hummingcrow: one squall voice

and me!! I love the monsoon season and the wild, crazy storms we get during this time. This particular storm was absolutely breathtaking. First we saw lightning more than 20 miles away, but striking multiple times a second for hours. While we were on the leading edge, the cloud formations looked like long fingers, and we could see the lightning flashes above and between them. It was strange and surreal and stunning. Then the storm reached us, and the temperature dropped 20 degrees in seconds. Suddenly hail was hammering my window, and the rain was coming down in thick sheets. Within minutes the water in the streets started to rise. The bad news is, we re at the low end of a dead end street. Maybe you can tell from the video still, which is looking out at our street from our driveway. On the left is a 7-foot block wall separating us from neighboring condos. At the bottom of this wall there are three or four little cutouts, 6 inches high, that supposedly allow water to flow through. Well, not tonight. We experienced flash flood conditions and high winds. A friend told me large trees were felled not a mile away (good thing we cut down our termite infested trees that leaned toward our house). The streets might have been able to drain properly, except it s bulk trash time in our neighborhood. Our street lacks a sidewalk, and no one wants to kill their grass by leaving a huge pile of trash sitting on it for two weeks, so everyone piles trash just over their property line on the street, and the city picks it up - this happens four times per year. Scheduled pick up was August 25, but here it is August 28 and the trash is still there. Blocking the water in the street from reaching the drain holes. Causing the water to flow into our yard, and up over our porch. At 9:30 pm we were half an inch away from having water come over the threshold of our house, with no end to the storm in sight. So out into the street we went, to move all our neighbors trash piles either further into the street, or up onto their lawns. These are huge piles, generally of tree and shrub trimmings, but with the occasional piece of large wrecked furniture thrown in. Everything should be neatly bagged, but people from outside the neighborhood tend to scavenge these piles for scrap or useful items. I have no problem with that normally - I m all for recycling and reusing. But this time they cut open bagged lawn clippings, which were impossible to clear away in the flow of water, and these were mixed in with palm fronds that had large thorns on them. Also, some dog crap. So it s dark, I m soaked, it s cold, and I m covered in lawn clippings, when my asthma kicks in big time. By the time I found my inhaler I could barely get air in or out of my lungs. I started to panic, which makes it get worse really quickly. But the meds worked, and we cleared enough debris out of the path of the water that we were able to prevent the water from entering our house. For the second time this week. I ve sent yet another letter off to City Street Maintenance before posting this and going to bed. They ve promised to keep an eye on drainage in our neighborhood, but obviously it s a roving, a lax, dare I say a lazy eye. I m exhausted. Goodnight.

Just testing Flickr s rebuilt-from-the-ground-up embeddable slide show. I like that it will now play videos in the slideshow before moving on to the next photo. No videos here, thought, just a Manga tribute to my vloggy friends.

I just can t keep up with my own stuff.

More little things for Ru and all my pals who find the Arizona monsoon / oven season exotic. Yesterday was a beautiful day! Aside: Before you think we re heathens, we re draining our pool because we ve been unable to de-cloud the water this season even though the pool chemistry numbers were right where they were supposed to be. We think a neighbor may have been throwing stuff into it but we don t know. In any case it s been 5 years without a major water change. So this is going to cost us a bunch to replace all that water. Before we do it we ll power wash the surface, patch it up and repaint it. We ve watered all our trees and shrubs, plus those of our neighbors, with the water we ve pumped out. It developed algae during the draining because we stopped chlorinating when we started pumping water out.

Last year around this time, I made a video showing rain evaporating off the sidewalk. Ru liked it and reminded me of it recently. So when I found myself on the same porch stoop with some light rain falling, I made another video. Just for you, Ru.

A little video moment recorded with my iPhone. Horrible audio - you probably want to turn the volume down. If you can t understand me, I m basically saying that the arrival yesterday of our first monsoon storm of the year began with a lightning strike that ignited a brush fire on the Gila Indian Reservation southwest of Phoenix. The cloud cover was welcome, but the fire, not so much. So far it s consumed over 1000 acres and caused the evacuation of at least 25 people. Firefighters couldn t even get to it until this morning. The salt cedar fueling the fire is very dense and hot burning - I hope they get it put out today and that no one is hurt.

Shot this video just for Jay Dedman, who likes bugs. While I was at the Transmission Asia-Pacific conference in Indonesia, this big beetle decided he wanted his own umbrella after a brief bout of rain (it s supposed to be the dry season after all). Excuse the quality - iPhones aren t good at closeups.

Inspired by Bekah Havens highly personal, tortured-teen-girl and, well, plaid diary readings, but with no diary of my own at hand, I present you this week in 1955. As written by my grandmother, Olive Jane Poe Whitmore. I identify with Bekah s journal entries. They could almost be mine. We graduated high school in the same year, Miss B and I. We began college the same year. We put ourselves through similar turmoil, and wrote about it with similar alternating sarcastic humor and raw emotion. Our choices were many and difficult. Grandma lived in simpler times. There was never much question about her choices. She dated one guy before my grandpa, but married grandpa, who was the love of her life. She didn t have sex before marriage. And her writing is more a record of inevitable events than a tortured exploration of possible life paths. I find that really interesting.

