17 September 08
Blogger Bioblitz 2
The second annual Blogger Bioblitz is coming up! The idea is for ecobloggers to head to a favorite spot and count all the species of living things they see there, post this information to their blog, and preferably participate in a data gathering exercise. Last year I went to Putah Creek: I will return to that spot this time too. The bioblitz runs from Sept. 20 to Sept. 28: leave a comment here if you’re interested in playing.
15 September 08
Three Novels That Touch on, or Skirt, War
My sister sent me, as a birthday present, a new novel by Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book. I had read Year of Wonders a while ago and loved her heroine who survives the plague and loss of her family and everyone she knew to end up in a place of unlikely redemption. My sister D. thought I’d like this new one because bookbinding and calligraphy and Spanish history are all part of the plot. She was right; the sequences of the book’s violent journey through history and Europe bracket each other like a book of hours, plus there’s a great gutsy Aussie heroine.
Some Spanish friends recently gave me a copy of Los Soldados de Salamina by Javier Cercas, which apparently was a bestseller in Spain in 2001 but which I’d never heard of. It recreates the story of a falangist (Spanish fascist) writer who faces, but improbably survives, a firing squad at the end of the Spanish Civil War and whose story is recreated by a journalist with writer’s block — the metaphors are as unsubtle as the people whose story is told — and to whom not all the facts are available. (Think Rashomon under Franco.) It was fun to read a novel in Spanish again, something I should try more often; if I read El Pais on Fridays I can start to make a list of thing that look interesting to me.
Finally, well back into the Brooks mode, I’m reading March, which is a fictional retelling of the absent father from Alcott’s Little Women, and which draws heavily on Bronson Alcott’s diaries and correspondence. This book is not about the American Civil War but the war is the backdrop.
Trying not to be too violent in my reading, here, but maybe there’s a lesson in all this…
15 September 08
Books Two and Three
I was inspired by our whirlwind course on binding a sketchbook three weeks ago to start taking the introduction to bookbinding series at the San Francisco Center for the Book. This weekend I went down to the Bay Area and took the Bookbinding I class. I made two books over yesterday and today, so including the one from three weeks ago, these are the second and third books I’ve ever made (at least of the sewn signature hardback book variety).
It’s very satisfying to hold and open a book that you’ve sewn and glued yourself. I’ve already signed up for Bookbinding II, and I think I will take Bookbinding III this fall as well.
12 September 08
More Spillage
The bees outside our door have been working on the nectar that’s been spilled by the guys working on a huge operation to get their winter food source bottled up. This is many gallons of sweet stuff that gets all over the driveway and everything else. Not so many flowers for them now, and they are going to get fewer as the fall comes in…
12 September 08
Tomato Corner
It’s the time of year when tomato trucks are traveling the country roads of Yolo and Solano counties. Some of them gather their wares from the fields just east of here, and then make the right-hand turn from the levee road onto the main road by our house. Some tomatoes inevitably spill out of the overfilled bins of the trucks.
When the first rains come in a month or two, the reconstituted tomato mush on the road surface is very slippery to travel on — be careful.
11 September 08
Lance To Visit Davis?
Inspired by a strong performance in a 100-mile mountain bike race last month, Lance Armstrong has decided to come out of retirement to try to win his 8th Tour de France in 2009. One of the races he plans to ride as training for the Tour de France is the Amgen Tour of California. Since Davis is a host city for next year’s Tour of California, being the starting point for the second stage of the race, we should be able to see Lance Armstrong warming up riding in the streets of Davis before the day’s race on February 15th. The trick will be to arrive plenty early before the riders depart for Santa Rosa.
9 September 08
Life and Death
This is an exquisite truth:
Saints and ordinary folks are the same from the start.
Inquiring about a difference
is like asking to borrow string when you’ve got a good strong rope.
Every Dharma is known in the heart.
After a rain, the mountain colors intensify.
Once you become familiar with the design of fate’s illusions
Your ink-well will contain all of life and death. – Hsu Yun
I found this on the always surprising, always provocative Whiskey River this morning. I’ve been thinking more about fairyism and the meaning, and purpose, of art. About how Danny Gregory says drawing every day saved his life after a life-and-death event.
I am such a dabbler. A butterfly. I bring people together, give them food, give them work I’ve done, here, have a mudpie, it’s made with love. For the universe, but you’re here, as a deserving member of the universe. You have it. Have a poem, have a book I made, have a painting.
I have lived my life as though this generous spirit somehow let me off the hook of going to the dark places. But we are about to enter some dark places, whoever gets elected here in the US, and it will take only the most supreme pollyannas or the wealthy beyond measure to deny them (they may hope to be dead before New York is 12 feet underwater after the melting ice caps, because if not, they won’t escape either). The question will no longer be “am I really an artist” but “am I really a human being.” There will be tests. Will I be ready?
Here’s what I’m trying to work out, inspired by the likes of her and her and her: how to find wisdom in the dark places. How to be open to it even when it’s terrifying and seems hopeless. How the marks on paper or wood or metal or stone help to make sense of things when there is no sense to be made.
How, in other words, to have art save your life. Or at least contain, direct, preserve your humanity until you die.
8 September 08
Satire In The Park
The San Francisco Mime Troupe made their annual visit to Davis this afternoon, setting up their outdoor theatre in Community Park on a hot day ( it always seems to be hot when they come to town). This year’s musical political theatre was entitled “Red State” — the plot centering on the down-and-out town of Bluebird, Kansas who because of a improbable electoral tie and a voting machine malfunction wind up with the job of determining the result of the 2008 presidential elections after all the voting has ended everywhere else.
The trouble with political satire these days is that reality is now more outrageous than the satire.
5 September 08
Miss Your Forms From the Trace of Fairyism
This was a sign seen at the Beijing Airport, according to Steven Skaggs, who has a piece in the latest edition of Letter Arts Review. (The sign presumably was a little more clear in Chinese.) Although it’s hard to tell exactly what it means to Chinese travellers returning to the big city, for Skaggs, it’s a call to reject the superficial and pretty in Western calligraphy. The exuberant happy colors. The flourishes and hands that bear no relation to the content. The effete. Trite sentiment. Calligraphy as commodity.
Having been following the sudden intensification of the political landscape in the US, I can’t say I’m finding this call to darkness all that unappealing. I am moved by powerful art, which calligraphy can be, when it’s not concerning itself with writing out Desiderata or “I am not there, I do not sleep.” I wish I had the time and the skill to devote myself to a massive piece that would somehow make some kind of difference in this campaign. Because, no offense to 8-year-old girls, fairyism isn’t going to cut it. This needs to be more of the kind of thing I spend my time doing… I was pleased to see Skaggs including, in his searing call to authenticity, a request that people write their own stuff, not just quote the now hackneyed voices of others.
4 September 08
Front Row Seats
We took our friends Fernando and Belen to their first baseball game ever this evening. Fernando is a postdoc from Spain I’ve been working with this year, and Belen is his sweetie; they’ll be headed back to Spain at the end of the month so we wanted to make sure they had the cultural experience of seeing a baseball game.
The game we went to was the Sacramento River Cats playing the Salt Lake City Bees in the first round of the Pacific Coast League playoffs. We ended up with seats in the very first row, on the right field foul line about 100 feet back from first base. It couldn’t be better for a field level view of the action.
It was hardly a pitcher’s duel though. There were many hits and a good number of home run — by the time we left the River Cats were losing 9-13. We were cheated though: our plan was to stay through the seventh inning stretch but they replaced “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” with “God Bless America” played on the sax. The horror of it all. That was very unfair to our guests.