a blog about farming in Oakland

I don’t remember how I found my way to Your City Farmer, a blog about farming in Oakland (SFGate.com?). I copied the url to the Word doc where I work on LuvSet posts. That was back in April. Since then the blogger has changed it. Just found that out when I put the old url into the browser and got whipped around to the new one.

Looks like the name has changed to Meaningful Pursuit. Hm. Better title? I don’t know. I think … no. But whatever.

Right now our backyard is at its farmingest, what with cherries ripening and lush tomato plants considering whether to turn their yellow flowers into tight green fruits.

The May 12th post starts out with a picture of weeds. Novella (yes, that’s the blogger’s name) says, “Weeding can be satisfying work. Passers-by say hello, chew the fat, ask me for a quarter. Because remember, I'm not living some rural lifestyle with baby goats and rabbits. I'm living some urban lifestyle with baby goats and rabbits. A reminder of my urban farm: gun fire. Two shots, very close. Somehow muffled. Now, it IS firework season, but I knew those were bullets.”

Police cars appear. She overhears one of the officers say a man was shot in the apartment across the street, not killed though.

She went back to weeding. Now & then a neighbor would stop and ask what happened. “I grew tired of telling the news,” Novella says.

maybe I should

Maybe I should write something on my blog. I haven't written anything on my blog in two weeks. My blog must be hungry. Or lonely. Maybe I should do something about the needs of my blog. It needs freshening. Blog posts climb onto it and age and age.

Of the six March posts one should get an update -- the Supreme Court of California has ruled that marriage cannot be denied to same-sex couples without a compelling reason. And they looked around and didn't find one, et voila -- Marry, you gays! I've been thinking about various ways to talk about it, actually. From the fear of a November ballot initiative to reading through the text of the decision to speculating about how this changes society. All of that would require a lot of thought and writing, wouldn't it?

I could review our last two trips -- the one to Orlando & environs, the one to Baja & Copper Canyon. After all, one of the ways I researched those trips was reading the blogs of travellers. So I could offer up what I've learned for the use of others.

I could write about daily things, what's doing at work, the weather, what piles we've dusted and what piles we've sorted.

I have several posts in the works, you know. Links to this or that, videos I found fascinating. Come back and check those out.

Info Desk Blogging

Hm. It's some kind of warm today. 85 degrees F.

I walked to work. And that was okay. Rather wish I'd worn shorts but I don't quite feel comfortable wearing shorts to work. Forecast says room temp tomorrow (72 degrees).

It is cooler in the building than outside 'cept outside the air does move a little bit.

Quiet in here. Only two people at the internet stations. I see two people in the magazine lounge. One person just passed talking on his cell phone, but he was on his way out the door. Yeah, I hear ringtones a few times a day, but most people are good about taking their conversations outdoors. I've only had to ask 4 or 5 people to hush or exit. That's over the course of a year or so. You know how people talk LOUD on cell phones.

This Monday I stopped in at North Branch to view the Quilt Show. Some really handsome work. As a tribute one quilter is represented by 10 quilts. Dorothy Vance's quilts are "witty takes on presidents, political activists, doctors and others," says the press release about the show. Here at Claremont I helped Ms Vance find images she could use in her quilt creations, especially a quilt of odd couples -- Harpo & Karl Marx, Bette & Jefferson Davis, etc. Sorry to learn she is no longer with us.

Info Desk Blogging

I'm in charge of the browsing paperbacks collection here at Claremont. The collection consists mainly of books that come to us as donations. Whenever someone drops off a bag of books I hop over and paw through it. Usually there's a book or two worth adding to my to-be-processed stack in the workroom.

It's simple processing. A barcode and radio frequency ID tag (RFID), a label to indicate genre (nonfic, fic, sf/fantasy, romance, mystery), a little plastic to reinforce the cover. Unlike the majority of the items owned by the library the browsing collection doesn't have to go through our cataloging librarians; you can't look them up in the catalog; what you see is what you get.

General fiction is popular. Nonfiction does fine. Mysteries? Yes, more or less.

But romance and sf/fantasy? Not so much. There are some name romance authors who go out but many paperbacks on the spinny racks go round and round and round, year after year. I've long had fewer sf/fantasy but the rate at which they go out is about the same. The other problem is that people just don't donate romances and sf/fantasy, so it's hard to keep the collection from getting tired. Maybe readers tend to resell the genre stuff at Berkeley's used bookstores. Dunno.

Anyway, I finally got a bagful of goodlooking romances so decided to refresh the collection. I reviewed everything that'd been swinging about the carousel and found many that hadn't been checked out in 2 or 3 years. I threw those away. I've reduced the romance collection by about a third. As I also obtained some more sf I'm going to equalize the romance and sf collections. See if they really do have about the same size audience.

I'll let you know.

the foot measure

Berkeley's been rather cold lately. I judge temperature by how cold my feet are. They are cold right now. Even though I'm wearing socks with a snowflake pattern on the sole. (I should wear socks with flames?)

But it's not just how cold they are, it's how quickly/easily they can be warmed up. I expect once I get up from the computer and walk around my feet will warm up. It's really cold when I have on thick socks, big shoes and go walking around and my feet refuse to warm up. It's never that bad in Berkeley. We don't have ice or snow.

The big test is at bedtime. Will socks and blankets be enough to warm my feet? In winter the answer is no. Sometimes a foot massage will warm them enough. But when it's really unpleasantly cold I have to soak my feet in hot water, stuff them in warmed socks, then dive into bed before they cool off again. It's been like that once or twice since we got back from Mexico.

And I don't like it.

Baby Gray Whale at San Ignacio Lagoon, Baja California

photo by KLM

More at our new Flickr account.

Friendly Whales of San Ignacio Lagoon

That's me in the brown hat. Kent was standing behind manning a camera. That's Baby you see mostly, but note when Mama slides in between Baby and boat. She's the one with barnacles.

More videos are now up at youtube/kentmannis.

I miss that hair

It's a frame from the Touch of a Poet series videotapes. Unfortunately the tapes are not online. Yet? Oddly, there are a lot of typos in the names. That's Amy Kashiwabara (not Kashiwabar) who read with me on June 20, 1997. And my name is missing an L and an N.

Fun to note on the same page one of my coworkers at Claremont also read for the Touch series. Love the sideburns, Tom!

home again

Berkeley Public Library

Yes, I know these people. And the video? ‘Tis rather droll. I might’ve even popped up in the video if I still worked at Central. But Central seems so far away these days.

gay marriage is for the kids

So the California Supreme Court had oral arguments (which, unlike oral sex, involves no bodily contact) in a case that will determine whether gay marrieds get to be "marrieds" under the law. The three hours of backnforth boiled down to, according to the articles I saw, a few whiny bits from the judges like this: "Why now! Why not in ten years! Then my mom'll be dead & my grandkids will be old enough to contribute to my reelection fund!" Don't forget, folks, California Supreme Courtiers have to face the voters! Rose Bird got tossed just for deciding against killing people. Naughty girl.

In his column at SFGate Jon Carroll makes the Duh argument that seems to be missed most the time: "The state can and does compel the people who did the procreating to support the upbringing of the children. Sometimes [the parents] can't or won't, but still, it's a system and a legitimate function of government. The marriage license is a way of saying 'These people are responsible for that kid.' Not perfect, but extremely useful all the same.

"Which means, of course, that formal marriages between gay people are necessary. Not just desirable; necessary. Gay people have kids too, increasingly so, and those kids require equal protection under the law. To create two classes of marriage is to create two classes of children, and that is both morally and legally unacceptable."

Restricting marriage does not protect children, it actively harms them. Little things didn't ask to be born and the state oughtn't go around swatting them according to whether the state likes their parents.

dinner

tofu in lettuce roll

chicken with green bean

kung pao fish fillet

vegetable chow fun

How funny.

Last night I lay in bed thinking up things to say on LuvSet.

Game for a Sunday Morning

Here’s a game. How long a train of celebrity/prominent persons’ names can you make?

The one I came up with this morning lying in bed:

Eddie Albert Gore Vidal Sassoon

That’s from Eddie Albert / Albert Gore / Gore Vidal / Vidal Sassoon

Kent came up with this one:

Olivia Newton-John Dean Martin Landau

That’s from Olivia Newton-John / John Dean / Dean Martin / Martin Landau

OK, I provided Olivia Newton-John. Was Kent going to produce Olivia Newton-John? What’s a celebrity with the last name John? he said.

Happy To Day!

Don’t put off to Fro Day what you can do on a day like To Day!

Happy Leap Day!

May all your days be springy.

tough enough?

