Prepositions

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ON
Summer is 'on,' and normally, June in Tucson is like being in an oven.
But the oven, surprisingly, hasn't been turned 'on' yet--
amazingly pleasant so far, this month;
truly chilly this morning, even, as I went for my jog...

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UP.
--the title of a new Pixar computer-animated film;
GO SEE IT!

Here's a review of the film, from the San Francisco Chronicle.
And here's the critic's opening sentence, which I wish I'd come up with:
There are scenes in "Up" of such beauty, economy and poetic wisdom that they belong in any anthology of great movie moments...
Seriously. Not an exaggeration. So...Go!
(...and it's really cool in 3-D!!!)

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THROUGH

...as in, 'how much can people go through?'
Tucson's small but tight and growing African refugee community was hit hard last week...a horrible accident: an overcrowded van rolling over on the freeway. One family we know--resettled refugees from Congo, with eight (!) children--was involved.

So, last Wednesday, a van-load of Africans--all either Burundian or Congolese, resettled here due to the ongoing violence in Central and East Africa (Remember "Hotel Rwanda?")--had gone to the town of Wilcox--about two hours away, in a farming region, to apply for jobs picking vegetables and sorting them in a greenhouse complex...The wife, oldest son and oldest daughter of our Congolese friend had gone. On the return trip in the afternoon, evidently a tire blew out in the van, and the van rolled over several times on I-10...there were 17 people in the van. (and who knows if there were seatbelts...) Five died at the scene; the rest were airlifted back to southern AZ's only level-1 trauma hospital all the way back in Tucson...

The oldest daughter was so severly injured, it seems she may have been brain-dead on arrival...but the hospital didn't formally declare her dead until Thursday afternoon. The mother had severe internal injuries and a multiply-fratured pelvis, but looks as if she will survive with no brain-injury. The oldest son is also severe-but-stable...hopefully his brain-injury/injuries won't be serious, but we're not sure yet. The father has been, understandably, overwhelmed...he's had health-problems of his own, for years probably...it's been over five years since they initially fled their region of eastern Congo due to war...and of course, there are the other SIX children at home, ranging in age from 16 down to 2 1/2.

As you can imagine, all those who know people in this community are busy. What complicates the issue, too, is that the families face multiple levels of language complication--most don't know English yet, some are fluent in French, but for many, due to years of living in refugee camps in Tanzania, Swahili is their 'better'2nd-language.

For example, in the family we know, the mother speaks no French; the father speaks basic French, the oldest daughter--who just died--spoke some as well, and the oldest son, severly injured, spoke pretty good French as well...The younger children speak either only Swahili, or are just beginning to learn English; they've only been here since December... The Burundian refugees know some Swahili, but for many of them, they are only truly conversant in Kirundi.

Imagine finding interpreters for those languages in southern Arizona.

And the father of the Congolese family has asked me to give the memorial/funeral discourse for his daughter, one of the six who've died...(I'm not sure yet how I'll get through that myself...that's tomorrow evening.)

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...du coq à l'âne:

ABOUT
...a link to a column in the Washington Post from a few weeks ago.
re: freedom; minority rights; religion & politics...
...Thought-provoking.

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OVER
...as in 'all over the place.'
Boxes. All over the place, right now, as our moving-day is a week-and-a-day away.
So much left to do.
Absurdly, though, we've already decorated the fridge in the new place
with magnets to make it 'homey.'
Priorities, eh?

Applause (?) / Panoramas

In last month's Actualité, (a Newsweek-type magazine from Québec that I've subscribed to off and on over the years), this cartoon caught my eye:

...self-congratulatory tree-planting, (look! it's green!), a metaphor...

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Now that it's summer, I've had a bit of time to try out some more photo-editting features...

Back in June 2001, my wife and I were able to visit the French Mediterranean island of Corsica.

Here's a 'stitched-together' panorama of a couple of photos--a 'land's-end' view of the Pointe de la Parata promontory, several miles west of the capital city Ajaccio.

(You're never allowed to forget, while in the scenically-situated-yet-somewhat-decrepit-city, that here is the birthplace of emperor Napoléon I.)

