Saturday, November 20, 2010
Bohemian Waxwing
These waxwings are flocking all over town these days. They picked my Mountain Ash clean last week. Funny how they are so striking up close yet still can disappear in plain sight by the dozens in a tree. Then startle and the tree comes alive.
This one was a casualty of my clean windows. I carried it to the top of my back fence to leave for an owl, but a raven and magpie were first on the scene.
It's winter here today and I like it.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Friday, October 8, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Long Lake
Baths are more of a winter thing; summer is for swimming. Swimming satisfies me in a way that nothing else does.
In the Yukon, lakes are rarely warm enough for luxurious swims. Here's Bella on one of the warm Long Lake days.
When I was a kid, I went to the Okanagan every summer. Both sets of grandparents lived there, in a town aptly named Summerland. I could never stay in the water as long as my sister and cousins could; I got cold, blue-lipped and shivery. But I went in and out, diving up and down like a seal, scaring myself with thoughts of things underwater, floating and doing handstands and running out splashing to lie goose-fleshed on my towel in the heat.
I miss all that, living here.
But right now I am getting to swim lots in Long Lake and it is making things better. Tonight I went alone, at 11 at night, and jumped in quick in the almost dark.
(I wore my fine jewelry for a Long Lake picnic on Solstice this year).
This summer has been warm and swimmy.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Kevgina
Monday, May 24, 2010
A voyeur in St. Petersburg
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Signs
How to play hockey
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
More sights of Vancouver
Monday, April 5, 2010
How much? Not much!
What is the “cyclotron”?
A cyclotron is a special type of particle accelerator that accelerates protons as they follow a spiral path through it. The TRIUMF cyclotron accelerates particles inside an air-free chamber between the poles of an electromagnet whose magnetic field guides the particles in an expanding spiral path. The particles are accelerated by 'kicks' of electric voltage every half turn. When the beam reaches the outside edge of the tank, it is bent into pipes called beam lines, which lead to experimental halls. The cyclotron at TRIUMF, the largest in the world, accelerates 1000 trillion particles per second to speeds of 224,000 km/s, making TRIUMF's proton beam one of the most intense in the world.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Fayetteville
What do I know about Fayetteville, Arkansas?
It is in the Ozark Mountains. They get snow there, in the winter. So it is in The South, but not the sticky south. I wonder if they get tornadoes there? I am scared of tornadoes. (I wonder how much this Wizard of Oz legacy affects others? I have nightmares about tornadoes chasing me across the landscape. When I was bicycling through Alabama a couple of years ago, we went to a cocktail party. All the southerners sipped their drinks and mingled while I stared transfixed at a television set (who leaves a t.v. on at a party?), at the bottom of which a red line scrolled “Tornado Advisory”. One man came over to see what I was looking at. “Dang,” he said, “My daughter’s driving through Mobile County tonight. Hope she pulls over.”
Ellen Gilchrist lives there. A favorite writer of mine since I was in my teens, she has a house on a hill, designed by the architect E. Fay Jones. Not too many years ago, she started teaching in the creative writing program at the University of Arkansas. She took up teaching in her 60s. Ellen Gilchrist is the author of the story collections In The Land of Dreamy Dreams, Light Can Be Both Wave and Particle, and Victory Over Japan. I like some of her novels too, especially The Anna Papers and Net of Jewels, though I suspect they’ve never matched the literary merit of those early story collections. In fact, I think some of the novels aren’t very good, but I love Ellen Gilchrist so I don’t care.
The creative writing program at U of A (it will take me some time to get Alberta and Alaska out of my mind, I think) was run by Miller Williams for many years, the poet and father of Lucinda. Lucinda was raised in Fayetteville, I think.
Bill and Hillary lived there.
When you look at Fayetteville on Google Earth, the biggest feature is the dark oval of a football stadium. This football stadium holds more people than even live in Fayetteville. Football is big there. The Arkansas team is called The Razorbacks. Razorbacks are wild pigs. The time name was changed in 1910 after coach Hugo Bezdek proclaimed his team played "like a wild band of Razorback hogs". According to Google, there is a tradition at football games known as ‘calling the hogs’. The famous yell, “Woo, Pig! Sooie” has been heard since the 1920s.
The staff and student as U of A creative writing department are incredibly friendly and welcoming. They have been thoughtful and generous with advice and information. They don’t seem to hold to regular office hours, calling and emailing me evenings and weekends.
I think I might go there come September.
Razorback figurine from Noah's Animals.