the world. Thousands of people go out in all weathers to count the birds in a given area and tally them at the end of the day. Spikes or dips in populations can be seen and hopefully explained. It’s a good and useful activity, even though it has a tendency to become an exercise in finding rarities (irrelevant to science) and competitiveness (ditto).
We were not signed up to do the Bodega Bay count this year because there seemed to be no leader; we had a dinner engagement that morphed into brunch this morning; and we had the fall-back excuse of a dodgy back and achilles tendon, respectively. We got a last-minute plea to do a very abbreviated count yesterday. This means that today we counted robins, starlings, housefinches, California quail, and turkey vultures in and around French toast with poached dried fruit in a citrus sauce at the fabulous new organic eatery in Bodega Bay, the Seaweed Cafe. Melinda and Jackie are taking January off for a well-deserved rest but will be back in February. The dinner menu is not great for vegetarians (though seems spectacular for omnivores) but brunch is superb. Incredible teas.
If any of my serious birding friends are reading this, yes, we know we’re slouches. We didn’t find the immature goshawk and we failed in our mission to find a rough-legged hawk or even a cowbird. Next year.
27 December 03
Ablatives On The Rebound
Thanks to the excellent blog Mirabilis.ca, there is an article in The Economist about contemporary advocates of Latin, including that center of Latin as a living language, the Vatican. Some tidbits from the article:
– In his upcoming movie The Passion about the last hours of Christ, Mel Gibson initially didn’t want the film, which is spoken entirely in Latin and Aramaic, to be subtitled. – The Finnish national radio broadcasting station YLE each week has a 5-minute world news broadcast in Latin, entitled Nuntii Latini. It may be heard worldwide via satellite or shortwave radio. – Every Thursday, a five-man team in the Vatican argues about how to translate modern words into Latin. Try globuli solaniani for potato chips.Though not mentioned in the article, there’s even a programming language, specifically a dialect of Perl, in Latin!
26 December 03
New Zealand as Middle Earth
This is a very belated entry to the Ecotone Wiki’s joint post on Mythic Place.
I doubt whether J.R.R. Tolkien ever visited New Zealand but Peter Jackson has ensured that it is now on the global mythic map of the 21st century. It is said that Tolkien was disappointed that England had no native myths, so he set about writing one—about an England that had long disappeared first into Enclosures and then into the Industrial Revolution. (The Arthurian legends are all of French origin.) The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion read like the Icelandic sagas that were the professor’s day job.
Claude Lvi-Strauss insists that myths are a language because they only exist in language; that they must be retold. Jackson’s retelling must count, in part because of the introduction of this landscape into the contemporary consciousness.
A quick rereading of parts of Tolkien has struck me in its almost obsessive avoidance of the latinate. Use an Anglo-Saxon word where there is one, he seems to say. Perhaps the latinate in English is less able to evoke myth than the language of Beowulf.
I wonder whether Maori New Zealand is as excited about the success of the films as everyone else seems to be. Ideas, anyone?
25 December 03
A Dog’s Best Christmas Present
...is to spend a good part of the day bounding across open terrain. We went today with my sister, her boyfriend, and her dog Hooper to Pt. Isabel Regional Shoreline, which is a bit of open space on the east side of San Francisco Bay that is well-known to East Bay residents as a place to let dogs run off-leash. There were many dozens of dogs of all shape and variety out there today, enjoying the Christmas sunshine, some retrieving frisbees and balls, and a few going swimming in a channel leading to the Bay. Remarkably, all these dogs were getting along with each other quite well, many of them no doubt exchanging holiday wishes and email addresses. At left we see Hooper returning after venturing hither and yon.
24 December 03
Pen Fetish
I have often felt frustrated when going to stationery stores in the United States. It seems they are full of junk and contain very poor, mediocre selections of, well, stationery. Lots of rotten pens, some of which end up costing quite a bit. I won’t go so far as to blame the decline of Western civilization on the abandonment of the fountain pen, but I do cling obstinately to my belief that the world would be a better place if people WROTE better—and for this the fountain pen is the ideal tool. (Of course it would be better if they wrote at all, but that’s another piece.) I’m bleating in the wilderness, on this, to a world of keyboardists; to a world where children can routinely get to be almost adults without being able to read cursive; to a world of the ballpoint superseded by the rollerball superseded by the next miserable effort. Baaah, baaah.
