17 May 09
Riders in the Heat
Today we did radio support for the 40th running of the Davis Double Century, which always makes for a long day, both for us and for the riders. And it got hot: the temperature hit 99 degrees here in Davis. This year we split up assignments — Pica drove the course as a sag vehicle, and I spent all day at start/finish working as radio net control. There are always crises when one sets out to work such events; our started last night when Pica discovered the car wouldn’t start since the battery had been drained after the interior lights had been knocked on. We hooked the battery charger I usually use to charge my 12-volt SLA batteries for the radios and let the car battery charge overnight. Happily, the car started in the morning, and the battery got plenty of charging over the day. And then there was the issue with our mobile radio whose mike now wants to stick open. This is still unresolved, but didn’t end up being much of an issue on the course.
Pica drew the luck of arriving on the scene at the first and I think most serious accident of the day — a tandem in a descent hit a pothole and both riders got thrown. The stoker was unconscious for a little bit, and both riders ended up being transported to a hospital in Napa by air ambulance. Fortunately, the riders weren’t that seriously injured, and they were discharged later in the afternoon. I meanwhile at net control had to deal with lots of reports coming in all at once — such pileups occur in dribs and drabs. I’m glad the radio ops out on the the course are patient and don’t mind repeating things.
It’s a lot of fun working these events, but we’re going to have a mellow day tomorrow.
12 May 09
Rhétorique Française
I am very happy to be back in touch with an old friend and wonderful translator from my Harvard Press days, Art Goldhammer, and even more so to learn that he has a blog, French Politics. It’s a great way to follow gallic happenings, which I admit I haven’t been, much. (I really wish there were a counterpart for Spain, and if anyone knows of one, in Spanish or English, please let me know.)
Today there’s a link to an article by Jean Daniel of the Nouvel Observateur on his recent luncheon meeting with Nicolas Sarkozy. This is quality, elegant writing, and reveals, as Art points out, a nuanced series of layers in the French President which I found surprising. (Why? I mean, nobody can argue he’s not a clever bastard.)
Nuanced he may be, but Sarkozy doesn’t seem to tire of the sound of his own voice, and the quote in the article I thought most telling about his character, about his vision of his place in history, and which he apparently uses to justify his “maverick” independence, is this one: « Les grandes choses, on les décide seul car le consensus interdit l’audace. Reste que les grandes réformes, comme la décolonisation ou l‘élection au suffrage universel, sont nécessairement impopulaires au départ puis qu’elles modifient le cours des choses. » (The really big things, you decide on alone because consensus precludes audacity. So the great reforms, such as decolonisation or universal suffrage, are necessarily unpopular at first, because they change the course of things. Sorry if my translation’s not as good as Art’s would be, but you get the idea.)
This sort of quote would in years past have found its way into British A-level, Oxbridge entrance, or university examination papers, with the simple addition of the word “Discuss.” We’d have been expected to provide copious (but not too many!) historical examples along with memorized quotes for bonus points and provided a series of pros and cons, plonking down in the end on one side or the other, trying all the while not to make it look too pedestrian. Our French counterparts, though, would have been expected to provide, in addition to such arguments, an elegance of phrasing and structure.
I bet Sarko aced these kinds of exam questions.
11 May 09
Bistro Nagini
At left is the sign for a rather poncy restaurant in downtown Davis. There are some things you shouldn’t do to threes.
9 May 09
The Locavore's Curse
One of the things about my conversion to gardening: I know what’s in season here, when. To the minute. I know when beets are likely to be turning woody, know when to expect the first real tomatoes. At the moment asparagus and strawberries are just past peak (we’ve had a good hot week), but it will be a while before the first tomatoes harvested locally hit the stands. Chard, bombproof as always, is a good intermediary. I am harvesting the last of the crucifers. Next week, the onions will start to flower, and will be pulled up. I haven’t planted enough to last all summer — but the leeks are starting to flower now, and I’m hoping to use them first. The garlic is drying: this, we will have for all of the summer and most of the winter.
We went this afternoon to the Maxfield Parrish show at the Crocker Museum of Art. We’re members, so are able to put in a quick fifteen minutes without guilt. Today, though, there was a reception to launch the Parrish show. We decided to attend.
There were strawberries, to be sure. But there were no asparagus. There was pineapple, probably from Hawaii; melons and canteloupes, probably from Mexico or Colombia; grapes, probably from Chile; green peppers, probably also from Mexico (we still have a few frozen bags from last summer’s crop, but these were “fresh”). The carrots were probably local (but who knows?). Oh: and tomatoes. Cherry and grape tomatoes. From where? Blackberries and raspberries: from where? Or when?
