7 July 10
Superstition
Spain face Germany in a few hours. Like Maradona and his rosary beads, elaborate wardrobe shifts, and no doubt favorite drawers, I am filled with the irrational urge to don a red shirt, but wonder whether that will jinx the team.
Many athletes have elaborate superstitious rituals some of which border, like Maradona’s, on the theatrically absurd. Fans do as well. I’m trying to resist, trying to talk myself out of it. But what I’ve noticed for sure is that my syntax has become more British in the fast three weeks. It’s something to do with the language of football and I don’t think it’s a superstition, it’s more elemental.
So do I believe Paul the Octopus in his prognostications? do I believe they are always flawed when he is pitching Spain against Germany? Sigh. To any non-soccer types reading the blog, at least it will all be over soon, one way or the other.
29 June 10
And Then There Were Eight
We get a bit of a breather until the next World Cup matches; the quarterfinals don’t begin until Friday. I’m not quite sure how I will deal without this diet of twice or thrice-daily footie matches. In the quarterfinals I am rooting for Netherlands over Brazil, Germany over Argentina, Spain over Paraguay, and am indifferent in Ghana vs. Uruguay (it will be neat seeing either team in the semis). I’m afraid attending to what is happening in baseball is quite difficult now. The two sports are just on completely different elemental planes of action, especially when you compare the intensity of the World Cup to the middle of a baseball season.
28 June 10
Back from Pennsylvania
Spending a week just outside Gettysburg, studying 9th-century European lettering: bliss. Bliss was the long table with papers and ink and writing easels. Bliss was the conversation with other letterform devotees, sharing table and morning coffee (well, tea in my case) outside in the warm humid dawn. Bliss was rising on the solstice before the sun and greeting it accompanied by a gold flute echoing back the mourning dove’s soft song. Bliss was the delight of learning how to grind stick ink.
I sketched at Little Round Top and from Cemetery Ridge, looking down on the field with fences faced by Pickett’s division, marching double time up into Union canister. Ghosts.
18 June 10
One Week Behind The Jabulani
We’re deep in the trenches of following the World Cup, and will be in that mode for the next three weeks. Mexico’s win today 2-0 over France has brought the most satisfaction of any match to date; with 44 matches remaining in the tournament more delights and disappointments are surely to come. Not having a television I am quite happy that ESPN Radio has stepped up to broadcasting all the matches on radio. The flip side of this intense focus on the sport one month out of every four years is I don’t really have much access to following top-flight soccer the other forty-seven months. It’s a tad of a predicament.
10 June 10
Bafana Bafana!
Well, it all starts tomorrow. I can’t decide whether to come in to work early (7 am here) and listen to the opening match, South Africa-Mexico, on the radio in Spanish, or go in to House of Prague for an egg breakfast, or go to International House for coffee and donuts. Which match where? Ooof.
As Steven Rubio says, ESPN has gone all out to televise the World Cup this year. And it may be worth watching some of it instead of sticking with my usual favorite, Univisión. I will be paying attention to several blogs including Steven’s and Not A Safari. And somewhere in this murk I’m going to be traveling to Pennsylvania for a week — for a calligraphy workshop. I may have to participate in some furtive football fanishness. Watch this space.
The first World Cup I remember much of is 1970. The anticipation, the cheers, the rib-splitting tension in those smoky rooms just north of Madrid then, sucked into the over-urbanized sprawl heading for default now. Pelé. I remember Pelé, what a phenomenon, he was pure flowing magic on the field, we watched in black and white but it seemed like color, gold even, he had a sort of holy aura: the football was so beautiful. It was a fantastic World Cup and it hooked me forever.
I’d love to see South Africa do well, they are so excited to be hosting and throwing a damn good party already. I will be very torn between England and the US but hope the US does well this time. I will enjoy watching Brazil and will hope, as always, that Argentina gets thrashed. I have a huge soft spot for any underdog and hope to see an unlikely winner here and there. But my heart, as always, belongs to Spain, to La Roja, and is in my mouth as they make their final preparations for the tournament. Maybe this year… Quizás. Vamos, muchachines, que ya es hora.