Random musical moments from Sunday night s dinner. Good stuff!

Back during NaVloPoMo, I made several posts about Kanohi ki te Kanohi (Face to Face), the Maori performing arts group I spent time with in Aotearoa (New Zealand). Well guess what?! They re here! Right here in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. They arrived Friday April 18, and have already kicked things off to a great start. On Sunday there was a pow wow at ASU. Two Navajo students from our travel group made sure our Maori friends could attend the pow wow. I didn t get to go, but our friends were given the opportunity to perform at the pow wow after the opening ceremony. From what I hear, the pow wow community opened their hearts to our Maori friends, bestowed gifts during and after their performance, and really felt an instant connection. I wish I could have been there. This video is from dinner after the pow wow, at the home of fellow traveler Nizhoni and her amazing chef husband Joseph. He fed us a four or five course meal that included a prickly pear cactus salad, his own version of surf and turf which included swordfish steak and buffalo burgers, and a custom dessert creation called Chocolate Taranaki in honor of the volcanic mountain dominating the landscape where our friends live. The meal was seriously amazing. Between courses, our friends taught us a song. You can learn it too, here are the words: He honore, he kororia Maungarongo ki te whenua Whakaro pai e Ki nga tangata katoa Ake ake, ake ake, amine Te atua, te piringa, toku oranga (x2) Toku oranga Wendy Lewis is the woman teaching us the words to the song and what they mean. This song is an acknowledgment of ties to Parihaka, a Taranaki settlement whose two leaders drew on ancestral and Christian teachings to organize passive resistance to the colonizing army, and that is now is a manifestation of peace here on Earth. Sorry for my crappy video audio recording. I m not good at both recording and experiencing moments at the same time, and I didn t have my good mic with me either so this is the best I and my poor little Xacti could do under the circumstances.

My mom bought me a Kit-Cat clock. On the one hand, it s silly. But on the other hand, it s a memento of my dear departed friend Merrill, the polydactyl tuxedo cat who loved to play fetch: When I was a kid I was fascinated by moving clocks. One of our neighbors had several that were mesmerizing, including one of these. Overall, it s a great gift and now lives on my office wall, where it can watch over me while I edit video.

Awhile back we had one of those days so rare in the Sonoran desert, the kind where it rains lightly all day long. Those are the days when it seems like father sky is at his most tender, lingering for long slow kisses with mother earth. These special days are infused with an extra vividness of color, like when you find a rock in the riverbed that looks so beautiful in the water. When it s dry, the colors lose depth, and when wet, they shine. I love days like these. I shot this footage on Friday, February 15 and am just getting around to posting it. I m so glad that with video, it s never too late to share a beautiful day.

I made this for MissBHavens, because she made one for me. The music is pure Chris Chandler, troubadour, and my hero. In fact, I m only posting this to my web site because it might encourage someone who doesn t know of him yet to go buy one of Chris CDs or DVDs. Or, if you can, see him perform. He s amazing. I believe every word of this song. Oh, if you download the iPod version, I inserted the lyrics into its metadata. I think you can read them if you add the video to your iTunes library and get info.

My sometime driving companion. More fun than a dashboard compass, but a much worse navigator.

Today I got this message on my Grand Central phone number. It s obviously not for me. I felt sad that there was no way to answer this nice sounding fellow who wanted to go get something to eat with a friend. But I had some orphan footage of getting yummy tacos. So I placed it with this orphaned audio. I hope they are happy together.

This is a remix of my vlog from inside the voting booth, done by one of my students as an experiment for learning iMovie. I ve been wanting to post it, and today is definitely the day. Get out there and vote in your Super Tuesday primaries, people!

I had a nice moment to myself before going into the classroom.

Come one, come all, to the first PHXedit! Get the details at node101phoenix.org.

My family - at least my dad and grandma (his mom) - were superstitious. They always made me eat at least one spoonful of black-eyed peas on New Year s Day. For luck. They re gone now, and nobody can make me eat black-eyed peas anymore. But what if they were right? About the luck? And anyway, I like this dish. I make it vegan - no salt pork here. Hopping John and Happy New Year!

My last video of 2007. I ve done it. I ve posted a video every day since the start of NaVloPoMo! Two whole months! Ok, I ve got nothing on Rox, this is true. But I exceeded what I thought were my limits. Makes me wonder what else I can do! So. I will vlog on. Maybe not every day, but every week at minimum. And I ll do my best to be a better person.

I learned more than this. But these were the highlights I thought of while reflecting today. You ll notice cuts, but all I cut out were the many long ums and uhs. I want to thank my NaVloPoMo pals for being my teachers during the month of November. I learned too many things to list! Heath taught me to open up, and Bekah taught me to make no-knead bread, and Croma taught me to trust my eye, and David Howell taught me that I can change my agenda whenever I damn well please, and Ru taught me not to smack myself around so much, and GoGen taught me baby fingers can be dangerous, and Valdez taught me to sleep less, and I taught me to fear less, and, and, and - I can t name them all, folks, but it was such a privilege!