...and from June of fifteen years ago, another stitched-together panorama of a view that can, alas, no longer be had: looking from the rooftop observation deck of the World Trade Center in New York, east over the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge over Brooklyn Heights:

...and from the same now-inexistent platform, which stood 1300 feet above Lower Manhattan, looking north toward mid-town Manhattan and the Empire State building, which is, once again, the tallest structure in New York City:

(At the bottom center, you can see Washington Square Arch, the heart of the NYU neighborhood, and Fifth Avenue leading from it up to the right of the Empire State Building.)

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...neither here nor there,

while running some errands this morning, I heard an interview on the radio with the author of an article that appeared in the NY Times a couple of weeks ago.

He's a motorcycle-repair-shop-guy-with-a-Ph.D.

Here's the article: "The Case for Working With Your Hands."

A bit long, but well worth it...

As a teacher, I feel like his voice needs to be heard more clearly,

especially in school counseling offices...

...our upcoming move to the "javelina house," as a friend of ours (E.) put it, is less than three weeks away; time to start packing!

My wife and I were realizing that this will be our tenth address.

(The process of getting ready to move to, moving to, then moving back from Nicaragua involved several addresses in just a couple-year period.)

And really (no, really) we don't even like moving...

lunchtime update: we'll be moving next month!

So...after the posting from a couple of days ago--YES we will be moving next month, to a townhome at the foot of the Catalinas, practically at the entrance to Sabino Canyon!

I went yesterday afternoon to sign the lease, and here's a little cell-phone view of the walkway that leads to our soon-to-be front door:

The fountain and the red-tile-roofs under the leafy canopy (sycamore trees) feel vaguely Provençal to me...

Our friends (who will be our next-door neighors) as well as the landlord say that javelinas often come through to drink at the fountain. Javelinas are southern Arizona's 'wild pigs;' technically not pigs, but 'collared peccaries:' (above photo courtesy of this website)

(and the above photo from here)

Strange proportions, eh? but cute babies...just don't cross a mad parent javelina; their tusks can inflict some damage...we're looking forward to some javelina photos of our own; it'll be fun to watch them while having morning coffee on the patio...

Now, back to grading final exams; tomorrow is the last day of school here in Tucson...

Sunday...this morning in Sabino Canyon...

Yesterday morning on my bike-ride through Saguaro Nat'l Park, I noticed that lots of the blooming saguaros are just past their peak...and I hadn't yet had the chance yet to take some photos of the ephemeral cactus blooms this May, what with all of the end-of-the-school-year-madness...

So this morning I got up early and went to Sabino Canyon, skipping breakfast.

This desert dove, though ('white-winged' might be part of its 'official' name?), was definitely not skipping breakfast:
I love how these guys have sky-blue 'eye-shadow:'
...and even after a couple of years here, saguaro blooms still amaze me with their waxy substantialness:

...but as beautiful as they are, the saguaros themselves take on a comical look, with the tips of their crests and arms holding these bouquets, eh?

...and this is where Sabino creek exits the canyon, through a grove of cottonwoods:during the dry season, the creek, which runs year-round in the canyon, peters out into dryness a mile or two away...

In a few minutes, my wife and I are going to go meet someone; we might be moving this summer, and this person is wanting to rent out their townhome that's located practically at Sabino Canyon's 'front door!' S. and I are already smitten with the idea of having all THIS (the scenery of the above photos) just a ten minute walk from our potential front door!

We hope it works out...

Link: The mysterious allure of the fry cook from Bikini Bottom

Yes, that's correct--that's my title line for this entry.
It's the subtitle for this article from the current issue of The Atlantic magazine:
Sponge Bob's Golden Dream
by James Parker
(click on the above to read the full article.)

Seriously, it's one of the more brilliant essays I've read in a while.
Even if you have just the slightest passing acquaintance with
the animated phenomenon, you should read this essay; I hope you like it...

Yesterday, I had a new experience--I had to go to the dentist...
...for a crown. Ay ay ay. I cracked a back tooth--an old filling from childhood...

Wow, the cost. (At least I still have insurance, which covers some of the cost.)

