3 June 08
Being a Political Junkie is Over till Tomorrow...
We don’t write much about politics on Feathers of Hope.
But tonight, I have Hope, and the November election’s looking pretty good.
Hillary Clinton fought hard, harder than I’d ever have expected. I wish she had done so more fairly, without inciting her supporters to racist vitriol. The constant pleasant/vicious flip-flopping became really predictable after a while and I’m glad it’s over.
Because it really is over, and now we can look forward to the task ahead, which is getting rid of these scoundrels who throw lives into the hopper on a whim and who scoff at the Constitution. Can we?
Yes we can.
3 June 08
Land Of Olives
There are fledgling efforts in this state to promote agri-tourism. Yolo County, which leads the country in direct sales of agricultural products to customers, seems a good place to start. Perhaps surprisingly, Yolo County has become a center for artisanal olive oil production. This directory lists 13 olive oil producers in Yolo County, including Yolo Press, home of the only working olive mill in Yolo and Solano counties, UC Davis, who got into the olive oil production business a couple years ago when their grounds crew came up with a creative way to deal with the hazard fallen olives would create on bike paths, and others such as Frate Sole Olive Company, Hillstone Olive Oil, and the Story Olive Oil Company.
1 June 08
Replantings
I lost many tomato plants in our freak freeze in April. I put in the remainders. They seem to be making it, as do many of the squashes.
But the beans: oh, the earwigs. (And pocket gophers.) The last one of the large Christmas beans was gone this morning, nibbled to death from above and below.
I’ve set out some tubs with oil and water, caught a bunch overnight, but the damage was done. I’ve redug the bean bed and lined it, quickly, against the gophers. I had six different varieties of beans planted; we’re down to three, one of which is simply a volunteer from last year and has a spectacular bright red flower, mostly ornamental.
To make up for all this loss I went and bought three new tomato plants today and flung carrot and radish seeds among the new bean bed: an act of defiance that will I’m sure come back to bite me somewhere, sometime. (Hoping that a teepee of beans will provide enough shade for these winter veggies.) More defiantly, I’m soaking flageolet beans and purple bush beans I intend to put into the parsnip/arugula bed, which is already rodent-lined. (The parsnips have proved remarkably impervious to any pests, but the spray I made with their leaves/peels has not done much to deter earwigs around the beans…)
Carrots Love Tomatoes, says author Louise Riotte. Sure. But they have different watering needs, different growing seasons. I’m encouraged to plant celery in among the beans. Hmm. Not here, not in summer, I don’t think.
Dear gardening gods, have pity… Otherwise, can someone recommend a gardening therapist??
Postscript: I just saw this. I think it’s the answer to everything. Potter away, everyone…
31 May 08
Batting Average With Delegates In Play
Over this primary season a blogger going by the name of Poblano has been producing some remarkably accurate predictions of the election results based on some sophisticated demographic modelling.
Today Poblano outed himself. It turns out his name is Nate Silver, and he is a whiz baseball statistical analyst by profession. He is a managing partner of the publication Baseball Prospectus, and developed the PECOTA system for projecting players’ future performance based on historical pattern. As a data geek I am delighted to see such overlap between baseball and political analytics.
Closer to home the UC Davis Aggie baseball just won its first NCAA Division I playoff game! They beat Stanford 4-2 on a complete game pitching performance by Eddie Gamboa. A few years back the UC Davis students voted to move the athletic program to the highest NCAA division. The 2007-2008 academic year has been the first year since the move that the UCD sports teams have been eligible for the playoffs, and the baseball team has done very well for itself this year.
27 May 08
New Pens, or Numenius Bicolor
I picked up a couple of fountain pens on Saturday in Berkeley, as well as some brown ink cartidges. I tested them out on Saturday evening: Numenius was looking intently into the laptop screen.
He doesn’t really look like Jerry Garcia…
[Comments disabled because some cretinous spammer obviously really hates Jerry Garcia]
26 May 08
Phoenix Arriving
Yesterday the Phoenix spacecraft successfully landed on Mars to the jubilation of space enthusiasts everywhere. Despite this being on another planet, there was a witness to the event: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took an amazing photograph from a distance of 760 kilometers showing Phoenix parachuting down for the landing which went flawlessly.
25 May 08
The Damn Big Boiler
Sometime in the early 1970s, a girls’ boarding school in the British midlands burned down. The “progressive” independent school of Abbotsholme decided to become co-ed and integrate the hapless St. Vincents’ girls.
We ran about in the nick and had communal baths and did lots of things that we thought were outrageous (some of which really were, others not so much) and experimented wildly and generally lived a Hogwartian lifestyle minus the magic.
Today I met up with a friend from that time and immersed myself in a hot tub in Berkeley with her. It’s been thirty years, pretty much. Our bodies aren’t as lithe, but we have a jump on those kids: a little bit of wisdom. Oh but it goes a long way…
23 May 08
Acorns in the Laundry
For the past few years my officemate Jim has been raising valley oak seedlings from acorns in any place he has been able to find, including his own laundry room. The campus student paper the California Aggie reported today on his considerable efforts at native oak restoration.
22 May 08
Excess
the love of it
the Schumann of it
the oceans of tea of it
the wine and baked brie of it
the overflowing basket of cards of it
the clucking everyone round a table of it
the isn’t chicken a vegetable at Passover of it
the flour up to the elbows making playdough of it
the determination to walk with no pain of it
the teasing of nuance in the fingers of it
the effing the ineffable in Bach of it
the Sunday New York Times of it
the steep steps up or down of it
the antiquated beam look of it
the three damn pianos of it
the love, the love of it
O, the love in it
For S., with love
22 May 08
Board Elections
Tonight was the last meeting of the Yolo Audubon Society for this school year, and we all got drafted onto the YAS board for another year. The YAS board elections are hardly competitive; rather, the task is to hunt far and wide to find somebody who wants to be hospitality chair.
This is quite unlike the elections for the Davis Food Coop board. The annual election is underway, the ballots are to be submitted in a week, and we don’t have a clue who to vote for. The annual member meeting was this evening, but we had the YAS meeting to go to, so we missed that opportunity to learn about the candidates. Heated letters about the candidates have been appearing about the candidates in the local paper for several weeks now. Nine candidates are up for four slots. We only really like one of the candidates, and are not sure how to fill out the ballot.