As noted often before, my Number 1 favorite activity during a plane flight is staring out the window at what’s below. My Number 2 favorite activity is taking pictures of whatever it is. Above is a shot from Tuesday evening, as we approached San Francisco International Airport on our flight home from Chicago. This shot looks north across Sunol Regional Wilderness to San Antonio Reservoir (one of the many reservoirs in the San Francisco water system). I love the light on the contours of this landscape. (The air? I believe it was smoky from fires we’ve been having in Northern California, though I never followed up on that to figure out where the closes fires were.)
Your Official Labor Day Weekend Slogan and Butterfly
Above, it’s the California Sister (Adelpha californica). We spent the weekend with our friends Jill and Piero in that part of Calaveras County where the foothills turn to the mountains, on a ridge south of the Middle Fork of the Mokelumne River. On Sunday, we walked down to Blue Creek, then walked up the stream a short way. This butterfly was hanging out and posed while I tried to get a picture.
Back at base camp, also known as Casa Della Montagna, a construction project was under way. Piero and Jill were building a small deck for a wood-fired hot tub. The underlying framework was a beautiful, asymmetrical web of beams and joists. I commented on the workmanship, which I always find impressive. Piero seemed to see it as more of a rough-and-ready carpentry job. He said, putting a new spin on an old proverb, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the done!”
Kate and I spent the afternoon watching and occasionally lending our hands as Jill and Piero measured angles, cut planks, and screwed them into place. They were done by dinnertime.
(Click pictures for larger images.)
Your Friendly Neighborhood Low-Flying Radiation-Detecting Helicopter
Helicopters circling over a local news event: That’s just one of those noises you get used to in our modern urban soundscape. When you hear the sound of choppers orbiting over some downtown or campus or some random intersection, you know a protest is going on or maybe a fire or maybe someone’s spotted a picturesque car crash.
This morning’s helicopter visit is different. Starting sometime in the groggy hour before 8 a.m., I started to hear a helicopter nearby. It would pass, then return. It sounded like it was flying low. Once I was up and attending to the morning’s first ritual, making coffee, I heard the helicopter coming back and went out and took a look. It looked like it was only about 500 feet up, if that, and it was not orbiting or following anything at that height.
I remembered seeing an article somewhere about some government agency taking radiation measurements over parts of the Bay Area. This helicopter must be part of that whole thing, I thought. After the chopper passed, I went in and tried to find some information.
The summary, by way of the excellent Oakland North blog: “Some government agency” is the Department of Homeland Security’s Nuclear Detection Office and the National Nuclear Security Administration. Despite what I say in the video above, the helicopter is a Bell 412, and it’s outfitted with equipment to measure background radiation levels in the area. The stated purpose: to assist research and development on airborne radiation detection systems. (More on the chopper(s) at Berkeleyside: Low-flying helicopters over Berkeley.)
Ruminants Among Us
Yes, that up there is common deer poop, left right next to a manzanita bush in our front yard. Or so I believe from previous experience in wilder parts of the country. I can’t think of another animal in our parts that would leave scat that looks quite like this. More circumstantial evidence: a deer hoof print in our next-door neighbor’s front-yard garden, which contains lots of roses, reputedly a favorite food of our semi-urban deer.
Joking aside: the deer have moved in. There’s not enough cover in our yard for them to stay full time, but I’ve heard of places within three or four blocks where deer families have taken up residence. I don’t object, though they are larger than our average wild neighbor and the thing that sometimes worries me about them is scaring one at night and getting run over. Hasn’t happened yet, though.
Respecting the Fundamentals
If you’re interested in how content is produced in our socially connected media world, David Carr had a nice piece in Monday’s New York Times (“Journalists Dancing on the Edge of Truth“). He was focusing on the lessons inherent in the case of Jonah Lehrer, the Wired and New Yorker science writer who was caught inventing and retooling quotes from Bob Dylan in a book published this summer and then lying about it.
Lehrer isn’t the first to be caught creating nonfiction from a fertile imagination, and he won’t be the last. Carr and others argue that a lot of this kind of behavior is the product of a news/entertainment industry landscape in which journalists, reporters, columnists, and analysts–maybe the best catch-all description would be “media performers”–are slaves to a nonstop, multi-platform demand for their brilliance.
Carr also suggests that part of the problem lies in what’s missing from Jonah Lehrer’s journalistic resume:
“Mr. Lehrer, now 31, became famous before he had a grasp of the fundamentals. …
“The now ancient routes to credibility at small magazines and newspapers—toiling in menial jobs while learning the business—have been wiped out, replaced by an algorithm of social media heat and blog traction. Every reporter who came up in legacy media can tell you about a come-to-Jesus moment, when an editor put them up against a wall and tattooed a message deep into their skull: show respect for the fundamentals of the craft, or you would soon not be part of it.
“I once lost a job I dearly wanted because I had misspelled the name of the publisher of the publication I was about to go to work for. Not very smart, but I learned a brutal lesson that has stayed with me. Nobody ever did that for Mr. Lehrer, even after repeated questions were raised about his work.”
