dailybell2008

Tasty Bells Sunset Snack

2012-01-21T15:09:00.000-08:00

5:18PM Oakland, CA

Soon after beginning the dailybell2008 project, my Godson Kazimir was born, and we have spent as many Fridays together as possible since then. He now has a baby sister who is just about the same age as Kazimir was when he first started to join us for the bell ringing. (In his case, it was a more oral than aural experience).

Now as his sister carries on the oral bell tradition, Kazimir has become more interested in the videotaping than the bell ringing while Krys and I comfortably observe the passing of the day together. (FYI: That's the new and improved mosh pit in the background).

Berkeley Garden Sunset

2012-01-16T19:13:00.000-08:00

1/15/12 PM

This place may look familiar from among the last round of daily videos in 2008. Time has not passed unnoticed however. The prayer flags have come and gone and come again. The garden is more wild and varied. The tree is taller, as is Jenny's nephew who is now in the middle of Kindergarten. Welcome back!

First Weekly Post of 2012

2012-01-08T14:04:00.000-08:00

Sunrise/Sunset
January 7, 2012

I began this project in 2008 at the beginning of a Leap Year. Since we are here again at another Leap Year, I wanted to do something special to commemorate the anniversary as well as the occasion of our realignment of Earth time with Universal time. It’s amazing how short a period it takes for us to become out of whack, requiring an additional entire day to adjust our tidy and slightly lagging timekeeping methods with the actual planetary movement.

Anyway, I continue to observe and invite others to join the sunrise and sunset each day. I still like ringing the bells and carry a few in my purse and lug a big one around in the back of my car. It’s become a part of my life and a few children I know who have grown up with the tradition think nothing of it when the sunsets to come over and ring the bell in my car or to grab a bell in the house and ring along.

Believe it or not, some people have actually said they missed the updates and little bits of documentation they received as part of the first year. So to both commemorate the beginning of year 5 and to share glimpses of my observances, I am going to document one of the sunrises or sunsets each week this year and post them to the blog. If you have any media or comments you would like to post, please post what you can directly and send whatever you can’t to me, and I will do it for you.

Happy 2012!

Happy 2012!

2012-01-01T14:00:00.000-08:00

MIDNIGHT- January 1, 2012
Ocean Beach in San Francisco, CA.

Best wishes for a happy, healthy new year from Ocean Beach in San Francisco, CA. This is the beginning of another leap year! It's also the beginning of the 5th year of daily sunrise and sunset observances that begin with dailybell2008. Please join us in spreading and sharing the awareness of these 2 brief moments that connects 100% of us everyday.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

Ringing in 2011 (and the start of the 4th year of the dailybell project)

Final Sunset 2010

2010-12-31T20:04:00.000-08:00

May each of the sunrises and sunsets in this New Year find you in a good place!

Winter Solstice 2010

2010-12-21T18:42:00.000-08:00

Seed Swap and Bell Ringing at the Dearborn Garden
What a lovely garden. Congratulations and good luck as we now move into the light

A little chilly but homemade food, drinks and good company warmed up the evening. Thanks to Liz Keim, Sam Sharkey and the Exploratorium and to Bill Basquin, Johunna Grayson, Greta Snider and the members and friends of the Dearborn Community Garden.

Happy Solstice Everyone!!!! And thanks for the seeds.

Winter Solstice Seed Swap and Bell Ring

2010-12-16T18:10:00.000-08:00

SAVE YOUR SEEDS!

Sunset is at 4:54PM

The annual Solstice Seed Swap and Sunset Bell Ringing is just around the corner. dailybell will be joining artists and urban gardeners Bill Basquin, Johunna Grayson, Greta Snider.
When: 3:00 - 7:00 pm. Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Where: Dearborn Garden, at the corner of Dearborn and Bird Streets, very near to the Women's Building; SF, CA.
What: Bring seeds or plants to share. Bells.
Who: you and others who love to garden, compost, and protect the genetic commons through seed saving and sharing.
Who else: young people are welcome; dogs are NOT
Please label your seeds with as much information as you can provide:
• Location and date of collection.
• Species and variety. Color of bloom (when applicable).
• Adaptability to particular microclimates (which one are you in?).
• Cultivation preferences of the plant (does it like to have cool feet and a warm top?) if you know them.
Supported by Liz Keim and The Exploratorium.

Ring Round The World

2010-03-11T17:53:00.001-08:00

OK. Let's do it.

On September 23, 2010, the date of the Harvest Moon, we will create a Ring Round the World by following the sunrise or sunset as it travels around the globe for 24 hours and by ringing bells at that moment. We could begin tracking the sunrise as it rises over the International Date Line and follow it from there.

As the 3rd year of the dailybell gets underway, I thought this would be a good time to plant some seeds for what could happen. The idea of tracking the sunrise and sunset as it travels around the globe, even for just one day, is such a joyous notion.

I am not quite sure how this works yet, but I've started a google group and you can go there and join.

Happy 2010!

2009-12-31T18:00:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of 2009, I decided to keep the large cast iron bell in the back of my hatchback. I figured I would most likely be with my car at the end of the day and that it would be really nice to have the big bell handy. Since I was already at home for many of the sunsets, I rang the bell regularly in my neighborhood. Over the course of the year, some of my neighbors have joined me consistently. The fact that most of them are under 10 years old and need to be accompanied across the street by an adult should be mentioned.

I look forward to embarking on year 3 and have yet to decide how I would like to participate in it’s evolution. The daily practice is great and I would also like to instigate and document more events this time around. It would be great to have more people join the project and to know about their various activities.

The big picture?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a ring around the world- a constant trail of bells following the sun as it crosses the horizon across the globe? Oh…!
Reality check
This is a picture one of my young and loyal bell ringers slipped under my door the other day. I was so excited because I thought he had drawn himself striking these two little round school bells that he often likes to play. When I thanked him for the drawing and told him how much I liked it, especially the part with him playing the bells, he told me they weren’t bells. They were the spots of light he was casting with his new flashlight that I gave him for Christmas. AAH bells, flashlights- what’s the difference…

Winter Solstice

2009-12-21T23:30:00.000-08:00

Following the Light

Sunrise and sunset times from 11/29/09 - 1/11/10 in San Francisco, CA

It's all still a bit mysterious to me. Even though the sun continues to rise later and later until the middle of January AND the sun has already begun to set later a week before the Solstice, December 21st still has the least amount of daylight in the year.

Any ideas? It's interesting to compare this chart to the Summer Solstice chart from last year. As you would expect, the lines are reversed.

Greetings!

HOORAY!! It only gets lighter from here. Today is the 72oth sunrise and 721st sunset since beginning this practice on New Year's Eve 2007.

Happy Holidays to everyone!
love,
Brenda

4th of July Weekend In the Light Cone

2009-09-16T19:17:00.000-07:00

July 3 - 5, 2009 Anacortes, WA
Lasercave Presents: In the Light Cone at the Department of Safety
This was a magical, communal event- indoors and out- installations, performances, BBQs, fire kite launching at night—all in a very quiet, beautiful town surrounded by water and mountains. It felt very clean and as if time was looking the other way as it passed by this little piece of heaven.
The curatorial premise behind In The Light Cone was simple: makers from throughout the country made dynamic, site-specific work based around the notion of two viewing times, during the day, when natural and artificial light commingled in a traditional gallery setting and at night, when piece-specific and -generated lights and shapes transformed the space into a wholly new environment.
Sunset at the Department of Safety
7/3 and 7/4/09 PM
The sun sets late way up in the Northwest, so I arrived in plenty of time on the first evening of the festivities at the Department of Safety in Anacortes, Wash. While the evening bell ringings on the 3rd and 4th of July were energetic and well attended, the 5AM sunrises were solo affairs.
Where is Everybody?
7/4 AM
Quiet Solo Bells (listen)
The first morning, I was the only person at the Department of Safety. I saw people moving indoors, but the streets were deserted. I found out later that everyone was camping on someone’s lawn in another part of town.
7/5/AM Shhhh... So on my way out of town on Sunday morning July 5th, I drove over to where everyone was sleeping on the ground. I tiptoed quietly among the tents and sleeping bags on the ground and quietly rang the smallest bells over each person as they slept. It felt somewhat sacred and I was moved to be in the presence of so many trusting and vulnerable people. It was a mutual blessing and I thank you all for a wonderful weekend.

The show was curated and organized by Jonah Adels, Jade Ajani, Adam Baz, Polly Bresnick, Tim Donovan, Maggie Jones, Jesse Malmed and Raven Munsell.

Other participants included: Mark Essen, Carlyn Elin Wutkee, Ben Segal, Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa, Sidney B. Russell, Bethany Miller, Rebecca Leopold, Tim Donovan + Jonah Adels, Adam Baz, Jade Ajani, Tim Karpinski, Allison Cekala and Timothy Karpinski.
The video program was curated by Jesse Malmed and featured works by: Jonah Adels, Tyrone Davies, Molly Bradbury, Chris Rice, Aurora Halal, Josephine Shokrian, Jade Ajani, Duncan Malashock, Jesse Malmed, Adam Davies, Brandon Rosenbluth and Jesse McLean.

Summer Solstice 2009

2009-06-22T10:38:00.000-07:00

Chapel of the Chimes

Listen

Video

with Francesca and Rose at sunset. photo and audio recording: Thea Farhadian
Thank you, Thea!

Happy Solstice!!!
Thank you Sarah and all the volunteers. This year was super smooth!

We rang bells during the sunset at the Annual Chapel of the Chimes Garden of Memory event. Anyone there care to add any comments or photos from the event? Everyone who was celebrating the summer Solstice elsewhere care to say a few words or share some images or sounds from wherever you happened to be?

FAREWELL, FOR NOW

2009-01-03T22:17:00.000-08:00

Sunset. December 31, 2008 Leaving the Pamida grocery store in Bozeman, MT
Happy New Year!
I had no idea how many exceptionally generous and wonderful people I knew. I was and am overwhelmed and humbled by your support, creativity and generosity.

Regarding the Solstice- Thank you all for your kind and immediate offers of assistance and for the many fabulous solstice recordings you sent in on such short notice. That was beyond luck. The Solstice Sunwatch recordings are so incredible, and they would have never happened under ordinary circumstances. If I had to point to a single moment from this past year in terms of gauging the success of the dailybell2008 project, that was the moment. Thank you all; truly, from a part of myself I hadn’t known existed.

I have decided to continue to observe the sunrises and sunsets as a daily practice-- I really like it. I haven't figured out yet where to take the project but have some ideas.

In the meantime, let's continue to track the sun...

December Odds and Ends

2009-01-01T16:10:00.000-08:00

Working with free103point9 this month, we received more than 60 audio recordings from all over the world in response to our invitation to observe and record sunrises and sunsets this month. Those recordings replaced the usual documentation this month, and I posted those pieces to two different entries. Sunwatchers Audio Archive is a daily record of what came in from where and whom for the entire month. The EMERGENCY AUDIO RESPONDERS entry is a collection of all the emergency audio responders that came through with recordings for the Solstice. I continued to observe and ring bells at each sunrise and sunset and occasionally collected some media or thoughts of my own. However, for the most part, I invite you to enjoy hearing from others for a change. I know I did!
FYI We rang bells in front of the house (including the big bell in the back of the car) for 19 out of 25 consecutive days. That’s a record.

What follows is the odd collection of media from the entire month. To read the aborted daily journal, click here. I discontinued the journal and finished off the month with the Solstice Saga and miscellaneous media. The stories are more buried this month.

12/30 PM Encore, sort of...

12/28 PM Final Procession

12/13 AM Sunrise by the Williamsburg Bridge

12/12 AM Connie and Elizabeth ringing bells and singing by the bridge at 7:05AM (audio)

12/6 PM Somewhere over Missouri?

12/1 AM and 12/3 AM San Francisco day to day.

December Sunwatchers Audio Archive

2008-12-31T22:27:00.000-08:00

In response to the invitation, people are sending in recordings from all over the world- they trickle in as the path of the sunrise of sunset moves around the globe. I gather each day's recordings and send them to free103point9 where they are broadcast at noon (EST) the following day. To listen to the daily offerings - live each noon- "tune into" the online radio show at free103point9.

To hear the ones you missed, they are archived here on the dates they were recorded, not broadcast. Just click on the time of day to listen.

11/30 PM Brenda Hutchinson reads poem by Jenneth Webster SF, CA 4:51PM
12/1 AM Norman Tuck "Hy's Bell" San Francisco, CA 7:07AM
12/1 PM Al Margolis at home Chester, NY 4:30PM
12/2 AM Stephan Moore Radiator Brooklyn, NY 7:01AM
12/2 PM Julia(2) and Sonia Vilafranca del Penedes, Barcelona 6:05PM
12/2 PM Erik Deluca What I was Doing Miami, FL 5:45PM
12/3 AM Alyce Santoro 6000 ft Davis Mountains, West Texas 7:30AM
12/4 AM Stephen Vitiello Thursday Morning Richmond, VA 7:09AM
12/5 PM Chris DeLaurenti for Brenda at 4:18 PM on Dec 5 Seattle, WA 4:18PM
12/5 PM Vince Rubino with Dianne Baasch, Heejung Kim, Maureen Kim, Stan Crocker, Alex You, Juhae Park and Cheong Keoul Songdo Incheon, Korea 5:15PM
12/7 AM Jenny Holland "Morning Practice" Albany, CA 7:12AM
12/7 PM Laura Vitale "Rainy Corner" Brooklyn, NY 4:28PM
12/7 PM Pauline Oliveros and Ione Living Room Kingston, NY 4:24PM
12/8 AM Tom Bickley and Nancy Beckman Blessing Berkeley, CA 7:13AM
12/8 PM Ginger Miles "Fire Escape" New York, NY 4:28PM
12/10 PM Jon Brumit kernel-shit-storm and farce-basil-miami-beech Miami, FL 5:30 PM
12/11 PM Sebastian (Beau Casey and Margot Bevington, parents) 7:14AM
12/11 AM and PM Lyn Goeringer Providence, RI 7:04AM/4:16PM
12/11PM Janice Misurell- Mitchell “Border Crossings" Chicago, IL 4:18PM
12/12AM Connie Kieltyka and Elizabeth Robinson "J-Train Sunrise" Brooklyn, NY 7:05AM
12/12PM Charles Veasey Stillwater, NY 4:20PM
12/14PM Kathy Kennedy "Montreal Bells" Montreal, Quebec 6:00PM
12/14PM Sharon Cheslow "On This Day Dec. 14th" Los Angeles, CA 4:45PM
12/15PM Maria Mykolenko "nysunsetdec15" NY, NY 4:28PM
12/15PM Lu Olkowski "BNC_Daily Bell_Dec 16 2008" Brooklyn, NY 4:29PM
12/16PM Judy Dunaway "For Dec 17" Boston, MA 4:13PM
12/17PM Maggi Payne "Berkeley BART" Berkeley, CA 4:51PM
12/18AM Brenda Hutchinson "Broadway Window" Brooklyn, NY 7:14AM
12/18PM Barbara Held and Nil Tous "diagong" Barcelona, Spain 5:24PM
12/19AM Yvonne Buchanan Central New York 7:15AM
12/20PM Roxanne Amico and Heather Kuhn Buffalo, NY 4:44PM
12/21 AM&PM SOLSTICE (See SOLSTICE AUDIO ARCHIVE)
12/22AM Caterina De Re "Snow Seattle Prayer" 7:45AM
12/23AM Erin Espeland and Paul Kaufman Sydney, Montana 7:44AM
12/24PM Raylene Campbell Montreal, Quebec 4:13PM
12/25AM Monique Buzzarté City Island, NY 7:19AM
12/26AM Georgina Lewis Making Breakfast Boston, MA 7:12AM
12/27AM Pilar Subirà Barcelona, Spain 7:17AM
12/27AM Jaime Robles Berkeley, CA 7:23AM
12/27PM Norman Tuck Ocean Beach San Francisco, CA 4:58PM
12/28PM Jenny Holland, Bonnie Holland, Jon Patmore, Finn Holland, Cecelia Holland, Mia Narell, Isaac Narell, Zoe Leavens, Tom Miller, Linda Wang, Michael Jones, Chris Tripoli, Carol Kemper, Brenda Hutchinson, Lucy Holland. "Backyard Band" Berkeley, CA 4:59PM
12/30AM Vicoria Estok "Sunrise" Roosevelt, New Jersey 7:20AM
12/31AM Maria Mykolenko "New Year's Bells" Southeastern Michigan 5:31PM
Laura Spero Sunrise in Kaskikot, Nepal on 12/24AM for the New Year

EMERGENCY AUDIO RESPONDERS

2008-12-26T13:44:00.000-08:00

Since there are so many entries for this one day AND it is the Solstice, I am posting all Solstice recordings on this entry. Just click on the time of day to listen.
SOLSTICE SUNWATCH ARCHIVE
Many, many thanks to all of you who sent in recordings on the solstice in response to my distress call. I am very grateful. This was so perfect and wonderful and appropriate. It was worth limping around Newark, NJ indefinitely waiting for a ride home. Thank you again!

