Que experiencia! A few weeks ago I went paddleboarding in the lagoon late in the day. The water was like ice and as I came back toward the town dock, some people were watching me. My (racing) paddleboard is really fast, it seems to skim across the water and people are invariably surprised to see its speed. And so what do I do, being the mature person I am, but showboat it, sprinting, paddling as hard as I can. I should add that I hadn’t paddled for some time. Things were OK until I got into bed that night. I felt chest pains and had trouble breathing. Never happened before. 911-time and the full rescue experience. A roomful of local firefighters, an IV in my arm, the EMTs, and then a ride to the hospital. There was also a helicopter, which I declined: “No way!”
I ended up spending the night in the ER of Marin General Hospital, where they ran test after test. I saw 4 doctors, got spritzes of nitro-glycerine, the whole catastrophe. The ERs are geared for serious stuff; a dumbass condition like mine isn’t on their radar. Too simple. One doctor was pissed at me because I wouldn’t get a chest X-ray (by that time I knew I was OK). The next morning a cardiologist put me on a treadmill, and said, “I didn’t know you were a runner.” Everything was fine. Sheesh!
Home never looked so good. Got into my own bed with a hot water bottle and bowl of homemade chicken soup. Paradise!
Conclusion, later talking to my own doc: chest contractions from overexertion, muscles constricting lungs, brought on by showing off. I know, I know…
One thing I loved about the movie (intensified by the 3-D) was the feeling that I was moving through the woods with the tuned-in natives. And the flying was like a short time in my life when I dreamed of flying night after night. I tried explaining this to someone, but didn’t get the idea through. But in today’s NYTimes, biologist Carol Kaesuk Yoon writes a rave review (rare for the NYT) about “…the pure wonder of seeing life” in Avatar:
“Please excuse me if I seem a bit breathless, but the experience I had when I first saw the film (in 2-D, no less) shocked me. I felt as if someone had filmed my favorite dreams from those best nights of sleep where I wander and play through a landscape of familiar yet strange creatures, taking a swim and noticing dinosaurs paddling by, going out for a walk and spying several entirely new species of penguins, going sledding with giant tortoises. Less than the details of the movie, it was, I realized, the same feeling of elation, of wonder at life….”
Stewart Brand hosts the weekly “Seminars About Long-term Thinking” in San Francisco. Last week it was Wade Davis, who wrote The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World. Here are a few excerpts from Stewart’s write-up:
“He began with Polynesians, the wayfinders who mastered the Pacific ocean in the world’s largest diaspora. Without writing or chronometers they learned 220 stars by name, learned to read the subtle influence of distant islands on wave patterns and clouds, and navigated the open sea by a sheer act of integrative memory. For the duration of an ocean passage “navigators do not sleep….”
“In the Andes the Incas built 8,500 miles of roads over impossibly vertical country in a hundred years, and their descendents still run the mountains on intense ritual pilgrimages, grounding their culture in every detail of the landscape….”
The Zentner Collection is a retail outlet in the San Francisco Bay Area (5757 Horton Street, Emeryville). Here’s how they describe themselves: “The Zentner Collection has been dealing in Asian antiques for more than 30 years with a special emphasis on fine Japanese antiques. We offer one of the largest tansu collections in the world offering rare examples of Karuma, Fune, Choba, Gyosho, and Kaidon Tansu from the Edo thru Meiji Periods.”
We went there on our Berkeley trip last week to look at tantsus. This is a beautiful (if pricey) collection of all kinds of Japanese antiques.
The WaterWoman Festival was held at Joshua Tree National Monument in November, 2009. SunRay can go anywhere in the world and frame a beautiful building from whatever wood is lying around. He was one of the 3 featured builders in Builders of the Pacific Coast. Click here for a slide show from the book, including SunRay’s beautiful natural-materials temple at Harbin Hot Springs in the Northern California hills. Also, pic of SunRay at work. Look at those arms!
Photo by ecologist Peter Warshall, who writes: “The ringtail came from near our home in the Chiricahua Mountains, where Geronimo had his last gardens.”
I’ve found three like this while running in the hills yesterday afternoon. My friend Paul Wingate once remarked on vegetarian deer producing all this calcium on a diet of grass.
A few years ago I was in New York for the annual Book Expo America and one evening ran across the Baby Soda Jazz Band playing in the Washington Square park. Not only were they great, but the bass player, who turned out to be Peter Ford, had a homemade wooden bass with an amazing sound. (I played the washtub bass in high school and college.) I corresponded with Peter for a while and finally got him to sell me the parts for one of his basses. I just put it together a few weeks ago and is it fun! I’m not getting any work done! That’s a broomstick handle, a 1/8″ nylon string, and the black sound board is a piece of a Samsonite hard suitcase.
Photo yesterday by Lew Lewandowski
Here’s the Baby Soda Jazz band playing Muskrat Ramble, and you can see Peter playing the bass:
