On my way north up the coast from Santa Cruz a few weeks ago, a full house of windsurfers at Waddell Creek. This would look best as a 3-4′ mural. One of the many limitations of electronic as compared to the real thing. Sigh. Some day I’ll do an exhibit of panoramas, grande size. I have tons…
In the mid-50s there was a gang of us surfers here in Santa Cruz, maybe 20-30 in number. There were no wetsuits, and UC was not yet here. Nor was SiliconValley. In the winter months, there were very few people around. Other than the water being so cold, it was paradise.
One of my great friends from those days is Betty Van Dyke, and when I called her yesterday, she said she was going over to Jack O’Neill’s for martinis with some old surfing friends. I’ve known Jack for over 50 years, back before his wetsuit surfing empire, when he was selling firefighting equipment and I was an insurance broker — in San Francisco. Both of us bodysurfed at Kelly’s Cove. Early ’60s. When he started his surf equipment business in about 1963, I was his insurance broker (before I bailed on that world).
So here was Jack, holding forth in his cliffside house, and we had a delightful reunion. He’s (real) hard of hearing, has only one working eye, and is 90, so it took me a while to my volume high enough so he could hear me, but I did, and sat real close and we got really rolling about the old days. It was like dragging dusty treasures out of old chests.
Also there was Rich Novak, he of the NHS/Santa Cruz Bikes/Santa Cruz Skateboards empire — twinkle in his eye — and with an icy martini each, six of us had an hour of rare fun. When it got time to go home, everyone said, wow!
Photo by Dave McGuire, l-r: Betty Van Dyke, Richard Novak, Jack O”Neill, moi.
I love this museum. I get dizzy after a little while in most museums, but I could spend days here. The whale exhibit had special meaning for me because in the last year I watch the disintegration of a 47′ fin whale on a California beach. The size of the skeletons is stunning. Below is the fin of the larger skeleton on exhibit. Note similarity to human hand.
“On the final day of September 2007, I left Jasper Alberta Canada without any agenda, plans or time. Living simply from my passion of photography and writing, living a freedom life while riding my Suzuki DR 350 motorcycle in search of rock climbing, surfing and experiencing different cultures along the way.
Now nearly 100 000 km, 19 countries and 4 years later… I continue to ride the dream… north from South America.
You can follow my stories and collection of images through my blog.
-Alain Dennis”
Went on long beach walk, collected this nice mass of nutrients for compost pile. I love to combine walking with bringing something home — driftwood, mussels, clams, mushrooms, cattail pollen, Today was windy, glary at ocean, but I found a sort of protected cove with a shallow pool, and immersed. Hoo — cold! But as soon as I was out, the chi was mos def higher.
In the car, heard Terry Gross replay of interview with pianist Dave McKenna. In the studio, he played Thanks For the Memories, it was beautiful. Could not locate it on GrooveShark, but here is another by him, below.
And I do mean boys. The Plichta brothers, ages 9 and 11, are my youngest friends. Going on a hike with them, as I did last night, is like having radar and sonar for anything on the ground, in the air, or in the water. Like a heightened sense of perception. They notice everything, last night a beetle, a termite, a snake “Shall I catch it?” “No.” “Look how the sunlight lights up this pine tree bud.” What’s this?” about innumerable objects. They’re into bones and feathers and anything that moves (or used to move). Once they called me over excitedly in the parking lot to see a dried and squashed gopher. They joke a lot. Last night they noticed how the frogs stopped singing when we got close. Here they are inspecting the driftwood sauna structure built by Dylan on the beach.
They picked right up on this minimalist rock/wood project someone had left on the beach. On the way back we stared at the just-sinking sun on the horizon, hoping for the green flash, but it didn’t happen.
iPhone 5 panorama. Distorted, but I like triangle of glassy water. You can never tell what the ocean will be like until you get there. It’s a being of infinitely different moods.
Sunday afternoon, am listening to “America’s Back 40,” great Sunday afternoon program on KPFA by Mary Tilson. All my kind of music. A lot of pleasant surprises by Mary, who’s obviously got a great collection.
Also, our local radio station, KWMR has a unique selection of music.
A few days back, I drove north and took a long beach walk and returned with mussels and seaweed (for garden and food). These days I get the smaller mussels, big ones are pretty tough. If I’m in a hurry, I’ll just steam them in a little water, red wine, and chopped parsley and garlic.This time the broth turned out purple from the wine. Infusion of ocean essence.
Had a pigeon 2 nights ago. They’ve proved tough, so I hung this one for few days and it was really good. With red wine, rice, garden greens.
I just read the chapter “Aging Game Birds” in Hunt, Gather, Cook by Hank Shaw, a very good book (Rodale) on obtaining and cooking from the wild. Also was reading about cooking pigeons in Chez Panisse Cooking by Paul Bertolli/Alice Waters. They serve a lot of pigeons at the restaurant, they say. They have a recipe for making broth from the bones, which are baked or grilled, then chopped up with big cleaver and simmered an hour in light beef or chicken broth. I’m going to try it in the next day or two, with the pigeon bones and duck bones. Got to be good.