The Hollosphere

The sun-warmed branches of the tree outside my window are festooned with pink buds. I’ve watched them day by day, swelling from tiny bumps on the bare gray branches to adolescent pods bursting with pink petals. The dominant local hummingbird has a favorite branch where he stands guard over the nearby feeder, swaying his head rhythmically in complete absorption with his riotous songs. He’s a thumb-sized tough guy unconcerned with the frilliness of his chosen perch or the over-the-top gaudiness of his iridescent feathers—the Eddie Izzard of hummingbirds.

Spring’s exuberant pull seems to tug at me too, with a vague, tickly restlessness for I don’t know what. The steep meadows above the house are thickly coated with orange California poppies, lightly peppered with other wildflowers in blue and white. Furry little bees are bumbling gently about in the sky-colored rosemary blossoms, and white lilac thickens the air with a sweet, heady perfume. Life, life, life, expressing jubilantly and calling my name!

The intense warmth of the sun, the soft scented breezes, the swiftly lengthening days, the bright blossoms nosing up through tender green grass, it’s all such a shock to the senses coming on so swiftly after the long, scorched fall and the cold dampness of winter. Perhaps I’m hardened to the teasing springtime habits of the Northwest weather gods, where heady warm days in March inspire unwary humans to don lightweight clothing and plan outdoor activities, only to be doused with freezing rain or coated with heavy frosts. Or even sprinkled with snow.

Is there someplace I’m supposed to go? Some appointment I’m late for? Or am I simply a mammal among hordes of other mammals and assorted critters nudged by Nature into doing their spring cleaning, traveling, and flirting like clockwork each year? After our hibernation through the dark of winter, spring trails its glorious, petaled raiment across our senses and tickles us to life and love and new beginnings. Who am I to resist?

Conal in the east office window, Easter Sunday. Note the green hillside, which had been burned black by the fire in May 2007.  Yay Nature.

Buttercups on the old stagecoach road near Black Bart’s rock, Murray Creek, California. Photo by Holly.

Thank goodness, and David Leonhardt of The New York Times, for this article on the credit crisis.

When the distress in the credit industry began to percolate last summer, I started reading a great deal more financial news than is normally my habit. I’m interested in the issue of consumer credit, having long had some vague unease about the level of consumer indebtedness that the average American carries. Opportunities to go deeply into debt abound, as anyone with an address for credit card offers to flood into can attest. The escalating problems in the credit industry got my attention in an “Oh no! I knew this house-of-borrowed-cards was going to implode sooner or later!” kind of way.

I figured that if I read enough and studied the matter I would be able to follow events and understand them, if only in a broader sense, to help me contribute to prudent decisions regarding our own household spending. Should we purchase a truck with borrowed money or cash, or not at all? Should we continue our usual spending patterns or cut back? At first, I followed along confidently in my reading of the unfolding events. But then I noticed aspects of the deepening crisis I was reading about starting to sound like some kind of made-up language.

Continue reading ‘Economic Gobbledygook ~ To Grok or Not to Grok’ »

I’m having a lot of fun with our new Canon Powershot AS650 IS, the camera I’ve been lusting after for some time. We got it at Costco, bundled with a photo printer and extra 1G SD card.

One of my favorite subjects is hummingbirds. Here are a couple of the local rowdies.

D’awe, look at those teensie feetses! Don’t be fooled, however, by their diminutive uber-cuteness. Although neither of these birds is even as big as my thumb, they buzz around sporting some serious ‘tude. Hummers are very territorial, and they spend a lot of time and energy chasing each other and trying to be Big Bass Ass Hummer of the ‘Hood. The guy with iridescent head literally stands guard in a tree overlooking one of the feeders, attempting to chase off any interlopers by zooming straight at them and cussing them out in high-pitched, electronic sounding tones.

Some of the birds scare off easily. Others just kind of look at him like, “Whatever, dude,” and go back to sipping their sugar water.

When Conal and I moved to San Andreas from Seattle, we wanted to choose a new bank. Our previous bank’s nearest location was an hour’s drive away. We don’t need to physically go to the bank all that often, but often enough to make that long of a drive unappetizing.

Our not-too-terribly scientific manner of choosing from the several banks with San Andreas locations involved walking in to each one, asking for a rundown of services and fees and a brochure, and seeing if we liked the atmosphere of the place. We did actually look at the brochures. A bit. Mostly, we wanted to enjoy our new bank as much as we had enjoyed the Lake Forest Park branch of Washington Mutual, which to us meant evaluating which outfit had the friendliest personalities and atmosphere.