“Tattooed a message deep into their skull.” I like that. Though I can testify that the tattooing these days needs to be done with a certain modicum of sensitivity that was scarce in those Old School days Carr speaks of.
Carved in Stone: Epitaphs, Actual and Proposed
With my dad’s recent passing, and having made several (unrelated, except for my mood) recent visits to Chicago cemeteries, I’ve been thinking about epitaphs. Webster’s defines epitaph as “1. an inscription on or at a tomb or a grave in memory of the one buried there. 2.: a brief statement commemorating or epitomizing a deceased person or something past.”
Most of what’s carved on graveyard monuments is pretty simple: names, dates, and relationships. Beyond that, most of the common people buy at most a brief fragment of a sentiment. In Catholic cemeteries, I’ve seen a lot of “My Jesus Mercy.” On my dad’s parents’ grave, In largely Scandinavian-American (and Lutheran) ground, the message is “Christ My Hope.”
But except for the expense involved–I think we’re paying $150 to have “2012” carved on my dad’s headstone–I think a secular message might be reflect more the concerns of today’s future deceased Americans. I’m thinking of phrases that reflect the preoccupations of most of us for most of our waking life: Phrases like:
Has anyone seen my keys?
Do you mind getting me another beer?
It’s time to get up already?
Turn here. No–here!
Have change for a 20?
Hey–there’s no toilet paper in here!
Sorry I’m late–traffic was terrible!
I meant to get in touch.
Don’t blame me.
What time is it?
Yeah–I’ll send that check tomorrow.
Later–we’ll discuss it later.
Chicago and Midwest Weather: Condition Orange
My brief stay in Chicago has included a couple of Summer of 2012 heat spikes, interspersed with less radical summer weather, as a frontal boundary oscillates across this part of the Midwest. Today’s National Weather Service forecast map for the Chicago region is orange in every direction, indicating a heat advisory. Temperatures in the city are expected to hit 100. Outside the city, up to 105. (I note that the forecast high in San Francisco today is … 63.)
Tom Skilling, the dean of Chicagoland TV weather forecasters, and a meteorologist who is unfailingly informative first and entertaining second, sums up today’s torrid conditions on the WGN/Tribune Chicago Weather Center blog:
“The blisteringly hot air mass responsible for 100-degree or hotter temperatures across sections of 19 states Tuesday re-expands into the Chicago area Wednesday. It’s on track to bring Chicago its fifth triple-digit high temperature of 2012—the most official 100+degree readings here of any year since 1988.
“Temperatures surge past 90-degrees for a 34th time this year at O’Hare and 35th time at Midway—extraordinary when you consider the average since weather records began in 1871 has been only 17 such days at O’Hare and 23 at Midway!
“…This summer’s warmth has been nothing if not persistent. If you needed any additional evidence this weather pattern has been unusual, WGN weather producer Bill Snyder, in surveying the city’s official temperature records, finds Chicago is to log an unprecedented 29th consecutive day of above normal temperatures—making this the most back-to-back days to post a surplus in the 5.5 years since a Dec. 10, 2006 through Jan. 14, 2007 mild spell in which above normal temperatures were recorded over 36 consecutive days.”
A Round Thing Out There in Space
KTVU (“There’s Only One 2”) News is very excited about NASA’s upcoming landing attempt on Mars. It did a little item on the Curiosity mission a couple nights ago. The graphic accompanying the piece was attention-getting. Never has the Red Planet looked so … moon-like. That’s because instead of using an image of Mars, whoever produced the graphic used a picture of Earth’s moon during an eclipse. Hey–it’s a round thing out there in space, and it looks red. Isn’t that close enough? (See this image for a comparison to the one in the graphic. Below is a 2001 Hubble Space Telescope picture of Mars, one of thousands of Mars images available from NASA. And yes–you’re allowed to ask whether I don’t have anything better to do with my time.)
Lest We Forget …
… What a beautiful place.
Was just thinking about whether there might be some interesting satellite pictures of the fires in Colorado. I'm sure there are. On my way to finding them, I encountered the shot above, which is a NASA mosaic of our planet taken this past January 4. See the really big version of the image here: Blue Marble .
Weeping in My Cappuccino
The other adult in our household teaches school. She happens to work in a community where many families are intimate with poverty and some of its associated experiences, including a poor diet, lack of access to regular medical care, limited opportunities for exercise because of generally dangerous surroundings, and the health consequences that come along with all that. But thank goodness someone is looking out for these people. Scholastic, the publisher of youth literature, is distributing child-rearing advice from a beloved and widely respected source:
“Rice Krispies Treats® is pleased to offer a few practical tips for fostering those moments with your child when he or she has a flash of brilliance, laughs out loud (LOL), or creates something new and original while relaxing and enjoying the warm and comforting feeling of time with family.”
LOL? I’m so touched at the generosity of Rice Krispies Treats® and so tickled by its warm yet cool concern for family togetherness that I’m WIMC (weeping in my cappuccino). One hardly notices all the reminders that Rice Krispies Treats® is sponsoring the message (my favorite subtle reference: the “you’re the best” message written on the Rice Krispies Treats® package).
Elsewhere this morning, I encountered this: