Utagawa Hiroshige, ukiyo-e artist (56)

Just one image today, in honor of December 31: Hiroshige's 1857 woodblock print New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Ōji.

Though in fact, since Japan didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar, and dispense with the traditional lunar calendar, until 1872, Hiroshige's New Year's Eve would not have been December 31 but rather sometime in late January or early February. Nonetheless, it's a cool print. (And perhaps nowadays when the foxes gather, they do so on December 31?)

Foxes are key figures in Japanese folklore. Here is a description from The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections:

In Japanese folklore the fox is considered to be a most mischievous animal. The wily fox is thought to have the ability to change form, usually into that of a beautiful woman, playing tricks and pranks on unlucky people. Foxes are also believed to be able to breathe fire and to make fire by rubbing their tails together. Legends abound in Japan of men, oftentimes priests, who wander through mist-filled moors late at night and see a distant flicker of flame, and think it is a lone hut that will provide a welcome refuge from the cold and dark. In truth, the flame is that produced by the fox to lure the hapless wayfarer to mischief or worse.

Here's a closer-up view of the foxes in this print. They are pretty mystical.

But in the case of New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Ōji, the foxes mean no harm. Here is what the Metropolitan Museum of Art has to say about the work: 

Foxes gather at the large, old enoki (hackberry) tree on New Year's Eve to prepare to pay homage at the Ōji Inari shrine, the headquarters of the Inari cult in eastern Japan (Kantō). The cult centers on the god of the rice field, for whom the fox serves as messenger. On the way to Ōji, the foxes have set a number of kitsunebi (foxfires), which farmers count to predict the upcoming rice harvest. Hiroshige's print successfully conveys the mysterious atmosphere of the rite as the procession of foxes bearing fires approaches from the distant, dark forest under a starry sky.

Happy new year! I hope 2023 brings you a bounteous rice harvest—or whatever good fortune befits your strivings and desires.

Three alphabets (55)

Last year on Christmas I posted an alphabet I made while wandering around Monterey. Today, for lack of any other ideas, I'll post three alphabets I made this last year, one in March in Évora, Portugal; the second in June in the Galápagos; and the third in September–October in Madagascar. I do enjoy hunting down letters in the landscape. And the resulting collages make perfect souvenirs.

Quick, literate post for today as we flow into a new year!

Book Report: Slow Horses (54)

30. Mick Herron, Slow Horses (2010) (12/29/22)

My sister-in-law recommended this series of, so far, eight books, as well as the new TV series starring Gary Oldman. I'm delighted to have discovered a new fictitious world to get lost in.

The story revolves around Slough House, where disgraced agents of MI5, or the Security Service, Britain's domestic counterintelligence agency, go to spend their days doing worthless work. They are known as the "slow horses," for they have been put out to pasture. 

The plot gets going slowly, to allow the various characters to be introduced in some detail. When it does take off, it centers on surveillance of a washed-up far-right journalist, but then the action shifts when a young man is abducted and a video appears online claiming that he will be beheaded in 48 hours. The slow horses suspect the two are linked. And soon they are drawn into high-stakes intrigue, in which not everyone at the top is behaving as conscientiously, or selflessly, as they should. 

The writing sparkles, and there are many cynically hilarious bits. The book, written before Brexit and Boris Johnson's rise to power, also presents a telling portrait of Britain's struggle to maintain integrity. As Herron said in a July 2022 interview,  

I was conjuring worst-case scenarios and made some lucky stabs in the dark. I’ve been drawn to politics as a backdrop because it seems to go hand in hand with the kind of espionage thriller I’m interested in. I don’t want to write a big, plotted, evil-mastermind spy novel; I’m interested in incompetence, things going wrong, badly motivated stuff, and that’s essentially our political reality now. It gives me plenty of scope, but I don’t feel good about it. We have a prime minister who acts with the worst possible intentions because he’s only interested in himself. As a citizen, I deplore it; as a writer, I’m rubbing my hands.

One of the main characters is a young man named River Cartwright who (for reasons that eventually come clear) was set up to fail a training exercise involving a would-be bomber in the London Underground. Normally, his failure would have had him booted straight out of Five, but instead he was sent to Slough House because of a word from his grandfather, formerly a mucky-muck in the Service. In one scene, River visits his granddad. There, he remembers the first time he met him, when River's irresponsible mother dropped him off—for what amounted to the rest of his childhood—and "bolted." The old man—or Old Bastard, as River's mother called him—had been gardening, on his knees digging in the dirt. 

When River thought back on scenes like that—on the umpire's hat and the jumper holed at the elbow; at the trowel and the rivulets of sweat creasing his round country face—it was hard not to see it as an act. The props were certainly to hand: big house with wrap-around garden; horses within spitting distance. English country gentleman down to the vocabulary: "bolter" was a word from early twentieth-century novels; from a world where Waughs and Mitfords played card games on tables designed for the purpose.
     Except that acts could shade into reality. When River remembered his childhood in this house, it was always bright summer, and never a cloud in the sky. So perhaps it had worked, the game the O.B. played; and all the clichés he espoused, or pretended to espouse, had left their mark on River. Sunshine in England, and fields stretching into the distance. When he'd become old enough to learn what his grandfather had really done with his life, and determined to do the same himself, those were the scenes he was thinking about, real or not. And the O.B. would have had an answer for that, too: Doesn't matter if it's not real. It's the idea you have to defend. 

That attitude becomes an undercurrent of the book, of the slow horses, both as something to embrace and as something to fight back against—because nothing's simple, is it?

In the end, amid the plot developments and action, there is a lot of food for thought, and pleasing complexity in the characters. I'm already looking forward to the next book in the series, Dead Lions.

Blogs (53)

I don't follow blogs. Well, one, by a virtual (i.e., FB) friend of mine, Greg Fallis. I wrote a bit about him here. And also here. His blog is always entertaining, and I do get an email notification whenever he posts, so it's easy for me to follow him.

I encounter really interesting, compelling blogs often, though, sometimes while researching a topic here. Today I ran into one that I'd like to read more of. It's by John Patrick Leary and is called Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism. It's about how the marketplace and our power structures have refashioned basic terms of vocabulary—terms like innovation, failure, flexibility, conversation, and engagement. (The context in which I encountered it was a professor of Christian ethics at Duke whom I follow on FB yelling, "The fleeing Holy Family wasn't 'resilient.' Don't preach that"—and she linked to this blog and its definition of resilience.) Me, I am not a fan of corporate capitalism, but I am a fan of language, so I figure this blog is right up my alley. 

I sometimes read Leo Babauta's Zen Habits, and may get back to that as I try (yet again) to institute a daily sitting practice. 

Whenever I remember to dip into the artist Stephen O'Donnell's blog Gods and Foolish Grandeur (Life and the Arts . . . from a Retrograde Perspective), I learn something new and usually quite delicious.

There are so many blogs still out there, even if the blog has been deemed passé. Here's a quick list of subjects that I am (or might become) interested in, with associated blogs—or, in some cases, voluminous end-of-the-year lists of blogs, many from the website Feedspot, "the Internet's largest human curated database of blogs and podcasts":

• The 20 Best Knitting Blogs for 2023 (no, I don't knit . . . but I'm considering taking it up?)
• 11 Mindfulness Blogs to Create Inner Peace
• 20 Best Art Book Blogs and Websites (I would like to get back to making artist books) 
• 70 Best Climbing Blogs and Websites (I may not climb anymore, but I still enjoy reading about it—and who knows, I might still get back out on some easy rock . . . a goal for 2023?)
• 50 Best Board Game Blogs (see my post from yesterday)
• My Jigsaw Journal and of course there's 40 Best Jigsaw Puzzle Blogs and Websites
  
• 6 Blogs to Help You Learn French Online (for Free!) or 10 Must-Read French and French Learning Blogs
• Which reminds me that in a fit of energetic optimism, I resubscribed to Practice Portuguese, which is not a blog but a language-learning site. I need to start fitting in a daily lesson. I'm paying for it, after all! But back to blogs:
  
• 17 Best Food Blogs to Slake Your Hunger in 2023
• Top 10 Best Baking Blogs for 2022
• 80 Most Popular Gardening Blogs to Be an Expert Gardener
  
• Here's a blog on succulent gardening 
• And here are a couple on dahlias: American Dahlia Society blog and the Dahlia Barn blog
• 100 Best Science Blogs and Websites for Latest Science News and Information 
  
• 70 Best Global Warming Blogs and Websites 
• 12 Best Travel Blogs in 2022 or there's the 100 Best Travel Blogs to Read posted just a few days ago 
• 100 Best Bird Blogs and Websites for Ornithologists and Bird Lovers
  

Okay. There's a start. Though I do find these enormous lists of 50 and 100 daunting, to say the least . . . I guess one can start at the top and go from there. Perhaps I'll cull a shorter list, more particularized to my own tastes and interests. Maybe I'll start fitting in a daily blog read—right after my sit and before my Portuguese lesson. Followed up by that Fair Isle sweater that I'll start knitting as soon as I learn how to cast on.

