There is a size and intensity to many things California that I am only slowly comprehending from a distance. L.A. County itself is, of course, vast. Traffic exceptional. The weather is potent, not just considering droughts, or atmospheric rivers, but the changes even within a day, where you would freeze in the morning and wilt in the afternoon. Winds are blasting, coming down from the mountains, and air quality can shift from o.k. to horrendous in the time it takes to take a breath or two.
The flora is qualitatively and quantitatively massive as well. Tropical plants are not just lush but equipped either with humongous leaves, or millions of feathery branches to adapt to climate necessities. Blossoms are showy, fruit prodigious, and geometric configurations unusual –
and that is before I even report on cacti, which we will save for another day, since they were among the most interesting things I saw.
Plenty of occasion to observe all this if you visit the Los Angeles Arboretum, an old, established garden that is divided into sub zones comprised of different geographic regions.
It is a pleasant space, with lots of color, and some remarkable specimens of old growth trees,
spacious lawns, water features,
and orchid collections.
Lots of mothers or nannies with strollers promenaded about, and it dawned on me that most of the paths were asphalted and easy to navigate, no pushing through pebbles or sand required.
An added attraction, for kids and adults alike, were the peacocks – again, in colossal numbers rather than an isolated specimen or two. They did not hesitate to show off – quite a display.
Until they have had enough of you…
The fluff from the silk floss tree matched the birds’ backside…
Somehow back home everything seems to be more small scale, fit for humans, rather than giants. Everything, that is, but the buttercups. I swear they will have covered yard and house and everything else in their path one of these mornings when I wake up. Just like sleeping beauty’s castle was covered in roses – except no prince to the rescue. I will have to go weed all by myself….
Music today is some Brazilian lushness, with one of my all time favorites, Egbert Gismonti.
When you have been gone for two months the re-entry into everyday life is both wonderful and overwhelming. Being home feels like you belong, a place at once familiar and safe, a comfortable bed to fall into to shake the travel fatigue.
It also clammers for attention to deal with neglected chores – at this time of the year the yard is a sea of weeds, overgrown meadow, last year’s leaves, decks covered with mossy slime. So much to tackle, never mind that a thorough spring cleaning of the house, usually done before Passover, also gave way to more pleasant times spent with a young family, who I now miss deeply. Oh well – all this to explain that I will provide some last photographic narratives of the trip without much content depth this week before we resume the familiar rhythm of the blog next week.
The trip North began along the Pacific coast with an overnight in Cambria, CA, a small town close to a beach that is renowned for elephant seal colonies. Seeing hundreds of them spread out along stretches of rocks and sand is pretty awe inspiring. All the more so when you learn that these humongous creatures are all female and pups – at this time of year the males, larger still, are on their migration routes, as are the juveniles. Northern elephant seals spend about 9 months of the year in the ocean. Most of this time is underwater, diving to depths of about 1,000 to 2,500 feet for 20 to 30 minute intervals with only short breaks at the surface.
It is a clever system of stacked returns – two months for birthing and nursing, another stint for molting for the females, then separate beachings for the males and/or juveniles because there is simply not enough acreage to accommodate them all at once.
While on the beach they do not drink or eat, for months at a time. They do molt, though, which gives them this sickly looking appearance, but is actually a healthy thing. The renewal of a whole skin and short hair layer helps them to get rid of wounds and scars as well as UV light damaged tissue, making for a smoother surface that supports fast swimming.
On land these creatures are gregarious, happy to socialize or spar for practice. Given that there were no males we were spared the view of bloody fighting over mating issues which seems to be habitual and reportedly gory.
The pups are black until they are weaned at 6 weeks, then molt to a shiny silver.
It is close to a miracle that they are still around. In 1884 the subspecies was declared extinct, as so many were hunted for their blubber. But a tiny population of northern elephant seals was rediscovered near Mexico in 1892, a tiny population of northern elephant seals was rediscovered near Mexico, and from those the population bounced back. The animals were protected by law in America and Mexico in the early twentieth century, and now the population numbers 150,000. (Ref.) They have one of the longest migrations of any mammal; some have been recorded traveling over 13,000 miles roundtrip. dangers abound – if they get entangled in fishing gear so they can’t surface for breathing, they are toast.
