Wednesday, December 30, 2015

2015 tailings: a year-end offering for data miners

...ranked more or less in order:
  • Beloved, Toni Morrison (again)
  • Running After Antelope, Scott Carrier
  • Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
  • Child of God, Cormac McCarthy
  • House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday
  • Rabbit Boss, Thomas Sanchez
  • The Columbian Exchange, Alfred Crosby
  • Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
  • The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
  • Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
  • My Year of Meats, Ruth Ozeki
  • The Iliad, Homer
  • The Snows of Kilimanjaro & Other Stories, Ernest Hemingway
  • Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
  • Notes from Underground, Fydor Dostoyevsky
  • The Metamorphosis & Other Stories, Franz Kafka


Thursday, November 19, 2015

apples for: precocious candidacies, edible maps, & things that might (have) be(en)

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We might all be excused for losing track of the seasons lately. Between El Niño, climate chaos, ‘tis the season for savings jingles, and election campaigns that begin 500+ days out, you may be looking to lay a hand on some good, ripe (& throwable) fruit. If so, the Falling Fruit Project is a good place to start.

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This is a crowdsourced global map of neighborhood fruit trees, gardens, mushroom patches, dumpsters, and other local edibles. They list over 1,000 different species in multiple languages (plus Linnaean nomenclature), from apples (malus domestica) to zulu figs (ficus lutea).

Here’s my neighborhood, where we’ve been looking for the nearest peaches, putting some apples and plums on the map, and carefully leaving others off.




This has all resulted in us bringing home boxes and boxes of apples, mostly from around our own block, drying them into chips, sealing jars of applesauce, pressing them into cider, and baking loads of pies.






























Through a lot of this, I’ve been sort of haunted by two songs. One is my friend George singing Patty Griffin’s “Making Pies,” ten years ago on the deck of a yurt in Pigeon Hollow.

The other is Joe Hill’s “Pie in the Sky,” alternatively known as “The Preacher and the Slave.” Here are a couple very good versions.



Earlier this year we went to a Labor Day commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Joe Hill’s execution by firing squad in Sugarhouse. There were folk singers shouting from an outdoor stage, food trucks with fusion noodle bowls and fancy mac & cheese, AFLCIO info booths, plenty of overalls and anarchist t-shirts, dogs and frisbees. Saltgrass Printmakers and Ken Sanders Books were also there. It rained off and on.

-->After making the rounds, eating, and a couple games of hide-and-seek with the kids, we picked up a little reprint of an old IWW songbook from 1923. Since then, Ash has really taken an interest in these old Wobblies songs, and she pulls the booklet down off the shelf a couple times a week to study the words and try to figure the tunes. Finn sings along and “The Preacher and the Slave” has moved into his top requests at bedtime.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Wednesday, February 04, 2015

in situ

























three of Tom's latest

Friday, January 02, 2015

rivers & birds, Dec 17-28


Green River, Colorado River, Mancos River, Animas River, Rio Chama, San Juan River, Santa Fe River, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, Pecos River, Llano River, Brazos River, (other/Texas) Colorado River, Pedernales River, Price River, Spanish Fork River

Turkey Vulture
Black Vulture
Great Horned Owl
Bald Eagle
Golden Eagle
Red-tailed Hawk
Cooper’s Hawk
American Kestrel
Common Raven
Red-winged Blackbird
Great-tailed Grackle
American Robin
European Starling
Western Meadowlark
Mourning Dove
Rock Pigeon
White-winged Dove
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Northern Mockingbird
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Red-naped Sapsucker
Northern Flicker
Monk Parakeet
Double-crested Cormorant
Snowy Egret
Spotted Sandpiper
Canada Goose
Mallard
American Coot
Belted Kingfisher
Mexican Jay
Blue Jay
Northern Cardinal
Dark-eyed Junco
Carolina Wren
Canyon Wren
American Goldfinch
House Finch
House Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Black-Throated Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Say’s Phoebe
Black Phoebe
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Spotted Towhee
Tufted Titmouse
Vermilion Flycatcher
Greater Roadrunner
Loggerhead Shrike