Ran across John Roberts in Mill Valley yesterday. He and his buddy had sturdy mountain bikes with big springs for downhill bombing, and John had this GoPro HD Helmet HERO camera attached to his helmet. See my writeup of it . John said he was making films to post on Youtube.
This is really a nice blog of Connie Mery’s paintings, many with apt quotations:
By nature, my old friend on East Mountain
treasures the beauty of hills and valleys.
Spring now green, you lie
in empty woods still sound asleep under a midday sun,
your robe growing lucid in pine winds,
rocky streams rinsing ear and heart clean.
No noise, no confusion—
all I want is this life pillowed high in emerald mist.
Li Po
Berkeley and Oakland (California) are filled with wonderful houses, many of them nicely maintained. This was about 7AM yesterday morning.
Went down to the post office early this morning to pick up a box containing 30 baby chicks from Murray McMurray Hatchery in Iowa. We’ve been getting chickens this way for 30 years. We’ve switched to bantams, and this time got 20 Auracnas (green eggs) and 10 Silver and Golden Sebrings. The Sebrings are beautiful birds. McMurray’s birds are top quality. Their catalog is a delight to look through: https://is.gd/c33K9
I still can’t get over the incredibleness of these little creatures coming halfway across the country on an airplane. They’re shipped when one day old. When they arrive we put them in a box under an infra-red light and get them to drink water fortified with electrolytes. They start eating ground-up grain right away.
A lot of people are suddenly interested in backyard chickens. There’s even a magazine: https://www.backyardpoultrymag.com/
This little starling was hopping around when Jack and I were having coffee at an outdoor table at the Java Beach Cafe out at the beach in San Francisco last week. This guy had kind of a punk haircut. He was probably young. He had poissonality, plus excellent selection of colors.
I’ve never liked electric hot water heaters, since a lot of energy is lost in transmission from the generating source. Propane or natural gas provides heat right at the source and seems a better choice. And of course, solar is king, if you’ve got it together. I have a solar-heated outdoor shower, but haven’t got around to solar-heating all household water. I’ve made an exception to electric water heating with this little 2-1/2 gallon hot water heater that goes under the sink of our office kitchen. It has a switch that I turn on for maybe an hour, then turn off. The water temperature can be set with the thermostat. The tank is well insulated, so it stays hot for hours. It seems a very efficient use of electricity.
In the house, we’ve had a 5 gallon electric water heater under the kitchen sink for about 15 years. It’s minimal in electric power usage, and doesn’t waste water getting from cold to hot (in pipes coming from a more distant water heater).
And yes, I’ve got to get more of our water heated by the sun. It’s on my list of things to do, honest.
https://www.insinkerator.com/product/product.php?id=41&template=hwd
This is the cabin that was used in the forthcoming movie Get Low, with Robert Duvall. (See my posting of May 2, 2010, below.)
It’s in the Pickett’s Mill Battlefield (Civil War) Historic Site, near Marietta, Georgia. It was built nearby in the 1850s and moved to the site. It’s now used for demonstrations of candle making, cooking, sewing, etc.
4th-graders (9 years old), are they cute! And they rock! Seen here at the Whiskey-a-go-go in L.A, March 20, 2010. They all met in a daycare school in Pacifica, California.
