Listening

Lately i've realized i am not a good listener, unless i consciously enter a situation in listening mode, which is not often enough. Often a question will come to mind when the conversation is long gone, but second-chances don't always come along. I also no longer ask many good questions of profs or situations--i've become a rather passive learner. The two are not unrelated, i think. Passive learning isn't terribly effective compared to active learning, and it's lazy. Not listening is self-centered and rather lazy too.

Walking home from the library today, a strange bird cry echoed across the street. Santa Gertrudes is a bit like a canyon at that spot--tall, sound-reducing ficus trees (honest they are--i know vegetation supposedly doesn't really reduce decibels but these suckers do) on one side of the street, screening a tall department building, and rows of apartment complexes on the other. I looked up and saw a crow. It was not the sound of a crow. Then i saw a pigeon-colored bird with a striped tail and intelligent head--some sort of hawk! On my street! In the middle of city-like suburbia! It landed on a light pole and began plucking its prey. I hope it was pigeon. Where did that hawk come from? What species is it? Where is its nest? How will it survive the annual tree lopping around here? Does anyone else cheer for the hawks instead of the pigeons?

....

One of my students told me last week that he was moving to Colorado. Thinking he was probably going to stay with a different grown child, i asked, When? His reply: Not sure; we'll go when the company tells us it's all set up.

Oh. That was my first clue that Jack* is slipping. He has Alzheimer's, but other than forgetting random vocabulary his case has always seemed mild. Today he told me he was moving to Oregon: his mind is slipping from the present into the past, when he was an engineer for a mining company and traveled frequently. I've heard that crossing these stages goes quickly, that the decline worsens exponentially. I've seen that happen with T and J. Oh, God. Please not Jack.

Sometimes i hate my job.

*Not his real name, of course.
....

One of the warm-up activities i do for work involves trivia about historical events: This Week in History. I like it--i love history--and my students like it since their memories function rather well about the past. Last week we learned that Ingrid Bergman was rare in that she refused to glamorize her name when she came to work in Hollywood. All these movie folks with normal, tidy, every-day sounding names--so many of them had other names, the truly every day names. How much of my perception of reality is accurate, and how much of it is a constructed image? I don't watch tv, i rarely watch movies, but i do read and listen to the news, and there are billboards, novels, stories, fairy tales....John Wayne's real name was Marion Michael Morrison. Bob Hope was Leslie Townes Hope. Why couldn't they keep their real names? Was it because those names were froo froo? But what if those manly men had performed with froo froo names--perhaps it would have changed that perception of those names? Doris Day was Doris Kappelhoff. Why change that?

Technology-dependent woes

My laptop is dead. Or dying. How blog i thus, you ask? House-sitting for my parents, on their desktop computer, taking a mini break from reading articles in preparation for a highly intimidating telephone interview with a renowned landscape architect for a research paper. Why did i request an interview with said person!? He is a principal at a huge firm. Designer of award-winning gardens. Busy important man. Very gracious to agree to an interview. I will learn a lot reading published material and in the interview, but I AM A GOOF (e.g. i have to put on my grown-up hat for this interview and that takes much effort), i hate telephones, and i'm second and third guessing pursuing this avenue. Panic! I don't want to shame my school. Or me.

And now my laptop won't start. Thankfully, i backed up everything 10 days ago. Miserably, that doesn't include last week's work or photos. And my parent's old desktop is fine for word processing and web browsing, but it doesn't have the Adobe Creative Suite that i need to finish presentation boards, nor Sketch-up to make models (because i can't adequately draw them yet), nor Autocad to load base plans for a final project due in two weeks...their computer can't handle all that software, not to mention their lives involve going to bed at nine in the evening and mine involves studying/working/(goofing off) until midnight, and in a different town. Mooching off their computer won't work. People did this work before computers, but now, well, i need mine.

Panic panic...ha. That reminds me of the cover to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

And now, to avoid panic, i am going to return to reading articles and hope my brothers have an idea of what to do. I've replaced the motherboard on a desk top before, walked through it on the phone by my techie brother, but i think a laptop is over my head. I can read. Reading i do well. Back to reading...

