In probably no other sport could things pan out like they did on September 28, 2011. Last night, to be a little more dated and precise. Only in a sport where there are 162 games played in a season could drama as wild as what happened last night could come to pass.
There have been in the neighborhood of 200,000 games of professional baseball played in the regular season, and 9/28/11--yesterday--was the most meaningful and ramification laden single day of regular season baseball games in the 130+ year history of the game.
In the National League the Atlanta Braves started off September with an 8.5 game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals for the final playoff spot, the NL Wild Card. Over the course of the month, Atlanta swooned and St. Louis surged, and beginning today the teams were tied. They weren't playing each other, so if they both won--or lost--their respective games, they'd still be tied and would have to play a single play-in game to determine the NL Wild Card team.
St. Louis jumped out early over the Houston Astros, and pummeled them behind Cardinal pitcher Chris Carpenter's two-hitter, winning 8-0. Atlanta lead 3-2 in the ninth, and blew the game, losing to the Phillies (who had the best record in baseball). They lost at home, blowing the lead in the last inning, and knowing that the season was over, since St. Louis had already finished up. Bummer for them.
Also in the National League the #2 seed was up for grabs, which determines which divisional winner would have home field advantage. Milwaukee won and Arizona lost, so, when playoffs start (tomorrow?) Arizona plays at Milwaukee, and St. Loo plays at Philly.
In the America league, the same thing happened, only with more dramatics and heartbreak. For Red Sox fans, anyway.
You know it can't be a good day in Beantown if they find themselves rooting for the Yankees. And they had to alright.
Atlanta's 8.5 game cough-up in the final month of the season eclipses the biggest in history, the Mets 7 game collapse in 2007 (we lived through that one in the city...I heard a ton of crap all summer about how awesome the Mets were, only to get the last laugh). But, the Braves don't get that record.
That record--Biggest Season Ending Collapse--will belong to the Red Sox. They started September with a 9 game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays. They proceeded to lose 20 games out of 27 in September, and the Rays put a run of victories together that's quite impressive in itself. But, like the Braves and Cardinals, they were tied with one game to go. Both win--or lose--and they'd be forced to play a single play-in game.
Boston, after pretending to be the Yankees and buying up the best two players on the market in the off-season--Carl Crawford (free-agent signing) and Adrian Gonzales (MVP candidate and trade acquisition)--was the trendy pick to win the World Series. When they started the season 0-6, it was stated that no team had ever made the playoffs after starting 0-6. The Red Sox went on a tear and held first place most of the summer.
Just reminding...
Funny, the first team to start a season 0-6 and make the playoff did happen this year: the Rays.
In any case, back to last night's games. The Bosox played the Orioles, the youngest and worst team in the AL East division. The lowly O's were supposed to be the reason the Sox would triumph over the Rays, since the Rays had to play the Yankees on these last few days.
Like the Braves, the Red Sox held a one run lead into the 9th, 3-2. Their closer, probably their best bull-pen pitcher all year and a rather good closer anyway, Johnathon Pappelbon, started out the bottom of the ninth by striking out the first two guys. Then he gave up a double. Then another, and the score was tied. The next batter hit a fly to a sprinting Crawford in left field. He dove, but trapped the ball instead of catching it. The runner from second scored, and the game was over.
All the Red Sox could do now was wait and root for the Yankees to beat the Rays and force that one game clincher.
The Yanks were doing their part, womping on the Rays. They were up to 7-0 after a few innings. Big hoss Texiera crushed a grand slam. Then the 8th inning rolls around, and the Rays, never feeling out of it, score six runs, pushing it to 7-6. In the 9th, some kid named Dan Johnson, a kid hitting just .119, stepped to the plate as a pinch hitter. Why you'd ever use a .119 hitter as a pinch hitter, I'll never know, and that's why I'm not a major league manager, since the kid hit a home run and tied the game.
They go to extra innings, the Boston/Baltimore game had been delayed because of rain and finished around a few minutes after midnight, and literally three minutes after the score came back that Boston had lost (the crowd in Florida cheered) did Evan Longoria, the Rays All-Star 3rd baseman and former LBSU player, hit a walk-off homer to send them to the playoffs.
So the Red Sox didn't really have to wait too long.
One funny thing is that all four of the games I've been describing here ended within 25 minutes of each other, making it the most exciting half-hour of regular season baseball ever.
In other baseball events from this same day: the Mets shortstop Jose Reyes was in a tie with the Brewers left fielder Ryan Braun for highest batting average on the season. Jose Reyes is an electrifying player who, when healthy, can take over games with his speed or his bat. He's been healthy this year. He's a leadoff hitter, and in his first at bat in the last game of the season, he laid down a bunt, reaching safely for a hit. He then took himself out of the game to ensure that he finished the game 1 for 1, in an attempt to lock up the batting title. He didn't play a few more innings, he didn't even run the bases. Once he got to first, he took himself out. Ryan Braun, playing the whole game, went 1 for 4, and the title went to Reyes.
Ironically, 9/28 this year is the 70th anniversary to the day of Ted Williams finishing the season at .406, the last player to finish above .400. The day started out with Ted hitting .3995. His manager told him that it would be rounded up to .400 for the official books, and if he wanted to sit out the last day--which was a double header--he could and be happy with his batting title.
Ted Williams said something to the effect of If I can't hit .400 over the whole season, then I don't deserve it. he played in both games, went 6 for 8, and finished at .406.
Tough end of the year for the Red Sox: forced to root for the Yankees and miss the playoffs.
So...Verlander/Sabbathia in game 1 in the Bronx?
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Griffith Observatory
This is the third part in my "WiLA" series. "WiLA" stands for the working title I'm using for the small humanist manifesto piece I'm working: Wednesday in Los Angeles. I like the middle of the week metaphor, and the fact that it's contextually defined by it's title is also a component of the whole.
This is the post that will appear as an altogether different piece in the paper form. If the first piece, about the Basin, as expanded concerns the "who we are/where we come from" topic, and the second post, about CAFOs concerns the "what we put inside our bodies" topic, then this is of the "what we believe" kind.
Well, in paper form anyway.
A wealthy Welsh man named Griffith J. Griffith bought a large piece of land in the mountains just north of the city center of Los Angeles, and in his will bequeathed it to the city as a park, and even left money for an observatory to be built.
Griffith was quite a character. He used the apparently self-given title of Colonel, earned his wealth from mining interests, and in one bizarre episode, was put on trial for shooting his wife. She didn't die, but was given a divorce on grounds of cruelty, with Mr. Griffith being forced to pay for their son's Stanford education as part of the sentence. The jury's decision was reached in four-and-a-half minutes.
Here's the observatory today:
It's been used many times in films and even a few times in The Simpsons as a design cue.
The views from it are rather striking. The Hollywood sign is nice and framed:
The haze can be choking, though:
It was bright and blue most places in LA on this Wednesday, but not from up top. I like the look of the open dome:
Here it's hard to see, but this golden ray represents the sun's path on the summer solstice, our anniversary (note the Hollywood sign in the background):
One of the themes of the only-on-paper entry from the Observatory is: do you believe that a person's body is made of cells, and that those cells are in turn made of molecules?
This is the post that will appear as an altogether different piece in the paper form. If the first piece, about the Basin, as expanded concerns the "who we are/where we come from" topic, and the second post, about CAFOs concerns the "what we put inside our bodies" topic, then this is of the "what we believe" kind.
Well, in paper form anyway.
A wealthy Welsh man named Griffith J. Griffith bought a large piece of land in the mountains just north of the city center of Los Angeles, and in his will bequeathed it to the city as a park, and even left money for an observatory to be built.
Griffith was quite a character. He used the apparently self-given title of Colonel, earned his wealth from mining interests, and in one bizarre episode, was put on trial for shooting his wife. She didn't die, but was given a divorce on grounds of cruelty, with Mr. Griffith being forced to pay for their son's Stanford education as part of the sentence. The jury's decision was reached in four-and-a-half minutes.
Here's the observatory today:
It's been used many times in films and even a few times in The Simpsons as a design cue.
The views from it are rather striking. The Hollywood sign is nice and framed:
The haze can be choking, though:
It was bright and blue most places in LA on this Wednesday, but not from up top. I like the look of the open dome:
Here it's hard to see, but this golden ray represents the sun's path on the summer solstice, our anniversary (note the Hollywood sign in the background):
One of the themes of the only-on-paper entry from the Observatory is: do you believe that a person's body is made of cells, and that those cells are in turn made of molecules?
CAFOs, The Chilling Effect, and Saying No
This is the second part of my "WiLA" series.
There is a picture I wanted to get for this post specifically, but I couldn't convince myself that the trek to obtain said picture would be worth the damage to my old car.
The picture I wanted would have been taken from the side of the freeway, off of I-5, near the Coalinga exit. Who knows what I'm talking about? That's a stretch of interstate that all drivers do their damnedest to speed through, rolling up their windows to avoid the oppressive stench. There's a stockyard there, a collection of thousands upon thousands of cattle, and the choking stench of their lot is well known by travelers and detected early.
When I was a kid in the car on the long drives from Sacramento to Santa Monica, I remember the stink yard amid the desolation along Interstate 5; farther than half-way, but still with time to go before the Grapevine.
What's going on there, 220 miles away from where I live now (the distance being the reason I didn't make a day trip just for a few pictures), is a CAFO: a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation.
The lot outside of Coalinga is one of few large holding places for cattle that are being pumped full of corn products, made to live their lives ankle deep in their own feces and crammed together like an uptown 6 train at 7:30 in the morning, before being sent off to slaughter.
CAFOs arose out of a practical need: if you have an entity placing an order for x amount of beef on a regular basis, and to have x amount of beef regularly, the only way that'll be possible is concentrate the cattle and bulk up the population.
Don't worry--there's plenty of blame to go around. Cattle aren't meant to live in places like Auschwitz (consolidating cattle ranching: boo). The purchasing power of fast-food giants is too great (fast-fooding of the market: boo). None of this would be happening if people would stop giving money to fast-food giants for sustenance needs (people constantly eating fast-food: boo).
All of these topics stem from the film Food Inc, a well made movie about the realities of the majority of the food available in the grocery store and vast majority of restaurants. I don't really want to beat points made in the film into the ground, like about how the government subsidizing the corn industry makes corn so cheap that we tend to use it in everything, or like how the purchasing power of the fast food giants drives prices down to a point that they can offer customers in the working-poor segment of the American population food far cheaper than non-processed and healthier counterparts. They do a better job with that in the movie.
I would like to type a few words about Monsanto, about how they own the rights to some huge percentage of seeds used in America, and about how they don't allow farmers to use the same seeds from year to year, forcing them to buy seeds each season; about how their corporate executives tend to end up in places of power in American government positions with the task of overseeing their old company. But I can't, or won't, anyway.
Not that I think I'm all that important, but, no matter how small my audience, I am using a public forum, and Monsanto tends to sue anybody who makes public claims against them. Even when they know they'll lose, they've been known to sue. That kind of thing sets the tone. Litigation ruins farmers and outspoken rabble-rousers.
The food-giant industry has gotten their hands on the law books and changed the libel laws in many states, creating so-called "Veggie Libel Laws". It makes it possible for those large multi-national corporations to sue people who utter disparaging words about their company or products. Usually the person doing the suing must show proof of their claims--not so in this new world order. It is the defendant's responsibility to prove their claims that disparaged the giant food company who's suing them. The beef industry even sued Oprah. After a few years of litigation Oprah won, but still refuses to discuss the topic.
When speech is protected by law, but litigation stands in the way of debate and stifles discussion, that's the Chilling Effect. The threat of being sued quiets the public.
Not that I'm actually scared of Monsanto or the beef-lobby, but I'm better safe than sorry...being a "literary blogger" doesn't pay anything, and I can't afford litigation of any kind. (Not yet...Pre-Paid Legal, you ready for a fight?)
One reason I wanted to get this discussion down in the blogosphere and later on paper is because the largest purchaser of beef in America, and maybe the world, have their very first establishment right in our backyard, in Downey:
It is a restaurant from which I'll never eat. I would've avoided it before seeing the Food Inc., but now, certainly. Their purchasing demands reshaped how food is engineered. Their hiring tactics of making it a Fordian factory assembly line, with unskilled workers doing the same action monotonously for hours, set the bar for food establishments around the country, and set the wage scale for all food workers dramatically low.
