13 October 03
Peace, Love, and Baseball
I was out this evening at a meeting planning the Peace Picnic which is part of the Campus Community Book Project, so I missed the Red Sox/Yankees game. I got home to two voice mails, both informing me of a Red Sox win. I’m so glad I’m being taken care of so well by Numenius and Doc Rock!
12 October 03
Fracas At Fenway
Yesterday’s key playoff matchup featuring pitching aces Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens between the Boston Red Sox and the NY Yankees turned much uglier than expected. Both pitchers threw intentionally well inside at the opposing batter, resulting in two skirmishes on the field of play, and the septuaginarian coach for the Yankees, Don Zimmer, being knocked down after he charged Martinez. To top that all off, two Yankees players may end up being charged with assault and battery after they tangled with an overexuberant groundskeeper in the Yankees bullpen. Not a good showing for either team—one wonders how they’ll make it through the rest of the series intact. The Red Sox lost 4-3, putting them much in the hole.
Down south, the Chicago Cubs seem well on their way to the World Series, beating the Florida Marlins at home 8-3 and now being within one game of the playoff series win.
I’m off on a two-day trip to Baltimore to meet with some frighteningly bright computer scientists. This will play havoc with following the playoffs, alas.
11 October 03
Harvested By the North Wind
Friday morning started out gusty and then the full-on October north wind set in before dawn. This took down a lot of the ripe English walnuts from the tree just outside our window.
I went out this morning to collect as many as I could before the rodents-good and badget them. A coyote, the first I’ve seen in a while, scared the living daylights out of about eight jackrabbits. I heard mockingbirds, white-crowned sparrows, the muffled voices of cyclists zooming down the road, the cattle across the street, the occasional tomato truck, about five trains, and the dogs barking every time I shifted to the next patch of fallen walnuts-my boot cracking them noisily.
Long morning shadows
A coyote trots northward
The full moon, sinking
10 October 03
The Winery Downstairs
It’s that time of year again, when a new crush of students starts crushing grapes. The Davis Enterprise has a front page story today about the wine production class that takes place in the teaching winery next to Wickson Hall, the building where I work famous as the home of the UC Davis viticulture and enology department. It’s neat seeing the forklift moving around large bins of grapes when I come cycling in each morning.
I can’t say I’ve ever had any of their wine, but we in Wickson Hall have a special dispensation to have alcoholic beverages without a campus permit. This comes in handy for those champagne-and-cake office celebrations.
9 October 03
Full Moon over Walnuts
Numenius and I wandered out this evening to look at the moon. It may not seem like much, but it’s the first time I’ve been able to match his strides in this way since August 10th. The boot is still on but every day I get stronger. I am even walking with a shoe on my left foot at the PT’s, doing certain exercises with it.
The moon and the walnuts remind me it’s time once again to get busy making walnut ink. Since this involves simmering a huge pot on the stove for three days, the weather needs to cooperate. I was thinking this year of expanding my repertoire and trying to make oak gall ink; the valley oaks seem to have been hard hit in the last few years and the galls are lying about on the ground, ready for something. Sybill Archibald suggests that in medieval times the symbolism of the wasp-evil inversion of the bee, attribute of the Virgin Mary-meant that oak galls were a bridge between good and evil, and that the process of writing with ink prepared from oak galls was spiritual. I’m interested to try it, though I have no idea where I’m going to find ferrous sulphate.
8 October 03
Day One With Arnold
As everybody this side of the moon knows by now, we in California woke up to a new governor this morning. I don’t think it’s the Apocalypse, but I’m definitely not happy. California was voting with the id. There’s something archetypal about the fact that Arnold is a body-builder: it’s all image. After all, body-builders are a very different species from athletes. Never mind the lack of relevant background or political experience—the aura of celebrity is what matters, and is what will get California off on a new tack.
Jeanne d’Arc has a great post up about how it looks like we’ve just elected a misogynistic bully. Like her, I am appalled that so many voters don’t seem to care.
Silver linings? This wasn’t a right-wing revolt, this was a throw-the-bum-out-of-office upswelling. Who knows—maybe that same sort of energy will lead to Bush’s defeat in 2004. And since Arnold’s governing ability is a complete mystery to all, he might just end up doing a better job than Gray Davis. Davis certainly set a low standard to hop above.
Or not. Schwarzeneggerian cluelessness could easily lead California into much worse fiscal shape than it already is. That’s what can happen when you elect a cypher. From this side of the Causeway, I’m morbidly curious about what’s in store for the Resources Agency, and will learn soon enough.
