proof of Leo's longevity

and what did I find today, in a box in my office, but a picture of me with Leo in my very first Oxford office, in Mansfield College, when he was a very new purchase indeed.  I can tell that I've only very recently arrived, because I quite soon painted the whole thing a strong deep blue, like being inside the heavens but without the stars.  Note two other things: the sagging rubber plant on top of the filing cabinet (there was always a rubber plant, back last century), and, on the desk, my very first computer, an Amstrad.  I thought I was so hip and cool having such a thing!  If you remember them, green lettering stuttered its way across the screen - one font only - and then, if the connection worked ok, one could print stuff out on a rattling dot-matrix printer.  The pic also works as a reminder that my current office is the smallest that I've had in my whole career: definitely downward mobility in terms of academic real estate, but I'm curiously fond of it, all the same, even if it's full of - because it's full of? - books and storage boxes and, seemingly, lions.

 

car park roof

Today was one of those miraculous Southern Californian days when the air was very fresh and clear after last night's (welcome) rain: just some remnants of clouds heading off to the mountains.  And they, and the light and puddles, rendered the morning transcendent (at least until, of course, I shuffled off to sort out travel and research grant awards for our grad students).

 

a graduating scooter?

If a scooter had a major, what would it be?  It's getting closer and closer to Commencement time, and students can be seen carrying packets with sashes in them.  This scooter, however, seems dressed in cardinal and gold rather as a statue of Buddha might have a garland thrown casually but reverently round its neck, or a sacred cow might be wreathed with marigolds.

 

owl pellet

and, right on cue, after I wrote yesterday that the black walnut is also the Owl Pelleting tree, what do I find underneath it today but a freshly hoiked pellet?  This is a particularly fine one: lots of little bones.  Too small for squirrel, I think, although there is a lot of grey fur - but I' thinking it's probably mouse fur, or just maybe a small pack rat.  Whatever it was must have slipped down a treat, been digested by stomach juices, and then ... owls are the most admirably tidy birds.   

 

squirrels

We have one tree that arborists can seemingly never agree about: the majority view is that it's a black walnut, but occasionally we'll talk to one who says No, Rubbish, It's a Northern Pecan.  It would be helpful (and doubtless tasty), if they bore fruit, but they never seem to get that far.  Maybe the squirrels pillaging the blossom explains why not ... I was sitting outside trying to read, this afternoon, but they were very distracting (there are indeed two separate squirrels here, and they kept breaking off from their gorging to chase one another.

It's also the tree on which one of the owls often sits, so one finds pellets, stray bits of bird (though, now I think about it, not squirrel, so far) underneath it.  Once, there was half a rabbit, which happily disappeared.

And yes, the sky was this blue, and the mountains that lovely.

 

No Kings 3

My poster this time was a little better in the conception than the execution - but huge fun to work on it, even if I wished that I'd started drafting it weeks ago, not late last night and early this morning.  And every demo, I wish I'd been practicing my always-emaciated lettering.  It did, as ever, feel good to go out there and stand up for democracy, against war, against corruption, against state violence, against - well, everything that's happening with the scary-clown show in D.C.

Good to run into our friends Dorothy and Leo (Dorothy's poster is wonderful!)

One of my favorites ... (with a properly fitting crown ...)

Harking back to the (Portland) frogs of the last No Kings - sadly, no amphibian inflatables today, but the temperature was 85 degrees;

Miscellaneous signs:

and, some flyposting: in keeping with the spirit of the day.

 

poppies

Visual evidence of how greenery is taking over parts of our yard - plus all the poppy seeds that I threw around with energetic enthusiasm.  They are so bright and startling that in person, it looks as though there are more of them than perhaps there are.  Anyway, spring.