Towse: views from the hill

Blogger Blocked at U.S. Border
By Lisa Vaas
November 29, 2005

“Bloggers have no privacy and should expect none—a lesson painfully learned by a Canadian citizen who was recently turned away after U.S. border guards Googled him and pored over his blog to discover where he lives.”

[...]

“‘One of them, a very sharp guy in fact, started to read every single post on my blog. And it didn’t take long until he shocked me: ‘So you live in New York, right? That’s what you’ve written in your [blog].’”

“Derakhshan did, in fact, write that he was based out of New York—mostly because it sounded “sexier” than saying he was based out of Toronto, he said.

“But between his offhand blog comment and the fact that he was carrying a Newsweek magazine sent to him at a New York address, the guards found grounds to refuse his entry into the United States, for at least the next six months.”

[...]

Oh, well! Be careful what fibs you tell on a blog. They may come back to bite you in the butt.

What I found intriguing is that the border guards Google’d him and read his blog. Who knew our guys were so computer literate?

USA Today’s new survey shows San Francisco as the nation’s fifth most literate city behind Seattle, Minneapolis, Washington, DC, and Atlanta.

“America’s Most Literate Cities 2005, a ranking based on the culture and resources for reading in the 69 largest U.S. cities, aims to rate cities not on whether their citizens can read, but whether they do.”

The study is posted online.

[via slushpile.net]

Earlier this month a friend and I were talking — well, e-mailing — about the cover article in Northside magazine on Manresa and David Kinch. At the time, I’d only made a brief mention of it on the blog because I couldn’t find any Web site for the magazine.

A wee bit ago today, someone made a comment on the blog entry from earlier this month to give me a heads up that the Kinch review was up at the Northside site.

Rise and Shine: Innovative chef David Kinch of Manresa is one of the culinary world’s brightest stars

The friend had asked back when, “Tell me what you thought of the story.” I told him,

I liked the story. I was surprised by the length allotted for it. No little short in and out there. The piece was long enough to give some juice, the vibe. Very unpuffy and thorough, I thought. Not fawning.

Whatever I wind up with will =not= be dinner at Manresa, alas.

About the only silver lining I can see for the two aborted escrows on the mid-century home in the bucolic village nestled in the verdant foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains is that when we decide to eat at Manresa, we need only bring a couple sleeping bags and sleepover in the guest house instead of driving fifty-plus miles home.

Maybe we should make reservations while we still have a place to lay our weary heads within a short distance of Manresa?

The current Photo Friday challenge is ‘yellow.’ 

The weather’s clear. The Sun is Shining.

Yesterday was a beautiful day.

Today looks to be so as well.

The view of Berkeley just before lunch yesterday.

The view toward Oakland — same time frame.

We walked over to Jack Falstaff last night for a winemaker dinner. 2.2 miles each way. 40 min. there. 50 min. back. I’d bundled up a bit as the temps were in the mid-high 40s.

Trudging back up the Filbert Steps from Sansome after dinner, eleven thirty, halfway up the 232 (or whatever it is) steps, warm, jacket slung over my arm, I heard something fall over the railing. Uh. Oh. I’d forgotten my phone was in my jacket pocket! Now it was somewhere in the garden, under the stairs.

I stayed in place so we would remember exactly where the phone launched, while his nibs continued on home and came back with a flashlight. I climbed over the railing and into the garden area with the flashlight while his nibs called the phone, which, of course, wouldn’t ring because I’d set it to vibrate so we wouldn’t disturb other people at dinner if it rang.

Luckily, the faceplate lit up with the incoming call and we spotted the glow underneath the steps near where I was looking. I reached for it, grabbed it, put it up on the stairs. His nibs tucked it in his pocket for safekeeping while I pulled myself up onto the stair supports and swung back over the railing and onto the stairs.

Such excitement.

Good thing I’m still flexible enough to hoist myself over railings.

My parents’ youngest grandchild with her family’s new kitten, Riley.

Riley wasn’t standing still for no picture-taking yesterday, so my young dragon pinned him down for a split second for me.

We’ve been having a balmy November, temps in the high 60s, sunshine, blue skies. That’s about to change, as one look at today’s weather will tell you. Highs in the upper 50s to mid 60s. West winds 5 to 15 mph. Intermittent clouds today with areas of fog in the morning are to give way to showers on Friday. Just as well, without the wind and rain, the air hasn’t been as crisp and clean as it will be on Saturday.

Saturday’s supposed to be lovely, with the rain returning Sunday-Monday.

Over on the right coast, our younger guy is sharing Thanksgiving dinner with my uncle’s family. The younger guy sent this phone-photo of my cousin’s house, where the festivities have already begun.

I called to thank him and we talked about the weather. He reports light snow in Boston. My cousin’s place is north of Boston and there are a couple inches of snow on the ground already.

I told him that there was no snow on the ground here. In fact, the wisteria is having its fall blooming cycle.

I would like to draw your attention to this extremely cool thing from Things You Never Knew Existed– and other items you can’t POSSIBLY live without!.

