When Working Is Playing

We've been getting a bit of rain over the last week, with attendant rainbows.

Last Wednesday was especially moist, but that didn't stop us from hiking. I figured it would be a good day for the kids to learn about water. We ended up wearing it. I don't think we would have gotten any wetter if I'd led the kids into the pond. As it was, we spent a lot of time playing in the gutters and culverts. At one point, we unblocked a clogged gutter and got to watch a refrigerator-sized cluster of leaves, branches, and other debris go racing away down the hill like a bear saddled with extra gravity. The kids loved it. They also loved just playing in the water. I love getting paid to play in the water.

During all of this, a boy said that he could have chased a coyote in his pants and nobody would have noticed. "Chasing a coyote" is camp code for peeing, and yes, we were all that wet.

On the mid-week feedback forms that we have the kids fill out, one kid remembered the lesson on decomposers slightly incorrectly. We teach about decomposers (fungus, bacteria, and invertebrates), using the acronym "F.B.I.", and one kid remembered that part, but wrote that he'd learned about fungus, bacteria, and immigration.

As I was leading the kids into the nature lab, one girl looked up and told me, "you smell like syrup." At first I was confused, since I hadn't eaten anything with syrup that morning, but then remembered the Candy Cap mushrooms I'd had in my backpack. They smell strongly of maple syrup, and even though I've lost the mushrooms somewhere, my backpack continues to smell like syrup. As smells go, it's a pretty good one.

This week, it feels colder and the clouds remain. Maybe we'll get some more rain. Speaking of getting things, one of the teachers from a couple of weeks ago showed her appreciation for what we do by giving all of the staff members who were working that week inscribed copies of her book. I hadn't even known she was an author. It's a children's book about the Redwood forest, complete with beautiful illustrations (check it out here). I love it when people make these kinds of gestures. It's yet another reminder that what we do is appreciated.

Eleven!

Willow turned 11 today! Happy birthday, Willow! Here are the first substantial posts I wrote about her birth, way back in the benighted year of 2003.

At camp this week, there is a kid who has not one, but four, imaginary friends. Apparently, he gets annoyed if you sit in a seat taken by one of these friends. I'm both glad and disappointed that he's not in my field class. Weird kids are cool.

Nerd Stuff

Yeah, I'm a big nerd. One of the things I'm most excited about this year is the opening of the new Godzilla movie.

Here's my review of Thursday's Marissa Nadler show. It was definitely worth taking the night off work to attend it.

We're getting ready to settle in and watch this week's episode of The Walking Dead. It's the only TV show I watch as it's being aired.

Tomorrow, I'm back in the field for another month or so before I work another week of nights. Right now, it feels like Spring again, although rain is forecast for later in the week.

Musical Notes, Plus More Chicken Stuff

The two nights I worked this week rank among the easiest I've ever worked. Once the kids went to bed, I had not one single visitor, with the exception of a pair of boys who stopped by at 6:00 AM on the first night to let me know that there were no paper towels in one of the bathrooms.

Tonight, I'm playing hookey and we're going to Santa Cruz to see Marissa Nadler. Here's what I had to say about the last time I saw her.

Speaking of musicians, these days it seems like more and more independent artists are going the Kickstarter route to fund upcoming albums and tours. I'm a big supporter of this sort of crowd funding, mostly because it means that more good music will reach my ears and more good musicians will continue to be able to continue doing what they love. Here's one that blipped my radar today. One of the other good things about this sort of thing is that by the time the finished product arrives in the mailbox, enough time has passed that it's almost like getting free music, which is much better than actually getting free music because this way you're not a shiftless freeloader pirate who steals songs via dodgy internet sources.

Next week, I'm back in the field.

Out the window, I can see one of the chickens taking a dirt bath in one of the garden beds, next to the leafless kale plant. The chickens are very diligent about making sure it never grows leaves.

Here's a pair of photos from a few days ago:

Great Flaming Arrow of Doom

Hanging in the sky to the west is an immense isosceles triangle, pointed like an arrow toward the western horizon, as if threatening to skewer Orion. Orion, in fear for his life, hides behind the mountains, with only Betelgeuse giving away his position. The venomously bright, downward-pointed tip of the triangle is Jupiter, and the other two vertices are Castor and Pollux, which are the two brightest stars in Gemini.

For most of human history, this great westward-pointing arrow would most likely have been seen as some sort of harbinger of doom. These days, our harbingers of doom are much more ridiculous, as can be seen in this graph, and this article.

