Ramble 26: The Twelve Faces of Seaweed

A gorgeous summer day  in Alameda - over 75 degrees F at 3pm in the afternoon! - and Sergei and Marge had a wonderfully warm and relaxing ramble along the shoreline.
Certainly feels like summer's here.
As usual Sergei carried his camera. And, as is becoming more usual, Marge carried her cell phone/camera. Sergei's camera is far better quality than anyone's cell phone but Marge finds that the flexibility of having her own camera allows her to point and shoot at will.  (Marge does have a small Nikon but, frankly, she finds it a pain to find, carry, keep charged, etc and the picture quality, while better than the cell phone, isn't that much better. (A bad worker often blames her tools, eh!) Here's Marge's question:  why manufacture cell phones with cameras that offer crappy resolution of 75 at 25 x 25 inches? Why not offer resolution of, say, 180 at 8 x 8 inches? After all, small pix with high resolution use about the same file size/memory and large pix with low resolution. Maybe, as it the case with so many consumer goods, there's a pact between the cell phone and camera manufacturers not to mess with one anothers' markets?)
Alas Marge digresses.
So there they were, Marge and Sergei, rambling along Crown Beach shoreline.
The tide was way out so rocks and shoreline that the tide would normally cover at higher low tides were exposed.
Marge was struck by the quality, quantity and, yes, sheer diversity of sea weed.
She shot these pix in an attempt to capture that quality and diversity. Too bad the quality of the camera flattened and washed out the seaweed-y colors - as well as the texture of the plants that, in real life, shows the action of the receding water over the seaweed.
Astonishing in real time.

Ramble 25: Another Plug for Little Library

(Didn't see the first plug? Here's the link - with photo and location )
There's something about having a library within easy walking distance that warms the cockles of any book lover's heart. Sure, Alameda's main branch library is within walking distance - Marge walks there often enough - but it's not exactly "easy" walking. (The carrying back of the books will wear you out if you're like Marge whose library visits frequently culminate in several big and heavy books; these soon become cumbersome when walking more than 5 blocks or so.)
True, the West End Alameda branch (788 Santa Clara Avenue) is even closer to Marge's neighborhood than the Little Library is. (Actually, Marge had forgotten this library. Past visits there went well. And now that she remembers it, she plans to revisit.)
But...there's just something about the Little Library....
Besides is location, the Little Library is ...well, little. What ya see is what ya get. It's also a treat not to have to create a book list so you don't get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of volumes at the "real" library.
LLib offers just two short, small, handmade shelves of books to choose from; if nothing suits or if you've already read the current selection, come back soon. Certainly Marge and Sergei have returned home empty-handed after a trip to LLib.
Their recent trip, a week or so ago, turned up some real gifts.
Highly recommended:
Julian Barnes: The Sense of an Ending. A lovely, well-written, unusually non-linear story. Also non-American (British) and the author doesn't seem to feel the need to insert guns, violence, overly-explicit-therefore-too-directive sex scenes or simplified and reductive relationships.
So-so recommended.
Rita Mae Brown: Hounded to Death. Seems RMB returned to her roots after Rubyfruit Jungle and now writes fox hunting mysteries; according to her author photo she hunts too.  Not great; not terrible, just a bit...y'know, ordinary and oriented towards teaching readers about hounds and the hunt... and the elite who can afford this lifestyle. Yawn.
Amy Tan: The Bonesetters Daughter. Talk about an author finding and exploiting a formu la for writing success! Some readers love Amy Tan, some readers hate her. Marge? Well, Marge is just    b  o  r   e d   by the formula now. Yawn squared.
Marge and Sergei dropped off a few books although the only book Marge remembers dropping off was James Joyce's The Ambassadors. (Marge owned this book for years, re-read it a few times and had been carrying it around in her vehicle - along with about 40 other books - meaning to drive 'em to the Internet Archive in SF where they're engaged is digitizing every book in the world and offering 'em, free, from their online library. Yikes! Big job...and one well worth supporting.)
Sergei recently introduced Marge to Ian Rankin, Scots writer of detective-style stories. Marge likes 'em.
Then there's Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger. A well-written, surprising, unusually non-linear story. Back cover description: "Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how to came to be a success in life - having nothing but his own wits to help him along."
The White Tiger is definitely a worth-it read. (This book did not come from the Little Library but from Sergei's well-stocked library. And it'll go back there. Despite lives full of books and their recognition that some books must go live in other homes, both Marge and Sergei recognize that some books must stay in their home. The White Tiger is one of these.)
Also found at the LLib: Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins' Left Behind. Marge was curious about the hoopla surrounding this book - the entire series - and what's in 'em that so many find entrancing. Well, she still doesn't get it. Badly written, trite conversation that fills up pages with words but doesn't say much or do anything other than chit chat. Another formula churning out what works rather than what's entrancing. Amy Tan's formula is several cuts above LaHaye/Jenkins formula; to each his/her own, eh?
Marge is ploughing through 5 or 6 fiction books per month these days. After the last decade reading only non-fiction she revels in reading decent fiction. What a treat.
Sergei reads both. He still reads heavy-duty non-fiction - U.S. defense budgets, arms treaties and so on. Just hearing about this drives Marge further into the pleasant denial that reading fiction provides.
Her advice?
Visit the Little Library, drop off a book or two, take a book or two.
It's magic, it's manageable, it's neighborly, it's user-friendly, and it's free.

