Photocosm

As The Corvus Corax Flies

I was listening Friday morning to the podcast of the KQED interview show, Forum, hosted by the incomparable Michael Krasny. He was in the studio with the new Poet Laureate of the United States, Kay Ryan. Late in the show, Josh Somebody emailed Kay a question about crows. Why do so many of her poems mention crows? Kay said they're important birds, they're important in her life, she sees them all the time. She had been concerned for a while that crows were forcing other birds from their habitats, but she was happy to learn this was not happening. She also mentioned that crows are ubiquitous.
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The crows in this photo are taking shelter from stiff offshore breezes. I was visiting Toast early one morning in Mill Valley a couple of months ago, and the crows were pretty well grounded by the harsh air.

And here's a shot of a crow visiting a telephone pole in Novato. Maybe it wanted a good seat for that Jefferson Starship concert at Stafford Lake.

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Back to the Forum podcast with quid pro crow-lover Kay Ryan. That was in the early morning. By noon, I was pulling into the parking lot to park in my designated parking space. Good thing I stopped, though, my designated space was taken by a small blue car with an odd license plate from out-of-state: C. CORAX.  (Some details of the plate have been removed.)  When the driver got out, my irritation at losing my parking spot dissolved because I was hooked. What does C. Corax mean?  Also, the woman driving it was young and attractive and smart. I didn't know she was smart at first, but she was kind enough to complete a short Mensa quiz I keep in the glove compartment.
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So, what does C. Corax mean? It means crows, the car owner answered. And ravens. It means Corvus Corax, their Latin genus/species/zip code name.  I told the driver and her passenger, her mom, about the interview with Kay Ryan and the crow mention. The driver had studied crows in college, and I think she did her masters work studying them as well. Cool. You just don't see Latin enough on license plates.
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I told the C. Corax license plate lady about the crows that visited the area, and even pointed to a telephone pole where they like to rest and watch. There was no crow there, of course, that would be too easy. What are the odds that you can point to a telephone pole and say a crow likes to rest there, and the crow will rest there? Not good. The lady and her mother then walked inside a used office equipment store. They were looking for a filing cabinet.

Whilst they were inside, a member of the C. Corax family showed up and rested on the pole I had mentioned. It made me feel a bit like Babe Ruth pointing to the bleachers and calling a home run. The crow made those caw-caw sounds, then leaped into the air and flew off. When the two women came back out from the store with a filing cabinet, I showed them the photo I took of the crow. The daughter said she'd heard the bird inside the store, she also knew its age, its call had revealed its immaturity.
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That was Friday. The next morning, I was up in Marin County, driving and listening to the podcast of the Rachel Maddow show. She did such a good job filling in for Keith Olbermann recently on MSNBC's Countdown, I've started listening to her show through iTunes. Late in the show, during the Ask Dr. Maddow segment, somebody called and asked, "What's the difference between crows and ravens?"  Rachel answered by discussing the subtle differences between the birds, and she mentioned their species. I think she said crows live near her home in Massachusetts. So, twice in 24 hours, I heard the Corvus Corax mentioned. That's good, you just don't hear enough Latin on talk radio.

Here's a shot from Saturday morning, when Rachel Maddow talked about the crow. This crow was sitting on the wires above my car in San Rafael. Something motivated it to leave, however, so I got a shot as it started its launch.

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Apollo Moon

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Yesterday was a forgotten anniversary, it seems, given the lack of media coverage.

Here's a photo of the full moon setting near Mt Tam. Sunrise is maybe ten minutes away, there isn't even alpenglow on the eastern ridge yet. So, what's the forgotten anniversary?

The Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon way back in 1969 on July 20th. Maybe you remember some of that. You might even remember the first astronaut to plant his feet on the lunar surface, Lance Armstrong. Not exactly, more like Neil Armstrong. The second man to stand on the moon was Buzz Lightyear, perhaps? No, Buzz Aldrin. The third of the Apollo 11 astronauts, Michael Collins, remained above the moon in the spacecraft that brought all three back to Earth. Of course, we all know Michael Collins from his days singing and writing music for Genesis. And then he ran the National Air and Space Museum.

When the Apollo 11 crew returned to earth on July 24th, 1969, they were picked up by the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier. President Nixon was on the Hornet for the splashdown and the retrieval of the Apollo 11 command module. The Hornet has since been decommissioned from service and is now a museum in nearby Alameda.

The last time I visited the Hornet in Alameda, the area looked like a war zone. No kidding. Turned out the producers of a movie had rented the place out, and were filming scenes there. It was the sequel to the Vin Diesel movie, XXX, titled XXX:State of the Union. You would have thought a real Blackhawk helicopter and other weapons had been blown apart, but they were props. I watched a man with a welder's torch take the helicopter apart as they cleaned up a parking lot.
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Here's Mt Tam thirty minutes after that clear moonset and sunrise. The fog is back, and right on time. We're not getting the huge marine layer blankets of dense fog that cover every town in the Bay Area, those can be surrealistic, but they are also unusual. Instead, fog in the summer follows patterns created by the topography. It will be blocked by a hill or a mountain, then sneak around it and cascade down a valley.

I've heard the Bay Area has 40 microclimates, and you can see them in action when the marine layer pushes in from the Pacific. I knew a couple once who lived in San Francisco uphill from the Haight-Ashbury district. The wife told me their house was right on the edge of the fog line. She could look out her west/northwest window and see fog in the front yard and the street, then walk to her east/southeast windows and see clear skies. The pattern was that precise.