Don't get me wrong, I've eaten plenty of fast-food in my life. In the past seven or eight years, though, I've made a conscious effort to avoid it. While living in New York I never visited a White Castle; while living in Austin I never went to a Whattaburger; and being back in California? I'm sorry, but I never go to In-N-Out anymore. In that time span I've had something from one of those places at most five times, mostly in the midst of old friends and alcohol.
I'm just one man, trying to make some decisions: they're right for me, but they may not be for you.
When I was young my parents favored Burger King and Carl's Jr. over McDonald's, and later when I was in High School and college I tended towards taco/burrito places, Wienerschnitzel, and sandwich shops. It's because of these reasons I can honestly say I've never had a Big Mac.
There is a picture I wanted to get for this post specifically, but I couldn't convince myself that the trek to obtain said picture would be worth the damage to my old car.
The picture I wanted would have been taken from the side of the freeway, off of I-5, near the Coalinga exit. Who knows what I'm talking about? That's a stretch of interstate that all drivers do their damnedest to speed through, rolling up their windows to avoid the oppressive stench. There's a stockyard there, a collection of thousands upon thousands of cattle, and the choking stench of their lot is well known by travelers and detected early.
When I was a kid in the car on the long drives from Sacramento to Santa Monica, I remember the stink yard amid the desolation along Interstate 5; farther than half-way, but still with time to go before the Grapevine.
What's going on there, 220 miles away from where I live now (the distance being the reason I didn't make a day trip just for a few pictures), is a CAFO: a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation.
The lot outside of Coalinga is one of few large holding places for cattle that are being pumped full of corn products, made to live their lives ankle deep in their own feces and crammed together like an uptown 6 train at 7:30 in the morning, before being sent off to slaughter.
CAFOs arose out of a practical need: if you have an entity placing an order for x amount of beef on a regular basis, and to have x amount of beef regularly, the only way that'll be possible is concentrate the cattle and bulk up the population.
Don't worry--there's plenty of blame to go around. Cattle aren't meant to live in places like Auschwitz (consolidating cattle ranching: boo). The purchasing power of fast-food giants is too great (fast-fooding of the market: boo). None of this would be happening if people would stop giving money to fast-food giants for sustenance needs (people constantly eating fast-food: boo).
All of these topics stem from the film Food Inc, a well made movie about the realities of the majority of the food available in the grocery store and vast majority of restaurants. I don't really want to beat points made in the film into the ground, like about how the government subsidizing the corn industry makes corn so cheap that we tend to use it in everything, or like how the purchasing power of the fast food giants drives prices down to a point that they can offer customers in the working-poor segment of the American population food far cheaper than non-processed and healthier counterparts. They do a better job with that in the movie.
I would like to type a few words about Monsanto, about how they own the rights to some huge percentage of seeds used in America, and about how they don't allow farmers to use the same seeds from year to year, forcing them to buy seeds each season; about how their corporate executives tend to end up in places of power in American government positions with the task of overseeing their old company. But I can't, or won't, anyway.
Not that I think I'm all that important, but, no matter how small my audience, I am using a public forum, and Monsanto tends to sue anybody who makes public claims against them. Even when they know they'll lose, they've been known to sue. That kind of thing sets the tone. Litigation ruins farmers and outspoken rabble-rousers.
The food-giant industry has gotten their hands on the law books and changed the libel laws in many states, creating so-called "Veggie Libel Laws". It makes it possible for those large multi-national corporations to sue people who utter disparaging words about their company or products. Usually the person doing the suing must show proof of their claims--not so in this new world order. It is the defendant's responsibility to prove their claims that disparaged the giant food company who's suing them. The beef industry even sued Oprah. After a few years of litigation Oprah won, but still refuses to discuss the topic.
When speech is protected by law, but litigation stands in the way of debate and stifles discussion, that's the Chilling Effect. The threat of being sued quiets the public.
Not that I'm actually scared of Monsanto or the beef-lobby, but I'm better safe than sorry...being a "literary blogger" doesn't pay anything, and I can't afford litigation of any kind. (Not yet...Pre-Paid Legal, you ready for a fight?)
One reason I wanted to get this discussion down in the blogosphere and later on paper is because the largest purchaser of beef in America, and maybe the world, have their very first establishment right in our backyard, in Downey:
It is a restaurant from which I'll never eat. I would've avoided it before seeing the Food Inc., but now, certainly. Their purchasing demands reshaped how food is engineered. Their hiring tactics of making it a Fordian factory assembly line, with unskilled workers doing the same action monotonously for hours, set the bar for food establishments around the country, and set the wage scale for all food workers dramatically low.
Don't get me wrong, I've eaten plenty of fast-food in my life. In the past seven or eight years, though, I've made a conscious effort to avoid it. While living in New York I never visited a White Castle; while living in Austin I never went to a Whattaburger; and being back in California? I'm sorry, but I never go to In-N-Out anymore. In that time span I've had something from one of those places at most five times, mostly in the midst of old friends and alcohol.
I'm just one man, trying to make some decisions: they're right for me, but they may not be for you.
When I was young my parents favored Burger King and Carl's Jr. over McDonald's, and later when I was in High School and college I tended towards taco/burrito places, Wienerschnitzel, and sandwich shops. It's because of these reasons I can honestly say I've never had a Big Mac.
Los Angeles Basin
This is the first part in my "WiLA" series.
Quite a large part of the population that makes up the "Greater Metropolitan LA Area" (much of Los Angeles County and the majority of the population in Orange County) lives on a flat plain in between the rugged mountains and the ocean. This plain is surrounded by the canyons around Malibu, the mountains that house the Getty, the hills with Griffith Park, the mountains that have Mt. Baldy and line the 210 freeway, and is eventually closed in by the hills south of Irvine in Mission Viejo.
The generally flat plane is 70 miles long by 35 miles wide. It's called the LA Basin.
Basin like these--between mountains and the ocean--are formed the same way as similar geological formations: with the depositing of silt by rivers.
If you take a moment to look at a map of the Los Angeles area, you'll see in the north-west the beach towns starting south of Malibu with Santa Monica, and along that stretch of beach you can find Venice Beach, Manhattan Beach, and Redondo Beach among others. A mountainous formation called the Palos Verdes Peninsula breaks up the smooth beach line, and sends it east for a ways before it starts south again. This is where you get Long Beach, Seal Beach, Huntington and Newport and the Orange County coast.
Palos Verdes blocks us in Long Beach from bad weather. Today it houses wealthy enclaves and beautiful views of both the ocean and the basin.
The thing is, is that Palos Verdes used to be an island.
Over the eons the silt has built up and filled up the space from where the rivers poured out of the mountains all the way to this lost Channel Island.
Human reliance on rivers is nothing new. It makes a kind of sense in the heart knowing that the entire area that this mostly urban blight ans sprawl exist on, this flat plain of Western Civilization, was all created by rivers.
Say "rivers" and "Los Angeles" in the same sentence to folks who aren't from around here and the idea that's conjured is usually the paved-in-concrete mostly empty dumps. There may be a trickle of water, there may be the T-1000 in a semi chasing the Governator on a hog.
Unfortunately, this is pretty accurate. The people of Los Angeles, a while back, decided (I'm guessing) that since they couldn't control earthquakes, and exerted so little control over the mudslides and wildfires, that maybe they could control the flooding of the LA River (and some of her sisters) by paving the path and ending the occasional shifting of the waterway.
Unlike places like Denver and Atlanta, which have no natural water sources, Los Angeles happens to be blessed with a three large rivers and one large tributary. They are: Los Angeles River, Rio Hondo, San Gabriel River, and Santa Ana River.
Historically the two biggies have been the LA River and the San Gabriel River. A flood in the San Gabriel River in the 1850s shifted it's path to where it is today, and it's old path is now known as Rio Hondo ("deep river" in Spanish).
It's funny to think that the Rio Hondo is the old path of the San Gabriel--until you notice that the geographic center of the LA Basin, the very center point of the 70 mi x 35 mi plain that is "LA" is the confluence of the LA River and today's Rio Hondo.
The very center of it all:
Once I read the fact that the meeting of the rivers was the center of the basin, I got busy looking at Google maps. I tried to follow the path of the LA River. It merges with another concrete monstrosity at one point, and a little zooming-out shows the names around this confluence of "Old River Road" and "Old River Elementary School". Bingo.
After the flood in the 1850s and the shifting of the San Gabriel to a path somewhat aways, the names of things in the neighborhood around the older "original" (to white American settlers) San Gabriel changed to "Old River" this and that.
I'd found the confluence of the LA River and the Rio Hondo. Zooming out on the map gave me directions, and when the time was right, I was off. It only took me eight minutes to get there. Traffic was generally accommodating, but it turns out we're not so far.
When I got there, the scene struck me as, well, strangely spiritual.
Yes, it's an almost nightmarish scene of concrete, but it's quieter that it seems it should be, and somehow tugs at you. After a moment I noticed some folks climbing up a retaining wall leaving the river "bed" area, and realizing that I could just get down into it, I scrambled for the opportunity.
The LA River is seen as the one behind the protruding concreted peninsula; the Rio Hondo is in the foreground.
In the first picture here, "The Center of it All" picture, the LA River is on the left, the Rio Hondo on the right.
Here's a similar picture to that looking directly at that peninsula, LA River on the left, Rio Hondo on the right:
I climbed up the peninsula and looked back. Here you can almost see the actual LA River flowing well in the tiny trough in the center of it's path. The Hondo is barely a trickle, but it's there, flowing.
Not even concrete can stop mother nature and gravity. Here's a "Continual Birth" shot:
None of these pictures really yield the sense of wonder that is found in the midst of the concrete. I wasn't joking about the heart-tugging sense of awe, the grip this "concrete monstrosity" had over me. I've been to the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, the Palisades on the Hudson in early October when the trees make it look like it's on fire, and somehow felt a similar pull out off the Imperial Highway and the 710.
Obviously there's no real comparison between those Wonders of the Natural World and this concrete confluence, but the grip it had on me was in the same family of awe-grip.
Quite a large part of the population that makes up the "Greater Metropolitan LA Area" (much of Los Angeles County and the majority of the population in Orange County) lives on a flat plain in between the rugged mountains and the ocean. This plain is surrounded by the canyons around Malibu, the mountains that house the Getty, the hills with Griffith Park, the mountains that have Mt. Baldy and line the 210 freeway, and is eventually closed in by the hills south of Irvine in Mission Viejo.
The generally flat plane is 70 miles long by 35 miles wide. It's called the LA Basin.
Basin like these--between mountains and the ocean--are formed the same way as similar geological formations: with the depositing of silt by rivers.
If you take a moment to look at a map of the Los Angeles area, you'll see in the north-west the beach towns starting south of Malibu with Santa Monica, and along that stretch of beach you can find Venice Beach, Manhattan Beach, and Redondo Beach among others. A mountainous formation called the Palos Verdes Peninsula breaks up the smooth beach line, and sends it east for a ways before it starts south again. This is where you get Long Beach, Seal Beach, Huntington and Newport and the Orange County coast.
Palos Verdes blocks us in Long Beach from bad weather. Today it houses wealthy enclaves and beautiful views of both the ocean and the basin.
The thing is, is that Palos Verdes used to be an island.
Over the eons the silt has built up and filled up the space from where the rivers poured out of the mountains all the way to this lost Channel Island.
Human reliance on rivers is nothing new. It makes a kind of sense in the heart knowing that the entire area that this mostly urban blight ans sprawl exist on, this flat plain of Western Civilization, was all created by rivers.
Say "rivers" and "Los Angeles" in the same sentence to folks who aren't from around here and the idea that's conjured is usually the paved-in-concrete mostly empty dumps. There may be a trickle of water, there may be the T-1000 in a semi chasing the Governator on a hog.
Unfortunately, this is pretty accurate. The people of Los Angeles, a while back, decided (I'm guessing) that since they couldn't control earthquakes, and exerted so little control over the mudslides and wildfires, that maybe they could control the flooding of the LA River (and some of her sisters) by paving the path and ending the occasional shifting of the waterway.
Unlike places like Denver and Atlanta, which have no natural water sources, Los Angeles happens to be blessed with a three large rivers and one large tributary. They are: Los Angeles River, Rio Hondo, San Gabriel River, and Santa Ana River.