If they drag the nets for a long time, they get too fatigued to be reproductively successful. An increasing danger, next to noise and plastic pollution, comes from more frequent accidents with ships. The increase in vessel traffic arising from the opening of trans-polar shipping routes (as arctic sea ice continues to decline) is increasing the risk of vessel strikes.
The ones on the beach seemed to be thoroughly in the moment, lazing in the late afternoon sun,
occasionally flipping sand over their bodies (science is speculative: might be used to protect against sun damage,) or taking a short dive.
Walk with me during this spring that has had enough rain to bring forth an abundance of wildflowers.
You’ve probably seen articles with professional pictures on this in the NYT and other media, including reports on some California communities limiting access to their natural wonders, for good reasons. People flock to the bloom and trample it in search for the perfect photo, destroying wildflower and wildlife habitat in due course. Yours’ truly no exception.
Lots of fiddlenecks. This year’s extra water has spurred growth of brome grasses and fiddlenecks, which can block out the light for the poppies.
To get to the reserve and adjacent private fields you drive through the San Gabriel Mountains if you start out from Altadena. For me, the bloom on those hills was equally if not more spectacular than the poppies, because less saturated blossoms still color the landscape. At the foothills there are patches of goldfields,
Whole swaths of mustard,
and unknown blue flowers, next to patches of lupines.
For me the most heart stopping view of the entire day was the emergence, once out of the clouds hanging over the top of the San Gabriels, of whole mountain sides covered in blooming blue ceanothus. There is a fairy tale quality to the silver sheen of the light against those blue blossoms, a softness that contrasts with the hard rocks of the canyons. Captured only through the car windows, with an iPhone since my camera, in typically timely fashion, had given up its ghost (as the last repair man had warned me – time for a replacement.)
Earlier the aromatic white ceanothus blossoms cover hillsides, sometimes called “mountain snow.” Native Americans used the blue ceanothus that is on view now, as digging tools and the harder wood as wedges to split logs for canoe planks and awls. Come closer, and you’ll detect a faint lilac smell that is suffusing the air. I was in awe. And didn’t think about politics for a whole day. Nature scored again.
Since it’s been a while, we’ll do two hikes instead of one today. Walk with me, if you are willing to brave potential flash floods or almost guaranteed heat stroke, if the warning signs of the CA governmental LA county parks website are to be trusted. We’ll do Altadena’s Eaton Canyon in the morning, and El Prieto in the afternoon. Bonus appearance by some daily wildlife sightings hopefully satisfies readers’ yearning for the obligatory nature shots…
Eaton Canyon is easily accessible, has plenty of amenities for picnic gatherings and the like at the park’s entrance and a parking lot that is so overcrowded on the weekends that everyone recommends to hike only during the week. Follow that recommendation and you’ll be rewarded by beautiful landscapes, including oak groves, a (currently) flowing stream, cacti oases, wildflowers and eventually chaparral dotted hills.
These hills are now green – a very unusual sight, I am told, related to the torrential rains coming down across the last months. The river that you have to cross to get to a longer portion of the trail could not be forded when I visited, unless willing to hop barefoot across slippery boulders and shores. I erred on the side of caution, and still had a nice walk on the southern side of the stream.
Here, and in so many other locations, birds and lizards can be found if you approach quietly.
***
An equally, if differently, beautiful walk yielded some fascinating history ( I learned much of it here.) Altadena’s “El Prieto” (meaning “the dark man”) was also known as Black Mountain for its resident, Robert Owens who had bought his own freedom from slavery and came to the free state in the early 1850s. According to the census, there were only 12 African Americans in Los Angeles at the time. Someone (eventually) more famous settled on this mountain in the late 1800s, Owen Brown, son of John Brown – yes, that John Brown – a white man whose attempt in 1859 to spark a slave rebellion at the Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia arsenal resulted in his hanging for the crime of inciting violent rejection of slavery.
