Parts 4 and 5 from guest blgger, 1950

Guest Blogger from 1950 Part 3

Again, this is easier to read if you click on it.

Diego's Leaf

I came home from work a couple weeks ago and my dog had left this leaf on my bed (which is a lot better than some other things he has left on my bed). Last night Diego got out of bed and retrieved the leaf from my cardboard-box nightstand and gently placed it on my lap and then he curled up to go to sleep.

Update to the Previous Post

I checked my records and I was charged $367.02 for the Henrosa Hotel.

Miami Beach

It was 86° in Miami when I arrived Thursday afternoon. Yes, I did arrive and the flights were uneventful, unless I count being on stand-by as an event. When I checked in at my gate at LAX I had no seat assignment and after most people were already on the plane the woman at the desk said, “Will stand-by passenger Jonathan Sadler please come to the check in counter.” Maybe I am not clear on the meaning of the word reservation.

But that little inconvenience was not an event compared to what happened when I got to Miami Beach. My hotel, The Henrosa, which I first thought meant red hen, and then I thought it meant generous, but it so happens that Henrosa is one of those words that cannot be defined with a single English word and must be described with a lengthy sentence:

Hotel that takes reservations but sells the rooms first come, first serve at the higher rates people are willing to pay due to the room shortage caused by the thousands of people who have come to take part in the art fairs.

Just so you don’t think I accidentally did not really make a reservation, the couple after me was met with the same, “we have no record of your reservation” as I was. The giggling young couple at the front desk generously recommended a hotel down the street. The Berkeley Shore Hotel was the floppiest flophouse in the South and time spent - or time served - in the room brought to mind the phrase lengthy sentence once again. Mark, the hotel clerk handed me the key and a roll of toilet paper then asked, “Did you bring a towel?” No. “You didn’t,” he asked with a tone of incredulity. Then he told me they were really busy and ran out of towels. In the room, I discovered the bathtub had about 4 inches of water in it. Back to the now deserted front desk. Eventually I found a woman whose job was not clear to me and when she looked in the tub she exclaimed, “Again!” On the way back to the lobby (I use the term loosely) she pushed the call button for the elevator and then said, “Fuck it, this fuckin’ thing is too slow.” It was then that I realized I had found someone I could trust at this hotel (I use that term loosely too). We eventually found Mark and after quite a bit of mental room searching that included sentences like, “no, that one has a clogged toilet,” and “no, that guy is still in that room,” he offered me a room with two beds for the same price. But when I got to that room, Hestor was in it and told me Mark was crazy and that the room would be $35 more. I tried to explain that one could not sell something for one price and then change the price and then I remembered that I was not in the U.S - I was in Miami Beach where our laws didn’t apply. Back at the loosely termed lobby, Mark and Hestor argued about giving me the room. Finally Hestor said, “I’ll fix it,” and about four minutes later he returned from the original room telling me and Mark that my room was fixed. I did not check but instead went out with friends Joel and Melissa from Illinois. When I returned at 2a.m. I saw that my tub was either still flooded or flooded again. I made up my mind to leave first thing in the morning. But first thing in the morning arrived with the sound of keys in my door. “Hello?” I called and hello was returned but the person did not stop trying to get in. I opened the door for what turned out to be a tiny guy with a snake... not a reptile but a drain snake and he proceeded to work on the tub while I read my book in bed. After him, the foul-mouthed woman from the night before came in smoking a cigarette. She joined the plumber and they spoke Spanish and laughed while looking at my tub. I went to the lobby and checked out. The woman at the desk was sympathetic and offered me the room that Hestor denied me the night before but the words of Abraham Lincoln were brought to mind, “Fool me once shame on you, fool my twice shame on me.” So I checked out. After wandering the streets for a while Abe’s words left my mind and I returned to the sympathetic woman at the Berkeley Shore Hotel Flop(crack)house. She told me she felt bad for me so she showed me the “best room in the house.” She smelled the towel before she handing it to me and said, “Nice and clean.” She confided in me the reason this room was so nice; “This used to be Chris’s room and Chris likes everything to be perfect.” As you may have guessed, Chris and I have different ideas of what constitutes perfection. In my perfect world the graffiti is completely covered, the horizontal artwork is not hung vertically, the blood* gets washed of the walls, there is no mildew in the shower or on the telephone and wastebaskets are available.
Things looked up when Alice showed up and to here credit she laughed about the room as much as I did. But after I left Sunday morning, Alice was trapped in the room while she waited for someone who was having some sort of fit outside the door to leave.