Historically the two biggies have been the LA River and the San Gabriel River. A flood in the San Gabriel River in the 1850s shifted it's path to where it is today, and it's old path is now known as Rio Hondo ("deep river" in Spanish).
It's funny to think that the Rio Hondo is the old path of the San Gabriel--until you notice that the geographic center of the LA Basin, the very center point of the 70 mi x 35 mi plain that is "LA" is the confluence of the LA River and today's Rio Hondo.
The very center of it all:
Once I read the fact that the meeting of the rivers was the center of the basin, I got busy looking at Google maps. I tried to follow the path of the LA River. It merges with another concrete monstrosity at one point, and a little zooming-out shows the names around this confluence of "Old River Road" and "Old River Elementary School". Bingo.
After the flood in the 1850s and the shifting of the San Gabriel to a path somewhat aways, the names of things in the neighborhood around the older "original" (to white American settlers) San Gabriel changed to "Old River" this and that.
I'd found the confluence of the LA River and the Rio Hondo. Zooming out on the map gave me directions, and when the time was right, I was off. It only took me eight minutes to get there. Traffic was generally accommodating, but it turns out we're not so far.
When I got there, the scene struck me as, well, strangely spiritual.
Yes, it's an almost nightmarish scene of concrete, but it's quieter that it seems it should be, and somehow tugs at you. After a moment I noticed some folks climbing up a retaining wall leaving the river "bed" area, and realizing that I could just get down into it, I scrambled for the opportunity.
The LA River is seen as the one behind the protruding concreted peninsula; the Rio Hondo is in the foreground.
In the first picture here, "The Center of it All" picture, the LA River is on the left, the Rio Hondo on the right.
Here's a similar picture to that looking directly at that peninsula, LA River on the left, Rio Hondo on the right:
I climbed up the peninsula and looked back. Here you can almost see the actual LA River flowing well in the tiny trough in the center of it's path. The Hondo is barely a trickle, but it's there, flowing.
Not even concrete can stop mother nature and gravity. Here's a "Continual Birth" shot:
None of these pictures really yield the sense of wonder that is found in the midst of the concrete. I wasn't joking about the heart-tugging sense of awe, the grip this "concrete monstrosity" had over me. I've been to the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, the Palisades on the Hudson in early October when the trees make it look like it's on fire, and somehow felt a similar pull out off the Imperial Highway and the 710.
Obviously there's no real comparison between those Wonders of the Natural World and this concrete confluence, but the grip it had on me was in the same family of awe-grip.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Coming Up...
Probably later today I'll have a trio of posts up about the day I spent out last Wednesday. I also was thinking of compiling the three posts, maybe with a few added ideas, into a collection of essays that act as a humanist manifesto of sorts, and having little copies printed up from some POD place.
The posts--as essays--I'll have expanded, so even if you read them as they appeared in this forum, they'd be fresh, or deeper, or in one case, totally different in the little book.
I'm just playing with an idea...
The posts--as essays--I'll have expanded, so even if you read them as they appeared in this forum, they'd be fresh, or deeper, or in one case, totally different in the little book.
I'm just playing with an idea...
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
A Handful of Pictures for Norm
I was out and about today and took a few pictures that have references that only Norm and Corrie out of my friends and family will get.
The first picture is of a P-Touch label I made and put onto my car.
This picture I almost died trying to take. It's from northbound 101, just north of Griffith Park.
Here's the street itself...
The first picture is of a P-Touch label I made and put onto my car.
This picture I almost died trying to take. It's from northbound 101, just north of Griffith Park.
Here's the street itself...
Two Wheelin' it to the OC
This past Sunday found Corrie and I waking up early and preparing for, and then executing, a long bike trek to the Marina in Belmont Shore--a shiny beach neighborhood on the eastern side of Long Beach--for their farmer's market. It's just over five-and-a-half miles from our apartment on the west side to the far east side, pretty much on the border with Orange County, so you can decide how long that is in terms of lifetime...it takes about a half hour, maybe forty minutes.
Corrie's basket was attached to her bike and I sported a bigger-than-average backpack, and we headed out along the beach, planning on returning along the streets for a change of pace. We started out before we had breakfast, as we planned to eat at a place out on the Marina's man-made peninsula.
Having forgotten to grab some cash from our nearby bank before we left our 'hood, and not wanting to pay the exorbitant fee from a sidewalk ATM, we located the closest Chase branch. It turned out to be a short jaunt over into Orange County. It was our first time bicycling to another county.
After we loaded ourselves down with a ridiculous amount of groceries--Corrie's eyes and ambition have always been larger than her carrying capacity--some excitement went down.
Her basket was so full, and poorly constructed, that it was drooping and resting against her front wheel's break line, causing the diminished ability of that break to work. I, having no basket, found myself with a backpack bursting at the seems with produce, so full as to have our fancy granola stuffed into the bungee netting on the outside of the rucksack. It must have been at least thirty pounds, and since my big heavy cruiser bicycle is nearly eighty pounds itself, I had quite the added weight.
Neither of us were travelling very fast. But we left the parking area where the market takes place, obeyed all applicable traffic laws, turned left out of the market and into a lane that was unpopulated at the time, the left turn lane. Our plan was to turn left, nice and legal, back out onto 2nd Street and start the trip home.
What we couldn't see was an asshole tearing out of the market at a exit behind ours in such a rush that he hadn't noticed two bikers. We hear honking and brakes skidding, voices yelling from behind. We're yelling too, hollering as a white SUV zooms around us, coming alarmingly close to Corrie. The driver, a man in his fifties or so, had a look on his face like, "What the hell are you doing?". I remember yelling "It's the law! We have to be here!"
The SUV sped off for the green turning signal and as I shook my head in disbelief, I heard another person behind us yelling and cursing up a storm. Loaded down I tried to turn and look, but the person--on a bicycle--sped past. This guy was on a mission. He was tearing off after the SUV. He even threw his water bottle at the truck in between profanity laced threats. He pulled off his bike lock and was prepared to crack some windows, but the hill after the light proved the difference maker in that equation.
This young man, a round young Long Beach State student probably, had watched the driver almost kill us (Corrie mainly), had taken personal offense to the action, and decided to retaliate: an attack on one is an attack on all. You have a four thousand pound fossil fuel burning machine, we have under-a-hundred pound human powered mechanisms. This is not a game of chicken we can win.
After the young guy sped off after the SUV, I turned to Corrie and said, "I'm buying that kid a drink." Never got to, but we did chat for a minute, and proclaimed out unity.
We decided to take the beach path home, mainly to keep away from cars and to keep our momentum going forward; the starting and stopping from those lights would prove too annoying carrying all that weight.
When we got home Corrie cracked a beer and went off to take a nap. I showered and went to work, but boy was I ready for sleep that night.
Corrie's basket was attached to her bike and I sported a bigger-than-average backpack, and we headed out along the beach, planning on returning along the streets for a change of pace. We started out before we had breakfast, as we planned to eat at a place out on the Marina's man-made peninsula.
Having forgotten to grab some cash from our nearby bank before we left our 'hood, and not wanting to pay the exorbitant fee from a sidewalk ATM, we located the closest Chase branch. It turned out to be a short jaunt over into Orange County. It was our first time bicycling to another county.
After we loaded ourselves down with a ridiculous amount of groceries--Corrie's eyes and ambition have always been larger than her carrying capacity--some excitement went down.
Her basket was so full, and poorly constructed, that it was drooping and resting against her front wheel's break line, causing the diminished ability of that break to work. I, having no basket, found myself with a backpack bursting at the seems with produce, so full as to have our fancy granola stuffed into the bungee netting on the outside of the rucksack. It must have been at least thirty pounds, and since my big heavy cruiser bicycle is nearly eighty pounds itself, I had quite the added weight.
Neither of us were travelling very fast. But we left the parking area where the market takes place, obeyed all applicable traffic laws, turned left out of the market and into a lane that was unpopulated at the time, the left turn lane. Our plan was to turn left, nice and legal, back out onto 2nd Street and start the trip home.
What we couldn't see was an asshole tearing out of the market at a exit behind ours in such a rush that he hadn't noticed two bikers. We hear honking and brakes skidding, voices yelling from behind. We're yelling too, hollering as a white SUV zooms around us, coming alarmingly close to Corrie. The driver, a man in his fifties or so, had a look on his face like, "What the hell are you doing?". I remember yelling "It's the law! We have to be here!"
The SUV sped off for the green turning signal and as I shook my head in disbelief, I heard another person behind us yelling and cursing up a storm. Loaded down I tried to turn and look, but the person--on a bicycle--sped past. This guy was on a mission. He was tearing off after the SUV. He even threw his water bottle at the truck in between profanity laced threats. He pulled off his bike lock and was prepared to crack some windows, but the hill after the light proved the difference maker in that equation.
This young man, a round young Long Beach State student probably, had watched the driver almost kill us (Corrie mainly), had taken personal offense to the action, and decided to retaliate: an attack on one is an attack on all. You have a four thousand pound fossil fuel burning machine, we have under-a-hundred pound human powered mechanisms. This is not a game of chicken we can win.
After the young guy sped off after the SUV, I turned to Corrie and said, "I'm buying that kid a drink." Never got to, but we did chat for a minute, and proclaimed out unity.
We decided to take the beach path home, mainly to keep away from cars and to keep our momentum going forward; the starting and stopping from those lights would prove too annoying carrying all that weight.
When we got home Corrie cracked a beer and went off to take a nap. I showered and went to work, but boy was I ready for sleep that night.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Go Big Mo!
This is the third post this year about a current or former Yankee baseballer and of a congratulatory nature. The first was for Derek Jeter, the iconic shortstop who got his 3000th career hit. The second was for Hideki Matsui, now with the Oakland A's, who got his 500th career home-run (spanning here and Japan).
This post is for Big Mo, Mariano Rivera. With the Yankees victory yesterday over the Minnesota Twins, a makeup game from four weeks ago, Mo finished it off and earned a save, his 42nd on the year, good for second place in the American league.
It was also his 602nd save for his career, putting him in first place all-time, breaking the tie he was in with the retired Trevor Hoffman. While Trevor Hoffman was an excellent pitcher and closer, he played for longer than Rivera and the majority of his career was played in the National League West, universally seen as the lightest hitting and most pitcher friendly division in baseball.
Mo, on the other hand, plays in the American League East, the roughest, toughest, hardest hitting-est division in the game. When the Blue Jays lead the league in homers and are the fourth best team in the division, you know it's off the hook. This season, the three best American league teams have been (and still are) the Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays, although the Tigers (AL Central) are making a case for themselves.
In any case, Mo plays in the hardest division in baseball, has consistently put up remarkable numbers, and does it all with only two pitches: fastball, cutter. (A cutter is a "cut-fastball", a fastball that creeps in on the hands of the batter and turns into a buzz-saw that can't be hit, shattering bats.) His pinpoint accuracy with the cutter is the stuff of legend.
I remember watching him pitch in 1996, when he looked like he weighed 165 pounds and pitched in middle relief. He'd come into the game in the fifth or sixth inning, break bats around strikeouts for two innngs, and John Wetteland would enter in the 9th and get the save. In 1997, they let Wetteland go and made Rivera the closer, and he subsequently became the greatest closer of all time, with no questions asked. It's quite remarkable.
He's forty-freaking-one years old. He's got 42 saves this year. 2nd place on the season, and 41 years old.
I haven't even mentioned his post-season exploits. Much talk has been generated about the importance of a lock-down reliever or closer in the playoffs. Looking at the percentages over the past fifteen years you get the sense of that visceral importance, but, that whole body of evidence--all that data that generate those percentages--could be skewed single-handedly by Mariano Rivera's continued excellence and the Yankees frequent trips to the playoffs. Mo has pitched in 139 2/3 inings, almost 140 innings in the playoffs--the divisional rounds, the championship rounds, and World Series games. His earned run average (ERA) in those nearly 140 innings: 0.74.
If you don't know baseball, that number doesn't mean much. If you do know baseball, an ERA that low for a month is pretty good, let alone fifteen seasons of playoff trips accumulating 140 innings. As an explanation for non-baseball people, a pitcher's ERA is the measure of, on average, how many runs would a pitcher give up in a 9 inning game--a pitcher's average run-allowance per 9 innings. For Mariano Rivera, over the course of almost sixteen complete games, that's less than a single run a game.
