David Sedaris

Last night David Sedaris, the writer and humorist, gave a reading in Sacramento.

I have been a fan of his since the Santaland Diary days on NPR, but had not heard him live before. I must admit I didn't have very high expectations of the event - its just a guy on stage reading from a book for heaven's sake - how interesting can that be? However, he is seriously funny and he had the audience rolling in the aisles. I love his deadpan style of delivery and his almost whimpy nasally voice and he certainly is the master of his craft of a humor writer.

He gave some readings from his own works, most of which, I think, were works in progress, all of which I had not heard before. You could see him penciling in notes as he was reading - I guess he fine tunes his work by reading it over and over again to audiences and then goes back and edits it each night until it is ready for publication.

He also read from a book by another author George Saunders' The Braindead Megaphone. To give a reading of your works and then to branch out for 10 minutes to read someone else's work was unexpected and probably a little unusual. Nevertheless, he had high praise for the author and the book and it too sounded well written and funny.

This was the third performance event of the week - Eliza Gilkyson on Sunday, Laurie Anderson on Wednesday, and David Sedaris on Thursday. Just like London buses, they all come together, now there will be nothing happening until next year.

Eliza Gilkyson et al

Another nice show at The Palms last night - Eliza Gilkyson performed with an opening act by Hayes Carll. Eliza played to a packed house and was very ably assisted by the very excellent Nina Gerber (one of my favorite guitarists). The opener, Hayes Carll, a Houstonian would you believe, was talented and amusing and just all round enjoyable - I would recommend him to anyone.

Google and the Queen

Her face may be on the currency and on the stamps but surely nothing could be cooler for Her Majesty than getting her image embedded in the Google logo.

Thanks to Janet for pointing this out today.

Bees Make Honey

I finally finished harvesting all the honey from my bees the other night. It has been a good year - at least compared to my miserable returns with them last year (I didn't harvest any honey at all).

This year I retrieved just over 60lbs of honey - 24 from my first and oldest hive, 38 from the second hive, and none (or at least nothing worth disrupting the hive for) from the third one. The variance in the production of the hives is surprising, they are all adjacent to each other in the back yard, they all look reasonably healthy in my eyes. The best producer and the worst were even acquired from the same shipment to the bee store and were installed on the same day. I wonder why they are so different.

Anyway, this is all well and good but now I have to get rid of the stuff. I have been driving around with honey in the car for the last few weeks giving anyone I know a jar or two. I still have over 30 lbs to go, so anyone who needs honey please get in touch.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

This last weekend there was a free concert in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park – Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. The primary theme was bluegrass (perhaps not my all time favorite music genre), but as the name of the event suggests it was not limited to that and the list of performers was across the board (MC Hammer appeared on Friday afternoon – hardly strictly bluegrass at all).

Emmylou Harris

I went down primarily to see Elvis Costello on the Sunday afternoon, but, due to my late start, the horrible traffic in the city and the dearth of parking near the event, I missed Elvis completely. Nevertheless, I did eventually find a parking spot to squeeze into and thankfully I had my bike with me to speed my way over to the park in time to see The Waybacks, Loudon Wainwright, Iris Dement, and Emmylou Harris. I was well satisfied. Actually The Waybacks were the most enjoyable in that open-air environment. I had heard bits of them before but they really did a great set and when they launched into the Grateful Dead’s Saint Stephen it was like the 60’s all over again except with old people (there was even lots of fragrant smoke wafting around and lots of people selling brownies and cookies).

I guess I had never been aware of this concert series before, but this was its 8th year. It is put on by the billionaire financier Warren Hellman (a kind of San Francisco Warren Buffet) who loves music and who has the means to put on a really good concert - for free. He also happens to be a banjo picker too (he played along with Emmylou Harris on one song.

Iris Dement at the Piano

Noah's Bris

Another first for me this week - attending my first bris. My friends Julia and Greg had a baby last week - Noah Michael - and, in line with Jewish tradition, when a male child is 8 days old he should be circumcised (apparently it says so in the Bible or is it the Torah - one of those).

I guess I knew such things were common in the Jewish faith, but I didn't realize they made such a party out of it with friends, family, food and all. We all congregated at Julia's mum's house and the deed was done right there in the living room in front of everyone (with a camera man on hand to record the 'happy' event).

I never cease to be amazed at the things we all do in the name of religion, and bringing what is a surgical procedure into your living room is certainly one of the more interesting rituals. Still the whole reinforcement of community and family ties is a good thing and that's what was happening - something we atheists have to work harder at. Of course not that poor old Noah will remember much about bonding with the family quite yet, hopefully not anyway or else he might resent his dad holding him down while the cut was made.

Congratulations to Greg and Julia and best wishes for a speedy recovery to Noah.

The Grand Canyon Trip

I am back in civilization again after a wonderful trip down the Grand Canyon.