So if you go to Miami Beach and stay in the Berkeley Shore Hotel bring the following Items:

A towel or two
Sheets
A light bulb
A lamp or flashlight if you read in bed
A gallon of bleach
Shoes for the shower
Soap
Shampoo
A tent might be a good idea too

And if someone invites you to “come up to my place,” and in Miami Beach someone probably will, you should take him/her up on that offer.

*In fairness, the blood on the wall was not that much and could have been from popping a zit – a really big zit.

P.S. When I see a person in his twenties on a BMX bike I think, “It’s time to get a grown up bike,” but in the Berkeley Shore Hotel there was a guy, at least in his seventies, riding a BMX bike in the hotel. He also had a baseball cap, cocked to one side hip hop style.

Guest Blogger from 1950 Part II

This is easier to read if you click on it.

Missing Records

If you have my Oingo Boingo records I would like them back. It's no big deal, I wont be mad at you and you wont get in trouble. If you don't want me to know just put them behind my screen door.
You are right, they are an annoying band but I am looking for the song Pictures of You.

Joey Sessle Updated

or Sissle or Sissli participating in a 1960 dog throwing event.

I've decided that the dog is jumping over Joey.

Guest Blooger fom 1950 Part I

hedgehog beard

You ever have one of those days when your beard feels extra prickly


and it turns out to be a hedgehog in your beard?


Sorry I didn't get the wood chips out of your face.

You know what I like about dogs? They wag their tails. People rarely wag their tails and on the rare occasion that they do, it is embarrassing.



Even when one of my favorite musicians is doing it.

Google Earth

I am still very blown away, for lack of a better term, by Google Earth. Lately I have been using it to keep an eye on the cabin to make sure the bear hasn't broken in again.

While waiting for my coffee drink at a local coffee establishment (local to this planet), I overheard one of the employees complement a coworker: “Delicious suggestion,” he said. Give that man a raise.

Potential Disaster

I almost named my stuffed owl Mohammed - I said almost. Sheesh.

More on the Bear

This bed must have been just right; look how dirty it is (see pillow). Not only was the bed filthy there was also quite a bit of wiry, black hair on it.

One Dumb Thing Leads to Another

Funny thing, embarrassment. If you do something embarrassing, what is the best next step? Should you tell people or try to sweep it under the rug? I am starting to think doing embarrassing things is something I excel at. Usually I tell as many people as possible about the embarrassing or stupid choices I make. Partly, I think, I do that so people do not hear about it through the grapevine. But lately I wonder if it might not be better to keep my silliness to myself (and the few people directly involved in the embarrassing act). That way people don’t start to associate me with embarrassing moments. In fact, I may not actually do dumb things any more than you do, or you, I just advertise it. Take this morning…

Bear News

Here are some photographs illustrating what the bear did while visiting the cabin. I cleaned it up but not soon enough to prevent a mouse baby boom. The first night that I slept there I was nervous about being waken up by the bear but the mice kept me up instead. The next night Alice was with me and, after sleeping for a few hours, the bear woke us up as he/she tried to open the back door. We yelled to scare the bear away and Diego (the chihuahua) looked at us and went back to sleep.
We screwed the shutters shut and put a bed in front of the door. We'll see if it works.

Here is a bear track (with chihuahua tracks for scale) in front of the cabin. More bear news later.

Travelocity or Travelosucky?

This may be boring, self serving and some other adjective, but you never know until you read it (or in my case until I write it). On September 18th I bought a plane ticket to Miami, Florida for December 6-9. The price included airfare back to Boise. It's what we call "round trip." On September 19th, I got a call and an email telling me my flight was not confirmed. It turned out I was booked on airlines that did not have baggage agreements and for some reason Travelocity had to make my reservation into two reservations in order to make things work. I didn’t care. I just wanted things to work. A few days after that I got another email telling me that my reservation was not confirmed and that I should call Travelocity as soon as possible. This time ATA, one of the many airlines that I would be utilizing for my weekend in Miami Beach, would no longer be servicing Washington D.C. You may be wondering why I would care about Washington D.C. My return flight unfortunately takes me (might take?) through Washington. Travelocity said they would contact the airline and the airline would contact me in three days. At least a week later I called back because I had not heard from the airline. This time Travelocity told me the airline would get back to me in two weeks. A couple of days ago Southwest Airlines contacted me and said that they would honor my ATA flight. The problem was and is Southwest does not fly from the Washington Airport that I will be flying into. So I called Travelocity again. After 45 minutes on the phone yesterday the fellow on the phone said, “OK, it’s all fixed. He described my entire trip, ending in Washington DC. I reminded him that I am trying to get all the way home to Boise. I, in fact, have no need or desire to be in Washington D.C. December 9th. I asked for a refund. He said my ticket is nonrefundable. I asked to talk to a supervisor. He said he would transfer me to his supervisor. After about 5 minutes of being on hold he said, “I am now transferring you to my supervisor. You will be on hold for a maximum of one minute.” 10 minutes later I hung up because no one came back on the line. Today I started the whole thing over again. This time a supervisor was to call me, and finally one did! When I tried to answer the call but my stupid phone showed a message that read, “Phone Numbers Only,” and would not let me answer the phone. She left a message and confirmed that my ticket is nonrefundable and that I should call back. No special number or extension. Just call back and start over.
I forgot to mention that today my Travelocity person offered me a flight home from D.C. for an additional $374.00.