Owen, the only Brown son to survive participation in the Harper’s Ferry raid, was a fugitive for 2 decades before he made it out West, where his sister had settled in Pasadena. He homesteaded on the mountain, now dedicated to his father’s name and legacy, and was buried on a plot of land that was part of the homestead, in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, after more than 2000 people, both black and white, had paid their respects during the funeral to this staunch believer in racial equality.
Photograph from the Altadena Historical Society/
His grave site in the Altadena Meadows attracted 1000s of visitors across the years, contemplating what the concrete headstone stood for. It read, “Owen Brown son of John Brown The Liberator, Died Jan. 9, 1889, Aged 64 yrs.”
Not everyone shared the admiration, however. Private landowners hated the intrusion and tried to keep people out with No Trespassing signs, eventually losing law suits to prohibit access. Early attempts to make the site a historical monument failed as well.
The gravestone went “missing,” twice as it turns out, rolled down the ravine by vandals or opponents of the preservation society. By sheer coincidence it was found the second time around, having been missing for a decade, during a 2012 hike by artist Ian White, son of Charles White, the Los Angeles painter who had only painted two portraits of White men, Abraham Lincoln and John Brown, among his vast portraiture oeuvre.
Shown at the Charles White Elementary School, L.A.
Things have improved since then. An (independent) dispute over land rights and zoning issues for a near-by gated community of pricey homes produced unlikely allies. The developer has become a supporter of the preservation efforts, helping the community to protect the grave and access to it, getting some of his needs filled in turn. All agree that no visitor center will ever be build for the grave site or parking provided for busloads of people. You have to find neighborhood parking and hike up, which will only happen if you are really determined. The historians involved in the process, USC historian Bill Deverell and Michelle Zack are “...planning to help develop curriculum and train teachers to integrate Brown’s story into the Civil War, its aftermath and westward expansion. Charles Thomas of Outward Bound Adventure plans to develop a lesson that includes discussion of slavery and the black wilderness experience, according to the project proposal.” (Ref.)
I was hot when hiking the short but steep trail uphill. Blooming Ceanothus dotted the hills with blue clouds, the sweet smell of wild sage suffused the air. The grave marker is re-installed, and someone had spread wildflower seeds. The view over the valley was unobstructed by clouds or smog, just beautiful. You could do worse for resting places! Well deserved by a man true to justice. May his memory be a blessing.
***
Music today by Pete Seeger, appropriate for the grave site of an abolitionist.
On a day sunny last week, my son took me to a beach, El Pescador, near Malibu, where he occasionally fishes.
A beautiful spot, with the tide still out, allowing me to explore the rocks and tide pools and all that they house. Every new bird set off a quick heartbeat, from cormorants, to king fisher to whimbrels.
A beach where benevolent pirates decided to make it easy for you to find treasure… DIG HERE!
I was particularly taken by the range of colors, not those of the sea as in Mary Oliver’s poem, but those of the rocks, fauna and flora surrounding me.
Reds, greens, yellows, ochres, turquoise, purple, oranges, grey and blues filled the eyes if you looked closely. Lots of pictures, then, and few words – treading with light feet and a full heart in view of nature, once again.
Tides
Every day the sea
blue gray green lavender pulls away leaving the harbor’s dark-cobbled undercoat
slick and rutted and worm-riddled, the gulls walk there among old whalebones, the white spines of fish blink from the strandy stew as the hours tick over; and then
far out the faint, sheer line turns, rustling over the slack, the outer bars, over the green-furred flats, over the clam beds, slippery logs,
barnacle-studded stones, dragging the shining sheets forward, deepening, pushing, wreathing together wave and seaweed, their piled curvatures
spilling over themselves, lapping blue gray green lavender, never resting, not ever but fashioning shore, continent, everything.
And here you may find me on almost any morning walking along the shore so light-footed so casual.
By Mary Oliver,
From A Thousand Mornings, 2012
The stone formations and differing colors never cease to amaze.