Spain has, on the other hand, no shortage of good stationery stores—tiny closet-type spaces packed to the ceilings with unknown treasures in boxes. My guess is that this is one unintended but excellent result of the Napoleonic invasion of 1808 (the French REALLY know stationery: whoever has not had the sybaritic pleasure writing in fountain pen on Clairefontaine paper, papier velouté [velveted paper], should definitely try it; it will cure all manner of woes, aches, pains, and even warts).
Anyway, there was this tiny closet stationer downstairs from the apartment with the Oxford Spanish Dictionary which kept Numenius so busy for hours (we now own a copy, and a splendid thing it is too). We popped in to see what they might have in the way of fountain pens.
I don’t want something fancy. I don’t want laqueur, mother of pearl, bakelite, ebony; I don’t want a venetian glass dip pen which looks elegant on a female executive’s desk but can’t write for toffee; I don’t want a collector’s item to be stored in a vault or even just a drawer. I want something that can WRITE, by golly. It’s all in the nib, the nib, the nib. The rest of the pen is simply a vehicle to hold the nib; to facilitate smooth, even transfer of ink to the nib; and to permit the hand to HOLD the nib (balance is the next thing I look for; good pens are designed to be balanced when the cap is on the body, and to write best like this).
A happy curiosity: the RETRACTABLE fountain pen, made by Stypen (French, bien sûr). I bought one immediately. We went back a few days later and bought one for Numenius. It made writing in our travel journal a pure joy; we did lots of sketches on buses stuck in traffic; and, of course, we made sure to remove the cartridges before getting on the plane home to avoid the dreaded blue-black menstruation, where ink gets all over everything you ever owned and everyone else’s too.
I keep this pen in my pocket all the time; it fits into even the smallest pockets. It’s my current favorite. Good, fine nib. Great balance. Great price: 12 Euros.
Postscript: some readers in England read this post and did some research (thanks Clare and Alan). The Stypen-Up is available at a fabulous shop in Brighton called Pen to Paper. The fact that this pen takes small standard cartridges means that there are many colors of ink from which to choose.
I am contacting these people to see if they ship to the United States…
Further postscript, January 23, 2004: The fabulous Pendemonium, based in Iowa, stocks the pens, the inks, and the paper, along with a huge number of collectibles. They seem to be out of stock of several items but are very prompt in responding to inquiries; even though they’re at the Philadelphia Pen Show this week I heard back the same day. I have bought pens from them before but didn’t realize they ran to what in France is a typical supermarket brand…
23 December 03
Immersion Learning
At left is a bit of typography from a sign outside a bank in vila. Pica noticed this sign on account of the unusual DE ligature; meanwhile I did what I was doing throughout the trip to Spain – notice the language. Try to figure out patterns in words, phrases and make sense of a language that I’ve never studied. My favorite book in one of the places where we stayed turned out to be a copy of the Oxford Spanish Dictionary.
I’ve returned from Spain determined to learn Spanish. I don’t know what it will be like to learn a language at age forty. I’m monolingual, but along the way I’ve studied Hebrew, some German, some Latin, and most of all French (six years in secondary school). I’ve signed up for a class in the new year, and right now I’m starting by trying to read, with aid of dictionaries and grammars, whatever Spanish I come across.
22 December 03
Birds of the Coto Doana
The one full day we spent birding in Doana was calm, sunny, and warm (at least once the sun got well up). It involved ferry rides to and fro over the Guadalquivir and a long, hugely wet ford where the water sloshed up to the doors of the van we were driven around in by our guide, Jos Antonio of Discovering Doana.
Here’s our list. My highlights: stone curlew, Sardinian warbler, short-toed eagle. Numenius’ highlights: kingfisher, white stork, stonechat.
Little grebe
Great cormorant
black-crowned night-heron
squacco heron
cattle egret
little egret
great white heron
grey heron
purple heron
black stork
white stork
glossy ibis
greylag goose
wigeon
teal
mallard
shoveler
common pochard
black-shouldered kite
red kite
short-toed eagle
marsh harrier
hen harrier
sparrowhawk
common buzzard
booted eagle
osprey
kestrel
red-legged partridge
moorhen
purple gallinule
coot
red-knobbed coot
black-winged stilt
avocet
stone-curlew
common ringed plover
Kentish (snowy) plover
European golden plover
lapwing
sanderling
snipe
green sandpiper
black-headed gull
herring gull
yellow-legged gull
wood pigeon
barn owl
little owl
kingfisher
calandra lark
lesser short-toed lark
crested lark
skylark
meadow pipit
white wagtail
robin
black redstart
stonechat
redwing
Cetti’s warbler
fan-tailed warbler
Sardinian warbler
chiffchaff
great tit
great grey shrike
magpie
jackdaw
starling
spotless starling
house sparrow
spanish sparrow
serin
goldfinch
linnet
corn bunting
21 December 03
Medieval Interludes
At left we see Pica standing in the battlements on top of the old wall at vila. Spain is of course a good place for seeing medieval things. Given that I live in a town where old means dating back to the 1920s, this was an enjoyable thing. Of the places we visited, both vila and Toledo were replete with medieval stuff, but there was also the occasional castle seen from train or road.
And there were lots of advertisements for a certain movie entitled El Seor de los Anillos: El Retorno del Rey, the English-language version of which we just saw yesterday. We also noted that Lgolas the elf seems to be as popular in Spain as he is here. And in lieu of an elven-blade, Toledo steel would be just the thing to defend against a marauding orc or two, or so the tourist shops suggested.
We have created a gallery of photos from our trip to Spain, which may be seen here.
20 December 03
On Pilgrimage
One of the greatest surprises we encountered on our trip to Spain was the hamlet of El Rocío (literally, “The Dew”), which lies between Cádiz and Huelva on the western side of the Guadalquivir estuary (and the largest natural park in Europe, the Coto Doñana). The sand streets, which after so much rain prompted the driver of the bus from Seville to announce rather grumpily “no entra,” spilling us all out onto the highway to walk into the village, were a revelation. Lots of horses use these streets and they prefer sand to asphalt and cobbles.
A few weary steps (we were dragging our bags on a hand cart and it found the sand heavier going than horses do) into the village and a memory, vague enough, about the Virgen del Rocío was triggered by the ceramic tiles on walls, the shops selling “ropa rociera” (flamenco, or sevillana, dress), and the few shops devoted to devotions and religious knick-knacks. It all seemed very quiet.
In June (around Pentecost), though, this hamlet of no more than 2,000 swells to nearly a million. Pilgrims come from all over, many of them making an arduous three-day trek by horse or on foot, in colorful dress, in carts garlanded with flowers. Apparently the cult of this Virgin Mary (who demurely looks down at the child she’s holding; her attributes include White Dove and Shepherdess) is growing fast. She has devotees throughout Andalucía (where she has no shortage of competitionthe Virgen de la Macarena, de la Estrella, de la Esperanza are all local Virgins with strong followings) but also in Madrid, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, and Adelaide. That’s Adelaide Australia. They sing a flamenco Salve to her every Friday in Madrid, punctuated with lots of olés. Many songs are written to her (and they are songs you can dance to); the pilgrims sing them as they make the journey and around campfires in the evenings. More come every year; they are not tourists. They are pilgrims. The cab driver who drove us to the airport in Madrid on Monday morning had a medallion of the Virgen del Rocío on his dashboard.
While this might all smack of hocus-pocus (and though the cult to Our Lady of the Dew only started in 1240, there seems little doubt that its origins are pre-Christian), it is worth pausing to look at the connection of place and the holy, which defines pilgrimage and not simply devotion. If a journey is involved in the search for the transcendent, the body can become a metaphor for the act of seeking. By moving in space with effort and blisters, it is purified. The longing can grow in proportion to the time and effort it takes to get there.
Our own pilgrimage, to find the Imperial Eagle in the adjacent Coto Doñana, inevitably took on a new hue in this village of pilgrimage. (We did not see the eagle; we’ll have to come back.) It was good to be reminded, meanwhile, that this was a journey of renewal and farewell for me. We spent the fourth anniversary of my father’s death with close friends of his and held him in our memory; we connected with a child whose journey back to China (someday) might bring her some greater awareness of who she is.
It’s easy to scoff at tourists with cameras yet I hope, somehow, that travelling to distant lands will give them what they seek, in part. To yearn is human. When it’s done to clapping and guitars, though, it’s Andalucian.
19 December 03
Critters Of Andaluca
In Andaluca we saw many horses roaming wild in the marshes of the Doana. During our birding excursion we had to stop at one point and drive slowly around several that were happily milling about the road. The horse at left was grazing contentedly at dawn in the marsh just by our hotel in El Roco. Apparently these are all mares, and they get rounded up at the end of June each year, just after the pilgrimage.
At right is a kitten who was sunning herself in the courtyard next to the new Picasso museum in Mlaga. Nearby was a mime couple, dressed in statuesque white, the woman in 18th century garb, the man kneeling with a Cupidian bow and arrow. The kitten wasn’t quite sure what they were up to.
When we were driving down the canyon road leading to Mlaga, we stopped once for food, and were surprised to see a black spaniel on the roof of the house next door. I think he enjoyed the view.