28 October 08
Return to Bodega Bay
My mother’s been visiting. She had some business to do in Bodega Bay, the fishing village she left two years ago to move to Maine. I went with her. She was pleased to be back but worried that there were no boats coming in and out of the harbor (we later learned that the collapse of the salmon fishery had put a lot of the fishermen out of business). The exception was this sloop that had run aground eighteen months ago and had just been left there — nobody can come up with the thousands of dollars it would cost to salvage it at this point. So it sits.
We went up to Bodega Head, the clifftop Mum walked daily when she lived here, and where she sent my father’s ashes into the wind. Say hi Dad, she said. Hi Dad, I said. Nearly nine years…
What was most astonishing was this long-tailed weasel, a mammal I’ve never seen before, popping out of his various holes to check us out. They are a gorgeous two-tone of cinnamon and caramel. He didn’t show us his teeth but those little jaws were evidence enough of a fierce predator. Of pocket gophers. Don’t think I didn’t want to bring one or two home with me…
PS: I finished this, too:
26 October 08
Stimulating The Economy Through End-Of-The-World Spending
The paradox of thrift states that if everybody were to save most of their money, the resultant decrease in consumption would be highly deflationary, leading to worsening economic difficulties. Hence the call for stimulus packages these days. I’ve just finished watched Chris Martenson’s excellent video series The Crash Course about the economy, energy, and the environment and agree with his major theme that the next twenty years is going to be nothing at all like the past twenty years. That is, expect chaos ahead.
So before the economy completely collapses we’re working on getting our pre-apocalyptic stores laid in. Today we ordered a) a hand-cranked grain mill and food mill from Lehman’s (purveyors to the Amish) b) a small solar panel and charge controller for keeping the 12V SLA batteries charged and c) an external lithium battery good for powering small electronics up to and including the laptop. If there’s no electricity we’ll still be able to blog…assuming of course the phone line still works!
24 October 08
In Praise of the Doodle
I’m a doodler. I admit it. If you talk to me on the phone, I will almost certainly reach for one of the several fountain pens within my field of view and start making marks on paper. Often they start out abstract, but usually resolve into something figurative. A flourish turns into a letter, which gets followed by another letter.
I make, and swap, Artist Trading Cards (ATCs). There are only two rules with these things: a) they must be 3.5” x 2.5” and b) they can’t be sold. A tiny canvas, a place to try a new medium or technique. I’ve been trading with calligraphers for a while, but recently have joined Swapbot to do one or two trades at a time with a much wider range of options.
It was on Swapbot that I found the call for the Doodle ATC. Go back through your pages and find doodles you’ve made and cut them out, it said. Don’t consciously try to doodle something. Send something you’d like to receive yourself.
Wow. I guess I must really have been on a fish kick over the summer.
22 October 08
It's All In The Name
The Tampa Bay Rays are going to the World Series, having clinched the American League pennant by beating the Boston Red Sox 3-1 in the seventh game of the ALCS Sunday. This game was quite a pitching matchup, and ended in thrilling fashion when the Rays brought in a young pitcher named David Price who had only seen action in five previous major league games to get out of a bases-loaded jam in the 8th inning and get the final four outs.
Not only was this the first time Tampa Bay has made it to the World Series, it’s the first time they’ve had a winning season, the team having finished in the cellar of the AL East 9 out of the 10 years the team been in existence. (The one year they weren’t last, 2004, they finished second-to-last.) It must have been their name: in all those prior years they were the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. This season they dropped the devil from their name, and major success follows.
On the other side of the theological divide, the Angels’ name has gotten clunkier over the years. Initially they were the Los Angeles Angels, then in 1965 they changed their name to the California Angels, then became the Anaheim Angels in 1997, and most recently changed their name in 2005 to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Ka-chunk. I suppose that’s to differentiate them from their cross-town rivals the Los Angeles Angels of Fontana. :)
20 October 08
A Day in San Francisco
As Numenius said, I had a wonderful day in San Francisco yesterday, hitting Open Studios, a cooking supply place in Japantown, Chloe’s cafe for lunch (see sketch), and the unbelievably fabulous Imagiknit in the Castro. An Irish customer in the shop explained to her friend she had spent months exploring all the yarn stores in San Francisco, and this was by far the best one, she should have started here; mostly, she said, because they were so helpful. (But also, I should add, because the place is like a dream palace of color and texture; it left me speechless.)