7 October 03
Fandom and Place
This is not an official entry to the Ecotone Wiki, but Numenius and I were reflecting on how sports fans (we were specifically talking about baseball, but this can be applied to many different sports) identify themselves with a place primarily through their devotion to a team.
First, there is the locus of the team’s activity-say, Fenway Park, a place so steeped in baseball, Boston, and memory that Chris O’Donnell goes so far as to call it his ancestral place. Then, there is the “flavor” of the fans (A’s fans, for example, in no way resemble Yankees fans, either in dress, demeanor, or speech), not to mention the “flavor” of the players (a certain player can “look” like a Detroit Tiger. The Yankees’ attempt to transform Jason Giambi from an Oakland A into a Yankee was successful-up to a point. You can shave a goatee but removing tattoos from forearms is more of a proposition).
Much has been written about the diaspora of Boston Red Sox fans (called Red Sox Nation) and how they are identifiable in any ball park by their lack of belief in the possibility that their team might, perhaps, this year, do the unthinkable and win. There are those hunched shoulders, that diffident cheer. We all, no matter how far away from Boston we might live, sigh when we think about the uncomfortable seats at Fenway and the big green wall in left field.
6 October 03
The Medieval Presidency
Neal Gabler has an excellent piece about how George Bush may be running the nation’s first medieval presidency—one where rationality and empiricism have gone out the window to be replaced by faith and a preconceived cosmology. There’s lots of discussion of this over at Kos, and I think he’s on to something here. In a similar vein, CalPundit cites a piece for the Boston Globe by Chris Mooney about the 1995 demise of the congressional Office of Technology in the Newt Gingrich-led Congress, and how such an institution is unlikely to be revived in the today’s Republican-led Congress, this reflecting the waning influence of scientists on national policy.
5 October 03
The Recall Farce
After fighting depression for weeks owing to the likelihood of our next governor’s being a woman-groping Nazi sympathizer with steroid-enhanced anatomical bits, I have come to the conclusion that it might not be such a terrible thing after all if Arnold were, in fact, to win the recall election on Tuesday. Here’s why:
1) This would deal a permanent, irrevocable blow to the Republican party in California. Arnold is, remember, pro-choice and pro-gay marriage. The hardline Republican right will never recover if he becomes governor.
2) The legislature will remain untouched by the recall election. It is now, and will remain, so hostile to Mr. Terminator that it will be three months before he can even find the bathroom, let alone get any of his (or Pete Wilson’s) schemes through the door. There will be stalemate for three years at least. Imagine trying to get a Schwarzenegger budget through this crowd…
3) The world needed a good laugh, and it seems we’re providing that in spades.
Remember, none of this would have happened if there had been even the slightest inkling of leadership in the Capitol. Gray Davis has been so incompetent-so SPECTACULARLY and PERFECTLY incompetent-that this makes the Perfect Storm look like a balmy breeze.
Hold on to your hats; it’s going to be a bumpy ride…
[I’m refraining from mentioning the Red Sox win today out of deference to Chris, but that won’t stop me from cheering for the Chicago Cubs, who beat the Braves tonight on Turner Field in admirable fashion.]
4 October 03
Playoff Ordeals
Everything was peachy the first day of the playoffs, with the Giants winning, the Cubs winning, and the Yankees losing, but it has gone downhill since then. The SF Giants were the first team eliminated from the playoffs today, they losing three in a row to the Florida Marlins. The Yankees have taken the next two games from the Minnesota Twins, and are now poised to win the series tomorrow. The Cubs will play the Atlanta Braves in the deciding game of their series.
Meanwhile the Red Sox in a heartbreaking duel lost their opening game with Oakland in the 12th inning, and lost the second game as well, never threatening. Both teams are hitting very poorly, the A’s pitching successfully containing the Red Sox’s powerful lineup. The Red Sox managed to stay alive in tonight’s game, winning it in the bottom of the 11th with a two-run home run from Trot Nixon. It was a very bizarre game, with 6 errors between the two teams, and baserunning snafus by the A’s, including one where Miguel Tejada of the A’s was running from 2nd to 3rd, got obstructed by the Red Sox’s third baseman, ran around third, then stopped between third and home figuring he’d be awarded home anyway after the obstruction. Or something like that. Confusion reigned at that point. He was tagged by the catcher, and the umpiring crew ruled him out, since he should have kept running to home.
The poor Giants. It’s a sad day in Giantsland. The Red Sox avoided the sweep today, but they have to win the next two in a row, so they have their work cut out for them. It might help if their sluggers were to start hitting.