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A few hours later, the sailboats and seagulls were using the wind of the San Francisco Bay. You can see the Golden Gate Bridge straight ahead. San Francisco is to the left and Marin County is to the right.

Here's the view from Tiburon, looking toward Sausalito and Mill Valley.

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And now for something different. I was visiting Emeryville yesterday, and noticed a woman riding a new kind of tri-wheel device. From a distance, it seemed to be a Segway. I've written about the city of San Rafael's experiment with the Segway. This isn't one of them. I don't know what the name is, she buzzed me and continued toward the traffic light.

If people don't care for the price or technological complexity of the Segway, this device may be the next best thing. It wasn't loud, so maybe it's electric, whatever it is. I forgot to ask the headless rider its name.

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And we close with a dog. I saw this at one of the local golf courses, sitting patiently for its owner, who was in the clubhouse purchasing a keg of beer.

I think it's good to allow dogs onto golf courses. They can be trained successfully to perform para-caddy functions. A dog can be trained to search for golf balls, significantly reducing the time to find that errant tee shot. Dogs are also excellent for washing golf balls, once they stop chewing them.

Dogs are also appreciative members of a gallery. They can be trained to bark admiringly when a golfer hits his shot to the green and within a few feet of the cup. What golfer doesn't want a tight shot to the green respected? One good putt and you can put that golfer down for a birdie. There's only one problem with this, some dogs don't know if the golfer is putting for a birdie or maybe a quadruple bogey. What if the golfer took seven shots to reach the green? When the dog barks at that, it sounds insincere.

This Is My Smile

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A red Mercedes in the morning. Nobody else on the street in Mill Valley. The plate was WELL-KEPT in one spelling or another. A license plate was never truer.

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There are 200 fires burning in California right now, according to the news. I believe 'em. Nothing is burning in sight of the San Francisco Bay, but the smoke is still blowing in, even when we have strong breezes from the Pacific Ocean. Here's one of the creeks which connect Marin County to the Bay, and barely visible is Mount Tam.
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Smile for the camera! Smile!

Here's a dog waiting outside a Fairfax coffee shop, but the photo does double-duty here. Look at how warm and glowing the light is on the sidewalk and the street. Without the haze from the fires, the white lines on the pavement would be cooler and the sidewalk would be gray.

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There's a cactus that grows in my front yard, I never noticed it because it's so close to the fence and some bushes. Hard to ignore it now. Beautiful, isn't it? This rare bloom will end a couple of days from now, except on the Internet.

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And we close with another well-kept car, a Ferrari 330 from the 1960s. Caught it in Berkeley near UC, it was in beautiful condition.

Global Brightening and Whitening

The sun was big and bright today, not a good sign, clean air makes the sun shrink. The fires down in Big Sur continue to burn, but the air quality in the Bay Area wasn't as bad as a week or so ago. Hope that's a good sign.


The morning commute in Marin County was slow because of small fires next to US 101 in San Rafael. An hour or two after they started and were put out, firemen still walked along the freeway to check for hot spots. I rolled the window down and heard one fireman shout, "Let's check out that hot spot!" The lead fireman called back, "Don't waste your time! They have a cover charge!" Those firemen know all the angles.

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Mr. Monk Visits A Cafe By The San Francisco Bay And Quickly Leaves It. Go figure.

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It's the Aston Martin DB7.  They don't produce them anymore, the factory line closed after 2003, so try to get by with the DB9 if you're looking for wheels. The car was designed by Ian Callum, and DB stands for "David Brown." In the movie Goldfinger, James Bond drove the DB5. Aston Martin sold a lot of cars that year. I'm not sure if Aston Martin replaced the DB7 with the DB8, I think they went straight to the DB9. They probably didn't want to sell a car that people would call Debate.

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After the firemen put out the small fires by the highway, they returned the garden hose to Mrs. O'Leary's front yard. They gave her a flower, though, they're not thieves.

Happy Birthday, USA!

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Ah, the Fourth Of July, a chance to celebrate watermelons and fireworks. I always look forward to it in the Bay Area. I also look forward to July 4th in Tahiti, but I never get a chance to visit.

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The US flag flies proudly over an auto yard in Berkeley. They put this Raggedy Ann doll on the fence last year. You don't normally see a towing company get sentimental, but this is Berkeley.

We started with clear skies in Marin, here's the sunrise on Mount Tamalpais. There's something inspiring about a mountain sunrise. I used to hike a lot in the American West, and would often start the hikes in darkness to make sure I made the summit at a reasonable time. When the sunrise came and you saw the summit, it meant you had made progress to the top. In this case, it means you stayed on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.

Here's the lagoon at the Marin County Fairgrounds. The tents and booths and the rides are up, ready for the county fair. That's right, people who make an average of $250,000 a year put on their overalls and party at the Fairgrounds. It's the only county fair in the world where you can buy a raffle ticket for a chance to win a corporation.

I stopped by a cafe in Fairfax yesterday. I would mention their name, but they won't trade publicity for eggplant burritos. Here's a familiar visitor to the cafe. I've seen this dog before, and it's a real troublemaker. The last time somebody let it come inside to be with its owner, it leaped from table to table and knocked over all the lava lamps, then ran off with the doll from a baby's stroller and bit somebody who was praising the government's ethanol program. Those eyes through the window may say, "I'll be good this time," but she's bad, bad, bad. Except for the ethanol bite.