The last home-run he gave up in any playoff game was in 2000, against the Mets during the World Series, a series in which they won. Before that, his only other post-season homer allowed was against the Indians in 1997.
Mariano Rivera isn't the greatest baseball player of all time, but, can you name a better role player? Has there been anyone better, in any sport, at doing their one job, over an over, for a long period of time, against the hardest competition, at ridiculously high levels? I can only think of maybe two: Pele and Jordan.
I've had the pleasure of watching some of Mo's saves in person.
Remember this, from November of 2009 (like the Matsui post):
This post is for Big Mo, Mariano Rivera. With the Yankees victory yesterday over the Minnesota Twins, a makeup game from four weeks ago, Mo finished it off and earned a save, his 42nd on the year, good for second place in the American league.
It was also his 602nd save for his career, putting him in first place all-time, breaking the tie he was in with the retired Trevor Hoffman. While Trevor Hoffman was an excellent pitcher and closer, he played for longer than Rivera and the majority of his career was played in the National League West, universally seen as the lightest hitting and most pitcher friendly division in baseball.
Mo, on the other hand, plays in the American League East, the roughest, toughest, hardest hitting-est division in the game. When the Blue Jays lead the league in homers and are the fourth best team in the division, you know it's off the hook. This season, the three best American league teams have been (and still are) the Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays, although the Tigers (AL Central) are making a case for themselves.
In any case, Mo plays in the hardest division in baseball, has consistently put up remarkable numbers, and does it all with only two pitches: fastball, cutter. (A cutter is a "cut-fastball", a fastball that creeps in on the hands of the batter and turns into a buzz-saw that can't be hit, shattering bats.) His pinpoint accuracy with the cutter is the stuff of legend.
I remember watching him pitch in 1996, when he looked like he weighed 165 pounds and pitched in middle relief. He'd come into the game in the fifth or sixth inning, break bats around strikeouts for two innngs, and John Wetteland would enter in the 9th and get the save. In 1997, they let Wetteland go and made Rivera the closer, and he subsequently became the greatest closer of all time, with no questions asked. It's quite remarkable.
He's forty-freaking-one years old. He's got 42 saves this year. 2nd place on the season, and 41 years old.
I haven't even mentioned his post-season exploits. Much talk has been generated about the importance of a lock-down reliever or closer in the playoffs. Looking at the percentages over the past fifteen years you get the sense of that visceral importance, but, that whole body of evidence--all that data that generate those percentages--could be skewed single-handedly by Mariano Rivera's continued excellence and the Yankees frequent trips to the playoffs. Mo has pitched in 139 2/3 inings, almost 140 innings in the playoffs--the divisional rounds, the championship rounds, and World Series games. His earned run average (ERA) in those nearly 140 innings: 0.74.
If you don't know baseball, that number doesn't mean much. If you do know baseball, an ERA that low for a month is pretty good, let alone fifteen seasons of playoff trips accumulating 140 innings. As an explanation for non-baseball people, a pitcher's ERA is the measure of, on average, how many runs would a pitcher give up in a 9 inning game--a pitcher's average run-allowance per 9 innings. For Mariano Rivera, over the course of almost sixteen complete games, that's less than a single run a game.
The last home-run he gave up in any playoff game was in 2000, against the Mets during the World Series, a series in which they won. Before that, his only other post-season homer allowed was against the Indians in 1997.
Mariano Rivera isn't the greatest baseball player of all time, but, can you name a better role player? Has there been anyone better, in any sport, at doing their one job, over an over, for a long period of time, against the hardest competition, at ridiculously high levels? I can only think of maybe two: Pele and Jordan.
I've had the pleasure of watching some of Mo's saves in person.
Remember this, from November of 2009 (like the Matsui post):
Friday, September 16, 2011
A Channel for Rachel
Rachel is my wife's cousin, the young lady we lived with for a time in Austin, Corrie's Maid of Honor, an institution of downtown Austin, and a survivor of the Austin balcony collapse of 2010.
She's fun and energetic and loves horses, so when we found this channel on our local free digital television, I thought of her: Pegasus TV.
This is an entire channel devoted to horses and equestrian pursuits. My mother is also a horse lady, so this channel and accompanying website should be of interest for her as well.
She's fun and energetic and loves horses, so when we found this channel on our local free digital television, I thought of her: Pegasus TV.
This is an entire channel devoted to horses and equestrian pursuits. My mother is also a horse lady, so this channel and accompanying website should be of interest for her as well.
Burning Bastrop
Bastrop is the name of a city in Central Texas about 50 miles east of Austin. The Guyton Ranchette, a small ranch owned by kin of Corrie that we stayed at in March of 2010, is in a small town called Paige, and is about ten miles from Bastrop.
Bastrop's been in the news lately because of wildfires burning through the area. Believe me, if we still lived in Austin I'd have gathered my own photographs and posted about this by now. Still, any of my own photos wouldn't look anything like the following picture, which must have been taken by a firefighter. Outrageous:
This next picture looks like it's taken looking east on HWY 290, the hypotenuse from Austin to Houston in the Austin-San Antonio-Houston triangle. The horizons in Texas seem bigger when you're there, but here you can get the idea of what would normally be rolling green hills kissing a dynamic sky is dominated by smoke:
This last picture is the skyline and the fire off in the east, possibly taken from a hill in Zilker Park:
We're hoping the Ranchette is fine, and since we haven't heard anything to the contrary, we're confident.
Bastrop's been in the news lately because of wildfires burning through the area. Believe me, if we still lived in Austin I'd have gathered my own photographs and posted about this by now. Still, any of my own photos wouldn't look anything like the following picture, which must have been taken by a firefighter. Outrageous:
This next picture looks like it's taken looking east on HWY 290, the hypotenuse from Austin to Houston in the Austin-San Antonio-Houston triangle. The horizons in Texas seem bigger when you're there, but here you can get the idea of what would normally be rolling green hills kissing a dynamic sky is dominated by smoke:
This last picture is the skyline and the fire off in the east, possibly taken from a hill in Zilker Park:
We're hoping the Ranchette is fine, and since we haven't heard anything to the contrary, we're confident.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Some of our Large Murals
Murals and friezes and large scale public works of art have been commissioned by municipal leaders for thousands of years. That tradition lives on in Long Beach.
This mural was just finished and unveiled in a daytime ceremony that I missed because my paper didn't come that day. It's down the street from my place and an article mentioned the ceremony on the first page (the paper was delivered the next day). It was during a time when I wasn't going to be at work, so I would've gone.
The mural shows the history of our fair oil- and aviation-boom town. Using the building next to it, one can see how tall the thing really is:
This large painting is on the side of parking garage down our exact street. It showcases the Latino heritage in the Southland:
This piece is a ceramic tile mosaic. I imagine it is the what this 'hood looked like before:
There are many more, a surprisingly large amount, really, and I plan on showcasing them here. Ever since we used to walk by a large scale mural in Santa Monica on the way to the beach when I was a kid, a mural that spans an underpass, I've been fascinated.
This mural was just finished and unveiled in a daytime ceremony that I missed because my paper didn't come that day. It's down the street from my place and an article mentioned the ceremony on the first page (the paper was delivered the next day). It was during a time when I wasn't going to be at work, so I would've gone.
The mural shows the history of our fair oil- and aviation-boom town. Using the building next to it, one can see how tall the thing really is:
This large painting is on the side of parking garage down our exact street. It showcases the Latino heritage in the Southland:
This piece is a ceramic tile mosaic. I imagine it is the what this 'hood looked like before:
There are many more, a surprisingly large amount, really, and I plan on showcasing them here. Ever since we used to walk by a large scale mural in Santa Monica on the way to the beach when I was a kid, a mural that spans an underpass, I've been fascinated.
A Few Historic Sites in Long Beach
Long Beach is full of it's own historic sites, places that have historical ties to the "idea" of LB and of the Southland. Our fair city has it's sordid tales covered by a facade of Art Deco and Miami pink and eggshell blue.
Well, not everything's Art Deco. (I plan on a post about the Art Deco in Long Beach specifically and the Southland generally (the second time I've used that phrase today). The Art Deco wave was triggered by an earthquake.)
With this post I have just a trio of pictures of places that are very close to our apartment and have a history that I've yet to fully uncover.
The first is a place I've posted about briefly before; the Broadlind Hotel.
It's named for the streets at the corner on which it sits; Broadway and Linden. It's the largest example, and one of only two or three in the area, of the Renaissance revival style. Note the large arches and beautifully landscaped palms.
I'm not sure why, but I really enjoy this building. I used to visit the coffee shop that lived in the bottom floor of the Boradlind to work on this blog and read. Their coffee wasn't that great, and Sipology, as it was called, is now closed. The space is vacant for the time being.
I take lots of pictures of the Broadlind.
This is the Cherry Ave Lifegaurd Station. It was built in the '30s, and eventually moved to it's final position. It's a cool spot seen from above at the Bluffs.
This is one of the first buildings with large spaces that were converted into lofts. The Kress family seem to have lofts all around the nation. Whether all the properties with the Kress name are connected remains to be seen, the fact that this loft-living building was a precursor to the "artist-loft" trend that swept New York City decades later. These lofts were made available in the '30s.
I'll be adding some other historic sites in the future. Just for you, my fair readers, as I learn about the Southland, I'll share with you.
Well, not everything's Art Deco. (I plan on a post about the Art Deco in Long Beach specifically and the Southland generally (the second time I've used that phrase today). The Art Deco wave was triggered by an earthquake.)
With this post I have just a trio of pictures of places that are very close to our apartment and have a history that I've yet to fully uncover.
The first is a place I've posted about briefly before; the Broadlind Hotel.
It's named for the streets at the corner on which it sits; Broadway and Linden. It's the largest example, and one of only two or three in the area, of the Renaissance revival style. Note the large arches and beautifully landscaped palms.
I'm not sure why, but I really enjoy this building. I used to visit the coffee shop that lived in the bottom floor of the Boradlind to work on this blog and read. Their coffee wasn't that great, and Sipology, as it was called, is now closed. The space is vacant for the time being.
I take lots of pictures of the Broadlind.
This is the Cherry Ave Lifegaurd Station. It was built in the '30s, and eventually moved to it's final position. It's a cool spot seen from above at the Bluffs.
This is one of the first buildings with large spaces that were converted into lofts. The Kress family seem to have lofts all around the nation. Whether all the properties with the Kress name are connected remains to be seen, the fact that this loft-living building was a precursor to the "artist-loft" trend that swept New York City decades later. These lofts were made available in the '30s.
I'll be adding some other historic sites in the future. Just for you, my fair readers, as I learn about the Southland, I'll share with you.
Having read those again...
I spent the last post talking up this form of writing, and exalted one of my own pieces, "Buddhism and Anticipation Games", as one of my favorites. I re-read it, as I do from time to time. The position it holds in my brain doesn't always seem to match what it actually says.
Whatever.
I still have hopes for this form generally and this site specifically, with it's mundane Gonzo approach to the world.
Whatever.
I still have hopes for this form generally and this site specifically, with it's mundane Gonzo approach to the world.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Post 600: A Case for Literary Blogging
This is my 600th post since I started this blog in Brooklyn in April of 2009. I've been thinking of this post for a while, ever since I realized that my 400th and 500th posts were nearly identical; the same background story and premise. I've repeated myself a few times in this forum before, but that was usually about weather related things. I've been loathe to repeat the meat of posts.
I had two goals with this, the 600th post. First, I crunched some numbers. I posted 223 times while living in Brooklyn. Those posts, under the "...Back East" title, were about New York and travels we made while living in Brooklyn. I posted 217 times while living in Austin and under the "...Deep in Texas" title. That leaves us with exactly 160 posts under the "...Makes it Home" title. Pretty even split so far.
The second goal I had for this post is to broach the topic of "Literary Blogging", the idea that this is a media that can allow the formation of art in a style that is relatively new.
After hearing the buzz over Grantland, a literary style blog about sports and a touch of other entertainment news, and having checked it out myself, I shook my head. It looked like my own material, but about solely sports. I read the site, of course, but I feel like I beat them to the punch.
I would never claim that every post I've ever entered into this realm is literature. I am claiming though that this is a form in which literature can be created.
One reason I read Grantland is that it's similar to my own material, or so I think. I also check out Cracked's website regularly, because they have a more Daily Show mentality.