Ramble 24: Wha'ts good for the gosling

It's spring and Canada Geese are turning out Canada goslings! Lots of 'em....and it's only the beginning of the season.
The mom pictured here had 17 young'uns under her wing. Sergei snapped this shot as he and Marge strolled around the pond at Crown Beach.
The pic below shows the sentinels looking out for the large family.
As Sergei snapped that family another set of parents brought their goose family to the pond too.
This one is a smaller family, just 3 goslings, but, think of it: two Canada Goose pairs created, between them, 20 goslings!
If the first mom finds herself overwhelmed with gosling-care, the second mom can, y'know, help out.
At this rate, imagine how many goslings there'll be pecking and paddling around the beach in a few more weeks. (Be sure that Sergei will follow and report on their progress with his trusty camera.)

More goose news
Update for readers who followed last summer's saga of the Canada Goose with the injured leg:  Good news! (New to the saga? Get caught up with Ramble 17: Duck, duck, goose.)
Marge noticed that, when the 2013 summer's soft- /baseball season opened, the injured goose had to share her territory - the outfield at Washington Park along Central Ave., with assorted batches of similarly dressed and disparately coordinated players applying bats to wildly unpredictable balls.
Rather than contemplate the most dire reason for the goose's disappearance - she'd succumbed to her injury and died - Marge mulled over an assortment of other possibilities including 1) her leg had healed and she was doing what other geese of her generation and evolutionary imperative were doing - laying or hatching eggs or frolicking with her brood in the pond or... 2) as any other self-respecting goose who'd rather abandon contested territory than insist on staying (and risk a kid's bad aim breaking her other leg...or a wing...or another body part) she'd moved to a spot more conducive to feeding while sitting on her belly.

Today, after their ramble to the Little Library to return and borrow more books (See Ramble 2: Little Free Library...), Sergei and Marge rambled along the 8th Street border of  Washington Park...and there she was...

 

...on the grass between the sidewalk and the basketball hoops, north of the kids playground.
Sergei took her picture - the first of 2013.
Doesn't she look... terrific...for a goose that has had to adjust to the vagaries of fate?
Marge suggests her theme song is "I will survive":
...At first I was afraid I was petrified.
...Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side....
Listen to Gloria Gaynor's version.

Ramble 23: Tartan sheep and other forms of lunar madness

 

Tartan sheep trending...

Apologies to readers for the lack of content recently. It's not that we're no longer rambling- we are! and more than ever! Rather, we're collecting so much to write about that we seem never to have the time actually to write! Go figure; a sign of the times.
Meanwhile, Sergei noticed that a Scots animal farm has come up with a novel way to celebrate Scotland's Tartan Week – by unveiling the country’s first ever tartan sheep. Since each tartan represents a different clan Marge and Sergei hope soon to share a photo or two of a flock of sheep representing a number of clans - therefore a veritable crazy quilt of tartans strewn over the highlands.

Now for good times a little closer to home. It was full moon recently and, touched by lunar madness, Marge found herself walking the beach in the early morning. The tides, of course, are more extreme during full moon and here's a sample of the beach on Friday April 26th.

 

 (Above) Crab Cove on promontory near McKay.

(Below) Looking towards Sunny Cove (Central Av lies beyond the residences in the background).

 (Above) Looking towards what Marge and Sergei refer to as "Poopy Point" (See Ramble 12: Pipe to Know-where for that history.)
(Below) Looking towards yacht harbor at Ballena Bay.

Ramble 22: The Wall...or, Target's coming to town

On another ramble Marge notices a dark silhouette against the northern sky near the estuary: Target.
It's coming to an Alameda Landing near you - and sooner than you think.
When it does, poof! there goes the skyline, replaced by a building that goes up in huge prefab slabs held by 2 by 4s.

