3.24.2009
3.23.2009
3.22.2009
3.21.2009
QUOTE OF THE DAY
The teacher was a real writer, too, a lean, handsome cowboy writer from an old Central Valley ranching family, who revered Faulkner and who in his younger days had published a fat, controversial novel that was made into a movie with Robert Mitchum and Mercedes McCambridge. He was given to epigrams and I filled an entire notebook, since lost, with his gnomic utterances, all of which every night I committed to the care of my memory, since ruined. He wore a patrician manner and boots made of rattlesnake hide, and he drove an E-type Jaguar, but his teeth were bad, the fly of his trousers was always agape, and his family life was a semi-notorious farrago of legal proceedings, accidental injury, and institutionalization. He seemed simultaneously haunted and oblivious, the kind of person who in one moment could guess, with breathtaking coldness, at the innermost sorrow in your heart, and in the next moment turn and, with a cheery wave of farewell, march blithely through a plate-glass window, requiring twenty-two stitches in his cheek.
-Michael Chabon,
Wonder Boys
-Michael Chabon,
Wonder Boys
3.14.2009
Things I Observed on My Morning Walk
1. A man stealing a "FOR SALE" sign from a stranger's lawn, secreting it in the back of his baby's carriage, and strolling off.
2. A skinny Cracker "Hulk Hogan" pursuing me (very slowly) on a bicycle.
3. Azaleas! I don't remember the azaleas ever blooming like this. All over the city, it's shades of fuscia and baby pink and pearl.
2. A skinny Cracker "Hulk Hogan" pursuing me (very slowly) on a bicycle.
3. Azaleas! I don't remember the azaleas ever blooming like this. All over the city, it's shades of fuscia and baby pink and pearl.
3.13.2009
Gnome This
Recently the radio show Gardening in a Minute, which airs on nearly all 67 counties in Florida, did an informative show about Garden Gnomes--mischevious little men in red pointed hats who help out gardeners at night. Listen and read the transcript here.
3.12.2009
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Oh, we most definitely ARE NOT F.B. friends. She better not tag me, or I'll beat the shit out of her and burn her house down. WHORE!
~Dr. Gonzo
~Dr. Gonzo
3.11.2009
Shrimp?
This is seriously one of the weirdest programs that the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) offers: The Cooked Shrimp School.
Movies We've Turned Off Include:
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
The Bank Job
Even Money
21
Mammoth
3:10 to Yuma
Awake
Basically if you steer clear of all third-rate British crime dramas, cheapo sci fi flicks about aliens and extinct mammals, and anything to do with trains, you should be okay.
The Bank Job
Even Money
21
Mammoth
3:10 to Yuma
Awake
Basically if you steer clear of all third-rate British crime dramas, cheapo sci fi flicks about aliens and extinct mammals, and anything to do with trains, you should be okay.
3.10.2009
3.09.2009
QUOTE OF THE DAY
hello old friend
oh this is so like you
to drop back in
you're right on time
how have i been?
well--that can of worms
ain't worth openin'
leave it in...
fine, i'm just fine
~Kim Richey
oh this is so like you
to drop back in
you're right on time
how have i been?
well--that can of worms
ain't worth openin'
leave it in...
fine, i'm just fine
~Kim Richey
Osprey Sighting
Last evening at Newnan's Lake, I saw my first osprey. The osprey, a sea or fish hawk, is a diurnal raptor with qualities of both the hawk/kestrel clan and the gull. Ospreys perch in high, dead trees by water and catch fish with their talons. The one at the lake was making a high-pitched, delicate "cheeping" noise from its tree. It may have been a female or a juvenile, judging by its coloring: distinct white breast, black overwings, black-striped underwings, and a black-and-white head. I did not have my camera with me, unfortunately.
I also saw a number of ducks of undetermined type; a vigorously diving anhinga; a marvelous fallen cypress that looked like bone; a nearly full moon; a skinny (harmless) black water snake; a flying little egret; and a great blue heron silhouetted between the mossy trees at nearly full dark.
3.08.2009
Newnan's Lake: Evening Montage
Note the anhinga head on the left.
These cousins of the cormorant swim with their bodies underwater and their heads poking out like snakes. Watching them dive for food is quite entertaining. They can stay down for about thirty seconds.
Cypresses and pneumatophores. These stumps are actually roots of the tree that collect oxygen when the water level is high.
A snowy egret.
Note his mating plumage.
Bolen's Bluff: Finally!
Now's great outdoors weather in North Florida: Warm and sunny, but not too humid; no skeeters for another month or so; things just starting to green up, but woods still sparse enough for you to see vistas and animals.
Yesterday I took a hike out to Bolen's Bluff, consummating a four-year quest to finish this 2.6-mile trail. The first time I went, in grad school, there were eight of us, it was February, and we were thwarted by cold and boredom before we'd even gotten out of the woods that surround the prairie on an elevated rim (hence, the "bluff"). The second time, I made it out of the woods, but the prairie was flooded and the path ended abruptly in a lake. The third time, Todd and I tried for an early September hike that ended in us fleeing the swarms of bloodthirsty mosquitos that left welts all over our bodies, despite the Off we had doused ourselves in.
This Saturday I managed to make the whole trip from the trailhead out to the prairie observation tower and back by the alternate path. To get to the trailhead, drive south on 441, through Payne's Prairie, and continue about 3/4 of a mile. The parking area for the trail is clearly marked on your left. At this time of year, though you don't need bugspray, it's advisable to wear shoes with traction: I was wearing flip-flops, and the path was covered with slippery fallen leaves, making quick walking difficult.
The first part of the trail is woodsy, with views of the still-brown prairie through the Spanish moss.
You go down a short slope, around a corner: suddenly the trees part and you see the prairie ahead.
This is the trail stretching out into the prairie. At the moment, the prairie is a true grassland. Spanish horses and bison roam here (no lie!). As you can see, it's not spring on the prairie quite yet.
Sometimes (mostly) Payne's Prairie is a flooded marsh with alligators. Once upon a time, in the mid-1800s, it was known as Alachua Lake, where steam-powered boats ferried citrus and lumber. Seasonal changes in water level are an essential feature of this ecosystem. "Prairie" is actually a bit of a misnomer--during dry spells, like now, it resembles the Midwestern grasslands that its white settlers were familiar with. But it's certainly not a prairie in the Great Plains sense. This is a picture of the prairie, about 1/2 mile from where I was yesterday, in early June.
Right now it's bone-dry out here, thanks to our multi-year drought and an especially long, cold, dry winter.
This is from the observation tower. It's hard to capture the enormity of this landscape. Floridia is flat, but it's very lush and vegetated: these open spaces are rare. The sky really looks like a dome, as it does out West.
That faint line of dark blue-green trees is the opposite rim of the prairie. Those teeny, tiny white specks on the far left are University of Florida buildings. That gives you some sense of the scale.
Viva la Prairie!
Yesterday I took a hike out to Bolen's Bluff, consummating a four-year quest to finish this 2.6-mile trail. The first time I went, in grad school, there were eight of us, it was February, and we were thwarted by cold and boredom before we'd even gotten out of the woods that surround the prairie on an elevated rim (hence, the "bluff"). The second time, I made it out of the woods, but the prairie was flooded and the path ended abruptly in a lake. The third time, Todd and I tried for an early September hike that ended in us fleeing the swarms of bloodthirsty mosquitos that left welts all over our bodies, despite the Off we had doused ourselves in.
This Saturday I managed to make the whole trip from the trailhead out to the prairie observation tower and back by the alternate path. To get to the trailhead, drive south on 441, through Payne's Prairie, and continue about 3/4 of a mile. The parking area for the trail is clearly marked on your left. At this time of year, though you don't need bugspray, it's advisable to wear shoes with traction: I was wearing flip-flops, and the path was covered with slippery fallen leaves, making quick walking difficult.
The first part of the trail is woodsy, with views of the still-brown prairie through the Spanish moss.
You go down a short slope, around a corner: suddenly the trees part and you see the prairie ahead.
This is the trail stretching out into the prairie. At the moment, the prairie is a true grassland. Spanish horses and bison roam here (no lie!). As you can see, it's not spring on the prairie quite yet.
Sometimes (mostly) Payne's Prairie is a flooded marsh with alligators. Once upon a time, in the mid-1800s, it was known as Alachua Lake, where steam-powered boats ferried citrus and lumber. Seasonal changes in water level are an essential feature of this ecosystem. "Prairie" is actually a bit of a misnomer--during dry spells, like now, it resembles the Midwestern grasslands that its white settlers were familiar with. But it's certainly not a prairie in the Great Plains sense. This is a picture of the prairie, about 1/2 mile from where I was yesterday, in early June.
Right now it's bone-dry out here, thanks to our multi-year drought and an especially long, cold, dry winter.
This is from the observation tower. It's hard to capture the enormity of this landscape. Floridia is flat, but it's very lush and vegetated: these open spaces are rare. The sky really looks like a dome, as it does out West.
That faint line of dark blue-green trees is the opposite rim of the prairie. Those teeny, tiny white specks on the far left are University of Florida buildings. That gives you some sense of the scale.
Viva la Prairie!
3.06.2009
Big Apple, Here I Come!
I'm off to Newwwwww Yawk in the middle of May! Ten days of play with old pals, Virgil the dog, museums, beaches, and revisting sites from my adolescence (without the pressures thereof). Woohoo!!
3.05.2009
Tom Saves the Day!
My friend Tom saved my variegated candelabra cactus, which is the only plant to have survived--thrived, even--in my apartment. I thought it had met its end when its ceramic pot fell off the windowsill and broke...and then on the way to work, where I was taking it in a plastic cup for Tom to rescue, the cactus itself broke in half. I cried...but Tom made it all okay. He air dried the broken nubbin for two days, then repotted both halves separately. Thanks, Tom!
Emily's Egg
Emily brought some farm-fresh eggs to work yesterday. They came from her banty hen, so they are very tiny--about the size of a ping pong ball if it were egg shaped. Kim ate hers on a very small breakfast sandwich. I intend to hollow mine out with a needle and paint it, in the old Polish tradition. If Emily can find where her hen is laying them (it changes daily), she's going to bring more. I'd like to make a few for Easter.
Freakish Canadian Has Camera Installed In Prosthetic Eye
I think the headline really says it all. But read here if you would like to know more about "Project Eyeborg."
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Mortgage your debt to reality by departing from it. And attend to it to the degree that you depart from it.
~Todd Hasak-Lowy
in fiction workshop
Spring 2007
3.04.2009
3.03.2009
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Those of us who had been up all night were in no mood for coffee and donuts. We wanted strong drink.
~Hunter S. Thompson
~Hunter S. Thompson
3.02.2009
Tikis 4 U: A Florida Must-Have
Check out Gainesville landscaper Palm Tree Charlie's site Tikis4u, where you can purchase outdoor tiki items and enlist knowledgable Floridian tiki landscapers to come and "tikify" your lawn and garden! They really have an amazing selection of tikis.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
PPS: I ate a weed cookie yesterday morning. I was so fucked up I spent the day talking about myself in the third person. I woke up this morning and I'm still a little high.
~Dr. Gonzo
~Dr. Gonzo
Currently Reading...
I am a third of the way through The English Patient (1992), the second side novel I've read while journeying through the 800-page, unabridged, fantastic David Copperfield (1850). Although I'm not crazy about Ondaatje's style (a touch too poetic and scattered for my taste), I am enjoying it as a kind of refresher in between courses of Copperfield (which, by the way, if you Google image search, all you'll get is a lot of douchey pictures of that douchey magician). As for the masterpiece, I have fifty pages left to go, and am both glad and sorry to be finishing it.
80s Beauties
These are friends of mine back in their teen years. They were gorgeous then, and they're gorgeous now.
3.01.2009
Dixieland News
1. Dixie has been promoted at her "day job" from low-level peon to mid-level peon. Her singing career holds steady in third-tier excellence.
2. Word on the street is that Dixie's former professor is publishing a "novel" that is entirely questions, a typically crazy and annoying move on his part.
3. Yesterday a red-tailed hawk devoured a gray squirrel across the road from Dixie's apartment. Initially the hawk was eating the squirrel in the grass at the edge of the road, but when he was frightened by an ogling redneck, he flew to a tree, where he draped the squirrel over a branch and went on eating. The tail hung down and blew, with the Spanish moss, in the breeze. The hawk was up there about 10 minutes, harassed by two other, angry squirrels the entire time, when he attempted to move his dinner and dropped it. The squirrel's dead falling body was the most amazing thing Dixie has seen in recent weeks.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"I have sent his name up, on a scrap of paper, to the kite, along the string, when it has been in the sky, among the larks. The kite has been glad to receive it, sir,and the sky has been brighter with it."
~Charles Dickens,
David Copperfield
~Charles Dickens,
David Copperfield
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
