The Road Ahead
Lost in the Redwoods

Re: the election

Not a day goes by that someone asks us what we thought of the election results, or that we hear hosannas in the streets for the routing of the Republican Machine. Both N and I have had a hard time verbalizing our despondence; it just seems too morose to those so ravaged by the losses in 2004. But here’s a wonderfully articulate piece from Diane McWhorter on Slate that gives words to my fears. The final line: "If the midterm election was a referendum on nothing more than Bush’s competence, then the message the Republicans have gotten is: Next time, make it work."

Indeed, the horror.

Trip to Boston

We have returned from our trip to Boston. The weather was amazing and walking through Harvard yard on a beautiful fall morning was wonderful. The wedding was beautiful and I can’t believe how much my little nephew has grown already!  I wanted to say thanks to everyone for spending time with us.  We all have such busy schedules and I was truly impressed with everyone’s ability to make time for us, for being flexible and for understanding how hard it is for us to see everyone.  We of course wish that we had more time to spend with everyone but enjoyed the limited time we had (five minutes at the airport, breakfast at 8:00 a.m., tea at all hours, late dinners and so forth).  For those of you we missed this time around, hopefully next time.  I have no plans to come to Boston again until maybe the summer (not sure yet), but let us know if you are interested in coming to visit. You are always welcome to crash in our palatial apartment.  While I of course enjoyed my time in Massachusetts, I missed Santa Cruz while I was there and hope you all will be able to visit at one point. 

- N.

The Eucalyptus craze

Coming to the Bay Area has brought many of the strange delights of a new world: new foods, new customs, and new organisms. Many are the days that N remarks that she has seen a new bird, and we spent one evening hiking up to campus while attempting to discover the nature of the numerous ground squirrels (longer bodies, shorter tails, less haunch-sitting) that have the run of the place.

But one of the most interesting new species is a beautiful, tall, gracefully winding tree startling in its ubiquity. It has a smooth gray bark, droops its branches like a willow, and sprouts thin sickle-like leaves by the ton. And it’s everywhere. Along the roadsides, bordering Golden Gate park, running up and down the slopes of the Santa Cruz mountains. What species of tree is this?

When we visited this past summer, colleagues of mine identified this as a eucalyptus tree, the famous mistake of Australian Gold Rushers which has developed an invasive monoculture throughout California (more on this below). But N was confused — these trees looked and smelled nothing like the ornamental eucalyptus we see in florists, and th efact that neither of us attend zoos pretty much ruled out the asking of the koalas. We must have described the tree incorrectly, we figured. (Although, I contended, we should see the famous eucalyptus around us everywhere anyway, and surely we don’t see the ornamental trees running rampant.)

Well, it turns out we were wrong to doubt. Not only is central CA overrun with the eucalyptus we saw, it also has the opportunity to turn this resource into something profitable — biodiesel [search for "Taming the Australian Weed"]. The Salon.com report summarizes the history alluded to above: eucalyptus was brought to the U.S. by gold prospectors from Australia. It is unclear if the trees were brought to aid in extraction of gold (via eucalyptus oil flotation) or for timber resources, but it is important to note that eucalyptus grows both fast and tall, something that would have been attractive to prospectors coming to the denuded post-settlement Bay Area. The famous (around here) irony was that eucalyptus proved practically useless as a timber crop, since while it grows tall and broad, it doesn’t grow straight. In particular, hopes of making it the timber of choice for railroad ties quickly faded when it was noticed that the wood easily warped and rotted away. But before that came exuberance by speculators, sending the eucalyptus up and down the coast, all but assuring its dominance (it’s apparently rather invasive). While that’s bad for all sorts of biodiversity reasons, more pragmatically worrisome is the fact that eucalyptus is such an oil-rich tree, making forests of it wildfires waiting to happen. Instead, Salon.com recommends, follow Thailand and turn the trees into bio-fuel.

I have to say as a recent transplant myself, I find the eucalyptus groves incredibly beautiful though, and would hate to see them uprooted for the sake of energy profiteering. But then, this is a disconnect we often feel here. For example, the UCSC campus is truly littered with deer; I often see them within 15 feet as I am on my way to class, and recently one came within 5 feet of the car when N was dropping me off. We never fail to be awed by these encounters, but locals decry them as pests. And yet, these are the same people that shrug their shoulders at flooding streets (more specific details when that happens this winter) and landslides blocking their two-lane highways. The disconnect is interesting: I would happily let deer munch on my tomatoes in order to see deer up close, but I’d surely agitate for repairs to my street’s drainage system. The locals here seem to have opposite predilections.

