Algae and Lichen

In the post Animals, Mushrooms and Plants, I visited the phylogenetic tree of Eukaryotic organisms. Since I especially like algae and lichen (Algen und Flechten), I dug up some photos of those.

The first one shows lichen-covered stones on Mount Desert Island in Acadia National Park in Maine.

Quite a different color is the red lichen at Point Bonita in the Marin Headlands. I didn't have my camera with me, but check out the link for a picture on Flickr.

On the beach (here at Point Reyes), algae are abundant. They look like big snakes, and are hollow.

Point Reyes is worth a visit any time of the year. A special treat is a hike to Tomales Point during the mating season of the Tule Elk. The best time of the day is early in the morning, when few hikers are on the trail, and the Elk are close by.

On the top of the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, the ornamental cherry trees are covered in lichen. they are exposed to a lot of wind, and the lichen hides on the eastern side of the tree trunk.

The next pictures shows trees at Alpine Meadows, a ski resort in the Lake Tahoe area. While I don't ski, I enjoyed snow-shoeing the area.

Additionally to the liken-ed trees, I saw a dead one, that looked like a spiral. The poor tree spiraled it's whole life in search of the light, until it smothered itself to death.

Kel Richards: The second Death

As my first Australian book in the Global Reading Challenge, I read The second Death from Kel Richards.

The novel is about Australian radio host Mark Roman, who gets entangled in one of his callers' issues (Liz), and solves the connected crimes.

I found the book quite boring, and wouldn't have finished it, if it weren't so short anyway. First of all: It really annoys me, when I guess the main message of the story within the first 40 pages.

The story-line has a lot of potential, but the characters are too black and white and not really developed. It would have been nice to get the point of view of the villan, Liz, for example, without having to guess.

Also, the protagonist (Mark Roman) does a lot of thinking, but doesn't enlighten me, the reader, about his thoughts until later, rather describes his surroundings while thinking, thinking, thinking.

And it's inconceivable that the police would have been as passive as they were described in a high profile murder case.

All in all, unfortunately not recommended. I'll have to hunt for more Australian mysteries ...

Next will be The last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. I am really looking forward to it, since it has been  recommended by a friend with excellent taste and finding skills.

Brazil in December (crime novel)

Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza: December Heat

The crime novel is set in Rio de Janiero, Brazil: A retired cop looses his wallet, and in the same night, his hooker girlfriend gets killed. This set off a whole slew of killings of street people, which are all somewhat connected to each other, but the killings are for no apparent reason. The cop that investigates is described as a loner, not a lot of police support is visible. The author can't resist adding a couple of explicit sex scenes. The story is a bit convoluted and the ending is not at all satisfying. A lot of loose ends are untied, and I was left by the impression, that the real bad guys will not even get pursued. Overall, the story is a bit too macho for my taste.

It's interesting to read about the Brazilian culture. Especially the lack of referring or even mentioning the race, skin color, etc. of the protagonists is very different from what I experience reading US-American mysteries. That reminds me of a former colleague from Peru, who said once that the black population in Peru is declining. He was then asked whether it's because they leave. He said: Quite the contrary, they mix.

One thing kind of puzzled me in a historical sense: Everybody in the book depends on telephone land lines. Cell phones don't seem to exist, not even for the wealthy bad guys. The novel was published in 2002, so I guess, it was written about 2001/2000.  I didn't know that many people in the US with cell phones at the time, but they were a lot more common already in Europe.

Trains and Bridges

I am fascinated by the dramatic beauty of industrial constructions. Here, I want to share a couple of pictures of trains and bridges.

The first one on the right is made from the driving car (I was the passenger) on our way from Lake Tahoe to the low-lands. It was great weather, and I got a fair amount of good "cloud" pictures.

I shot the picture of the George Washington Bridge in New York from Fort Tryon Park, on our way to the cloisters. The park's garden didn't quite show its beauty in January, but it was still a peaceful, pretty place. 
The cloisters are certainly a great place to visit. Built by the Rockefellers, and completed in 1938, it is a collection of monastery buildings and religous art from Europe. It has been donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I found the train on the right in the town of American Canyon, in Napa County. We saw it hidden between a shopping center and development, while trying to get a close look of an old hops kiln. Everything was fenced up, and the only visible "landmark" was this colorful train.

The other bridge in San Francisco: The Bay Bridge, spans from SF to Oakland. This is an unusually photo, probably from Sunday morning. When I drive over at rush hour, the bridge is packed with cars.
The picture shows the western span on the bridge, between Treasure Island and SF. The Oakland side of the bridge is very different, and much less stable. During the Loma Prieta earthquake, the upper deck fell on the lower. The Oakland span of the bridge is finally getting rebuilt. Construction will finish probably in 2013.

For my European readers: A typical American firetruck! Not a train, but pretty, too. To me, it looks incredibly old-fashioned.




And finally, a picture of the Golden Gate bridge, from the Presidio to the Marin Headlands.

Edited later:
Another bridge: The Penobscot Narrows bridge in Maine is not only a bridge but also an observatory. Unfortunately, I got vertigo and had to leave immediately. If you don't suffer from it, visiting the observatory is highly recommended!

Praise to Mariquita

Once every two weeks, we can get a vegetable box from Mariquita Farms. They grow organic vegetables, mostly for their CSA and for restaurants. Every other Thursday Julia comes to San Francisco with a truck full of boxes, and parks at one of the restaurants they sell to. The boxes are preordered, and soon the place gets busy with pickups.
For us, this system works better than a CSA, because 1. we haven't found a CSA in the East Bay that has veggies as interesting and fresh as Mariquita; 2. we don't have to commit to a weekly box.
Check out their web-site and also Andy's blog (he is the farmer).

The picture shows the contents of last week's box: Little carrots and big carrots, escarole, rapini, other kind of broccoli, a savoy cabbage, mustard greens, swiss chart, garlic greens, sprint onions, leeks, spinach, fennel, and I am sure I forgot something. Everything is super fresh, organic and very tasty.

When the season is right, we go tomato picking and make sauce, we get a case of apricots and strawberries from a neighboring farms and make jams. Or we get delicious bacon avocados from yet another neighbor.  We love the Pimiento de Padron so much, that they will probably soon grow in our own garden. Thank you!

New York in the 19th century

After reading most of Anne Perry's books, I started reading the crime novels of Victoria Thompson. They have a similar theme: Independent woman solves crimes in a 19th century metropolis. Thompsons first books were mildly dissatisfying to me, because of a lack of complexity. However, since I lived in NYC, and they were otherwise pleasing, I continue to read her novels. Since she only writes one a year, I was pleased to find another author with a crime novel serious of a similar kind.

Rhys Ryan's Molly Murphy novels are utterly delightful. They are easy to read, but interesting and funny. Molly is the only woman of the books of the genre (at least of the ones I read), in which the protagonist actually calls herself a professional detective.

The newest one "In a gilded cage" has Molly Murphy investigate the ancestry of another professional woman, who works at a drugstore. In spite of being college educated, she is not allowed in the lab (which she would have loved) but has to work as a sale person.

Then another case showed up (connected to the first one), with the Poindexter family in the center. The client and women die, all somewhat connected. It appears to be the flu (I don't think that in the 19th century, people would have talked about "a particularly vicious strain of influenza", one of the rare historical mistakes), but Molly and her friend Emily are suspicious.

Molly's beau, a police captain, incidentally investigates overlapping crimes. Information that lead to nothing for Molly helps him to solve his cases, while she is not taken serious, but manages in the end well on her own.

Interesting features of the Molly Murphy series are the constant reminders of the status of women of the times, the differences between the classes, the vivid description of life in NYC of the times. In this particular book, it's mostly about the women that loose all independence once they are married, and a little bit woman's suffrage. Previous books in the series covered among other themes sweat shops, workers rights and more woman's lib.

The Wine Road

The wine road is an organization of Sonoma County wineries, mostly in the Russian River area.

When Alaska was owned by Russia, Russian settlers as well as Alaskans were living in Northern California with the purpose of growing food to be shipped to Alaska. However, the food growing experiment failed, because the settlers didn't know how to deal with the climate and with the wild-life, especially the gophers that destroyed their crops. Fort Ross, at the Sonoma coast, is a  state historical park of one of the old settlements. In the early 1840s, the properties of the Russian American Company were sold to a rancher from Sacramento, and most of the Russian settlers left the area. What remains of them is the name of the river: the Russian River.

Once a year, the wine road organizes a barrel tasting event. About 100 wineries participate. For one small fee, one can drive from winery to winery and taste their wines. Even the designated driver gets something out of it: sometimes a gift, sometimes a juice, a lot of times gorgeous views and food. The lucky ones see some wild-life can bee seen on the side of the road (Turkey on the left).

Many wineries bring out the barrels from their not-yet-released wines. We got our tastings from a huge pipette directly from these barrels. 

Here are a few pictures from some of the wineries:
Russian Hill Estate had wonderful Pinots. They are located on a hill (surprisingly), with great views of the area.

One winery was growing bell beans, a variation of fava beans, on a field in preparation for planting Chardonnay grapes. Legumes enrich the nitrogen content of the soil.

Hop Kiln Winery sells a lot of food items additionally to their wines: mustards, vinegar, salami, dips and chips, and you can borrow plates and knives for a picknick on the beautiful grounds.
As the name indicates, the winery used to be a hop kiln. It looks like the area evolved from beer to wine (also, a hop kiln is seen in the picture above from Russian Hill).

Chalk Hill is an upscale winery with a huge estate and wonderful Chardonnays. You see their stainless vats on the left.

Graton Ridge Cellars was our first and last stop on the wine road. They had the best Petite Syrah, and one of us had to buy a bottle. They also had a bunch of chickens running around in their vineyard that ran away as soon as I got my camera out. Oh well, the truck is pretty, too!

I was lucky that I was able to make these pictures, since I hadn't charged my camera. Every picture I took was threatening to be the last. I didn't get anything from Twomey, one of our favorite wineries in the Napa Valley, that also has an estate close to Healdsburg. Twomey is the best deal in town in Napa Valley (close to Calistoga). They are the sister winery to the high-profile Silver Oak, and originally specialized on Merlot (made in Calistoga). Now, they also make great Pinots and Sauvignon Blancs at the Russian River. In Calistoga, they used to charge $5 for a tasting and we'd get the glass (a very nice Schott/Zwiesel glass) to take home. Now, tastings are free. Not to be missed!

The other wineries that were our favorites on this trip where Pellegrini (great deal on half bottles Sauvignon Blanc) and Russian River Vineyards (wonderful desert wine, not yet bottled).