=============================================
Full Color Photo Throw Packet Web Exclusive!
Item No: 63035
Price: $109.98

We’ll use your color photo (up to 8″ x 10″) to create a full color custom throw! This throw is a memorable gift for parents, grandparents, anniversary, bridal shower, pet lover, etc. The design is actually jacquard woven right into the 100% cotton tapestry throw–not screen printed–for a soft, lush feel and unbelievable reproduction of your cherished photograph. Machine washable. 70″ x 54″. We send you a packet with an order form and instructions which you send to the production facility, along with a clear photo. Your original photo and throw will be returned to you from the production facility in 4-6 weeks. No photos to The Lighter Side®, please. We cannot reproduce copyrighted photos or professional studio portraits. Your packet should reach the production facility by December 13 to insure Christmas delivery.
=============================================

Is that cool or what?

Maybe I should get a throw with Lovelace’s portrait woven in.

Or is that incredibly geeky?

DARE (The Dictionary of American Regional English) is put together by folks at University of Wisconsin, Madison. DARE needs your help.

DARE has a list of phrases on site and they’d like to know if you’re familiar with any of them.

Latest questions include

• Do you call the strip of grass and trees between the sidewalk and the curb boulevard, curb line, grass plot, parking (strip), parkway, terrace, or tree lawn, or do you have another term for it? Please e-mail Senior Editor Luanne von Schneidemesser [...]

• The main responses to our question “Playground equipment with a long board for two children to sit on and go up and down in turn.” were teeter-totter and seesaw. We also received variant forms of the former, such as teeter-tot, teeter-tooter, tee-totter, teeter(ing) board, tinter board, and just teeter, among others. If you use a variant form, could you tell us what the form is and how you pronounce it? Specifically, some of our examples of teeter-tooter may be typos for teeter-totter, but others appear to be legitimate. Or do you say ridy horse? We also need the standard info as well: your gender and age, where you learned the term (geographically), and where you grew up and have lived. Thanks.
• And if you are familiar with any of the words or expressions below, please let us know. It is most helpful if you can give an example or examples of how it is (or was) used, and as much detail as possible about when, where (geographically speaking), and by whom (including gender and age of person). Other data, such as references to written works where the word appears, are very welcome, too, but please note that if it can be found with a Google search on the Web we have probably already seen it. E-mail Editor George Goebel your information (please put “NADS queries” in the subject line). Thank you.

Last week or so, I sent Goebel a note re the request for information on

make strange—”To act shy”; also, often with of, “to act surprised (at), feign ignorance (of).” For the first sense we have (relatively) recent evidence from Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Canada, but we suspect it is more widespread. For the second there is plenty of early evidence, but little from the last century; we would like to know if it is still or was recently in use. If you know it, please give examples of use.

I told him that I didn’t know “make strange,” but … in early 1982, when I was visiting relatives in New Hampshire with my seven-month old, my relatives complimented me on my son: “He’s not strange at all!”

The phrase was translated for me as “He’s not shy with strangers at all” — six-months or so being the usual age when babies start being aware of “other” and begin being shy with strangers, crying when someone other than Mom, Dad, caregiver picks them up, &c.

Got a note back from Goebel this morning thanking me. Seems they’ve had two other people (one from NH, one from south-central PA) who attest to this use of “strange” in the sense “shy.”

Strange (hah!) thing is, “the latest example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1763, and we had no idea that it was still in use (except in the phrase “make strange”) until we started getting these responses to our query.”

Any help you can give the DARE folks would be appreciated. Check out their list of phrases and help them sort out the regionalisms.

Crystals facing SE to catch the sun.

What next? Peacock feathers?

No, that’s Marin. Peacock feathers and hot tubs are definitely Marin.

Well, except for the peacock feather my dad gave me after he collected the feathers dropped by the neighborhood peacock a few months ago. That feather is kept in a jade-green vase in the dining room, against a dark aqua wall to show it to its best advantage.

Peacock feathers. Irridescence. Beauty.
Physics. All physics.

A while back, I was down at Yone’s getting some replacement beads and picked up two prisms, with hanging threads which I hung in the sunny SE-facing window to catch the morning rays and throw rainbows all over the living room floor.

A few weeks ago, I was in Chinatown hunting down a gift for a five-year-old dragon of my acquaintance. In one of the shops — I couldn’t tell you which one, but if I walked along Grant, I could find it again — I found some lovely crystals. The clear ones were inexpensive. I bought two for myself. The pink one that I bought for the young dragon cost five times as much, but pink is her favorite color and I knew she’d appreciate a pink jewel that makes rainbows. Dragons love their stash, you know.

I hung the crystals with the prisms in the SE window.

The cat thinks the rainbows are small, colorful creatures that somehow always manage to slip out of her grasp at the last minute.

Rainbows are magical things.
As are crystals.
Magic.

“Magic? It’s all in Physics, all in Physics! Dear me, what do they teach them in the schools nowadays?” [riff off Professor Digory Kirke, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis]