Capers With Carroll

Opening day for Kamisaka Sekka

Kamisaka Sekka

Moon and Waves, Suzuki Kiitsu (1796-1858)

Grasshopper detail from Autumn Grasses and Moon, Sakai Ōho (1808-1841)

Takasago, Kamisaka Sekka (ca. 1920-1930)

For more on the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture: 

For my previous review of the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture:

School is out, so it's catch-up time here at Capers. All the thoughts and observations that I've carried around since things accelerated in March can finally find a place to land.

In the few minutes I could snatch here or there over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been enjoying a hedge of passion vines and grapes that I started last summer. Over the winter, I covered (and saved) some of the passion vines with clear plastic, and learned a lesson from what I never got covered. A freeze came on suddenly just before Thanksgiving. Then the winter turned mild but wet. The rains continued longer than I can ever remember. I covered a length of about 16 feet (8 to 10 feet high), but I never quite got the plastic as far as the P. amethyst. It survived the worst cold and still had green on it until almost the end March, but then it died. I have since read that some prefer dry ground when it is cold. I replaced the dead one as soon as Lowes put the spring vines out, and next winter I will cover it.

The section I protected included the bright red P. vitafolia, the maracuya-bearing P. frederick, and what the big-box home-improvement center had labeled as P. victoria (which is lavender), but turns out to be one of the whites, either ‘Charlotte Corday,’ or ‘Constance Elliott.’ Until someone corrects me, I will go with the former, named for the ‘Angel of Assassination’ who went to the guillotine for stabbing-to-death Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat in his bath-tub. She hoped it would end the Reign of Terror. In actuality, it turned them each into martyrs, one for each side, but among Reign-of-Terror floral remembrances, this flower stands out as perhaps the most delicate. As a history teacher, it’s hard to imagine planting anything in my yard with more history than that.

The white one has been blooming for a couple of months, and has set dozens of fruit. The vitafolia and frederick just began blooming last week. The primary pollinators for passion flowers are bumble bees. In our area, that’s the Valley Carpenter Bee, Xylocopa veripuncta. I see them mainly in the late afternoon, most often two of the black females, and occasionally a single tan-orange male. He seems mostly to be checking things out, and I don’t see him land anywhere. They don’t seem to mind either me or the camera, and when the females are intent on a flower, they let me approach within four or five inches.The bees are just the right height to brush under the five overhanging anthers, picking up pollen on their backs, and carrying it to deposit against the three stigmas. They seem to prefer the whites, visit the frederick only after several visits to each of the available white blossoms, and show no interest at all in the vitafolia.I first encountered an insectarium at the Berlin zoo, misnamed though, because it housed and displayed both insects (I saw my first walking stick) and spiders (I saw my first Argiope). Spiders are not insects, but both are arthropods. A better name for such a display therefore is "arthropodarium."








In early June, I began seeing a California Hairstreak Satyrium.












A week later, the first Gulf Fritillary arrived.
















The Argentine Ant tends to dominate my yard, but so far I have not seen them tending herds of scale insects.

So far, I have seen four species of spiders in my hedge.

Holocnemus pluchei immigrated into our area in the 1970s, but now is ubiquitous.



Cheiracanthium mildei needed no introduction: It was already everywhere.







Of the spiders that show up as hedge residents, my two favorites are jumping spiders (family Salticidae). The male Thiodina hespera took exception to being photographed, but I will have the rest of the summer to get a clearer picture. This was the species that first attracted my attention and launched my interest in spiders, some 37 years ago, so we are old friends. Back then, using my first set of close-up lenses, I took my first spider pictures and sent them off to a scholar studying this genus. In those days, the species had no name, and I heard recently that the specialist considered naming the species after me. I don't think my little investigations would have justified that, but it helps explain why I consider this Thiodina almost a member of the family.









The second jumping spider was a female Sassacus vitis. She appeared just after a microscope I had ordered arrived in the mail. She thereby won the right to be my first subject under the new apparatus. On a leaf, her iridescent scales would catch the sun and cast a glint of golden bronze. She is loose again on my hedge, and I will try again to catch a picture of that glint.

The summer and my hedge are still young. I will be traveling some, and trying to write for a portion of each day. But my microscope is brand new, my arthropodarium is just beginning, and school doesn't start for another eight weeks. Life is sweet.

Can't Wait Till Christmas
by Mike Huckabee

• Reading level: Ages 4-8
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Juvenile (October 5, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399255397
• ISBN-13: 978-0399255397

With back-to-back best-sellers about Christmas, one might believe that Mike Huckabee was an active candidate for Santa Claus, rather than an unannounced candidate for President of the United States. The two roles have several similarities.

