Sunday bird blogging

Another towhee (or maybe the same towhee) in Berkeley a while back.

Yesterday I was waiting for the bus down Fifth Avenue after class—the knee was very achy and there was no possibility of walking all the way home—and when a bus finally came, it was so crowded it didn't even stop. The MTA app said the next bus wasn't due for another ten minutes, so I sat down on a bench by the park wall and closed my eyes. And one of my fellow passengers came over to get me a couple of minutes later. “A bus is coming! And it's empty!” I would probably have missed it if she hadn't alerted me and that little kindness made my day, almost as much as the student who'd told me my class was “awesome” earlier that afternoon.

It's difficult to feel optimistic about anything right now, so I try to revel in the positive moments when I can.

Sunday, oops, Monday bird blogging

A snowy egret wading in San Francisco Bay.

I really did mean to post this yesterday, but the amount of work after the first class of the semester is not much smaller than the preparation before the class. I have to grade the assessment tests and the writing samples. I have to post all the class materials in Google Classroom. I have to send followup emails to the students who registered but didn't come on Saturday. I have to verify all the email addresses and phone numbers and create a WhatsApp group. I have to crop and label the photos I take of each student so we can all learn each other's names. I made a good start yesterday, but need to finish up today. This week I have two tutoring sessions, several appointments, and a professional development class, and, oh, I also need to finish prep for the next class.

I love love LOVE this job, but it is part-time only in theory.

Sunday bird blogging

A California towhee enjoying the sun earlier this summer.

Sunday bird blogging

I actually saw a double-crested cormorant sitting on a piling in the Hudson River yesterday. I have never seen one in New York before.

It was gray and drizzly and the bird was too far away to photograph, so here's a picture of a different cormorant in Lake Anza in Berkeley.

Saturday reflections

Palm trees reflected in a car window in Berkeley.

Urban poetry

Here are some fun shadows and geometries from my recent trip before I leave on the next adventure: a bridge over the Truckee River in Reno, and the San Francisco Bay Ferry terminal in Richmond.

Golden hour

Some of the grasses on the verge in the golden light of late afternoon, and a house taking the theme of native plants to a beautiful conclusion

So succulent

This photo of a plant in the garden in Berkeley looks like it has a filter on it, but it doesn't.

There is a noticeable shift in Berkeley towards using succulents and (presumably) native grasses in the parkway strips on the sidewalk verges and islands instead of flowers.

The art of Drakes Beach

I thought this photo looked like a painting, so I helped it out with a little filter.

Sunday bird blogging

A pair of gulls hanging out on Drakes Beach.

Sunday bird blogging

A fairly terrible picture of a scrub jay enjoying breakfast in the garden here.

Drakes Beach

I haven't taken many pictures in Berkeley, and haven't processed most of those I did take, but here are a few from our excursion to Point Reyes on Friday.

Drakes Beach is backed by steep sandstone cliffs, which the wind and water have sculpted into beautiful patterns. The winds were on display Friday, and I could only stand to walk on the beach for maybe twenty minutes, but it was worth being in the grindstone of the flung sand and water to be able to breathe in that fresh air.

Eden

My AirBnB in North Berkeley has a wonderful garden, lush and half-wild, full of bees and butterflies. And I have been spending a lot of time in it after a bad fall on the sidewalk on Sunday night which left me bruised and a little shaky. I have a lot of reading still to do for my Oxford program next month, and I have found that sitting in the shade in the garden and watching the swallowtails and hummingbirds makes it possible (barely) to wade through the impenetrable thickets of Henry James's prose.

At any rate, I have managed to finish The Turn of the Screw, and am pleased to realize that I still hate it every bit as much as I did when I was younger and much more inclined to decide I liked certain books because I felt that I should rather than because I actually did.

I'm very glad that I never have to try to teach my English students to parse something like this:

It was a pity that I should have had to quaver out again the reasons for my not having, in my delusion, so much as questioned that the little girl saw our visitant even as I actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she wanted, by just so much as she did thus see, to make me suppose she didn’t, and at the same time, without showing anything, arrive at a guess as to whether I myself did!

Back to the Bay Area

I'm leaving tomorrow, for a brief stop in Reno and then on to Berkeley. So I want to post these pictures from last year's trip before I start collecting new ones: the view from Mount Tam and some nearby wildflowers, and the always amazing view from Cesar Chavez Park in Berkeley.

The cat is apparently alive

I went looking for water pictures and found this from Berkeley in April. A long way from the Mediterrean but peaceful water views have always been the thing I enjoyed most about ship travels.

I'm flying to Heathrow tonight, and on to Athens tomorrow afternoon. I have a pre-cruise tour of Classical Greek sites, and the cruise proper leaves on Friday.

I guess we're really doing this.

Sunday bird blogging

My summer vacation is almost over and I have done almost none of the things I meant to do, including finishing going over older photos. But here's one from Berkeley, earlier this year: some lovely architectural detail on a house, a framing tree, and the warm light of the golden hour.

And, if you look closely, a downy woodpecker in the tree.

San Francisco

Seen from Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, the spires of San Francisco look like something from a fairy tale.

I'm taking advantage of spring break to spend a few days visiting friends, staying in an AirBnB south of the campus in Berkeley, where everything is different—no more Kip's or Cody's or Rasputin Records—and yet unnervingly familiar.

And someone I hadn't seen in more than 40 years actually recognized me when I was walking on campus today, so apparently I am among the things that haven't really changed as much as I would like to believe.

Urban poetry

I will clearly never catch up on my backlog of photos until I am no longer in grad school. I must accept this.

Here's a photo that is less than a month old, of the legacy Bay Bridge in San Francisco.

One more tree

This cypress lost its fight with the sea winds, but I love how the broken trunk forms a (sort of) heart.

Trees at Land's End

Nothing evokes the Bay Area for me more than the smell of eucalyptus on a foggy day, but I've always loved cypresses as well. The weathered trunks and scrawny flat crowns are well suited for a life of being windblown.