The Adventures of Sunny Girl: Existential Cat

For Kris.

Recent videos of a similarly personal nature:

• The Adventures of Adam & Sarah: they drop by

Fear in Holland

From the LEDE: After Danish Cartoons, Dutch Film Sparks More Worries:

.....The aftermath has flowed predictably enough since Feb. 13, when Danish newspapers reprinted cartoons that sparked fury among Muslims around the world in 2006: There was more fury.
.....Street protests started in the streets of Copenhagen and spread to Sudan, Pakistan, Turkey and other parts of the Islamic world. Now, after more than a month, comes what might be the direst reaction in Osama bin Laden’s latest message.
.....“Publishing these insulting drawings,” he said, “is the greatest misfortune and the most dangerous.”
.....An analyst interviewed by The Associated Press interpreted the message as a “clear threat against E.U. member countries and an indicator of a possible upcoming significant attack.”
.....In The New York Times today, Michael Kimmelman writes that “many Europeans seem fed up,” including some of the cartoonists. One has been moving from safe house to safe house to elude any assassins, while another is struggling to find meaning in the second printing….
.....Meanwhile, a politician two countries away is planning to release a movie that has “triggered a panic in the Netherlands that could only be likened to the dread leading up to a massive storm,” according to Der Spiegel, a German magazine.
.....Geert Wilders’s 15-minute film reportedly juxtaposes excerpts from the Koran with beheadings and stonings on a split screen, a warning of “the threat of the growing Islamization of Western society,” he said in an interview with a Danish TV station, Reuters reported.
.....Even before the film’s release, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands insisted that his country did not share the views of Mr. Wilders, who is the subject of death threats — threats made all the more unsettling by the 2004 murder of another Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, who was killed for being “an enemy of Islam,” the killer said.
.....“I strongly condemn Geert Wilders’s condescending statements about Muslims,” Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark said on Wednesday, according to Reuters. “I find these expressions extremely offensive.”….

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "Orion walks waist deep"

.....Spring!
.....Once again.
.....Today's poem, courtesy of Kenneth Rexroth, from his cycle titled, "Toward an Organic Philosophy."

SPRING, COAST RANGE

The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless,
The circle of white ash widens around it.
I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time
I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller.
Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw;
The moon has come before them, the light
Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees.
It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish,
Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons;
The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall.
There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now.
There were sheep here after the farm, and fire
Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch,
The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil
Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat
And plate the surface like scales.
Twenty years ago the spreading gully
Toppled the big oak over onto the house.
Now there is nothing left but the foundations
Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge,
Six lonely, ominous fenceposts;
The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge
Over the deep waterless creek bed;
The hills are covered with wild oats
Dry and white by midsummer.
I walk in the random survivals of the orchard.
In a patch of moonlight a mole
Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein;
Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean;
Leo crouches under the zenith.
There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees.
The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible.
As the wind dies down their fragrance
Clusters around them like thick smoke.
All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight
They are silent and immaculate.

Recent images, recent things

Mr. Moon, two or three hours ago.

Looking east, again, two or three hours ago.

Flag waving, a turd in a punchbowl, along Santiago Canyon, yesterday.

My Chrysler 300, along Santiago Canyon, yesterday, a mile or two above Cook's Corner.

Burnt tree on hill, in the new grass, sprouting leaves. Yesterday, along Santiago Canyon Road.

Sand Canyon, just a few days ago, looking north. It sure has changed.

I think this fellow will go far:

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "Winter is dead."

SOMETIMES their household is all Winnie-the-Pooh, which Rebel Girl prefers, she must admit, to Harry Potter.

It was A.A. Milne, yesterday, all the way down the snowy mountain.

Selections from "When We Were Very Young," poems like this one:

"They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
'A soldier's life is terrible hard,'
says Alice."



Ah, Christopher Robin, Alice, a tubby bear, a dormouse, the King of France, pictures books with knights and ladies. Why is Alice marrying a soldier? What kind of mouse is a dormouse?

As the reader, a bear-like Charles Kuralt, announced each title, the little guy would announce from the back seat: "I love that poem!"


They had had a weekend away – the end of winter together. Unexpected snow. The first trout of the season. The little guy's first loose tooth.

This next poem they enjoyed, then Rebel Girl paused the tape and reminded the little guy of the daffodils by the Santa Ana river. The day before she and he had pulled their frilled yellow heads out of the snow. Do you see the flower in the poem, she asked, the daffodil?

He did not.

He saw a girl, with a yellow hat and a green dress.



Listen, she told him - it's about a flower too. It about two things at once. The poet is giving human qualties to the flower. She rewound the tape. She pressed play.

He listened again. This time he saw the flower and the girl. He saw the flowers that they had seen together at the riverside the day before and he saw the one that A.A. Milne had described - all at once. A wonder.

by A.A. Milne:

Daffo-down-dilly

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,
She wore her greenest gown;
She turned to the south wind
And curtsied up and down.
She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbour:
"Winter is dead".

Tenure, the Movie

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: Tenure, the Movie:

Higher education has provided plenty of plots for film, with student oriented movies the most likely to pack in audiences. Campus hijinks have always been popular (think “Animal House“). Getting into college featured prominently in “Risky Business” and “Orange County.” Faculty stories also get told of course, with many an academic novel having been dramatized. But tales of infidelity, failure, and visions of political correctness tend to dominate — such as the stories in the films “Wonder Boys,” “We Don’t Live Here Anymore” or “The Human Stain.”

But what about tenure? It’s about to have its 15 minutes of Hollywood fame. Blowtorch Entertainment will next month begin filming on “Tenure,” which is about a college professor coming up for tenure (Luke Wilson) and facing off against a female rival who recently arrived at (fictional) Grey College. (The part of the institution will be played by Bryn Mawr College, where the movie will be shot.) David Koechner will play the professorial sidekick to the Wilson character, and the production company is planning kickoff events next year to promote the film in college towns.

…Addy N., the blogger whose recent promotion made moot the blog title What an Untenured College Professor Shouldn’t Be Doing, said via e-mail: “I guess the problem I’ll have with the movie is that it will be what Hollywood thinks the process should be like, rather than what really happens. I guess if they told the real story it wouldn’t be as entertaining, though. There would be lots of people sitting at computers writing papers and grant proposals.” If the producers “make the movie in a way that the masses will enjoy,” then “we academics will say ‘that’s not how it works.’ “

Elaine Showalter, a professor emeritus of English at Princeton University, wrote about depictions of academic life in Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents (University of Pennsylvania Press). She said she had a tough time thinking of tenure as a major plot line in film. “Somehow the sturm and drang of university life has not appealed to the entertainment industry,” she said….

Today, along Santiago Canyon Road

Had to go into town for some supplies. Just got back.

Along the way, I took some shots along Santiago Canyon Road, mostly across from the entrance to Modjeska Grade. All of the trees had been burned, but, as you can see, they're sprouting all sorts of greenery.

Somehow, it seems especially quiet today. Not like yesterday, which was a bit blustery and ended with some wonderful lightning flashes and slow, rolling thunder.

I used a polarizing filter. Way cool, I say.


This is the creek as it comes out of Modjeska Canyon. Whoever lives there puts up loony warning signs in Spanish about electification. Who they kiddin'?

Or maybe the folks there go by the name "Electrocutar." Could be.

"Home of Wayne and Estelle Electrocutar. Welcome!"