Since Sergei isn't there to talk Marge down from the image of Target looming over Alameda, her thoughts of impending doom run away with her: Yikes, that looks like The Separation Wall that snakes over large junks of the West Bank and annexes Palestinian land to Israel.
Later, Marge talks to an Alamedan friend about the state of construction and asks, "What does it remind you of?"

Without missing a beat, the Alamedan friend responds, "Of the Separation Barrier in the West Bank...."

Do you think that's far-fetched?

Well, see for yourself.

 

Here's the Target wall-raising...
The line of what looks like toothpicks in the pic on the left is a line of 2 x 4s holding up The Wall ...




 


and here's The Wall or Separation Barrier through the West Bank.
30 meters high in some spots - close to 90 feet - it is high enough to block out the sun for hours at sunrise and sunset.
The section pictured here goes straight through what was, once, a Palestinian family's business: growing and selling vegetables from their green house and a run for about 40,000 chickens.  Both were destroyed for the road the IDF insisted had to be routed right through the gardens and pens.
Family friends painted the mural shown here that includes a phoenix rising from the ashes (you can just see a bit of it's wings - that orange-color in the distance).
The paved road you see on the left is the military-only road that an Israeli Defense Force patrol drives twice a day. It is locked with a padlock on the gate at each end of the family property. A pad locked gate at the end of this section of wall on the left - also locked and unlocked by the IDF each morning and afternoon - allows family members to come and go; if the soldiers forget to unlock the gate the family is confined to this cage.) /what was once an independently well-enough-off family, is, today, a family struggling to survive on the income the head of the household can make selling water from a truck with a small water tank on the back.

True, Target is more likely to lock customers into the store than to lock them out (can't thrive if no customers) and, besides the way they look, the Walls aren't that similar: for one thing, Target's walls are far flimsy-er than the Separation Barrier. Both walls separate communities though.

and, if, like Marge, you found this all too depressing.... here's a snippet of music to cheer you up, Pink Floyd's The Wall.

Ramble 21: Oh la la, Shangri La

On St. Patrick's Day Sergei and Marge stroll on the pedestrian path along Shoreline Drive. As you know if you've been outside in the last weeks, spring is sprung and: "the sun is a-shinin' to welcome the day, the birds are all singing all happy and gay, heigh ho...." (On this topic of spring ditties, this year Sergei scored a home run with Marge - who loves such things - when he introduced her to a ditty from his childhood:
"Spring is sprung, the grass is riz
I wonder where the birdies is?")

As often happens when it's a particularly warm and lovely weekend day, Marge and Sergei head to their favorite Alameda haunt, the place they call Shangri La (see pix of Shangri La at sunset on the last day of 2012).

On the way on this day, Marge captured this pic of the beach near Elsie Roemer Bird Sanctuary getting its annual sand re-arrangement.
Here, a trio of youth take advantage of the St. Patrick's Day holiday to relax upon the sand re-arrangers.

Then Marge and Sergei push on to Shangri La where large flocks of birds gather.
Sergei suggests these flocks are preparing to leave for their breeding grounds up north. In some spots along the beach, there are so many birds crowded into such small areas that the tidelands look almost ... textured .... The pic below gives a good sense of that quality of textured tideland that is actually high density bird life. (Note the egret to the right. Marge asks, "Sergei, doesn't that egret remind you of how your grammar school Headmaster hovered nearby to keep an eye on the goings-on as we kids played?"
"Sure does Marge." )

Then on to Shangri La.
On this day, several residences have residents on display in their back yards as they enjoy the beautiful day. (For the map lovers among our readers, Shangri La is on the bay side of what is Bay Street for vehicles, mailmen, and those too timid to explore the dirt footpath).
Sightings of Shangri La residents is unusual - which is why Marge mentions it. On this topic, she's been known to mutter, "If we had the good luck to live along here, Sergei, wouldn't we take every opportunity to hang out outside?"
Sergei mutters his answer, "Yes, Marge." (Once he added, "Marge, you and I, generally, are not covetous people but...do you notice that our most fervent bouts of envy are directed at residents who reside in Shangri La?" In response, he got an ear full from Marge about "making the most of your good luck, appreciating the glory around you, etc.)
Today, Marge is somewhat mollified to discover that at least one set of residents appreciates her/his spectacular location and celebrates it with this totem-like sculpture.
Isn't it something?

Ramble 20: Emma! Or, a Frenchman meets his match...

And, for a change of pace... This very cute, 39-second commercial, titled, from French, "Paper is not dead".
Enjoy!