Towse: views from the hill

“Evolutionary biology omitted inadvertantly, says DOE”

Two days after the Chronicle of Higher Education broke the story about the absence of evolutionary biology from a list of college majors eligible for a federal grant, both New Scientist and The New York Times have provided further details. At issue is a list of majors that qualify for grants up to $4000 under the new federal Smart Grant program; a blank line appears in the list (PDF) in lieu of 26.1303, where evolutionary biology would normally have appeared, prompting observers to wonder, according to the Chronicle (August 22, 2006), “whether the omission was deliberate.”

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Entertaining, wot?

Today’s lesson: Make it easy for people to contact you by including contact information at your Web site — preferably on each and every page.

If you don’t want someone scarfing up your contact e-mail, disguise it as an EMAIL button and/or use the topsekrit code (&-#-6-4) for the “@″ sign and/or use a gmail address for your site.

e.g. Site containing (allegedly accurate) information about The best mystery authors. Skimming through the list of names, I found it impossible not to notice

• Lawrence Block’s name misspelt.
• Arthur Conan Doyle’s name misspelt.
• Erle Stanley Gardner’s name misspelt.
• Dashiell Hammett’s name misspelt.
• and others

I would’ve pointed out the misspellings to the site owner if I could’ve found contact information anywhere on the site.

Couldn’t find contact information.

Nothing.

Oh, well.

Updated FICTION page at Internet Resources for Writers

Pier 26 needs repair too. The Port Authority has millions of dollars of deferred maintenance that needs tending to.

10 Aug 2006

Pier 36 needs repair

10 Aug 2006

For the second time within the week — that we know of — there was a huge fireworks display over at Treasure Island, north of the Admin building.

The first one we saw was Saturday night. (Well, first you hear them going boom! boom! Then you go over to the windows to see if the Giants are blowing off fireworks at the ballpark which, if they are, you can’t really see them, but you can see the flareups on the cloud cover. Nothing from the ballpark end of town, then Oooooh! Pretty! Look, Eunice! Fireworks over at Treasure Island!)

Last night we were on the way home from a party friends had thrown in the south bay, so there might’ve been fireworks or not. Tonight we heard the boom! boom! again — louder than before — sounding more like explosions closeby.

Tonight, I had my camera out, set to the “fireworks” scene setting, but I was hoping that holding the camera steady on a railing might work and I was too rushed to pull out the tripod and set everything up. Everything was blurry and none of the pics really captured how cool the fireworks were.

We heard neighbors applaud after the grand finale.

We thought the show might be the pyrotechnic guys in town for their annual convention again (last convention with accompanying razzle dazzle was September 2005), but we couldn’t find hide nor hair of explanation anywhere in our web wanderings.

So, instead of the fireworks pics I’d planned to post, here is a pic from a set I made August 10th, when we went out for the day on Pablo’s boat with Pablo and the lovely and charming Ellyn. We spent the day hanging around Ayala Cove, Angel Island, picky nicking before heading back to South Beach harbor. Quiet day at the cove. Sunny. No fog whatsoever either coming or going.

Cupid’s Span by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, on the Embarcadero, public art I’ve mentioned before.

Wasn’t until recently when I was pouring some balsamic vinegar from a decorative oil/vinegar bottle my younger sister gave me several years back that I realized the picture on the bottle was of

L’Abbaye de Notre-Dame de Sénanque, in Provence .  

(Picture taken June 2005. Lavender not in bloom. Alas.)

Why’d it take me so long to make the connection?

His nibs asked me to clear the space next to the window so he could open the window and brush off the debris that Joe had accidentally let fall on the overhang.

So, I’m sorting through old papers and straightening piles. Photographs. My passport photo, age 4. Me riding a pony, age 3. The Towse family, sans #5 and before #6, at Manhattan Beach, New Year’s Day, 1957.

I found a torn piece of paper with cryptic notes from a conference some time ago, which one, I don’t remember — perhaps a NASW session on writing science for children. Maybe.

13307 $33
The Little Giant Book of
   Sterling Publishing, NY

“Sometimes” Sheenagh Pugh

Turns out Sterling Publishing (associated with Barnes and Noble) has a whole series of THE LITTLE GIANT BOOK OF … Maybe I’d been thinking of sending them a proposal.

