4.01k suit run roundup

for anyone who missed the important meeting this last Saturday, here are a few photos, beginning w/ everyone starting up on Wall Street:



summary: 20+ real serious types, well-groomed, fancy photographers, wingtips, blouses, bluetooths(blueteeth?), a stroller, all kinds of jaywalking, conference calls and networking, an unscheduled jaunt through the farmers market, snacks, high-tech prizes, a plazaful of tiny geysers, a bride and groom (?), God Bless America (??), handshakes. "thanks for coming." breakfast.

for more detail, see the latter half of these July pics on picasa.
and there are plenty more photos all over facebonk, I recommend starting w/ Abigail's gallery.

if you've got photos too, please post any links in the comments section. congratulations all, a very productive morning.

Shopping for Independence Day

You need certain things for the marinade:
Ginger root, olive oil, garlic, soy sauce, Coca-Cola.

Giant plastic letters mounted to the concrete above the entrance.
The letters are sky blue, and a pair of crows sit atop the “a”.
Iridescent, mouths open, they pant in the shimmering heat.
One hops onto the r, the m, a, c, y, and flies off.

Deep inside, way in back, there’s a shallow marine tank.
Surrounded by schools of static, headless fillets.

Bubbles. The lobsters wait like strangers, cocks and hens
Each for its day, to whistle and snap like firecrackers.
Fastened to the armored wrist of one, a barnacle.
Still pulsing, it reaches and strains, licking the desert suspension for particles.

An analogue watch, set to a more tidal rhythm. A lunar calendar
beating within our Gregorian grid of bank holidays.

But there we go, anthropomorphizing. I pluck the last ingredient-
An 8 ounce bulletshell, red, and white stripes- from the display;
It releases so easily from the plastic cuffs, like a lowest-hanging fruit.

7/25 - Wasatch Plateau Skyline Run III

OK, this will be a little shorter than the last couple years (just over 21 miles). as always, you can run it, walk, mountain bike, do a relay, whatever. and, because of the length, it makes a great training run for anyone doing a Marathon in the fall (St. George, Logan, etc.).

here's a map of the general neighborhood.



and here's a map of the course. this time we're starting at the top of Ephraim Canyon, running the Skyline Drive (about 10,000 ' elevation) to the top of Manti Canyon, and then heading down into town. since most of the route runs down Manti Canyon, this will be mostly a downhill course. (hooray!)

here are the posts detailing similar runs from the last couple summers: 2008, 2007

and for more details you can follow this link to the of course it's legal event disclaimer and FAQ's (a la Gil Scott Heron)

otherwise, let me know if you're in or have any other questions. things will probably start around 10 am.

7/11 - Suits Are Kicking Up the Hill 4.01k

it's been a while since I can remember having worn a suit to anything. (Cate, maybe to your wedding a couple years ago.) but, for the last several months I've had this persistent longing to put on an old suit (yeah, I know) and go run somewhere. maybe even with a briefcase in hand, some sort of styling product in my hair. somewhere public. you know.

I had something like a 5k in mind. and I was really trying not to put too fine a point on it, but a friend suggested making it a 4.01k. (you know, suits.) and who could resist that?

anyway, here's the plan:
a little over 4 kilometers (run, walk, both, whatever)
wear a suit, tie, slacks (blackberry, cufflinks, etc. again, whatever, you get it.)
if you could find an old race number or two to pin on that would also be handy.

when:
Saturday July 11, around 8 am. (let me know if you're interested and we'll work out the details.)

and:
of course, this is not an organized "race".
so there's no fee. no t-shirt. no trophies. no cops. (hopefully no cops.)

we'll be starting up at the Utah State Capitol, running basically down State Street to 300 S. then taking a right over to 400 west before wrapping back up north for the final three or so blocks. although not required, jaywalking is of course heartily encouraged. here's the map.

as you look things over, you'll also notice that the run finishes in the middle of the big fountain at the Gateway Mall. from there maybe we can go for breakfast somewhere.

any questions? who's in?

another post about running

the desert thunderstorms have let up for a couple days and it's definitely summer. so I'm planning a couple runs for next month that I want to sell you on. when talking with friends, sometimes I tend toward a kind of bossy moralizing about "why you aught to run". but instead of doing that here why don't I direct you to last month's Radio West show where Doug Fabrizio talks with w/ Christopher McDougall about his book Born to Run.

it's a pretty great interview despite Doug Fabrizio's signature half-question-followed by statement-followed by slight backpedaling-followed by surprisingly keen observation-concluded with either totally leading or vaguely open-ended question style. they cover everything from human anatomy, to the Tarahumara/Raramuri runners of the Sierrra Madre, to those funny glove-shoes with the toes that you see people shopping in when you go to Whole Foods. maybe best of all, they reference some of Running After Antelope by our (Utah's) own beloved Scott Carrier. (for more of this latter piece check out one of these four This American Life shows.)

related: getting there, going

creation, blessing

reconquista 84627

I thought this little story from the Salt Lake Tribune might be of interest to some.



from there it looks like it got picked up by the AP and went out on Deseret News, KSL, Daily Herald, City Weekly, Fox and a couple blogs.

and since then, the SL Trib went and did an editorial too.

3 haiku: early summer

pollen clouds blowing
from the trees, like golden smoke
or a solar wind.

runoff flows over,
and she still tries to unstop
our flooding culvert.

we take a last run,
chase peacocks, deer, and make your
headwreath of bindweed.

all the weekend tee vees

yard sale, Saturday. $4-5 hundred? haggling. rain.



memorial day. Six-Mile canyon. orange peels (lichens). Elmer's glue.


artist-in-residence.

animal magnetism

last year maybe you heard about how these Czech scientists "recorded body alignment of cattle in satellite images provided by Google Earth" and found that cattle and deer "orient their body axes along the field lines of the Earth's magnetic field." yeah, north-south.



photographer Christine Chin's Alternative Alternative Energy (A[2]E) sort of picks things up and takes them from there.

"A[2]E's Moth Generator uses moths to generate electricity. The moths in the generator are fed a high iron diet and polarized, which results in magnetized moths. The moths are induced to fly alternately from one side of the generator to the other using their innate attraction to light. The flight of magnetized moths past conductive coils generates current in the same manner as an alternating current generator. While a single moth would only create a small charge, the millions of moths in the generator create a significant output."
text from ASCI



there's also a mosquito generator, a bat generator, combustible ice worms, a terrifying plastic rodent that runs on apple batteries, and something (?) about methane and sea cucumbers.

related: exploiting systems, Brian Burkhardt, Insect Lab, arcadia-immersion

Rigo 23 & the Mata Atlântica massive

Caiçara, Guaraní, Quilombola villagers give Lockheed Martin a run for their submarines and cluster bombs.

Teko Mbarate


Sapukay

details here.
and if you have 7 minutes, the video over here is worth it.

-------------------------------------------------------------
some additional context - FYI

Trident by Numbers*
14 - Trident nuclear-armed submarines in U.S. fleet
24 - Trident missiles per Trident submarine
6 - nuclear warheads per Trident missile
100 - kilotons on each Trident W76 warhead
1,632 - W76 warheads deployed on Trident fleet
345,6000 - total kilotons deployed on Trident fleet
$170,200,000,000 - low estimate of total cost of the entire Trident program through year 2042

*borrowed/ripped off from the March 2009 edition of The Mormon Worker

cultivating the primitive

it was good, that afternoon to thaw the hawk that had spent the last month in my freezer, to stretch a tape measure from wingtip to wingtip, from beak to tail and determine, "yes, Cooper's Hawk,"to ask it for a few feathers it will no longer need, and to finally bury it in the clay banks of a stock pond outside of town.
then the boys made atlatls and darts from brittle willow sticks and peacock feathers. Ash, of course, loved this too.

after 5 or so years of being the Webelos leader, I've gotten pretty well reacquainted with the 10-year-old heart.
and poop jokes.

plein air taxidermy

I was over at Matthias Merkel Hess' blog the other day where I found these and was then referred to Jim Baughn’s taxidermy website. there's a kind of sweet penitent intention about mounting these on trees overlooking an autumn field off a Kansas highway. we want to put them all back the way we found them, sort of.

something mythological too, like ill-conceived species of minotaur, centaur, or dryad. the tree as this sort of galley space has also been conceived elsewhere.
(btw, do yourself a favor and avoid searching google images for "centaur")

highway 50 - Salina, UT to Reno, NV and back

Circus Circus' house kennel channel, w/ the Cure playing. no kidding.