I find I am cooking more with the seasons, using what’s available now. Our fridge is full of beets. They will be over soon, meaning I can dig up that bed and put something else in. Something other than beans, cucurbits, or tomatoes, because I am taking up inordinate acreage with those outside my original bunny fence…
7 May 09
Gameplan
I somehow missed the Eurogame revolution, which is remarkable since I spent a frightful amount of time in my teens and early twenties playing board games of various sorts. Last Saturday I took a step towards remedying this lacuna when I was invited out to play my first game ever of Settlers of Catan, a 1995 game which is one of the classics of this style of games. In the 1990s, board games started emerging from Europe that were elegant in design and conception, often with simple rules but with deep play and minimal luck, and more about resource allocation than direct conflict. (For some reason, many of these games come from Germany, so these games are sometimes called German-style games; the Germans buy more board games per capita than any other nationality.) Having quite enjoyed my Settlers session, I’ve decided that these style of games may be a good fit for me now, and am doing lots of research on game possibilities. Right now Pandemic and Carcassonne are on my shortlist; we’re planning a trip to the local game store in Sacramento for Saturday. And though it’s hardly a Eurogame, I can’t help but being intrigued by a game entitled American Megafauna (the theme is the evolution of life on this continent since the Triassic).
1 May 09
The Clade Launched
The Clade is a new community environmental website that holds that the environment is about more than climate change. Join the conversation…
30 April 09
What To Do About No Run Support
One of the things I love about baseball is the way quirky events occur with regularity. Today the Milwaukee Brewers were playing the Pittsburgh Pirates with the young pitcher Yovani Gallardo on the hill for the Brewers. Gallardo pitched extremely well, allowing only 2 hits with 11 strikeouts over seven innings. He was however getting no help from the Brewers’ offense and the score was 0-0 in the seventh. So Gallardo takes things into his own hands and hits a solo home run in the bottom of the seventh. Nobody scores any more runs, and the Brewers win 1-0.
We had dinner this evening at the taqueria and were watching ESPN Baseball Tonight there who had a story about Gallardo’s day. One of the stats they flashed was that only two other pitchers in the modern era had struck ten or more batters and had hit a home run to win the game 1-0: these would be Early Wynn for the White Sox in 1959 and Red Ruffing for the Yankees in 1932. These are the sort of figures that the various stats agencies take pride in pulling out of their databases, but I’m amazed at how much of this detail is available on the web through sites like Baseball-Reference.com. Here for instance is the complete play-by-play action for that Early Wynn game in 1959 (White Sox 1, Red Sox 0, with Wynn striking out 14).
27 April 09
Trip on Transit
I went to Pleasanton yesterday — about 90 miles away — on my bike, bike on train, bike on BART. I haven’t put my bike on a train before and it was surprisingly easy. My bike trip at either end was only about three miles.
Jarrett Walker of Creature of the Shade has started a new blog, Human Transit. I feel lucky to be in a place where this kind of trip was not only possible but very easy. Of course we had to wait for the bridge to go down outside Martinez — they were letting a ship through — but I’d have had to have done that in the car anyway.
On the way to the station yesterday, I ran into a) a criterium, which made me alter my route through b) the antique Volvos show, on the way to get c) asparagus, which I threw into a tub of pre-prepared lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, and a little tarragon to throw on the grill at the Lazy, Stupid and Godless knitting/dyeing/spinning party. I learned to spin. I hung out with some awesome people. And then I turned around and did the whole thing backwards, running into the fixed gear event in Pleasanton — at first I thought it was part of the city code, that you couldn’t ride bikes with gears. But no. Just some tired guys at the end of the day, looking at the overpass with fear and loathing. I turned right to the subway station.
Oh, and on the way down on the train I conducted a birdathon in support of Yolo Audubon. 48 species, including Western gull, Clark’s grebe, and chestnut-backed chickadee, all of which are hard to find in Yolo County. You can’t do this kind of thing from a car…
26 April 09
At The Local Airport
UC Davis is the only campus in the University of California system to have its own airport (though UCSB is quite close to the Santa Barbara commercial airport). For the past few years, the University Airport has held an open house in the spring; aviation buff that I am, I try to go to these, usually doing some sketching while there. At today’s open house, I sketched this Rockwell 112A, manufactured in 1975. A note on the sketch: I used gouache here — I recently built up a little paintbox of different gouache colors and this seems to be a good complement in the field to my box of watercolors.
24 April 09
Velvet Women
For Ivy and in memory of Bobette
They clung together through
the soft rocking:
the boat and the gin
while the men on deck
smoked and laughed and
coursed.
The tears and slobber
[o those violet eyes]
my baby, gone. my baby.
it was a night
to remember
[her name is was Liz]
and forget
[my unborn had no name]
The pain of it, the
misery
the shame
sloshing in the bilge
slapping the side
the hangover next day
and through it all
two women, adrift, bereft.