For awhile, I fed two neighborhood cats. White Kitty, the one appearing second in this video, and Silver, a kitten I caught and had neutered, then re-released. Silver was carried away by a bird of prey, probably a hawk. A few new cats have turned up to take his place, but White Kitty is still the Queen in our yard. So a little queue has formed around feeding time. I hope I eventually gain these new cats trust so I can whisk them to the vet and make sure they re healthy, and not reproducing more strays. Name suggestions are welcome, by the way. I don t think Fraidy Cat is fond of the moniker, and Ring-Tail White Kitty is just not a name. Not at all.

Here s a little more of Australia in 2004. Something I tried to do every day. We d be tired and cold, and just want one more hour to sleep, but the birds would start singing loudly just before dawn. Some of the people around me put their pillows over their heads and went back to sleep. I often wanted to do the same, but I forced myself to get up and listen. It was my way of honoring this land and getting to know it as a place in the short time we had together. Today, I am so glad I made this recording of the birds singing. I still think the crows have an Aussie accent. I know there were magpies around, and a mated pair of beautiful green parrots of some sort. And there was a little bird that looked a lot like a quail, only with the wrong colors. I don t know all the other voices, but hearing them is still a form of sustenance. Robert Croma asked if there is more from Australia. I m actively looking for a few videos I remember making. I m not sure if they are on tape, or already waiting my attention on a hard drive here in my office. But the travelogue I wrote with my mom still exists: Dreaming Down Under. And so do two photo galleries, one from 2004 and one from 2005.

Another moment from my past, specifically, a trip to Australia in June 2004 - when it s winter down under. I was staying with a travel group at the Korrawinga Community Center on Aboriginal lands. We are in the tiny kitchen of a pre-school day care center, and were being allowed to use it for our breakfast, but had to clear out before the kiddies showed up. Our group slept outside in an enormous marquee, and our first couple of nights were bitterly cold. I tried to record a lot of little moments that recurred daily at Korrawinga. There was a daily ritual the coffee addicts went through involving a personal French press. There was the daily walk down a gravelly, muddy dirt road to use one of the two outdoor showers. We had to watch for poisonous snakes on the way, and kick out the cane toads. There was being awakened at night by the dogs going through the trash, and awakened in the morning by the most beautiful birdsong I could imagine. And, every night, on the way to the toilet, there was the required stop to stand, shivering, staring at the sky, seeking out the new constellations, and searching for the familiar one we had in common, Orion, rising upside-down in the pre-dawn sky. Good times.

Montezuma Well is a limestone sinkhole in central Arizona, but it s much more than that. It s a constant source of water in the desert, for one. The Yavapai people believe they emerged into this world from within the Well. It is their ancestor. It reveals some of the history of previous civilizations. It harbors a unique ecology and is a source of medicinal herbs. But mostly, it s a place of such awe-inspiring beauty and energy that it forces you to listen. Of course, my mom is also a source of awe-inspiring beauty and energy, and you ll hear her voice along with the sounds of the Well. If you ever come through Phoenix, I d love to take you up here for a picnic.

If you live in the U.S.A., the hardest ingredient to get for a Tim Tam Slam is Tim Tams. Simple to find in an Australian convenience store, but hard to come by in the States. If you re lucky, like me, you get your good buddy Alan to bring back a package of Tim Tams when he comes back from the Land Down Under. Tim Tams in hand, you brew up your favorite tea or coffee. Take a Tim Tam and bite off two diagonally opposite corners. Seal your lips around one corner, dunk the other corner in your hot drink, and suck the liquid up through the Tim Tam. As soon as the liquid hits your tongue, slam the Tim Tam in your mouth and savor the melty chocolaty goodness. Repeat as often as necessary. This video was shot and edited entirely in my Xacti HD1A camera, my new favorite method for getting video up quickly. I have not been compensated by Arnott s, but if they ever want to pay me in Tim Tams I ll make all the ads they want. Yum!

MissB started a risotto vlog cook-off thing: December Vlog Risotto Month. This is my entry, a really simple risotto. I hope Jeffrey posts his, because otherwise MissB will have no competition. After all, her risotto has bacon in it.

Manual labor may be good for the soul, but it saps the will to make risotto. We re tired. See you tomorrow.

My mom and I set out to support local business today, buying some food and holiday gifts in the little town of Guadalupe. I handed the camera to my mom, and she used it! So this is my mom s first videoblog!

I now present an opportunity for an organic conversation. I m sure it will get me into trouble, and I m very sure I haven t expressed myself to the best of my ability. But if I wait to do it right or perfectly, it ll never happen. And while this video is mostly saying what I don t like right now, I do believe in be the change you want to see in the world. So I m going to find a way to put my vlog where my mouth is, and launch a new project early in 2008. Comments and video responses welcome. Talk to me. Keep it in context, too. Check out the sites I mentioned: 12/11/07 EpicFU: rockband tips and tricks, santacon, seesmic VuGoesVegan: Promo Video and Vegan TV Dinner , Kinda Mahalo Daily: Watching Footbal as a Couple