Central State Credit Union won us over with their smiles and warm welcome. At a glance it appeared our accounting needs would be met with their services. We opened our accounts and began the process of moving our primary banking to CSCU.

I do nearly all our banking business online. Bone-headedly, I did not ask to see each bank’s online interface to find out if I would like it before we made our choice. Unfortunately, I did not like CSCU’s account interface very much. But by then, we had already set up our accounts. I figured I’d eventually get used to it.

Well, a few more technical issues popped up, and I considered changing banks again several times. Each time, however, I decided that the amazingly friendly and efficient service I got whenever I had a problem or a question was something that I enjoyed and valued very much.

Then things got really wacky.

Continue reading ‘My Friendly Bank’ »

The New York Times (login may be required) posted an article today about Wal-Mart’s new product review blog, which they call Check Out. I had previously only been aware of Wally World’s crap-orate BS sites, aimed at polishing the company’s increasingly tarnished rep, and which were finally shut down. Kudos to Wal-Mart for giving up on pulling the wool over our eyes.

Dear friends and family, who are likely the only ones reading this blog o’ mine, you may be aware that I’m not a huge fan of Wal-Mart. Even so, I’m smiling to read the Times’ assessment that Wal-Mart has really and truly unleashed its buyers to speak freely. And not only about laptops and video games, although tech reviews are a foundational part of the blog. These are apparently real people, speaking up in their own voices in real time, and without much editing of their content by the higher-ups.

My God, they are even quoting Robert Scoble. What is the world coming to?

I’m choosing to believe that the world is moving, if oh-so-agonizingly slowly, toward the point where corporate-washed PR attempts to disguise the true inner workings of a company no longer work, and that we’re getting a peek into the testing of a more open, people-centered business culture. I’m betting that the results of this test will be very positive, and that the “preserve and protect” cultural and business model has got one more (granted very, very tiny, but hey, they all count) chink in its well-oiled armor. After all, everything Wal-Mart does, whether for good or ill, is hugely impactful. What if all that inertia were to moving toward a model of openness, inclusiveness for all, evolution and aliveness? The mind boggles.

That doesn’t mean I’ll be shopping there anytime soon, though.

When I lived in Seattle, I belonged to an outdoor club called The Mountaineers. I got a lot out of my membership, taking courses in mountaineering-oriented first aid, alpine scrambling (off-trail, non-technical climbing), and orienteering, and going to occasional social dances and on lots of group hikes, snowshoes, x-country ski trips, and the like.

The maximum number of people allowed on any given hike was twelve. The hikes I chose usually set out from the trail head with full attendance. I had fun, got to do some things I might not have tried otherwise, and met lots of interesting people. I also discovered that I preferred to spend my precious wilderness time with just one friend or, even better, alone.

A hike with twelve people can’t help but have a social flavor. People chat with each other, meeting for the first time that morning or getting reacquainted with other regulars or old friends. I found that I could enjoy it as a social gathering, but it eventually became clear to me that social connection was not what I went to the mountains for. What I wanted was to melt into the wilderness, to tiptoe through the landscape and keep my eyes peeled for what was going on with the forest and its inhabitants.

Continue reading ‘Home Sweet Wilderness’ »

We have woodpeckers. Acorn woodpeckers, I think they are, specifically. Each morning as the sun comes up, we are jolted awake by their rapid pounding on the house. Often, they go at it in twos and threes, making a heckuva racket. We get up out of bed, shoo them away, and go on about our day. As the day proceeds, our activities are punctuated by frequent hollering sessions at the boogers as they return again and again and again.

The hammering noise is bad enough. What distresses me even more is the damage that they do to the house siding and fascia boards. They drill holes everywhere, poke acorns into the holes, even jamming acorns under the edges of the roofing material, to the point of lifting it away from its underlayment.

Our house is surrounded by lovely oak and pine forests. I wondered what was so compelling about our house (and Ann’s next door, which over the decades is being slowly turned into a swiss cheese of ‘pecker holes) to attract them away from the trees all around. A few minutes of online investigation informed me that the little blighters have more than one motivation for banging on things with their heads.

One reason they drill, I learned, is to hollow out spaces to make their nests. Another reason is going after insects in the wood. I don’t think I’ve seen the kind of damage I would guess to indicate either of those behaviors, however, based on the examples I found. A third reason may be at work in our case.

Continue reading ‘Enemy Mine’ »

Sometimes, if it’s been days since I’ve been to town, say, or seen a car or another human being besides Conal, I think to myself I’m becoming a real hillbilly. And then I realize… oh.  Wow.  Maybe not so much.