highway 50 - Salina, UT to Reno, NV and back

Circus Circus' house kennel channel, w/ the Cure playing. no kidding.

Austin, NV. Serbian Christmas, now you know.

basin and range

river of shoes



a little something for everyone in Fallon


trash or treasure was here

hauling a warp and weft of sheetrock across the Paiute rez

petroglyphs at Hickison Summit. lava caves at Pyramid Lake (w/ flycatcher nest).



Humboldt - Toiyabe

Ash draws the school bell. Ash draws a crowd.

over the last couple weeks Ash has really been getting into the green blackboard.

when I found her doing this one in chalk and pencil she got excited and shouted "school-bell!" and made the noise of the grinding prison-camp alarm of an elementary school bell that sounds daily from the playground behind our house.

not bad, right? I don't think she's ever seen any Cy Twombly.


and here she is visiting the petting zoo.

capybaras and barnacle geese

ROME
Dear Pope Julius,

There's this 150lb animal here that's scaly, with webbed feet, but it's also hairy. And it spends most of its time in the water, but sometimes comes on land. Can we call it a fish? We know it's Lent but the Indians are really hungry.

Yours,

the Capuchins
BRAZIL

***


print by Jenny Pope

“Nature produces Barnacle Geese against Nature in the most extraordinary way. They are like marsh geese but somewhat smaller. They are produced from fir timber tossed along the sea, and are at first like gum. Afterwards they hang down by their beaks as from a seaweed attached to the timber, and are surrounded by shells in order to grow more freely. Having thus in process of time been clothed with a strong coat of feathers, they either fall into the water or fly freely away into the air. They derived their food and growth from the sap of the wood or from the sea, by a secret and most wonderful process of alimentation. I have frequently seen, with my own eyes, more than a thousand of these small bodies of birds, hanging down on the sea-shore from one piece of timber, enclosed in their shells, and already formed. They do not breed and lay eggs like other birds, nor do they ever hatch any eggs, nor do they seem to build nests in any corner of the earth.”
-Giraldus Cambrensis
1187, Topographica Hiberniae

***

“Pope Innocent III considered it necessary in 1215 to prohibit the eating of barnacle geese in Lent, since although he admitted they are not generated by the ordinary way, he yet maintained that they live and feed like ducks and cannot be regarded as differing in nature from other birds.”
-Sir Edwin Ray Lankester
1915, Diversions of a Naturalist

***

This (Spanish) website has more details on chigüiro/capibara history (along with cuisine and some things you can do with capybara leather and oil)! London's The Independent did a good article about the Easter fish in 2000. And a couple years ago, The NY Times put together a nice slideshow of a capybara hunt in Venezuela. Other "fish" you can eat during lent include sea turtles, iguanas, beavers and, in Michigan, muskrats.

related: cladistically, we're all of us fish and imaginary beings/seres imaginarios

reprise

related: ATM, Costa Rica, headlessness awareness

last fire of the season

Martin Prothero

Martin Prothero does these.

crab

hedgehog

frog

cricket

centipede

worm

about his process:
"The materials are carbon and glass. The glass surface is coated with thin layer of carbon (from a flame) and time and care is taken to make sure this is uniform over the entire surface. ... Then, keeping a close eye on the weather (rain, frost, wind and dew can all ruin the delicate carbon surface) I choose a good time to lay the plates out, normally over night, in the hope of recording some tracks.The animals’ feet lift off this extremely sensitive layer of carbon as they come in to contact with it. This leaves the finest details traced in the opaque carbon, which is then revealed when the glass is backlit using daylight or a lightbox."

and here's a link to his gallery, where there are some cool pinhole photos too.

residential snirt heaps

related: toward a new geology, trash vortex

one-channel television lures hangarful of Amish into 21st century. others still holding out for flatscreens, digital, smarter cars, colder fusion

once the Quakers started making Vanilla Yogurt Crunch cereal, something like this was only a matter of time. the Heat Surge electric fireplace is what comes of merging Chinese engineering, Amish craftsmanship and the cleverness of the American businessman. and the best thing about bringing these rubes on as board members is they accept as fair barter the placard from last season’s trade expo kiosk.
“yes, Amos. that’s correct. it’s one’a those giant checks.”

