8 March 11
State of Siege
Last week I finished reading Fernand Braudel’s masterful tome The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, a book which I’ve been wanting to get through for about twenty-five years now. Looking around for other retellings of the same theme I came across the author Roger Crowley, who has recently written the books 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West and Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, The Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World. Crowley is an able storyteller, and I finished both these books in rapid succession. Sieges are at the center of both books: the siege and the fall of Constantinople being the subject of the first, and the Great Siege of Malta in 1565 being the centerpiece of the second book.
After reading Crowley’s narrative I decide the siege of Malta would make a great movie, hitting a number of good storytelling tropes: an epic defense against overwhelming odds; the sacrifice of one contingent of the defenders to buy time for the rest; and finally rescue by the arrival of reinforcements just in time (delayed by the ditherings of Philip II off in Spain). Sieges don’t seem to make it into war movies very often though. What comes to my mind is Helms’ Deep in The Two Towers, and switching from fantasy to history, the 1964 movie Zulu. This list of top ten siege movies doesn’t really add any other examples of siege warfare, most of the movies on the list being thrillers or horror flicks. I don’t think the siege of Constantinople has quite the potential for being a movie as does the siege of Malta. Not that 15th-16th century Mediterranean history has the slightest chance of making it into the movies: how can you film a historical drama without there being any English royalty around?
25 February 11
Paris, 1986
The metro.
The dogshit.
The smoke.
The traffic.
The noise.
The stairs.
The walls.
The silence.
Dwindle-cash.
Dwindle-truths.
Dwindle-joy.
Dwindle-god.
Dwindle-voice.
Fake smile.
Fake joy.
Fake French.
Fake marriage.
Fake self.
Book-delve.
Deep-delve.
Story-delve:
Sheherezade
on a perch
weaving tales
(in flawless French)
to save her life
This is a contribution to the Language, Place Blog Carnival hosted this time by Jean at Tasting Rhubarb with a theme of “another place, another language, another self.”
20 February 11
February Sketchcrawl
Following the passage of a cold front, I woke up yesterday to the sight of snow sprinkled on the Vaca Mountains, and with wet-looking clouds still blowing on through this month’s Davis Sketchcrawl called for dressing warmly. Several of us sketchers met on campus at the Death Star AKA the Social Sciences and Humanities Building. The sketch at left are two views of this odd maze of a building. Fingers frozen, we headed to a nearby cafe for lunch and finished up the day only a couple hundred yards from where we began at the bus circle near the student union.
13 February 11
Passe-Passe Papa
Numenius and I walked the five miles into town and back yesterday to see The Ilusionist, one of the three animation films nominated for an Oscar this year. It probably won’t get one because the Academy is so very safe and the Toy Story triology is over and will be hard for them to pass up, but you should go if you get the chance.
Jacques Tati wrote the screenplay in the late 50s. His daughter gave it to Sylvain Chomet after he’d asked her for permission to show a clip of Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot in The Triplets of Belleville/Belleville Rendezvous. The resulting animated film is like having another — another! — Tati film come to life. He’s right there, exquisitely drawn, every expression and gawky crumple-from-the-middle impossibly perfect. There’s a scene in which the magician bumbles into a theatre playing Tati in Mon Oncle, leaving, not quite leaving, finally walking through a gate; it’s his cue to depart, leaving the young Shetland islander-turned Edinburgh beauty he’d been a father-figure to behind in the arms of the future — television and rock-and-roll. It’s the most loving story of loss and, well, passing.
If this film weren’t so heartwrenching I’d go back today. Actually, I’d watch all of Tati first and then go — I caught some of the references but lost many more, doubtless, and part of what makes this so painful is that my father was such a Tati fan. What I definitely want to do is listen to the final song (written, as was the entire score, by Chomet himself) — this film is almost devoid of dialogue and lots of clues are to be found in the lyrics, but I didn’t catch them all.
