not the real thing, BUT ...

Two nights ago, I was down in my study, working ... and Gramsci was convinced there was a mouse sharing our space.  He was fixated on the area under my mother's old desk, behind the books, behind more books... Admittedly, sometimes I thought I heard a very slight rustling - but it could have been a large moth (or, worse, still, a cockroach), but on balance, I thought it best (or cowardly) ignored.  

No sounds yesterday, although Gramsci was strangely fixated when we went to bed.  Usually he climbs onto my chest, into my arms, purrs.  Last night ... he fetched the red mouse (seen above), shook it, chased it on and off the bed, and eventually fetched another (yellow) mouse from a different part of the room, and repeated the performance.

Was he trying to tell me something?  Surely.  This morning, he disappeared down to my study, pre-breakfast.  I was trying to leave by 6.30, a long and painful dental appointment awaiting me on the other side of town.  Then at 6.29, I found him in the dining room, guarding the sweetest and unharmed (physically, that is - who knows about psychological scars?) little field mouse hiding behind the door.  She was captured under a plastic bowl, and escorted to a safe space down the garden.

Grammy is very pleased with himself.  Myself, I'm blown away by what he was telling me through that role play with the toy mice.

 

sniffing spring

In truth, it was a grey, gloomy, and very chilly day, which began with some light rain.  All the same, the wisteria is out down the street, and so is the - is it a gardenia?  Alice is sniffing it, hoping to find out.  

 

abandoned?

Or, more likely, dropped, and rescued, and left for her ... does one say "owner," for a doll as self-possessed as this one?  "Person"?  ... to come and find her again.  By Silver Lake reservoir, which seems to be a positive mecca for lost toys, but this one is lifelike enough to make one hunt for some kind of narrative, some kind of metaphor, here.

 

The Poet's Wife

She's out right on time: all that rain a few weeks ago encouraged her.  I still don't know which poet - the David Austin website doesn't explain, although it does inform one that she has 77 petals, which seems rather special.  

 

wooing potential graduate students

Two busy days of hoping that we can persuade the graduate students to whom we've made offers to come ... and today was a morning - and lunch - at the Huntington: some paintings; a library visit - both of those with a colleague - and a walk round the desert garden (and past the poppies - why are they so much more advanced than ours? I guess they get more sun ...) - and lunch, before back to another class visit, and dinner (before they all headed off to a bar)  It's always strange at this stage: they seem always like our new class, and they seem like a bonded flock - and then there are always some that one never sees again - or next sees at CAA, or when they apply for a job in the department some seven years later, or or or ...  

 

balloons

I don't know.  Only they emphatically are not cardinal and gold, and therefore fairly inexplicable.  They are very variegated in their blueness - I'd say: are they for the Dodgers home opener tomorrow, but really none of them are a true Dodgers blue.  Maybe they're to welcome our Graduate Prospective to campus?  It was such a gloomy day, in terms of the weather (and in terms of university and national politics, for that matter) that anything cheering was welcome.

 

first poppies

The very first Californian poppies are blooming in the back yard!  I strewed handfuls and handfuls of them, and I'm hoping that these will be the first of many.

This was a cheerful sight to start a day that then rapidly went downhill when the University told us that our senior search has been halted - when we had already started bringing candidates to campus - for when they said that cuts and budget restrictions would start immediately, they meant it.  We feel particularly angry about this, because we were all ready to roll with this search in January - and then the fires happened, and half of our committee was houseless, and all of us were rattled, distracted, distressed - and it would have been unrealistic to bring senior candidates to campus at that moment.  So we ran our junior search, regrouped, had one senior candidate visit - and now, bam.  Nada.  

 

Gramsci contemplates

... the distance between Winslow and Los Angeles from the top of an armoire at La Posada, and thinks that it could be a long time before he gets his dinner.

Little did her know that he's have to listen - via Zoom - to a Faculty interview session with someone on the short list for our next Dean; a History department meeting; and the reading aloud of a Dear Colleagues, or Dear Trojan Family, or whatever-it-was email, about Frozen Faculty and Staff hiring; no salary increases this year; a chunk of staff winter break being taken away from them (what good will that do?); no "unnecessary" conference travel (which would be what, exactly??) - and so on.  Gloom ahead.  But Grams (and Moth) got their dinner on time - we were home by 5 p.m.

