Close-Up

Close-Up, originally uploaded by Corbie.

Here's a photo taken during our short honeymoon last week. We found all sorts of creative uses for the ducks people brought to the wedding.

Call me an idiot, but I just noticed that I can share photos directly from my Flickr page, not to mention compose the post itself from there, so the main function of this post is that of a guinea pig. Here goes nothing...

Deep Autumn

The wheel of the seasons is spinning towards Winter, but for the most part, it doesn't feel like it. California never really has a Winter, instead skirting the edges of the season with a storm or two, and never staying below freezing for more than a few hours all season long. This time of year, the best thing is the interesting sunrises and sunsets. I think my biggest problem with Summer has always been the boring sky. I'd rather have something more varied to look at, and I'd even rather have things fall out of it than have to suffer through months of pale blue nothing.

The Thanksgiving holiday week is drawing to an end. We had a modest little get-together at our place, which included the Trader Joe's brand of imitation turkey. I forgot to put the gravy on it, but it was still good. Willow was actually here on the holiday instead of a day or two afterwards, which means her mom spent Thanksgiving without kids for perhaps the first time in 16 years. I must note that we celebrate Thanksgiving the same way we celebrate Christmas - from the standpoint of tradition rather than any real agreement with the myth behind the holiday itself - in this case, it's the myth that the pilgrims and the Native Americans lived in some sort of Disneyfied fairytale land where everybody helped each other out. I think most people don't really give it a lot of thought. Sure, everybody comes up with lists of things to be thankful for, which is a good thing because it steers us away from taking too much for granted, but I'm sure nobody has ever uttered the thought, "I'm thankful for this continent we stole from the poor suckers who were here before us." People, I might add, who thought the concept of land ownership was ridiculous. Good for them. Why is it that sensible people always get overtaken by barbarians?

We went to a Harvest Festival the other day too, and bought things from artisans there - candy, tea, ear cuffs for Eva, and a romantic picture to hang on the wall. Willow doesn't think the picture is romantic though. She thinks it's creepy because it has skeletons in it. Oh, well. The whole reason I mentioned the festival at all is that the name signifies another thing we're generally out of touch with in modern society, at least those of us who don't live in rural areas. I'm talking of course about the harvest, the bringing in of the crops, the squirreling away of food in order to stave off starvation during the bleakness of Winter. There was no shipping fruit in from the southern hemisphere in the old days. No, you had to spend the Autumn months stuffing it into jars and cans. We have it pretty easy these days, but as always, this comes with a hidden price. Every convenience does. Think about it.

Currently listening to: William Basinski "The Disintegration Loops"

Moon of Honey

We're heading out for a brief mini-honeymoon in a couple of hours. Despite this being my second marriage, I've never been on a honeymoon before. The first time around, circumstances (read: finances and children) didn't allow for that kind of luxury. Here in the present, we're making it happen.

Traveling with us will be a bunch of rubber ducks, given to us by literal-minded wedding guests who read the fine print on the invitation. Or perhaps people just like buying ducks. Either way you look at it, we have a bunch, and they're going with us.

We're taking the chocolate ducks with us too. They won't survive for long.

Currently listening to: V/A "Benefit For Animals In Need" Follow the link if you'd like to support the ASPCA while at the same time adding 31 songs to your digital library. Go on, you know you want to.

Married!

The wedding went off without a hitch. Over a couple of days, our friend Raul whipped together some fantastic balloon decorations, and Earles of Newtown, a swing band from Nevada city featuring my old friend Chad on washboard and vocals, proved to be so entertaining that adults and kids alike had good things to say about them. The ceremony took place in a hillside amphitheater, at just around sunset. We passed around a speaking stick with our rings attached, and lots of people chose to share their thoughts and wishes for us with the crowd. By the end of the ceremony, it was so cold that I invited everybody down to warm their hands around the fire, which ended up being just perfect. The cake, baked by Walrus, was magnificent, and the company was excellent.

Plus, we have a lot of ducks now, mostly of the rubber kind, but also a nice wooden mallard, a plush duck or two, and some wind-up ones. I'm not sure what possessed me to write "nobody will be admitted without a duck" on the invitation. I'm just glad that nobody brought live ducks (at least a couple of people almost did).

My friend Jellyfish took some nice pictures too:

Currently listening to: Celer "Recumbent In Wishes"

Today Is The Day!

Jeanine and I are making it all official later today. We've opted to keep the ceremony simple, since neither of us have ever understood the need to make things more complicated than they need to be. That said, there will be scenic views, a warm fire, yummy cake, friends aplenty, and good music. What more could anyone ask for?

