More Stuff…

One of my San Diego friends, knowing that I had just read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and another of Marie Kondo’s books, Joy¹, gave me a copy of The Story of Stuff, by Annie Leonard.  The subtitle (it seems you need subtitles nowadays – Tidying Up has The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing) is The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-And How We Can Make It Better.  It is way depressing.  A snippet:

In the 1950’s, the chairman of President Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisors stated, “The American economy’s ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods.”  Really?  Rather than to provide health care, safe communities, solid education for our youngsters, or a good quality of life…

So I wouldn’t recommend that you read the book, unless you’re up for a downer.  However, she has made a 20-minute online movie, which (very quickly) summarizes the book, and I do recommend that you watch it (just click here): story-of-stuff. The only thing that bothers me about the movie is that she is too perky about a depressing subject (as opposed to Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth).

And speaking of Stuff:

DETROIT — A gun was pulled after two pairs of women fought over the last notebook on a shelf at a Walmart in Michigan this week, according to police.²  (Photo from  © James Dingeldey Video footage of a woman pulling out a gun at a Walmart in Novi.)

A notebook.  Really.

The other book I’m reading now is A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold.  Lovely charcoal drawings throughout by Charles Schwartz.

Admired by an ever-growing number of readers and imitated by hundreds of writers, A Sand County Almanac serves as one of the cornerstones of modern conservation science, policy, and ethics. First published by Oxford University Press in 1949, it has become a conservation classic.³

It is depressing in a different way.  He poetically describes all that he sees, but also writes about all of the animals and plants that have been eliminated from our planet due to “progress.”  However, he isn’t strident about it.  He killed many of the animals for his own meals, but the tree that he cut up for firewood had been downed by a lightning strike.  It is quietly sad.

On April nights when it has become warm enough to sit outdoors, we love to listen to the proceedings of the convention in the marsh.  There are long periods of silence when one hears only the winnowing of snipe, the hoot of a distant owl, or the nasal clucking of some amorous coot.  Then, of a sudden, a strident honk resounds, and in an instant pandemonium echoes. There is a beating of pinions on water, a rushing of dark prows propelled by churning paddles, and a general shouting by the onlookers of a vehement controversy.  Finally some deep honker has his last word, and the noise subsides to that half-audible small-talk that seldom ceases among geese…

It is a kind providence that has withheld a sense of of history from the thousands of species of plants and animals that have exterminated each other to build the present world. The same kind providence now withholds it from us. Few grieved when the last buffalo left Wisconsin, and few will grieve when the last Silphium follows him to the lush prairies of the never-never land.

These animals have not been eliminated by Oro Valley yet:

Bobcat

First time I’ve seen one in this yard.  Was working at the computer when I saw it, ran for the camera in the bedroom and got these shots from there.  Probably should have knocked on the window so it looked at me.  The third photo is it on top of the wall before it jumped into the neighbor’s yard.  I also grabbed my cat and put her on her stool so she could see it too.  Explained to her that was why she wasn’t going out any more.  She was very attentive.  (I mentioned the bobcat to my neighbor, so she’d watch out for her small dog.  She said the couple in this rental before me had a small dog.  One night they let it out, and never saw it again.  So it could have been the bobcat.)

Roadrunner

First time I’ve seen one of these in this yard too.  (This taken from the family room.)

Doves

Each evening seven mourning doves sit on my back fence.  Tightly knit family?

Towhee

An Albert’s towhee has been attacking my office window for the past three days.  This is the wrong season.  They typically attack their reflections in the spring, competing for mates.  Also, usually brightly colored birds do it, as they can more easily see their reflections.  Three houses ago there was a male cardinal who would attack the office window.  Was afraid he’d hurt himself, but a website said no.

Catalina Mountains

Of course, another photo of these gorgeous mountains.

¹https://notesfromthewest.wordpress.com/2017/08/10/stuff/
²gun-pulled-in-fight-between-back-to-school-shoppers
³https://www.aldoleopold.org/about/aldo-leopold/sand-county-almanac/

Seen Today

Saturday, February 9, 2013

This morning I awoke to rain.  When the sun came out a hummingbird zipped along the rosemary.  A friend called and said that there was snow on the Catalinas, but I can’t see them from my house; in the afternoon when I went out it was gone.  The clouds look foreboding; we may get more rain.

5:45 pm

A very large bobcat just walked across my bedroom patio, at least four times my cat’s size, with paws about ten times as large.  I was so engrossed in the newspaper that I only noticed the motion as he strode behind the chaise.  Of course I grabbed my camera, but he didn’t pause for a photo op, just continued through my fence to the wash.  My cat was sound asleep at my feet.

When I left the house at 6 pm the Catalinas were larger than usual, a rosy pink, with sharp shadows of dusty blue.  The grey-blue clouds above them were color-coordinated, illuminated to pink beneath by the setting sun.

Monty Python Accents

It’s not insomnia; I just often wake up in the middle of the night.  If I can’t get right back to sleep I turn on the radio, and at three in the morning NPR runs the BBC.  So the other night I heard two guys with Monty Python accents discussing Barcelona soccer star Lionel Messi earning an estimated $43.5 million.  I thought that this must be some Monty Python joke, or maybe part of my dream.

But, in the light of day, I googled him and found that his wages and bonuses were “only” $15.8 million, but he also had $27.7 million in endorsements¹.  Then I googled highest earning American athletes including endorsements and found The 50 highest-earning American Athletes².  Last year, the boxer, Floyd Mayweather, who was unranked a year ago, scored two huge pay-per-view paydays to earn $85 million without a single endorsement. 

He beat Tiger, who only got $59.4M for 2012. ($4.4M in winnings, $55M in endorsements.  Guess the wife v. girlfriend brouhaha has blown over.  Nobody’s paying attention to his latest blond, a 22-year old!)

¹http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/20/report-messi-tops-money-earnings-with-435m/
²http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes%27_list_of_world%27s_highest-paid_athletes

Blizzard

California’s blizzard is headed for us.

In Laguna Beach, where businesses were flooded last week with water and mud flowing down canyons, flood-control drains contained the heavy burst of overnight rain. The storm that hammered the West Coast on Wednesday will move into the Southwest and Rockies today and toward the northern Plains and upper Midwest on New Year’s Eve. Today, heavy snow is forecast across the higher elevations of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming.

It poured all of last night, causing my little wash to run, and the wind was so strong that one of my patio chairs was blown across the deck.

Clouds shroud the mountains, but the snow level isn’t as low as predicted. Tonight the low is to be 27°, tomorrow night 22°. I’ll cover my pots of coleus and bougainvillea, and add a light under each of them. The sweet potato vine is probably hopeless. (I covered the bougainvillea and vine for the unseasonably early freeze in November, but they were both hit badly, hence the added light.)

So it’s one of those gray days that Tucson rarely sees. The tree branches, despite the wind whipping them around, are covered with diamonds of raindrops. Most of the yard is still green (or the gray-blue of the cactus), but the frost-tender plants, the red and yellow birds of paradise, the yellow bells, the lantana, are stalks of brown leaves.

The only wildlife in view is a hummingbird darting over the pale blue flowers of the rosemary, and a dozen goldfinches flitting back and forth to the birdfeeder.

I have a bit of a sore throat – have I picked something up from the grandkids? Enough to substitute hot tea with lemon and honey for my morning latte. A good day to snuggle in bed with a book. (Reading Tinkers, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.)