Austin, NV. Serbian Christmas, now you know.

basin and range

river of shoes



a little something for everyone in Fallon


trash or treasure was here

hauling a warp and weft of sheetrock across the Paiute rez

petroglyphs at Hickison Summit. lava caves at Pyramid Lake (w/ flycatcher nest).



Humboldt - Toiyabe

Ash draws the school bell. Ash draws a crowd.

over the last couple weeks Ash has really been getting into the green blackboard.

when I found her doing this one in chalk and pencil she got excited and shouted "school-bell!" and made the noise of the grinding prison-camp alarm of an elementary school bell that sounds daily from the playground behind our house.

not bad, right? I don't think she's ever seen any Cy Twombly.


and here she is visiting the petting zoo.

capybaras and barnacle geese

ROME
Dear Pope Julius,

There's this 150lb animal here that's scaly, with webbed feet, but it's also hairy. And it spends most of its time in the water, but sometimes comes on land. Can we call it a fish? We know it's Lent but the Indians are really hungry.

Yours,

the Capuchins
BRAZIL

***


print by Jenny Pope

“Nature produces Barnacle Geese against Nature in the most extraordinary way. They are like marsh geese but somewhat smaller. They are produced from fir timber tossed along the sea, and are at first like gum. Afterwards they hang down by their beaks as from a seaweed attached to the timber, and are surrounded by shells in order to grow more freely. Having thus in process of time been clothed with a strong coat of feathers, they either fall into the water or fly freely away into the air. They derived their food and growth from the sap of the wood or from the sea, by a secret and most wonderful process of alimentation. I have frequently seen, with my own eyes, more than a thousand of these small bodies of birds, hanging down on the sea-shore from one piece of timber, enclosed in their shells, and already formed. They do not breed and lay eggs like other birds, nor do they ever hatch any eggs, nor do they seem to build nests in any corner of the earth.”
-Giraldus Cambrensis
1187, Topographica Hiberniae

***

“Pope Innocent III considered it necessary in 1215 to prohibit the eating of barnacle geese in Lent, since although he admitted they are not generated by the ordinary way, he yet maintained that they live and feed like ducks and cannot be regarded as differing in nature from other birds.”
-Sir Edwin Ray Lankester
1915, Diversions of a Naturalist

***

This (Spanish) website has more details on chigüiro/capibara history (along with cuisine and some things you can do with capybara leather and oil)! London's The Independent did a good article about the Easter fish in 2000. And a couple years ago, The NY Times put together a nice slideshow of a capybara hunt in Venezuela. Other "fish" you can eat during lent include sea turtles, iguanas, beavers and, in Michigan, muskrats.

related: cladistically, we're all of us fish and imaginary beings/seres imaginarios

reprise

related: ATM, Costa Rica, headlessness awareness

last fire of the season

Martin Prothero

Martin Prothero does these.

crab

hedgehog

frog

cricket

centipede

worm

about his process:
"The materials are carbon and glass. The glass surface is coated with thin layer of carbon (from a flame) and time and care is taken to make sure this is uniform over the entire surface. ... Then, keeping a close eye on the weather (rain, frost, wind and dew can all ruin the delicate carbon surface) I choose a good time to lay the plates out, normally over night, in the hope of recording some tracks.The animals’ feet lift off this extremely sensitive layer of carbon as they come in to contact with it. This leaves the finest details traced in the opaque carbon, which is then revealed when the glass is backlit using daylight or a lightbox."

and here's a link to his gallery, where there are some cool pinhole photos too.

residential snirt heaps

related: toward a new geology, trash vortex

one-channel television lures hangarful of Amish into 21st century. others still holding out for flatscreens, digital, smarter cars, colder fusion

once the Quakers started making Vanilla Yogurt Crunch cereal, something like this was only a matter of time. the Heat Surge electric fireplace is what comes of merging Chinese engineering, Amish craftsmanship and the cleverness of the American businessman. and the best thing about bringing these rubes on as board members is they accept as fair barter the placard from last season’s trade expo kiosk.
“yes, Amos. that’s correct. it’s one’a those giant checks.”

OK, I see how posting this in mid March makes me the old retired couple who leaves the Christmas stuff up well into tulip season. but I’m a sucker for fire on the TV. old man Barnum doesn’t even need to trot out the elephants and I’m already on my feet waving my $547 cash in the air. so, to those with links to fish without faces, my apologies for bringing down everyone’s property value.

this sort of thing has been on my mind more than usual lately, probably since I went to hear Wendell Berry when he was in town a couple weeks ago. also, last month Kevin Kelly posted some great observations on Amish hacking on his blog The Technium. of course you can always visit youtube for more fire on TV, then go full screen.

month of Sundays

good Lord, if there were ever a day
to lose an hour then it’s today.
maybe yesterday: a dumb, mute post
where I’m still trying to tie the other end
of this long long hammock. laundryline.
prayerflags. a fine mess, actually.

let the worm gear skip
the waterclock sputter
popping cinders, and a carousel of tinctures
and oils. ounces, inches, cartoon octopi
he
mat
o
crit

I’ll tell you now. how it all went down, a siphon
one hundred gallons of warm, dawn-colored water.
over this concrete threshold, these steps, and into the brown
leaves, to thaw and awaken the crocus and the chives.

go on Saturday and you can call it a date

a couple years ago I posted this about the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s annual nationwide bird count. it’s coming around again this weekend; this year it starts on Friday and goes through Monday (February 13-16).

it’s pretty straightforward and you can go to the website for answers to other questions. questions like: why count birds?

another answer to that why? comes recently from the Associated Press.



for those of us hurriedly skimming through blogs at work, trying to catch up and letting our “fingers do the walking,” the National Wildlife Federation has put together a very accessible little brief that tries to answer the larger, trickier question: “why care about birds?”
the report shies away from the well, they’re alive. like us. answer and goes for something they’re hoping we can better relate to: “birdwatching makes a significant contribution to Utah’s economy.” here's something your car dealer who moonlights at the state legislature might pause to consider, once his intern has highlighted it for him: “$237 million in 1996.” the remaining net value of Utah songbirds gets summed up more or less as, “boy, but they sure are handy as moth eaters and mascots.”

and if birds still don’t get our attention, there’s always climate change’s gadfly equivalent of al-Qaeda and the four horsemen of the apocalypse: Killer Bees!

related: all your fishbase are belong to EOL

crossroads w/ snow

a warning: this takes forever to load on Vimeo.

Martin Frobisher’s voyage to Baffin Island “for the finding of a passage to Cathay”

But when the people perceived our departure, with great tokens of affection they earnestly called us back again, following us almost to our boats: whereupon our general taking his master with him, who was best acquainted with their manners, went apart unto two of them, meaning, if they could lay sure hold upon them, forcibly to bring them aboard, with intent to bestow certain toys and apparel upon the one, and so to dismiss him with all arguments of courtesy, and retain the other for an interpreter.

The general and his master being met with their two companions together, after they had exchanged certain things the one with the other, one of the savages for lack of better merchandise cut off the tail of his coat (which is a chief ornament among them) and gave it to our general for a present. But he presently upon a watchword given with his master suddenly laid hold upon the two savages. But the ground underfoot being slippery with the snow on the side of the hill, their handfast failed, and their prey escaping ran away and lightly recovered their bows and arrows, which they had hid not far from them behind the rocks. And being only two savages in sight, they so fiercely, desperately, and with such fury assaulted and pursued our general and his master, being altogether unarmed, and not mistrusting their subtlety, that they chased them to their boats, and hurt the general in the buttock with an arrow, who the rather speedily fled back because they suspected a greater number behind the rocks.
…
But a servant of my Lord of Warwick, called Nicholas Conger, a good footman, and uncumbered with any furniture, having only a dagger at his back, overtook one of them, and being a Cornishman and a good wrestler, showed his companion such a Cornish trick that he made his sides ache against the ground for a month after. And being so stayed, he was taken alive and brought away, but the other escaped

-George Best, 1578

huzzah for sabotage! for the orphan sculptors! and a cowboy secretary!

a little follow up on our sabotage stories from a couple months ago.

in a nutshell:
Muntadhir al-Zaidi was "severely beaten" by security officers leaving a "large blood trail" where they then dragged him across the carpet. broken hand. broken ribs. internal bleeding. an eye injury. a limp. still in jail.