But, really, I could read this blog, my blog, anytime. I do, actually, in a bout of narcissism that I've never really encountered before. I have tons of posts I really enjoy; I enjoy their subject matter, their flow, tone, and progression.
The current idea is that blogs are creating a world in which the newspaper, or maybe newspapering, is a relic that costs their audience money. Blogging is supposed to be training people to expect their "news" for free. I've never had that goal, or plan, for this site. This site has always been about observations, ideas, memories, travels, experiences generally...you know, all the things about the human condition. All the things that can inspire artistic creation.
Some of my favorite posts I've culled to the left side on the web version of this blog. They live under the title "Essential Caliboy", mainly because "Essential Caliboyinbrooklyn" wouldn't fit and I couldn't settle on anything better. It seems like much of my personal beliefs can be discovered if you pay enough attention to those "Essential" pieces. Sometimes I try to hide my true feelings, maybe because I'm planning to run for Mayor of Long Beach within a decade, but those posts sure tell plenty. There're also a few posts I haven't included as an "Essential" piece that explain my personal feeling on other topics, explain them plain as day, but for other reasons haven't made it to Column Left.
Maybe that should be the name, instead of "Essential Caliboy"..."Column Left".
In any case, one of the best posts I put up here was one of the first, "A Beautiful Sight". That was a discussion about November 4th, 2008, in the black community. It's powerful. There was a reason I put it up third overall, I guess (the first two posts were of the "Hi! Here I am..." and "...this is what you can expect..." variety). It originated as a letter to a friend (actually a Facebook message (full disclosure)).
One of the best pure posts, or maybe a post that I consider to be one of the better posts, is the "Buddhism and Anticipation Games". I've read a great deal of things by a great deal of writers, and I've never read anything quite like that post. Even now when I read it, the flow, the connection of American consumerism, Buddhism and anticipation, and the conclusion all still surprise me. Somehow it all came together.
These posts aren't New Journalism, by any means, but they're non-fiction. There's definitely a strain of Hunter Thompson and Gonzo, since "I" is a character in, and protagonist of, each post. These are much more mundane things being done here than in which anything Hunter was involved. I also specifically avoid claiming any pretense of objectivity, but I wouldn't call this blog a series of editorials.
I'm at a loss for giving it a title. That's why I'm thinking of calling this whole endeavor Literary Blogging. I put a post up a few days ago about "Mammalian Prejudices" and got one of my loyal readers so fired up about a similar but different topic that she got up on a soapbox. The fact that reader was my mother doesn't overshadow the power of words, and if they have kind of power, then the whole thing has value, doesn't it?
Isn't that which reflects the world and has meaning and power for others what constitutes art?
I had two goals with this, the 600th post. First, I crunched some numbers. I posted 223 times while living in Brooklyn. Those posts, under the "...Back East" title, were about New York and travels we made while living in Brooklyn. I posted 217 times while living in Austin and under the "...Deep in Texas" title. That leaves us with exactly 160 posts under the "...Makes it Home" title. Pretty even split so far.
The second goal I had for this post is to broach the topic of "Literary Blogging", the idea that this is a media that can allow the formation of art in a style that is relatively new.
After hearing the buzz over Grantland, a literary style blog about sports and a touch of other entertainment news, and having checked it out myself, I shook my head. It looked like my own material, but about solely sports. I read the site, of course, but I feel like I beat them to the punch.
I would never claim that every post I've ever entered into this realm is literature. I am claiming though that this is a form in which literature can be created.
One reason I read Grantland is that it's similar to my own material, or so I think. I also check out Cracked's website regularly, because they have a more Daily Show mentality.
But, really, I could read this blog, my blog, anytime. I do, actually, in a bout of narcissism that I've never really encountered before. I have tons of posts I really enjoy; I enjoy their subject matter, their flow, tone, and progression.
The current idea is that blogs are creating a world in which the newspaper, or maybe newspapering, is a relic that costs their audience money. Blogging is supposed to be training people to expect their "news" for free. I've never had that goal, or plan, for this site. This site has always been about observations, ideas, memories, travels, experiences generally...you know, all the things about the human condition. All the things that can inspire artistic creation.
Some of my favorite posts I've culled to the left side on the web version of this blog. They live under the title "Essential Caliboy", mainly because "Essential Caliboyinbrooklyn" wouldn't fit and I couldn't settle on anything better. It seems like much of my personal beliefs can be discovered if you pay enough attention to those "Essential" pieces. Sometimes I try to hide my true feelings, maybe because I'm planning to run for Mayor of Long Beach within a decade, but those posts sure tell plenty. There're also a few posts I haven't included as an "Essential" piece that explain my personal feeling on other topics, explain them plain as day, but for other reasons haven't made it to Column Left.
Maybe that should be the name, instead of "Essential Caliboy"..."Column Left".
In any case, one of the best posts I put up here was one of the first, "A Beautiful Sight". That was a discussion about November 4th, 2008, in the black community. It's powerful. There was a reason I put it up third overall, I guess (the first two posts were of the "Hi! Here I am..." and "...this is what you can expect..." variety). It originated as a letter to a friend (actually a Facebook message (full disclosure)).
One of the best pure posts, or maybe a post that I consider to be one of the better posts, is the "Buddhism and Anticipation Games". I've read a great deal of things by a great deal of writers, and I've never read anything quite like that post. Even now when I read it, the flow, the connection of American consumerism, Buddhism and anticipation, and the conclusion all still surprise me. Somehow it all came together.
These posts aren't New Journalism, by any means, but they're non-fiction. There's definitely a strain of Hunter Thompson and Gonzo, since "I" is a character in, and protagonist of, each post. These are much more mundane things being done here than in which anything Hunter was involved. I also specifically avoid claiming any pretense of objectivity, but I wouldn't call this blog a series of editorials.
I'm at a loss for giving it a title. That's why I'm thinking of calling this whole endeavor Literary Blogging. I put a post up a few days ago about "Mammalian Prejudices" and got one of my loyal readers so fired up about a similar but different topic that she got up on a soapbox. The fact that reader was my mother doesn't overshadow the power of words, and if they have kind of power, then the whole thing has value, doesn't it?
Isn't that which reflects the world and has meaning and power for others what constitutes art?
Just a Tuesday in the LBC
I saw this sight today, and took the following picture at Drake Park in Long Beach. It's not a football having Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and with no LA NFL team, the blimp's not out for that either.
It must just be a Tuesday blimp ride. Maybe they have dirigible rides every day. How can I get up on that? I found some sights, so we'll see...
If you look down in the left hand corner, you can see the crumbling bridge on the 710 heading into San Pedro. (I waited to get that angle. Sometimes they're Rossian happy little accidents--cool background images--but this one was deliberate.
It must just be a Tuesday blimp ride. Maybe they have dirigible rides every day. How can I get up on that? I found some sights, so we'll see...
If you look down in the left hand corner, you can see the crumbling bridge on the 710 heading into San Pedro. (I waited to get that angle. Sometimes they're Rossian happy little accidents--cool background images--but this one was deliberate.
Reflection Fun
I've always been a fan of photography of reflections. At different times, both Corrie and I have captured some cool pictures off of other more reflective surfaces.
Today was no different. I went on a bike ride over to the nearby Drake Park (scoping a dilapidated house Corrie wants to buy), and luckily was there when a groundskeeper was hard at work. His watering began to flow over the concrete, I noticed, and grabbed my camera.
I love the realism, the colors...
...and the textured backgrounds. The drains are a nice addition. I really like the break in the puddle here:
Pretty cool, all of the random beauty that can be found on the world...
Today was no different. I went on a bike ride over to the nearby Drake Park (scoping a dilapidated house Corrie wants to buy), and luckily was there when a groundskeeper was hard at work. His watering began to flow over the concrete, I noticed, and grabbed my camera.
I love the realism, the colors...
...and the textured backgrounds. The drains are a nice addition. I really like the break in the puddle here:
Pretty cool, all of the random beauty that can be found on the world...
Monday, September 12, 2011
War of 1812 Memories
Just a quick note about events from almost two hundred years ago.
In a strange turn, the War of 1812 is claimed as a victory by both belligerents, the United States and the United Kingdom, and is remembered for different reasons by those belligerents
The US held their own, won a few skirmishes, lost a few skirmishes, invaded Canada, were eventually repelled from Canada. The UK held Canada, and even burned down the White House, the original White House anyway. Can you imagine any invading entity burning down the White House today?
Here in the States the War of 1812 is seen as the emergence of America as a player on the world stage. Over in the UK, the war barely registers in the collective consciousness, as 1812 is the year Napoleon invaded Russia, and marked the start of the end of his French Empire. Heard of the novel War and Peace? That's what get's conjured in the memory banks for Europeans when "1812" and "war" is mentioned in the same sentence.
Napoleon invading tsarist Russia was, and probably is, more important historically than American soldiers slaughtering Indians and invading Toronto. But, maybe that's not exactly accurate, especially if that was the moment when the tiny new nation, in a kiddie fist-fight with their older brother (or father?), gained the confidence that grew them to self-proclaimed status as world police.
The immediate aftermath is more noticeable. The UK was always a maritime empire, and the aftermath of their small scale battles with their old colonies did little to change that. Their eyes have always been focused out over the seas and beyond. The US, since that battle, and for quite a few decades, was much more focused inward, on their vast unconquered landmass.
The idea of American isolationism might actually be a result of the aftermath of the War of 1812, and not some essential characteristic of US policy.
In a strange turn, the War of 1812 is claimed as a victory by both belligerents, the United States and the United Kingdom, and is remembered for different reasons by those belligerents
The US held their own, won a few skirmishes, lost a few skirmishes, invaded Canada, were eventually repelled from Canada. The UK held Canada, and even burned down the White House, the original White House anyway. Can you imagine any invading entity burning down the White House today?
Here in the States the War of 1812 is seen as the emergence of America as a player on the world stage. Over in the UK, the war barely registers in the collective consciousness, as 1812 is the year Napoleon invaded Russia, and marked the start of the end of his French Empire. Heard of the novel War and Peace? That's what get's conjured in the memory banks for Europeans when "1812" and "war" is mentioned in the same sentence.
Napoleon invading tsarist Russia was, and probably is, more important historically than American soldiers slaughtering Indians and invading Toronto. But, maybe that's not exactly accurate, especially if that was the moment when the tiny new nation, in a kiddie fist-fight with their older brother (or father?), gained the confidence that grew them to self-proclaimed status as world police.
The immediate aftermath is more noticeable. The UK was always a maritime empire, and the aftermath of their small scale battles with their old colonies did little to change that. Their eyes have always been focused out over the seas and beyond. The US, since that battle, and for quite a few decades, was much more focused inward, on their vast unconquered landmass.
The idea of American isolationism might actually be a result of the aftermath of the War of 1812, and not some essential characteristic of US policy.
Philosophical Basis for "Two Towns Over" Post
Recently I was speaking with one of Corrie's coworkers who is the only other worker there who lives in Long Beach. I mentioned that in one of my days off I rode my bicycle to San Pedro, an event I chronicled in the Two Towns Over post.
He looked perplexed, and asked why I hadn't ridden the other way, towards nearby Seal Beach or to slightly further Huntington Beach. It was nicer and cleaner, he accurately pointed out.
It was then that I realized something about myself. It had never occurred to me to go east, into Orange County and to the nicer, cleaner beaches and cities. My plan had always been to ride off into what Corrie had called "the loneliest sand-spit on Earth". The appeal of the blight, the hardship, the rough pawnshop lined streets was always very strong with me.
And then I started to think about the artistic and philosophical background.
When I started my latest writing binge, around age 19-20, after a little break to finish up high school and have a, er, good time in the dorms, the majority of what I was writing was philosophy. Inspired by the biggies--to me--Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Ryle, Baier, Chomsky and Sagan, I filled page after page with musings on various topics. At that time I couldn't imagine writing mostly fiction. Fast forward a few years, and fiction was what I was mainly working on. Now, a few years later, this non-fiction work has started to impinge on my fiction. It's all in the game.
But, as an artist--and a philosopher--the interesting things in life, the things we follow and mimic and make art from, the things that truly speak to the human condition, have always been the hard-scrabble. I like to joke that my marriage to Corrie would make rather boring literature.
Denis Johnson's unnamed protagonist from Jesus' Son, Zoyd Wheeler, Webb Traverse, even Ishmael...all characters from eras and areas that aren't the shiny places, even appropriately back-aged.