Chioggia Beet

I was making a salad today and started cutting into the beets we got last week at the farmer’s market and was instantly impressed with the candy cane stripes in them.  It turns out we got Chioggia beets, beautiful but more sweet and bitter than an average beet.  If anyone has ever cooked with them, any suggestions would be welcome.

 - N.

election jitters

voter fraud
debold voting machines
robo calls
running out of absentee ballots
negative tv ads
tennessee, va, missouri
pollster.com
voter guides
letters telling naturalized immigrants they can’t vote
ted haggard
voter suppression in va
saddam Hussein sentenced to death
call for Rumsfeld to resign
neo-conservatives publicly criticize war in iraq
voter id laws
global warming
john kerry
secret cia prisons
mark foley
jack abramoff
equal rights to marriage
abortion
george allen
israel

and soooooo much more.

Weekend Update

This weekend:

Friday:  I was supposed to go on a journey to Stockton, CA and that was canceled so instead I spent the day doing something rare…relaxing.  So nice.  P worked all day and then we spent the evening making dozens of pizzelles to bring to P’s sister’s house to say goodbye to P’s brother who was leaving to travel the globe (or at least part of it).  The bad news is that the plans fell through and we were unable to see P’s brother off.  The good news is that I now have enough pizzelles to last me the rest of the month.  We just got the pizzelle maker and I am pleased to say it is a fantastic device.  The rest of Friday night was spent watching Antonia’s Line, a dutch film that won the Academy Award for best foreign language film in 1995.  I found the film somewhat dull unfortunately.  The movie’s theme seemed to be basically that we all have sex and should therefore all get along…and that all men are idiots.  The movie did have a beautiful country setting (in the netherlands) but I don’t believe that is enough to see the movie alone.

Saturday:  Our file cabinet was delivered.  For those of you who are not privy to the file cabinet story, we’ve been waiting for this file cabinet since September 14th.  I believe P will vent in another post about it but if any local santa cruzians are reading this, don’t shop at Sweets in the Nude (not a porn shop as it sounds, only an unfinished furniture store).  Despite the wait, the file cabinet (handmade out of alder) is very beautiful as expected and I am looking forward to staining it and using it.  Then, we went to the gym.  We came home very tired and watched Rififi.  It is a French black and white from 1955 (I think that’s the right date) that was about a jewelry store heist.  It’s very Ocean’s 11, but better.  IMDB says that Al Pacino is staring in a new version of Rififi due to come out in 2007.  I would recommend the movie but I can’t because of the offensive roles it had its female actresses playing and gratuitous violence against women.  After the movie, a quick dinner and then we headed off to see a hindustani classical music concert at UCSC.  The concert featured Tripti Mukherjee with the tabla and harmonium.  This is the first time I have been to an Indian classical music concert and thought it was incredibly beautiful and relaxing.  The time flew by and I look forward to attending another one in the future.

Sunday:  Went to the gym close to P’s sister’s house in Palo Alto.  Had a short visit with P’s sister and then did some errands on the way home.  We became REI members.  We did not realize REI is still a co-op, pretty awesome (although, sounds too good to be true).  We purchased some new toys for Hobbes and he spent part of the afternoon chasing them around.  I cooked dinner, P worked on a grant proposal.  I moaned about losing my second book this week.  (If anyone finds either a copy of Rousseau’s confessions or Proust’s volume I lying around, please let me know)  Instead, I read a short story in the Lemon Table by Julian Barnes (one of P’s favorites), quite lovely.  I also wrote a nasty e-mail to Vernon Robinson, a candidate for congress in North Carolina.  If you feel like getting very angry, google him and watch the television ads he has on his web-site.  They amount to him accusing the immigrant population of stealing jobs, creating bi-lingual programs that steal jobs and wanting to burn american flags.  Hopefully, he will lose on Tuesday. 

Moment of Silence for the Mint

Yesterday was not only the day of the dead, but the day of the dead mint.  

Indeed, the mint is dead. Time of death, unknown. Not-really-experts guess that it passed away sometime last week due to extreme parchment, bug infestation, lack of room for roots in its pot, noxious fumes from vehicles passing by or just a general dislike of its care takers. What the real cause was may never be known and may forever remain a mystery. 

I had such great plans for the future of the mint, sprigs in my tea, a little in my riata or a casserole.  I remember the day, only one day after we moved in, that we were carefully selecting it from a group of organic herbs at the UCSC organic plant sale not far from our apartment.  Weeks later it was growing too big for its little plastic pot and was transplanted into one of the large clay ones that we shipped all the way from Boston.  While all the other plants wilted, mint took off and was soon the pride and joy of our deck.  No matter how many times Hobbes ate the mint, it lived on.  The mint was a survivor.