This dollar was used to buy fish. Later, maybe weeks or months later, when the previous owner of the dollar bill discovered that he or she had inadvertently spent his or her Danny Glover autograph, I am sure he or she was disappointed. Maybe devastated.

Bear

My sister called today to tell me that a bear broke into the cabin. Diego and I are going to go there in a couple weeks to clean up.

Everything

With all this talk about Simplifying, I decided to photograph everything I own. This is not all of it, nor is it to scale. Feel free to chose one thing you think I could do with out and I'll give it away. When my friend Cheyenne was much younger, she had to donate one toy to the thrift store if she wanted to get a new toy.
I felt like this post needed one more sentence and the first one that came to me was, "Then she walked out of the thrift store and was promptly hit by a bus." I decided not to use that one.

I love stories with a character that can identify birds by sound. Some people, particularly in third world countries, know all the birds by sound and sight but know different names for them. Some have a similar knowledge of mammals. In Central America people call jaguars, tigres, which can be confusing because, to a gringo, tigers are striped and jaguars are spotted. When I was in Costa Rica, I saw an ocelot. Seeing cats in the wild is rare. I was with a skinny guy named David. We saw a quick flash of a smallish wild cat dropping from a tree branch. We gave chase. We did not see or hear the cat again. Later, a bull chased us. I turned and chased the bull back. David and I were hiking from somewhere near Monte Verde to a lagoon at the foot of a volcano called Arenal. Toby, a graduate student from the United States living in Monte Verde, told us there was a boat taxi service that would take us across the lagoon so we could visit the town of La Fortuna. There was no such service but armed with a combined vocabulary of dozens of Spanish words we managed to explain our situation to a local who found another local to take us across the lagoon. There were plenty of taxis waiting to drive us the rest of the way into town. We watched howler monkeys resting in the roadside trees as we drove. As soon as we exited the taxi, a young man invited us to a party and promised us, “Muchas pussy,” while making a shape, opposite of phallic, with his fingers intertwined while moving his palms apart. Inexplicably, we ended up not attending the party even with such promising party favors. We did go to a restaurant that served, “comidas typicas,” or typical food. A beautiful, purebred boxer walked in while we were eating then walked out and was promptly hit by a bus.

I was just listening to a story on the radio, and there was a character that was described as having, “learned to recognize all the birds by song.” That is what made me write the first sentence. I had no idea that was going to lead me back to the time when that dog got hit by a bus.

Bird Skull

I found this attached to some bones and feathers in my front yard.

Drivers License

This morning I went to get my Idaho drivers license. One of the forms I had to sign was one verifying that I did not have to register as a sex offender. But when I saw my photo I had second thoughts.

Food in the Sierra

Sunny-side up courtesy Dr. Matt.

Fall in the Sierra

Closed the cabin last weekend. I cannot think of anything to say that would add to the above photo.

Not a Spider

There are other critters running around my house.

Another view

Another Spider

Spider

Do you know what kind of spider this is? It appears to have an alien's face on its abdomen.

Gift from Chicago

Belted Kingfisher

Unfortunately this bird will fish no more. Is it ironic that he was killed by fishing line?

Starlings

If you read only part of the above, make it the last sentence.

Hear hear!

Bunkum

Scroll to the bottom of this page and you’ll see a banner ad for a CD compilation featuring the band Bunkum. If you like potty humor (and who doesn’t?) buy this CD now. If you aren’t a big fan of that brand of humor, buy the CD later. This is one of America’s longest-lived bands. They formed way back in 1982 or 1983 and have been together (with all the original members and then some) ever since. And if all that is not enough, they are friends of mine. I might even be thought of as the Pete Best of Bunkum if I played the drums or the Stewart Sutcliffe if I had died in art school. But alas, I survived art school.

Hardball

Every once in a while I write about politics.
In Boise we have a famous senator, famous for being openly gay to everyone but himself. Yesterday Idaho’s junior republican senator, Mike Crapo (pronounced just the way it looks) said he is “stepping in to make sure no balls are dropped…” It seemed to be exactly the appropriate thing to say in this situation.