Must be what they call "keepin' it real."
He looked perplexed, and asked why I hadn't ridden the other way, towards nearby Seal Beach or to slightly further Huntington Beach. It was nicer and cleaner, he accurately pointed out.
It was then that I realized something about myself. It had never occurred to me to go east, into Orange County and to the nicer, cleaner beaches and cities. My plan had always been to ride off into what Corrie had called "the loneliest sand-spit on Earth". The appeal of the blight, the hardship, the rough pawnshop lined streets was always very strong with me.
And then I started to think about the artistic and philosophical background.
When I started my latest writing binge, around age 19-20, after a little break to finish up high school and have a, er, good time in the dorms, the majority of what I was writing was philosophy. Inspired by the biggies--to me--Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Ryle, Baier, Chomsky and Sagan, I filled page after page with musings on various topics. At that time I couldn't imagine writing mostly fiction. Fast forward a few years, and fiction was what I was mainly working on. Now, a few years later, this non-fiction work has started to impinge on my fiction. It's all in the game.
But, as an artist--and a philosopher--the interesting things in life, the things we follow and mimic and make art from, the things that truly speak to the human condition, have always been the hard-scrabble. I like to joke that my marriage to Corrie would make rather boring literature.
Denis Johnson's unnamed protagonist from Jesus' Son, Zoyd Wheeler, Webb Traverse, even Ishmael...all characters from eras and areas that aren't the shiny places, even appropriately back-aged.
Must be what they call "keepin' it real."
Honest Work
In my industry, a few years ago back in New York, we had a saying: "The hours are long and the work is hard, but at least the pay sucks".
I was riding my bike home from some errands with a few bags full of motor oil when I saw this:
I imagine that their hours are long, their work is hard, and I'm guessing their pay is not solely based on American money? Does think that make me a cynic?
This guy looks in danger:
But otherwise the rappels and tie lines are highlighted by the two-by-four anchors:
If they noticed me taking pictures, they didn't say anything. I've learned that bushy-topped white guys with cameras taking pictures of construction sites don't invoke tons of sympathy or good-will.
Oh well, that's just a part of the life of a blogging enthusiast.
I was riding my bike home from some errands with a few bags full of motor oil when I saw this:
I imagine that their hours are long, their work is hard, and I'm guessing their pay is not solely based on American money? Does think that make me a cynic?
This guy looks in danger:
But otherwise the rappels and tie lines are highlighted by the two-by-four anchors:
If they noticed me taking pictures, they didn't say anything. I've learned that bushy-topped white guys with cameras taking pictures of construction sites don't invoke tons of sympathy or good-will.
Oh well, that's just a part of the life of a blogging enthusiast.
Post-Modern Dinosaurs
This is the post I was really wanting to write, the post about the incredible golden eagle.
It was an innocuous list from a jokey site about cool animals that prey on the world's scariest animals that got me going on an intellectual bender. If you have some time, and these types of lists interest you, you might want to check it out. It got me doing my own research on all sorts of things; birds, pink dolphins, buzzards and giant hornets...
The golden eagle is the ultimate heir to T-Rex. There are documented anecdotes dating back to ancient Greek and Roman days of golden eagles preying on everything from other birds all the way to wolves and bear cubs. The perceived toughness of the golden eagle vaulted it into the collective consciousness of the Romans, and it was adopted by them as their national animal emblem.
Because of the Romans, and of the intrinsic bad-assitude of the golden eagle, almost all imperial and/or conquering entities have chosen the bird as their emblem. Do you know what's throttling the rattlesnake on the Mexican flag (and their coat of arms)? How about the bird on the Deutsche-mark, and now the German-minted Euro?
Golden eagles.
We Americans, following in the Roman footsteps, chose the bald eagle in an homage to the true master.
Golden eagles are distributed all over the world in the non-arctic climates. They are the largest and strongest of all the birds of prey, but possibly not the smartest (that title goes to the falcons, who, along with the crows, ravens, and parrots rank as the smartest birds). With a seven-foot wingspan and the ability to fight with, rob, and hunt badgers, with razor sharp talons and beak and the strength to lift a human child, who needs to be Isaac Newton of birds?
Golden eagles have been known to prey on bear cubs, and pretty much anything else it feels like. They have been used for falconry in the past. Their feathers are sacred to American aboriginal tribes, and the trade in such is tightly controlled by the government, limited to tribal members, like peyote buttons.
Their feathers are treated like peyote, man. Even our government thinks golden eagles are magic. It's not like they're endangered; their populations are healthy and their numbers strong in each environment they live.
I have video link here to a Youtube montage that does have some disturbing images (mountain goats being thrown from mountains, etc), but portrays well the exploits of the fearless wolf attacking, bear menacing bundle of fury and strength, that when combined with the ability to fly channels the true spirit of T-Rex.
Big feathered Omars, telling the judge they rob drug-dealers for a living, that's the golden eagle. If you click on the first link, the one to the list, and follow it down to the end, you'll find some footage of a badger macking some carrion, and a hungry golden eagle arriving. Bears don't even mess with badgers. This eagle could give a fuck, and after a few skirmishes, the badger gives up, and two are content to feast together. One of the most tenacious and vicious land mammals yielding to the top modern dinosaur.
Our post-modern dinosaur.
It was an innocuous list from a jokey site about cool animals that prey on the world's scariest animals that got me going on an intellectual bender. If you have some time, and these types of lists interest you, you might want to check it out. It got me doing my own research on all sorts of things; birds, pink dolphins, buzzards and giant hornets...
The golden eagle is the ultimate heir to T-Rex. There are documented anecdotes dating back to ancient Greek and Roman days of golden eagles preying on everything from other birds all the way to wolves and bear cubs. The perceived toughness of the golden eagle vaulted it into the collective consciousness of the Romans, and it was adopted by them as their national animal emblem.
Because of the Romans, and of the intrinsic bad-assitude of the golden eagle, almost all imperial and/or conquering entities have chosen the bird as their emblem. Do you know what's throttling the rattlesnake on the Mexican flag (and their coat of arms)? How about the bird on the Deutsche-mark, and now the German-minted Euro?
Golden eagles.
We Americans, following in the Roman footsteps, chose the bald eagle in an homage to the true master.
Golden eagles are distributed all over the world in the non-arctic climates. They are the largest and strongest of all the birds of prey, but possibly not the smartest (that title goes to the falcons, who, along with the crows, ravens, and parrots rank as the smartest birds). With a seven-foot wingspan and the ability to fight with, rob, and hunt badgers, with razor sharp talons and beak and the strength to lift a human child, who needs to be Isaac Newton of birds?
Golden eagles have been known to prey on bear cubs, and pretty much anything else it feels like. They have been used for falconry in the past. Their feathers are sacred to American aboriginal tribes, and the trade in such is tightly controlled by the government, limited to tribal members, like peyote buttons.
Their feathers are treated like peyote, man. Even our government thinks golden eagles are magic. It's not like they're endangered; their populations are healthy and their numbers strong in each environment they live.
I have video link here to a Youtube montage that does have some disturbing images (mountain goats being thrown from mountains, etc), but portrays well the exploits of the fearless wolf attacking, bear menacing bundle of fury and strength, that when combined with the ability to fly channels the true spirit of T-Rex.
Big feathered Omars, telling the judge they rob drug-dealers for a living, that's the golden eagle. If you click on the first link, the one to the list, and follow it down to the end, you'll find some footage of a badger macking some carrion, and a hungry golden eagle arriving. Bears don't even mess with badgers. This eagle could give a fuck, and after a few skirmishes, the badger gives up, and two are content to feast together. One of the most tenacious and vicious land mammals yielding to the top modern dinosaur.
Our post-modern dinosaur.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Mammalian Prejudices
It's been said that as humans we have certain prejudices towards other mammals. If you want people to give money to a fund that is bent on saving a forest, you put the monkey or the deer on the paperwork, and not the spider that may be critically endangered yet absolutely vital to the ecosystem.
The cuter the spokes-animal the better.
In a similar regard lies veal. I've met plenty of folks who refuse to eat veal because of the treatment of the calves. I usually refer to veal as baby-cow just to remove the semblance of euphemism. These people refuse to eat veal on principle.
Nevermind that most high-end veal is treated rather well, if not really allowed to move around a lot, and that really, what we're talking about is an animal that is bred for the purpose of being eaten.
In the foodie world there is the growing trend for heirloom products, and not just tomatoes. There is a burgeoning market for heirloom pork, turkey, and chicken. Old, nearly extinct breeds of those three animals have been brought back from the precipice. What brought them back?
That's the paradox of the heirloom protein trend: to save these rare breeds of animals, we eat them. The more we eat them, the more they thrive. Or "thrive". I guess that depends on your point of view.
In any case, I don't eat veal because it's always too chewy for me and hurts my teeth. Like foie gras, I think veal's overrated.
What really cracks me up is when people say, "Oh no, I don't eat veal. Can you believe how they treat those calves. I'll stick with the chicken."
Chicken? Is there any other animal on this planet as mistreated, abused, genetically modified, pumped full of water and steroids, and tortured in as great of numbers as the humble chicken?
Won't eat veal because of mistreatment, but still eats chicken...this is a very common person, but it seems like they haven't done their research. For many chickens every day is like The Island of Dr. Moreau mixed with Schindler's List. Jeeze.
Think of a number, the number that you'd guess would be the number of chickens slaughtered for food each day on planet Earth. What would your number look like if it was a gaggle of poultry clucking and shitting and going about their daily life in front of you? Would there be this many zeros? (The true number according to a recent article I read in National Geographic---)
28,000,000,000.
Twenty-eight billion, with a capital BILLION.
A day.
I, though, have no problems eating chicken. The thigh is the best part; dark meat with less sinew than the drumstick.
The cuter the spokes-animal the better.
In a similar regard lies veal. I've met plenty of folks who refuse to eat veal because of the treatment of the calves. I usually refer to veal as baby-cow just to remove the semblance of euphemism. These people refuse to eat veal on principle.
Nevermind that most high-end veal is treated rather well, if not really allowed to move around a lot, and that really, what we're talking about is an animal that is bred for the purpose of being eaten.
In the foodie world there is the growing trend for heirloom products, and not just tomatoes. There is a burgeoning market for heirloom pork, turkey, and chicken. Old, nearly extinct breeds of those three animals have been brought back from the precipice. What brought them back?
That's the paradox of the heirloom protein trend: to save these rare breeds of animals, we eat them. The more we eat them, the more they thrive. Or "thrive". I guess that depends on your point of view.
In any case, I don't eat veal because it's always too chewy for me and hurts my teeth. Like foie gras, I think veal's overrated.
What really cracks me up is when people say, "Oh no, I don't eat veal. Can you believe how they treat those calves. I'll stick with the chicken."
Chicken? Is there any other animal on this planet as mistreated, abused, genetically modified, pumped full of water and steroids, and tortured in as great of numbers as the humble chicken?
Won't eat veal because of mistreatment, but still eats chicken...this is a very common person, but it seems like they haven't done their research. For many chickens every day is like The Island of Dr. Moreau mixed with Schindler's List. Jeeze.
Think of a number, the number that you'd guess would be the number of chickens slaughtered for food each day on planet Earth. What would your number look like if it was a gaggle of poultry clucking and shitting and going about their daily life in front of you? Would there be this many zeros? (The true number according to a recent article I read in National Geographic---)
28,000,000,000.
Twenty-eight billion, with a capital BILLION.
A day.
I, though, have no problems eating chicken. The thigh is the best part; dark meat with less sinew than the drumstick.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Happy Birthday Mom!
Giving a birthday shout-out to my mom, who turns 48 today. Dang, lady, you must have been young when you had me...I always got the sense that you were more responsible than that.
I kid, but I love. Happy birthday mom! Love you, and hope your day is awesome.
I kid, but I love. Happy birthday mom! Love you, and hope your day is awesome.
Modern Dinosaurs
I'm speaking about the descendants of the theropods. Crocodiles, alligators, caymans, and the great Kimodo dragons are more like sharks and the great turtles: they aren't existing dinosaurs, they're lizards (and sharks) that haven't changed drastically since the time of dinosaurs. They're very similar to what they were when dinosaurs roamed, and have survived because of their highly successful design and ecosystem niche.
