Bodega Bay Journal
I got back yesterday from an overnight in Bodega Bay with my pal Karen Hester and her friend Diane. I drove and they absorbed the costs of lodging and food—not a bad deal. Karen has a friend whose mother owns this 3+ bedroom home overlooking the ocean beach (well, high hedges prevent your seeing the perfectly artificial 18-hole golf course between the housing development and the sandspit). Toward the protected harbor with its tidal mudflats is a wetland preserve full of shorebirds and raptors. Karen is something of a birder, so yesterday we hiked a loop through the wetland, crossing the sandspit and returning by the beach.
Karen identified an avocet that stood in the shallow water, periodically dipping its head. This is a medium-sized downy-white bird with well-demarcated black-and-white bands along its wings. In the sunlight it occurred to me that the bird wouldn’t appear out of place among naval dress uniforms. The bird-book plate showed the avocet with a long, gray, slightly upturned bill (Karen confirmed through binoculars), long gray legs (we had to assume), and a pinkish neck. Our bird didn’t have this last feature but a smaller plate confirmed its winter coloring to be all white. Bingo.
For the avid birder confirmed sighting of a previously unseen species provides immense satisfaction. Trailing the women with my camera I enjoyed seeing two hunky surfer-dudes peeling tight clingy wetsuits from warm glistening skin. For some of us pleasure is in the variety of shapes the familiar takes, not just the shock of the new.
After we got unpacked Wednesday we drove around the mudflats at low tide with their clear channel, beside New England-style clapboard fishhouses of the still-working fishing village, and along the peninsula of Salinian Block (Southern CA) granite, forced this far north through the agency of the San Andreas fault. At Bodega Head we hiked in a seasonally green meadow atop high coastal bluffs. Through binoculars Karen and Diane spotted hundreds of seals massing on the offshore Bodega Rocks, though we heard them long before the rocks had even come into view. Diane compared the density and cacophony on the rocky shore to that of an Olivia Cruise ship—ha, ha!
Besides starlit skies above the hot tub at night, we were lucky in late January to have warm sunny days. Before driving to Bodega Head I backed into this clipped, blue-blossoming rosemary hedge in the circular driveway, having misjudged its position. Perhaps it was my bumping into it that led to our really looking. Arrayed there in the dense foliage to maximize its solar gain was possibly the most beautiful snake I’ve ever seen. Adorning the length of its back and contrasting with a nondescript gray belly were lovely tan lines separated by a red-and-black pattern familiar from Navaho rugs. Being fully human and thus use to appropriating the world’s fragile loveliness, my first thought was what a terrific-looking belt could be fashioned from the skin. But soon my short sightedness dissolved to a deep wonder.
posted by Paul at 11:23 AM
No Way—Not In My Name
[Here's another letter to elected California representatives that I was moved to write. You're welcome to tailor it to your uses.]
I wrote you in August detailing five compelling reasons not to invade Iraq. I offer another reason today, which hadn’t somehow occurred to me then, when I had not yet completed the first anniversary of my layoff as a book editor. Besides my previous reasons—mostly arising from ethical considerations based upon a basic knowledge of Middle East history—I’m moved to write you today partly out of self-interest and partly out of concern for thousands of long-term unemployed persons in our state.
How will this unnecessary war with Iraq repair the economy—on the skids in our almost bankrupt state? How will future expenditures to replace and improve our weapons of mass destruction benefit the tax-paying electorate? Not being an engineer for Lockheed Martin or Chevron, I do not see how our invasion—sure to undermine the worldwide rule of law we helped establish under the United Nations—benefits me or, generally, us.
In Washington the Defense budget has or will soon outgrow its bloat at the height of the cold war, while we remain the unchallenged superpower. In Sacramento our Democratic governor believes for fiscal health he must cut still-pitiful expenditures for education. What is wrong with this picture? As brutal a wake-up call as 9/11 was, we misread history to let its trauma pave the way for de-democratization in the U.S. How could any self-respecting American legislator vote for the Patriot Act?
Those who cannot find work, plus those who have watched their employer-sponsored 401(k) investments shrink to levels unlikely to support retirement, are hard pressed. Of the tax dollars we paid into the system over many years there have been disproportional allocations for military-industrial and prison-industrial budgets. Does anyone have a vision of what might constitute social health in our country or in the world? Whatever happened to our once-lauded social contract? In what sense are we the most powerful nation if we cannot guarantee a basic level of health and provide opportunities for our people? Where will the American people look for leadership if our elected representatives—either out of inner Beltway myopia or being compromised by high-powered lobbies—fail us? I await your response.
posted by Paul at 3:30 PM
