This is the neighbor’s goat.
He browses the hillside.
The neighbors recently asked if they could open a gate between their property and ours and let the goat roam our hillside some. I agreed as having a browser like a goat will reduce the brush, and help reduce fire danger. So we all win. Happily, the goat gets along well with the deer, I often see the goat and deer browsing within twenty feet of one another.
He’s got some really wild horns, something like a shofar.
I betcha one day he’ll be a musical instrument in my hands….
but not today.
He’s got more beard than me…but mine probably smells better.
The dogs went nuts over this large goat coming too close to the house. Chica was the first to raise the alarm. Here she is, all five pounds ready to charge the hundred fifty pound goat.
But Whitey is the one who got the closest. Here he is a scant charge from the goat…ready to attack at the slightest provocation. It is kind of sad because Whitey kind of kept losing sight of the goat, the grass is a bit tall for my little buddy. Where we live is not only good for Vickie and me, it is also a dog’s dream.
Lyrics: Latin
Lingua mendax et dolosa,
Lingua procax venenosa,
Lingua digna detruncari
Et in igne concremari
Lyrics: English
The mendacious and crafty tongue
The bold, venomous tongue
The worthy tongue is cut off
And is burned by the fire
Corvus Corax is a German band that plays music with an elemental twist,
and their lyrics are often in Latin or other ‘Romance Languages’.
In this video, some has wedded some images from computer games to the magnificent song called Lingua Mendax. It is just so great to see how much creativity humans can have. Would that we as a species were to spend it more fruitfully.
This is just down the road from our place. The road up ahead was partially closed down due to fire. Besides the oddity of the moon and clouds and the surreal aspects of the signs… I like the ‘Next services 52 Miles’ sign. Yes, there truly is no gas or any town, or store or anything but people like me back in that fifty two miles and beyond.
I know people sometimes get spooked in places like this… and I don’t blame them. If I didn’t live here and know the hills and animals and people, I’d be scared too. But this big empty open hilly area is home….
Sometimes we’ll come across visitors from Europe who disregard the signs warning of no services. They just cannot fathom the fact that for fifty or more miles there would be no service station or some such thing. One time our family found a group of Germans along the road, sad and depressed and out of gas in their rented Motor Home. Then we come pulling up looking like characters from a horror film. My dad drove twenty miles back to get gas enough for them to drive to the next station. They said they just could not believe such a long stretch of road with no gasoline or stores or towns was possible, so they continued on rather than pay the overinflated prices at that ‘Next Services’ place.
Yeah, the poor folks there have to pay about twenty five cents more than the folks in Santa Maria, who pay even fifteen cents more than the people in Lompoc. Yeah, I know where the cheaper gas is, and tank up fully when in an area cheaper than the next place I’ll visit.
The Santa Barbara Botanical Garden is one of my favorite places to visit. Although I only visit the garden every year or two, I tend to go there on Tuesdays if possible because it is free admission on Tuesdays.
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For Immediate Release
August 21, 2008
Media Contact:
Amanda De Lucia
Public Relations & Marketing Manager adelucia@sbbg.org
(805) 682-4726, ext. 139
Holiday Marketplace Artisans Needed!
CALL FOR ARTISANS & CRAFTS PEOPLE
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden’s
15th Annual Holiday Marketplace
November 22-23 2008
Juried Artisans gather at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden for our 15th
Annual Holiday Marketplace, where we showcase local artisans in a
beautiful outdoor environment. Each year we welcome previous exhibitors
as well as new talent, who offer nature inspired, one of a kind, fine &
functional arts and crafts for sale.
For an application: call 805-682-4726 x113 or apply online at www.SantaBarbaraBotanicGarden.org
Deadline for application: October 15, 2008
Please forward this email to any interested parties.
For more information, contact (805) 682-4726, or online at
The Botanical Garden is really a nice piece of art. I had a cousin and her husband visiting from Germany one time a few years ago… although he’s only seen them on TV, he is deathly afraid of rattlesnakes. I assured him there were few rattlesnakes in the botanical garden, and we’d likely not be in danger as long as we stayed on the marked trails. I think we were near the 200 year-old dam in the canyon alongside the pretty creek with its picturesque boulders when we looked at a map encased along the trail. We were in ‘Rattlesnake Canyon’. Yeah, he kinda blanched, but we made it through.
Actually, being afraid of rattlesnakes is the wisest course of action. I used to handle rattlesnakes a quite a bit some years ago. Now I haven’t picked up a live rattlesnake for some years. As long as you stay on trails, you are unlikely to fall into real danger from a rattlesnake. If one is on the trail you should be able to see it well enough. It is when you are in grass and brush and might step too close (or on) to a snake and cause it to bite you in response that you are in danger.
In time you can learn to recognize the places snakes will tend to go on particular days. Sometimes they’ll be in the open sunning themselves to get warmed up, other times they might try to stay in the shade to avoid overheating.
All-in-all, I’d recommend staying away from snakes in general, you don’t want to hurt a beneficial snake… and rattlers in particular, you don’t want to get a rattlesnake scared when you’re too close.
Here’s a couple photos of rattlesnakes I’ve taken this last year.
This guy was curled up right next to this weed which I was about to pull (this was in our cactus orchard on the hillside). Luckily I noticed the little guy before I pulled the weed. Even a small snake like this (perhaps a foot long,it’s hard to measure a live snake), can put out a lot of poison. There are some who say the younger ones are more poisonous because they have little ‘flow control’ on their poison. They might dump all their poison in a bite, when a mature snake knows to apply just the amount needed and not waste poison which will take time to grow back in sufficient amounts to use. This might also explain why some people will get bitten and not seem to get much poison put into them.
