from the recycling bin:
an example of borderlands bi-illiteracy...

It's the end of the semester...Grades are done (!) and I'm getting ready for the new semester to begin in January...so I'm tidying up the classroom...
and I come across a note, unfolded, face-up in the recycling bin...
Immediately the spanglish catches my eye, and, so, yes, I pick up the note--written in two distinct 'hands,' an on-paper 'conversation' between two of my students (I do not know who, exactly)--and I read it.
(It's reproduced below.)

Purely academic curiosity. (Maybe a bit of teacherly verbal-voyeurism? does that sound bad?)
Well, okay--not 'purely' academic...but I had fun 'analyzing' it.

An 'academic' title of a linguistic analysis might be something like:
Adolescent bilingual code-switching:
The influence of spanglish texting on written informal discourse
in other words--an excerpt of Hispanic-teenage-girl-note-passing.

...to be read outloud--ah, spanglish...
============================

...k me preguntaste eso
IDK
ohh okaii well I wish we wur pero no c I dont talk to him cuz I chicken out! :(
y a silviano dise nada
de k ?
De ke te gusta
no she just talkes about him in my face like omg he is so cute
or like he has a nice body n like he was walking with me.. I get
pissed of she tryz to mack me jelouse
pues it's working cause you get mad nomas ignorala
well yea X nose y he know le podran desir k im nervous of going up to him and talking to him. y k c el puede ablar con migo! :D

============================

So...am I exagerrating when I talk about 'bi-illiteracy'?
Hmm...maybe 'semi-literacy' is more accurate than 'illiterate;'
so, 'bi-semi-illiteracy' then.

...flowing again...

..after several months of being reduced to a few pools between long sandy stretches, Sabino Creek is finally free-flowing again!

Yesterday afternoon, as I went on my run into Sabino Canyon, I heard a strange 'new' noise--ahh! rushing water! I peered down to the creek bed--full of little rapids. The rain and mountain snowfall earlier this week has trickled down...

So today after work, my wife and I went on a little hike...(camera in hand...)

The ear's hunger for the sound of running water can be forgotten,
then instantly summoned...and satiated.

================================

Off to the SE: the remaining snow on the upper slopes of the NW flank of the Rincon mountains, seen from the cottonwoods along lower Sabino creek:

...the sycamores and cottonwoods are just reaching their peak fall color along the lower stretch of Sabino Creek, finally a flowing creek again after months of being just a sandy wash:
...a still pool, here and there among the new rapids:

...desert evening sky, always a balm...

============================

Our friend/next-door-neighbor has had to leave the country suddenly; his elderly father's health has taken a turn for the worse...I end up thinking back to my father's last few months before his death just before I finished college...I wonder what it's like to have your father around, to talk to, fully adult-to-adult, all through your 20's...your 30's...into your 40's...

I'm half-way through a short novel right now, "The Cellist of Sarajevo" by Canadian author Steven Galloway...(click here for the 'book jacket')...As I read the harrowing account of the Balkan war in the early 1990's, I think back to the few conversations my father and I had about the experiences he had in the Korean war forty years prior to that...When I was in college, we'd regularly have coffee together in the afternoons, and he'd begun to talk about some of the things he'd seen; he'd been a very young soldier in the latter part of the war, having left Maine to join the army...

...and I think of my grandmother, in Korea during that same time,already widowed and worrying about her eight children (my mother was the youngest) while the U.S. and UN troops and the North Korean and Chinese troops marched back and forth across the country, flattening and re-flattening everything...Time (she died right after I finished high school) and language (I'm still not fluent in Korean) have precluded my talking with her about those years...

So many stories.

So many words...

A column in today's Washington Post...

...lunchtime reading, and I came across
this column in today's Washington Post
re: freedom of press, belief, religion in Russia...

...here's the link

evening, Sabino Canyon, reflections

On last night's run, I noticed a few spots in Sabino Canyon where there are still some clear pools in the creekbed, untouched by the summer drought...

...and even though the calendar says 'December,' it's technically still autumn, and the fall colors are just now peaking down along the creek...

So, after work today, I took the camera and raced into the canyon against the setting sun;
here are a few photos:

treadmill--fr/sp musings...moonrise

"Treadmill."
With all the varieties of English today, that word seems relatively constant--in the UK, the US, in the South, the NW, etc. etc.--'treadmill' is universally understood.

A student, though, was trying to explain 'running on the treadmill' in French...
but the expression she used, to my ears, is more often used when referring to a 'moving walkway' or a luggage caroussel in an airport...I tried to verify, but multiple dictionaries confirm multiple usages...
"Tapis roulant" vs. "tapis de jogging" or "tapis de course..."
Also--Canadian-French usage? or European-French usage?
ay ay ay...

Variety is the spice of life...but consistency is nice sometimes, too, no?

And then, curious--I looked up the Spanish expression.
The commonly used word in the U.S. coincides with the commonly-used-in-Mexico "caminadora."
But, note these variations:

molino de rueda de andar
plataforma rodante
faja ergonométrica estacionaria
"el treadmill" (seriously)
caminadora
tapiz rodante
cintas de correr
trotadores

Teachers and translators argue over these terms, you know...
So. Treadmills.

I've rarely used them...
...so much nicer (weather permitting) to run outdoors...

earlier this evening: two deer,
young does, crossing my path... ,
full moon rising over the canyon's reddish ridge,
saguaros silhouetted against the lunar surface,
cottontail rabbits dashing under nopales in the twilight...

Now I can face the punks, er, I mean, my dear students, again tomorrow...

"Black Friday" hike...

Far, far from the madding crowds of malls, today...
the day after Thanksgiving is a day for me to avoid the crowds of consumers...
(at least, this year, so far, I've not heard of anyone dying in a Wal-Mart stampede...)

So, like last year, today, a hike...

...into Pontatoc canyon and then up the ridge, in the middle of the southern face of the Santa Catalina range, Tucson's 'backyard.'


After parking at a trailhead parking lot in the shadow of ritzy desert-'palaces', you hike behind the backyards of those privileged foothills-homeowners, and then, officially behind the 'wilderness line,' you descend into the canyon, looking up at distinctive Finger Rock...


...you crisscross the boulders of the seasonal-creek-bed, then begin to climb the backside of the ridge to reach the sunny southern side, from where all of Tucson spreads out, (surprisingly green), below:

...A couple of miles and a couple of thousand feet later, you reach the end of the trail, about 5000' high.

Much quieter than the mall-parking-lot on this last Friday in November...

======================

Last weekend, an out-of-town friend came to stay with us...so, of course, we went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, where 'raptor free-flights' are currently going on; this Harris' hawk hadn't yet had time to adjust its wings upon landing:


Truly impressive--one of the only birds that hunts collectively in family groups.

And Harris' hawks (native to South America, originally) are actually relative newcomers to the Sonoran desert--about a century ago, they began following ranchers, since they have water tanks for their livestock. With those reliable water supplies, they were able to 'settle' in the desert, then finding riparian environments with other water sources, learning to hunt the local prey--reminds me of the now ubiquitous (but no less beautiful) cattle egrets--successful avian 'colonizers'.

The mountain-lion habitat is always one of the most popular sights; these cougars must be the most-photographed cats of their kind:

...gotta love that face, eh?

=======================
...and a semi-random quote I came across the other day, by Albert Camus:
L'automne est un deuxième printemps où chaque feuille est une fleur.
(Autumn is a second spring when each leaf is a flower.)

Joli, non?

Coatimundi!...after San Diego, another local canyon...

"Coatimundi?" you ask? Yes, "coatimundi," as in the tropical racoon-relative.
(Click here for more info.)

But first, closer to home:

Ouch! Poor birdie...from the 'wingprint', I think it was a desert white-winged dove. As you can see, it's not as if our living-room window is even particularly clean...I wonder where the bird wanted to go...I found no carcass, so I think the dove recovered and flew away...

More birds, different time of day, outside the same window:

...for the past couple of weeks now, early to mid-morning, we've been having what my wife calls 'quail parties;' we've taken to throwing Paquito's 'leftovers' out the back door when we feed him each morning, and sure enough, a couple of hours later, local Gambel's quails show up to breakfast on parrotlet-seed-rejects in the mesquite shade...

...Far from home, now:
...Last weekend we drove over to San Diego--seven hours across the occasionally interesting and often booo-ring desert through Yuma, AZ and El Centro, CA...a quick trip to see some friends, and to wake up for a beach-run...ahh, the salt air...

===========================

And now, to a decidedly ocean-free locale--Pima Canyon, just a few miles from where we live in Tucson:

In the over-two-years that we've lived here, I've driven by this canyon so many times, but from the main road you just don't notice the entrance...and since we live, now, near to Sabino Canyon, I'd never thought about going to the 'trouble' of driving a few miles to the western end of the Santa Catalina range, especially since it juts out between the built-up Catalina foothills and the suburbanly-sprawling Northwest side, where the towns of Oro valley and Marana continue to grow...

But yesterday, having the day off from work, I thought I'd check it out, and it turned out to be a great day-hike--once you drive up through the neo-Tuscan-'palaces' of the foothills and then hike between their 'no trespassing' signs protecting their infinity-edge pools, you finally end up in designated wilderness and the sounds of traffic disappear as the desert blends into riparian habitat. For southern Arizona, the canyon is 'lush,' thick with jojoba, cottonwoods, and unusually tall mesquite-trees...

And there is where I saw, for the first time in the wild in Arizona, a pair of coatimundis!

Forgive the boring photos; I was on my way out of the canyon and not expecting to see substantial wildlife...I turned a corner on the trail and heard a couple of 'squeets,' thinking it was birds in the creosote, when these guys trotted in front of me and up into some shrubby rocks. By the time I fumbled and got my camera ready, face-shots were impossible...but still! coatimundis! It made my morning...

(Here's a slightly better view of a coati:

This was my first coati-sighting ever, when my wife and I were in Tikal National Park in Guatemala a few years ago...)

Back to Pima Canyon. The seasonal creek has been dry for a couple of months now, but the cottonwoods are substantial--proof that enough groundwater exists in the canyon year-round, even if it doesn't flow on the surface.

If we get good snows this winter, the snowmelt will make the creek flow for a few weeks or months again...

Before I spotted the coatis, I saw this:

Amazing color, eh? This dried-out seed-pod contains 'desert coral beans,' poisonous but pretty...

Another fascinating seedpod is the doubly-wicked 'devil's claw:'

...and there are even signs of pre-columbian human habitation in Pima Canyon: about three miles in are these grinding-holes, metates, in the stones: They were probably started by the Hohokam people, up to 1300 years ago--they most likely harvested mesquite pods in the canyon, and used the local stone to process the legumes into flour on site...

Coatis, seedpods, metates...a nice change of pace...

On the way back out, heading back to the trailhead parking lot in mid-afternoon--looking off to the suburban west; you can make out a golf course in the middle distance:

...and one of the uncommon 'cristate' crested saguaros--this one looks vaguely like it's doing a gang-hand-sign, no? (Maybe I spend too much time around urban teenagers at work...)

...and that's the latest...