San Francisco Garter Snake

Golden Gate National Recreation Area:

The San Francisco Garter Snake has been called North America’s most beautiful serpent.  A fantastically colored species that does justice to its moniker, it is identified by its reddish-orange head with red, black, and blue racing stripes on its sides and back.Unfortunately this harmless and gorgeous critter isn’t easily seen, in part because it is on the brink of extinction.  Restricted primarily to San Mateo County, the species’ preferred habitats—wet and marshy habitats with access to upland areas—have been hit hard by agricultural, residential, commercial, and even recreational development.  There may be only one to two thousand individuals remaining in the wild today.

MP3: Incredible String Band - First Girl I Loved

I Been Downhearted Baby

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeva since the day we met.Good lord almighty. If there's an order you should do things today, clicking here should be on the top of your list. And if you don't have the time to watch five glorious minutes of BB and Lucille preaching to a large group of Sing Sing inmates on Thanksgiving day of 1972 - and clearly you do - then go to the 4:00 mark, watch for Joan Baez, and try to deal with how much more fun prison looks than being on the internet.

West With The Night

West With The Night by Beryl Markham, 1952:

"Night flying over charted country by the aid of instruments and radio guidance can still be a lonely business, but to fly in unbroken darkness without even the cold companionship of a pair of ear phones or the knowledge that somewhere ahead are lights and life and a well-marked airport is something more than just lonely. It is at times unreal to the point where the existence of other people seems not even a reasonable probability. The hills, the forests, the rocks, and the plains are one with the darkness, and the darkness is infinite. The Earth is no more your planet than is a distant star - if a star is shining; the plane is your planet and you are its sole inhabitant.Before such a flight it was this anticipation of aloneness more than any thought of physical danger that used to haunt me a little and make me wonder sometimes if mine was the most wonderful job in the world after all. I always concluded that lonely or not it was still free from the curse of boredom."

Ernest Hemingway on Beryl Markham:

"Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West With The Night? ...She has written so well, and marvellously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade bitch, can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers ... it really is a bloody wonderful book."

West With The Night - #8 On Nat Geo's 100 Greatest Adventure Books Of All TimeBuy it on Amazon

Rainbow Festivals

Guano:

My daughter Skater (aka: Pixie, Shine, age 13) and I had a grand time at the Missouri Rainbow. We arrived Sunday June 23 and left July 3, and those were 11 magical days! Our drive in was 12 hours, and started with thunderstorms and a downburst in central Illinois that forced us off the road near Springfield. Big booming lightning! Old Mother Nature's power chords! Ba-BOOM!! Ka-Pow!!!!!

Guano's maps of various Rainbow Festivals - 1993, 1996,  1999, 2000 MP3: Melanie - Babe Rainbow

Missing Links

From Nat Geo:

Known today as Hyracotherium ("hyrax-like beast"), Eohippus ("dawn horse") was the original name of the first complete skeleton of this primitive, foxlike horse, discovered in the southern U.S. in 1867.Why it matters: When Darwin went public with his theory of evolution, there was no hard evidence to show how an existing animal had evolved from prehistoric species—until Hyracotherium, kicked off a series of fossil discoveries depicting the evolution of horses over 55 million years.Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago says Hyracotherium/Eohippus is up there historically with Archaeopteryx. The paleontologist named Eoraptor—the small transitional dinosaur at the root of the dinosaur family tree—with Eohippus in mind.

MP3: Genesis - Turn It On Again (Thx)

Coyote Melon

If one of these things is intact and all dried out when you find it on the desert floor, it'll make a damn fine maraca:

Cucurbita palmata is a species of flowering plant in the squash family known by the common names coyote melon and coyote gourd. This squash is native to the southwestern United States and far northern Mexico, where it is most common in desert regions. It is a sprawling vine with rough, stiff-haired stems and leaves. The dark green, light-veined leaves are sharply palmate with usually five long triangular points. The stiff, curling yellow flowers are 6 to 8 centimeters wide. The plant bears smooth spherical or oblate squash fruits 8 to 10 centimeters wide. The fruits may be bright yellow to dark green and may have white stripes. The fruit is distasteful and not edible.

Sunday Project: Brainwave Monitor

I bought a brainwave monitor on Ebay a few months ago for way too much money and, unlike the one that was my inspiration, the only way to get the thing humming was through electrode inputs, which I didn't have, nor could I seem to want to find. So yesterday I bought a soldering iron and installed a 1/4 inch jack so I could use a microphone and/or a guitar to get this old thing to squeal and hiss. The whole process was a blur and I can't believe I actually did it, but yeah, she's now a working, beautiful, boring machine. MP3s to come. Click the photo for a better view.Pre 1/4 Inch JackAnother Sunday Project

Phosphorescent

A few weeks ago, I left work in the middle of the day and trekked through the black East Village snow with Sam and Hanly to watch Phosphorescent play a few of those Willie Nelson covers he made an album out of.  It was five of us in an empty bar, pretending to drink beer, talking about Dan Asher, and picking our jaws off the floor when we listened to Matthew and Angel sing them songs.Watch 'em sing hereMP3: Phosphorescent - Reasons To Quit

Salamanders

Above: Oregon Slender SalamanderAbove: Black-chinned red salamander, North CarolinaPhotos by Josef Uyeda:

I am a second year Ph.D. student in the Department of Zoology at Oregon State University. I am studying the evolution of sexual isolation and the potential consequences of secondary contact between divergent lineages with Dr. Stevan Arnold.

Spirit In The Night

If you haven't seen the Hammersmith show from 1975 that accompanies the Born To Run reissue, go find it.Crazy Janey and her mission man were back in the alley tradin' hands`Long came Wild Billy with his friend G-man all duded up for Saturday nightBilly slammed on his coaster brakes and said anybody wanna go on up to Greasy LakeIt's about a mile down on the dark side of Route 88I got a bottle of rose so let's try itWe'll pick up Hazy Davy and Killer Joe and I'll take you all out to where the gypsy angels goThey're built like lightAnd they dance like spirits in the night (all night) in the night (all night)Oh you don't know what they can do to youSpirits in the night, in the nightStand up now and let it shoot through youWell now Wild Billy was a crazy cat and he shook some dust out of his coonskin capHe said trust some of this it'll show you where you're at or at least it'llhelp you really feel itBy the time we made it up to Greasy Lake I had my head out the window and Janey's fingers in the cakeI think I really dug her `cause I was too loose to fakeI said I'm hurt she said Honey let me heal itAnd we danced all night to a soul fairy bandAnd she kissed me just right like only a lonely angel canShe felt just right just like as sweet as a spirit in the nightIn the night baby don't know what she do to youSpirits in the night, in the nightStand right up now and let it shoot through youAnd there's this.And this.

Lechuguilla Cave, NM

Lechuguilla Cave is located in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, NM. It's the fifth longest cave known to exist in the world (122 miles) and the deepest in the United States (1,604 feet). Up until the 1950s, the cave was considered pretty insignificant until a group of miners heard wind coming from the floor. In 1984 some people started digging and, by May of 1986, a new large walking passage was discovered that lead to the 122 miles of cave we now know.Lechuguilla Cave on Planet EarthMore amazing pictures from Cavepics.com