DEC21 NOON Barbara Held Andora Mountains, Spain NOON
DEC21PM Thea Farhadian. Sesenheimer Str. 1. Berlin, Germany 3:54PM
DEC21PM Bun Ching Lam. Paris, France 4:54PM
DEC21PM Raylene Campbell. Montreal, Quebec 4:11PM
DEC21PM Georgina Lewis Boston, MA 4:15PM
DEC21PM Lyn Goeringer Providence, RI 4:18PM
DEC21PM Monique Buzzarté City Island, New York 4:23PM
DEC21PM Al Margolis. Chester, NY 4:31PM
DEC21PM Betsey Biggs. 14th Street. New York City 4:31PM
DEC21PM Jenneth Webster. Brooklyn, NY 4:31PM
DEC21PM Alyce Santoro. Truth or Consequences, NM 5:51PM
DEC21PM Vince Rubino On an Airplane somewhere above Eastern Washington time?
DEC21PM Caterina De Re. Seattle, WA 4:04PM
DEC21PM Chris DeLaurentis Seattle, WA 4:21PM
DEC21PM Krys Bobrowski and Chien Wong. KAZ Berkeley, CA 4:54PM
DEC21PM Beau Casey "Soulstice" Berkeley, CA 4:53PM
DEC21PM Paul Stepahin. The Exploratorium- Seed Swap and Bell Ringing. San Francisco, CA 4:53PM
DEC22AM Wendy Suiter. Mt Keira. New South Wales, Australia 5:44AM

SOLSTICE SAGA

2008-12-24T15:15:00.000-08:00

67 hours door to door from New York to San Francisco
TaDa! That must be some kind of record. Although I know there were 1000’s, maybe 10’s of thousands of people who slept in the airports these past few days leading up to Christmas. My sister and I would have been two more of them. Fortunately for her, when Lisa learned her flight was cancelled she went back and stayed with my father and rerouted herself through Philadelphia. She had to wait two days but she hung out with my Dad and watched TV and got stuff out of the refrigerator when she wanted a snack.
For more details of the saga, click here. To jump to the end, read on:
It really turned out to be a very wonderful thing. A huge blessing. The absolute finality of not being able to leave New York on time. The falling down and hurting myself. The main things I was concerned about missing were the Seed Swap and Solstice Bell Ringing and my audio contribution to the December Sunwatch project. The Exploratorium event went on without me. The Seed Swap was fun and successful. And the bell took on a life of it’s own. Norman brought the Honda and the big bell over to the museum and rang it outside in the parking lot in the pouring rain. Inside the museum, the Explainers rang the two big bells that they usually ring only at the end of the day. (One of those bells is the one I drove around the country in 2006). People who were gathered in the theater rang bells and shook their keys before wandering out to join Norman in the parking lot. Thank you everyone who made this happen and especially Norman and Liz. I was sorry that I couldn’t be there but unbelievably happy just imagining it happening. What happened next was unexpected and honestly has changed my life in ways I don’t really understand, but I am forever grateful and appreciative.

When I had arrived at the hotel, it was 5:00 in the morning on the 21st. I knew that I wouldn’t make it back for the Exploratorium event and I knew that I would be unable to record my sunrise or sunset observance. And I was very tired. I should have just gone to bed, but instead, I sent up a flare. I sent an email to everyone that I had originally invited to participate in the daily recordings. I should have been more selective, but I wasn’t thinking clearly, and my computer was running out of battery power. What I wanted to convey was that I wouldn’t be able to record on the solstice and wondered if anyone would be willing to do so in my place. I should have simply made the request and left it at that, but I explained my situation and it seemed more dire than it actually was. Because my phone had already died, I was unaware of how many people called and left messages for assistance and it wasn’t until I woke up and checked my email that I realized how many people so generously and quickly responded to my cry for emergency audio. I had no idea how many exceptionally generous and wonderful people I know. I was and am overwhelmed and humbled.

Thank you all for your kind and immediate offers of assistance and for the many fabulous solstice recordings you sent in on such short notice. That was beyond luck. These Solstice Sunwatch recordings are more and better than anything I could have possibly done and they would have never happened under ordinary circumstances. If I had to point to a single moment from this past year in terms of gauging the success of the dailybell2008 project, this was the moment. Thank you all; truly, from a part of myself I hadn’t known existed.

Happy Holidays. And “It ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings”…

Who's Who- Sunwatching on the Radio

2008-12-01T11:52:00.000-08:00

I have extended an invitation from Free103point9 to broadcast 1-3 minutes of audio each day for the month of December. This invitation grew out of my collaboration with Lines of Sight #6 produced for Radio Web MACBA in Barcelona by Barbara Held and Pilar Subirá. I made the initial invitation to 30 people from all over the globe.
It's a very exciting line up and you can listen to a new piece each day at noon (EST) on free103point9. I will also archive each piece here on the blog.

December 2008 BROADCAST dates (due dates are one day earlier):
1- Jenneth Webster/Brenda Hutchinson
2- Al Margolis
3- Stephan Moore,
Sònia López and her daughter, Julia
Erik Deluca
4- Alyce Santoro
5- Stephen Vitiello
6- Chris DeLaurenti
7- Vince Rubino with Dianne Baasch, Heejung Kim, Maureen Kim, Stan Crocker, Alex You, Juhae Park and Cheong Keoul
8- Jenny Holland
9- Tom Bickley and Nancy Beckman
Laura Vitale
10- Ginger Miles
Pauline Oliveros and Ione
11- Jon Brumit
12- Lyn Goeringer
Sebastian (Margot Bevington and Beau Casey's baby boy)
13- Connie Kieltyka and Elizabeth Robinson
Charles Veasey
Janice Misurell- Mitchell
14- Norman Tuck
15- Kathy Kennedy
Sharon Cheslow
16- Lu Olkowski
Maria Mykolenko
17- Judy Dunaway
18- Brenda Hutchinson
Maggie Payne
19- Barbara Held and Nil Tous
20- Yvonne Buchanan
21- Roxanne Amico
22- Barbara Held
Thea Farhadian
Bun Ching Lam
Raylene Campbell
Lyn Goeringer
Georgina Lewis
Al Margolis
Monique Buzzarté
Betsey Biggs
Jenneth Webster
Alyce Santoro
Vince Rubino
Caterina De Re
Chris DeLaurenti
Krys Bobrowski & Chien Wang & Kaz
Paul Stepahin @ The Exploratorium
Wendy Suiter
Liz Keim
23- Caterina De Re
24- Erin Espeland
25- Raylene Campbell
26- Monique Buzzarté
27- Georgina Lewis
28- Pilar Subirà
Norman Tuck
29- Jenny's House Jenny Holland, Bonnie Holland, Jon Patmore, Finn Holland, Cecelia Holland, Mia Narell, Isaac Narell, Zoe Leavens, Tom Miller, Linda Wang, Michael Jones, Chris Tripoli, Carol Kemper, Brenda Hutchinson, Lucy Holland.
30- Jaime Robles
31- Victoria Estok
1/1/09- Laura Spero
Maria Mykolenko

"Twighlight into Darkness"

2008-11-30T21:12:00.000-08:00

Tonight was the first recording in a series of daily audio responses to either the sunrise or sunset each day. My friend, Jenneth Webster sent a poem she had written about a sunset in Brooklyn. I read her poem here in San Francisco this evening at sunset while Norman rang the big bell out in the street. Thank you, Jenneth.

Listen to a new recording from someone different each day during the month of December at free103point9. I will also archive the pieces here on the blog.

TWILIGHT INTO DARKNESS
by Jenneth Webster

So old ocean
I am with you again.
Lost baby possum: narrow tall head, small neatly folded black ears
Skeletal eye sockets, narrow tall body. buff with a ridge of hairs along the spine, small naked tail.
Walking, slowly, questioningly along the base of rock wall.
Lost baby possum, sniffing each gap among big stones.
In the bottom of the garden in Brooklyn's heart.
Where did you come from?

In the cab window, the small space between glass and door, a lady bug climbs and slides back,
climbs again. She will not climb my finger, but mounts a morsel of newspaper which flies
out the window. Little girl, where did you go?

I am alone, red Dragonfly, Mocking Bird, Woodpecker.
Squirrel:I see you hunching dead still in a treefork. I have seen you eating avocados, apples.
Bunny, sitting in lush bright last of sunlight grass of the Children's Garden, I know your ways.

I lived here once for ten minutes, shut in the Botannical Garden at closing. Silent, blissful world.

I am trying so hard to remember, so hard to remember you.
The Fall darkness is coming.
Trying so hard.

Last Week of November

2008-11-30T15:10:00.000-08:00

We have been ringing the big bell on the street at home most nights since November 11th. It is becoming a regular part of the day and sometimes our neighbor come out to join us in the evenings.

11/24 AM Malcolm is getting old
It’s a mixed blessing with him because the older and more frail he becomes, the sweeter and more mellow he gets. Maybe mellow is to optimistic of a word, but he definitely has moments of availability and softness that he never had in his feral and high-strung youth. So this morning when it was time to get up, I just couldn’t move. Sometime in the night, Malcolm had weaseled his way over my arm with his body pressed against mine and his face jammed into my cheek. I wasn’t exactly afraid to move, but I wasn’t in a hurry either. It was such a rare moment. So Norman got his usual bell from his bureau and passed it to me very carefully so we wouldn’t alarm the cat. Then we took turns ringing it as gently as possible.

11/24 PM I was on the phone at sunset this evening and missed it by a few minutes. When I hung up, it was still light outside so I grabbed some cowbells and ran downstairs to get Norman to come outside with me. We ran out of the garage clanging the bells and were surprised to see Henry and his father standing in their driveway across the street. Looking closer, we saw that Henry (who is only 3 years old) was ringing the little free bell I gave him months ago. It turned out that he and his father were out walking Gladys and Gus when they noticed the sunset. It was particularly colorful this evening because of all the dirt in the air. Suddenly Henry said they had to go ring their bells and they hurried home, ran into the house and were standing in their driveway ringing that tiny little bell when we came barreling out of the house with the cowbells. Magic.

11/25 AM I was hoping to capture that early morning hum. (audio)

11/25 PM Oh Henry!
We were racing home this evening so we would be there in case Henry was waiting. I kept flashing to the image of Henry standing at the bottom of his driveway ringing that tiny little bell last evening. Norman and I were late, but Henry was there for us. So it was with some urgency that we zipped home tonight and pulled up in front of the house - just on time. As we hopped out of the car to open up the back, Henry’s dad pulled up across the street in their car. Henry’s dad had barely parked the car when he jumped out to open up the back door, and Henry popped out. We had already started ringing the big bell when Henry came running across the street. We put the adult sized hearing protection over his ears and told him to push on the bell. He had never rung the big bell and was a little shy of it and had to push it over and over again until it finally rang. Once. And that was enough. I love Henry. His dad said that when they pulled up and saw us ringing the bell Henry just started yelling “letmeouletmeoutletmeout!”

11/26 AM Still Pondering the Birds
There are a few really large trees in the nearby back yards and they must house 100’s of birds. I remember wondering in the spring where all the birds had gone. Was their absence some new indicator of either global environmental change or crow dominance in our local area. Perhaps it turns out to be partly seasonal. Wintering in San Francisco?

I realize that even after a year of watching and listening to the bird activity in my own back yard, I know very little about what’s going on. Are the birds in peril? Are their times when there are more birds than others? Do certain birds dominate at different times of year? And where does one go to find out information about one’s local bird activity? So I started searching the web for some answers. I googled “San Francisco seasonal bird population” and went from there. Here’s what I found. The birds are in peril- some times more than others. They are seasonal. When it’s a quiet morning and there aren’t many birds around, can I tell the difference? Do I know if everyone is present and accounted for? How can I know if some birds are dead, never born or are merely elsewhere? I still don’t know. But I do have a small audio record of their songs and presence in my yard over this past year. In the overall scheme of things- eras and eons- I do have a very tiny sampling to use for comparison in the upcoming year.

11/26 PM Sunset on the Escalator
Budd, Norman and I met at the wrong movie theater. The names were sort of similar (Bay Street 16 and Emerybay 10), and they were both in the same confusing wasteland of massive mall, home depot and IKEA. It took us an hour to find the place, park the car in a garage and be in front of the theater at the agreed upon time. Right place. Wrong time. Just before heading back into the parking garage so we could drive around, under and past the on and off ramps to 3 different freeways without getting lost again, we took out some bells and rang them. An escalator ran right in front of the theater where we were standing and we informed the people smoothly ascending past us that the sun was setting as we toasted them with the bells.

11/27 AM Thanksgiving morning
Busy little birds. (audio) Because it’s a holiday, there is no traffic at this time of day. It’s like Sundays when you can hear the local activity so much better.

11/27 PM Turkey Time

Amir came over to join us for dinner just before sundown. I hadn’t realized that Amir had never rung the big bell. Usually he tries to give the impression that he knows how to do everything and projects an assurance and confidence about doing things. It’s hard to know what he’s done before and what he’s trying for the first time. So I was surprised when he said he wasn’t sure he could ring the bell. But he did and one by one kids started coming out of neighboring houses. Each time a new person showed up and rang a bit, I thought that was it. The last one. And then another would come. It turns out they were all cousins. The two girls live next door to one another and they are old hats with the bell ringing. Their other cousin must have been visiting for Thanksgiving, and when they all finished ringing, the girls asked if their cousin could have a bell to keep. I like how normal it’s become around here.

11/28 AM I vaguely remember ringing the bicycle-disguised-as a-hotel-bell this morning while Norman rang Hy’s little bell. It was a sweet performance. Malcolm was about as attentive as he usually is - which is to say he didn’t move. The sun came up as usual and I went back to sleep, also as usual these days.

11/28 PM Evening Bell Ringing Routine
Since my neighbors have been coming out to join me these past few evenings, I thought I’d bring the movie camera out for a change to catch some of the action. Jinxed it. Nobody came. Maybe nobody wanted to come out into the grayness.

11/29 AM There is no other time of day that sounds like the early morning. On Saturday it’s possible to hear the small, busy birds fluttering and chattering everywhere. (audio).

11/29 PM Walking the Grid
Jenny and Isaac came to visit this afternoon, and we all walked down to the beach. We had just started walking away from the house when I thought to go back and bring some bells with us in case we didn’t make it back before sunset. But we had a few hours and figured we would be back in plenty of time. Three hours later we were still zigzagging our way back home through the grid of numbered and alphabetically named avenues when the sun went down. I had a few of the free bells in my bag and we rang those. They are so small and quiet you can hardly hear them. Change in your pocket makes more noise than those bells. In any event we found a spot on a corner up the hill from the ocean where we could actually see the sun dipping below the water. We weren’t alone. The family whose house we were standing in front of was also outside watching the sun go down. We shared our bells with them and watched together.

11/30 AM Norman and I rang our favorite combination of bells again this morning.

Third Week of November

2008-11-25T13:58:00.000-08:00

11/16 AM
This morning I woke Lisa up with the gong she had given me for Christmas last year. It’s the same gong I rang for Warren when he was so ill. Every morning and every night when I open or close the curtains, I ring that gong and think about the sound carrying blessings out beyond those windows. Of course, this morning, I just wanted to wake Lisa with it.

11/17 AM Cazadero Wake Up
This is working out so nicely. The sun rises just about the time Lisa needs to wake up to get ready for her conference each day. So I get to be her wake up call. It reminds me of being at Cazadero Music Camp more than 30 years ago. Cazadero was a summer camp in a redwood forest in Northern California where city kids from the Bay Area would go for a few weeks each summer to sleep in tents at night and play music all day. We’d have up to 170 kids there at a time, and we needed to wake them all up by 7:30 in the morning. So one by one, day-by-day, each tent full of kids or faculty would take turns waking everybody up. It was called Creative Wake-up and it was sort of a contest to see who could come up with the most imaginative and effective way to wake everybody up. Running around yelling and screaming at people to wake up was low on the list. A small band of strolling musicians was regarded much more highly. Having a group of people think about, plan and perform a ritual wake-up call was a really lovely way to be nudged out of what was usually a very deep sleep. I thought about this when I woke my sister up this morning as I gently rang the gong for her.