I always enjoyed the late Ruth Heller’s work. She published her first children’s book, CHICKENS AREN’T THE ONLY ONES, in 1981, when she was fifty-seven. A few years later, the young ones and I heard her talk at the Santa Clara City Library about the whys and wherefores of her books and her illustrations. She was living in San Francisco at the time and using the creatures at the zoo and the aquarium as models for her book illustrations. So often illustrations in children’s books are not to my taste. Heller’s always were.

Maryjo Koch lives in the hills above Santa Cruz. Not that far away. Her illustrations are similar to Heller’s: detailed, delicate, engaging.

The note reading “Jared Diamond COLLAPSE” refers, of course, to the 2005 book by Diamond, who also wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL. Haven’t read it.

The final note — “Sometimes” Sheenagh Pugh — turns out to refer to a poem, a poem which Sheenagh Pugh “long ago got sick of.”

Here ’tis:

Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

— Sheenagh Pugh

The neighbors in the two top floors immediately south of us were burgled in January. The same burglars tried to break into our place but were put off by the burglar alarm setup they noticed when they took a screen off a window.

We found the screen tilted up against the wall the next morning and wondered who had done what and why. We thought maybe our youngest had been mucking with the screen but we never got around to asking him.

A couple days later we heard about the neighbors’ burglaries. We figured we must’ve been out gallivanting and away from home when the burglars paid us a visit. We assume that they started in the then-vacant top unit just north of us, hopped over onto our deck, hopped over to our neighbors, and then over to the next building down.

We hadn’t really thought about it before, but the burglars only took jewelry and small items from the neighbors. Of course! we realized. Who’d want to drag TVs or stereos up the path, up the stairs and over to wherever they’d found a place to park. Easier to take jewelry and cufflinks and stuff their pockets full, then saunter away.

Night before last, after dinner, we were sitting at the table reading papers and magazines. I heard some distinct thumps from upstairs. Then some more. Thumps from something heavier than the cat, who has a distinct thump all her own when she jumps off the bed so you won’t catch her where she’s not supposed to be.

The thumps sounded like they were coming from our deck, on the top floor, two floors above us — the deck with the window the burglars had tried to enter through in January.

Um. I said. How about those noises?

Some more thumps followed and a noise that sounded like someone had stumbled against some of my potted plants.

His nibs went up to investigate.

“Come up here, Sal. Come up here RIGHT NOW!”

I raced up the stairs and had made it one floor up when his voice floated down. “Oh, too late.”

He came down the stairs to explain what he’d seen. I followed him back up. He’d turned the lights on on the deck. One last BIG FAT RACCOON was staring in at us, then waddled away and disappeared down the fire escape.

Seems there’d been at least five raccoons, big raccoons — REAL BIG RACCOONS, his nibs said — (the one I’d seen was the smallest of the lot and was still three times bigger than our cat). The raccoons had been wrassling around up on our deck. Thump. Bump. Crash.

They’d scattered when his nibs turned the lights on.

Those raccoons had lumbered up a spiral fire escape staircase FIVE STORIES HIGH just to wrassle on our deck.

Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

The cat? She’d gone missing and didn’t turn up again until much much later. Probably hid under the bed until the excitement was over.

Harper’s carried Bill McKibben’s The Christian Paradox last August.

excerpt:

Ours is among the most spiritually homogenous rich nations on earth. Depending on which poll you look at and how the question is asked, somewhere around 85 percent of us call ourselves Christian. Israel, by way of comparison, is 77 percent Jewish. It is true that a smaller number of Americans—about 75 percent—claim they actually pray to God on a daily basis, and only 33 percent say they manage to get to church every week. Still, even if that 85 percent overstates actual practice, it clearly represents aspiration. In fact, there is nothing else that unites more than four fifths of America. Every other statistic one can cite about American behavior is essentially also a measure of the behavior of professed Christians. That’s what America is: a place saturated in Christian identity.

But is it Christian?

Interesting article.

In the article McKibben mentions a survey that found that 12% of American adults think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.