Birding and other pleasures and aggravations, in Berkeley and beyond, by Ron Sullivan.
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All kinds of news lately, much of it bad. (We’re in OK health and nobody’s died and things look bleak mostly on the employment front, which is as bad as it needs to get but hey, nobody’s dead lately. )
But here, anyway:
Posted by Ron Sullivan | 4 comments already... We ran into some California summer weather on the way home from visiting some gardens in Sonoma County on Sunday.
First “Uh-oh” when Petaluma’s main drag turned to aim us at this vista:
In some places and conditions this might have been a fogbank, but no: smoke. Very white smoke, so probably only a grass fire so far. Therre was a fogbank at the coast all day, and it produced some serious wind as it drew inland in the evening; this of course moved the fire relatively fast.
Traffic was slow going past it, but at least the highway was upwind so the smoke blew the other way.
When we passed the flame front, the sound was almost liquid, if a bit more crisp, like shallow water flowing over an edge.
This was such an insignificant fire it barely rated a mention in the news; KTVU had some footage so that got played, buy the real news was a new fire up near Yosemite. Here, grass got burned, the oaks in the fields were probably OK, and someone lost “a couple of outbuildings” but not the main house. Nesting season is over for most critters, so I doubt there were many casualties. I could have outrun the flame front myself without breaking a sweat, and most of the animal inhabitants of the grass can be assumed to be faster than I am. We saw a bunch of horses clustered uphill, but the fire was nowhere near them and was moving the other way.
The grass that burned was mostly a species that was introduced because livestock relish it; somebody lost a month’s fodder for their (probably dairy) cattle, in what’s already a bad year for most of us.
These photos show a bit more detail when viewed large.
Posted by Ron Sullivan | 1 comment so far... High point of the day, in its own way:
Dental assistant: “Oh man, this is getting too much like auto mechanics,” as she handed Mark the dentist something or other to cope with an assemblage of teeny screws, wrenches, screwdrivers (offset?), and other machined steel parts, and then something very like a grease gun which contained a substance more like caulk. The whole process did resemble what Gail the Mechanic Goddess does to our Toyota, in fact. Everything fits together just so; everything’s designed to work smoothly for a long time under predictable stresses; everything’s disassemble-able and replaceable. Plus, shiny tools! At the end of it I had not one but two new teeth. One is the finished implant that’s been in process for most of the last year, to replace the molar I broke clenching my teeth when my sister died.
I think I just answered part of my internal question about why Jeannie and the unfinished obligation I have to write about what happened to her has been preying on my mind all month. Only part of it, though, because apparently I’m not the only one of us in this stunned, enervated state of mind.
The other tooth isn’t quite all there yet but I have a temporary crown directly upstairs from the new implant. This is wider than the tooth it crowns because it also has to replace one that’s been missing for years. The crown had to get done anyway because the tooth there had lengthened into the gap now filled by the implant. If you can follow that, you’re more coherent than I am just now. What I like about this is that it’s rather an artistic solution to a sort of engineering problem.
I do appreciate elegance, particularly when it’s in a matter so close to my, well, not heart exactly. Still, one of the bits that I use a lot.
Posted by Ron Sullivan | 5 comments already... And also Fraternité
Because it’s my brother Patrick’s birthdé!
Happy birthday, bro. I just got word they’ve shipped your present, so it’ll be belated. As usual. I’ve come to think of it as prolonging the joviality.
Posted by Ron Sullivan | 3 comments already... OK, I’ll have to reiterate: It’s just a frackin’ cracker.
Alas, unlike Twisty, I haven’t spent the last two weeks riding a gorgeous horse. We’re having yet another week of weird red light and painful air, thanks to the wildfires that are still consuming my beloved California. For some reason, that (plus a few other things that have surfaced in my personal swamp) has apparently made me allergic to words. Deadline/work matters, personal correspondence, words of all sorts. Apologies to all I’ve neglected.
The other thing screwing up my deadlines for the last couple of days has been the kerfuffle in Florida over a University of Central Florida student who was assaulted in church and later threatened with death for walking farther with a Communion wafer in his hand than some ecclesiastical martinet thought he ought to.
So you can go over to Pharyngula to witness the mess; I’d advise skimming a few of the relevant threads. Right here, I’m going to pull my Catholic schooling out of my pocket and do some damning of my own.
People are carrying on about “desecration.” Some of them are doing so quite imaginatively. For some reason (Paging Dr. Freud!) a large proportion of their imaginary desecration scenes involve the Koran and/or various human excreta. I’ll give the less-experienced a tip: Holy books tend to be printed on paper that gets sharp edges when it’s crumpled, and is therefore not fit to wipe one’s ass with. Beware.
I have a deep enough background in Catholicism to tell everyone this: The Eucharist was desecrated by Catholics when that kid was assaulted in the Sacred Presence. It was desecrated again when he was threatened by alleged Catholics—threatened in any manner, not just with death. He was threatened with death. He is a human person. His being is sacred. Any who threaten him with harm are threatening God Himself. They are damning themselves.
Any who tell him and/or Dr. Myers that they are going to Hell are committing the sin of presumption, in daring to pretend to speak for God Himself. They are twice damning themselves. (I? I have nothing to fear from the Catholic hierarchy or ideology. I can merrily call these fools out on their own terms and have no thought to the imaginary eternal consequences.)
It’s funny that all those “moderate” Catholics and other Christians are failing to publicly condemn ol’ Bill Donahue for presuming to speak for the Church. He has egregiously misrepresented Catholic theology, human decency, and even such freedom of thought as exists within the confines of Catholic theology. How odd that the consequences of that sin have not descended upon him here on Earth with any degree of severity remotely comparable as what befell, say, the Dutch theologians who got all that Vatican opprobrium for lesser disagreements.
Posted by Ron Sullivan | 5 comments already...