For starters, both Santa and presidential campaigners come with fictions that everyone recognizes, but with which all participants play along. In this case, we have the fiction that Huckabee has not decided whether or not to run. Like sports seasons, campaigns break down into practice games, league play, and a national championship. During preseason play, candidates romance the voters with the fantasy that they have not made up their minds about running. For Huckabee to say he’s not running is comparable to the San Diego Padres saying, “It hurt a lot last year to get beat in the play-offs by the Giants, so we’re coming to Spring Training this year, but we haven’t decided yet whether we will play any regular season games.” While it’s true that candidates may drop out at any time (and at a rate of about one every-other week during primary season), about a dozen Republicans could now be described as running until-they-are-forced-to-drop-out. In this pack, Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich stand out as the leaders.

In 2009, I supported Huckabee in the primaries and waited for him to make a local appearance, if not in Visalia, then in Fresno or Bakersfield. When he never came, I realized he had chosen not to contest California. Huckabee has now worked Visalia twice in 20 months (he spoke at the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast in May, 2009). We may be a city of only 125,000, but we’re the commercial center of a red county in a blue state, and a link in California’s Bible belt. This time, it’s safe to say Huckabee plans to do battle in the California primary.

After writing several books on public policy and a couple of exhortations in favor of weight loss and building a legacy, the pair of Christmas books might seem a little innocuous. Not so. The Christmas season follows immediately after the November elections and allows Huckabee to hit the stump before the last recounts have been decided from the midterm contests. It also quietly plays the nostalgia card for Huckabee’s base. There is considerable resentment that Winter Holidays have supplanted Christmas Vacations. It certainly wasn’t that way in the 1950’s, when these autobiographical stories took place.

Last year’s A Simple Christmas told 12 stories from Huckabee’s childhood. They stress the influences and events that built his character. (And certainly character is one of Huckabee’s long suits: there will be no intern embarrassments or Watergate burglaries from a Huckabee presidency.) Each story teaches a lesson, and some express Huckabee’s Christian faith. This year’s Can’t Wait Till Christmas takes just one of those stories, adds pictures, and reworks it as a children’s story.

The plot is simple. Young Mike and his somewhat older sister cannot resist sneaking a peek at the Christmas presents wrapped under the tree. One thing leads to another until Mike is re-wrapping a dirty football to return to the pile. His sister is re-wrapping a slightly used chemistry set. They are discovered. Parental wisdom and mercy prevail, but a lesson is learned about the importance of patience.

Or has it really been learned? This two-week, “non-political” book tour started at the Richard Nixon Library (how’s that for an icon of non-politicosity?), and runs to Seattle, with multiple signings each day. Huckabee appears to be chomping at the bit to launch a campaign that technically won't start for another year. Notice the transportation being used for this tour. I ask my author friends: have you ever traveled to a book-signing in this kind of style?







Or has your publisher hired personal assistants to travel ahead, to organize the crowd before your arrival, and then to open and hold the books for economy of motion as you sign and give handshakes as well? (The guffaws some of you may hear are my writing friends exchanging book-signing stories.)

I was about 12 when I attended my first celebrity autograph event, Sandy Koufax coming to a local bank to sign souvenir plastic bats. At 14, as a reporter for my junior high newspaper, I went through the reception line twice in order to interview Nelson Rockefeller in his primary contest against Barry Goldwater. I’ve attended presidential campaign rallies with Eugene McCarthy, Bobby Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Shirley Chisholm, and George McGovern, and author signings by Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Franzen, Randy Alcorn, T. Davis Bunn, and Jerry B. Jenkens. All of my experience tells me this was a campaign stop, not a book signing.

Yet it was very impressive, and scrupulously clean. There were no sign-up tables, campaign buttons, or literature handouts. The press release said he would be at Borders in the evening, from eight until nine, and sign 400 books, signature only—no personal inscriptions. Borders distributed numbered tickets throughout the day, and began organizing the line at 7:00. The candidate author arrived four minutes early (Clinton would have been 90 minutes late), as personable and at-ease as I have ever seen any person at the center of attention. Perhaps 250 people stood ready. (For a children’s book, reading level four to eight, surprisingly few of the attendees were under voting age.) When people asked for anything extra, he politely told them he needed to get signatures for everybody first, but they could try coming through the line a second time. I had him sign his 2009, Do The Right Thing, and then went and got a second book. As the numbers thinned, he began posing for pictures. When Pictures slowed, Borders employees rolled out several carts with another couple hundred books, which his staff fed him assembly-line style. Finally, at six minutes past nine, he was out the front door and back on the bus. At each step in the process, as people encouraged him to run or promised to vote for him, he graciously thanked them for the comment, but stated that he hadn’t made any decision.