Yes, they were helpful. I haven’t done any knitting for over 20 years and I’ve never knit socks, but I have had the WORST hankering to do this. Kurt-the-helpful organized me with a beginner’s pattern and took me over to the fingering yarns. Then he sat me down to do a tension gauge. Hmm, he said. You were taught to knit by a Spanish person… (You have to picture this because I don’t have, and am not likely to provide, a photo: needle under my right arm, balanced on my right boob, and yes, my hands remembered what to do… fast. It’s a fast way to knit).
I ended up with some small bamboo needles for the socks. I can’t fit them under my arm and over my boob, alas. But I’ll just have to draw on my memory of English knitting (thumb under, rather than over, the needle). It’s slower for me but not excruciating, and the needles are lovely. The cats agree. Oh dear.
19 October 08
Books Five and Six
They say that after you bind your first hundred books, you can consider yourself to be a practiced bookbinder. This weekend I took Bookbinding II down at the San Francisco Center for the Book where we made two more books, getting me to six total, learning how to do Bradel binding and to work with decorative papers. Pica meanwhile went down to San Francisco with me today and had a grand time touring the city, returning home with sock-knitting supplies!
13 October 08
A Busy Sunday
It is the UC Davis Centennial this year, and a weekend-long series of events and street parties filled the windblown streets of Davis. We worked registering voters until we were told to move on by some officious gal who said Yolo Unite had only paid for one booth. (Registering voters is a civic act and we should have argued with her, but we’ll know next time.)
We took ourselves off to see Religulous which was funny and irreverent and serious, deadly serious in the end. Oddly enough, the Catholics came off as the most rational of the religious groups Bill Maher spoke with.
Barbara now tells me that a priest in Fresno has been fired for opposing Prop. 8, an attempt by the right-wing religious to overturn same-sex marriage laws in California.
Right. That’s it.
Obama will win California, but these guys, funded by the Mormon Church, have given Prop. 8 a serious chance of passing. I’m campaigning, from now until the election, against Prop. 8. Please join me, or please consider donating. This isn’t a religious issue, it’s an issue of human rights. If you’re Mormon or Baptist and Catholic and gay and think it’s a sin to get married, don’t do it. Fine by me. Otherwise, get your religion out of my state and THE state.
10 October 08
Different Strokes for Folks
Here are two noteworthy bikes for this week. The first bike is a prototype that would be good for our emergency preparedness efforts. The second bike we saw Sunday when we worked the Princess Promenade event. This quintuplet (scroll to the bottom of the page of photos) was not officially part of the event but it caused me to do a double-take when I saw it go past one of the rest stops.
5 October 08
Princess Promenade
The second annual “Princess Promenade” — a bike ride for women and girls to try and get them to exercise — was held today along the American River Parkway in Sacramento. Numenius was a bike radio mobile and I was a shadow radio operator for the director, which meant I saw a lot of pink tutus and tiaras, saw gals coming back in saying this was the furthest they had ever ridden, got to witness the horror of a teenager who had thrown her retainer in the trash which had then been emptied and had to tell her I didn’t know where they’d taken the bags. She really was prepared to paw through dumpsters…
As I write the Red Sox and Angels are tied at four. Hoping the Sox put this one away tonight…
4 October 08
First Rain
The first storm of the season has come through today, producing some sprinkles this afternoon and evening, with more rain expected tomorrow. Sunday it should be clear, which is good because we are scheduled to help out with radio support for a bicycle event along the American River Parkway in Sacramento that day.
Looking at the local National Weather Service web page, they are highlighting the CoCoRaHS (Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network) program, which is a citizen science effort to collect precipitation data all across the United States. California has just entered this program this month, which first got started with a pilot effort in Colorado in 1998 and is now taking place in 36 states. All one needs to participate is a standardized low-cost rain gauge and the commitment to measure it every morning.