Currently listening to: Xambuca "Kamuy"

Wedding

In less than 48 hours, Jeanine and I will have rings on our fingers and the benevolent gleam of legality will illuminate our already interwoven lives. I think we've covered all of the pertinent details, and hopefully there won't be any nth hour moments of sudden realization due to overlooked tasks. I'm very much looking forward to the ceremony, and will of course write more after the weekend.

After a couple of weeks in the field, I'm working nights this week and next, followed by a week off in honor of the annual Feast of Gluttons.

Here's a picture taken during field class the week before last. I love how fog utterly changes the mood of the photo.

Currently listening to: Tim Eriksen "Josh Billings Voyage"

What's Wrong With This Picture?

I meant to post this awhile ago, but it got pushed to the back of my mind by more pressing matters.

I often get Facebook messages from friends, usually accompanied by a photo (like the case in point here), asking me to identify some mysterious creature that appeared in a yard, or bathtub, or garage, or somewhere else terrifying and inconvenient. Usually I can identify the critter right away. In most cases, if I can't identify it, I'll at least have a good idea.

The animal in this picture is as well known to me as the palm of my hand, and since I know what it is, I would never actually put one in the palm of my hand. It's a Rattlesnake, of course. To be precise (as a pair of fictional detectives are fond of saying), it's a Northern Pacific Rattlesnake. Fortunately for the kid in the picture, the species isn't very aggressive. It makes up for its lack of aggressiveness with relatively toxic venom though, so it's not something you should pick up with your bare hands, no matter who you are.

In this case, if I remember the story right, the irresponsible party was a grandparent. As adults, it's our responsibility to be knowledgeable about potential dangers in our immediate environment. This particular adult fell down on the job. Hard.

Where living things are concerned, the best advice I can give is: If you don't know what it is, don't touch it.

A Brief Update

After inspecting a couple of antique stores, we found a nice pair of wedding rings today. The ladies who sold them to us spent a moment sharing how long they'd each been married. If I remember correctly, the durations were 41, 47, and 65 years. The unanimous opinion was that marriage works. That's good to know.

This day also marks a somber anniversary, since it is the one year anniversary of my dad's death. It's hard to believe that a year has already vanished, since the day is still so finely etched into my memory. It's interesting to note that my dad passed away on the Festival of the Dead, a festival that became All Soul's Day once the Christians got hold of it. Yet another holiday that now has a deeper, more personal meaning for me.

Speaking of the dead, All Hallow's Eve passed without incident. A row of jack-o-lanterns and a large balloon Frankenstein's Monster greeted the surprisingly large number of trick-or-treaters who came to our door. Jeanine reported that many of them didn't seem to know what to say, instead standing there with mute expectation.

Currently listening to: At Jennie Ritchie "The Communist's Garden"

The Night Sky Springs A Brief Leak

It rained, sort of. It hit the valley in the evening, but not for very long. Up in the hills at camp, I was despairing that I'd been cheated, but a few desultory drops found their way to the ground during the wee hours, and again within the last hour. Early on, I did get treated to a bit of thunder and lightning. There was a flash beyond the hill to the north, briefly backlighting it, and of course the attendant rumble of thunder.

It's not much, but it's been dry for so long that even a few drops seems like a deluge.

Currently listening to: Bernardo Devlin "Sic Transit"

Autumnal

As we move into the heart of October, there's a bit of a bite to the night air. Now, as I type these words, I can see a stately procession of tattered, white clouds moving north, starkly contrasting against the deep blue beyond. I love this time of year. I wish it would rain though.

We're slowly but surely pulling the elements of our wedding together. Jeanine and I collaborated on the invitations, and I'm still trying to confirm a band. All of the local bands I've asked are either suddenly not local or have time conflicts (although one band member expressed a desire to play our 10th anniversary). At the moment, I'm pinning my hopes on a friend who has two bands, a swing band and a blues band, and I'm waiting to hear back about the availability of either. They'd be coming from a bit farther away, but hopefully at least one of the bands will be available on the date.

Another friend, who also plays in a blues band, was surprised that we were interested in having a blues band play our wedding, but if you think about it, the whole point of blues is to make people feel good. Of course, most of my favorite music could be labelled "depressing" or at least "melancholy", so what do I know?

I know that the music draws out sadness and expresses it in a way that nothing else can, so the sadder the music, the happier it makes me feel. Not that I'm sad or anything like that, but perhaps the reason I'm rarely sad myself is because I wallow in musical morbidity.

Lest one think that it's just me, Jeanine is fully on board with having a blues band play. Yet another reason why we're such a good match.

Currently listening to: Tinariwen - YouTube mix, which isn't melancholy at all, and thus doesn't really support the point I was making above, but sometimes life is like that.