Night of the Living Clowns

The stars are diamonds in ink, although a cataract of cloud is advancing. I'm back on the night shift this week, although only for a couple of nights since the holiday snipped off the first one and my constant desire to experience live music will be snipping off the last one.

After I met with the cabin leaders tonight, I sent them back to join the campers down at the hillside amphitheater, where they were just finishing up the campfire program. One cabin leader lingered in the staff room, and then asked if he could stay there for a little bit. It turned out that one of the teachers was dressed up like a clown (for a skit) and the cabin leader was scared to go near him while he was in his clown outfit.

I remember being afraid of clowns when I was a kid - when I was maybe 3 or 4 years old. The cabin leaders are all in high school though. It's moments like this that remind me that we have kids watching over the kids.

With that in mind, I realize that, not counting the three sleeping teachers, I'm really the only adult here. This week I'm in charge of 111 sleeping 6th graders and 11 cabin leaders, at least one of whom is terrified of clowns. I can only imagine what the others are scared of.

Currently listening to: Bohren & der Club of Gore "Piano Nights"

Of Mist and Moondogs

The weather has been wintery, but not wildly so. Misty mornings give way to overcast afternoons, and every so often the mist coalesces into almost-raindrops. Right now, there is an scent to the air that smells like atmospheric indecision, something halfway between Winter and Spring. The dry, warm weather has tricked a lot of plants into blooming early, or so it seems to me.

It even continues to trick the local rattlesnakes. Although I've seen snakes during every month of the year (one of the benefits to living in California), it is still unusual to find rattlesnakes in February. This is the same rattlesnake from last week, resting in nearly the same place.

This illustrates what a typical morning at camp has looked like over the past couple of weeks:

The camp week flew by uneventfully. The kids were good, with only a couple of them being annoyingly immature. I did pretty much the same things I did the previous week, although the scorpion I've been finding on Mondays has moved. In its place this Monday was a male Calisoga spider. The Wednesday night hike was beautiful, with an enormous moondog circling the moon and almost seeming to bisect Jupiter, and puddles of moonlight gleaming in the forest.

During our visit to the chaparral earlier in the day, the trail was suddenly full of robins. There must have been 15 or 20 of them. They were probably looking for unwary invertebrates.

Jeanine is at work right now, and the girls are at the mall. This is the first time that Willow has walked to the mall with Eva and her friends, and it's a bit of a walk (perhaps 2 miles). I'm still not completely comfortable letting her do that, but I've always been a bit disdainful of parents who over-shelter their children (mostly because I have to deal with the results of it at camp) so off she went. Plus, there's no way I want to spend any time in any mall if I can avoid it. I think they'll have a better time without me anyway. Jeanine is going to pick them up after she is done working, and then we'll spend our Saturday evening together.

On Cheese, Coffee, and the Written Word

Under grey clouds gravid with rain, Jeanine and I went to the farmer's market today. Last week, we picked up some great pepper sauce and some ghost pepper salt (which I now put on nearly everything), plus some gluten free pizzas and coffee beans. Just the essentials.

This week, it was the cheese curd that called our names. Plus more coffee beans, although only I could hear them. Jeanine is deaf to the cries of coffee.

We stopped in at the book store so I could pick up some Alastair Reynolds novels. I was feeling good about having saved money and space by accepting the loan of a big bag of books and DVDs from a friend (now more than a year ago), but he's a friend with excellent taste, leaving me wanting more on all fronts, so most of my recent book and DVD purchases have been directly inspired by the contents of this particular bag.

There was a book signing in progress at the store, and I recognized the book as one I'd impulse-bought a few weeks ago. It's a book about a book store, so it appealed to me to see a writer of a book about book stores sitting in a book store with a smile on his face and a pen in his hand. His name is Robin Sloan, and his book (his only one to date, I believe) is entitled Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. As soon as I finish reading all of the books I've borrowed, I'll crack its cover and get started. It's not a signed copy though, because I bought it on the wrong day.

Speaking of writing, I just dusted off and threw a new coat of imaginary paint on one of my other blogs. It's completely fictional, and hasn't actually been updated in around a decade, and when I peeked at it today I found that most of the posts had dropped off some virtual cliff into the unreachable darkness of nowhere-land. I updated the template and republished them. Since it's a story written in blog style, it must be read back to front, starting with the oldest post and working forward. Annoying, isn't it? Perhaps I'll start updating it again. Or maybe not. Check it out here.