Tim DeChristopher may still also face federal prison but he does have a website. and in the meantime he’s been interviewing on a lot of local and national of TV and radio shows (including all things considered today). they’ve even done a shoot of dreamy, rustic press photos.

but what’s this about all those leases the BLM auctioned last December? canceled as of yesterday. interior secretary Ken Salazar’s got our backs this time. here he is addressing a bunch of Colorado hippies last summer.

and did you see this?! while some of us are just blogging comfortably by the south window, watching magpies and scrub jays, a tall glass of water at our left hand, others are taking to the streets, rolling up their sleeves and building big monuments. like the giant shoe sculpture that Laith al-Amiri and the orphaned children of Tikrit made in fiberglass, copper and concrete.

names for the baby

some possible candidates:

1. Boris Aurora Borealis Brooks
2. Judas Prescott Nixon Brooks
3. Neil Diamond Phillips Brooks
4. *Juanita/o Vanitas Brooks
5. Waltzing Pneumonia Brooks
6. Guano Bonanza Brooks
7. Kyle
9. Belvedere Wheelbrow Brooks
10. Calypso Fishkite Brooks
11. Yigüirro Arenal Brooks

*family name


of course, we're still open to suggestions...

good news and bad

last weekend they told me that something I wrote five or so years ago just got published in IRWLE, an obscure online journal based in Madras. (plus, they put the title in comic sans!?)
and last summer hawk and whippoorwill put a couple of my poems in too.

the bad news is these things will do nothing for the girth of my failure file. but I'm waiting to hear back on my applications to half a dozen graduate programs, which should probably help some in that latter department.

corrugated plastic birdhouse

here are some patterns from the EPA.


related posts:
where jettisonned turkey timers go to die
liberty OBO
invention as the mother of necessity

lion hunt

I don’t know whether it’s the economy or just a general lack of interest in things like crime scene Christmas trees and homemade fireworks, but fish without faces has marked a recent flagging trend in the comments department. so I'm forced to respond with a little sensationalism.

over the last several years I’ve met a few guys in town who, um, hunt mountain lions. I guess this can mean a lot of different things. for example if you want to shoot a cougar and all that you can put into a lottery, maybe get a tag, bring your hounds, bring your guns and so on. more people around here are into this than you might guess. a couple of my neighbors have their own dogs and, with or without tags and guns, will go out pretty regularly in the winter to track down and tree cougars and bobcats. there’s also a guy that goes by “Mad Dog” (seriously) who has a flooring store at the north end of town and a reputation of hassling cougars, pulling their tails and stuff.

anyway, so of course I’ve been really curious about all this for a while. I ended up asking a guy named Gary (not Mad Dog) if I could tag along sometime. yesterday morning Gary called to let me know they’d found some tracks in the new snow and I got out there (Pigeon Hollow) as soon as I could. after waiting around a little by the trucks and hounds for some logistics to get sorted, I climbed onto Gary’s snowmobile and rode “bitch” up to where we could begin tracking on foot.


how many hound dogs will fit into a 50 gallon plastic barrel? three, it turns out. that’s Mt. Nebo on the far horizon.


on the left: a cougar track and snow fleas. on the right: some bobcat tracks that Gary and Mark (Gary’s brother) also pointed out to me along the way. the cerberus on the end of Mark's leash are Bonnie and Diego. I should also say that the two photos below were taken on the way back. when the dogs are tracking they're way off the leash and miles ahead of any of us.

Gary and Mark are both turkey farmers, Sanpete natives and really nice guys. they talked with me about growing up tracking mountain lions, their observations on the behavior of cats and dogs, and how they both currently have sons who are on the wrestling team at the local high school. they also showed me the general area where the big herb farm was discovered this past fall.


ok, here's the juniper the dogs led us to.



and here's Mark climbing the tree. he has our attention.


this time around Gary and Mark weren't packing. after we got a good look and I shot some ok photos, the dogs were called off and the lion ran away. once we made it back to the snowmobiles I rode down again behind Gary, holding Diego over the saddle on my lap.

"I startled a mountain lion.
It turned from the road and was gone...

If anyone ever kills it,
he'll have taken more wild beauty than he can ever make.

He'll owe the universe a cougar,
and I hope in my too tame guts he has to pay."
-Rob Carney

"He yave not of the text a pulled hen,
that saith that hunters ben not holy men"
-Chaucer