10 February 11
Sunspots!
When I was cycling to work through campus this morning past the grassy landscaped hillocks just east of one of the engineering buildings, I saw a small refractor telescope pointing southeast set up on a tripod on the grass with a person hovering nearby. I realized that it was being aimed at the sun, which means only one thing: there are sunspots to look at! Any radio geek knows the significance of that: lots of sunspots means higher levels of ionization in the upper atmosphere which means better conditions for shortwave communications. Indeed, when I got into the office and looked at the little Firefox add-on in the lower right corner of the browser, it said that the solar flux index was up to 91, not very high in historical terms, but definitely a sign that the laggardly Solar Cycle 24 now is getting off the ground. Look for good radio DXing possibilities in the days and months ahead.
27 January 11
Don't Stick Your Face in a Pit
… is my take-home piece of advice after three days of HAZWOPER training in Marin. Oh, and don’t forget to drink water but wait till you get out of the hot zone.
The hot zone: contaminated area. Worst stealth baddie: Hydrogen sulphide, because although the smell is unmistakeable, your olfactory nerve gets tired fast and you can’t smell it any more which is when it can kill you. Ugh.
Back to the fog, which is now so thick you can’t see more than about 20 yards in front of you….
22 January 11
SketchCrawl 30
Today was the 30th Worldwide SketchCrawl. I’m not sure how many of these I’ve participated in, somewhere between five and ten I would guess. Pete Scully organized the Davis edition of this event; a number of us meeting at E Street Plaza in downtown Davis at 11 AM. It was a beautiful day, beckoning of spring, temperature in the mid-60s, breezy in the afternoon. That helped with the turnout, which was huge: at least 25 sketchers. We stayed within a couple of blocks of the starting point, my furthest journey being out to Ace Hardware to add a sketch to my antenna book . Pica arrived in the afternoon following leading a children’s bird count event. We sauntered forth after our traditional Saturday lunch of a burrito and soft tacos and stayed to the event’s finish at 3:30.
14 January 11
Teapot Tempestuousness
This morning I made my tea in the brown pot I bought last week to replace the white one whose lid had broken.
It cracked with a neat fissure near the bottom, all across the teapot. Tea poured everywhere — onto the stove, the counter, my sock. I make loose tea. This was tea with a lot of tealeaves all over the kitchen. Scalding.
Is it really so very much to ask to have a teapot that will JUST POUR TEA without spilling? I guess so.
31 December 10
Antenna Book
I’ve started my antenna book. This was the idea I had earlier for a sketchbook devoted to that type of infrastructure. The sketches I want to do these days involve ink overlaid with a lot of watercolor wash, which makes it very difficult to find pre-made sketchbooks with suitable paper. This meant it was time to resurrect my bookbinding skills: my big project over break was to bind a 6” x 8” sketchbook with sheets of Arches Cover paper. This made for a good rainy day activity at the beginning of the week, and now I’m three sketches into this book project..
19 December 10
A Little Bit Inclement
Today was the Putah Creek Christmas Bird Count. At four I got up and it was pouring; went back to bed; got up again at 4:30, still the same. We eschewed our tentative plans to go owling and ended up getting to the base of Thompson Canyon at the very tardy hour of 9:15. It was a quagmire.
We ended up seeing really more cows than birds in oak woodland chaparral, which is not where you generally expect to see cows around here. Most of the birds on our list were heard-only. After we threw in the towel with mud up to our knees we went over to the bridge to see if we could see the dipper that’s been hanging around (no luck) but did get to see a spectacular male Barrow’s goldeneye.
Three entirely new species were added to the count list today: great-tailed grackle, evening grosbeak, warbling vireo. Tallymeister Joan Humphrey couldn’t remember a time after about the first 10 years of the count when that many new species were added. And this on a day when many people bailed early because of driving rain (it did clear up a bit in the afternoon but by then many of us had moved on to hot showers or a nap).