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I know I'm in the middle of two other ongoing journal projects (talking to myself about various aspects of difficulty in fiction, and five songs of which I've done three), but it won't be late october for much longer.
The bus strike is still going on. Every few days they meet for talks which don't go much of anywhere. The Sentinel has been taken to task for being virulently atnti-driver, and has moderated their writing a little so that they occasionally report on the drivers' side of things, but they contnue to favor letters from crankcases who accuse the drivers of being greedy and selfish (sounding alarmingly like the villainesses of nineteenth-century novels, who call anything the young heroine does to support her own interests greedy and selfish).
They had a feckless surf contest, the "Coldwater Classic." Feckless because the waves don't get going for a couple months yet, as far as I can tell. The paper said it ought to have been called the "Flatwater Classic," and they relocated up the coast to Wadell Creek for a while. But it was so foggy they had trouble judging it anyway. I bought a bottle of water to support the Santa Cruz High School Surf Team.
The City Council is considering taking over the distribution of medical marijuana, on the grounds that it would somehow clarify the legal situation. They're thinking about establishing an "Office of Compassionate Use."
Rain is coming. When, though -- we don't know. It's been drizzling all day. The naked run in the rain event may or may not happen on campus tonight, but the thing that matters more to me is that First Flush may or may not happen. We've been calling each other to make sure we're ready and to be sure who all is in town and stuff. The strawberry growers are predicting an end to the season this weekend of soon hereafter because the berries will be all rotten and stuff. It will be one of the latest season endings ever, but they had been hoping to go on to mid November.
Also in Watsonville, the 90-acre Manabe berry farm has been cleared for annexation by the city, making the Manabes happy and the city happy because of all the development they can cram on to 90 acres. the Local Agency Formation Commission, which is in charge of this kind of thing, was not thrilled about giving the okay for this for various reasons, but I guess they had to.
I wish I liked persimmons better because they are all over the damned place, beautiful and orange and decorative on stark bare branches in people's front yards.
The Steinbeck Center in Salinas is having a fundraiser where you give them money and you get to have dinner with a local writer. Alas, it's $150. No, I don't know who's on the list, though I imagine Jane Smiley probably is.
The land that used to house the beautiful old building that Bookshop Santa Cruz used to be in has been sold. It's a sad story. Ron Lau, who used to own the building, was a pioneer in calling for ewarthquake retrofitting on Pacific Avenue, which was the heart of downtown. But he didn't get a movement going nad never got around to doing it all by himself, and his building was one of the more disastrous elements in the earthquake in 1989. It fell over on to the building next door, trapping and killed a couple of vibrant young coffee roasters in the rubble. Since then Ron Lau has been sort of desultorily trying to get a project going on that land which met his own high economic and environmental standards. It's one of two holes in the ground still there 16 years later. The other hole in the ground belongs to Rittenhouse, who has had repeated tantrums because the city will only waive small amounts of the building code for him. I believe there's plans for his hole in the gorund. Ron Lau has been threatened with seizure and eminent domain because they are tired of the hole in the ground, and they finally made some kind of deal with a developer who's going to put in stores and condominiums (it's at the expensive end of the avenue).
I have a feeling this will be an overpriced debacle, but I could be wrong.
Coyote bushes are getting ready to bloom.
Large bird report: I saw Emma's putative raven, and I think she's right, it is a raven. Not a crow, I mean. The nice fellow says crows don't seem to go as high as campus. I wonder where the crow/raven divide is? And lots and lots of raptors -- I think redtails mainly. Though the one that flew at eye level right in front of the car for a couple hundred feet the other day had such a prominently barred tail that I wouldn't be surprised if it were its own thing. I couldn't tell what it was carrying in its claws -- but it was as big as a gopher or a rat.
On other fronts, entirely: I found a dog breed that looks like my dog, and it supposedly behaves like my dog too: the entlebucher.
The bus strike is still going on. Every few days they meet for talks which don't go much of anywhere. The Sentinel has been taken to task for being virulently atnti-driver, and has moderated their writing a little so that they occasionally report on the drivers' side of things, but they contnue to favor letters from crankcases who accuse the drivers of being greedy and selfish (sounding alarmingly like the villainesses of nineteenth-century novels, who call anything the young heroine does to support her own interests greedy and selfish).
They had a feckless surf contest, the "Coldwater Classic." Feckless because the waves don't get going for a couple months yet, as far as I can tell. The paper said it ought to have been called the "Flatwater Classic," and they relocated up the coast to Wadell Creek for a while. But it was so foggy they had trouble judging it anyway. I bought a bottle of water to support the Santa Cruz High School Surf Team.
The City Council is considering taking over the distribution of medical marijuana, on the grounds that it would somehow clarify the legal situation. They're thinking about establishing an "Office of Compassionate Use."
Rain is coming. When, though -- we don't know. It's been drizzling all day. The naked run in the rain event may or may not happen on campus tonight, but the thing that matters more to me is that First Flush may or may not happen. We've been calling each other to make sure we're ready and to be sure who all is in town and stuff. The strawberry growers are predicting an end to the season this weekend of soon hereafter because the berries will be all rotten and stuff. It will be one of the latest season endings ever, but they had been hoping to go on to mid November.
Also in Watsonville, the 90-acre Manabe berry farm has been cleared for annexation by the city, making the Manabes happy and the city happy because of all the development they can cram on to 90 acres. the Local Agency Formation Commission, which is in charge of this kind of thing, was not thrilled about giving the okay for this for various reasons, but I guess they had to.
I wish I liked persimmons better because they are all over the damned place, beautiful and orange and decorative on stark bare branches in people's front yards.
The Steinbeck Center in Salinas is having a fundraiser where you give them money and you get to have dinner with a local writer. Alas, it's $150. No, I don't know who's on the list, though I imagine Jane Smiley probably is.
The land that used to house the beautiful old building that Bookshop Santa Cruz used to be in has been sold. It's a sad story. Ron Lau, who used to own the building, was a pioneer in calling for ewarthquake retrofitting on Pacific Avenue, which was the heart of downtown. But he didn't get a movement going nad never got around to doing it all by himself, and his building was one of the more disastrous elements in the earthquake in 1989. It fell over on to the building next door, trapping and killed a couple of vibrant young coffee roasters in the rubble. Since then Ron Lau has been sort of desultorily trying to get a project going on that land which met his own high economic and environmental standards. It's one of two holes in the ground still there 16 years later. The other hole in the ground belongs to Rittenhouse, who has had repeated tantrums because the city will only waive small amounts of the building code for him. I believe there's plans for his hole in the gorund. Ron Lau has been threatened with seizure and eminent domain because they are tired of the hole in the ground, and they finally made some kind of deal with a developer who's going to put in stores and condominiums (it's at the expensive end of the avenue).
I have a feeling this will be an overpriced debacle, but I could be wrong.
Coyote bushes are getting ready to bloom.
Large bird report: I saw Emma's putative raven, and I think she's right, it is a raven. Not a crow, I mean. The nice fellow says crows don't seem to go as high as campus. I wonder where the crow/raven divide is? And lots and lots of raptors -- I think redtails mainly. Though the one that flew at eye level right in front of the car for a couple hundred feet the other day had such a prominently barred tail that I wouldn't be surprised if it were its own thing. I couldn't tell what it was carrying in its claws -- but it was as big as a gopher or a rat.
On other fronts, entirely: I found a dog breed that looks like my dog, and it supposedly behaves like my dog too: the entlebucher.
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