11/17 PM Norman is working with our former neighbor, Will to build several of Norman's OscylinderScopes that the Exploratorium has ordered from him for resale to other science museums. They were working in the garage all day and took a break to ring some cowbells with Lisa. Then she wanted to ring the big bell in the car, so we ran out to the street to set up. We discovered that the hearing protection was missing (I guess they needed it for the metal cutting) so Lisa only rang the bell a couple of times. It hurt her ears.

11/18 AM We didn’t have to wake my sister this morning since she finished her conference yesterday. She wanted to sleep in. So Norman and I rang the hotel bell-disguised-bicycle bell and Hy’s little hand bell without getting out of bed ourselves. They sounded really nice together. The fog has returned. Or the sun is leaving with Lisa. It’s cold again.

11/18 PM
Will and Norman were still working on the OscylinderScopes this evening. They took a break from the welding and cutting of the metal to clang some (audio).

11/19 AM I had so enjoyed this combination of bells the other day that I wanted to record them. Unfortunately for the recording, I opened the door to go outside and made a lot of noise with the mic cable. I’ll try again another day.

11/19 PM A dream come true!
It’s been great ringing the big bell on my street every evening. It feels like part of the expected landscape. Part of the day. The other day when someone down the street honked a car horn in rhythm with the bell, it was so unexpected and exciting. Last night was even more so. Norman and I zipped home just in time for the sunset. I had carried lots of bells around in the car with me all day- just in case I didn’t make it home. So we pulled the bag out of the car and Norman picked the little tingsha bells as I hurried up and opened the back of the car. Fortunately, I had found the hearing protection in the garage after the construction job was finished and had already replaced them in my car. Just as we started ringing, our neighbors from a few doors down pulled up in front of their house. Mary ran inside to get her bell and she came out with her daughter and father. I was already beside myself that they had come uninvited when another neighbor from further down the street came walking over with her daughter running in front of her. Everyone rang bells and we hung out until the sun went down. It was so good.

11/20 AM When the alarm went off this morning, I was more alert than usual. So I went and got the bowl bell and took it outside while Norman rang Hy’s bell in the bed. Malcolm was also more alert than usual, and he tried to escape out the back door. However, I managed to slip out on my own and quietly stirred the bowl for the birds. There were so many.

11/20 PM I love when other people come out to join us. So casual and normal.

11/21 AM The sun is rising at almost 7AM, and during the week it is really humming out there. The roar from the traffic has displaced what had been a delicate spaciousness. The soft band of noise that is the sound 1000’s of cars moving all over the city is constant, thick and indistinct. It is everywhere, yet nowhere you can point to. It fills the air in the same way as background music. It doesn’t really command attention but it occupies space and washes out other, smaller details. Because the ambient sound level is so much louder and more present, it makes it more difficult to hear and appreciate small, local sounds. Quiet sounds with brittle edges like a rustling leaf or the flap of a bird’s wing. Even the sharp burst of a bird’s call is smothered. These tiny, bright sounds are lost, muffled or buried in the dense ambience of so many distant car engines.

11/21 PM Chewing on some bells

Krys and I in the mosh pit with the Obama boys.

11/22 AM Another lazy morning just looking out the window at sunrise and ringing bells in the bed.

11/22 PM We rang the big bell outside again this evening. (audio). This time nobody came. It was very foggy. Cold and wet. Better to stay inside.

11/23 AM

Last night, Norman finished turning Bob’s bell into our doorbell. (See entry: Bob's Bell One Year Later)

11/23 PM For the past few months, my friend Evangel King has been creating a monthly series of dance performances she calls “Dance As It’s Made”. She invites the audience to first witness her in the process of creating dance and then to discuss it over tea immediately following her performance. This was the first one I was able to attend, and it was very special. I enjoy watching work in progress and sharing that experience with others. The feeling in the audience is relaxed and engaged and it’s extremely pleasurable for me. Since I hadn’t seen Vangie in a long time, we went out to eat afterwards and our meal coincided with the sunset. We rang bells at our table and when I offered our waiter a free bell, he wanted to know how many he could have. He took several and shared them with other people working in the restaurant.

Bob's Bell One Year Later

2008-11-20T19:31:00.000-08:00

11/16 PM Our friend Bob Miller died just over a year ago. He had been in the Merchant Marines and his partner worked as a longshoreman on the Oakland and San Pedro docks before he died more than a decade ago. Bob had lived at our house, and he took care of Malcolm when we went out of town. Malcolm is a troubled animal. He’s fearful and aggressive. That’s a hard combination to live with. The mentality of “get the other guy before he gets you” is especially difficult when you as a human are on the receiving end of the claws and teeth which are called into service to “get the other guy” which is generally you. Bob and Malcolm had some kind of understanding. Malcolm loved Bob, and I think it was because Bob had such big feet. Malcolm would sit on the floor next to Bob’s feet looking very proud and comfortable to be in Bob’s presence. It was a special friendship between them and we were very grateful. Before Bob came along, we always had a hard time finding someone to stay with Malcolm. People would come once and then never come back. We had run out of friends and friends of friends before Malcolm met Bob.

Before Bob died, he had given us a ship’s bell. I have rung it all year and every time I do, I think of Bob. He was a wonderful man and a good friend. When he stayed here, he would find projects to do. He painted my room, the hallway, the room where we keep Malcolm’s litter box. He made a contraption with back-scratchers, bells and a piece of netting to catch the mail that normally fell on the garage floor when the mailman dropped it through the slot. Bob’s hand and presence are in every room and behind every door in this house. One of the projects we had planned to work on together was the doorbell. We have no doorbell. There’s just a hole in the wall next to the door where there had been one at some unnamed time in the past. We thought Bob’s ship bell would make a great doorbell because it’s so loud and also because it’s a real bell. We talked about where in the house to hang it and how would we get it to ring. Over time, the destiny of the bell emerged. However, we didn’t get around to turning it into the doorbell in time.

So now after more than a year since Bob died, we finally are getting around to it. Norman was in the garage rigging up a solenoid and mounting the bell when it was time for the sunset. While he rang Bob’s bell in the garage, I went out to the street and rang the big bell (audio). Those are our loudest bells. I wonder how loud something has to be to be considered “loud enough to wake the dead”. HELLO WE MISS YOU!!!!

Choral Sunset Preview

2008-11-16T23:14:00.000-08:00

11/9 Earlier this afternoon, I recorded (audio) the Cardew Choir as they rehearsed and performed a piece we have just begun to work on. The piece was commissioned by Barbara Held for the online radio program she and Pilar Subirá are curating for Radio Web MACBA (Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona) The show is called Lines of Sight, and the next installment will feature yours truly. Most, but not all of the focus is on collaborative projects. These include both large-scale long-term projects like dailybell2008 as well as more intimate work like the SoundTracks project I did with Ann Chamberlain. In addition, there is a conversation between Jon Brumit and I where we discuss a few of our public collaborative projects. If you are unfamiliar with his work, check out his website. He’s very funny and thinks we may be distant cousins. Lines of Sight #6 will be available beginning December 1 at RWM.

This is an excerpt (audio) from the work in progress for the choir. They will premiere the completed work at a concert in May 2009. In the meantime, here’s a short sketch and preview.

Second Week of November

2008-11-16T20:28:00.000-08:00

11/9 AM Norman and I walked out to the sidewalk and listened to the birds all up and down the street. There were two little trees at the end of the street that seemed to house most of the birds and they were blasting the music.

11/9 PM A nice pink sunset with cowbells

11/10 AM Bells in the bed at 6:45 AM. Malcolm didn’t even get up.

11/10 PM It had been a while since
we sounded that big loud bell in the back of my car. I had missed hearing it so that’s the one we rang. It’s really nice to be working and in the middle of doing something to suddenly and gently realize that the sun is about to go down. The past few days I have stopped what I was doing within minutes of the sunset because something about that time of the day asserted itself. Like magic, the moment intruded and subtly disturbed my concentration. So I simply stopped whatever I was doing, stood up, got some bells and walked outside to look around at just that moment. It was like riding over the edge of the world. Riding for that one moment as the earth turned away from the sun and carried me along as I watched.

11/11 AM Still lazy in the morning. We wake up just long enough to look out the window and see what kind of day it might be while we ring a few bells for a minute or two. I’ve been too tired to even feel bad about not getting up and going outside or down to the Ferry Building. Maybe next week.

11/11 PM In honor of Veteran’s Day
I rang the big bell at sunset again today. It’s a very solemn sounding bell. There’s also something reassuring about the repetition and constancy of ringing the big bell in my neighborhood in the evening. It’s so loud that everyone on the block can hear it as it signals the ever-hastening end of the day for this time of year.

11/12 AM A busy morning. Birds up. Neighbors up and driving off. (Audio)

11/12 PM The Band Got Bigger
This is the third day in a row we rang the big bell out front of the house. Just before sunset, my neighbor Helen came over to look at my futon. Her Aunt is coming from New York, and she needs a place to sleep for a few days. Helen has a cot but no mattress so she wanted to see if mine would work. It will. As we were walking back towards the front door, I offered Helen a cowbell and asked if she would like to join us. We had to hurry. Norman was already outside opening up the back of the car when Helen and I came out the front doors jangling our cowbells. Then Norman started clanging that big bell. The next thing I noticed was a car horn beeping down the street. It was tapping along with us in a regular rhythm. Suddenly the street was so alive and noisy. It was great.

11/13 AM Sunrise and a bathroom run coincided very nicely this morning. A minute of multitasking, then back to bed.

11/13 PM My sister, Lisa, came into town today for a conference at a fancy hotel on Market Street. I dropped her off for her first meeting just before 5:00 this evening then sat in the bike lane with my flashers on so that I could catch the sunset before driving off into rush hour traffic. I had my Ziploc bag of free bells in the car and rang them for a moment or two. They sounded so nice, I continued to ring them all the way up Market Street. I felt a little guilty ringing them by myself when there were so many people walking around.

11/14 AM Coffee and Bells?

Lisa is staying with me while attending ENERGY MEDICINE for WOMEN conference and workshop with Donna Eden at the Hotel Whitcomb this week. Lisa is a healer and practitioner of Applied Kinesiology and has been working in this field for several years. It’s hard to hear, but the first few words out of her mouth this morning after I woke her up were inquiring whether or not I would be serving coffee as an encore at that early hour. I think perhaps she forgot she wasn’t at the hotel.

11/14 PM Unless I have something special planned for the sunset, I usually keep on doing whatever I am doing until the last minute. This evening however, I had just returned home from some errands, and there was still a chunk of time before sunset. Instead of rushing into the house and finding something to do for 15 minutes, I just stayed outside and looked around the street. Not much was going on. Some people walked by, the man across the street was watering his little patch of grass. A streetcar passed by the corner. In general, it was quiet and slow on the street. On the other hand, the change in the light was very dramatic. When I first arrived home, the houses and roads and trees seemed to be producing their own light. In the short amount of time that I was surveying the activities around my house, the light had drained away from the ground and moved to the sky. But only for a moment. I rang the big bell and went inside. Instead of closing the curtains at that moment, I left them open to allow the last bit of colored light into the room.

11/15 AM Lisa came in and woke me up for the sunrise this morning. The only handy bell was the one I call the hotel bell. It looks like the bells you tap on for service at the hotel desk. However, you ring this one by twisting instead of tapping. And it doesn’t behave like the single ding of the desk bell. It’s works and sounds like the kind of bell we used to have on our bicycle handlebars when we were kids. It’s a bike bell masquerading as a desk bell. What’s it for, really?

11/15 PM As I walked by the kitchen window,
I happened to look out and see the tree in the neighbor’s backyard, blazing with autumn color. However, it’s not a deciduous tree. It’s that big evergreen where those nasty crows live in. The “Baby Crow Battle” tree. The sun must have been shooting straight across on its way down to set the tree on fire like that. Within a few minutes, the color was gone.

Election Days

2008-11-08T18:00:00.000-08:00

11/3 PM Ringing on the Road to Reno
We had gone to Phoenix 4 years ago as poll watchers for election protection.org. We witnessed first hand such a deadly combination of corruption, incompetence, misinformation and intimidation that it was obvious that the will of the people was not being honored. So this time around, Norman and I voted early in San Francisco so we could go to Nevada for the election to help get out the vote there on election day itself. The sun set as we were stuck in rush hour traffic on a rainy Interstate 80 and we just pulled over to the side of the road and rattled some cowbells at the slowly passing cars. As we approached the Sierra Mountains, that rain turned to snow and we got caught in a blizzard going over the Donner Pass. The road was closed to anyone who didn’t have chains or 4-wheel drive. Our little rental car had neither and we couldn’t go ahead or turn back without them. So we got in line at the gas station and got some chains and put them on in the parking lot with the snow blowing and piling up at an alarming rate. Then off we went -over the mountains. There weren’t many cars on the road so when we spun around and went off the road, it was quiet and smooth and easy. Fortunately, once we came to rest and waited for the line of cars coming over the rise to pass, those chains gripped the road and we were off again.

11/4 AM Canvassing in Ne-VAAH-da
We were in Reno to canvass for the election and were on the road by 5:30 AM. By the time the sun was coming up, we were already out hanging election reminders and poll information on the doorknobs of many sleeping households. It was SO cold, but the snow on the distant mountains was turning a cotton candy pink, and the sight was worth freezing for.

11/4 PM Yes we can. Yes we did!
Wow. I didn’t believe it was possible. AUDIO (bells recorded at the Exploratorium).

11/5 AM
It was so dark in the room when I woke up this morning, I thought I might have gotten up too soon again. But then I remembered where I was and opened up those very effective blackout curtains found in all the finest hotels. And the Circus Circus was no exception. It really is a lovely sight to see the sun come up over those snow-dusted mountains. We left Reno to drive back to San Francisco this morning. What a difference two days make. The Donner Pass was clear and well salted.

First Week of November

2008-11-08T17:40:00.000-08:00

11/1 AM Barking Crow
It’s our 11th anniversary today. There was a crow barking outside this morning. It was regularly and cawing in short bursts for at least 15 minutes. If it was a dog, I would have been irritated. I imagined for a moment that it was a dog and thought about why that would have bothered me. If it was a dog, I would have been annoyed at the owners of the dog for letting it bark. But because it was a crow, I only thought about the crow and the fact that it was a bird making the noises that a bird makes. It never would have occurred to me to think beyond the bird or to look for someone to blame for the persistent cawing of the bird. But I have gotten annoyed at the same persistent barking of a nearby dog.

11/1 PM Fish Song
We went out and bought a goldfish to keep our other fish company. She’s 13 years old and has outlived two other fish. We thought she might be lonely and several people who have come over lately have said the same thing. At sunset, we decided to serenade the new little fish on her first night in our house and rang some bells for her. Then we released her into the big tank and hoped for the best.

11/2 AM
Norman rang Hy’s bell this morning and I went and got the little tingsha (cymbal) bell. When we rang them, they were almost the same pitch. This was the first time I noticed that.

11/2 PM Sudden, Early Darkness
This was the first night since we have turned the clocks back. It was also the last evening of our training as volunteers for Jewish Family and Children’s Services Palliative Care Program. It’s been really wonderful to ring down the sun with a group of people who have looked forward to it and embraced the project and experience. Thank you all again. I am so happy that we have met, and I look forward to where we go from here.

11/3 AM Standard Time
I got confused this morning and thought the sunrise was at 6:08 AM. The darkness creeps into each day one minute at a time and last night the sun set at 5:09 PM. Somehow I subtracted a minute but it was from the wrong hour at the wrong end of the day. So when I woke up this morning, it was still pretty dark outside. But because there was a little bit of pink light peeking over my neighbor’s trees to the south I knew it was only a matter of time before the whole sun appeared. I just thought it was extra dark because of fog or clouds or some other mysterious reason. In any event, I didn’t want to wait around until it got lighter, so I got up and rang my bells and went back to sleep while it was still early dawn.

11/5 PM
Ringing down the sun just after 5:00 with Norman and Carl.

11/6 AM feed them and they will come...
There are so many more songbirds in the mornings now. It’s partly seasonal, but since Norman has started feeding the birds on our back porch, there are many, many more birds nearby as well (audio).