We paddled (kayaks) or rowed (rafts) for 225 miles of the Colorado River from Lee’s Ferry to Diamond Springs in 16 days and I must say, as far as scenery goes, this was one of the most spectacular trips that I have ever made. It was, however, hard work - rowing and kayaking that distance was a work out and loading and unloading all the ‘stuff’ we were carrying each day, setting up camp and cooking meals made for some tired bodies at the end of the day.


I am not sure I can adequately describe all the wonders of the trip but perhaps my photos will help show what an impressive area of the country this is. A collection of the best are here but if you want to see all 600 or so then these are here.

While there are a lot of people traveling down the Colorado River (some 29,000 per year) we were relatively isolated. Every now and again we would pass, or be passed by another group of rafters but mostly we were alone – the fifteen of us – 5 rafts and up to 5 kayaks depending upon how energetic or brave we were feeling.

Things were relatively calm and uneventful, though we did have 3 rafts flip over and several ‘swims’ down rapids by the kayakers. I was fortunate to not be in a raft when it flipped over (it can be a little dangerous) but I did make a three swims when I was in the inflatable kayak. The first two were good fun and refreshing on hot days, but the third was of more concern and involved swallowing more water than I needed to and being held under water for longer than I would have liked. It gave me a healthier respect for the rapids.

Regretfully in one of the raft flips, one of our group, Len, was injured (a torn bicep muscle). Relatively speaking, not necessarily too serious, but something that might have compromised his ability to row/swim if that were needed later in the trip, so he made the safe and wise choice of hiking out of the canyon at Phantom Ranch to seek medical attention. (Phantom Ranch some 70 miles into the trip was the only contact with the outside world – if it can be called that – that we had during the trip. There are two bridges across the river there, a campground and a “rustic” resort there.)

We averaged about 15 river miles per day and the daily routine was pretty much as follows:

• Breakfast – usually we awoke just before sun up (around 6:00 am) and staggered around slowly getting our act together. It was more work for the cook crew as they had to feed everyone, clean up and then pack their own camp up but usually we all chipped in to help. Breakfasts were sometimes quite elaborate for camp food (French Toast, Pancakes, Omelettes).
• Loading the rafts – this was a time consuming job with everything needing to be loaded in order and strapped down really tightly. In the case of a raft flipping over the last thing you need is boxes or coolers becoming detached and flying through the air. Not only could you lose important supplies, they could cause serious injury.
• On the river – we usually got going around 8:30 + or – and we would row downstream more or less in a group – the idea being that you don’t lose site of the raft behind you. If there were any points of interest (side canyons, springs, Anasazi ruins, etc) we would stop and take a look. Lunch of course was one of these stops and again we went through this big procedure of unloading tables, water, food, etc, etc and then reloading it all when done (a lot of work).
• Setting up camp - we would aim for arriving at our camp site by at least 3:00 pm. There are many campsites all the way down the river, typically on a sandy beach area, hopefully, with a little shade from trees or the canyon walls. After off loading all our equipment we would set up camp, giving priority to the positioning of the kitchen and the ‘groover’. Then we would each set up our individual camp sites. I took a tent but didn’t need it, though threatening clouds made me set it up a few times, all to no avail, we didn’t get any significant rain at night.
• Cooking dinner – we divided into 5 groups of 3, with each group taking a turn at cooking meals for one day, so over the 16 days each group did three days. The meals were quite elaborate for a wilderness experience – we had steaks, salmon, and lots of fresh (at least at the start) food packed on ice. Sometimes the recipes were a bit more involved than I and many would have liked. It would have been better to eat a simpler fare and relax more in camp rather than making some of the elaborate 3 course meals that we did. But
• Dish Washing – the procedure for washing dishes was an interesting process – 4 buckets – cold water wash to get the food off; warm soapy water wash to really clean the dishes; warm water rinse to get the soap off; cold water bleach wash to disinfect followed by drying in air. To avoid contaminating the river the wash water was then filtered into the river with the solids being packed away with our trash. Great pains were taken not to contaminate any of the camp sites with food debris so that critters like ravens or ring-tailed cats or worse condors don’t become habituated to humans and their food. For the most part this works and all the campsites we visited were pretty clean.
• Sleeping – all of the effort typically left us weary by 7 or 8 o’clock, so we tended to retire early and sleep long – a good 10 hours each night (alas even with the extra thick Thermarest, it was still not like sleeping in a bed and my sleep was disjointed). I took books along intending to read at night – that didn’t happen – I was exhausted.

So a great trip – one that I would recommend to anyone. If you are not up for rowing/paddling or for the 16 days it takes, there are commercial trips that are motor powered that take of the order of 7 or 8 days. As an indicator of how desirable self guided tours down the canyon are and how difficult it is to get a permit, our trip leader, Jim, made the application in 1994 and it wasn’t until 14 years later that his name popped to the top of the list. That’s a long time to wait. Now the Parks Service operates a lottery system so if you are lucky maybe you won’t have to wait so long.