So does any of the imposture put me off? No. Two years ago Huckabee was my favorite candidate based on issues. Now I’ve seen him up close. He is the most talented politician I have ever seen, winsome, easy-going, yet remarkably self-disciplined.

In a manner of speaking, I can’t wait till Christmas.

Later today I will harvest this year’s last feijoas (a.k.a., pineapple guava, or guavasteen; Acca sellowiana, syn. Feijoa sellowiana). A few I will spoon out and eat fresh, but most I will puree and pour into ice trays. The fruit comes ripe in October, but I find its robust flavor most agreeable on hot summer days, and then iced and diluted with coconut juice.

Most gardeners allow their feijoas to fall to the ground, unused. As a shrub or small tree, it makes a nice hedge or stand-alone ornamental. The fruit falls while still hard, and then needs a day or two before it softens to the touch and is ready to eat. Left on the ground, they go bad quickly, but I set mine in a box indoors until I can process them.

The fruit packs a burst of unique flavor, sometimes more than the uninitiated is prepared for, and especially when left in the skin. It compares to a citrus zest, with uses in salsas, chutneys, or sweetbreads, but even diced small in a fruit salad, I have seen plates come back to the kitchen with the feijoas pushed to the side.

However, almost daily throughout this past summer, I enjoyed a frothy mug of iced feijoa-colada, from cubes I froze this time last year. When pureeing the feijoa, skin and all, I use canned coconut juice for any necessary liquid, and then use chilled coconut juice to blend the drink on the sweltering summer days when I am ready to enjoy it. The two flavors balance well, zesty but sweet, and require no additional ingredients.
(Note: I once offered a taste of feijoas to a class of students and two members of the class experienced minor reactions, passing about an hour in drowsiness. I searched the web for some mention of this, without seeing anything, but two students was eight percent of my sample, and their drowsiness came on rather quickly after tasting the fruit.)

Many Novembers ago I came home from a farmers’ market with a collection of persimmons, pomegranates, and kiwis. I mixed them in a salad and was so pleased with the results that it became my default offering for any potluck or party between Columbus Day and New Years’. Now I have all three planted in my yard. I’m a devotee of local fruit.

I like the colors in this salad, as well as the flavors and textures. The kiwis are soft, sweet, and gently tangy. The fuyu persimmons add crunch like a crisp pear and hint at cinnamon with their flavor. The pomegranates explode between the teeth and turn to a winsome juice. (Some varieties can be a little tart, but the one I grow is wonderful.) Occasionally I’ve thrown in late-harvest grapes (a purple-black variety is available in my local farmers markets), or fresh pineapple if I’m willing to cheat and add a yellow import.

The slicing and husking for a large bowl of this salad takes about an hour. Most varieties of kiwis require peeling, while pomegranates must be carefully coaxed from their shells. Persimmons can be eaten in the skin, but for salads I prefer to take it off. Both pomegranates and persimmons are long-lived in a fruit bowl (and longer with refrigeration), but the kiwi presents itself with a shorter window of readiness. I have kept them in a frig for up to ten weeks, but I’ve learned to put soft ones in cold storage and hard ones out on the sink four to seven days before I will need them.

The photograph shows the version I made tonight. I had three helpings at dinner, and may have another bowl before bed. Enjoy.

It wasn't very big, but neither was it going to get any bigger, so today I clipped my little dragon fruit and split it with Vicki. That works out to 46 days from hand pollination to plate, and puts an end to the fun little episode that began here. It was delicate, sweet, and everything I could have asked for, except bigger. The main suspense came with the first slice of the skin, since I had been hoping for the variety with white insides rather than purple. The dragon gratified even that desire. Ah, the little delights of life.

Actually, for a garden that gets very little attention after school starts in August, I continue to find delights anytime I can get out there. It is a full week into November, but rather than calling it quits for the year, two varieties of passion vine seem to be accelerating their bloom. The red Passiflora vitifolia opens upward, while the lavender P. amethyst (amethystina?) wants to hang its blossoms downward.

Today I harvested both the lingering summer crops (cherry tomatoes and a handful of Italian Honey Figs), fall crops (persimmons, pomegranates, and pineapple guavas), and a winter crop (one freak navel orange).


Oh, and one tropical fruit that shouldn't even grow in our area . . .

. . . a delightful little Chinese dragon.