11/6 PM No Bells
I knew that I would be in the middle of my physical therapy appointment when the sun set so I brought bells with me. Then I left them in the waiting room. During my session as the therapist was working on my neck, she remarked about how dark it was getting so early in the day. So instead of ringing bells, we both looked outside at the fading day through a little crack in the blinds. We talked about turning the clocks up and back and how that disrupted what could be a gentle compression and expansion of our days and nights.

11/7 AM Easy Listening
The easy ringing home routine. Alarm goes off. Bells by the bed. Look outside. Sunny? Foggy? Ring the bells for a minute or so. Back to sleep.

11/7 PM Every available Friday,
I visit with my friend Krys and hang out with her 10 month old son (my Godson) and his 9 month old buddy. We spend the day juggling the 2 boys. If they weren’t so heavy, I would say, “literally juggling”. At the end of the day, just before I had to go, we all sat in the fenced-in play area known as the “mosh pit” and rang the sun down together. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that some of us rang, one of us sat still and listened and the other explored his bell with his mouth. It was lovely. By the way, it took me a while to understand what a mosh pit was. Because my mosh pit days are so far behind me, I only had the faintest of recollections of having heard the phrase before. And now after spending a bit of time in the mosh pit, I think a much better name would be the “mush pit”. I’ll say no more. I didn’t have a camera with me at sunset on Friday, so this is a photo of the boys at the polls on Tuesday.

11/8 AM That crack of dawn must be awfully loud
to wake up so many birds. By the time the sun is about to breach the horizon, the birds are very noisy and busy. As I opened the door to go out back and join them this morning, several pigeons flew off the porch into the crow tree next door (audio). Their wings made that creaky hinge sounds as they flew off.

11/8 PM It drizzled all day
so the porch steps were wet and shiny. They look pretty good since we cleaned them, too. So Norman and I stood at the top of the stairs and leaned over so our bells showed up reflected in the wet bricks.

The Whole Month of October

2008-10-31T23:16:00.000-07:00

I know I said that I was taking the month off as far as documentation was concerned. However, I did occasionally record some audio or shoot a photo or movie. Not much. Just now and then. If you are interested in knowing more about how the month went, I did keep a daily journal for the month. The entries are generally quite short. It's a rough draft that I intend to finish at some point by putting in the links where they are indicated. But other than that, it's OK as is. It will open in MS word.

So Many Birds in the Mornings

2008-10-31T22:08:00.000-07:00

10/17/08
SF 7:21 AM
I was so impressed by how loud it was yesterday that I made an audio recording this morning. I don’t know why, but there are so many more birds out at this time of the day. Birds can’t tell time and I had always thought that their schedule followed the sun. But now I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s simply seasonal and there are in fact more birds around this time of year. Who knows?

10/23/08
SF 7:27 AM
There won’t be too many more mornings where the sun rises this late and the weather is this nice. I decided last night that I would wander around outside a bit in the morning and record the activity (audio). Even though there are so many more birds just now, it’s so late in the day already that the engines have already built up and there is a general din of cars, trams, and other machines. Still, it’s nice to have company on the street these mornings. I just caught my neighbor across the street returning home with his puppies.

Three National Parks in One Week

2008-10-31T21:49:00.000-07:00

10/4/08 Yosemite

6:57 AM It was raining here this morning. A real raindrop kind of rain, not the drizzly suspended moisture in the air that passes for rain in San Francisco. We haven’t heard raindrops in quite a while so I took a little movie for the sound.

10/6/08 PM
San Francisco to Salt Lake City to Denver to Bozeman in 10 hours. There were also a variety of planes to sample as well. Now that’s getting your money’s worth for plane travel. The smallest plane was so small that we were not allowed to take off until 2 passengers voluntarily moved from the front of the plane to the back to redistribute the weight. In preparation for the sunset, I had figured out in advance where I should be for the sunset if everything ran on time. And it did. We were well into our descent into the Denver Airport when the sun was due to set. My seatmate in this very small plane was happy to take the picture out the window but not quite as excited about ringing a bell. So I offered him a bribe- if he rang the bell he could keep it. He did and he did.

10/7/08 PM Yellowstone Park

We had planned to leave at noon for the Grand Teton’s at noon so we could be there before dark. However, my teeth had other plans. While eating my cereal, a big piece of my molar broke off into my bowl. Fortunately my sister had a great dentist who just slapped some bondo material onto my huge existing filling and off we went. As a result of the late start, we were riding in the middle of Yellowstone Park when the sun set. It’s very common to see cars pulled over to the side of the road in the park. Wherever cars are clumped together, there is usually some large animal that people are looking at. As we were looking for someplace to pull over and ring some bells, we noticed a group of cars on the shoulder of the road up ahead. So we pulled off and saw a small herd of elk near the river in the distance. The largest was off by himself and had a set of antlers the size of a small rotary clothes rack. I couldn’t believe how graceful he was. I suppose he got used to it gradually as he and the antlers grew. His ease of balance and shifting of his weight into motion were as fluid and unconscious as a dancer. We stayed with the clump of other cars and silently watched him until we could no longer distinguish him as he joined the rest of his herd.

10/9/08 PM Grand Teton Park
Moose, WY.

We had pulled over to the side of the road next to a big pile of covered dirt to look at the Tetons. It was a great view, unobscured by trees which is why we stopped at that particular spot. There were still 40 minutes or so to go before the sunset, but we were on out way out of the park. Sadly we would be long gone by sunset. The sun was shining below the mountain peaks on the other side and was shooting a bright beam of light directly between two of the peaks. It was like a giant flashlight shooting towards the sky. It looked so amazing that I wanted to get some pictures of the mountains and ring the bells there even if it was early. So we hopped out of the car and took lots of pictures and made a little movie while we rang the bells. Because it was getting darker and colder by the minute, we had planned to jump in and out and had left our coats in the car. As soon as we finished our photo op and bell ringing, we ran back to the car to get warm. My sister got there first and before I reached my door I heard her say “Uh oh”. So there we were in the middle of freezing nowhere. Fortunately we weren’t alone. There was another car parked near us and they drove us to the park entrance and left us at the nearest building that we could get into. And that was the Moose Post Office. It was warm in there and there were lots of recycled catalogs to look at while we waited for the AAA man. The biggest bonus of all was that we got to be by the Tetons at sunset.

10/10/08 AM Jackson, WY
Last night was the first snow of the year. I went outside and rang the bells off the hotel balcony.

10/10/08 PM Emigrant, MT
We made it back to my sister’s house in time for sunset after driving through the first snowstorm in Yellowstone Park this season. I realized today that I have been in 3 national Parks in the last week. I have also gone from the warm sunny summer weather that characterizes San Francisco this time of year through the autumn of falling leaves and the rainy season in Yosemite to the snowy winter weather of Northern Wyoming and Southern Montana. In one week.

We Rang

2008-10-20T19:43:00.000-07:00

Categorically Not!
Santa Monica 6:15 PM
KC Cole invited me to join this evening’s informal presentation on the topic of “entanglement”. John Preskill, physicist and Susan Diamond, writer and author were the other guests. Before the event began people arrived and milled around the Santa Monica Art Studios-Hanger. It’s a huge building and it was full of art, artists and artists’ studios. Tonight was the silent auction as well. In the middle of all the activity, the sun set at 6:15. I passed around my bag of little bells as if it was candy and people chose their bells and began ringing them immediately. They didn’t stop when the sun set. In fact, someone was still ringing her bell during John’s presentation on Quantum Entanglement. Maybe she was unaware that she was shaking her bell. Or maybe she was just nervous. Those little bells are very quiet but not silent.

Public Ringing- Entanglement

2008-10-13T11:49:00.000-07:00

Anyone in the Santa Monica area on Sunday, October 19th at 6:15 PM? The sun sets during this evening's presentation in the series Categorically Not! It's a informal evening of conversation and presentation on the topic of Entanglement. I will be joining John Preskill (physicist) and Susan Diamond (writer) and our host KC Cole (author of Mind Over Matter: Conversations with the Cosmos, and other works).The evening begins at 6:00 and is located in the airplane hanger at the Santa Monica Art Studios. Please join us if you are in the area, Bring a bell if you have one!

Imperfect Sunrises and Cable TV

2008-10-02T23:00:00.000-07:00

The appearance of the sun breaking over the horizon yesterday was like something you’d see on one of those late night channel sign offs that television used to have in the days when stations didn’t have enough programming to broadcast for 24 hours a day. In these days of hundreds of channels and constant bombardment of every possible image and activity, it may be hard to imagine a time when there was such a limited range and amount of material that there would be down time. Maybe that downtime reflected a lack of imagination or a dearth of broadcastable materials for this relatively new medium. Perhaps there was a shortage of advertisers willing to pay for airspace to entice people with their products when those viewers were either half or completely asleep. Or maybe people were more discerning about what they were willing to broadcast to the public. Maybe “the public” was less a faceless entity of potential consumers and more a group of familiar people you might recognize when you were outside and not watching television. Neighbors, people in the grocery stores, coworkers, people on the bus- not people you knew but not exactly strangers, either. That is not to say that the content in those days of limited choice was more thoughtful or thought provoking than it is now. Game shows, sit-coms, quiz shows and soap operas abounded alongside the cowboy serials, doctor shows and police dramas. Before cable and HBO and before Ted Turner acquired all those movies from the 30's - 50's, the movies on TV were free. Before late night television was dominated by talk shows, those same movies played all night. For free. However limited the range and availability of programs- junk and gems- it was egalitarian. Now you pay. The more you pay, the more entertaining, the more variety and better quality of programming you expect. And one of those programs that used to be a throw away item at the end of a day that you can now pay for is the sunrise and sunset channel. The perfect sunrises and sunsets of your imagination. Over and over again. From one beautiful or exotic location to the next. Without the long wait, at an hour of your convenience and with music. So here is my second offering in a row of the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. However, because of all the clouds, the sun doesn’t make an appearance near the horizon. So I left that part out and just concentrated on the waves and the ground and left the sky to the imagination.

End of September

2008-10-02T21:54:00.000-07:00

9/21 AM
Taking it easy this Sunday morning. Just a few birds and me (audio).

9/21 PM
This is the end of the second marathon cabinet making day. Norman, Krys and I momentarily plopped on the floor in front of our handiwork. The sunset was a good excuse to stop. We were so tired; we just kept on ringing the bells so we wouldn’t have to stand up again so soon. To see "before" kitchen, click here and scroll down to yesterday's entry on 9/20 PM.

9/22 AM
No special celebration for the equinox. I woke up and listened for a while to a new bird sound before getting out of bed. The bird was right outside the door, and I knew as soon as I went out, it would fly away. So I stayed put for a while just so I could listen to it. Once the bird had flown away and I heard it in the distance, I recognized its voice. Today was the first time it had been so close and it sounded so different, I hadn't realized it was the same song.

9/22 PM
Norman wanted to see the sun go down by the ocean this evening. However, we left too late and the sun set as we were driving to the beach. I rang the bells out of the side window as we drove down the street.

9/23 PM
Tonight was the last night that our Tuesday meditation group will be together for the sunset this year. Too soon. It’s barely autumn, and we’ve already reached the end of a possibility. A last time. We won’t be meeting again in the daylight until next year. Like the birds flying south, this encroaching darkness on our daily routines is a familiar warning of how quickly we slide from here into winter.

9/24 AM Sunrise at San Francisco Airport
Riding on a plane at sunrise or sunset is one of the more difficult situations to determine the time, place and sometimes, the actual moment that the sun crosses the horizon. Sometimes when the sun is visible in front of the plane or across the aisle I need to find other indications of how close the sun is to the horizon: a shrinking patch of sunlight on the wing of the plane or a growing number of colored bands on the horizon. This morning we were still on the ground, taxiing on the runway when the sun rose. The passenger at the window was in charge of the documentation as the three of us in our row rang in the morning.

9/24 PM Sunset at the International Plaza
It’s my niece’s birthday tomorrow, and we needed to do some last minute shopping this evening on the way home from the airport. My brother and I were just leaving the International Plaza in Tampa on the way to the parking lot at sunset. This mall is like a small town and looks like a combination casino and hospital. It turns out the hospital is actually a big hotel attached to the mall and they have valet parking. Since there was no activity at the valet parking area, we walked over to the attendant and told him about the sunset and asked him if he would take our picture in front of the mall while we rang the bells. Then we took turns.

9/25 AM Bells and the Trampoline
Since we are hovering around the equinox, the sun rises and sets at about the same time here in Florida as it does in San Francisco. Hooray for small blessings. My nieces are up already by then because of school. In fact, by the time the sun comes up only one of them is still at home. So she and I went out into the backyard to ring the bells. She thought the trampoline would be a good place to greet the day. When we dropped the bells she said it made a sound like a thousand little church bells.

9/25 PM Hannah's Birthday Wish
We were eating and opening birthday presents when the sun set this evening and didn’t notice until it was getting dark. Too late. There is no cell phone reception here - hence any reminders from the phone alarm are not possible. So it’s more of a challenge to pay attention, and we’ll see how it goes for the next few days. In the meantime-
Happy Birthday, Hannah!!!

9/26 AM
In all the birthday excitement last night, the sunset wasn’t the only thing to slip our minds. This morning Ginger was doing the homework she “forgot” to do. It was a good thing, too, because she was the only person awake at that hour. She came upstairs and got me to watch the sunset with her again. Thanks. Ginger.

9/26 PM Pit stop at sunset - Florida

9/27 AM Sunrise on the Atlantic Ocean.
This is the first sunrise I witnessed over the ocean this year and only the second one breaking close to the horizon at all. I love the Atlantic Ocean. It’s the ocean I grew up with. It’s warm. It’s where I learned to swim. It even smells warm. The waves are big but not killers or sneaky like the Pacific. Speaking of killers- there are no great white sharks here, either. It’s true that “Jaws” took place in the Atlantic Ocean, but there are more Great Whites off the coast of San Francisco than here in Florida. There is also a certain hissing sound that accompanies the waves breaking and receding on the shore that’s unlike the cold crashing and sweeping on and off the shore of the Pacific Ocean. The Atlantic feels more friendly. Less majestic, but much more inviting. And if you watch the birds along the shore here, they seem more relaxed than the little birds that skitter along the edge of the waves of the Pacific at Ocean Beach. Perhaps it’s because the water is so cold there, it hurts their little feet.

9/27 PM
My brother didn’t want to ring the bells at the dinner table in the restaurant this evening. It was one of those places where the center of the table is a huge grill and everyone sits along the perimeter as the cook prepares your meal on the grill. Since each table seats about 9 people, a party of three would never be allowed to occupy one table all on its own. So two couples joined my brother, niece and me and we ate together. As the sunset approached and I asked my brother if he wanted to ring bells outside or at the table, he didn’t seem all that enthusiastic about either option. However, he accepted the job of cameraman and the other people at the table seemed pleased to ring down the sun from our table.

9/28 PM
Saying goodbye with my brother’s family at sunset, we all took a break from watching television for a moment to ring bells one last time.

9/29 AM
A bleak and noisy morning at the Howard Johnson’s hotel near the Tampa airport came too early because I stayed up too late watching an old movie on the hotel’s cable TV.

9/29 PM
I had redeemed the vouchers I received as a result of that 30 hour flight from San Francisco to NY several weeks ago and was waiting for the plane to take off for the last leg of this trip. Northwest Airlines took over Delta and it’s been great. Things may not move quickly, but they are on time, and I am grateful. We were the 16th plane sitting on the tarmac waiting for takeoff in Atlanta when the sun set. Since we’d been waiting for quite some time by then, most people were already settled in and engrossed in whatever they planned to do for the next 4 1/2 hours. This was a large plane with 2 aisles and I was seated in the middle section of seats- nowhere near any windows. At the last minute, I disturbed the man across the aisle who was seated with his girlfriend next to the window. I asked him if he would mind trying to find the sun or simply shoot whatever he could see out there. He obliged and took the camera. However, when I offered him a bell to ring, he declined. The man sitting next to me took one and we jingled for a moment as we slowly inched our way forward in line.

9/30 AM
It’s good to be home (audio)

9/30 PM
This evening when I looked out the front window at sunset, I saw the children playing across the street and our friends Bill and Mary pulling into the driveway. Bill and Mary had just arrived after installing work at Seal Point Park in San Mateo all day. They were tired but willing to ring a few bells before dinner. While Norman walked around the corner to get the car (and the big bell), we went outside and told the kids we were going to ring some bells. They like to do it and came right over. After we finished I asked them if they still had their bells from the last time, and they said yes. One of the girls had even made hers into a necklace.

Bridge of Miracles

2008-10-02T14:44:00.000-07:00

9/23 AM Garbage Day
This morning I chose a bell that I haven’t rung in a while. It’s one of my favorite bells and I had removed it from my daily collection because I like it so much. I love the way it sounds- so high and quiet and clear. I had removed it from the ones I travel with because I didn’t want to lose it. I was afraid that I would either leave it somewhere or that someone would take it and not give it back. This is what I learned about objects: the more desirable, the more valuable and the more likely they are to be stolen.

I didn’t understand this or expect it to happen when I first began this project. However, there were several occasions where I had passed out my bells and never saw some of them again. The ones that never returned were the most beautiful sounding or ones that were given to be and were my sentimental favorites. They were irreplaceable. I told myself that was the price of doing business but I still think of those bells, not with regret that I shared them, but with longing. I don’t imagine them with a new life. I miss them. Once I was down to having only a few remaining favorite bells, I decided to remove them from the pack and keep them safely at home.

So of course, I rarely use them and just look at them occasionally. Now they sit on the shelf—constant reminders of the betrayal of others. This morning, for whatever reason, I took this one little bell from the shelf and brought it outside to greet the day. There’s something about the sound of that particular bell which draws attention to other sounds in the environment. Especially to one bird in particular. (audio) This bell and that bird connected this morning through the air, and the honest clarity of that connection was a revelation. For a brief moment, there was no me. No bird. No bell. There was only a quiet, simple awareness of the fabric of this world. It was an amazing experience and in that moment there was no risk. No loss.

Crazy Obsessive

2008-10-01T17:03:00.000-07:00

My stated goal at the beginning of this project was to observe the sun every time it crossed the horizon and to share the awareness of that moment with others. I am continuing to fail everyday, twice a day. Maybe that is the nature of the project. So far, I have rarely been able to both focus my attention on the moment when the sun crosses the horizon and to alert others to that moment in any meaningful way. However,I haven't given up. For the month of October, I will forgo the daily documentation. Just to see what it feels like. It would be nice to have some time for reflection and planning for the final part of the year. The Equinox is coming up as is the Winter Solstice.I plan to use the extra time that I am not documenting and editing the daily event to come up with other ideas and strategies. In the meantime, I plan to enjoy the sunrises and sunsets without the additional obligation of sharing those moments with anyone who is not there.

Fall Equinox

2008-09-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

Misc. Info

On Monday, September 22 Autumn begins as the sun crosses the equator on it’s way towards the Southern hemisphere. If you live at the equator, the day will be divided into 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. However, because we are roughly 40˚ north of the equator, we won’t experience our day of equal light and darkness for another 4 days. On September 26th, if you live in San Francisco the sun rises and sets at 7:01. For those of you who live in New York the sun rises at 6:47 AM and sets at 6:46 PM. Depending on where you live, you can check out http://www.sunrisesunset.com to figure out which day you will have equal amounts of light and darkness where you live.

Mid September- Out and about

2008-09-21T00:51:00.000-07:00

9/12 PM Children and Puppies at Sunset
There was a lot of activity across the street this evening. With children and new puppies running around, it looked like a good opportunity to go say hello to our neighbor. We could also get a look at our house from a distance with its partially applied, fresh coat of primer. Jesse, the painter had asked us to tint the primer with a touch of the house color. Now all the little girls on that side of the street love our house. This particular shade of purple is their second favorite color (pink being #1). They proceeded to show off their pink and purple sparkles, T-shirts and shoes. This was before, during and after the bell ringing. Tiny and tinny as they are, the bells were a big hit.

9/13 PM Bells in the Air
This evening Pauline Oliveros and Chris Brown performed a benefit concert, Music in the Air, for the Deep Listening Institute. WIGband (Johanna Poethig and Barbara Golden) opened the evenings concert with a fabulous and too short performance of 2 songs. The concert took place at the physically beautiful and sonically extraordinary Maybeck Studio for the Performing Arts in Berkeley, CA. Gregory Moore graciously hosted the performance at the studio. It was an amazing evening of incredibly skillful and beautiful improvisation for piano, accordion and interactive electronics. There were several people at the studio setting up, sound checking and hanging out long before the concert was scheduled to begin. Chris, Johanna, Barbara and percussionist Jennifer Wilsey came outside at sunset, and we rang the sundown together.

9/15 PM Do You Hear What I Hear?
When I arrived home this evening all of the children were outside playing across the street again. The painters were finishing up for the day and a few neighbors had come out to look at the progress and color combination on our house. It is a surprise and I hope, a delight. As we were standing around, the children wanted to know if they could ring the big bell later on, and I said, of course and that I would come back outside when it was time. I figured as long as we were going to ring the big bell, I would also bring the rest of the noisiest bells I could find. So I gathered up the cowbells, the ships bell and the most piercing little bell and handed them out. The commotion brought our neighbors from down the street out as well. They even brought their own bells.

9/16 AM Sunrise at the Marin Headlands
I have been trying to record large bells outdoors in a quiet environment for the past few days without much success. Last night I went to the Exploratorium and tried to record their bells that they ring at the end of the day to alert visitors that it’s time to go home. These are very loud bells. (One of them is the one I gave them after driving it around the country for a month). Even with all of the exhibits turned off and only a skeleton crew inside the building, it was still incredibly noisy. Blowers of all sorts, the ventilation system, coke machines and a very persistent soundtrack from a film that runs 24/7 somewhere in the back of the museum. I am trying to make these recordings for Charles Veasey who is doing his Masters thesis at RPI. He would like to recreate historical soundscapes, and one of the great signifiers for how the world sounded in times past is the sound of a large bell ringing in the distance. A distance that is not obscured by the sounds of cars, machines, planes or the general urban hum of electricity and constant motion.
This morning we drove out to the Marin Headlands. It’s relatively quiet out there and I was hoping that it would be early enough in the morning the world would just be stirring and perhaps not yet firing up the grand and ubiquitous combustible engine. Here’s a snippet of the audio I recorded while it was still dark.

9/16 PM "Between"
The sun is setting about 10 minutes earlier per week these days. Since people generally tend to arrive 10 – 15 minutes early for many different kinds of events, there is usually a short window of “between” time. “Between” being an unstructured period of time after arrival but before a scheduled event where people are where they want to be but are not doing what they came to do. Yet. “Between” is a time where unplanned things are possible. It’s a time for spontaneity. A time of possibility. And because there is nothing to do and nowhere to go during this little period of between time, it’s a great opportunity to enlist a number of people to do something you want to do. Well, it’s a good opportunity as long as it doesn’t take too much time or effort. Ringing the bells at sunset is a perfect activity for “between”, especially if the bells materialize and you don’t have to prepare in any way. The unfortunate thing about this short little window of time in relation to the sunset and our meditation group is - next week when the sun sets 10 minutes earlier than this week, it won’t be between yet.

9/17 PM Great Acoustics!
The sun set just after we found a parking place in the Sutter Stockton Garage near Chinatown and Union Square. The big bell was nice and loud and the sound bounced all over the place. As the doors were closing on the elevator, a young woman and her little dog raced over and hopped on. She’d heard the bell and wondered what we were up to.

9/20 PM It will look nice if we ever finish...
We took a short break from the cabinet construction business to ring our bells at sunset.

Ferry Building

2008-09-21T00:32:00.000-07:00

9/12 AM Greeting Commuters at Sunrise
I arrived at the Ferry Building earlier than usual today so it was still quite dark. A few stragglers were disembarking from the latest ferry, and the Baylink bus had not yet arrived. However, someone was in my parking space! I waited him out and no sooner had I pulled into the space than the bus pulled up. I sat in my car in the dark and watched the passengers leave the bus and disperse into the city. It was another sunless morning. At some point it got light enough to pass for day. As I waited to pull away from the curb another big bus pulled in behind me as the earlier bus prepared to leave. I am so excited because this means when I come back on Monday there will be a whole new group of people who haven’t encountered the greeting and the bells on their way to work.

9/17 AM
Yesterday morning I was excited to go to the Headlands. When the alarm went off, I didn’t moan and groan as much as usual. Anticipation cheered me up and got me out of bed. It was the first time all year that this tiny bit of happiness and waking up so early in the morning occupied the same time and place. It was so much more pleasant than the usual chore of getting up too early has been than I decided to see if I could get as excited about going to the Ferry Building.
What do I like about going to the Ferry Building before sunrise? Hmm. Well, I like driving there. Since there are very few cars on the road, I can drive fast. The route goes through the park and the Presidio and along the bay. When I am not grumpy about it, it’s actually very nice. Once I have arrived, I like the routine of setting out the sign, unhitching the bell and posting whatever the current time for the sunrise is supposed to be. I have gotten used to being ignored and just go about my business. Ringing the bell well is something of a challenge. It’s awkwardly hung on blocks of wood so that it doesn’t swing freely. The bell is also out of balance and favors swinging in one direction more than the other so it is difficult to get a regular rhythm. But it is possible. And finally, on the off chance that anyone is interested enough in what is going on to stop for a moment, I get to talk with people I would never otherwise meet.

9/19 AM The Stage is Set, The Audience Awaits
Clear clear clear. There are many more cars on the road at this hour compared to even half an hour earlier. And even though there are more drivers, they are generally less speedy and aggressive than the earlier shift. Since I decided to slow down and broaden my focus to include all aspects of sunrise – including the preparation and time beforehand, I am enjoying this early morning a bit more. When I arrived at the Ferry Building today, I strolled around, took some photos, walked to the end of the pier and looked around. It smelled really good there this morning. Like the sea. As I walked around, I rang the little cymbal bells until it was almost time for the sun cross the horizon. Then I went back to the car and rang the big bell for the many joggers running by at this hour.

Mid September at Home

2008-09-20T23:41:00.000-07:00

9/13 AM BEFORE
The painters are moving so quickly on our house I wanted to get a picture of it in the early stages so that we could do a before and after comparison. I was also looking for a minimal activity that would capture both the moment of the sunrise and the condition of the house. So I had asked Norman if he would mind just sticking his arm out the front window and ring a bell he liked while I went outside and recorded a little movie. It seemed like a good plan until we went to open the windows and found they had been painted shut.

9/14 AM Celebrating the Purple Primer
I'm just walking around in my pink pajamas in front of our house with the newly painted purple primer. Greeting the sunrise.

9/14 PM Sunday Evening Bells

9/15 AM Cosmic Downbeat
After 3 hours sleep, I decided to postpone going to the Ferry building until Wednesday morning. Instead, I wandered out into a quiet the backyard dangling the large cymbal bells. I had heard a crow out there while I was waking up and thought he would make a good companion. Much to my surprise, a different, sweet little voice piped in right at the first chime. Then suddenly, it was as if someone released machine sounds into the still and peaceful air. The trolley started up the street as an airplane flew overhead. It was as if the morning began on some large unseen downbeat.

9/18 AM AFTER

Last night before I went to bed I thought about where I would like to ring the bells in the morning. Since we had just finished painting our house, I thought it’d be nice to include the house in the documentation. One of my favorite things about the way the house looks now is the set of little lion heads above the windows. At first we didn’t see them. We thought they were just plaster medallions. Once we realized they were cats, we decided that when we finally got around to painting them, we would like to make them look like our cranky cat, Malcolm. However, when the time finally came, we were afraid to go up on the ladder. So we asked one of the painters if he would mind painting their little faces for us. Instead of mini-Malcolm portraits, we opted for a minimal touch to the lion face with only the eyes and mouths filled in with color. I love them. Each one is different and I had planned to ring a bell for each lion when I went out this morning. Unfortunately, when I stumbled outside this morning, I was only half conscious. While I remembered that I wanted o ring the bell five times, I forgot why. It wasn’t until I finished ringing the bell and the sun had come up that I remembered about welcoming the cats to their first sunrise experience with new eyes.

9/18 PM
Clean windows. Clear evening. The painters have long ladders. Very tall and shaky ladders. As long as they were already up that high to paint, they cleaned the windows. Thank you guys! I can't believe what we've been missing.

9/19 PM
Red sky in morning, sailors take warning
Red sky at night, sailors’ delight
The weather pattern along the coast in Northern California is so much different than the east coast that I never thought that saying applied to the west coast. There aren’t many thunderstorms. It’s mostly fog or drizzle as far as water in the air. No snow. No hurricanes or extreme weather conditions of any kind. Earthquakes are the extreme nature occurrence out here, not precipitation. So when it was so beautiful and red this morning, Norman quoted that little poem and I said, oh no not out here. Well. It is drizzling out here this evening. But it's not a dreary drizzle. It's deposited a gentle sheen on the ground so that everything shimmers (audio). Just a little bit.

9/20 AM
The first sound I heard when I woke up this morning was the ticking of the clock. Although it didn’t happen immediately or all at once. I gradually noticed what had been there all along. Gentle, steady reliable and persistent. It made a big impression on me- that erosive pawing at my awareness. So I decided to accompany that soft tick with a chime on the bowl for one minute as the sun rose. A small soundbridge (audio) from the night to the morning.

September 11, 2008

2008-09-12T17:01:00.000-07:00

On September 11, 2006, I was tolling a 250lb bell in one of the parking lots at Arlington National Cemetery. The parking lot was deserted. There were no tour buses that day and I didn’t see a single person in the lot or the grounds immediately adjacent to the lot. I did hear, however, cannons being fired in the distance. A prolonged series of muffled explosions.

I had come to the cemetery to toll the big bell. At that time according antiwar.com- 2600 Americans had been killed. Iraqbodycount.org estimated that between 40,000 and 46,000 Iraqi’s had been killed in the war. Based on the tolling rate of that particular bell, I had calculated the number of days and hours it would take to commemorate every person that had been killed. At that time in 2006, if I tolled the bell for 45 minutes per day, it would take 2 days to ring for all of the Americans that had been killed. It would take another 34 days to ring for each Iraqi killed.

Two years later, the numbers of people killed in this war has more than doubled. Imagine waking up in the morning and hearing a bell slowly, constantly ringing for an hour. One peal every other second. Over and over. Each toll of the bell sounding for someone who has died. At the end of the hour, you would have heard 1800 individual sounds. 1800 individual souls. Now imagine waking up everyday for the next 2 and a half months and hearing the same thing.

People do not agree on the numbers of people that have been killed in the war. Especially when it come to the numbers of Iraqis. The most conservative numbers from iraqbodycount.org estimate that between 86,864 and 94,782 Iraqis have died as of June 2008. The Lancet Study places the count at 654, 9565 as of June 2006. Too many people no matter how or who is counting.

AM 2008
Norman and I began the day quietly in the backyard. I rang the new bowl(audio) that Norman had gotten in Germany from Der Glockenladen where the 3rd generation proprietor, Michael Metzler, makes the bowls and other bell creations. This bowl is not uniformly round or thick and so it has a shimmery quality from the different pitches. It's also a bit difficult to sustain the resonance, but it’s a lovely sound and I like it very much.

PM 2008
We went to the cemetery at Chrissy Fields in the Presidio to observe the sunset and ring the big bell. While Norman remained with the car, I climbed over a low stone wall and walked among the gravestones.

Beginning of September

2008-09-11T23:39:00.000-07:00

9/1 PM
Such a beautiful, clear day. Most people associate Labor Day with the end of summer. But for us out here in the Bay Area, it’s the beginning of the nicest weather of the year. For the next two months, anyway.(audio)

9/2 AM Looking and listening.
Another day out in the back yard.

9/2 PM A Little Help From My Friends
As I ran out the door to take Norman to the airport I grabbed the camera case and some bells to ring later in the evening. However, at sunset when I went to get the camera, the case was empty. So I assumed I would quietly rang a few bells in the church courtyard, the same as last Tuesday night. Since the sunsets so close to the time our sitting group begins, there were a few stragglers arriving a bit late or waiting in line to use the bathroom. While there is no media documentation for this evening, there were a few additional witnesses to the sunset who joined me this evening. It shouldn’t matter whether or not I do this alone, but I love having company. Thank you stragglers!