Spirit Island and board games (52)

This afternoon Lynn came over and we tried to play a game called Spirit Island. Tried being the operative word: this game is complicated.  

As I've researched the game—which has been completely necessary, because just reading the (32 large-format pages of) instructions is far from sufficient to actually understand how to play it—I've been tiptoeing into the alternate reality that is gamerdom. It has its own vocabulary, with terms like Eurogame, Ameritrash, engine-building, and co-op having specific meanings. 

Spirit Island, for example, is a co-op game, meaning it is both highly cooperative and asymmetric: the various players assume different personae—that is, spirits—with different, mutually assistive but individually insufficient powers. Today, we played with three "low complexity" (i.e., beginner) spirits: Lightning's Swift Strike, River Surges in Sunlight, and Vital Strength of the Earth. Our cooperative goal: to vanquish marauding colonialists. (That, indeed, is the overall goal of the game, which counts it officially as anti-colonial—an actual category; as, on the other end of the spectrum, are colonial games, such as Catan, as a recent Atlantic article spells out.) 

I have discovered various YouTube channels of folks who take games very seriously, and spend quality time walking viewers through the set-up, rules, and execution of hundreds of games. For Spirit Island, we watched a 1-hour and 21-minute video hosted by Monique and Naveen of BeforeYouPlay, which was really informative: they not only explained the mechanics, but they played an entire game, discussing their strategies and moves. They also have an intermediate-level walk-through, 1 hour and 42 minutes long—which we will no doubt watch after re-watching the beginner version. (Did I mention this game is complicated?)

The other day, having grown fascinated by this whole subculture, I watched Monique and Naveen talk about the ten (or twenty-one, since they each had ten, plus two runners-up, though they shared #3) games they would never part with—and I hadn't heard of a single one of them. Many seemed to be Eurogames; some were card games; a few came in enormous boxes ➹; and a lot of them were out of print, so if I wanted to find out more about them, I'm just out of luck. 

A while back, when we first opened up Spirit Island, took a gander at all the moving parts, tried to set it up, and then realized we needed guidance, we found another fellow on YouTube who had three or four half-hour videos dedicated to the game. I might have to track those down too. And I'm sure there are others out there. The key, I'm finding, is to locate a teacher who is thorough enough, but not too detailed; who doesn't talk too fast and doesn't assume too much; and who is pleasant to listen to. We need all the help we can get!

San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge (51)

This morning at 8 our friend Lynn picked us up and we drove two hours to the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge in California's Central Valley. Our goal: birds. Ducks, sure, but especially snow geese and sandhill cranes, which are overwintering now along the Pacific Flyway. 

It was a chilly morning, and foggy. We walked the several-mile trail at the refuge and observed waterfowl through our binoculars, identifying such species as the white-fronted goose (Anser albifrons), northern shoveler (Spatula clypeata), American wigeon (Mareca americana), and of course the ubiquitous (and noisy) American coot (Fulica americana). But once we left the wetland behind and ventured into the riparian areas, birds were scarce. We did see a few cranes high overhead, ghosts in the fog. But otherwise just a few songbirds, sparrow-like objects. Here's some of the landscape we walked through:

So we decided to head for a viewing platform that Lynn had visited in the past (also part of SJRNWR), see what might be there. It was a bit of a drive: it's all farmland out there, and the river interrupts through-travel. We were seeing very little in the way of avian life, but who knew? We might get lucky.

WELL. 

Somehow, we managed to bypass the platform itself by a short distance, and arrived at a dead end. There, though, on all three sides, were mown fields, and the mown fields were absolutely full of snow geese (Anser caeruscens). I've never seen so many at once. As we looked closer, we also saw some white-fronted geese and a horde of once-rare Aleutian cackling geese (see below). Jackpot! I took a few photos and videos, which of course do no justice to the experience: the sight of all that goosiness, the sounds of their calls and their flapping wings, the rhythms of their takeoffs (en masse) and landings (less so). This interface isn't cooperating with an upload of a video, so here's one on IG (at 15x magnification, so a bit impressionistic, but it gives a good idea of the commotion).

At one point, almost two entire fields of birds lifted up and flew away—many of them across the road to the third field, but many more of them, it seemed, deeper into the refuge. Soon, all we saw up close in those particular fields was dry grass. We sure got lucky with our timing. (Here's a sequence of photos. Alas, I was not ready with video.)

It was spectacular! 

On our way back out we made it to the viewing platform, where absolutely nothing was happening—save the several hundred white-fronted geese we passed in a field, who were unspectacularly minding their own business, pecking quietly at the ground. 

The signage at the platform, however, informed us that the Aleutian cackling goose (Branta hutchinsii leucopareia), which we'd been (excuse us) writing off as "just some sort of Canada goose [Branta canadensis]"—they do look similar—had become almost extinct, largely due to predation by arctic foxes introduced on their breeding grounds for hunting. In 1975, the total population had declined to fewer than 800 birds. "Protection and management . . . under the Endangered Species Act came just in time," the sign explained. "The introduced foxes were removed from the nesting islands; geese were relocated onto fox-free islands to re-establish populations; the birds were protected from hunting until their numbers rebounded; and actions were taken, such as the establishment of this Refuge, to protect and improve winter habitat." Today, the population may be as high as 180,000—an amazing comeback; what's more, virtually all the Aleutian cackling geese in the world overwinter in San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties in the Central Valley.* It's been an active effort to manage and protect that has paid off in spades. The bird was removed from the Endangered Species List in 2011. 

Note their white necklace: when I saw that, I thought,
"Hmmm, those aren't just any Canada geese."
I was right. They're not Canada geese at all!
(not my photo)

We also learned about another successful conservation effort at the SJRNWR involving the very rare (and still endangered) riparian brush rabbit, but I'll just leave a link for that. For now. Maybe in the future I'll delve more fully into other such stories in California. I can always use material . . . 

It was a great day, starting out quiet, ending with a whoop and a holler. Nature is amazing!

*As we were driving home, I was chatting via WhatsApp with two friends, one of whom lives on Kauai. She knows about Aleutian cackling geese because, as she said, "We have ONE that migrates here EVERY year, for, at least, 10 years. I really need to see these kids in numbers!" Field trip! I'm happy to accompany her. There is nothing like seeing tens of thousands of birds take to the sky!

Endre Penovác, artist (50)

Every Christmas, David's sister sends us a calendar. It's always a treat to open the package and see what place she's sending us to, or what scientific adventures we'll be going on, or what art we'll discover. This year, what we found was an entire year full of crows: ink and watercolor crows, that is, by the Serbian painter Endre Penovác. (As always, click on the images to see them large on black.)

He also paints chickens, and seems to be especially well known for his cats:

I love the dreamy effect of the black inkwork. But Penovác also knows his way around color:

Thanks, Patty! I'm delighted to learn about a new artist.

Christmas music (49)

We went out for Japanese this evening, and when we arrived the restaurant was almost empty—which made the Christmas music difficult to ignore. I was glad as people kept coming, until by the time we left, the place was full and bustling with noise. I am not a big fan of insipid Christmas songs, which tend to be what gets played in public places. 

Which is not to say there aren't musical Christmas treats out there. Here are a few that come immediately to mind:

Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds with Dave's "Christmas Song"

Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, a Christmas medley

Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, the Nutcracker Suite (also the Peer Gynt Suite, if you want to keep listening)

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town"

Although in her assessment of 100 (yes, 100!) Christmas songs, Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post singled out the following version of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" as the "treatment the song needed. Forget it, Bruce." As one commenter said, "This is the only version of this song that makes me sincerely believe I better watch out! He absolutely delivers the MENACE. It's brilliant." See what you think.

There's always the Bing Crosby/David Bowie chestnut of "Peace on Earth" and "Little Drummer Boy." Which, yeah, maybe sort of insipid (Petri ranks "LDB" "the worst holiday song of all")—except... Bowie. He was a magician. Even when "LDB" was involved. (And here is the backstory behind this classically weird collaboration.)

When David and I were discussing Christmas songs on our drive home from the restaurant, he jokingly, and completely randomly, mentioned Def Leppard. Well, yes: Def Leppard did record a Christmas song: "We All Need Christmas" (which I won't post, but if you do want to hear it, you can find it here; it's surprisingly lovely, if rather repetitious).  

The following is what I like to listen to at Christmastime. It's not the sort of thing you'll hear in a sushi spot. It's called "On Yoolis Night," medieval carols and motets by Anonymous 4.

And of course, there is good old Handel's Messiah. We will be playing that tomorrow while we prepare our festive feast. It is one reason I look forward to Christmas every year. The recording I offer here is (I believe: the YouTube post has no liner notes, so I gleaned this information from the comments) by Collegium 1704, a Czech ensemble conducted by Václav Luks. It's spectacular.

No doubt there are tons more uninsipid Christmas tunes out there. Maybe I'll fetch up a few more next year.

Happy Christmas Eve!

Carnivorous plants (48)

The other day I bought a carnivorous plant—a Sarracenia 'Fiona', to be specific. We'd gone to the drought-tolerant nursery looking for a  shrub our landscaper recommended, and didn't find that, but I was enormously taken with this little pitcher plant in a pretty Mexican pot. It was on sale. How could I resist? 

And now, I am considering getting more bug-eating plants. Because they are very cool. There is a nursery specializing in such plants in Sebastopol, California Carnivores. I may have to do some web-surfing (alas, the store is not open to the public: online shopping only).

That got me thinking that I've "always" (that is, for the past ten, fifteen years—ever since I bought my first, and until the other day, only little pitcher plant) wanted to go to northern California and Oregon and see these plants in their wild habitat. A couple of spots for that:

Stony Creek Trail, outside the town of Gasquet, in the Smith River Recreation Area; here, horned butterwort (Pinguicula macroceras ssp. nortensis) and California pitcher plant (Darlingtonia californica) thrive in the nutrient-poor serpentine soils. 

Darlingtonia State Natural Site near Florence, Oregon, an 18-acre preserve with acidic boglands low in nitrogen, which are perfect for D. californica. The site is accessed via a boardwalk—which is good, because as one site I found mentioned, about an outing in Plumas County, "While walking in the meadows, we struggled through floating fens and saturated peat in our heavy rubber boots, wishing the carnivorous plants would eat more of the mosquitoes and biting flies." 

These plants are found elsewhere in the United States as well, including (for example) Big Thicket Natural Preserve in Kountze Texas (sundews, pitcher plants, bladderworts, and butterworts); Yellow River Marsh Preserve State Park, Santa Rosa County, Florida (white-top pitcher plants, Sarracenia leucophylla); Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, Maine (esp. round-leaved sundew, Drosera rotundifolia, and northern pitcher plant, S. purpurea); and Stanley Rehder Carnivorous Plant Garden, Wilmington, North Carolina (NC has a state carnivorous plant, in fact: the Venus fly trap, Dionaea muscipula). 

For a more contained experience, next time I'm in Los Angeles I can visit the Huntington Gardens, where the large conservatory has a special wing devoted to carnivores.

I am just starting to research this, and will try to remember to update this page as I learn more. Here is a link to the Carnivorous Plant Resource, with loads of information; and some pictures:

A field of pitcher plants in Plumas County, CA

White-top pitcher plant, Sarracenia leucophylla

A bladderwort, Utricularia sp.

Cape sundew, Drosera capensis

Pinguicula moranensis (a butterwort native to
Mexico and Guatemala)

A tropical pitcher plant, Nepenthes sp.

Round-leafed sundew, D. rotundifolia

Ravi and Luna (47)

A couple of months ago, a neighbor on the next street over came to our door, distressed. She asked if we owned (I use the word loosely) an orange cat. We said we did. She said that he'd been hanging out at her house, and killing birds. Just that morning she'd had to put a flayed dove out of its misery with a shovel. She wanted us to do something. 

She also explained that she liked this orange cat. But she did not like his murderousness. 

We were just about to head off on a month-long trip, so we told our housesitters about the situation but didn't ask them to do anything. When we came home, though, we found a belled collar on the cat, which, surprisingly, he seemed to tolerate—until he got heavily into grooming and his lower jaw got stuck in it, to his extreme distress.  

Distress. So much distress. And I include the various dead and injured birds at the top of the list.

We don't like his murderousness either, but we'd always felt it was in his nature to roam. He may be a "domestic" cat, but he has a strong character, a strong will to ramble—which I perhaps anthropomorphize, being a restless wanderer myself as well. Plus, I honestly thought he'd rebel—come flying at us, claws extended, threatening us with bodily harm if we didn't let him out. 

Nevertheless, as an experiment, we started to keep him inside during the day, letting him out only when it got dark. When the birds were asleep he could still go after rodents.

And... he took it in stride. Now, during the day, although he does sometimes sit by the deck door and gaze longingly at the world, he doesn't complain about being housebound. He has the dog's bed to lie in in the sun, or the upstairs bed with its fleece blanket to curl up on, or the living room recliner to relax in. What would he be doing outdoors (when he wasn't momentarily distracted by the instinct to kill a blue jay or a sparrow)? He'd be lying in the strawberry bed, enjoying the warm breeze.

So yes, the "bruiser," Ravi, has become a mostly indoor cat. When he does go out after dark, he always comes back, often with a mouse or gopher—good kitty. (The back-door cat door has become one-way: entrance only, no exit.) 

Ravi's white sister, meanwhile, the sweet, slightly befuddled Luna, can still go out whenever she likes. She would never harm a thing.