Digging through some old images, stumbled across this one, shot by Miles (age six) while playing with my camera. Quite beautiful … seems to have a real sense for the camera. He must get that from his mother.
Peter Brantley, Vision Forum, Swedenborg
Birdhouse Hosting is pleased to welcome several new web sites that have gone live over the past few weeks:
This blog seeks to advance the use of network-based communications and media to develop new services and products that enable people to enrich their lives and transform our society through web and mobile technologies.
The VISION FORUM, a ministry of the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration, was founded in 2008 to increase awareness of the reality of the human condition and the promise of hope and healing offered through education and the arts leading toward a sustainable, just, and peaceful world.
Finally, a lovely church site for a wonderful local community:
The mission of the Hillside Community Church is to provide a place of worship for the community and to facilitate spiritual growth.
Mt. Diablo Solo
Another great solo day trekking Bay Area backroads – this time to Mt. Diablo. Not having a full day to play with, drove in half way and parked at a placed called Junction, then hit the Summit trail and hiked all the way up. 82 degrees heading in, but temps dropped as I neared the peak. Wind started whipping, and black streaks of rain separated from the clouds. Only ended up getting dumped on for five minutes, thankfully. Exhausted by end of day.
Surpassed the 300 geocache finds marked, and then some. Also nabbed three “earthcaches,” which have no container or log but instead are about discovering and learning about some unique geological feature. Highlight of day – doing the multi-cache at the summit. After I had done the math and got to the final location, took the cap off a fencepost and was greeted not by the cache but by a colony of swarming earwigs, right out of a horror movie. Awshum.
Some devilishly clever containers today – like the normal-looking pinecone shown, and the fake plumbing – you had to remove the pipe assembly, then turn the valve and a Bison tube tumbled out. Loved it.
Slideshow above does not include captions – view set at Flickr for those.
Significant Objects
Birdhouse Hosting is happy to welcome Significant Objects, the latest brainchild from Hermenaut Josh Glenn. The project is so interesting I’m going to run the whole back-story:
Rob Walker and I are amateur students of the “cathexis” via which significance accrues to inanimate objects, particularly ones that aren’t as obviously meaningful as, say, heirlooms, travel souvenirs, or objets d’art. Rob’s “Consumed” column in the New York Times Magazine attempts to figure out why consumers respond the way they to do particular products, from consumer items to TV shows; while a book that I coedited, “Taking Things Seriously,” asked 75 writers, artists, and other creative types to describe the surprising significance of unlikely-looking objects found in their homes, offices, and studios.
Agreeing that narrative — stories — is the vehicle through which insignificant objects become significant, Rob and I decided we’d run a test. We’d ask authors to tell stories about worthless objects that Rob and I had purchased at thrift stores and yard sales for a couple of bucks at most. Would said objects then become significant? If so, how to measure such a transformation? Rob’s brilliant/funny solution: Put the objects on eBay, using the authors’ stories as the Item Description (while making it clear that the story was fictional), then see if the objects sell for more than we paid for ’em. We’d pass along all proceeds from the eBay sales to the authors; and we’d send the item and also the story to the winning bidders.
So this spring we contacted 35 authors, some of whom we knew and admired, and others whom we just admired. The response has been very gratifying, indeed. Posted today: Great object-oriented stories by Lydia Millet, Matthew Battles, Annie Nocenti, Lucinda Rosenfeld, and Luc Sante. Coming soon: More objects, and stories by Stewart O’Nan, Matthew Sharpe, Cintra Wilson, Ben Greenman, Michelle Tea, Kurt Andersen, Rebecca Wolff, Mark Frauenfelder, and Bruce Sterling, among other talents. Eventually we hope to publish 75, or maybe 100, stories about these ex-insignificant objects.
I won’t keep sending emails, but we will post one or more new objects/stories to the website every weekday. So stay tuned! Please read the stories, leave comments, bid on objects (cheap!), and most importantly, please help me SPREAD THE WORD.
Tomales Bay Trek Day
Playing bachelor for a few weeks while Amy and Miles spend time in Minnesota and I return to CA to get back to work. Taking the opportunity to do things I never get to do with family… like spend an entire day hiking rather than just a couple hours. Yesterday decided to geocache the entire rim of Tomales Bay. Knew it would have to be a combined drive/hike thing. Ended up driving almost 200 miles total, and hiking 15.
Day got off to a bad start with horrendous Bay Area July 4th exodus traffic, overcast skies, and a starter string of three DNFs (Did Not Finds). But things quickly turned around – everything turned gorgeous when the sun came out, the caches kept getting better, and the hikes got longer. Favorite cache of the day was Crivens! – on a peninsula half-mile off the road. Trekking through walls of blackberry taller than me, out toward a perfect blue bay, with amazing views. While most caches are filled with forgettable geo-crap, this one had an excellent Mullet-scented air freshener (yes, that kind of mullet) and a USB “humping dog.”
The west side of the bay was quite a bit trickier, since most of the rim is in State Park area. Access to caches much harder than it appeared on a map. Decided to hike to Johnstone rather than pay the $6 parking fee. So glad I did – descended through deep dark woods with bluebirds and chipmunks, got some major heart pumping action on the way back up. Dropped off some travel bugs I had carried home from Minnesota.
The scene changed completely for the last cache of the day as I headed toward the Pacific side for Kehoe Beach earthcache. Suddenly it was about salt mist and jellyfish, sand and dense fog. Reminded me of Morro Bay. This one was a major geology lesson – needed to photograph quartz veins running through granite cliffs and read about five pages of text on the local geological forces to answer the questions needed to log the find. If I nail it, will be my first verified earthcache find.
Getting very close to hitting the elusive 300-cache mark… but I’d much rather spend two hours on a great hike for a single well-placed cache than do 15 parking lot drive-bys in the same amount of time. The key is to remain process-oriented, rather than goal-oriented, and never let the drive for numbers outweigh the joy of the great outdoors and honest exercise.
Wrapped day with a well-earned dinner of Full Sail and raw / BBQ’d oysters at Tony’s. BBQ’d is nice, but IMO the only way to show an oyster your full respect and attention is to eat it raw. Heaven.
Completely fried by end of day. Showered, fell onto couch, and watched the fantastic but campy 1971 eco-disaster sci-fi flick Silent Running ’till I passed out.
Animated route from GPS (combined driving/hiking):
(click Replay to view)
Carver Park Reserve
Wrapping up an excellent – but sad – 10 days with relatives in Minnesota. Excellent because Minnesota is always excellent this time of year, lush and verdant, with endless trails and meadows fed by those famous 10,000 lakes. Excellent because it was wonderful to see family and because I really needed the downtime. Sad because we were there to say farewell to my father-in-law, who passed away a few weeks ago and is deeply missed by all of us.
Click Replay for hike animation
Wrapped up the visit with a lovely 3-mile walk through Carver Park Reserve with the family and kids through rolling hills. Returned with a few tics and lots of great memories.
Farewell Ben – we’ll always miss you.