From a New York Times article about Barack Obama’s riding high in the race for the Democratic nomination:

He lists the arrows that critics sling his way. He’s too hopeful, too inexperienced, not tough enough. At mention of the last, he bobs his head, steps toward the crowd, leans in and says: “Listen, I’m a black guy named Barack Obama running for president. You want to tell me that I’m not tough enough?”

He smirks. “Shoot.”

Trapped in a world he never made!

I never understood that tagline. It was a tagline for Howard the Duck, a comic book series written by Steve Gerber. I bought a few issues of Howard the Duck; but it was my brother who became a regular reader. When we were buying comics it was rare we’d be able to start with the first issue. You want to start at the beginning, right? So we’d have to buy back issues at the comic store in Santa Rosa (what a relief when we discovered such a thing existed!) Usually back issues were fairly inexpensive – we weren’t investing in the old back issues, like Avengers #1 or Amazing Fantasy #15, because, well, we didn’t have that kind of money. But the first issue of Howard the Duck I bought was a low number. #4? Something like that. “Something Winkie this Way Comes,” was the story. An old Ozzy, I doubted the Winkie in the comic had anything to do with the Winkies of Oz (in the MGM movie they’re the guys who work for the Wicked Witch of the West and chant OH-WEE-OH); I was right. Nothing. When we tried to buy the Howard back issues they weren’t to be had, and when any showed up they were pricey. It seems Marvel had printed only a few, having little suspicion of success; those first issues sold out and no one wanted to part with them (for cheap, anyway). I’ve not read a Howard the Duck in, oh, thirty years? Nice that reprints are available now, though.

I discovered Steve Gerber’s blog a year or two ago. As I recall he was bent out of shape at Jonathan Lethem’s poaching Omega the Unknown, a comic character Gerber had created for a short-lived comic series also published by Marvel. How dare he! Gerber fumed. Omega was very personal. Maybe he had created Omega as a work-for-hire, meaning Marvel owned everything about it and could legally do whatever it wanted with the “property”, but it wasn’t like Gerber had had any choice at the time. That was the way the business worked. Jonathan Lethem can create his own characters; he doesn’t have to steal mine! Gerber said.

I sympathized. Somewhat. But I stopped reading the blog. After reading an obituary at SF Gate I dropped by Steve Gerber’s blog again last week. Mark Evanier has been putting up new posts, encouraging fans to leave appreciations.

I wonder if I have those original Omegas in a box somewhere.

I haven’t read any of Lethem’s version of Omega the Unknown. I feel like I have to be loyal to Gerber and boycott it. On the other hand, I’ve flipped through it at the comic store and it looks interesting.

P&P v. P&P

When I go to an event these days I’ll sometimes check afterward to see if anyone has blogged it. Two people blogged the Harold Norse reading at the Beat Museum, for instance.

So has anybody blogged Poetry & Pizza, the reading series in SF I help run? Other than me, it seems, no.

However I did come across a post about New Jersey’s Pizza & Poetry night at Slice of New York Pizza. So, instead of Poetry & Pizza, it’s Pizza & Poetry. Instead of the host restaurant being Escape from New York Pizza, it’s Slice of New York Pizza. It’s a monthly reading. And it sounds like they are reaching capacity, too.

“I fear the Monkey Man's group may outgrow Slice of New York Pizza, because on Tuesday night we filled every seat. It's not a big place, but it's big enough -- we're just getting more and more folks all the time,” says Anne at her blog, Gods Are Bored.

To keep with the symmetry Katharine, Clive, and I will have to change our names to the Monkey Collective or Baboon Troops or, um, Trio Lemur.

For our own P&P I did find a review of sorts at yelp.com. Is this one for the scrapbook? becca h. says , “i love all-you-can-eat pizza and poetry nights... go for the pizza, run from the poetry. pizza's always good, and the slices are just right. mmm, pesto and potato!” That was from 1/4/08. Run from the poetry!

Sunday Night

Congratulations to whoever won the Super Bowl. I’m sure it was a giant accomplishment!

Good luck to you big presidential candidates come Tuesday (and beyond). I’m sure the best president will emerge from all the noise and bother. Like usual.

May all of you with diseases, get well soon. And all of you under the bombs (or stepping on them), be blessed with dud after dud, and flowers in the mud.

Ah readers, I wish you especially, great wealth and happiness. (If you want to pass that along, more power to you.) And more power, too.