November desk

I was glad to turn over the calendar page from October to November: not because October was a bad month (it wasn't, at all), but because October's picture was one that just didn't work from a distance (and was fairly boring close up).  But the distance thing is hard to judge until the calendar's all printed up and one can pace away from it.  But November ... suitably gloomy, but nicely so: it's a corner from the big cemetery in Genoa.  Time, soon, to be assembling the pictures for next year's calendar ...

Here in New Mexico, my desk faces a cork pin board (with some paintings above it, and to each side).  The window is to my left, so I can see the Sandias and the Cerrillos Hills with a slight turn of the procrastinating head. This is a configuration that just wouldn't work in LA, where I look straight out of the window: otherwise, there would be a complicated navigation of where to put furniture so it doesn't block the heating/ac vent, and so on.  But I get to gaze on visual inspiration and solace, which of course periodically gets changed around: I see Ruskin (rather a lot of Ruskin, actually); Turner; Whistler; late C19th interiors; Ojibwe wampum beads; a photo of a rose from the garden at 20 Hillside ...) - I feel happily grounded when I look at all of these.

 

clouds, skelly

Another day of wild skies (I'm hoping that the rumblings of tornado warnings for tomorrow will come to nothing), and me trying to get an improbable amount of work done in very little time... the quiet helps, of course; as does the fact that my ongoing laryngitis means I have no incentive to speak to anyone.  A post-lunch walk revealed this huge skelly outlined against the sky, striding out, it would seem, over the range ...

 

Resist

A placard making its point under a lowering sky.  I'm pleased to see TWO of these signs on our block - though surprised that there aren't many many more.

I was relieved to get that comforting text today that tells one that one's ballot has been received and will be counted.

 

new and different things

Burbank airport - the new Burbank airport, which opened on October 13th - at the crack of dawn.  I don't know what I'd been expecting, but not anything so huge and shiny (and with completely ridiculous prices for coffee).  I'm devastated to read that the old, 1930s, adobe style one is going to be demolished - one would have thought a good use could be found for it - even an aviation museum?  I was very surprised, too, that they didn't have new style body and luggage scanners, but I guess one can't have everything ...

This very flying visit to New Mexico is to check on the stuccoing and painting of our house (and to pay those who did it!).  Instead of the mid brown sludge color that was on the woodwork before, we've gone for a rather wintry grey (which was really hard to choose - not too light, not too dark, not too blue, not too green - and then we both had to like it - oh, and there are lots of residents' association regulations about colors, too).  So this is quite a change, but I think it works!

As you can see, the morning glories are still out - and indeed, this is a shade that never appeared during the summer!  There's lots of very green new grass everywhere, too -

and autumnal trees.  It is great to be back - not least so that I can be reunited with a couple of books that I left here by mistake, and about which I have to write a very imminent review ...

 

an old but favorite skellington

It's always good to see the 1862 Punch cartoon, "The Arsenic Waltz" - such a deadly green to use for one's fancy clothes (or for that matter, the walllpaper).  This was accompanying Anna's works-in-progress paper (and preview for NAVSA in two weeks), on bitumen and art needlework (not that I can quite recollect what point it was illustrating ...).  I promise you that there were other people there, and on line ... our WiP series is such a great opportunity for grad students to try out papers in a safe environment andto get - not so much the kind of questions they'll get at a conference, as feedback about what might have worked better or differently.

 

skellies!

Here are the very best in our immediate neighborhood, as admired on this morning's walk. The skellies appear annually in the old ?1920s or 30s luggage funicular car - this time accompanied by an upside down stars and stripes labeled Vote or Die.  Quite so (although the length of time that it takes to fill out all of the ballot's 9 pages means that surely various people expire during the exercise itself).  

No other political ones on our route this morning - though a fair number of election signs themselves.  Ours is a fairly solid Raman community - I don't think I've seen a single Karen Bass sign around here (though there are two down by the reservoir).   One week to go ...

 

my ear

... and a very clean ear it is, inside and out.

As some of you know, I've been battling hearing problems since late May/early June, when a combination of lots of flights - 13 or 14 - in Argentina, and going up to 14,500 in the pre-Andes, created (or so I thought) around 60% hearing loss in my right ear - and if that wasn't bad enough, a feeling of being perpetually distanced in some kind of diving bell, or echo chamber, where not only did all sound become muffled, and it was difficult to tell what direction sounds were coming from, but it made me feel horribly cut off from the world (and grumpy). Social events, with fuzzy noises hitting me from every side, were a nightmare.

I've had to wait 4 months to see a specialist, during which time Googling didn't (of course) make me feel much better.  But first, the technicians at Keck peered deep into my ear - or as far as they could, because like my primary care doctor before them, all they could see was wax, and more wax: it was as though I had a wax cork in there.  So they used a tiny suction machine which I could watch on very magnified CCTV doing its magic (until I got unbearably dizzy, which is apparently normal), and then the specialist finished it off.  No, I've never had my ears deep-vacuumed before.

And now I can hear, just as well as before.  You can't imagine my gratitude.