9/3 PM Mummy Movie
Amir came by this evening, and we went to the movies again. This time we both set our cell phones to vibrate at 7:31. Since we were seeing the latest Mummy movie - preview. I had hoped that it would be very loud and that we would be able to ring from our seats. I like doing that. However, the movie had just started and was still warming up when it was time to visit the sunset. I went out to the lobby and there was an usher sitting on the bench. Only they aren’t called ushers anymore. Does anyone know what those young people in uniform with the badges are called these days? Anyway, I sat on the bench with him and chatted for a few minutes before it was time to ring the bells. He told me that he had just looked outside the theater and saw the sun setting already. So he and I rang the bells a few minutes earlier than I had expected. He is usually working at the theater at sunset and he said he would ring his little bell on other nights. Then I went back to sit with Amir and watch the rest of the Mummy movie.

9/4 AM Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning...
It’s too bad I am so sleepy first thing in the morning. I really do not appreciate the sunrise and some days I actually dislike it. Today was one of those days. I got up, stuck my head outside and pointed the camera around trying to find something interesting to land on. It looked the same as it usual does – either clear or foggy. And much too early.

9/4 PM Calling All Gongs!

This evening I walked by the living room and saw the gong hanging there. I had just finished writing the entry about Warren’s scary brush with death while he was in New York. The sun was still pouring into the room at that time and everything was very bright and magical. This evening’s observance is dedicated to Warren. Get well soon!

9/5 PM Ocean Beach by Any Other Name...
Each time Monique comes to San Francisco, she visits the ocean at sundown. The last few times, she has invited me to join her and now it’s become something of a ritual for me as well. On this occasion, Monique is here to perform in the 9th annual San Francisco Electronic Music Festival (SFEMF) - which is already well underway. Although observing a sunset half an hour before the beginning of the evening’s events is cutting it a bit close, we met at the beach and rang bells together as the sun seemed to literally melt into the water. We enlisted a passerby to join us as well, and after the sun went down she said, “I don’t think I have ever been to Ocean Beach for the sunset”. It’s understandable that a place with such a practical and uninspired name like “Ocean Beach” would fail to motivate someone to visit if it required an effort at all. But don’t let the name fool you. For an urban location, this beach is relatively undeveloped with dunes and grasses and long clear beaches. Windy and cold it may be most of the time, but the air is good and the views are different every day.

9/6 AM Ringing tiny bells that sound like the birds
audio

9/6 PM No Parking Karma
Driving around the Mission looking for a parking space, I went up and down, round and round the same blocks over and over again, hoping that something would change while I was somewhere else. After 4 or 5 times running the same circuit and looking at the same cars in the same spots, I decided to swing further away. In the meantime, I missed meeting up with Krys and Thea who were waiting in from of We Be Sushi. Having come in on public transportation, they were on time. So at 7:30 I grabbed a few bells, plopped the camera on the dashboard, turned it on and continued to drive around jingling as I went. Police at every turn...

9/7 AM
There was a lot of activity outside this morning – especially for a Sunday. I added to the noise for a moment (audio), trundled back into the house and fell asleep.

9/7 PM Looming Insanity
As so often happens, I am behind in editing the documentation for the blog. I am obsessed and will sit slavishly at the computer trying to catch up as long as there is media to edit. In the name of sanity, or merely a desperate rationale, I am curtailing the documentation. I am too obsessive to completely eliminate it at this point in the year. Or maybe I will do it when some other form of craziness overtakes the obsession. For now, I will continue to ring with pleasure. I look forward to it, at least in the evenings. And for the documentation- here’s a photo of the bells I chose for this evening’s foggy sunset observance.

9/8 PM Social Security- gone to the dogs
My neighbor, Helen called just before the sunset this evening. She had received her “Explanation of Benefits” from the Social Security Administration, and it got her all excited. She is due to retire in a few years and the amount of money she is entitled to receive wouldn’t feed a dog for a month. After we rang some bells together for a minute, we went inside and sat in the kitchen for a while. Helen doesn't have much confidence in her English speaking ability, especially when it comes to navigating any kind of official business concerning money. She said she was entitled to some percentage of her ex-husband's benefits and she wanted me to call Social Security in the morning and find out how much. The really awful part is that while her husband’s check could feed himself and a dog for a month, there wouldn't be enough left over for anything else.

9/9 AM Mindless Exuberance
I had decided before going to bed last night that I would like to ring as many bells simultaneously as possible. I tried it out and I loved the way it sounded. It was exuberant and melodious, and I looked forward to greeting the day in that way. Well, too bad. There’s a big difference in my physical coordination at the end of the day when I am fully awake compared with my abilities first thing in the morning when I approach stairs as if they were an escalator. Abundant enthusiasm without a mind or physical dexterity looks pretty frantic.

9/9 PM Meditation Bells
In anticipation of this evening’s sunset just a few minutes before the beginning of our meditation, I had invited everyone present last week to ring bells at sunset this evening. As people trickled into the garden, some walked directly into the Church and others began to congregate along a low stone wall where I had dumped a little pile of bells. As soon as someone had a bell in their hand, they started ringing it and very soon, the garden was sparkling with sound. And then it was over. (Historical photo of Church)

9/10 PM A Tree for Toyoji
This evening was the memorial for Toyoji Tomita. It was held at Mills College and jointly presented by the Mills College Music Dept. and the Deep Listening Institute, LTD. We gathered next to the music building just before sunset for the tree planting ceremony. The sun set a few minutes before the ceremony was due to begin so we all rang bells while we waited. After dedicating a young Red Maple to Toyoji’s memory, we all walked over to Lisser Hall where friends and family remembered Toyji with words and music. Very sad. Much love. Make a donation in memory of Toyoji

Return to the Ferry Building

2008-09-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

9/1 AM Labor Day at the Ferry Building
Finally. Back to the Ferry Building. I was so excited about going back to the Ferry Building that I forgot that today was a holiday. No ferries this early on Labor Day. Since I was last here on Memorial Day, the area has been determined to be unsafe and is closed indefinitely. At least one other person arrived this morning and was surprised by the closing. He was angry and walked around swearing in front of the Ferry Terminal for a few minutes before leaving to find other parking. Fortunately for me, there was a tiny spot behind the bus zone that I could squeeze into.

9/3 AM Greeting Sunrise Commuters
I arrived at the Ferry Building quite a bit before the sunrise, and the first of two ferries was already coming in. I set up the sandwich board, untied the bell and spilled a few of the tiny bells onto the sidewalk in front of the board. By the time I finished setting up, all of the people were gone so I just stood around for a few minutes staring into the morning. There were still 10 minutes or so to go until the sunrise and as soon as I started to ring the bell- the Baylink bus showed up! I was so surprised to see it because it was much later than the one I had met in the Spring. Of course, it was a different bus and different driver. This driver didn’t even get out of the bus, but many passengers did. One of them came by to read my sign and asked me what it was all about. I told her the sun was rising and she smiled in surprise. She took a bell and blessed me. By then the second ferry had come in and those passengers were disembarking. I rang and rang for them and kept an eye on the time so I would know when the sun was actually crossing the horizon. I figured that would be my stop time. One more person came by and took a bell and rang it as she walked away. Those free bells are so tiny and quiet, the woman had to hold it to her ear as she crossed the street and then she rang it in her friend’s ear as well. When there was only two minutes until the actual event, I turned on the camera and rang the bell double time for the last few minutes. All by myself.

9/5 AM Leaving a Little Pile of Gold
Because I got to the Ferry Building just 5 minutes ahead of the sunrise, I had to rush around to set out all of my accessories and do my little chores: update the sign board so that it showed the correct time for the sunrise, scatter the tiny bells on the ground in front of the sign, unhitch the bungees on the bell and the clapper, etc. Once finished with the set up, there wasn’t much time left to look around and see what was going on. I quickly set up the camera so that it faced a different direction than the last time and began the filming and the chiming. Although no one stopped this time, it felt very satisfying to ring for the joggers, cyclists and early morning tourists who happened by.

9/8 AM Sunrise Under the Bay Bridge
As I approached the Ferry Terminal this morning, I saw the thin line of early morning passengers leaving the boat and heading into town. They have all disappeared by the time the sun comes up. Not so for the Baylink bus passengers who arrive just as the sun is rising. Not that there is much difference in the amount of light. The biggest change in light comes when the streetlights and parking lot lights switch off. The one person who stopped and spoke with me this morning told me that she worked at the next pier. She says she watches the sun rise under the Bay Bridge every morning when she is at work. It’s a great vantage point.

9/10 AM Losing Light
Another trip to the Ferry Building. We are losing light. The pace has noticeably accelerated since the summer solstice. At the turning point just after the solstice, we were losing less than 5 minutes a week for the first few weeks. Now we are almost 15 minutes of light per week. Last week when I arrived at the Ferry Terminal just before sunrise, the ferry had just arrived and people were still getting off the boat as I set up. Today, the boat was already pulling away from the dock and zipping along the bay while it was still dark outside. I had a repeat visitor this morning. The security guard who sang and rang last week, came back while I was setting up and I gave him another little bell. They’re like the little candies by the register on the way out of the restaurant. Maybe he is spreading them around. I hope so, and I hope others will do the same. I forgot the little pile of bells that I had spilled onto the sidewalk in front of the signboard today. It’s a lovely little pile of gold waiting to be discovered. At least I remembered the signboard this time.

The Sun Also Rises (and Sets) in Berlin

2008-09-10T23:50:00.000-07:00

DAY 1 in Berlin

The show at Phaeno in Wolfsburg, Germany closed a few weeks ago, and Norman went there this past week to pack up his pieces. His work will soon travel along with the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre to the Parque Ciencias in Granada. Since Norman was jetlagged the whole time he was in Germany he was able to carry on the dailybell sun observances without too much trouble. When he finally finished taking his show down, he stayed in Berlin on a houseboat for a few days and did a little sight seeing before coming home. One of the places he visited was a bell shop, Der Glockenladen where Michael Metzler (the 3rd generation to operate the shop), made his own bells and bell creations. The bell wheel in the video was inspired by one Michael saw in Toledo, Spain.

Day 2
(He bought one of those bells from Der Glockenladen)

Last week of August - Mornings

2008-08-31T23:10:00.000-07:00

I observed the sunrise near my house every morning this week. These are simple quiet mornings.

8/24 AM

A walk around the foggy yard in my pajamas.

8/25 AM
Looking left, straight back and to the right- this is the view from my back porch in the early morning fog.

8/26 AM
Norman and I walked up to the corner to have a look at the sunrise and the streetcar stop. No big doings at this hour. Except for the moon.

8/27 AM
Clear skies and warm days are coming to the San Francisco Bay area. This is my favorite time of year here.

8/30 AM
Back to the foggy summer mornings (audio). Until it’s really cooled down in the Sacramento Valley, we will have these foggy days in San Francisco. In a few weeks, the temperatures inland and on the coast will be much more similar and the conditions that create this cold, dreary summer fog will cease to exist. I can’t wait.

8/31 AM
Red umbrella. Clear morning. Still. And still no crows. As much as I dislike the crows because of their possible involvement in the disappearance of the songbirds, it’s very sad to think that some of them are mourning the killing of that little newborn crow. On the other hand, all of a sudden there are many more new birds singing (audio) this morning. Pretty new songs.

Hawking Bells

2008-08-31T21:43:00.000-07:00

8/28 PM
Before the concert began, I was outside on the sidewalk ringing some bells and announcing the sunset. All the while, I was offering and trying to give away the little bells. I felt like I was hawking bells. It’s a tough crowd out there. Most people cannot hear or see. They already know what’s going on or they just don’t want to know. I realize this part of town is a big and constant hustle and that panhandlers are everywhere. However, this situation is not just on this spot, on this block. This turning away from strangers on the street is common in America. It has been my experience with the big bell, with the piano and with this public sun watching. I think this is a good spot- here on Market at 6th Street, and that I would like to return here one or two nights a week for a while and see what happens.

I didn't realize how much I was truly hawking bells until I played back the video from the evening of 8/28. "They're free!" I had been so excited to have found a way to engage with people and to get them to stop for an instant that I had momentarily lost my mind. I am so easily distracted and forget why and what I am doing at those moments. I will try harder to concentrate on observing the moment of the sunrise and sunset and pay less attention to trying to get others to join me. See how that works for a change.

ABOUT THE GALLERY AND PERFORMANCES:
Thea Farhadian, Katrina Wreede and Iron Dog performed at the Luggage Store this evening. It’s a very noisy space, especially when the audience faces the street. But it worked this evening. Sometimes you couldn’t tell what was happening outside and what was being performed, and the experience was really lovely.

The artwork in the gallery is by Ana Teresa Fernandez

End of August - Evenings

2008-08-31T21:07:00.000-07:00

8/24 PM
We brought my friend Barbara who was visiting from Barcelona down to the beach to see the sunset. Once there, we inevitably encountered others who were there to do the same. They gladly took some of the little bells and joined us. After a few minutes, the woman from the tie-dye bus came over as well. She and her living companions have been parked in this same parking lot since we met them last winter. At that time, they planned to continue to move up or down the coast for the summer (I can’t remember which direction). However, the price of gas might have had something to do with their continuing presence here at Ocean Beach. It’s nice to see them, and they are very familiar with the bell ringing tradition by now.

8/25 PM
The never-to-ripen peaches are falling on the ground. We’ve brought many of them into the house and put them in paper bags. Then we keep them until they get moldy so we can throw them in the compost. Does anyone have a recipe for hard, yellow unripe peaches? They smell really good.

8/26 PM
Just a few minutes into our Tuesday night sitting, I crept outside and quietly rang the bells in the Church garden. The weather is beginning to turn warm enough these days so that people leave their windows open into the evening. I hope they enjoyed the little sunset serenade.

8/27 PM
Just as we were running out the door to go to the corner for the sunset, our neighbor Jerry came home and he joined us. It was so windy out on the street that I set up the microphone near the house and we stood by the curb to ring. We rang long enough (audio) for a plane to pass by and then I started to pack up. Jerry liked my microphone and wanted to borrow it. He swore he would bring it back after work tomorrow.

8/29 PM
The sun set just before dinner. Marlita rang the gong my sister had given me. I have been ringing this gong all week for my friend Warren Burt who nearly died in a New York hospital this week. He had suddenly begun to fail and no one knew what was wrong with him until very recently. Without going into personal details, it has been suggested that he has been experiencing complications from West Nile Virus. His hospital bills have hit an astronomical amount of money, and now that Warren is in stable condition, he is being flown back to his home in Australia for further care. Since Warren is especially fond of gongs, I have been playing this gong several times a day and will continue to do so until he is on the mend. Anyone else who has a gong to ring, please do.

8/30 PM
Happy Birthday Judy! This was Judy’s 60th Birthday celebration and there were 100’s of people there. The party was held at Annie’s Hall, which is one of those Easter egg kinds of places. From the street you would never know this labyrinthine, expansive place existed. It’s a similar experience to the first time you look through a little hole and peer into one of those Easter eggs that has a huge and intricate scene painted on the inside. A delightful loss of perspective and the perfect place to celebrate 60 years on this earth.

8/31 PM
The last time we went to the movies, it was so noisy and action filled, I missed the sunset entirely. This time I kept a close watch on the time and planned to ring the bells in my seat during the film. I thought it would be so noisy that no one would notice and the theater was nearly empty anyway. However, when it was time for the sunset, the movie was pretty quiet. So I dug around in the dark and found the quietest little bells I had, and we rang them instead of the larger ones I had planned to ring. It worked out OK. It wasn't until I replayed the video that I realized I had missed a crucial part of the plot...

Baby Crow Story

2008-08-30T20:25:00.000-07:00

This is a 3 part story that I will tell as it unfolded itself to me.
(Try playing the movie to listen to the soundtrack while you read)

Part 1: 8/28 AM
A new bird! A sound I have never noticed here before. Or anywhere else, for that matter. It’s the only one like it. At the end of the sunrise, you can actually also hear a few songbirds. Maybe the change in birds has something to so with the change of season. It’s the warm weather here in San Francisco now. It was 105 degrees in Marin yesterday and over 100 elsewhere inland. However, it’s heaven here. I would have recorded the sound this morning but Jerry still has my microphone. Tomorrow. I hope that new bird is still here.

Part 2: Later in the day, I heard a terrible racket out in the backyard. Many crows screeching. When I finally went out to look, the noise had calmed down a bit, but Norman had been watching and he said there had been a terrible battle. Two crows had locked their feet together and were fighting on the telephone wires. Other birds were screeching and flying in and out of that huge tree. The brand new bird voice this morning must have been a baby crow. I don’t understand birds, but we were watching a fierce battle. Some of the crows were attacking the spot where the little voice was. And other crows were defending it. I seemed to catch them at a moment where they were catching their breaths.
Part 3: 8/29 AM
A terrible silence.