Here is a musical offering to the oceans from around the world.
Pull up a chair. We are not walking today but looking out of my window, something I was forced to do most of last week since I had to navigate the consequences of a fall. (All good now, no worries.)
I resumed photographing the squirrels on my balcony. When you stare out of the windows for hours at a time you can eventually identify a cast of characters by their distinct markings. By now we are on a first name basis.
Meet Fire Ear, my favorite, since s/he’s fearless, happy to look me straight in the eye and defiantly pees into my flowerpot during visits. Every single time.
Then there’s Mohawk, whose tail is either fashionably barbered or the proud emblem of victory in a previous fight.
Nipped Ear has obviously been victorious as well, and is aggressively defending his position at the peanuts when other squirrels arrive.
Red dot is the leanest of them all and shy,
Butterball only appears when the big guys have had their share,
and occasionally there’s an enterprising Baby.
The word squirrel is Greek in origin: it comes from skiouros, from skia, meaning “shadow,” and oura, meaning “tail.” When they sit up and move their tail straight one could think of it as a bit of an umbrella, I guess.
There are a whopping 200 species across the world, all born altricial, or completely dependent on their mothers for the first three months of their lives. They hoard food in caches for lean times, able to dig up stuff even under a foot of snow. Some 25% of those stores are lost to raiders, some are never dug up, which in turn helps to grow new trees, in theory. Not in my flowerpots, where nuts disappear en masse.
They are crepuscular, that is most active at dusk and dawn, so they can hang out when it gets hot during the middle of the day. They also sport hyper mobility (they can rotate their ankles by 180 degrees,) which allows them to climb in amazing ways, with forearms stretching, while the backless are anchored to the tree limbs. Oh, and their teeth never stop growing. Good thing, too when your perennially wear them down on hard nuts.
It brings me such joy to watch them, prohibitions to feed them close to the house (they might start nesting in the rafters) be d-mned. The poem below could not be more apt.
Checking out what’s inside the house!
Here is a field recording of Squirrel Flower – longtime readers might remember the location, deCordova sculpture park in MA, I wrote about it here.
I’m not asking you to walk with me today. Rather, sit back and let me regale you with a tale of failure: the failure to hike to a seemingly easy destination, Cape Falcon at the Pacific coast.
The sign should have been a warning, the generously left behind walking sticks not been ignored. The path seemed perfectly fine, until it wasn’t. Landslides that had felled trees could be ignored, climbing over the trunks was not a major effort.
But then the mud set in, in depth and fluidity that you really could not walk on it without sinking in to the ankles. So you had to find stepping stones, utilize the root systems of the old growth trees or make side detours, only to find your way back to a path that was now covered with mall rivulets of running water.
Jumping puddles….
I gave up halfway in, saying good bye to the dream of seeing the Pacific ocean from high up, off cliffs that I had never visited before.
Let me hasten to add that of course it was not a failure. It was an adventure in a damp, dripping, moist, muddy universe that provide innumerable shades of intensely saturated greens, gentle rain that was barely felt, squishy noises that echoed delightful childhood memories of stomping around in your ladybug rubber boots.
The forest verdant. Wet. Full of new growth, pretending spring was already here.
It was also a reminder of how privileged we are to live at the threshold of so many different micro climates, the dry, steep cliffs of the Gorge on Wednesday, the temperate rainforest at the coast on Friday, all easily reached with a short drive.
Failure, as a concept, was on my mind because of two things I read recently. Both told stories about the consequences of failure, with both acknowledging that our society is particularly, grossly even, success oriented, with success structurally reserved for a few. Failure, then, can lead to compensating mechanisms that prove to be intensely destructive. At least that was the upshot of a thoughtful, well argued article by Tom Nichols in the Atlantic, The Narcissism of the Angry Young Men. The essay discusses the misfits who become killers, sometimes mass murderers,
“show(ing) them, in general, to be young losers who failed to mature, and whose lives revolved around various grievances, insecurities, and heroic fantasies…. But these young males, no matter how “quiet,” are filled with an astonishing level of enraged resentment and entitlement about their roles as men, and they seek rationalizations for inflicting violence on a society they think has both ignored and injured them. They become what the German writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger called “radical losers,” unsuccessful men who feel that they have been denied their dominant role in society and who then channel their blunted male social impulses toward destruction.”