While dinosaurs were the dominant reptilian force during their height, after the extinction event of 65 MYA, only a select few survived; the specialized descendants of the theropods.
The theropods came in all sizes, but the largest and most famous would have to be every kids fantasy horse, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. The name says it all: King of the Terrible Lizards. With something that has a little less menacing a presence, I give you:
So, depending on how much attention might have been paid towards the scientific community on the study of things dinosaur, one might have heard of the general consensus that all of our fine feathered friends are the remnants of the dinosaurs, that they are the last vestiges of the Land Before Time, the link to T-Rex, and here we mean literally.
If the idea that birds coming from dinosaurs seems hard to swallow, imagine that at the time of the 65 MYA extinction event, the event that augured in the dawn of the Age of the Mammals, the only mammals were bug eating and berry foraging rodent like critters. Doesn't seem as weird to me as typing on a plastic rectangle some symbols that I and my peers understand as abstract or concrete concepts.
In any case, by any measure the modern dinosaurs have been wildly successful on this planet. They have colonized every continent and adapted means to survive in each of the worlds varied environments. This ability to adapt has brought the class Aves to a bulging taxonomic section with more entries than the largest mammalian class, Rodentia.
There are too many cool things about birds for me to go into too much detail here, but there are two groups I want to mention quickly. The first are the Corvids. The corvids are the largest, toughest, and smartest of the Passerines, one of the largest sub-orders in Aves. In fact, some corvids are considered to be some of the smartest animals--period--on the planet. Their brain to body-mass ratio is similar to dolphins and chimpanzees, and they have been known to recognize themselves in reflections as well as been seen fashioning tools. The Passerines are known as "perching birds" more recently, and used to be called (somewhat inaccurately) "songbirds".
The corvids are the crows, ravens, magpies, jays and jackdaws.
I ended up learning about the corvids because I was curious why crows weren't listed as birds of prey. Turns out that many birds aren't listed as "birds of prey" that gather most of their food from hunting, like cranes, storks, penguins, and gulls. Gulls are tough sumbitches, tough but also lazy, and scavenge human developments more than hunting nowadays.
Technical "birds of prey", or, as I like to call, "rightful heirs to real estate in the sentence '______ descended from T-Rex'", come from one of two groups: raptors and owls.
Makes sense, right? One group are daytime hunters, the other nocturnal.
It seemed like the criteria is for surprise attack from the air coupled with sharp and powerful talons and beak. Sounds like raptors and owls to me.
Modern dinosaurs for sure.
Owls are broken up into two groups, neither of which has a cool sounding name. Don't get me wrong--I dig owls like crazy. It's kinda hard to get pumped between "barn owls" and "typical owls".
Here's a Storm-trooper looking barn-owl:
Raptors as well have two general groups, the falcons and the entries from the larger group Accipitridae. The differences between the falcons and the others are subtle, but have to do with wing shape and size limits. The entries from the Acc. are the eagles, kites, buzzards, and vultures, among other similar species. Kestrels are falcons, if anyone's curious.
Here's a falcon:
One thing I found weird was that in England what are called "buzzards" are called "hawks" in America, and that it seems like we almost interchangeably use "buzzard" and "vulture" here in the States. Hawks aren't a special group, the name tends to be used for kites in certain areas, kestrels in others, small eagles in other places. The closest thing it seemed like people could agree on being solely a "hawk" was the Osprey, the fish-nabber.
The biggest bird of prey, the one closest to the heir of the T-Rex descendant title, would be a specific type of eagle, possibly the most badass of all wild animals, the wolf hunting, grizzly menacing, badger robbing golden eagle.
I've got an entire post about them coming up. They were the reason I ended up learning so much about birds, our Modern Dinosaurs. I even left out much stuff I wanted to write about, like whoopers and albatrosses.
The king, or queen as it turns out (by sexual dimorphism), by a sizable margin is the Golden Eagle.
While dinosaurs were the dominant reptilian force during their height, after the extinction event of 65 MYA, only a select few survived; the specialized descendants of the theropods.
The theropods came in all sizes, but the largest and most famous would have to be every kids fantasy horse, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. The name says it all: King of the Terrible Lizards. With something that has a little less menacing a presence, I give you:
So, depending on how much attention might have been paid towards the scientific community on the study of things dinosaur, one might have heard of the general consensus that all of our fine feathered friends are the remnants of the dinosaurs, that they are the last vestiges of the Land Before Time, the link to T-Rex, and here we mean literally.
If the idea that birds coming from dinosaurs seems hard to swallow, imagine that at the time of the 65 MYA extinction event, the event that augured in the dawn of the Age of the Mammals, the only mammals were bug eating and berry foraging rodent like critters. Doesn't seem as weird to me as typing on a plastic rectangle some symbols that I and my peers understand as abstract or concrete concepts.
In any case, by any measure the modern dinosaurs have been wildly successful on this planet. They have colonized every continent and adapted means to survive in each of the worlds varied environments. This ability to adapt has brought the class Aves to a bulging taxonomic section with more entries than the largest mammalian class, Rodentia.
There are too many cool things about birds for me to go into too much detail here, but there are two groups I want to mention quickly. The first are the Corvids. The corvids are the largest, toughest, and smartest of the Passerines, one of the largest sub-orders in Aves. In fact, some corvids are considered to be some of the smartest animals--period--on the planet. Their brain to body-mass ratio is similar to dolphins and chimpanzees, and they have been known to recognize themselves in reflections as well as been seen fashioning tools. The Passerines are known as "perching birds" more recently, and used to be called (somewhat inaccurately) "songbirds".
The corvids are the crows, ravens, magpies, jays and jackdaws.
I ended up learning about the corvids because I was curious why crows weren't listed as birds of prey. Turns out that many birds aren't listed as "birds of prey" that gather most of their food from hunting, like cranes, storks, penguins, and gulls. Gulls are tough sumbitches, tough but also lazy, and scavenge human developments more than hunting nowadays.
Technical "birds of prey", or, as I like to call, "rightful heirs to real estate in the sentence '______ descended from T-Rex'", come from one of two groups: raptors and owls.
Makes sense, right? One group are daytime hunters, the other nocturnal.
It seemed like the criteria is for surprise attack from the air coupled with sharp and powerful talons and beak. Sounds like raptors and owls to me.
Modern dinosaurs for sure.
Owls are broken up into two groups, neither of which has a cool sounding name. Don't get me wrong--I dig owls like crazy. It's kinda hard to get pumped between "barn owls" and "typical owls".
Here's a Storm-trooper looking barn-owl:
Raptors as well have two general groups, the falcons and the entries from the larger group Accipitridae. The differences between the falcons and the others are subtle, but have to do with wing shape and size limits. The entries from the Acc. are the eagles, kites, buzzards, and vultures, among other similar species. Kestrels are falcons, if anyone's curious.
Here's a falcon:
One thing I found weird was that in England what are called "buzzards" are called "hawks" in America, and that it seems like we almost interchangeably use "buzzard" and "vulture" here in the States. Hawks aren't a special group, the name tends to be used for kites in certain areas, kestrels in others, small eagles in other places. The closest thing it seemed like people could agree on being solely a "hawk" was the Osprey, the fish-nabber.
The biggest bird of prey, the one closest to the heir of the T-Rex descendant title, would be a specific type of eagle, possibly the most badass of all wild animals, the wolf hunting, grizzly menacing, badger robbing golden eagle.
I've got an entire post about them coming up. They were the reason I ended up learning so much about birds, our Modern Dinosaurs. I even left out much stuff I wanted to write about, like whoopers and albatrosses.
The king, or queen as it turns out (by sexual dimorphism), by a sizable margin is the Golden Eagle.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Quinine and Pine
Many plants on this planet have curative abilities for a slew of maladies. In Jeremy Narby's book The Cosmic Serpent, the writer relays his studies in the Amazon basin, learning the local natives' belief that their dreams tell them what plants to use to mix and make healing "potions". These potions aren't magic, of course, but they're quite excellent at curing whatever they're designed to cure, sometimes many years ahead of pharmaceutical companies, a few of which have people working in the area.
One idea Narby discusses--and concedes it could get him drummed out of the anthropological academia--is an interpretation of the native's explanation that our DNA tells our Amazon cousins what plants to use, and that communication takes place when the medicine men are under the influence of ayahuasca, a psychedelic brew made from local vines. The main ingredient in ayahuasca is DMT, an alkaloyd that's a building block in psilocybin, the magic component in "magic mushrooms".
In any case, the bark from cinchona trees from Peru, when mixed with sweetened water (to offset the bitter taste), was (and still occasionally is) used as an effective muscle relaxant. Another interesting thing this bark water does is stave off malaria. The main ingredient, chemically, as it were, is quinine.
When the Brits colonized India, malaria being the problem that it still is, they had to drink plenty of quinine. They carbonated it and called it "tonic water", as it was literally a health tonic. Would anyone like to guess what colonizing military men would do with a fizzy and horribly bitter drink?
Add gin, of course.
If you take neutral spirits from agricultural production and distill them a second time, and this time mix in the berries of the juniper pine tree, you get what we call "gin", a harsh concoction of rubbing alcohol and pine. Oh how we love it. Maybe I just mean "me" instead of "we".
The name almost certainly comes from genievre, French for juniper, so that pine taste is an essential characteristic.
In my time as being an alcohol-drinking person, I've gone through different phases of where my affections lie when it comes to cocktails, beers and wines.
My love of beer is great, and while I enjoy many different kinds, I tend toward ales over lagers, darks over lights, and I'll order any small brand I've never heard of before. In Texas I drank a fair share of Lone Star (The National beer of Texas), but only because it was cheap. In New York it was Ballantine Ale, which wasn't all that bad. In both of those cases cost and resources were issues, but my true affections lie with the high-end or small production product.
My appreciation of wine is also great, but I say appreciation and not "love" deliberately. After a rough patch when I was 19, I stayed away for more than ten years. Now I'm learning to appreciate more, and generally just learning more, which I like.
This post is more about my cocktail habits. When I was young and stupid I didn't really drink vodka mixed drinks. I still don't today. They're too smooth for me, to easy to mask, maybe. Maybe that says something about me.
I did drink a bit of gin and Dr Pepper, an old-fashioned GDP, before I backed off spirits in general for a half-dozen years or so. You could probably say that of anything, the GDP was my "drink" during those times.
The day I turned 21, I went into a bar and ordered for my first drink the same thing my dad told me he ordered on his first trip to the bar: a whiskey sour. (I wasn't carded.) It was hot sweet-tarts, and I had my new "drink". I drank whiskey sours for a while, until being accepted into a bar culture and scene that was the coolest bar scene I've been a part of. At McCarthy's they'd pour drinks that were strong, and I mean strong, and so I switched to Jack & Coke. The smallest amount of Coca Cola can affect the flavor of Jack Daniels in such a way as to make even the largest amount of spirit palatable.
Jack & Coke did me well most everywhere. People have heard of it, they don't need to ask what's in it, and it's respectable. Most everyone in our group ordered J&C then, and still order it today. In our group, the occasional shot will be Jameson, while Corrie tends toward Patron. I won't turn down Jaeger.
But, as happens in life, circles come around. At a NY Jets draft party in upstate New York everyone was drinking gin & tonics, and I joined in, having not even tasted gin since 1998. It was warm out and the drink, with it's bright quinine lime and pine flavor was quite refreshing.
I started regularly drinking the G&T as a cocktail a year later. I noticed that nobody would drink my gin. Now, as a stiff cocktail on my one day of drinking a week, the G&T does me well.
Quinine and pine...my history tied with the DMT drinking natives learning from their DNA...
I listened to mine; I learned from it; I am it. This just might be the most self-indulgent tripe-filled introduction to a long essay on DNA. I'm not sure that I'd agree with Narby's vocabulary or wording of his central thesis, that DNA educates beings to important things that would be helpful to those beings, but, in reality, the truth of the matter is a shadow of that thesis, or the thesis is a shadow of the truth.
Quinine and pine...a metaphor for the underpinnings of the human universe...health and self-destruction...learning from yourself and about your own connection to this rock...quinine and pine...
One idea Narby discusses--and concedes it could get him drummed out of the anthropological academia--is an interpretation of the native's explanation that our DNA tells our Amazon cousins what plants to use, and that communication takes place when the medicine men are under the influence of ayahuasca, a psychedelic brew made from local vines. The main ingredient in ayahuasca is DMT, an alkaloyd that's a building block in psilocybin, the magic component in "magic mushrooms".