Dreaming of Plants and Poison

2008-08-26T21:32:00.000-07:00

8/23 AM
Ringing out back by the Williamsburg Bridge. Those are Penelope’s tomato plants in the foreground. I always said that I would never eat anything that grew in such proximity to those fumes and exhaust. I had a dream many years ago after riding on a bus through Newark, NJ. When I was a child as we approached North Jersey in a car, the air would become brown and opaque. We couldn’t roll the windows up fast enough. The sun vanished; the air was so thick you could taste it, and so caustic that it burned your eyes. I would bury my nose in whatever clothing was thickest and nearest to my face and try to filter out the particulate matter as well as the smell. It was a living nightmare.

Years later, as I was riding the bus on the New Jersey Turnpike and we approached Newark, everything had been cleaned up. It was remarkable. The air was clear and didn’t smell bad. The marshlands had come back to replace some of the industrial wasted landscape. It seemed to good to be true. In my dream I was riding in an elevator and when the doors opened I was standing before a lush green rural scene. It was sunny and felt festive. People were walking around enjoying the weather and the greenness. Apparently, this was a newly opened area that had recently been determined to be safe after some kind of apocalypse. The elevator was the conveyance to this world and until that point, we had all been living inside. Long tables were set up and people were serving and eating all kinds of food. At one table someone was preparing a salad and was chopping and slicing a scallion. As the white part of the scallion was sliced into thin, round slivers, the pieces fell over onto their sides. When I looked closely at the sliced rings, I noticed that each ring was like a band, and the band was rotating. Each band was slowly turning in the opposite direction from the one next to it. The head of the scallion was alive in a way that no vegetable should be alive. I decided to pass on the salad, but there was a Chinese man in the line in front of me and he ate the salad. After the picnic was over, I returned to the elevator to go home and prepared to get off at the 4th floor. When the door opened, there was the Chinese man, lying dead on the ground.

When I woke from the dream, it was clear to me for the first time that toxicity in the environment could mutate plants so they could and probably did contain poison and contaminants long after they looked “normal” and restored to health. That it was no longer possible to trust our eyes when it came to the food we grow. That the air and soil could poison our food in ways that was invisible to us. This was an old dream and it seems to be even more prophetic now in regards to genetic engineering. Pollution seems almost benign by comparison.

However, I couldn’t refuse when Penelope offered some of her homemade pesto and fresh tomatoes from those vines. And it was delicious. Maybe if I ate them everyday, I would develop an extra appendage, but once in a while, it’s really amazing to eat something growing within ten feet of that massive air putrifier.

Third week of August- PUBLIC

2008-08-26T13:54:00.000-07:00

8/16 AM Sleepover Sunrise
A short story of a very long night- in the wrong airport. For now here’s a list of what I remember: the skateboard guys, the kind woman who held my bag, Doritos dinner from the vending machine at 3AM, the very nice steward who returned to the empty plane to get some salt (and pepper) for my contact lenses, the woman with dog who tried to rescue the stuck puppy in the conveyor belt (it only sounded like a squealing puppy), sleeping on 2 seats with my neck brace and head resting on my computer pillow, the wild insomniac child running the length of the terminal at 3:30 AM, his non-insomniac parents following him around, the lies (oops, I mean reasons) that we ended up spending the night in the Syracuse airport instead on landing in JFK, the piece of paper circulating on the final leg of the journey gathering names and email addresses for a class action suit, the disappearance of said list, the recirculation of a piece of paper during the 1 1/ 2 hour wait for our luggage at the baggage carousel, the kindness of strangers and incredible patience and good humor for the 24 hour journey from LA to JFK.

We could have gone to India

8/16 PM Sunset at C-Town
Delta Flight #204 finally arrived in New York! Yay. The weather is perfect. Not too hot. A nice breeze. After taking a shower, unpacking and brushing my teeth about 5 times, I called my neighbor Penelope. She hadn’t called because she thought I would be sleeping in after my flight. Ha! She and I went grocery shopping at C-Town. It was the most intensely pink sunset I have seen in a while. Oh I am so glad to be here.

8/17 PM The Trouble With Santa
So much for the wonderful magic of the “free” word. It didn’t work here in NY outside of Macy’s at sunset. In fact, I felt a bit like an out of season Santa the moment I started ringing the bells. The association with the Salvation Army Santa and Macy’s at Christmas time is so strong it was disorienting and palpable. People looked at me as if I was crazy. And it was even worse when I offered the free bells. Hand extended, “They’re free. Take one.” You’d think I was passing out bullets from the looks of horror I got. People couldn’t get away fast enough. So maybe I can’t generalize about the universal wonder of “free”. Or maybe I shouldn’t generalize about the “New York” reaction. Perhaps it was just the proximity to Macy’s. I hate to think it’s just me so I’ll try somewhere else later this week and see how that goes.

8/18 PM Couldn't Wait
I just couldn’t wait for the sunset. The buildings and bridge were on fire! So beautiful. I rang and filmed about 15 minutes early in order to capture that incredible light. After I went inside, Mary and I rang the bells over the phone together again. I have added the audio from that recording to the mix of the blazing buildings- sort of a time lapse, time collapse.

8/19 PM Asian Bells at Sunset in Manhattan
After several recent long distance ringings over the phone where only one of us can actually experience the sunset at a time, Mary and I were in the same place at the same time. Our friend Betty Sue joined us and rang assorted bells from the Buchens’ collection of bells from several Asian countries. Conjuring cows and goats, they played the bells for Mary’s dog, Mr. Singh and me. Beautiful bells. Thanks!

8/22 PM Going to the Walk-In Movies
Penelope and I were on our way to the 6B community garden at 6th street and Ave B when the sun set. There were still a few minutes to go until the sunset as we rode over the Williamsburg Bridge on the bus. However, it looked so beautiful outside the bus windows that I snapped a photo through the windshield just before we got off the bus. We were going to transfer to the subway and then realized that it was quicker and more direct to walk. So we rang a few bells on the way to the garden where Richard Sandler was showing his film, “Brave New York”. It was packed. I love going to events at the 6B Garden and sitting outside watching movies with everyone from the neighborhood. It’s like a drive in - only better.

8/23 PM Chasing the Sunset at 30,000 feet
Riding on the plane from New York to California during an extended sunset, we rang the bells and celebrated 4 times. Each time, we thought, “This is it”. The first time was over Missouri. The man by the window said he thought the sun wouldn’t be setting for half and hour, but I didn’t believe him. And since we couldn’t actually see the sun, we had to guess from the what the man could see of the shadows on the wing and of the sun on the ground and clouds below. The second time we rang the bells was over Kansas. When we rang for the third time while flying over Colorado, we definitely thought that was it. A little while later, the sun was blasting a beautiful clear orange light through the window into the plane so we rang for the final time. Then the sun really was gone for the day. Even though it’s not possible, it felt like we were keeping up with the sun or at least playing tag. Even at 500 miles per hour, we finally fell behind and when we landed in San Francisco, it was dark.

Ringing While Dining

2008-08-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

8/20 PM Los 3 Padrillos, Brooklyn
This evening, all of the participants from the AIR Sounds Elemental workshop at Harvestworks went on a field trip to Michael Schumacher’s gallery, Diapason, in Brooklyn. On our way there, most of us ended up eating together at Los 3 Padrillos. The food was good and the portions were so big we weren’t even close to finishing in time for our appointment at Diapason, let alone in time for the sunset. Most, but not all of us rang the bells at sunset, and we were joined by the gracious staff at the restaurant. Thank you everyone!

8/21 PM Ray's Restaurant, Manhattan
Since I am in New York for just this week, I spend most of my time working, sleeping and traveling from home to work and back. There is not much time left over to visit with my friends so I eat most of my meals out and with friends, as it‘s a convenient and New York efficient way to spend time with the people I want to see. As the sunset approached this evening, I was finishing my meal in yet another restaurant (Ray's Restaurant on Prince Street), this time with my friend Jenneth. We were ringing an assortment of little bells when someone form across the restaurant yelled, "What’s going on!?” Since everyone was looking at us anyway, I hollered back across the room “The sun is going down!” And then I got up and went around offering bells to the other diners and passing out my dailybell cards. Quite a few other people rang the bells. I gave away all of the little bells and our waitress kept one of the Buchens’ bells. She liked it so much and continued to ring it even after the sun was down, I didn’t have the heart ask her to return it. I love those bells and they are Norman’s favorites. Of three bells 2, have almost the same pitch and one is slightly lower, Fortunately, the waitress kept one of the duplicates, so I don’t’ mind so much. It was definitely worth it to think that she might ring that bell in the restaurant every now and then. A family sat at the table nearest ours. The woman really like the bell and the idea of ringing the bells. And her husband wryly thanked me for providing his wife with a little bell to wake him so early in the morning.

Third Week of August- PRIVATE

2008-08-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

8/17 AM Sunday Faithful
Every bone and muscle creaked to life this morning as I went out to visit the sunrise. It’s still lovely and warm even at this early hour. Noisy, too (audio). Subways crossing in both directions, faithful to their schedule even though they are almost completely empty this Sunday morning.

8/18 AM Hanging Out (the Window)
Even though there was not much human activity yesterday morning, the subways are usually so noisy that human presence isn’t much of a factor when it comes to density of the sound environment. This morning, I thought I would see what was happening out front for a change. While there’s still not much in the way of human life, there is also not much in the way of noise, either. What caught most of my attention was the building across the street. I remember ringing and filming out this window sometime this past winter. It was cold and the building was dreary looked abandoned and burned out. Big change. Not only has the old building been fixed up, but an additional 2 floors and an elevator shaft have been added. Pretty fast work. I wonder how long it will be before people start coming and going and moving about inside.

8/19 AM Can You See the Sunrise From Any Of Your Windows?
Because the windows in my apartment face north and south, it’s not possible to see the sunrise from either place. Even when I go outside, I can only point in the general direction of the sunrise. As long as you can’t see the actual place where the sun rises, it doesn’t matter very much whether I ring in the back or the front. So instead of choosing one arbitrary place over the other, I sampled both.

8/20 AM Surrogate Ears
Instead of leaning out the window and looking up and down the street while ringing my little bells, I thought I’d literally follow my gaze for a change. Walking around, crossing the street, wandering back and forth in front of the window, I rang the bells (audio) for my ears waiting on the windowsill.

8/21 AM Surrogate Self
Alone in the morning, one morning after another, I am witness to the sunrise, bell ringer and documentation committee. Also, I am not awake. In fact, I try not to fully wake up so that I can go back to sleep for another hour or two before really starting the day. In light of the number of things I am trying to accomplish while trying to remain asleep, and the fact that I have already passed the 200 day mark, it’s no wonder I have run out of ideas of “things to do” in the mornings. Yesterday, I put the microphone on the windowsill and carefully walked down a flight of stairs out onto the street to ring the bells with the rising sun. By the end of the day, however, I had forgotten exactly what I had done in the morning. When I went to download the media from the morning’s activity into my computer, I rewound the camera and was dismayed to see that I had recorded over yesterday morning. Then I looked at the still images in the camera and saw a photo of the microphone on the windowsill and remembered that I had only made an audio recording. The reason for the longwinded and detailed retelling of a basically boring story of no consequence is that when I woke up this morning, I thought about the movie I thought I had made yesterday. So I set the camera on the ledge below the window and did the same thing as I did yesterday- wander around out front. Only this morning, I walked in front of a bus on my way back across the street. That’s the end of the story. No point, No punch line.

8/22 AM MISSED AGAIN!
I missed this morning’s sunrise. My alarm is my cellphone, and the ringer was set to silent. It felt really good to sleep a full, uninterrupted 8 hours. It felt so good, in fact, that I am not really sorry about missing the sunrise today.

Second week of August- PUBLIC

2008-08-16T11:10:00.000-07:00

8/9 PM Reflection Play
Norman really likes the sound of the Buchens’ bells and wanted to ring them again this evening. After such a wet and foggy start to the day, the sun came out late this afternoon and was still visible at sunset. The sun didn’t “come out”, of course. The brisk wind that came up off the ocean blew the fog inland. That same wind was still blowing at sunset and would have interfered with the recording. Since we wanted to hear the bells and make a decent recording, we decided to ring them in the shelter of our porch. The reflection in the window faces west, by the way and makes a nice backdrop for the shadow play. We even had an audience. When we finished, we looked down the bottom of the stairs, and a woman and her sweet white dog were watching us. They enjoyed our little show.

8/11 PM Norman's Birthday Season

We celebrated a pre-birthday dinner for Norman at Carl and Sue’s in Oakland. After dinner, we watched the first of a three-part series of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long-Blog which finished just two minutes before sunset.
It’s much warmer in Oakland and we could actually see the sunlight for a change. Someone said that in Beijing because of air pollution, a “blue-sky day” didn’t necessarily mean a day in which you could see blue sky. It simply meant it was a day when you could see your shadow. So maybe we have many more blue-sky days in San Francisco despite the fog if we go along with the Chinese definition.

8/12 PM Can't Tell Which End Is Up?
Bell ringing over the phone with Mary and Norman was not very successful as multi-location ensemble experiences go. Especially since the sound technician failed to fully comprehend whether to receive or broadcast and which end of the phone would do the job. Anyway, while it’s not readily apparent that someone is on the phone ringing bells, Mary was there ringing in the darkness of NYC to accompany us here on the west coast. Thank you Mary. I was calling to find out about the bells, which Norman has come to favor lately. They were a gift from Bill and Mary Buchen, and I wanted to find out more about them. Also to be continued…

8/13 PM Norman's Birthday Burger
Celebrating Norman's BD a day early at Mel's with Budd.

8/14 PM Happy Birthday To YooooooOOou!
It’s still Norman’s birthday. All day. Sunrise and Sunset.

8/15 PM DELTA FL. 240 (the first 15 hours)
Sunset somewhere over Indiana. Just around 8:45 EST. The fellow who had the window seat filmed while we rang and then handed me the camera. I immediately reversed the record and stop functions and stopped filming. I restarted shooting in time to catch my tray table and a tiny bit of the TV when I thought I was shutting down. Everyone in our row rang the bells, but I managed to turn the camera off for that part. And it remained off while I filmed the little monitor in the seat back in front of me. After we rang the bells, my fellow ringers kept their tiny little bells and we continued onward to what we thought was our final destination that we thought we would reach in 90 minutes. Ha… Oh to be so young and innocent.
Delta fl. # 240- Hold that thought.
to be continued next week…

Second week of August - PRIVATE

2008-08-16T11:02:00.000-07:00

8/9 AM April Showers Bring May Flowers. What does the Summer Fog Bring?
You can hear how wet it is outside (audio). Dripping and foghorns. That’s not rain. It’s dripping. From the big tree two doors down. The tree you can see from google earth. Good for the flowers. Bad for those peaches. However, they look pretty good so I’ll wait until they fall on the ground and see if they are tasty at all. To be continued…

8/10 AM Avoiding the Wind
This morning looked much like so many other mornings these past few weeks that I almost didn’t bother to take a photo. When I woke up and looked outside, I was just disgusted. But then I reminded myself that each day was not like any other day. Even if it looked like one, felt like one, started like one. Tired and gray. At least I thought I would avoid the wind and make a quiet recording. It may be boring, but at least there’s no wind noise for a change (audio).

8/10 PM
It cleared up again this evening. Like yesterday. Maybe this is the beginning of a new weather pattern. Late summer, perhaps? The moon is up, too.

8/11 AM Chamber Orchestra in the Yard
Out back many birds are singing with the fog horns and humming ubiquitous drones to create a lovely chamber orchestra piece (audio). Gets me thinking about more ways to document these daily observances. Several mornings lately have been so overtly musical that I am inspired to “play along”. Any requests? I would like to write a few little ensembles pieces to accompany, transform or otherwise respond to these already incredibly musical performances.

8/12 AM Why Birds Shouldn't Go To Music School
A new noisy bird soloist. Why only soloists? This one has a song that reminds me of a tired and overused rhythmic motif used way too many times in contemporary music.
___ ___ ___ ___ __ __ _ _ _ _ - Although he is a new voice on this block. The other fellow is gone by now. Is there only room for one bird at a time around here?