Highly recommended reading, which, in my case, was paired with an essay by Costica Bradatan, a Romanian immigrant and Professor of Humanities at Texas Tech University discussing his new book, “In Praise of Failure: Four Lessons in Humility.”
In a tongue in cheek assessment of his own predilections he writes:
“America’s noisy worshiping of success, its mania for ratings and rankings, the compulsive celebration of perfection in everything served only as a facade. Behind the optimistic veneer there lies an extraordinary fear of failure: the horror of going down and going under, of losing face and respectability, of exclusion and marginalization. It’s not success but failure — the savage fear of it — that lies at the heart of the American dream. The country is custom made for an aficionado of failure like me.”
The book is devoted to four major historical figures actively courting failure in their pursuit of meaning and transformation (or religious transcendence.) I have only read the chapter on Simone Weil which is available here, and was much taken by Bradatan’s narrative approach (and skill) and not at all by his conclusions. There is something about the proscription to be humble, to let failure lead you inwards on some self discovery journey that rubs me as too convenient in a society that is set to clamp down on anger and resistance provoked by injustice. (I must also admit that I will never be able to be a neutral reader on the saintliness of Ghandi, one of the four figures discussed in this book. Remember, Gandhi advised the Jews in Germany to offer passive resistance to the Nazi regime—and to give up their own lives as sacrifices. He told the Jews to pray for Adolf Hitler. “If even one Jew acted thus,’ he wrote, ‘he would salve his self respect and leave an example which, if it became infectious, would save the whole of Jewry and leave a rich heritage to mankind besides.”(Ref.)
Yes, excessive anger leading to mass shootings is catastrophic. But humble cowing in front of oppressive forces that promise enlightenment and salvation if you keep your voice down and obey, is not desirable either. There are too many requests for being humble in the air right now and I always wonder about the underlying societal frictions. I do believe it is important to experience failure (and not shelter kids from that experience, in particular) and learn from it, perhaps grow through it, but let’s not tie it to humility beyond curbing our narcissistic streaks. There’s a slippery slope from humility to servility to conformity and consent, in my not so humble opinion.
One last glimpse of Friday’s wondrous views: neither humble nor proud, the elks were taking it easy, some as mud-caked as their photographer by the end of the day. Pretty amazing.
Music today is America by Jewish (immigrant) composer Ernest Bloch who lived at the Oregon Coast.
PS: This WOULD have been the view, photograph from internet:
Hike with me. Pack the sunhat, yes, I mean it. If you are lucky we encounter another windless, cool but sunny day that brings the landscape into sharp relief and makes for long shadows.
The hike leads up to an old cherry orchard with a single remaining tree, on the Washington side of the Gorge, a longish hour’s drive straight East from PDX. I did the whole 5-mile loop some years ago, this time managed 2/3rds of that which counts as a grand achievement given the steep inclines.
The views of the Columbia river and the basalt cliffs are spectacular, once you up there after parking at river level.
The screes are impressive, walking on the unstable stones path is another matter. Not so much dangerous as simply requiring tons of concentration that you don’t loose your footing. Much time spent with eyes on the ground when they should be scanning the surround for its stark beauty.
Should you be so lucky, you’ll see a bald eagle flying in the distance just when you look up, eventually settling in one of the dry oak trees that dot the hillsides. If you quietly approach, you might find flickers as well, perfectly camouflaged against the lichen covered rocks. And always, always, ravens.
During the breaks to catch our breath, my fellow photographer and I talked about how differently serious photographers approach the views of the landscape.
What for us is still a marvel, a breathtaking exposure to beauty no matter how much affected by human habitation and intervention, is for others a grievous example of the loss of all that was pristine.