However, it was too good to be true.  One day, looking out on the deck, it was clear that the mint was not going to make it through the day.  I did not even bother to bring it inside to our plant ICU to visit the basil and oregano. The mint was on its way to the big compost heap in the sky.  While I would like to blame the sun, the bugs, noxious fumes or furry plant eaters…I can’t help but balme myself for the loss.  What if I had taken the time to water it that morning, what if I had moved it out of the direct sun light that weekend…or talked to it and told it how much I liked mint in my tea.  No, this mint did not die on its own.  It was me, it was me who killed the mint. 

So, the next time you hear that old gardner’s saying, it’s impossible to kill mint.  Remember - I killed it…and you could kill it too if you are not careful. 

Therefore, let us have a moment of silence for the dearly departed mint and say a prayer for our basil and oregano, which have been suffering since I used them in that tomato sauce a couple weeks ago. 

And finally, winter

Last night, as we ate dinner at a rather mediocre pizzeria on the Santa Cruz Pacific Ave. strip, we noticed something unexpected outside: rainfall. Rain! The climate here is so unBostonian — not a drop of rain past April (May? can’t really remember) through summer and fall, and then, in late October/early November, suddenly it begins to rain again. For four months, we’re told. Such is the cruelty of winter in these parts. Up here on campus, this morning, the fog blanket was thicker than normal, and the usual humidity that comes from the redwoods was replaced by something much more palpable, the thick fog of a string of horror movies. Not that I feel any dread; far from it. Walking this afternoon after lunch, I was amazed by how different the place seemed with the fog infecting everything, how quickly I became lost, how buildings simply ceased to exist around me, how I felt such solitude even as students passed me by, shadows across the gray background.

EPA closing research libraries

An article from Sunday on Salon.com reports on a relatively quiet decision to close the EPA’s 26 research libraries, with the promise of digitization of the contents for a less costly web distribution. However, as PEER alleges, the funds for this digitzation were never specified in the EPA budget. The seriousness of these allegations, if true, is really hard to overstate. The EPA libraries have an incredible amount of data that is not available anywhere else (as far as I’m available). In college, while researching on hill-farming (a long story), I found myself at the Region 1 library in Boston, puzzling through landslide data from soil-loss; Harvard had nothing comparable. It’s scary to think that this might just be lost. It started me thinking: how hard would it be for Google to just volunteer and digitize everything as a public service? This is at least something that can be done to undercut the Bush undercutting.

Weekend Update…late

Hi, our weekend at a glance:

Friday night: P had a linguistics event, a colloquium pot-luck.  While working during the day, I made some buttermilk rolls for the event.  He also took a syrah from a local vineyard that I won at a raffle earlier that week.  I didn’t go to the party because I am a work-a-holic and instead decided to spend my evening in front of the computer.  Actually, I was getting heat from the big wigs who pay me and needed to finish up a project.  So, I spent the night working and watching fawtly towers.  This is my first exposure to fawlty towers.  For those who are not familiar with it, it’s a british comedy that features john cleese as a hotel manager/owner, his nagging wife and a watier from bar-the-lona.  Very funny, I highly recommend it and you can netflix the whole series.  However, I confess a low tolerance level and at times when it is painfully obvious where the plot is going, I must hit pause for a good ten minutes to recover my interest. 

Saturday:  We got up early and went to the gym and then headed off to San Francisco for an anti-war protest put on by a.n.s.w.e.r.  Indeed, it was small, probably under a 1,000 showed up.  However, I found it very refreshing to be reminded that there are still people out there who care enough to turn up on a beautiful day to march around the streets.  Also, sad though to see so few, especially near the election.  I will try to post more on the protests, as it is something that’s been on my mind a lot recently.  After the protest, we went to visit P’s family and had a nice dinner.  We got home very late and I was exhaaaausted.

Sunday: Got up and went to the local bakery to grab breakfast to eat it on the beach.  These past two weekends we’ve gone to Natural Bridges, it’s the closest beach to us.  It has amazing waves, interesting succulents covering the sand and a wide variety of big sea birds perched on the big rocks that look like little bridges (hence the name).  Also, if you look close enough you can see a seal, and once we saw a dolphin (or shark, not sure).  After breakfast, we briefly walked around downtown to let our stomachs settle.  I did a bit of shoe shopping, always a challenge, we also checked out the kitchen store and the library before we headed off to the gym.  After the gym, we spent the day working. P needed to put the final touches on his talk for berkeley on Monday and I needed to work on my project.  I worked until midnight-ish and finally put an e-mail out to the big-wigs asking for more time.