OK, I see how posting this in mid March makes me the old retired couple who leaves the Christmas stuff up well into tulip season. but I’m a sucker for fire on the TV. old man Barnum doesn’t even need to trot out the elephants and I’m already on my feet waving my $547 cash in the air. so, to those with links to fish without faces, my apologies for bringing down everyone’s property value.

this sort of thing has been on my mind more than usual lately, probably since I went to hear Wendell Berry when he was in town a couple weeks ago. also, last month Kevin Kelly posted some great observations on Amish hacking on his blog The Technium. of course you can always visit youtube for more fire on TV, then go full screen.

month of Sundays

good Lord, if there were ever a day
to lose an hour then it’s today.
maybe yesterday: a dumb, mute post
where I’m still trying to tie the other end
of this long long hammock. laundryline.
prayerflags. a fine mess, actually.

let the worm gear skip
the waterclock sputter
popping cinders, and a carousel of tinctures
and oils. ounces, inches, cartoon octopi
he
mat
o
crit

I’ll tell you now. how it all went down, a siphon
one hundred gallons of warm, dawn-colored water.
over this concrete threshold, these steps, and into the brown
leaves, to thaw and awaken the crocus and the chives.

go on Saturday and you can call it a date

a couple years ago I posted this about the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s annual nationwide bird count. it’s coming around again this weekend; this year it starts on Friday and goes through Monday (February 13-16).

it’s pretty straightforward and you can go to the website for answers to other questions. questions like: why count birds?

another answer to that why? comes recently from the Associated Press.



for those of us hurriedly skimming through blogs at work, trying to catch up and letting our “fingers do the walking,” the National Wildlife Federation has put together a very accessible little brief that tries to answer the larger, trickier question: “why care about birds?”
the report shies away from the well, they’re alive. like us. answer and goes for something they’re hoping we can better relate to: “birdwatching makes a significant contribution to Utah’s economy.” here's something your car dealer who moonlights at the state legislature might pause to consider, once his intern has highlighted it for him: “$237 million in 1996.” the remaining net value of Utah songbirds gets summed up more or less as, “boy, but they sure are handy as moth eaters and mascots.”

and if birds still don’t get our attention, there’s always climate change’s gadfly equivalent of al-Qaeda and the four horsemen of the apocalypse: Killer Bees!

related: all your fishbase are belong to EOL

crossroads w/ snow

a warning: this takes forever to load on Vimeo.

Martin Frobisher’s voyage to Baffin Island “for the finding of a passage to Cathay”

But when the people perceived our departure, with great tokens of affection they earnestly called us back again, following us almost to our boats: whereupon our general taking his master with him, who was best acquainted with their manners, went apart unto two of them, meaning, if they could lay sure hold upon them, forcibly to bring them aboard, with intent to bestow certain toys and apparel upon the one, and so to dismiss him with all arguments of courtesy, and retain the other for an interpreter.

The general and his master being met with their two companions together, after they had exchanged certain things the one with the other, one of the savages for lack of better merchandise cut off the tail of his coat (which is a chief ornament among them) and gave it to our general for a present. But he presently upon a watchword given with his master suddenly laid hold upon the two savages. But the ground underfoot being slippery with the snow on the side of the hill, their handfast failed, and their prey escaping ran away and lightly recovered their bows and arrows, which they had hid not far from them behind the rocks. And being only two savages in sight, they so fiercely, desperately, and with such fury assaulted and pursued our general and his master, being altogether unarmed, and not mistrusting their subtlety, that they chased them to their boats, and hurt the general in the buttock with an arrow, who the rather speedily fled back because they suspected a greater number behind the rocks.
…
But a servant of my Lord of Warwick, called Nicholas Conger, a good footman, and uncumbered with any furniture, having only a dagger at his back, overtook one of them, and being a Cornishman and a good wrestler, showed his companion such a Cornish trick that he made his sides ache against the ground for a month after. And being so stayed, he was taken alive and brought away, but the other escaped

-George Best, 1578

huzzah for sabotage! for the orphan sculptors! and a cowboy secretary!

a little follow up on our sabotage stories from a couple months ago.

in a nutshell:
Muntadhir al-Zaidi was "severely beaten" by security officers leaving a "large blood trail" where they then dragged him across the carpet. broken hand. broken ribs. internal bleeding. an eye injury. a limp. still in jail.

Tim DeChristopher may still also face federal prison but he does have a website. and in the meantime he’s been interviewing on a lot of local and national of TV and radio shows (including all things considered today). they’ve even done a shoot of dreamy, rustic press photos.

but what’s this about all those leases the BLM auctioned last December? canceled as of yesterday. interior secretary Ken Salazar’s got our backs this time. here he is addressing a bunch of Colorado hippies last summer.

and did you see this?! while some of us are just blogging comfortably by the south window, watching magpies and scrub jays, a tall glass of water at our left hand, others are taking to the streets, rolling up their sleeves and building big monuments. like the giant shoe sculpture that Laith al-Amiri and the orphaned children of Tikrit made in fiberglass, copper and concrete.