Some long for untouched nature, while I certainly am grateful for the roads and tunnels built into the mountains so I can reach meadows that are crisscrossed by paths carved by men, and orchards built into oak tree habitats.
Which is, of course, not to say that we should not be stewards of the earth. Plenty of reminders all around – the drought is visible, even this early in the year,
the river low.
Evidence from where we looked down the promontory confirms that we continue to ravage the planet – trains carrying oil or coal that traverse the Gorge endanger us all. Coal trains pollute the air, contaminate the ground and water with coal dust, and contribute to climate change. Oil trains endanger lives and environment with their potential for accidents. In 2016 a 96-car Union Pacific train carrying highly volatile Bakken crude oil derailed near this location, setting off a massive blaze. 47,000 gallons of escaped oil, 2,960 tons of oil-drenched soil, contaminated groundwater, and $9 million in cleanup costs, cause by Union Pacific’s failure to maintain the tracks. It was a miracle that the small town of Moisier was mostly spared. (Here is the link, once more, to our documentary film that tells the whole story.)
Of course it is stunning, as always, how tenaciously nature clings on, even under challenging conditions.
I was reminded of a poem by Lucille Clifton that urges us to rethink our relationship to nature and the responsibilities we have not just for our own species but for all others as well. A perfect entry into a week where I will follow up with another hike that shows the effects of climate change in a different fashion.
generations
people who are going to be in a few years bottoms of trees bear a responsibility to something besides people if it was only you and me sharing the consequences it would be different it would be just generations of men but this business of war these war kinds of things are erasing those natural obedient generations who ignored pride stood on no hind legs begged no water stole no bread did their own things
and the generations of rice of coal of grasshoppers
from How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton.(2020)s
Music today is an incredibly beautiful tune from Mongolia’s steppes – Wandering, played at about the tempo that I was walking up those cliffs. The whole album Cycle by Hugjiltu 胡格吉乐图 can be found here.
It’s getting ridiculous. Here we live some 15 minutes away from the center of a medium-sized city, and yet it feels like we are out in the woods, something we cherish – in principle. We love the trees, the seclusion, the birds. We tolerate the various critters, from field mice to wood rats to rabbits that share our vegetable garden.
We have gotten used to the deer that eat everything from my peas to my hostas to my roses, forgiving their rapacious appetites that even empty the bird feeders directly in front of our windows for the pleasure of seeing “real” wildlife cross our yard several times a week.
Then there are the coyotes. What used to be an occasional sighting during dawn or dusk on the road (a road jokingly known as coyote highway, since it connects several neighborhood parks and ravines,) has now become almost a daily occurrence, during all times of the day. In our yard, where all these photos were taken, as well as the street.
Not only that. Last week our substantially-sized dog, a German Shorthair pointer, ran out, barking his head off when he saw the coyote standing right next to our wheelbarrow. The coyote fled into the trees, only to re-emerge within seconds and approaching the dog, face to face, with a “play-with-me” downward dog posture, only to depart when we started screaming in order to get our dog back to safety, me with camera in hand.
Downward coyote….
Corner of the wheelbarrow lower left
Sniffing the garden bench….
It is half scary, half wondrous to see a wild animal so close. Clearly they have increasingly habituated to human locations. Part of that is our own fault. Although we keep our garbage cans closed (when there are increasing numbers of coyotes with fewer prey spread between them, they tend to go for the garbage,) we do have bird feeders. Feeder spill attracts rodents, which in turn attract coyotes. So far they have not shown signs of aggression to humans, respond with flight when we stand our ground and yell at them or wave our arms, but that might change in May when they have pups. It means always having the dog on leash, and never ever have small kids unsupervised in the yard.
We started to keep count of the daily showing, both in the garden and on our walks in the neighborhood. It is not unusual to see three or four during a single 24 hr period. Which brings me to citizen science. It is pretty amazing how much of scientific knowledge these days can be and is crowd- sourced. Here is an informative NPR podcast about what citizen science is and how ordinary people like you and I can participate in meaningful ways.