In any case, the bark from cinchona trees from Peru, when mixed with sweetened water (to offset the bitter taste), was (and still occasionally is) used as an effective muscle relaxant. Another interesting thing this bark water does is stave off malaria. The main ingredient, chemically, as it were, is quinine.
When the Brits colonized India, malaria being the problem that it still is, they had to drink plenty of quinine. They carbonated it and called it "tonic water", as it was literally a health tonic. Would anyone like to guess what colonizing military men would do with a fizzy and horribly bitter drink?
Add gin, of course.
If you take neutral spirits from agricultural production and distill them a second time, and this time mix in the berries of the juniper pine tree, you get what we call "gin", a harsh concoction of rubbing alcohol and pine. Oh how we love it. Maybe I just mean "me" instead of "we".
The name almost certainly comes from genievre, French for juniper, so that pine taste is an essential characteristic.
In my time as being an alcohol-drinking person, I've gone through different phases of where my affections lie when it comes to cocktails, beers and wines.
My love of beer is great, and while I enjoy many different kinds, I tend toward ales over lagers, darks over lights, and I'll order any small brand I've never heard of before. In Texas I drank a fair share of Lone Star (The National beer of Texas), but only because it was cheap. In New York it was Ballantine Ale, which wasn't all that bad. In both of those cases cost and resources were issues, but my true affections lie with the high-end or small production product.
My appreciation of wine is also great, but I say appreciation and not "love" deliberately. After a rough patch when I was 19, I stayed away for more than ten years. Now I'm learning to appreciate more, and generally just learning more, which I like.
This post is more about my cocktail habits. When I was young and stupid I didn't really drink vodka mixed drinks. I still don't today. They're too smooth for me, to easy to mask, maybe. Maybe that says something about me.
I did drink a bit of gin and Dr Pepper, an old-fashioned GDP, before I backed off spirits in general for a half-dozen years or so. You could probably say that of anything, the GDP was my "drink" during those times.
The day I turned 21, I went into a bar and ordered for my first drink the same thing my dad told me he ordered on his first trip to the bar: a whiskey sour. (I wasn't carded.) It was hot sweet-tarts, and I had my new "drink". I drank whiskey sours for a while, until being accepted into a bar culture and scene that was the coolest bar scene I've been a part of. At McCarthy's they'd pour drinks that were strong, and I mean strong, and so I switched to Jack & Coke. The smallest amount of Coca Cola can affect the flavor of Jack Daniels in such a way as to make even the largest amount of spirit palatable.
Jack & Coke did me well most everywhere. People have heard of it, they don't need to ask what's in it, and it's respectable. Most everyone in our group ordered J&C then, and still order it today. In our group, the occasional shot will be Jameson, while Corrie tends toward Patron. I won't turn down Jaeger.
But, as happens in life, circles come around. At a NY Jets draft party in upstate New York everyone was drinking gin & tonics, and I joined in, having not even tasted gin since 1998. It was warm out and the drink, with it's bright quinine lime and pine flavor was quite refreshing.
I started regularly drinking the G&T as a cocktail a year later. I noticed that nobody would drink my gin. Now, as a stiff cocktail on my one day of drinking a week, the G&T does me well.
Quinine and pine...my history tied with the DMT drinking natives learning from their DNA...
I listened to mine; I learned from it; I am it. This just might be the most self-indulgent tripe-filled introduction to a long essay on DNA. I'm not sure that I'd agree with Narby's vocabulary or wording of his central thesis, that DNA educates beings to important things that would be helpful to those beings, but, in reality, the truth of the matter is a shadow of that thesis, or the thesis is a shadow of the truth.
Quinine and pine...a metaphor for the underpinnings of the human universe...health and self-destruction...learning from yourself and about your own connection to this rock...quinine and pine...
Quick College Football/State History Note
Much has been made about the new uniforms that the Maryland Terrapins were sporting in their first game, a victory over the Miami Hurricanes. The victory over the 'Canes is actually a bigger story, but still...Maybe "much has been made" only makes sense if you, one of my few fine readers, are a fan of college football, or pay attention to sports in a following capacity.
The attention has been of the "the uniforms are such atrocities" kind.
Here's a look:
I personally wouldn't call them atrocities. I think they're neat homages to the flag of Maryland. Most Maryland teams, like the Orioles and the Ravens have quite busy logos. My dad and I used to recognize that and chalk it up to their busy state flag.
The Maryland flag is the only American state flag that's entirely based on English heraldry. It's the heraldic banner of George Calvert, first Baron of Baltimore, and founder of the Maryland land grant. The gold bars were a paternal style in Calvert's ancestry, given by a king for storming a rampart in a battle. The red and white cross is called a cross bottony and comes from Calvert's mother, who, being an heiress, compelled Baron of Baltimore to use it in his banner as well. So while the college football team known as the Terps have a busy helmet, there's at least a little history there,
The Maryland flag is the only American state flag that's entirely based on English heraldry. It's the heraldic banner of George Calvert, first Baron of Baltimore, and founder of the Maryland land grant. The gold bars were a paternal style in Calvert's ancestry, given by a king for storming a rampart in a battle. The red and white cross is called a cross bottony and comes from Calvert's mother, who, being an heiress, compelled Baron of Baltimore to use it in his banner as well. So while the college football team known as the Terps have a busy helmet, there's at least a little history there,
Rincon Island
Drivers familiar with US 101 between Ventura and Santa Barbara, will recognize this island:
Once I was driving to meet my cousin Mike in Santa Monica and we were going to hang out. Along the way, I, not really having a timetable, pulled off the freeway and tried to drive out to this place. The bridge was fenced off.
On this latest trip home from SLO, I took a picture, because it's always mesmerized me a little; the sight of a palm tree lined island off in the distance.
It turns out that it's called Rincon Island, it's man-made, and it was constructed for the purposes of oil drilling.
In these cases, the truth is always less interesting than what we want to believe.
Once I was driving to meet my cousin Mike in Santa Monica and we were going to hang out. Along the way, I, not really having a timetable, pulled off the freeway and tried to drive out to this place. The bridge was fenced off.
On this latest trip home from SLO, I took a picture, because it's always mesmerized me a little; the sight of a palm tree lined island off in the distance.
It turns out that it's called Rincon Island, it's man-made, and it was constructed for the purposes of oil drilling.
In these cases, the truth is always less interesting than what we want to believe.
Three Cameras?
I was determined to use our Holga camera on the wedding trip to San Luis to take a picture (or two) of Morro Rock. I found a spot to try, and took a pair of pictures. Standing there, examining the scene, I pulled out my point-and-shoot digital camera and, waiting for the foreground to clear of people and the right zoom on, took this picture:
Then, as I started walking away I had a thought and a laugh. In addition to the Cannon and Holga, I had my Sanyo smartphone on me, giving me essentially three cameras.
What need does someone who's not a professional photographer have for three cameras on their person? Pros wouldn't have the combination I had anyway, but still, it made me laugh. And it forced me to take out my phone, take a picture, and upload it to Facebook, which is a pretty easy feat with these new-fangled phones.
Morro Rock is an easy thing to be in awe of, and a picturesque object, but the scale is always hard to reproduce in photos. The presence of the thing, it's local massiveness, is never truly conveyed. I've made it a character in my Cali Prone story, if you remember that post a while back.
Then, as I started walking away I had a thought and a laugh. In addition to the Cannon and Holga, I had my Sanyo smartphone on me, giving me essentially three cameras.
What need does someone who's not a professional photographer have for three cameras on their person? Pros wouldn't have the combination I had anyway, but still, it made me laugh. And it forced me to take out my phone, take a picture, and upload it to Facebook, which is a pretty easy feat with these new-fangled phones.
Morro Rock is an easy thing to be in awe of, and a picturesque object, but the scale is always hard to reproduce in photos. The presence of the thing, it's local massiveness, is never truly conveyed. I've made it a character in my Cali Prone story, if you remember that post a while back.
Congratulations Joe and Kelly
Joe and Kelly take the plunge!
My good friends Joe and Kelly got married this past Saturday at the Mission in San Luis Obispo, on the altar in front of a sizable group of friends and family.
I'm stealing the intro from my "Marc and Linda get married post". The picture above was taken by me from the very last pew in the Mission and shows Kelly to the immediate left of the priest, with her sister behind; and Joe to the immediate right of the priest, with his best man in tow, who happened to be our Tony. I know the picture's fuzzy, but the lighting was tough and the distance was plenty.
Joe and Kelly met during the Hudson's era, when much of our group came together, and our dormitory group grew and extended. We even got together to take a group picture of our Hudsonian crew:
Tony started at Hudson's in the kitchen, replacing the other white cook, Jimmy Berlow, who moved out to the floor. When I started at Hudson's, it was in the kitchen so Tony could move out to the floor. Crazy times.
The wedding in the Mission wasn't exactly like the last ceremony we attended in the old Spanish structure. That last ceremony was all in Spanish, as the padre was the Latina bride's childhood minister. The same thing happened this time, as Father Mike was Joe's childhood pastor. Joe's Portuguese and Kelly's Irish, so the Catholicism is strong between them.
We sat way in the back, not because we don't feel close to Joe and Kelly, but because we were late. It was Labor Day weekend, and we planned to leave early and have enough time to check into our little beach house in Cayucos (about twenty minutes north of the Mission up Hwy 1) before turning around and heading to the wedding.
Well, apparently we weren't alone in those plans, as the freeways were packed all the way through Venture, and then mostly packed until past UCSB, which is in the northern area of Santa Barbara. From there I could finally fly, but it was already too late. We had to change clothes in the parking structure and run to the nearby Mission just to be a half-hour late. Here's Corrie strutting:
The ceremony was nice, and the reception afterwards was very cool, as Tony and Ryan and I got to hangout together for the first time since my wedding.
The party was in Cayucos, the aforementioned beach town, at their Veterans Hall. Our little carriage house was within walking distance. That way, nobody would have to drive anywhere. Or go to SLO-town and close the bars...my body can't do that anymore.
It was great fun to see everyone together again, to see Joe and Kelly and be a part of their day, to see Tony and Ryan together...it was a little 2003 reunion.
My good friends Joe and Kelly got married this past Saturday at the Mission in San Luis Obispo, on the altar in front of a sizable group of friends and family.
I'm stealing the intro from my "Marc and Linda get married post". The picture above was taken by me from the very last pew in the Mission and shows Kelly to the immediate left of the priest, with her sister behind; and Joe to the immediate right of the priest, with his best man in tow, who happened to be our Tony. I know the picture's fuzzy, but the lighting was tough and the distance was plenty.
Joe and Kelly met during the Hudson's era, when much of our group came together, and our dormitory group grew and extended. We even got together to take a group picture of our Hudsonian crew:
Tony started at Hudson's in the kitchen, replacing the other white cook, Jimmy Berlow, who moved out to the floor. When I started at Hudson's, it was in the kitchen so Tony could move out to the floor. Crazy times.
The wedding in the Mission wasn't exactly like the last ceremony we attended in the old Spanish structure. That last ceremony was all in Spanish, as the padre was the Latina bride's childhood minister. The same thing happened this time, as Father Mike was Joe's childhood pastor. Joe's Portuguese and Kelly's Irish, so the Catholicism is strong between them.
We sat way in the back, not because we don't feel close to Joe and Kelly, but because we were late. It was Labor Day weekend, and we planned to leave early and have enough time to check into our little beach house in Cayucos (about twenty minutes north of the Mission up Hwy 1) before turning around and heading to the wedding.
Well, apparently we weren't alone in those plans, as the freeways were packed all the way through Venture, and then mostly packed until past UCSB, which is in the northern area of Santa Barbara. From there I could finally fly, but it was already too late. We had to change clothes in the parking structure and run to the nearby Mission just to be a half-hour late. Here's Corrie strutting:
The ceremony was nice, and the reception afterwards was very cool, as Tony and Ryan and I got to hangout together for the first time since my wedding.
The party was in Cayucos, the aforementioned beach town, at their Veterans Hall. Our little carriage house was within walking distance. That way, nobody would have to drive anywhere. Or go to SLO-town and close the bars...my body can't do that anymore.
It was great fun to see everyone together again, to see Joe and Kelly and be a part of their day, to see Tony and Ryan together...it was a little 2003 reunion.
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