Boise Observations

I am in a café in Boise. There is a table chock-full o’ teenagers next to me. They look about the same as teenagers looked when I was one but these have different things pierced. I was going to say, “they have more piercings,” but people had plenty in my time but they tended to be relegated to the ears or in some cases an ear. One teenager is eating packets of jelly from the condiment counter. Another is the cynical leader with a voice that could curdle milk or curl teeth or at least make you feel dumb if she talked to you. Paradoxically, if you were among her peers, you’d feel privileged if she talked to you. I know the type.
Low battery, must go.

Dog

This is my dog, Diego, and he is a Chihuahua. There, I said it. He tends to have wet eyes and that's what that dark crescent shape under his eye is.

Olden Days

I was doing a scanning demo for my class so I grabbed a bunch of old slides from my collection of old slides that I keep in a drawer marked, "Old Slides." This is our old dock.

My Home: a cabin it ain't

My new shower curtain makes my entire apartment smell like freshly finished floors. I believe that is what is referred to as "off gassing."

Haiku

In the cicada's cry
No sign can foretell
How soon it must die.

Basho, Matsuo. (1644-1694).

I assume this was originally written in Japanese but it rhymes in English.

This was sent to me from Rob Thurlow.

Western Idaho Fair

Here we have a young bison trying to nurse from billy goat. For those of you who do not know, a billy goat is a male goat, also called a buck. Only occasionally did he let his frustration with the bison bother him enough to butt the calf with his horns.
This activity raises quite a few questions, non of which will I address here. This is not that kind of blog.

Loaded Landscape

Here is a review from a show that Luke and I are in at the Museum of Contemporary Photography.
We are only named as "New Catalogue."

America Me

As a fifth generation Californian, I have a tendency to defend the state when people make fun of it for its hippy/mellow/earthy population. But today I went into a store in South Lake Tahoe and overheard two co-workers’ conversation. One of them asked, “What are you?” There must be dozens of possible answers to that question: a woman, a human, a girl, an American, a Democrat. But she knew the answer, a Virgo. He was an Aries. They agreed that those two signs are not meant for each other - romantically speaking. He said, “I need to find a Sag,” (short for Sagittarius). So all of your preconceived notions about Californians are correct: always warm, earthquakes, hippies. We’ve got it all.

But I don’t live in California. I live in Boise, Idaho. My current mailing address is in Chicago, Illinois, my car is registered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I have a Massachusetts drivers license, and my area code is New Mexican.

This is the picture I meant to post

Pete on Letterman

Apparently David Letterman also just read Dishwasher. My apologies to Pete - the TV I watched this on stretches people out a bit. Pete did a great job on television. He was funny and he even told people to turn off their TVs - Pete does not watch TV.

Practice Run

This truck/trailer combo seemed big until we parked it next to the big boys.
Luke and I drove this thing from Albuquerque to Chicago over the weekend. Next weekend we are driving a similar but smaller truck to Boise. See you there.

Tomorrow I am giving my computer back to the institution that owns it. I’ll get a new one in about a month from another institution, so I’ll be blogging with a typewriter like in the olden days.

New Residence

One of these is my new home in Boise. Next time your in Boise stop by.

Boise

Boise is pronounced with a hard 's,' as in Boy C. This is what I saw more than anything else during my four days in Boise - it's called "Rufus."

Waukegan

Today I went for a walk and found half a muskrat, (I don't recommend opening that link), a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, a Yellow Warbler, an Indigo Bunting, a Common Yellowthroat and a bunch of large, orange and black wasps digging holes.
It is safe to click on the other links. I can only take responsibility for one of the photos but unfortunately it is the first and grossest link.

Winner

Wow, you really went the extra mile, Matthew L. Warren of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Scientific Discovery

While walking along the Illinois River this morning, I heard a grunting noise. The grunting noise was coming from some logs and boards in the river. I decided to investigate. At first I thought the boards and logs rubbing against each other caused the sound. Upon closer inspection I discovered the source of the sound: carp sucking (eating algae?) or chewing the underside of the wood. I have included photographic evidence of my findings. Unfortunately, I did not bring my fancy recording device so I cannot offer audible evidence.
In the bottom photograph the carp is upside down so it can mouth the wood.

Shortcake

Dessert, breakfast and dinner in that order.

Sadler Drawing Contest

Well, the cicadas are dead and with them goes the Cicada Drawing Contest. Congratulations to all who won. For those of you itching to make a drawing I offer this challenge: draw me.

Bird ID

Can someone tell me what species these swans are?

Uh oh.

This is the view from the cabin of the smoke from the Angora Fire.