How do you do it? You can sign up on apps and websites that steer you to the right ways of observation, recording and sharing of data. Here is an example from Scientific American. You can go to CitizenScience.gov or SciStarter and see which projects tickle your curiosity. If you’re already hooked on something, why, birds come to mind, you can go to specialty programs like iNaturalist or eBird. The Audubon Society has a great Backyard Bird count every February where you can count the birds for 15 minutes to help establish which species flourish and which are on the decline. Not only will your observations help advance science but there is the additional benefit of sharing in conversation with other like minded people, no small thing in these times of isolation for many of us.
“The wisdom of the crowds” was a concept that popped up as early as 1906 when Sir Francis Galton, horrid eugenicist as well as gifted scientist, let’s face it, analyzed bets about the weight of an ox at the country fair. He realized that the average of all bets came within a hair’s width of the actual weight of the bovine. Collective wisdom was superior to any one individual guess. Aggregate answers are only superior, however, if certain conditions are present:
The guesses have to be independent of each other – you cannot be influenced by other people’s assumptions.
You need to have diverse guesses – people from all over the spectrum, from experts to laypeople who do not share the same biases.
There is a need for decentralization – people need to draw on their own, private, local knowledge.
Data need to be aggregated. You can take averages, but there are other forms as well.
The areas in which citizen scientists can make contributions are endless. A quick look at the reports unveils topics as widely disseminated as bird populations, migration patterns, bees, mushrooms, frogs, decline in ice sheets on northern lakes, northern lights, ticks, small stream flow, archeological looting and even new planets. (Ref.) Well, maybe not endless. The search for signs of extraterrestrial life by citizen scientist, an enterprise offered by UCal Berkeley’s SETI Research Center, shut down 3 years ago. SETI@home, a two-decades-old crowdsourcing effort to hunt for signs of E.T. in radio telescope data using internet-connected computers, was terminated because “we were scientifically at the “point of diminishing returns.”
I guess I stick to counting coyotes.
Music today- Joni Mitchell no regrets coyote…. about very different kinds of tricksters…
Yesterday was the first night of Hanukkah. The photo below appeared all last week in various Jewish publications, a timely reminder of how close light and darkness, faith and fascism existed in the past. Not surprised it resurfaced this year across many voices. It was taken by the wife of Rabbi Akiva Posner the last night of Hanukkah in 1931. They lived across from the NS headquarters in Kiel, a small Northern German harbor town, and were acutely aware of the rising danger. The family left Germany early, in 1934, and due to the Rabbi’s diligent warnings, the community of ca. 800 Jews in that town lost fewer than 1% to Nazi murder because they heeded the signs without complacency.
May the lights shine in remembrance, warning and consolation for those of us who celebrate this minor holiday.
***
Between the bustle of the holidays and the end-of-year fatigue my capacity to write in-depth musings is limited. Maybe the same is true for your capacity to read, but maybe not. Therefore my compromise for the rest of the year is to link to some texts that I found interesting, or funny, or meaningful – and for whom I had a nice challenge to pick appropriate visual companions.
We’ll start with something that today’s title riffed of: Thoughts on slow birding. The idea, in a nutshell, is to forgo the hunt for ever more, ever rarer species, but instead get your fill on what’s right in front of you out of your windows, at your feeders, in your backyard, on your balcony, the glimpses taken on your walks. Here is the link to the article that favorably reviews a book about just this topic, Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard,” by Joan E. Strassmann, an animal behaviorist and biology professor at Washington University in St. Louis. If you have a bird enthusiast for whom you still need a present this would be handy, but spendy at $27.
The library has the book – wait time in Multnomah County is 14 weeks, however, which tells you something about birders in our communities!
Photographs of diverse sparrows, finches, robins, and one Rufus Towhee were all taken last week in my immediate surround. Slowly and patiently.
Music today is a sweet song of calm and peace from Beethoven’s late string quartets, Op. 135, to go with the “Let’s take it slow” motto. I chose that over the 5th Symphony, although it is claimed that the beginning notes were borrowed from the song of the song sparrow.
