I'd never really noticed this little memorial marker on San Pablo Avenue, tucked between a chain-link fence & a tree, until today when we walked up to an opening at blankˆspace.

And here's some grafitti on a window nearby. If I was a fine art photographer I could call this "Shadows & Shades" and sell prints of it on my website.

Rachel Cunningham showing us part of the nursery.

I went out to Hedgerow Farms near Winters for a tour. I like hedgerows, like I like streetcars. I like public space where people of different classes can interact in non-pressure situations. Everyone's on pretty much the same level in a European streetcar. At least that was the case some years ago. I think automobile culture has been very damaging to the development of a civic sense. Autos separate you from others & I don't think that's healthy.

Anyway for me hedgerows are the rural equivalent of streetcars. They provide habitat & transportation corridors for all sorts of critters, and they benefit sustainable agriculture in lots of ways. I like that they are diverse & semi-wild but also part of the made environment. Like streetcars, they encourage diversity & are, to me, acceptable compromises.

As usual, my romantic imagination wasn't bolstered by any real practical knowledge, so when I found out that Hedgerow Farms did tours, I figured I'd go. The paradigm here in California is a little different than, say in England, which is the country I always associate with hedgerows. Here it's more about grasses & reeds & not as much about building vine structures. I had a good time though. Saw a deer & a bunch of huge rabbits.

Rachel pointing out details of the riparian environment. These green strips of reeds & grasses have all been planted - technically these are hedgerows.

Ponds are important in farming, as places where toxins can leech out of the water supply, as habitat for ducks & frogs etc. Lots of reasons.

Old beaver damage becomes a nice sculptural accent to a riparian hedgerow full of wild rye, mugwort & willows.

I went camping with Lise at Henry Coe State Park. Here's morning fog covering Morgan Hill & the whole bottom end of the Santa Clara Valley.

We saw lots of horizontal spiderwebs in open meadows on our Sunday morning hike. I'd never seen a spiderweb like this, but apparently these funnel webs are pretty common. The spider is in the funnel.

We have pretty good roses at the house, but this cluster is unusual & especially good.

The demon ships attack the dinosaur castle.

This invitation for a show running all this summer at the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu was a complete surprise for me when I pulled it out of my mailbox. If you look close, there's my name there in between Georgia O'Keeffe & Philip Guston. Thanks to curator Jay Jensen, the Contemporary has a small sculpture & one of my Targets in their permanent collection. The Target they have was made to be exhibited unwound, as an installation similar to this one in the Czech Republic, but they are currently exhibiting it wound. Whatever. It's allegedly on a wall between a Guston & a Sam Francis, so heck they could hang it in a paper bag if they wanted to.

We have boxes & boxes of Jen's book here at the house, ready for her to sign & ship. I like taking them out of the boxes & lining them up everywhere.

And, finally, here below is proof that my typically-less-than-sunny disposition is not as unhealthy or self-defeating as the Pollyannas of the world would like me to believe.

Just another crazy deadly day at or near the intersection of Adeline, Market & Aileen Streets, half a block from our house. This is the latest accident, which seems to have started on Market but ended up (& I do mean up!) on 56th. The van was stolen, the police chased it, driver died.

Boojum in her new waterproof collar. Is it time for a chewstick?

Me with painting of a polaroid take by Jim Leftwich of a sculpture by Ralph Eaton, who has some non-sculptural work on exhibit in the North Oakland Temporary Museum. Here I'm getting ready to pack it up & send it to Ralph.

My Senegalese friend Moussa Waly is an engineer working on problems of solid waste management. He recently sent me some photos of Tambacounda, the capital of the eastern region of Senegal, where he is working. The French captions are his.

L'avenir de ces enfants se perd dans les déchets déversés le long de la rivière Mamacounda qui traverse la ville de Tambacounda. (The future of these children is lost in the waste poured along the Mamacounda river which crosses the town of Tambacounda.)

Les déchets sont déversés impunément le long des rues et des routes. (Waste is poured with impunity along the streets and roads.)
Dans un marché de Tambacounda les déchets cotoient les denrées alimentaires. (In a Tambacoundan market, waste [cotoient?-contaminates?] the food products.)

Here's Mary Bennett, one of the organizers of the Strange Weeds collective, at the Bridge Art Fair in Chicago. The three pieces on the one shelf are all by me.

My friend Paul Stinson's band The Radishes just put out a new cd. All the cover artwork inside & out is by me, as is the drawing on the cd itself. I didn't, however, do any of the layout & design. Here is the cd & the front cover:

TUSSLE