Without even noticing it happen I have become directly immersed in the global economy. I need not even leave Alderpoint to do it. The global economy has been around us for longer than we realize. There was a famous essay, possibly in the 1930s, about a pencil, and where all of the parts of it came from, which was an essay on globalism. The point was that we take pencils for granted, but look at how many people from how many places contribute to the seemingly trivial pencil - or so I recall it now.

But that was indirect participation. We buy a pencil at the local store, not from Malayasia. Now I routinely make very small business deals with people all over the word, virtually every day. I do it through eBay, where I buy items for my stamp collection. Typically the item costs less than $10. I'm buying stamps from the Falkland Islands, speaking of globalization. Get out your globe and look east about 300 miles from the tip of South America, and there they are. Were it not for the war between England and Argentina over the islands in 1982, they would be as obscure as Tristan de Cuhna (another island way down south).



So, being an English colony, lots of people in England have items relating to to Falklands philately & I get small packages from England often. But yesterday took the cake. I got mail at the post office (they're still in business, you know) from England, Korea, and Argentina. Pretty global, I thought. But mostly I just take it all for granted, even though back in the 20th century such transactions would have been very time consuming and difficult to arrange. The internet, eBay and PayPal have revitalized stamp collecting by making it possible to learn about and buy very inexpensive items from people all around the globe with practically no trouble at all. Glad I stayed on the globe long enough for it to come about.

Last night I went on an entertainment binge and today I have regrets. My sweetie went to SF because Bruce's band, Flipper, was headlining the Fillmore. She got a VIP seat, and said the hall was comfortably full and the show was fantastic. But the point is I was home alone.



So I went to see the SF Mime Troup at the Mateel. I had a meeting with a prospective client (a lot of that going around right now) at 5:30 so I got in to the Mateel early - so early that the door wasn't set up and I just wandered in. A friend was running the wine booth, and they turned out to have a nice Shiraz, even if it was served in a plastic cup (my second serving was in a Mateel souvenir glass, and I think the glass held more than the cup). I had a vegetarian dinner, as that was all they were serving. I could easily become a mushroom fan after eating those shitakes on rice. I don't know if everyone was there, but it certainly seemed like it so I wandered about with my glass of Shiraz seeing old friends and making my way to the door to pay the admission fee.



Shortly after 8 the show started. If you haven't seen a Mime Troup show I can't describe it to you, but it is wonderful political theater. "Red State" was the title, and it was about a national election being held, and, due to a computer malfunction, a little town in Kansas was voting late. So late that as it developed that all the other votes were counted, and the election was a tie. All eyes were on our little town, with hillarious consequences, as they say. The show ends with an ensemble singing of "The Government Doesn't Give A Damn About the Working Man" or something similar. Lots of working off the obvious connection between "red" states and "communist" states. Obvious if you are over 40, at least. Nostaligic, I would have to say. But the show was great and at the end we gave the players a prolonged standing ovation. Someone said they were preaching to the choir, but I say the choir needs to be preached to too.

I got home around 10:15 p.m. and realized that I had a copy of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" which I had paid too much for at Costco in a moment of weakness. My upper limit for flicks is $9.99 usually. This one was $21.99 and even if it did come with a digital version I can download on to my computer, and possibly some deleted scenes, that was over budget. Moreover I have few evenings during which I can watch a flick, and my sweetie, inexplicably, is not as Harry happy as I am. So, to cut to the chase, I watched the movie.

I can't say I liked it. This is the part of the series in which Harry feels alone and isolated in his struggle, as the Ministry of Magic denies Voldemort is back, Dumbledore attempts to avoid him in a misguided attempt to keep him safe, and the school falls into the hands of Ms. Umbridge who sabotages the students attempts to learn the magic that would help them in the fight against Voldemort. We see lots of Harry being annoyed, confused, upset, and unpleasant, and not so much of Hermoine and Ron. We are spared the incessant calls of "Harreeeee" by Hermonie which give a later book an Indiana Jones feel when you hear it read aloud, but the parts of the movie which are cheerful, fun, uplifting (after all the message of the movie is that Harry must rely on love to overcome evil) seem almost tacked on in case there are younger viewers. I don't recall the book being as bad as the movie, but perhaps it was just my tiredness and mental attempts to overlay Harry Potter on the Mime Troup. In other words, too much fun.

I seem to take a lot of pictures of statues. In Hong Kong and Shanghai, lions were very popular, both the Chinese take on them, and the British. Here on the West Coast of the USA perhaps it is bears. Somewhere I have a shot of the US 101 bridge over the Klamath river bear statue. Here is an excellent bear I found in Eureka while parking to go to my dentist.