EDIT: Thanks to some techies from church, it is working again. Believe me, i am backing up much more often.

Tempers and temperatures

When it's hot, very hot, people seem to be more irritable. (I particularly notice this as i drive along Colima and the 60 freeway.) Earlier this week, discussing the weather, someone told me that one theory about this behavior is that people become at least mildly dehydrated and heat sick. Some side effects or symptoms of dehydration are irritability, irrational behavior, delusions, all that jazz.

How strange, because those are also the symptoms of hypothermia. Isn't it slightly paradoxical that opposite temperature extremes have similar symptoms? On the other hand, maybe it isn't so strange--it is still about body temperature.

At any rate, all you drivers out there, DRINK MORE WATER!!!

Strange nostalgia

When i was a little kid, sometimes after music lessons my mom would take us to get a cheese danish (and a cup of good coffee for her) at an infamous fast-food joint. I vaguely remember these events. I remember putting my stockinged feet on the traced feet of a music folder to have proper violin posture; i remember the wood and glass doors of the old building; i remember my lesson partner, Leslie; i remember that my teacher had incredibly long brown hair. I vaguely remember tree-lined streets, with metal grates around the roots of the trees, and brick (or are they stone?) townhouses with steps up to the front door. I remember yummy cheese danishes, or at least yummy in the sense of high sugar and fat content.

Today i had a feeling of nostalgia for a cheese danish, but alas, said infamous fast-food joint no longer sells cheese danishes. When did that happen?

You can eat this

To clarify: You can eat whatever you like...and you may well suffer for it. These, however, you can eat and they won't kill you or make you sick (unless, of course, you're allergic or someone used foliar pesticides or systemic fertilizer, in which case, ja, they just might make you pretty ill. Then again, so might cookies containing enough preservatives to make a mummy. If it's going to be death by food, i choose death by educated experimental browsing).

Day Lily, Hemerocallis sp. One of my classmates thought it was gross. I liked it. I find it tastes like pale celery lightly sautéed in butter, with a slight wasabi or peppery aftertaste. Try the buds just as they begin to show color. You can eat them raw (rinse them off first) or lightly sautéed with garlic, and added to a green salad. They're planted all over Southern California: usually yellow but sometimes the rose or orange varieties, although i'm not sure it's legal to harvest from the median strips. It would be the epitome of pitiful to be smashed by a car while living off the landscape; and have you seen what they spray along the sides of roads!? Ick. Eat them from your neighbors' yard and leave the medians alone.

Detail of Feijoa sellowiana. Photo courtesy of my classmate, I.F.

Pineapple Guava, Feijoa sellowiana. Deliciousness! I haven't tasted the guava fruits yet because they haven't ripened, but i love guavas and expect to enjoy these. (Probably a result of growing up in the tropics, that one is; guava trees also make good climbing). Not only is this a gorgeous tree, but the flowers on this plant are edible and they taste yummy, like a light fruit sorbet. I think they'd be good on high quality vanilla ice cream, one that was smooth and creamy, with chocolate sauce optional--it had better be good, not wimpy Hershey's. I bet the flowers would also be good in a fruit or garden salad. Mmmm.

Quote of the day

"The cure for too-much-to-do is solitude and silence, for there you find you are safely more than what you do. And the cure of loneliness is solitude and silence, for there you discover in how many ways you are never alone." — Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

Mt. Calvary Monastery, here i come. Once i'm done in June with the too-much-to-do that is school, that is. ;-)

How does my garden grow?

For starters, i don't have a garden. I live in 320 square feet and no patio. But if i had a garden, or a yard, i would use some of this wunder stuff:

Carex pansa, aka carex perdentata, passes the barefoot test. It only needs to be watered once a month, and only needs to be mowed 3-4 times a year, or maybe the other way around: either way, a great plant for the upcoming water rationing if you like having a green lawn. It's available at John Greenlee's Nursery in Chino in plugs. It will be spendy to install, especially to kill your marathon lawn, but it will be worth it!

I think this is Sweet Vernal Grass, Anthoxanthum odoratum. It's edible, tastes sweet, and it smells nice.

This also smells nice, like vanilla. It's called Vanilla Grass (ta da!), Heirochloe odorata. Here it has been whacked for transplanting, but it grows taller than this.

Homesick sounds

This isn't New Land Road.
It's better, actually; it's the road from Batouri to Yaounde.

The ubiquitous "they" say that the sense of smell is one of the strongest connected to memories. When designing therapeutic gardens for Alzheimer patients, for example, landscape designers use plants that will be familiar to older adults--roses, rosemary, lavender, sweet peas--in an effort to trigger memory recall and renewal from events or knowledge somehow tied to those smells in our criss-crossed brains.

Looking up case studies and having actual, solid references would be a good thing for a graduate student to do, but at the moment i'm studying children and play: aromatic therapy gardens will have to wait. I believe "them", however; the scent of freshly cut grass reminds me of my dad mowing the lawn on Saturdays in Pennsylvania and getting all scratchy as i played in piles of freshly mowed grass, cardamom reminds me of Christmas (and now it reminds me of baking Christmas bread with contents of two Republic of Tea Cardamom Cinnamon sachets since i couldn't find cardamom anywhere in the market in Cameroon), violets remind me of my mother and of the funky plywood bathroom shelves in Cameroon where she kept a tiny vial of Yardley's Violet Perfume. I can see that when i smell violets and almost reach out to touch the maroon painted wood and the contact paper lining.

Personally, though, sounds trigger memories as much as scents. I hear a sound, and it takes me somewhere like a summons i cannot disobey. I never know what they are until i hear them--it's not like i can think up a sound memory or many others. For example, last week i ran into a former student--someone i did not remember until i saw her face, and then all these memories about student teaching flooded back. A bit disconcerting it was, and i don't want to know what else is in there.

Anyway, back to sounds. Lumpy railroad tracks intersected my route to work this afternoon, a different way due to an errand. Keys rattled against the steering column as my car wobbled slowly across (slowly because all the raised pick-ups ahead of me had slowed down). My keys rattled, clack cling clack, then silent again.

Cameroon: I heard that sound every time i got a ride to school or market or home. The road was full of deep ruts and cars wobbled slowly as they drove lest an axle be wrenched or a rock scrape the underbelly of the car. Last time i heard that sound was as a passenger, driving out on New Land Road toward the airport, to leave.

Oh, to be this brilliant

This evening some of the second and third year grads and one of the department's former profs met in Pomona to see James Turrell's Skyspace. I didn't go to the gallery with them earlier in the afternoon because i needed more alone time than the weekend afforded, but (after getting lost) i did arrive in time for the evening display.

I didn't take my camera.

I'm going back.

Learning to draw

This week was Modules Week at school. It's a bit like a working spring break. The department brings in emeritus profs and professionals from the community to share their expertise in one-week intense classes. I took drawing--drawing as a means of seeing landscape.

Once i upgrade the memory on my laptop, i'll upload a sketch to show what i learned this week. A long way to go until i'd want to display drawings to anyone, but my prof taught us (me) enough to recognize shadows and light, the shape of things, to remember perspective. I'm proud of my blind contour California poppies, and the gesture sketches of guest speakers. I think i'm still better at diagrams than at anything close to realistic, but Italy should cure that. ;-)

EDIT: Here is a page of the gesture sketches.
They're rough, but hopefully the action or stance of the person is readable. Few eyes because they always look angry when i draw eyes!

It feels like learning to drive: all those things to think of: rear view mirror, side mirror, space cushion ahead, scanning, shifting gears, watching for stale greens & pedestrians; and now driving is like breathing. Maybe, if i practice enough, drawing well will become like that and perspective, diminishing scale, detail, light, shadow, and contours will be more automatic.

On the other hand, i drive 300 sorry miles a week, and i don't think drawing time is going to come close!

I also learned: Collages are an effective way to create perspectives. Legs are really hard to draw. And do not inhale cobalt blue!