I’ve known a number of people who got bitten by rattlers. One fellow was airlifted out from a ranch to the hospital. He said there was pain, but he got lightheaded and woozy as if he’d been drinking, or perhaps like some depressent drugs might give. He laid down to keep the poison from racing and awaited the copter.
One other fellow I knew some decades ago had been bitten some five or six times. The last couple times he didn’t even go to the doctor. He said that he seemed to have grown a certain immunity, so he only got a bit swollen and sore for a week or two. He was on old-time rancher from an earlier age, the thirties through the sixties when cowboys were a bit extra tough. In fact, he won several national awards for ‘quick draw’ competition in the seventies.
This little rattlesnake was in some rocks at Montana de Oro park in California’s Central Coast.
Some folks might think that snakes in public access areas like this should be removed, but I disagree. The snakes are part of the environment, and if people don’t get into the brush or rocks you are pretty safe. Myself, that’s the places I like to walk in.
This flower spike has been extending all spring and summer.. as it went along the end was a never-ending dance as it twisted day by day, always assuming another shape as it unwound.
Yes, I have found a new career path to look into. This one will combine my love of the outdoors, riding horses and seeing cats. In fact, this is a job that Vickie and I can do together since she loves cats even more than me.
A quarter century ago, a church in a nearby town was having a Christmas show. This show entailed a huge map-drawing of the Holy Land on the church floor. Each city and town with a mention in the Bible had a small group of church members depicting some famous scene from the Bible.
This show seemed very interesting to me, it would combine so many of my favorite subjects; geography, sociology, religion, acting (through the actions of the actors) and perhaps plants (I mean, there is a whole slew of plants mentioned in the Bible, one could have a great time building one’s own ‘Biblical Garden’ using such plants).
So it was with a happy heart, high with the season of Christmastime which has always been my favorite season when everyone seems so much more jubilant and positive than most of the year, I decided to go and see this celebration. The event was going on through the entire day, so I could show up any time between the posted hours and see the show. Since we usually get such fine weather in December, and the sun was shining warm on this Saturday morning, I decided to take my motorcycle. Now, my motorcycle is a bit like me, it’s loud strong and large. And put me on that chopped 1960 Harley with my big leather jacket with all my 6’4″ 235 lbs stuffed in and covered with hair, leather, denim and boots… and pull up to a church parking lot and walk in…. I think I kind of scared them. I was nice, I waited in the line in the lobby and signed the ledger book, smiling and talking nice like I usually do with people, and two fellows in suits came up and whispered to the lady behind the table, and after they walked away she looked up at me, with vacant eyes, kind of a Stepford imitation, and she said “I’m sorry, but we don’t think this is the right church for you”.
Smiling, aware of how I scared them by my appearance, I explained I wasn’t there to join their church, but I was coming to see the public event they had advertised in the paper. She replied in the same way “we don’t think this is the right church for you”. Well, if my looks will scare people enough that they can’t be comfortable, I’d rather not put them through the discomfort. So I told her that I’d just leave, and wished her a Merry Christmas.
Ol’ Betsy started up on the first kick, I dropped her into first gear and started up the road, heading onto Santa Rosa road, and went over to Solvang where I just blend into the Scandinavian population. And I had a Happy and Merry Christmas time.
‘Wind Up’
~Jethro Tull~
When I was young and they packed me off to school
And taught me how not to play the game,
I didn’t mind if they groomed me for success,
Or if they said that I was a fool.
So I left there in the morning
With their God tucked underneath my arm –
Their half-assed smiles and the book of rules.
So I asked this God a question
And by way of firm reply,
He said — I’m not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.
So to my old headmaster (and to anyone who cares):
Before I’m through I’d like to say my prayers…
I dont believe you:
You had the whole damn thing all wrong…
Hes not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.
Well you can excomunicate me on my way to sunday school
And have all the bishops harmonize these lines…
How do you dare tell me that I’m my fathers son
When that was just an accident of birth.
I’d rather look around me… compose a better song
`cause that’s the honest measure of my worth.
In your pomp and all your glory you’re a poorer man than me,
As you lick the boots of death born out of fear.
I don’t believe you;
You had the whole damn thing all wrong…
Hes not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.
Jethro Tull, Live in Florence, 1988
‘Wind Up’
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~Khalil Gibran~
I have learnt silence from the talkative,
toleration from the intolerant,
and kindness from the unkind;
yet strange,
I am ungrateful to these teachers.
This is me in 2007… hard as it is to believe, in 1984 I was even hairier.
On the one hand I don’t blame the people for being afraid of me…
But it would have been nice to be allowed in to see the play.
I’ve been followed by security in stores, been denied admission to a hostel due to my looks, and shuttled to the back and ignored in a restaurant. The police have pulled me over because ‘the sun was reflecting off my tags and they could not tell if they were current or not’, and I was kicked out of the ‘Alamo’ in San Antonio (and threatened with jail) because I had a knife on me….one I carried always out of habit and the fact that I live and work on a farm in the wilderness.
But those are all very rare occurances…
I have been treated with the greatest respect and hospitality by almost everyone I’ve ever met. So for me life has been a half century of learning and loving and living…. I’ve been blessed to have met the people that I have, and everyone whether they treated me ill or kind was a teacher… and from the majority of them, I learned of kindness.
But still it is a nice thing to have a little refuge back in the hills…. away from the teeming masses on the lowlands. A quiet, reverential place is Rivenrock…