ETA: See also the excellent Zonal Marking.
6 June 10
Drawing Day At The Zoo
Today is the worldwide Drawing Day 2010: we participated by going sketching at the Sacramento Zoo. Pica drew mostly birds; I drew a mix of birds and ungulates. At left is a sketch I made of an Amazon parrot, at right are a couple of giraffes. 
I need to submit my giraffe drawings to the one million giraffes project — the creator of this project has as of today collected 839,661 drawings of giraffes and has only 208 days left to reach his goal of one million giraffe drawings!
23 May 10
Maker Faire
This year we split up to cover the areas we wanted to see independently. Numenius spent time at a couple of panel discussions — including open source hardware — and looking at electronics. I spent time with the fiber folks and paper people. We both liked the robotic gamelan. I wanted to buy a geeky sketching canvas kilt you could ride a bike with. I learned how to knit a klein bottle (3 dimensions only, not 4). We bought this amazing stuff called Sugru (a silicone-based substance you can use to repair or enhance things, like ergonomically sculpting handles — it dries overnight with exposure to air).
A long day. Now we find a bee swarm in one of the guava bushes, which are flowering copiously…
22 May 10
Friday Is For Climbing On The Roof
And so was Tuesday and Wednesday. Charlie has been a scalawag this week. He’s quite snug on the bed right now though.
We’re off to the Maker Faire tomorrow! We expect to see all sorts of wacky goodness, from two-story high ray gun rocket ships to knitted Klein bottles.
19 May 10
A Visit to Sacramento
Racing off to the station this morning on my bike, I got on the train to Sacramento to represent the Oiled Wildlife Care Network at State Scientist Day, an event where 3,000 children come to the State Capitol to see scientific initiatives by California.
Water, pollution, lead, of course oil, endangered species, geology — I wasn’t able to visit all the booths but it was a good sampling and there was lots of enthusiasm.
Interacting with kids doesn’t come easily to me (there’s a reason I never had any) but this was an oft-repeated schtick, what happens to animals that get caught in oil, what we can do to help… the parents and teachers engaged more closely in the conversation because, I’m assuming, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is present on their minds. It’s on ours, too: my colleague Mike’s been there for three weeks, trying to set up the marine mammal and turtle response (well cataloged on the owcn blog ).
People: people who were short, people who were dressed up as bears (Smokey and Warden Grizzly were two I spotted), and this one guy dressed in 500 plastic bags.
We had a smattering of rain and it was, at length, over. I sketched. I took the train back to Davis, biked back to the office into a headwind with the miraculously recovered OWCN banner on my back. (It’s heavier than you’d think.)
18 May 10
May Flowers, May Showers
Saturday we provided radio support once again for the Davis Double Century. The weather was very mild this year, with highs not much above 80 degrees F. In part because of the mild weather the riders had a relatively easy time of it, and not too many had to be sagged back to Davis. The riders even got a dose of fog climbing into the mountains of eastern Napa County. Pica drove the entire course and then some as a sag vehicle; she was impressed to see so many wildflowers still out. It’s been an odd spring, with brief periods of rain every week or so. I meanwhile stayed behind at start/finish and worked at radio net control, and was especially pleased to see that the GPS radio tracker I had built was working well in Pica’s vehicle, and I was able to follow her progress via the APRS software we had running at net control.
Today was the second stage of the Amgen Tour of California, the stage starting in Davis and ending in Santa Rosa. Last year’s first stage also started in Davis, but the race was in February. It was pouring that day, and rained off and on throughout the week. So the race organizers moved the race to May in part to get better weather (never mind the conflict with the Giro d’Italia). I was amused to note when I went out to watch the peloton start to ride out of town that it was sprinkling. The riders must not know what to make of Davis weather.