Jeanine just walked through the house holding both chickens. There was a whole lot of flapping going on.

Much Needed Moisture

We have finally had a bit of rain, although not exactly a deluge. It has been drizzling off and on for the last handful of days though. I guess it's better than nothing.

The moisture brings out the amphibians and the decomposers, but that didn't stop me from also finding a Rattlesnake this week. It was coiled under one of the usual corrugated sheets of metal near camp, and barely reacted when 21 kids leaned over to look at it, cameras flashing.

On our "all day" hike (really only around 5.5 hours) we ascended 1000 feet into the foggy greenery, being careful not to tread on newts. By the time we finished the hike, we'd walked around four miles and counted 210 of them.

Here's newt #74:

Here's the magical woodland:

Yes, I took these at work. Weep.

Shortest Joyride In History

This morning started out with a bang, although Jeanine and I didn't hear it. Eva did though, and when I went out front, I noticed that an obnoxiously large pickup truck had collided with a tree across the street a couple of houses down. It was at an angle, almost as if it was thinking of trying to climb into the branches. I shook my head, got into my car, and went to work.

It wasn't until later that I found out that what I'd seen was the aftermath of an armed robbery, during which a knife-wielding man had jumped into the truck after menacing the owner. I guess it's a good thing his driving skills were about as good as his ability to make morally sound decisions, because he immediately crashed into a tree. Unfortunately, he survived the crash and got away on foot. He's still at large, possibly hanging out with the murderer from a few weeks ago and laughing at our inept police department.

Two Minor Things

Occasionally, a thing or two sticks in the mind. I'm not talking about the big events here, but rather those little moments that come and go without any fanfare, but somehow manage to linger in the corners of consciousness for days afterward.

This week, one such thing was a glimpse of the setting moon. I can't remember whether I was coming or going, but I think I was with Willow at the time, maybe coming back from her play. The moon was huge and grinning, a thin, upward curved crescent with a bulbous head of earth-shine rounding it out. It was a little misty around the edges too, like it was trailing ectoplasm as it sank.

The other thing was Elmo. You know, the Sesame Street character. He was standing by the curb alongside a major thoroughfare, looking as if he was waiting for a ride, grinning like Elmos always do.

Second Week In the Field

The ground at camp is still moist from the tiny bit of rain we got over the weekend, making it feel more like Winter. There is a certain smell in the air after rain, and the moss on the trees still had fronds extended. There was (and is) a definite chill in the air too.

We have another group of bright, well-behaved kids. One girl in my group decided to give herself a nature name she couldn't even pronounce, much less spell. Some kind of dinosaur. Usually I can figure those out, but this time I came up blank, so I asked her to change it to something else.

She chose Micropachycephalosaurus.

Later, the same camper picked up something she found on a stump, asking, "is this scat?". I told her that the time to ask that question is before reaching down and picking things up. As it turned out, it was indeed scat. Grey Fox scat, to be precise. Grey Foxes like taking dumps on top of things. It's how they mark territory. We've been finding scat on top of logs, rocks, and even on top of the big pile of decomposed manure in the garden. Silly creatures. I'm glad people don't mark territory like that.

Speaking of camp. Check out this page. It has interviews with me and many of my coworkers, conducted by Scooby. Scooby always goes above and beyond.

Here are a some photos from last week:

Days In A Daze

The frequency of my posts has dipped a bit due to my schedule upending itself this week. I'm now almost completely diurnal again, at least for the rest of this school year. My first week back in the field as an instructor was an easy one, with bright kids and even a little bit of rain! We had found a few salamanders early in the week, and they all looked kind of thin and dry. The kids even found an Ensatina sitting on top of a log. Perhaps it felt the pressure drop, or maybe it was doing a rain dance before we interrupted it. Whatever the reason might have been, this is the first time we've ever found one on top of a log instead of under it. Of course, the cynic in me whispers that perhaps one of the kids put it there and then lied about it (I tell them not to touch Ensatinas because they are lungless salamanders, and do their breathing through pores that can easily be clogged by contact with human skin). Up by the creek, the ladybugs are clustered in their thousands, wintering in weather that has more in common with Spring. Out of the 23 kids in my group, 22 lasted the week. One girl went home on Thursday morning due to illness, and I was sad to see her go. She was very excited to be at camp and was crushed that she would have to miss the last couple of days.