 

both ends of the day

First thing this morning - the strangest of double chem trails, like a shadow piercing the clouds.  But then a very beige - and very truck-heavy - drive to Winslow (no snow, though - more like a heat wave, this time ...) - to find that our favorite (and the cats' favorite) room at La Posada has been refurbished, and the mirror repositioned, and well ... the cats did not know what to make of that!

 

Mike Messner's book party

We were so happy that our old friend and colleague's Mike Messner's book party happened while we could still - just! - be here for Spring Break!  To say that it's a book about his old High School's yearbook makes it sound parochial - and it's anything but, even if the one hundred and twenty years of Salinas High School's publication offer the basis for a wide-reaching discussion of student life: sports and academics; gender and racial demographics, and plenty of surprises (finding that at one time the cheerleaders were all boys certainly puts a different spin on stereotypes).  Of course, in England we never had yearbooks, as such - rather, it was - and is - the School Magazine - and an analogous study might be somewhat different.  But this is a tour de force - micro into macro history - and stunningly produced by Rutgers University Press - it's a really beautiful volume.

Mike above, and Pierrette below, and in the mirror Doe Mayer - another former USC colleague, now a Santa Fe-an, too.

and, for complete irrelevance, a bluebird in Eldorado, except that it was so beautiful I had to share it.

 

out to dinner

We managed to leave our desks this evening (spring break, so-called, has neither been long enough nor by any stretch of the imagination a real break) to have dinner at Escondido, a newish Mexican restaurant on the east side of town, in a curiously futuristic tiny new development: it has (as we discovered when we were last here) amazing margaritas and real Mexican (as opposed to New Mexican) food - the Chile en Nogada mightn't be quite as good as the dish I had once in Mexico City (in a tiny restaurant weirdly positioned at the end of a street where the shops apparently sold nothing but wedding dresses), but it came close.

 

jar of utensils

I'll take moments of beauty during the day when I can get them, thank you.  This greeted me while I was making coffee this morning (don't worry - the cats were fed first) - and somehow it just summed up why I find being here in NM so relaxing... not that the rest of the day was that way: much admin, interspersed only by a trip to Fable - which is slowly taking over the space where Arable, of blessed memory, used to be in the Agora (our local set of shops), and promises very well indeed: lunch was chicken mole empañadas.  Only take out, and a tiny menu at present - I can't wait for it to be up and running for dinner.  The cooking utensils will be resting in their jar, some nights, I'm sure.

 

watching Rachel Maddow

Gramsci has watched a lot of news in his nearly four years on this earth (can that be? he's still ridiculous), and become nightly more horrified, as do we.  So watching Rachel is interspersed with more doom-scrolling ('did you see that?') and googling properties for sale in Brighton, or wherever.  I have no real immediate wish to move to Brighton ... but of course what we're witnessing is unprecedented, and awful.  First, however, resisting and fighting back, somehow.  Grammy would agree.  And I don't know what we're going to do when Rachel stops being on - with her guests - every night: 100 days post-Trump has been a treat.

 

dust in the air

... and this is by far the clearest that it's been all day.  Mostly it's been thick adobe brown obscurity. We had 40 mph winds, gusting up to 60 or so, and around 2.30 this afternoon our phones screeched with an Emergency Warning telling us of dust storms with zero visibility, and so on.  I-40 was closed, with crashes on La Bajada.  It's a good job that Alice flew in yesterday, not today.  It took a while rescuing the big recycling bin from the ditch, and then its lid kept flying open and whopping me over the head as I dragged it back up the driveway.  New Mexico can be like this in March, I know - it is without argument my least favorite month here - but it's when Spring Break happens, so that is that ...

 

spring break may really be here!

Yes - it could, indeed, be Spring Break!  Even if much of my day was consumed by admin issues, I then went down to Albuquerque to pick Alice up, and then straight (if 70 miles is "straight") to Harry's for margaritas and - well, as ever, I had Tinga de Pollo tacos, but, it being St Patrick's Day, Alice had the Guinness Lamb Stew.  She's not (despite her heritage) wearing green, but I dug out the greenest top in my closet, even if it's more Brat Summer than shamrock.  There were a lot of people wearing green check hats with lights (I just checked on line - they had to come from somewhere - Walmart, $5.97).  But seeing the other offerings ... I'm thinking I might invest in a glowing, blinking fedora for next year, and still have change from $10.  

 

an enigmatic flamingo

This is beautifully inexplicable, especially on the back wall of Santa Fe's Whole Foods.  At least, at a time of year when I find it hard not to keep checking in on live bird cams (Jackie and Shadow, the bald eagles at Big Bear; the barred owls in Indiana; the Great Horned Owl at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Texas - I particularly like Athena: she looks like a brooding cat), I don't have to worry about this one.

