The Urban Pantheist

Alexis in the bathroom of a house we were looking at. (No shower?!)

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This seems like a good opportunity to bring up the rural nature lover paradox which, roughly stated is: "People who love nature move there and ruin it." Pretty good comments section in the post in the link above, taking me to task and offering alternatives. Worth a read, especially if you feel like disputing the paradox.

As for me, well I've defined myself in a very deep way as "Urban" since 1998 or so. But at this point in my life, it would make things much easier on me if I had a bit of land to run the dogs. It would also make me happy to have a place to keep a composter, and a place to sit and watch the seasons pass from a lawn chair, and maybe even some chickens to provide some eggs for our breakfast. I actually spent the first 7 years of my life in the wooded hills of Connecticut (it's not all suburban NYC) and feel more at home in the forest than almost any other place--I need trees around me.

On the other hand I love the fact that I live in a city, and that exciting cultural things are happening all around me. I don't take advantage of them nearly enough, but they are happening, and when I want to partake in them, I have many to choose from. I can buy a coffee with my bank card within walking distance of my home 24 hours a day, and I can walk to my choice of six or seven bars, four grocery stores, a yoga place, a puppet theater, or a ceramics studito (none of the latter I've actually been to).

Our compromise appears to be the outer, Southwestern part of Portland Oregon. For the price of our little Brookline condo we can get a small house with a big yard, with money left over for home improvements. "The city" would be a few miles northeast, full of all the things a city offers. Forest Park, a monstrous rainforest, pokes into the heart of the city itself, actually reducing the city's heat island effect and providing a nearby source of spirit-restoring trees. We're at least two years away from this major change, as Alexis wants to pursue a career move and associated school program, and the thought of it terrifies and excites me.

Ice on the bank of the Muddy.

Back a few months ago--maybe a full year ago?--I opened the floor to questions about mushrooms, to help me prepare for teaching a class on the subject. I got a question about "marine" or "aquatic" mushrooms. I explained that the way a mushroom works, releasing spores into the air, wouldn't really work underwater, so there weren't any I knew about and probably weren't any. But wouldn't you know it some plucky mycologists in Oregon of all places found fleshy fungal fruiting bodies in the flow of a river. It doesn't appear that the scientists completely understand how it works yet, but they have named it and put it in a genus alongside some well known species, though at the moment it is the only known mushroom in this habitat. I should have been paying better attention, as it's been known about for at least two years. This article has a picture.

While I was walking the dogs in the Arboretum on Sunday, a young man stopped me and asked if he could take my picture. After a quick snap and a couple more questions I gave him one of my Muddy River project cards. Today he posted an article (for a journalism class it appears) about the arboretum to his blog. His pictures of the place are nice (are those beautyberries?) except for the weird bag man with his two pit bulls--what a character!

Finally, Alexis wants this house.

The Advocate just published their list of the 15 Gayest U.S. Cities. What's most surprising are the omissions. NO San Francisco, NO Provincetown, NO Key West. The criteria used to determine gayness were: Same-sex couples per capita (anti-single bias!), Statewide Marriage Equality (So long, California cities!), Gay Elected Officials, Gay Bars per capita (there goes Salt Lake City's chances), and then some weird web-based ones including cruising spots and Netflix favorites.

Why do I care? Because gay-friendly cities are more liberal and more well-educated and more cultured, and those are the kinds of places I want to live. Sorry if it's a stereotype, but gay people being out of the closet strongly correlates with art museums, colleges, and Democrats.

So the Advocate's site spreads the results over 6 pages, probably to boost ad revenue. I've listed them behind the cut for your convenience:
( Read more... )

November this year was more pleasant than June, by a long shot. December's started out pretty nicely as well. Today was almost 70 in Boston, way above that in the Berkshires, according to one friend. Meanwhile, it's about to snow for the second time this week in Austin. Does it really matter where we move? Saturday there is wintry mix in the forecast, so maybe I'll start feeling angry about the winter here again.

How do you like it?

For some reason I didn't notice until just now that the Portland Zoo insect keeper job is a temporary (May-September) position only. It would be idiotic to leave my wife for a year for a temporary job (considering that it would be pretty hard to get another one at the end of it) so I'm going to let my anxiety about writing a cover letter go. That feels pretty good. Plus, if they hire a new insect keeper every year, I can try again next year, right?

The predictions for tomorrow's snow keep going up. Apparently Boston Public Schools are already canceled for the day. We have a Big Deal thing happening in my department at work, but it involves bringing in outside people, who probably won't want to drive in a foot of snow to get to the zoo. I should figure out which things are causing the most anxiety and do what I can to alleviate them. I think it's the Pest Control Class, followed by the emcee gig. The class involves modifying the existing powerpoint, which isn't something I've done before. I know it's a pretty easy program to use, I just have to take a whack at it, and do some run-throughs to see how it looks.

The emcee thing, well, what can I do? Write jokes? The zookeepers are getting excited about their group outfits; I find the enthusiasm a little intimidating. Will my role fit in with the zeitgeist of the night? Good lord, the things I find to get anxious about.

I don't know what this new year will bring with it. I see it as a bridge year, where big changes that are going to happen in the following year will get their start.

The kid is going to start her Senior year in high school in September; This means that changes that have been put off until she moves on with her life will have to be confronted. The pressure to avoid another New England winter will push very hard at our roots.