The Long Fingers of Summer

The week started out uncomfortably warm, with temperatures well into the nineties, but the thermometer has dropped enough so that once again, a jacket is required at night. I've been watching episodes of Dexter at camp while the kids are sleeping, and tonight I plan on watching the last couple of episodes of season 4. After each episode, I take a palate-cleansing walk through camp, watching the stars wheel through the blackness and the fog drift in. It's a peaceful job, as long as nobody is throwing up or bleeding. There have been a lot of bloody noses this week, probably because of the lack of humidity. Kids often seem so fragile, ill-equipped for anything approaching "roughing it".

As I walk around in the dark, I think. This week, I've been thinking about passion, and about how I feel the need to develop some new creative passions, or perhaps revisit dormant ones. I feel like a lot of my creativity has been left by the wayside over the years, although I guess blogging sort of counts as creative, even if it is more like a chronicle of my experiences most of the time. For the time being, I'll take what I can get, I guess. I'm looking for some new muse or inspiration though, perhaps because I just finished reading a novel about a muse of sorts - Christopher Moore's Sacre Bleu. Of course, with this particular muse, pain and loss is inextricably linked to inspiration. I'm not a big fan of pain and loss, even though a lot of great art and music is born from it. Does that make me some sort of psychic vulture, benefiting as I do from the pain and loss of others? Ha.

Currently listening to: Empty Vessel Music "The Burial",

The Small Hours

Back when I started this blog, most of my posts were created in the middle of the night after I'd gotten home from delivering the Wall St. Journal. It has been over 8 years since that job ended, but once again I find myself regularly awake at that time. My goal this school year is to stay awake all night while I'm at camp, as opposed to napping during the small hours like I've been doing for the last handful of years. So far, so good. It's a peaceful time to be awake. As I type, it's nearly four in the morning, and all is well. The only real drawback is that I now have to sleep until mid-afternoon, which cuts down on my free time at home during the week. Life is always about juggling though, and so I'll continue to keep the pins spinning through the air.

I've got a cold. I think I picked it up over the weekend while I was at the Stella Natura festival in the Tahoe National Forest. The festival was phenomenal, and a detailed report will surface on my music blog soon. For the time being though, I'll sit here and continue blowing my nose.

Currently listening to: Natural Snow Buildings "Live at The Pop, Paris, France 05.11.2003"

Sudden Lizards

Suddenly, we have two Bearded Dragons. Their previous owner tried to donate them to science camp, but the nature lab is already stuffed with critters, so I offered to take them home. These weren't available as pets when I was a kid, or I probably would have had one before now. Over the last decade or so, they've become quite popular and easy to find. Everybody seems to be breeding them. Maybe we will too, since now we also have an incubator.

Currently listening to: Hazy Loper "High In The Murk"

The Internet Makes You Stupid

As I was driving to work tonight, I found myself musing about the internet, and how it seems to create its own reality - a reality that can eclipse the world around us by narrowing and distorting it. At my worst moments, I can feel the claws of this virtual world scraping at my psyche, lulling me into a strange sort of complacency. I was listening to Utah Phillips at the time, which always makes me long for the simple pleasure of sitting around a campfire and sharing stories. That's the best antidote for internetitis - unplugging and backing away. That said, as with everything we use, there is a right way and a wrong way to use the internet. Knowing and seeing the difference is the trick.

Moments after having these thoughts, I noticed the license plate holder on the car in front of me. It read, "the internet makes you stupid". Amen to that.

Currently listening to: Felicia Atkinson "Les Bois Rouges"

Busy

The second week of the current outdoor school season has begun, although my part in it doesn't begin until I get to work this evening.

I still feel like I need to recover from my busy weekend, which featured Willow's soccer photo day and the game that followed (well played, although Willow's team lost by a point or two), a birthday party up in the hills (with live blues band and karaoke - Willow is a karaoke monster!), open house at work (for kids who are coming to camp this school year), and an instore performance by my brother at Amoeba Records in Berkeley (followed by pizza at Zachary's pizza). To top it all off, I seem to have caught a cold.

We walked to get Eva from middle school earlier, and as we started walking homeward, I noticed a kid in front of us contemptuously toss his pencil into the air behind him. Half a block later, one of his friends did the same thing, flinging his pencil into a bush. Do kids these days think pencils are a one-use item? I suppose I did my share of similar things when I was their age, but from my current perspective, it seems kind of senseless. If these kids are sixth graders, we'll be seeing them at science camp in the Spring, and we'll get a chance to teach about not wasting resources. If they're seventh or eighth graders, then they've already been at camp and the lesson didn't stick.

Currently listening to: Nurse With Wound "?"

Back To Nights

This is my first night working as Night Supervisor for the 2012/13 outdoor school year. Last night should have been my first night, but I played hookey and went to see Swans instead.