 

snowing?

Gramsci was totally horrified at the white stuff falling from the sky (some of it snow, some of it sleet, some of it little round hail pellets).  Mind you, it had been an unsettling morning.  I was grinding coffee beans and was totally disconcerted by a vibrating, drilling noise outside – like a thick spring reverberating in the wind, only there wasn't that kind of wind, today.  So I bundled into a jacket and hat and went to investigate.  There was a very large (and cross) Flicker, who was presumably excavating insects from the canales, or any other bit of wood he could find on the roof.  Such is semi-rural life.  Much of the day was spent inside, understandably, catching up with such exciting tasks as my USC Information Security Training (I hr 15 minutes of learning not to click on suspicious links in one's email).

 

a long day on the road ...

We - that's the cats and I - made it!  It was a long drive from Tucson, with wind and occasional dust storms, but nothing as apocalyptic as yesterday's rain.  Arrived as the sun was going down ...

... at the other end, the cats were the star of the day at check out.  Miaow, miaow, miaow they went, as I pushed the trolley into the front hall at Tucson's Graduate Hotel (much recommended).  Oh My God, said the young guy behind the desk - Are They Cats?  I love Cats!  I can't charge for cats!  (and he didn't: their cuteness saved me $75).  And then a group of women on some kind of leadership tour - couldn't quite make out what - but sustainability, borderlands, etc -crowded round: oh, aren't they sweet!!  And then the woman who'd served me in the coffee shop - "aaaaaah.... can I take their pictures for the coffee shop?  Gramsci!  Is he - he looks like - a Bengal?"  [he loved that].  It was hard dragging them away from their adoring fans.

 

LA to Tucson

It was a very, very wet drive from Los Angeles to ... Tucson.  I had to take the southern route - via the 10 - which is much longer than the 40 - because it was dumping snow on Flagstaff, and that quickly gets impassable.  But the rain, the rain ... whole sections of the 210, and then, especially, once I was back on the 10 after a Phoenix-avoiding loop to Gila Bend and heading towards Tucson, were like driving through the worse monsoon rains - cars aquaplaning, semis jackknifing into boggy central reservations, and so on.  But I just kept on keeping on - what else could I have done?  The clouds were dramatic - I wish I could have pulled over near Gila Bend to take more pictures, and at one point there was a rainbow - but not much that one can do when one's just determined to arrive safely.

The most chilling site was near Blythe.  Here there was a big traffic tailback because of road works, and La Migra clearly had decided to take advantage of very slow moving cars, and had pulled this one over, and were clearly interrogating whoever (I couldn't see) was in the passenger seat. But I'll never - and I hope I never - be able to forget the sight of the face of the woman who had been driving: one of fear, and horror, and desperation.  What can one do?  Half a mile down the road, I was thinking - should I have asked ¿Hay alguien a quien pueda llamar por ti? but even if so - and if I hadn't been arrested myself - to say what?  Or is there an ICE/BP hotline to give a tip off so that help can be offered by them?  Or or or?  I kept wondering (it was about 2 p.m.) if she had kids to pick up from school, and if she'd ever get there. 

And in any case, I had passengers.  

 

storm arriving

... with the most dramatic clouds.  Strangely, that was 7.30, on my way home - and it's not here yet, at nearly midnight.  Indeed, iit would be good if it went somewhere else - because some one - not us - has removed the tiny tiny palm tree that was growing in the gutter, and that was stopping water from hurtling over the curb when it rounded the bend, I found this evening that rather too much water must have got in at the last storm.  So I removed masses of still-damp newspaper; replaced it; put a sand bag in the gutter, and am hoping for the best ...

 

noticeboard in Taper Hall

It's good to see notices being posted ... to the point, and practical...

 

sentiment of the day

OK - let's see if this stays up.  It's an experiment.  And would I have posted this if I hadn't been granted citizenship?  Probably not - not since this regime took over.  Could they revoke that citizenship?  Since they can apparently circumvent the law in all kinds of ways, doubtless they could try.  I mean, doubtless, yes. I am just in such a continual state of anger, of outrage - I'm sure they are expecting, hoping that we will all just become exhausted.  But - no.  On the other hand, am I going to push my luck when it comes to free speech by posting this image to FB?  Hell, no.  Here's a nice fire escape, from just up S. Hoover ...