Due to nearly 100% cloud cover, we had to inflate our portable planetarium on Tuesday evening so I could teach about constellations and actually have a visual aid.

I managed to successfully complete my goal of walking 100 miles in January, but only just. No goal for February yet. I tried out my pedometer and it seems to be fairly accurate. I walked nine miles on Thursday alone.

Thursday night, Jeanine and I went to see Willow perform as the Scarecrow in her school's version of The Wizard of Oz. Most of the kids did an excellent job. I went back again on Saturday and saw it again, only missing the third and final performance due to snoozing on picking up a ticket in time. I was over by the dressing/make-up rooms though, and heard part of the third performance through the outside speakers. I also watched the hapless volunteers wrangling the offstage actors, and I can report that the kids playing the flying monkeys were very well cast. The Tin Man was pretty good at using his ax as a guitar too. Right now, Willow is at a girl scout meeting. Cookie sales are coming soon! She's having a busy weekend.

Greg had a performance on Friday evening, which I'll write about in my music blog. Willow's performances book-ended his, and during my second viewing, I realized that Willow was performing in a bigger venue (an elementary school "cafetorium") and in front of a bigger audience (parents and other relatives, mostly). She also rehearsed a lot more, since play rehearsals started in September. I guess this is a good little anecdote to share with people contemplating becoming performers of any type. That fifth grade role in the play may be the peak of your career, at least if you care about venue and audience size.

Here's a photo of an impression of the stamp I carved and hid last Sunday. So far, one person has found it.

Hidden Treasure and Diurnal Activity

Jeanine and I went to Portal Park near my mom's old house yesterday and hid a letterbox to commemorate the 4th anniversary of her death. We hid one three years ago too, but that one quickly vanished due to it being hidden in a well traveled and well maintained area. The new letterbox is hidden a bit more off the beaten path,buried behind a Redwood tree. Check out the page for it here. I'll post an image of the stamp impression soon. Nobody has found it yet, but I'm sure that will change soon.

It's strange that four years have passed already. Gone but not forgotten.

I'm working days this week, and will be doing so for most of the rest of the school year (not to mention summer). At the moment, it looks like I'm only working two weeks of nights until September. The kids this week are well behaved and seem excited to be in the woods. A few of them didn't seem to want to sit in the dirt though, instead choosing to squat when the rest of us sat down. It's funny how some people are afraid of dirt. They relented and sat down after I did a dirt angel (that's like a snow angel, except for the obvious difference). It's fun to be back in the swing of things during the day, and I noted that I was feeling an emotion akin to joy earlier today. I really do love my job.

Death and Remembrance

Yesterday was the two year anniversary of the death of Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos, and tomorrow is the four year anniversary of the death of my mom. Continuing the trend of making this week heavy with death, Italian film composer Riz Ortolani has shuffled off this mortal coil, leaving behind a legacy of music. I listened to his score for the notorious "Cannibal Holocaust" to commemorate his passing. It really is beautiful music.

Here's an interesting short article and interview about Angelopoulos. With his death on my mind, I was looking for information about the film he had been working on when he was killed, hoping that enough of it had been finished to enable posthumous completion. Sadly, this won't be happening. Only 12 minutes had been shot at the time of his death.

I've got something planned to mark the fourth anniversary of my mom's death too, but that's tomorrow...

Sighting

The half moon is rising like an enormous, glowing bowl tonight, while nearby Mars glints redly like a distant warning beacon.

I glimpsed a Grey Fox earlier as I drove up the long driveway to work. Like most animals confronted by oncoming headlights, it wisely chose to show me its tail as it scampered off to some happier place for foxes. It's the first fox I've seen this close to camp.

Currently listening to the nocturnal sounds of: Noctooa "Adaptation"

Night Work

After a night off due to Martin Luther King Day, I'm back up in the hills, holding down the fort while the campers sleep. That said, they've been a bit restless tonight. A floor has already been puked on, and I've seen a homesick boy and a whole bunch of kids who got in trouble for talking, including Captain Sassypants and his second in command, Corporal Clueless. That's usually how it works in these situations - the back talker almost always comes with a bonus follower. Steps have been taken.

The beginning of every week is like the first day of school. Every new bunch of kids comes with unique challenges. That's part of what makes this job interesting.