Once in another life I stopped my car alongside the road, perhaps near Bolinas, and took a picture of an eclipse. The Joy of Cooking liked it and put it on an album cover. Maybe that's what keeps me taking pictures of objects in the skies. A few days ago there was a full moon, and in Alderpoint it was just rising over the eastern mountains when I leaned on the hood of my '99 Volvo and took this shot. The upper moon is in the sky, the lower one is the reflection on the Volvo hood.

We recently got a photograph of my sweetheart from c 1958 when she was with the pioneering rock climbers in Yosemite. She is standing periously close to the cliff edge, on a small ledge on Washington Column, seeing the sights with a spy glass. As you can see she is tied in, but it still gives me thrills of fear to see her so close to falling so far.



I have no other images of her from those days except those burned into my imagination from hearing the stories. I had not yet met her, in fact when this photo was taken our meeting, on a river trip down the Klamath river, was about 20 years in the future.

But I do have some more recent photos of this extraordinary woman.

Here we are in Deception Bay, Antarctica. It was not much below freezing but there was a wind, and the ship was moving, so we bundled up.



And still further south at the point where our ship was turned back by the ice - Uma's tits.



My sweetheart has always been what we might call an extreme knitter - she is very proficient technically. For many years she has had a Tuesday night knitting group at our Alderpoint home. On a transatlantic cruise she got together a group of knitters, convinced the ship to give her a space to meet in, and here she is with the group, somewhere in the Atlantic between Florida and the Azores islands.



And here she and I rest a moment in Barcelona, in a seat designed by Gaudi.


I travel quite a bit in Northern California, and sometimes she accompanies me. We went to Crescent City and on the way back stopped to take a hike in the redwoods.



We didn't get our reservations in for tickets on the Alaska ferry in time to get a bedroom. But we met a woman who did, and needed a roommate. Here she is with Mary Alice.



A while back we went to Petrapavolsk, Russia - known to all Tom Lehrer fans - and took a very bumpy ride in a converted army convoy vehicle up a river bed to a base camp for people who were going to go climbing or skiing on a local volano. Here is my sweetie walking acoss the lava field near base camp.



Making a victory sign with two fingers seems now to be the universal sign that you are having your photo taken. Mary Alice taught English for two weeks in Xi'an, China. This is her class.

This provocative sign is posted at either end of the Confusion Hill by-pass section of 101. Of course its one of those signs that can't be both read and followed, since your eyes are not on the road if you read it. Here's what you're not supposed to be looking at



Otherwise, its a full moon and you know what that means in Ukiah, right? It seems to mean discounts. I got the internet rate at the Best Western, even tho they are filled with firefighters, and then when, with trepedation contesting with hunger, I went to Patronas, I not only had a delightful meal, but the bill came up short. I sent it back for recaluation but they decided I had won the karmic lottery that night, and refused to add on the things left off.

For meal fans, I had the sausage and cheese pizza, which for a few months was on the menu under the more upscale name of "flatbread" instead of pizza. The pizza is on very thin, semi-crunchy crust, and its very good. I often have the gorganzola and fig pizza, but this night I was going more for the taste of fats. I toyed with the idea of the thick meat sauce on pasta, but, hey, what I can I say, the pizza parlor kid in me lives on. Syrah with it, even though the new menu has new, and higher, prices for the wines. We are having an inflation, it's clear. At desert time I weakened and had the cornmeal cake with strawberries and peaches, topped with a dab of whipped cream and a mint leaf. The strawberry shortcake - a favorite food of mine since I am a son of the south - was offered only on angelfood cake, and to me that echoes more of Safeway than the South. No doubt it is delicious since the cake served at Patronas would be scratch and not Safeway, but the dish is named "shortcake" after all, and some of my earliest childhood memories are of huge, heaping, dinnerplate sized strawberry shortcakes down home in Star, Mississippi during the war, so I prefer shortcake as a feature. Cornmeal cake had a kind of hush puppy or hoe cake sound to it, which as a son of the south I liked also, but as a base upon which to put fruit, I was doubtful about. Turned out well, it was quite good. The decaf coffee was a bit mundane, which is unusual for Patronas. On the other hand I didn't have to pay for it, so who's complaining.



Then I walked out into the warm Ukiah night, with the trees lit up with lights behind the courthouse. It was a magical evening. Most of the photos didn't come out, however. That's magic for you.