Toad in the Hole

Uh-Oh

Am I the only one who’s noticed a family resemblance between His Noodliness the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Chthulu?

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A Giggle from George Will

The Chron’s pullquote from Will’s column this morning, the subject being why Harriet Miers should not be nominated:

Miers’ nomination shows Bush’s belief in identity politicsand its tawdry corollary, the idea of categorical representation.

What an elementary flub! Right out there in public, Will displays that he somehow doesn’t/didn’t think the same thing about Roberrts’ nomination to replace a white male. Hilarious.

Yes, I know, white and male equals the norm, focus on the exception, including the majority “minority” I guess. It’s fun when they take their manners off in public and expose their shrivelled, limp little thought processes.

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Nature and Culture

Prize for this year’s Best Birding at a Music fest goes to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival and Unofficial Dog Show on Sunday in Golden Gate Park.

The three ravens hanging out over the crowd, soaring and surfing and just generally strolling around in the air, and the red-shouldered and red-tailed hawks were cool enough, during Hazel Dickens and the Austin Lounge Lizards and Ricky Skaggs and all. We even had some sun, and then enough of high cirrus clouds to prevent bad sunburns.

We have a policy of seeing the old farts first, because lately we have a heightened sense that they won’t be around forever. So we prioritized Dr. Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys even over Jimmie Dale Gilmore, over whom I personally swoon. We ended up standing right behind the sound booth, so I spent an inordinate amount of time on tiptoe and paid dearly for it the next day. The set was reward enough. They even did “Angel Band,” long one of my favorites. (I didn’t know till recently that the Stanley Brothers wrote that.) And Dr. Ralph looked pretty hale for an 80-ish guy who’d had a triple bypass three months ago. Sang and played well too. And his grandson has obviously had both a growth spurt and some good mandolin lessons since last January.

The crowd was noisy, as free outdoor festival crowds usually are. It gets more annoying every time — who comes out to see someone like the Lounge Lizards, known for their hilariously clever intricate lyrics, and then yammers through the whole set? Feh. And there’s someone in every little picnic-blanket group with a high piercing voice, or a sonorous nasal baritone, or a buzzsaw whine, who never shuts up. Ever. And why the hell am I hearing, instead of the lyrics to “Old Blevins,” some bint saying, “Everyone’s feeeelings got aired”? Why are the loudest people always the most boring?

But that’s another rant.

One break in the crowd noise: when Dr. Ralph a-capella’d “O Death,” everyone shut up. Everyone. Even the squalling darling sirens. Even the dogs. You could have heard that pin drop on the turf. Incredible. And of course the performance deserved it.

And I happened to look up and over to the east-southeast, where the cypresses and eucs hedged the sky, at the ravens flying easy, sociable circles round each other. One raven looked odd.

Peregrine.

It circled over to the space above us, close enough to see it was a subadult, maybe one of the trio fledged this year downtown. And it circled again, lazily, and glided off to the west.

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A Meme, of Sorts

If you had a drink named after you, what would be in it?

Example, the famous-in-our-crowd Delilah: one part Meyer lemon juice, one part Cointreau, two parts gin (stored in the freezer). Shake with ice and strain.

I’m thinking for me: something like Thai red tea, the kind they use to make the ubiquitous “Thai tea,” but barely sweetened, plus rum; shake with ice and strain or not; with some thick cream floated on top a la Irish coffee. But I’d have to road-test it first.

Or, on certain days, what my Russian History prof used to describe some eastern-hordes invader or other, or maybe the original Black Russian: equal parts vodka, kerosene, and Tabasco sauce.

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Winter Continued

Pretty hot again today. I followed a semi-familiar song to the back door, coffee in hand, and found a pair of Bewick’s wrens in the trees out back. Also, a rowdy gang of robins, and a grayish warbler I couldn’t get a better look at. The usual gang of bushtits and chickadees, hummers—traffic. And that flicker again, sneering.

Out front, the first golden-crowned sparrow of the year, singing that Oh Poor Me thing.

Joe looked out back while I was at work, and had another yellow warbler, an orange-crowned warbler (probably that was my gray bird), and more robins. I heard one singing, which happens when the winter flock comes in and they all have to get their territories sorted out.

The damned squirrels and the scrub-jays have been molesting my plant pots and, worse, my seed flat, burying acorns. I have to dig up that stash of hot pepper from the Korean supermarket.

Tomorrow we get to hit the Merritt plant sales. Stuff for the raised beds—veggies, herbs—and maybe some native bulbs if I can think of a place to plant them.

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