This didn't stop me from finishing the novel I've been working on. One of my goals this year is to finally finish off the huge bag of books and DVDs a friend loaned me around a year ago. Fortunately, he's a friend with good taste. The latest book I read, "The Scar" by China Mieville, was particularly excellent.

I wonder who broke the circular piece of wood covering the campfire pit in the main amphitheater though. It looks like somebody drove a truck over it.

The sky is a bit clearer up here. The air quality in the valley remains bad. For the last few days, I've had a tickle in my throat, plus an off again on again soreness there. Jeanine has too, although today she had a low-grade fever on top of that, so maybe we're both sick. Whatever the problem is, it has sapped our energy. Tonight I feel a bit better, but then again I'm out of the valley and I've had coffee.

Coffee is good.

New Camera, New Egg

I've been messing around with a Canon Rebel camera for the last couple of days. It's fortuitous that one of my coworkers decided to sell it, because it's the kind of camera I've been wanting to get. He handed it over at the end of the work week, and I'll be handing him payment sometime later this week. The software that comes with it, not to mention the larger photo files it creates, has forced me to empty a lot of stuff onto an external drive, but I'm really liking the camera so far. Now, I just have to learn how to use it properly.

I took the girls to a show up in Berkeley on Saturday, and I tried out the camera a bit while we wandered along the Berkeley Pier.

At home, Henrietta laid her first egg. Ameraucana hens lay green ones.

Our slow internet connection, coupled with the larger photo files, means it takes forever to upload photos. For some reason though, Blogger is much quicker than Typepad.

Dawning Of A Brand New Dystopia

The second week of camp for 2014 has now vanished from my rear view mirror, leaving only vague memories of its passing. From my perspective, there were no real highlights, but no real low-lights either. Every week there is some kind of first though. This week's first was that a kid managed to wet the bunk bed in the Hub. Usually, kids only sleep on those beds if they're sick and/or waiting to get picked up at night. Sometimes, like this week, kids who are just plain tired out before bedtime sleep there. This one leaked. The same night, a girl hurt her neck pretty badly during the Thursday night dance, necessitating a ride home. For some reason, Thursday nights are often chaotic. To add to the general chaos this week, many kids were weeping uncontrollably due to it being the last night of camp. Or at least one kid was weeping for this reason. It only takes one to get the rest worked up. It's like a person driving too slowly on a one-lane road. It affects everybody.

Since I know this about campers, I always try to make my Thursday night talk as funny as possible. This week, I was too successful. I found out later from one of the cabin leaders that one girl laughed so hard she wet her pants.

Sometimes you just can't win.

Shifting gears slightly, this morning, reading the news, I find myself hoping that these kids won't end up inheriting a dystopia after we're gone. This article makes me wonder if it might already be too late. It's like something out of a grim near-future science fiction film.

Closer to home, Governor Brown has officially declared a drought emergency. Read the article here.

Closer still (in fact, right around the corner from my old apartment), Flames has apparently gone up in flames. Oh, the irony.

Currently listening to: Zoe Boekbinder "100/100"

Water We Going To Do?

To judge by the temperature, it could be early Spring right now. There hasn't even been any of the usual morning fog at camp either. It's dry like the sunny side of Mercury.

Here's another worried-sounding article about social encouragement to cut down on water use. It's good that at least some people are thinking ahead, but I'm sure that most people will only start to conserve when they are forced to, complaining bitterly about it the whole time. It reminds me of a post I saw today on our neighborhood's online forum. A guy was seriously comparing recycling to communism. I imagine he drives a Hummer and thinks that the Tea Party is the intellectual elite. Yeah, I'm stereotyping a bit, but some people make it so easy.

At work, we continue to do our best to inspire kids to be conservation-minded. We only get each group of kids for a week though, and I imagine that even the ones who are inspired in some way are likely to backslide after being back at home awhile. The lack of rain and the possibility of water rationing is a lesson in itself though. Maybe it will serve as a wake-up call for some of these kids because, after all, conservation isn't even a word in most people's vocabularies during times of plenty. Maybe soon the two minute showers we restrict them to at camp will mirror the ones they have to take at home.

In other conservation news, the hunter from Texas who won a bid to shoot an endangered Black Rhino (with proceeds apparently going towards rhino conservation efforts), may now become the hunted. People are rightfully outraged at the idea of letting this waste of space legally kill an endangered species, and apparently he has been getting death threats. I hope he wasn't too surprised by this. I know I'm not.