The new school year.

Besides working on the darkroom and attending a baby shower this weekend (yeah, I know, it's a rock-n-roll lifestyle), I also decided to suck up to the parent institution and attend freshman convocation. A pretty hip author and jazz musician was the motivational speaker du jour (and no, he never lived in a van down by the river).

One thing that struck me, in his advice for how to succeed in college, was his anecdote about seeing Laurence Fishburne doing Shakespeare in Central Park. Apparently, he blew a line and, rather than flubbing or ad-libbing, he back up a step, put his head down, recovered his line, and then stepped back in a just attacked it, and hit the next several lines extra hard. This was his advice on how to fail gracefully.

Another thing that struck me was seeing what a visually impaired man did with his PDA. At first, I thought he was just doing what the professor in front of me was doing: playing solitaire through the president's speech. This guy was sitting one section over from me, so I saw him come in with white cane, but noted that he could see a bit. Later, I saw him with his PDA about 2 inches from his face--we're talking seriously near-sighted. But during the concert, I saw him stand up, snap a picture of the band, and then sit back down. I mean, a blind cat with a camera is gonna catch your eye, right? So I do a double-take, and see him studying the picture really intently. Was he using his PDA to see? Is this a totally un-designed feature that Sony and Palm and all the others didn't anticipate?

Of course, being the shy guy I am, I didn't run up to him and ask. But I'm really curious.

The Holiness I used to know.

As reported in the NYT today:
Tom Waits, who closed the show in his usual guise as a lowlife sage, wisecracked: "So his holiness goes to bed at 7:30? That's not the holiness I used to know."

He's such a kidder.

Anyway, the concert was a benefit for an outfit called Healing the Divide that has what looks like a kick-ass program for getting central Asian cultural resources online. Their site itself is a little skinny on content, but they're just starting out. They also have links (organizational, not just the html kind silly) to other Buddhist cultural projects. This aligns so nicely with Internet Archive and digitizing projects far and wide.

And if Tom Waits is doing a benefit for them, sign me up.

Free bin

I know I have a trip to talk about, but on my arrival back in Eugene, we discovered that one of our favorite places in the neighborhood is no longer.

When I first moved to the West, I was fascinated by people putting shit in front of their houses with 'free' signs. Anywhere else I've ever been, you leave something sitting in front of your house, it's going to walk away sign or no sign. Here in Eugene, this was apparently elevated to a new level with a set of shelves, a bulletin board, and constant traffic near the local free bin.

Or, as we have now found out it was called the free box. Today we were coming home from visiting the tomatoes and saw that the shelves had been removed and a new sign put up. It says something to the effect that local complaints and sloppiness forced the owner of the property to kill the free box.

The free box was brilliant. It always looked neat to us--we always assumed someone was maintaining it by folding clothes and getting rid of stuff that didn't move. We left a number of things there, and were always amazed at how quickly they went away: blankets, tall girl clothes, a leaky air mattress. Earlier this year, a sign went up asking people not to leave appliances. After that, I didn't see any more stoves, etc.

Long live the free box.

Gone fishin.'

I know, you're thinking: geez, the guy starts a blog and then goes on vacation for a week. Well, I may be able to update this once or twice while on the road if I run across an open public library. If not, you'll just have to wait until I return.

Until then, you'll just have to satisfy yourself with taking a look at the critters that I'll be drowning along the way. Thanks again Andrew.

Streams: part 1

A quick visit to the war room yielded these results:

Here's an idea of the part of the state that I'll be in:



And here's the details on the first few days' plan:



They're not too pretty, but what do you want for 15 minutes in the middle of a workday. The war room isn't all that hi tech. At least now you can't say you don't know where I am.

We really do have our camping gear well organized. Everything came together very quickly last night. Tonight, I just need to pack my clothes, cameras, and fishing gear, and we'll be all set.

Digger.

I've forgotten to mention that this is Whats Growing's 4th or 5th home in as many years, but we really like this one. Some day there will be a bunch of pictures from this and previous ones. The new homestead was incredibly overgrown when we first arrived. The whole summer has been spent weeding and just trying to take stock of what is here.

This past weekend, a long one, we finally got rid of the enormous pile of yard waste that has been, well, piling up. I used my extra-special method of chopping it up with an old electric lawn mower--for which L thinks I'm crazy. But at the end of it, just before heading to a last-minute labor day bbq, I had a 2 inch layer of mulch covering fully half of the yard.

The other half has a large trench, where I've been burying what I suppose the previous folks thought was a compost pile. Things uncovered include:

• Whole zucchini squashes
  
• Restaurant crackers in their plastic envelopes
  
• (plastic) Grocery bags full of hamburger buns
  
• A huge amount of eggshells
  
• Charcoal ash
  

Well, now I have a 3 foot burial mound started. I've also started digging out a dead shrub that is right up against the garage, and am trying to re-grade the area behind it. Soil has built up against the bottom course of siding and started to rot it away. So, I'm moving it. Slow and steady wins the race.

Two days till vacation. I'm not sure what I'm more looking forward to: the new landscapes I'm anticipating, or the fishing. Judging from the folks that I've told about my itinerary, this is an epic fishing trip. But the road trip is appealing as well. I'll try post details before leaving.