Then there's the promise of a new Presidential Administration, and the incredible challenges that this young man will have to lead our country through. I still have hope, and I'm still optimistic that this new inclusive, unity-building kind of presidency can make some real positive changes. We have to be prepared for the fact that Obama simply can't do all the things that were promised in the campaign, but that he is a better leader for our challenges than Bush, Cheney, McCain, and many others. Hillary will have a major role in restoring the world's confidence in the United States, and I'm happy to see Bill Richardson and other prominent democrats in the cabinet. I hope Obama's selection of republicans for certain roles will help bring unity, and encourage the right wing to try to work with the Administration, rather than attempting to stonewall everything they do.

As far as the decision to include Rick Warren in the inauguration, Adam Felber has some encouraging words about that.

I don't have a blog project for 2009, and even though I agonized over it in 2008 and ended up with a collection of small unfinished projects, I'm not going to let it bother me. I like where this liejournal thing is now. It offers me a good place to express myself in a variety of ways, and I love the constant input from and dialogue with lj friends and "anonymous."

I'm thinking I might do a picture a day thing, just to keep me looking around. Miz Geek's shopping cart series was very inspiring. She took pictures of this abandoned shopping cart in the swamp near her house, and this morning posted the whole year. Locked in ice in January, anchoring amphibian eggs in April, dry in July and submerged again in August. A man made object thrust into nature; a piece of garbage from on viewpoint, but so much more in that series of photos.

I don't usually thing of the calendar year as being so important as other turning points in the year. If I had my way, the Spring Equinox would be the new year mark. Two weeks into the winter makes no sense at all.

It's pretty out there today, and I'm glad to have the day off. We'll walk the dogs in the snow, but will probably cuddle and watch Heroes for most of it. Happy New Year everyone.

My happy things for yesterday were easy to know.

1. Never going more than 2 blocks from my house all day, and rarely even leaving my bed. That hasn't happened in years. Parking my car at work all weekend meant not having to play moving cars roulette with the city lot and our parking space.

2. The Solstice. I need more light. MORE LIGHT! Now it's coming.

In related news:

Portland Oregon, a shoo in for "most likely moving place" for us, has lost a lot of its lustre in the past week. I know that it's unusual weather, but the whole Pacific Northwest looks disconcertingly like New England this week. Of course, since it doesn't happen all the time, the city is unprepared, and the portland lj community is full of desperate pleas of various kinds (mostly "what liquor stores are open?!") and discussion of tire chains. Tire chains? Didn't those go out with the invention of snow tires, except for crossing the Donner Pass in January? Those poor bastards are in snow covered raincoats, eating xmas cookies intended for friends they can't reach, wondering what pizza place has a sherman tank that can get through their unsalted roads to feed them.

How are things in Austin, my Austiney friends?

Paying attention to politics angries up my blood.  Watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on hulu.com helps a little bit.  Now that the conventions are over, maybe I'll stop thinking about it for a little while.

I just read this news story.  The gist of it is that one guy is complaining that the local game and wildlife service (of Pennsylvania) didn't respond to his calls about an emu on the loose.  First, that's stupid.  Emus in North America are livestock.  Call animal control.  Second, as a footnote in the story, the police eventually responded to the situation and did what police seem to do every time they are confused.  They tasered the emu.  Yes, you read that correctly, faced with a large, loose, exotic animal, the cop shot the animal full of painful electricity.  Good going!  Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint, the emu dropped dead rather than running headlong into traffic or civilians or something.  Does nobody own a fucking net?  Whatever happened to dogcatchers and their big nets?  Can we put a moratorium on police taser use until they stop using them on animals and nonviolent protesters?

Here's a kind of cool story.  In an certain zoo's animal hospital, it was noticed that some of the poison dart frogs were getting thin.  Upon close observation, the frogs were targeting and striking, but not capturing the prey (wingless fruit flies).  One vet, a herpetology specialist, had the idea that a vitamin deficiency could be the cause.  The mucus-secreting cells on a frog's tongue are adversely affected by a lack of vitamin A.  The tongue becomes less sticky, so that the prey does not stick to it.  After a topical application of vitamin A supplement, the dart frogs were able to successfully catch their prey.

In other interesting zoo animal news, the world's heaviest flying bird (a bit heavier than a wild turkey and about tied with the mute swan) is the kori bustard of sub-Saharan Africa.  It needs large territories away from humans in order to survive, so expanding human populations and the encroachment of agriculture is threatening its survival.  Adding insult to injury is the fact that its feathers are highly prized for the bizarre hobby of fly-tying.  This is a craft wherein bits of feather are cut and and shaped and affixed to a hook, to mimic the appearance of a flying insect that lives near fresh water.  Sometimes these are even used in an attempt to catch fish, or lure tourists to Montana.  (I kid; even my writing hero David Quammen puts on rubber pants and wades into freezing water in an attempt to snag trout with an artificial caddisfly.)  These hobbyists will pay obscene amounts of money for their desired feathers.  Hunters and poachers in Africa are all too willing to kill bustards to satisfy the market for their feathers.  Part of the Species Survival Program for the kori bustard is an attempt to flood the market with cheap or free feathers to whomever wants them--a donation is asked for, but that's all.  There are about 150 kori bustards in captivity around the world.  Hopefully they can help protect the species from this peculiar source of predation.

On a personal note, Alexis and I have been doing more fantasy home shopping, but strangely they've all been in the same area.  Hmmmm...

Today was probably the last hot day of the year.  I celebrated by getting sweaty and filthy at work.


EDIT:  One last political note.  Earlier this week I made a flip joke about Hillary supporters voting for the Dark Side because of the VP pick over there happens to share their anatomy.  An old classmate of mine has made buttons (and stickers and shirts?) that cleverly refute the assumption that women would do such a thing.