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.
3 October 03
My New Goddaughter
One of my oldest friends has recently adopted a baby girl from China. Jennifer and Harald live in Sweden and their new daughter, Linda Qiu, seems to be adjusting quite well to the cold, to five dogs, and to a red-painted farmhouse.
I hope to join them all in Madrid in early December for the Christening. For now, I’m having a lot of fun trying to find suitable children’s books! Linda will grow up speaking English at home, Swedish at school. (Hope there’s some Spanish in there too…)
This is a great honor for me. I have never been a godmother. It seems really, momentously, important, somehow.
2 October 03
Ohio Roots
A note on Ancestral Place for the Ecotone Wiki.
Both my parents grew up in Ohio, they meeting as undergraduates at Ohio State University in Columbus. My father’s side was the more recent arrival in the state; my mother’s side arrived first and settled in Lorain County, a bit west of Cleveland, around 1840 or so. There they stayed for well over a hundred years, apparently staying out of the limelight, working as small farmers and laborers.
One of these years I’ll poke around Lorain County to learn what I can about the lives of my ancestors and their land. In the meantime I’ll content myself with resources such as the Lorain County Genealogy page, and a memory of a winter birding trip up to Lake Erie during which I saw my first rough-legged hawk and northern shrike, and returned via the ancestral territory.
Oh, and I pronounce “root” with a short vowel. Is that an Ohio thing?
1 October 03
Northern Climes
A contribution to the Ecotone Wiki’s biweekly topic, Ancestral Place.
When I first moved to the United States from England, I was astonished by how important it seemed to be to people where you came from. This is of almost no consequence in England, where far more importance is placed on the way you speak, the school you went to, your name—all the important class indicators.
There are lots of class indicators here too, but they’re different, more hidden. Having “come from” (i.e. having “people” who “came from”) England places you on a higher social rung than having “come from,” say, Serbia, or Ghana, or Armenia. Much higher. Having “come on” the Mayflower (the fact that most of the people on the Mayflower were barely literate is irrelevant) gives you the highest cachet of all. Since I do, in fact, have a Mayflower ancestor, despite my English accent, my Ancestral Place is sort of a guessing game (I get asked where I’m from at least once a week).
But it’s mostly Lancashire, it turns out. Both sides. From sheep farmers to mill owners to petty bourgeois shopkeepers. Lancashire is a wet, soggy place, much blackened by the ravages of the industrial revolution and neglect from the center of power in the south, which no doubt contributed to the spread of nonconformist sects. Its inhabitants are gritty, silent, phlegmatic, and excellent cricketers (a sport that requires infinite patience). Lancastrians are given to interesting turns of phrase when particularly inspired.
I hope I have some of the resilience they are known for.
30 September 03
The Complete Peanuts
The complete run of the Peanuts comic strip—all fifty years—is about to be reprinted. The comics publisher Fantagraphics will be issuing these in 25 hardbound volumes, releasing two a year. I am happy to see that the strip will be republished in its entirety: it’s been a significant enough part of American culture that people will enjoy and learn from the complete set for a long time to come. This news is also a reminder that Pica and I should one of these months make an expedition over to the Charles M. Schulz Museum, not too far from here in Santa Rosa.
29 September 03
The Creatures of Autumn
Fall migration has been going on for some time now, but the birds that spend the winter here have started arriving just within the last week. The white-crowned sparrows are now busily rooting around the oleanders for seeds. They will sing all winter, cheerfully lighting up the short days. The Swainson’s hawks have almost all gone-we still have a lingering two or three that seem to be juveniles, crying pitifully in the morning-and the red-tailed hawks are coming in to take their places, down from the foothills for the winter.
Yesterday I went with some friends west to Bodega Bay, birding. The promise of eastern warblers in the trees of Owl Canyon along with the chance to see my mother lured me out of bed at 5:00 am (Numenius sensibly declined). We didn’t see many warblers, but another birder alerted us to large numbers of warblers in Point Reyes to the south. We all made our way there and were rewarded with an extraordinary number of eastern vagrants; I was able to see most of them even with my limited mobility. (Things are looking up in this department: I got the final insert out of my boot this morning, and am now able to walk almost normally instead of lurching about like a drunken sailor.) There was a nip in the air, well described by Lisa of Field Notes.
The birds remind us that the light is waning. It’s time to think about different dinners, different clothes. To think about abundance and to be grateful. I always, somehow, prefer this season to spring.
By the way, the next joint Ecotone topic will be Ancestral Place (October 1). Everyone is invited to write something about this and post an excerpt and link to it on the wiki.