 

the roses of early spring #1

There will, doubtless, be more - hence the #1.  And this isn't ours, and it certainly isn't the first in the neighborhood, and with the orange tints of the new leaves, it does, in fact, look remarkably autumnal. But it's a way of marking a beautiful spring day, even if my head was firmly down, working ... Spring Break cannot come a moment too soon.

 

redbud

One of the triumphs of the new garden (some days I think that what I mean by that is something that neither the squirrels nor the possums have eaten) is a couple of redbud trees: this is the time of year when one can truly see why they were given that name.  In fact, the buds have popped into pinkness, by now ... At least they're not going to get assassinated by frost.  I have a very wary eye on next week's weather forecast, since I'm expecting to be driving to NM, and there's a lot of snow scheduled to fall around Flagstaff.  I have alternative plans, if so, to go south - although I hate driving down the boring 10 with a fairly fervent passion.

 

early spring

The storm moved out, and on - leaving this view from our deck around lunchtime.  That green grass? The Junior Golf Academy.  I can never get over the fact that a few times a year, I can see snow on the mountains from our house.  Mind you - and it's an unsurprisingly corollary - it was very chilly today.

 

soup

Ah, the combined blessings of an Instant Pot and Rancho Gordo beans ... I soaked these rebosero beans overnight; cut up lots of vegetables this morning; set everything going in the Pot - which Alice then liberated later.  And there was supper - and enough for another evening - and that completely suits this cold (very cold) and rainy weather.  

 

wet

Very wet!  Not that I'm sorry to see the rain - but it's not just wet, it's cold.  And it was a long day.  Two search discussions and voting, one in each of my departments; long meetings.  And rain.

This isn't actually the photo I thought I'd be posting.  I was splashing from class to meeting, and saw a slightly chilling sight: two campus cops, with a large, menacing, growling dog who was being trained to attack - luckily the object of the attack seemed to be a large wedge of cardboard, but you wouldn't want those teeth anywhere near you.  Very shortly afterwards I saw in Annenberg Media that an unhoused man with a history of sexual battery had been arrested on campus.  I'm suspecting the two things are linked.  But here's my question: given that we are paying security services for a secured perimeter that's a total pain to work within (having to check back in with a USC card when we've walked fifty feet to mail a letter, for example), why are there arrestable people on campus in the first place?  Anyway, they were probably trying to keep dry.

In any case - as I tend to do if I see armed police anywhere near students, doing anything unusual, I got out my cell phone as a kind of reflex action - thought I'd taken a pic, but no.  Maybe Elon Musk got inside my phone.

 

contemplating the future

Maybe I should stop on my way to or from USC and ask for a reading: I find (as, I'm sure, do half the country) that I wake up at 3 a.m. (assuming that I've been able to sleep, in the first place), thinking - what next, what next, what next?  This regime's incessant battering of seemingly everything I value in this country is exhausting, infuriating, and doubtless it's meant to make us feel like that, so that we shut ourselves down so as not to engage any more.  Well, no.

 

stairwell

Another day; another job candidate visit; another trip to the bathroom at Manuela so that I could take a photo of the tastefully decaying warehouse architecture ... This evening's discovery was the date ice cream ... 

 

the shadows of an afternoon walk

Unintentionally, I seem to have captured the shadows of a pregnant lamppost.  Plus some bougainvillea, and its accompanying leaves; all projected onto a weirdly colored pale lime green wall.  

Jolted just now by a 3.9 earthquake, which did everything it was meant to do (loud boom; sound as if a train was rushing into the house; windows rattling alarmingly). Gramsci fled; I dived under the dining room table; Moth carried on eating, and Alice "wasn't sure what that was."  I guess Grammy and I come across as the novices, here ...

 

Jackson Market

A new discovery!  Jackson Market, in Culver City (or, to be more exact, Park East), which is like a funky neighborhood deli in - oh, I don't know, somewhere mid-sized and quirky, like Columbus Ohio (friends in Columbus will tell me it's nothing like it, I'm sure - I plucked that out of the air, but it reminds me of the US 25 years ago, being busy but small scale and completely unpretentious), with a little yard in which to eat at the back.  "Eat" - I'm still on the not-chewing-very-much routine, but the tub of guacamole was delicious.

And this was with my oldest friend, whom I've known for ... a bit under 68 years.  Photo courtesy of the people sitting next to us - I don't know why I've slumped so ... it both seems a long time since we were, say, galloping down the beach at Deauville on retired racehorses, and on the other hand, not a minute ago.