20 February 04
Feasting On Blossoms
This white-crowned sparrow has been chowing down on almond blossoms along with his buddies. (Numenius took this photo yesterday morning.) Most of the sparrows, which spend the winter here in the Central Valley, have now moulted into adult plumage. They will be heading north over the next six weeks or so. The storm system that put so much water in our vicinity was warm and this, along with the increasing light, will be triggering the various synapses that cause birds to get up and go.
I think they like almond blossoms the best, not just because they’re the first ones. The blossoms smell just like honey.
My last day of work in Graduate Studies was today. I’ll be starting my new job at the Wildlife Health Center on Monday…
19 February 04
Creek In Flood
Putah Creek has turned into a lake. It’s as high as I recall seeing it, and would be in our living room if it weren’t for the levee. And there’s more rain on its way.
18 February 04
Runnymedians in California
A former schoolmate-from my school in Madrid (and Jenny’s over at Mulubinba Moments)-lives not far from here. Although he was in the class above me, our mothers both worked in the school library.
Ian and his wife Katrin met us in Bodega Bay this weekend; we had brunch at the Seaweed Cafe and then went to look for whales on Bodega Head. It was fun to reminisce and to talk politics. Some people seem to have the hobby of reading, researching, and memorizing facts and figures. Ian is one of these, and he regularly spends time with elected officials making sure they know what he thinks. (I have no time to do this and am thankful some do!)
He doesn’t look the same; he used to be blond (I used to be brunette). My mother, he thought, looked EXACTLY the same. (I now look more and more like her.)
We all bemoaned the loss of wild space and a simpler, saner lifestyle.
17 February 04
The Drafting Pencil Museum
Fountain pens are not the only writing instruments to have their ardent devotees. Leadholder.com is an online museum on the history of drafting pencils, and includes many images and catalogue entries.
The thin lead mechanical pencil is only reluctantly included in this site. As the author says:
I’ve been ranting since long before this site began about the evils of thin lead pencils and the corruptive power they have over impressionable youth. Although these impure drawing implements are now represented in the collection, thin lead mechanical pencils and their use are in no way endorsed by leadholder.com.
16 February 04
Marking Place
For the Ecotone wiki’s joint topic on Stones and Rocks.
Ever since our paleolithic ancestors started painting on stone, it has been the material of choice for marking, in a more or less permanent way, a geographic location of particular significance. The art of Scottish sculptor Ian Hamilton Finlay explores this neoclassically (a commission at UC San Diego shows a 1987 example), but cairns on mountaintops are as interesting in their way as the Trajan column. Stone: permanence. Human interaction with stone: human attempt to project permanence.
Gravestones are the markers most of us will encounter, but even they are less than permanent what with acid rain and ordinary erosion. When my father was cremated, my mother scattered his ashes to the waves from the northern California clifftops by their home. At the time I missed the lack of a stone that would give me a place to visit, to mourn. A series of rocks guards the inlet where the ashes scattered five years ago. They are bigger, more imposing, than most gravestones, and during our visit there this weekend I was able to touch my father’s memory by a visit to the cliff and the rocks below. The pelagic cormorants are coming into breeding plumage; California gray whales are migrating north. The surf pounds the rocks and the cycle continues. One day these rocks will be sand.
15 February 04
Indian Rock
An entry for the Ecotone Wiki’s topic on Stones and Rocks.
Berkeley, in addition to its fame as a center of development of California cuisine (the town’s radical past now usurped by the gourmet ghetto on Shattuck Avenue), is also noteworthy as one of the original training grounds for modern rock climbing. In the 1930s, the California mountaineers who would go on to do many of the first ascents in the Sierra Nevadas, among them Dick Leonard and David Brower, would practice their bouldering techniques in North Berkeley where there is a set of crags composed of rhyolite.
Indian Rock is the most famous of these boulders. It got its name from nearby mortar basins in the rock used by natives for grinding acorns. It is less than a mile from my old house, and I would often go there on a walk. It has a great view from the top, and as can be seen from the steps in the photo, you don’t have to go up the steep side with ropes to get to the top.
14 February 04
Metamorph
According to Justin Pope, there are many different Jesus figures in American history. There’s Jesus the distant symbol, and Jesus the gentle friend. There’s Jesus the pacifist and caregiver, and Jesus the gruff, muscular warrior. There’s black Jesus, and white Jesus. Homely and handsome, capitalist and socialist, stern and hippie. Hard-working social reformer, mystical comforter. (He omits the “Buddy Jesus,” a winking, good-natured fellow from the irreverent but deeply religious film Dogma.)
Pope has been looking at two new books: “Jesus in America: A History,” by Richard Wightman Fox, and “American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon.” This is all of great interest to me as I continue my Religion and Non-violence class here at UC Davis.
Gandhi is one of the most interesting historical figures of all time: weaving together life experience (especially colonialism) and Hindu, Christian, Enlightenment, and other traditions and texts, he developed a unique way of changing the world. His political and spiritual beliefs were inseparable; his body became the locus of conflict as he fasted, declared lifelong celibacy, pared down to essentials (gradually shifting down into a loincloth; his body became a national obsession in India particularly during his fasts-unto-death). One of the most interesting things to me about Gandhi, though, is his fascination with Jesus, whom he saw as the best example of a non-violent fighter.
“I kept running into Jesus when I was trying to study Hindus and Buddhists,” says Prothero quoted by Justin Pope. Indeed one of the most interesting things I learned from our Muslim brothers and sisters following September 11, 2001, was the reverence in which they hold Jesus (the word is always followed by “may his name be blessed” in Islam).
As the release date for Mel Gibson’s “Passion of Christ” looms, and Jews in the United States and elsewhere brace themselves for a wave of anti-semitism, we might do well to explore a little further what our own image is of Jesus.
13 February 04
Sign Of Spring
The first fruit tree to blossom here is the almond, long before it leafs out. This tree is in our backyard, and I think its blossoms opened on Wednesday.
But a weak storm has come through today, and it has been overcast with some showers. No astronomy tonight!
12 February 04
Bird Names
Some names for birds seem perfectly obvious: red-bellied woodpecker, for instance, gives a fairly detailed description of the bird, while hoopoe approximates its name. Thanks to Richard for drawing my attention to the meaning of the word “phainopepla,” which is the only species of silky flycatcher found in North America. It comes from the Greek meaning “shining gown,” which is a great name for this beautiful bird. “Pyrrhuloxia” means flame-colored plus crossed (oblique) bill.
The names I like best, though, are the “descriptive” ones that aren’t helpful at all. The yellow belly on a yellow-bellied sapsucker is really a stretch. The bristles on the thighs of a bristle-thighed curlew are NOT a good field mark…
11 February 04
Words Of The Year
Perhaps it’s getting a little late for lists for 2003, but the American Dialect Society has an annual list of the words that most colored the nation’s lexicon in that year. The overall winner in 2003 was metrosexual, with notable others being SARS, gropenfhrer, and weapons of mass deception.
And Pica and I certainly qualify as flexitarians.