But hey--better than what happened to most people for most of history, eh? --you lose a tooth here and there in your 20's and 30's, and before you know it, you're a toothless, and thus malnourished, 40-year-old, at the end of the typical life expentancy.

Too bad SpongeBob's happifying inanity didn't exist in the Middle Ages.

I had a photo on TV the other night--the local news included one of my hummingbird photos on the weather segment (one of the photos from a couple of entries ago--on April 23rd.) I didn't see it, but a friend did and called me.

Another small thrill.

Seriously, hummingbird nests--so cute.
My wife and I continue on our descent down the slippery slope of
bird-owner-dorkiness.
Alas.

May. Heat. Music.

May in Tucson: saguaros coming into bloom,
schoolkids giddy--only ten class-days left...

And tomorrow is supposed to be our first 100-degree day.
(Click here if you want weather trivia,
such as the average first day of
100-degree-heat in Tucson, etc. etc...)

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An old friend sent me a link from NPR's daily feature "The Writer's Almanac," which features a daily poem:

MUSIC
Anne Porter

When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor
Beside my mother's piano
As she played and sang
For there was in her singing
A shy yet solemn glory
My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked
Why I was crying
I had no words for it
I only shook my head
And went on crying

Why is it that music
At its most beautiful
Opens a wound in us
An ache a desolation
Deep as a homesickness
For some far-off
And half-forgotten country

I've never understood
Why this is so

But there's an ancient legend
From the other side of the world
That gives away the secret
Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries
We have been wandering
But we were made for Paradise
As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.

"Music" by Anne Porter
from Living Things: Collected Poems.
© Steerforth Press, 2006
===========================

I've just recently taken the time to (finally) do some serious listening to some Mahler.
(Gotta love the public library's cd collection...)
I'm one of those loves-Brahms-hates-Wagner people.
But I'd never really become familiar with Mahler.
Huge--Brahms' 'successor' in late 19th-century music...
Why didn't someone insist earlier that I listen to his stuff?
Then again, maybe I'm just 'ready' for it now...

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...came across this photo from last summer in Québec:

...can't resist calling this public art installation "The Riding on the Wall."

(I don't know if it even had a title... And speaking of 'writing on the wall,' I'm still waiting for mine, meaning that I'm still in next-year's-job -limbo...)

Last week I finally did bike to work--light early enough to do so comfortably...but now with the sudden arrival of 100-degree afternoons, not so tempting...

But this past Saturday did resurrect last year's routine of early morning bike-rides to and through Saguaro National Park East...

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And so the calendar still says 'spring,' although Tucson's thermometer is shouting 'summer.'

The nostalgia of seasonal change in places past:

Ahh, spring...such a lovely time in Seattle:

(The Japanese garden in the Washington Park Arboretum)

It's been almost two years now, that we've been living in Tucson.
Loving the nearby mountains and the Sonoran desert landscape...
but still missing the sunnier moments of the green green Northwest...

hummingbird nests...roadrunner...iguana...
blooms...spring in Paris

...a few photos from this past Sunday afternoon, when we took some kids for their visit to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum:

My wife and I had never seen hummingbird nests before--so tiny!

Every visit to the Desert museum, we've spent some time in the hummingbird aviary...

...and what a treat, this time, to see these little nests...

...the prairie dog habitat had an unexpected visitor in the enclosure:

...funny, that roadrunners are in the cuckoo family...
...later in the afternoon, we saw this guy perched on a rock, not in an enclosure:

...a spiny-tailed iguana, roaming free in the desert. I like his smile--a reptilian toothy grin.

..things in bloom, too. This is a bud of a 'Carl Nielsen sage:"

...and, of course, varieties of prickly-pear-cactus:
Et voilà--a little bit of April in Tucson.

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April in Tucson...can't help but think of April in Paris...

...Exactly ten years ago: early spring, along the Seine, behind Notre Dame:

...later in the spring, rhododendrons in bloom at the Parc de St.-Cloud, near where I lived:

...and just for fun, an architectural face as a parting shot:

(a Renaissance-era balcony with a mini-gargoyle in the Marais district in Paris.)