Few things in legislative craft are as easy to dislike or as difficult to eradicate as the gerrymandered district. A basic tenant of the American democratic ideal is that the last safe seat should have been the one held by the Kings George, First, Second, and Third.

It is not so in practice: safe seats—oftentimes gerrymandered—are the norm, at least in California. In California elections since the last redistricting (2002), there have been 692 races for state senate or assembly or federal congressperson. An astounding 687 (99.3%) resulted in a return of the same party to the seat. Although term limits denied reelection to some individual officeholders, one party was able to wrest a seat away from the other party only 5 times.

This was never supposed to happen. When the founding fathers designed our system of government, the legislature was supposed to be so close to the people that it would shift with their every mood, even if turbulent or Tea Party-esque. Alexander Hamilton feared this and wanted senators appointed for life (he also wanted a king), but was overruled by the majority.

A few years ago I attended a Visalia forum for candidates who hoped to represent California’s 34th Assembly district. One candidate came from Lone Pine. As the crow flies that is only about 80 miles, but no respectable crow would fly it and no road braves it, for it requires going over the backbone of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with its passes between here and Lone Pine up at about 12,000 feet. The candidate from Lone Pine had to drive some 235 miles and travel through two other assembly districts to get here.

When I study the outlines of my district, its geographic center seems to be in empty desert, about 20 miles north east of Calico Ghost Town, roughly 220 miles from my home, or four hours by car. I believe half that distance would take me to the center of four or maybe five other assembly districts. I am disenfranchised because my assemblyperson must drive for seven hours to get from one end of her district to the other, while some of her peers can do the same in 45 minutes. This means that my representative is left with less time to devote to representing me, simply because of the gerrymander.

But worse, if 99.3% of elections serve to maintain the status quo, every voter is disenfranchised, because every legislator is allowed to get comfortable, unless they so anger voters from their own party as to bring on a contested primary.

Voters thought they had changed this for state races with Prop 11, in 2008. Many voters hoped this year’s Prop 20 would extend the correction to congressional districts. The gerrymanderati countered with Prop 27, which would undo Prop 11 and save the safe seats.

Any reader who has come this far knows where my sympathies lie on these two propositions. However, in poking around on the Web, I first got swept away by websites devoted to the weird shapes of gerrymandered districts, and then by a couple of names that jolted me back to some foreboding memories from my youth.

In 1971, I took a part-time job as a custodian for a rundown strip-mall in Van Nuys. It was the perfect set-up for a UCLA student, $200-a-month for odds and ends I could fit around my class schedule. The downside was the creepiness of the people I was working for. I never passed by my boss’s office without wondering if I was working for Mafia dons. I never saw the boss and his brother together without the feeling they were plotting to take over the world. I stuck out the year, graduated, and quit.

It turns out I was half right. They were not Mafia dons. They were plotting to take over the world. And they have been remarkably successful at doing so. Before I had ever even seen a computer, Michael Berman understood that it could be used to assemble mailing lists of niche interest groups that would allow politicians to target a large collection of small audiences with sometimes contradictory promises. Then, computers could facilitate the otherwise tedious process of drawing gerrymandered districts. His methodology became the fountainhead of Democratic successes from Willie Brown to Nancy Pelosi, and propelled his brother Howard to chairmanship of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. As one article explains, by following the money, it becomes evident that Prop 27 is largely inspired for protecting Howard Berman’s funny-shaped (my Rorschach results: Frankenstein on skis) district, to the larger end—through his chairmanship—of protecting Israel. (Full disclosure: like many Evangelicals, I am highly favorable toward American support of Israel, though I would like to see it accomplished by way of honest elections.)

I do not get to vote in Mr. Berman’s district (though my assembly district nearly curves around to the other side of it). But I do get to vote against this kind of districting. In an earlier endorsement, I said I would support Prop 25 (to pass the budget by simple legislative majority) only if it came as a package with Prop. 20. As it stands now, the two-thirds majority is necessary because 99.3% of our elections serve to protect safe seats.

I will watch the polls until the last minute. If Prop 20 looks like it will win, and Prop 27 looks like it will lose, then and only then will I vote for Prop 25.

Note: Connie Conway is the assemblyperson in my safe-seat Republican district. I’ve followed Connie since she succeeded her father as county supervisor. I am happy with her and would probably vote for her even if she had a serious challenge.

*These numbers come from a Visalia Times-Delta editorial that gave no further source.

Map of Howard Berman's district

Try this for fun.

. . . it must be getting close to the end of Daylight Savings (I think we have nine more days).

A quick word from our Sponsor: "My mercies are new every morning."