So far, I've been treated to a Devo concert (I could hear the music from the nearby Mountain Winery) and a couple of bloody noses. The music and the blood are done now, and I'm anticipating seeing the moonrise in a little over an hour. This year, my goal is to actually stay awake all night, rather than try to get my usual 4 or 5 hours of sleep each night. This will mean more sleeping at home. So far, so good. I have to awaken 3 kids in a few minutes, so they don't moisten their sleeping bags before dawn. Then, it will be back to diverting myself with music and literature. I just finished E.R. Eddison's "The Worm Ouroboros", a book that has languished unread on my shelf for years. I'm glad that I finally read it. Next up is "The Jekyll Legacy" by Robert Bloch, which didn't even rate a shelf, but rather languished, coverless, in a cardboard box in various garages and storage spaces for probably decades. I'm trying to focus on what I have, instead of on what I want. This is a good way to start.

Currently listening to: Aural Apocalypse 9/5/12 Podcast, which is chock full of bands set to play the upcoming Stella Natura Festival up in desolation wilderness. I'm officially excited now.

Dinners

I've been digging through boxes in the garage again, and finding the usual mixture of treasure and trash. The recycling bin is close to full, and I have six or seven boxes of books that I can stand to part with. I've found some old photos, and even some old music reviews, written in ball point pen on college ruled binder paper. I'm still debating whether or not they should see the electronic light of day on my music blog.

I also found this book, and it reminded me of Dexter, who would be a six-dinner cat if he could get away with it. Six-Dinner Sid manages it by being an outside cat who fools six different families into believing they are each his sole owner. Dexter is an inside cat, so he mournfully meows at odd hours of the night.

Like he did last night.

Currently listening to: V/A "The Active Listener's First Birthday"

Early Awakening

Yesterday, the weather turned strange. I was near the garden at work when I first heard thunder rumbling up from the direction of the valley. Then, on the way to get Willow, a few fat drops impacted on my windshield, barely disturbing the dust. It has been dry for months now, so even those few drops were cause for rejoicing.

We're in the middle of our set-up/inservice week at camp, and the transformation from summer camp to outdoor school is almost complete. Willow is signed up for her school play this year, as well as doing soccer and girl scouts. She is a busy girl. It must be getting close to Autumn.

This morning, Jeanine and I were awakened by brief, pounding rain, complete with lightning and thunder. By the time we actually got out of bed, it was over. It was a great way to wake up though. I hope this winter is wetter than last year's was.

It just got dark enough for one of the solar-powered lights to blink on in one of the backyard garden bed, which I can see from where I'm typing. The clouds are in the process of losing their pinkish orange underbellies. I think I'll step outside to get a closer look.

Currently listening to: CMX "Melankolia"

Future Additions to the Family

We've been doing research on tortoises recently. Now that we have a backyard, it just seems like there needs to be a tortoise wandering around out there during the summer months. We might get a toad too. We took a trip up to East Bay Vivarium to look around, and we did see some interesting animals. We currently have our eyes on a Gulf Coast Toad and an African Spurred Tortoise, but our purchases for this trip were confined to various supplies for the existing animals (who live up at camp) and a kit for growing glow in the dark mushrooms. The mushrooms are exciting, but I have yet to procure the proper sort of log to grow them in. Ideally, we need a bit of oak.

We also might get a chicken, although we're still not sure if chickens and tortoises willingly share space with each other.

Currently listening to: Miranda Sex Garden "Peep Show"

Deserted Evening Streets

There was much internet excitement about the so-called Blue Moon, which of course isn't blue at all, and only exciting if you live by numbers on a calendar. If the full moon had occurred today, rather than yesterday, I'm sure there wouldn't have been a story on the Yahoo main page about how to "view the blue moon online". What the hell? Why would anybody want to watch the full moon rise online? Have people forgotten that there are doors, and that if you pass through the right ones, you'll find yourself in what people used to refer to as "the great outdoors"? Okay, maybe if you're being held against your will, either in jail or otherwise, with captors who allow you internet access, and if the concept of two full moons in the same month blows your mind for some reason, then you have an excuse for watching the moon rise online and not getting off your lazy butt and spending a few minutes in the unfamiliar outdoors watching the real thing.

Jeanine and I went for a walk, and yes, we saw the moon rise. It was glorious, hanging yellow and gravid just above the horizon. We barely saw anybody else outside on what was a very pleasant late summer evening. There was one guy walking with a small child, and a couple of girls in sparkly outfits running in and out of their open front door, but other than that, the darkening streets were deserted. We reminisced about childhood, about how there were always lots of kids doing kid stuff all over our neighborhoods, and how now many of the kids are inside sitting lifelessly in front of their electronic mood supports.

Currently listening to Natural Snow Buildings "Daughter of Darkness"