8/13 AM Mark Twain's Summer
More wandering around- this time out front for a change. I will be so glad when the fog dries up in a few weeks as the Sacramento Valley cools off. And I won’t be alone. So many tourists come here in the summer expecting sunny southern California and are rewarded with having to shell out extra special prices for not so tastefully designed sweatshirts, hats and long pants. You can easily recognize the tourists not only because of the places they amass to visit but because of the dazzling newness of their outer garments layered over more comfortable and stylish traveling clothes. Here's a concise description that explains why it’s so foggy here in the summer when it so warm everywhere else. Tourists take note. The sunny, warm months in San Francisco are coming. Hallelujah!

8/14 AM Happy Birthday first-thing-in-the-morning To Norman
Happy Birthday, Norman! This is a familiar scene. Norman hates the way he looks in this situation because he thinks he looks like an old infirm person rather than a tired person ringing bells to support his wife’s project. I love you, Norm. At the risk of repeating ourselves, here is the other movie from early on that bears a remarkable resemblance to this one.

8/15 AM Leaving on a Jet Plane, eventually...
It was very good timing this morning- the sun was rising just as I was leaving for the airport. Although it is hard to tell much about the sun by looking at the day. It’s also hard to believe that it will most likely be hot in New York – that it’s hot there even now. So maybe I can complain about that all week.

First week of August- PUBLIC

2008-08-11T23:31:00.000-07:00

I decided to break up the postings into private and public observances. Most, but not all of the public events occured at sunset. And v.v.

8/2 PM Sunset in the Last Row
We were listening to the beginning of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem when the sun went down. At just the precise moment, the chimes in the orchestra started to play and we very quietly added some little bells from our seats in the last row. This performance presented by the San Francisco Choral Society was wonderful. They were joined by the California Chamber Symphony and The Piedmont Boys and Girls Choirs.
Other links:
Poet Wilfred Owen
Concert Review

8/3 PM Out In the Street
We spent the day in Oakland visiting with family from out of town. (See entry July 20, Third week in July). Eliott carried a small bag of bells around in the pocket of his cargo pants all day just in case we didn’t make it back to the house in time for the sunset. As it turned out we had plenty of time. We were getting ready to return across the Bay a few minutes before the sun was due to set. The bell in the back of my car had belonged to Norman’s father and had come from Lebanon, PA in the 19th century. Eliott is Norman’s nephew, and he was interested in seeing it before we drove off. There’s not much point in just looking at a bell so I untethered it, gave Eliott the hearing protection and invited him to ring it. Which he did- several times. Enough times to draw some attention from the neighbors. There were several children pressed up against the screen door looking at my car that was parked in front of their house. I asked them if they would like to ring the bell and they said yes. Their mother told them to wait a minute so that she could put pajamas on one of the children, and then they all came outside and took turns ringing the big bell. It was very exciting. As we finished ringing the bell several minutes before the sun actually set, I offered the children some of the tiny bells I had just acquired so that they could ring them again when the sun went down- officially.

8/4 PM Vorticella and the Sunset
Our improvisation ensemble, Vorticella rehearsed at Karen’s house this evening. She has a pretty little horse named Coby who she can watch from that big window where we sat to watch the sun go down. The window faces east, but the light changes color as it sends the darkness up the hills. For our last improvisation of the evening, we rang the bells for the 20 odd horses, goats, chickens and cats who were meandering around outside the window while the sun set.

8/5 AM Garbage Day

I ventured out front today just in time to keep company with the garbage collectors.

8/5 PM Sunset on the 63rd Anniversary of the Bombing of Hiroshima
I put the signboard up in front of the Asian Art Museum and Norman and I chimed the bells for 10 minutes at sundown. Half of the people walking by read the signboard, which announced the 63rd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima on one side and the sunset time on the other. I also discovered that “free” is a magic word. Contrary to what your parents might have told you, it’s much more powerful than “please” or “thank you”. It was easy and fun, and everyone was happy. As I extended a handful of tiny bells to each person that passed by, everything would momentarily stop. “It’s free. Please take one”. Nothing ambiguous. Easy. With each bell, I also offered a card with the dailybell2008 project description and blog address. There was even time to inform the person that I did this every sunrise and sunset and that he or she could now do the same. Only one person said no, thanks. It was a wonderful feeling.

8/6 PM MISSED!!!
I had the bells. I had the camera. I set the alarm. And I still missed the sunset. Amir, Norman and I went to see Hellboy II at our favorite Century 20 Theater in Daly City. It must have been those incredibly loud and vibrating special effects that masked the tiny vibration of the cell phone in my pocket. By the time I thought of the sunset, I had missed it by 40 minutes. So we just waited until we went outside to take a picture of the dark. Is this the first sunset I’ve missed?

Who Cares About How Things End?

2008-08-10T23:44:00.000-07:00

August 1st
Total Eclipse, Rhythm and Sunrise
We went to the Exploratorium to see the total solar eclipse that occurred at (6:09 PM) in Xingjian Uygur Autonomous Region in northwestern China. Totality was reached at 4:09 AM (PST).

It was around 3:00 AM when we arrived at the museum. There were hundreds of people sleeping on the floor, milling around looking at exhibits or watching the webcast. At 3:30 AM, the live signal from China came through and we were able to watch the progress of the eclipse. Everyone was very attentive during the time leading up to the point where the moon covered the sun. We watched the progress through 3 different telescopes as well as through a camera focused on the people and landscape on location.

At the moment the corona appeared, everyone cheered. And then, it was as if the eclipse was over. It didn’t matter that it would take another 40 minutes for the earth and moon to finish moving so that the sun was completely revealed once again. Forty minutes- the same amount of time it took the moon to cover the sun just moments before. Why is it that we consider the beginning and lead up to a special moment the most worthy of our attention?

This privileging of lead ups and beginnings also happens with rhythm and music. I remember the first time a music teacher pointed out that the end of the note mattered as much as the beginning. Simply starting the note on time was only part of the proper performance of rhythm. When we first begin playing an instrument and learn about note values, we are taught to focus on starting each note on time. In order to do this we simply count the interval of time from the onset of the note and wait the correct amount of time to begin the next note. The way we proceed from note to note is to initiate the sound and then wait. It’s a big revelation and completely different feeling to attend to the note for it’s entire value.

To listen to how a note changes and to work with it until it’s turn is over requires active attention. It’s no longer about waiting. It’s not so much about executing a series of tasks as it is about honoring the integrity and totality of each individual moment. It’s about continuity and not quantization. We are no longer dividing time into units and much as were are staying aware of the passing of time. Once we learn to remain with a note and not abandon it as soon as we have initiated it, time shifts. Somehow because our attention is involved and maintained, our sense of duration changes to include our own physicality.

So it was very familiar, if not a bit surprising after that moment of total eclipse, when everyone scattered. Many people got up and left the museum even though the Exploratorium was staying open for 2 more hours. The unified attention and silence during the moments leading to the eclipse splintered as everyone began talking to each other and stopped looking at the screen. The webcast continued but there was no more commentary from the staff at the museum. Because I wanted to ring bells with people at the museum at sunrise, I decided to wait for 2 more hours. However, I didn’t watch the eclipse as the moon retreated from the sun either. I lay down on the floor and slept until they rang the big bell 90 minutes later to alert the stragglers that it was time to leave. (They rang the bell I donated to the museum, by the way). It was a lovely way to wake up and I was very surprised that I was among only about a dozen or so non-staff people at the museum. Since there was nobody left to ring with, Norman and I left to go home. Fortunately we had to stop and get some gas, so we pumped gas and rang bells at sunrise. I even managed to convince a stray cyclist to join us.
After working at the Exploratorium running her film program for the past 13 hours, Liz rang a bell for the sunrise just before passing out at home for a few hours.

First Week of August- PRIVATE

2008-08-10T23:39:00.000-07:00

Here are the private, more low key events. Most of these entries include audio recordings.

8/1 PM The Evening After the Eclipse
After staying up most of the night, we were pretty exhausted. When the sunset arrived, we did the easiest thing. The car is usually parked in front of the house and the big bell is in there. I love that bell and we can only ring it at night without disturbing the neighbors. So Norman went out front and rang the bell as I watched from upstairs. It was a clear evening for a change. Color!

8/2 AM A Fog Horn Choir
There were so many foghorns this morning. I don’t know the last time I heard four different tones all going at such a rapid rate. I thought it would be a treat to listen them so I rang the tiniest of bells to accompany those huge and lovely bass horns and recorded everything (audio).

8/3 AM Naked Ladies in Full Bloom!

Listen to the music they grow to (audio).

8/4 AM Everyone Was There
I love these little tiny bells and am equally enamored of those 2 naked ladies in the back. My little bird soloist friend was out there this morning. Despite the cold foggy gray, this morning’s sunrise was a delight. (I couldn’t find my jacket this morning).

8/6 and 8/7 AM Gray Day Look Alikes.
Another gray day (8/6). Again. Again. Again. Even the birds don’t bother coming out. Malcolm and I looked around for a moment and then we went back inside. While this morning (8/7) looks remarkably much the same as yesterday, it does sound a bit different (audio). For one thing that loud little bird was back. I caught the tail end of his song. It seems as if his song begins and ends about the same time each day. With the sun rising later each day, we are passing through his singing time. Sadly. Although he doesn’t keep a very strict schedule, otherwise we would no longer hear him at all since he’s been silent these past few sunrises. Maybe he doesn’t stop singing. Perhaps he just moves to a different venue at a certain time. More like a moving train schedule than a punch-the-clock type. Whichever it is, I hope there are still a few days left to hear him around here. There aren’t many other birds. Except for the crows.
(FYI: The photo on the right is 8/6, the left is 8/7)

8/7 PM Sunset From the Hallway
The documentation of the eclipse on August 1st has thrown me as far as editing and documenting the media for the blog. As I fall further behind, I am reluctant to either generate anything too time consuming to edit or to take much time out of the day for the actual event. I realize this compromises the intention of the project but I take some refuge in the fact that it’s a temporary condition. So this evening, I set up the camera in the house, and we rang the bells from our places in front of our computers. Sad, but true.

8/8 AM The Voluntary Peach Tree
Of all the things growing (or not growing) in the backyard, this tree has been thriving and pressing itself into the side of the house ever since we arrived here. We have cut and sawn branches and gathered up the hard rotted fruit year after year. The peaches always look so beautiful and inviting but their beauty is truly only skin deep. Because it’s so foggy and cold out here all summer, the peaches never get ripe. They grow and change color and eventually fall off the tree onto the blackberry brambles below. Last year I gathered about 30 of the unripe peaches from the ground and boiled them with lots of sugar, hoping to make something edible from them. The concoction was definitely peachy but disappointing. Even though it’s been so foggy and cold for the last 6 weeks, there were a few very hot days earlier in the summer and I am hoping that will make a difference in the peaches this year. Perhaps they will be delicious and juicy. I actually don’t even like peaches, but having a tree in the yard changes the way I feel about them. They are my peaches and I would love to be able to eat them. We’ll see. As far as the birds go, there were more songs then usual this morning. This is a good time of day.

8/8 PM Prairie Bells Will Travel
Sometimes, I look forward to ringing the bells. Just walking around the neighborhood, ringing as we go. Some combinations of bells sound really pretty and it’s a pleasure to ring them together. This evening, I had the small brass cymbal chimes. They are heavy and attached to each other by a piece of leather string. One way to play them is to swing them towards each other and knock their edges into one another. It’s hard to aim and get them to hit just right. But when they do, they ring for a long time and you can swing them past each other as they decay. Because they are slightly out of tune from each other, when they swing near each other, they produce a slight flutter. It’s shimmery and quiet.
Norman was playing 3 of the bells that Bill and Mary Buchen gave us. Sometimes, I look forward to ringing the bells. Just walking around the neighborhood, ringing as we go. Some combinations of bells sound really pretty and it’s a pleasure to ring them together. This evening, I had the small brass cymbal chimes. They are heavy and attached to each other by a piece of leather string. One way to play them is to swing them towards each other and knock their edges into one another. It’s hard to aim and get them to hit just right. But when they do, they ring for a long time and you can swing them past each other as they decay. Because they are slightly out of tune from each other, when they swing near each other, they produce a slight flutter. It’s shimmery and quiet. Norman was playing 3 of the bells that Bill and Mary Buchen gave us. The Buchens (aka Sonic Architecture) imported these bells from Thailand for their public art project called “Prairie Bells” they have recently installed in Frisco, Texas.

Last Week of July

2008-08-02T12:06:00.000-07:00

7/26 AM
I stumbled out onto the back porch and was greeted by some colored light. Not very clear, but at least it wasn’t foggy, wet and gray.

7/26 PM Sunset at Treasure Island
My friend, Sherri invited us to a BBQ at her studio on Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Treasure Island is a decommissioned Naval Base, and like the Presidio (also a decommissioned military post) it is located on some of the most beautiful land in the city. While the development of the Presidio is much further along in its new life, Treasure Island is just beginning. There are some civilians living there, but for now, mostly large tour buses, the occasional cyclists and the lost or curious driver visits the island. There is a panoramic view of San Francisco and the Bay from Sherri’s roof, and that’s where we watched the sun go down. Thank you Sherri and David.

7/27 AM Wet Fence in The Morning

Dripping again (audio). Wet and depressing.

7/27 PM Double Take
It has stopped dripping, but it looks and feels about the same as it did this morning. So I returned to the same spot and recorded (audio) from there and photographed the same bit of fence. At least the fence has dried out.

7/28 AM Same Old Same Old
Same as yesterday. Foggy and wet. I didn’t even bother to take a photo. You can listen to the sounds of today and look at yesterday's photo. (Either one).

7/28 PM A Different View
It’s been a while since I rang the big bell and since there’s not much to see- just more gray, dreary gray- I thought a view from inside the car would make a nice change. Also, I made another mistake with my hair today and decided the best way to fix it was to shave it all off. Again.

7/29 AM Where Oh Where Has that Little Bird Gone?
A gray, quiet morning, but not foggy. When I first woke up, I didn’t hear that one little bird who is a regular part of the morning. So I brought out many of the little bells (audio) to fill in the space. I wonder where he went.

7/29 PM WALL-E at Sunset
It was Amir’s 17th birthday today so we went out to dinner and a movie. We saw WALL-E and got up in the middle to run out to the lobby and ring bells for the sunset. Then we ran back inside. It was very festive.

7/30 AM That Old Pink Magic
Usually as soon as I crack open the door to go out at sunrise, Malcolm shoots out onto the porch and dives through the bars as he leaps from the porch to land onto the sand below. I hate it when he does that because there are no stairs going down to the yard. In order to get him to come back inside, I have to go back through the house, down the stairs, open the back door and try to entice him with cat food to come back inside. I don’t mind so much at other times of the day, but at sunrise, it’s too much activity. Anyway, for whatever reason, he didn’t do that. He walked over to the edge of the porch and then just decided to take in the view and hang out while I rang the bell. We noticed the pink lady in full bloom. Maybe she cast a spell…

7/30 PM Good Jumper
I finally decided to buy a bunch of little bells so that I would have some to give away whenever I encounter people who join me at sunrise or sunset. These bells are much tinier than I thought they would be and much quieter, But they are very cute. So I grabbed a handful at sunset this evening and Norman and I walked around the block. In an effort to get some volume out of them, I shook a handful of them as if they were coins. They felt and sounded more like coins than bells when handled that way. So I accept their tiny little bell sound and will ring them accordingly from now on. Apparently they were loud enough to bother a nearby dog, although when we got close enough for him to see us, he was quite excited and curious. And quite a good little jumper.

7/31 AM Ringing Bell Rings
These tin bells arrived yesterday along with the teeny bells. The tin bells are much louder, and I love that I can attach them to my fingers and ring so many at once. Today looks like we might have some sunshine. What a treat.

7/31 PM Mini Convergence at Marnee Thai
It turned out to be such a nice day; Thea and I met at the beach early this evening and walked by the water. I haven’t experienced the pure joy of movement for a while, and it feels good to simply take a walk for the pleasure of walking. Afterwards, we went up the street for dinner and stepped outside for a moment at sunset to ring the bells.

Upcoming Events

2008-07-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

Full Solar Eclipse in China
If you are interested in watching the eclipse this Friday morning, August 1st at 4:00 AM PST, The Exploratorium is opening it's doors on Thursday night, July 31. You are invited to stay up all night and watch a live web cam of the event as it happens in China. I expect a lot of people will come. Bring a sleeping bag and check out the Exploratorium website for more information. The sun will rise in San Francisco at 6:14 AM on Friday morning. So if you are still at the Exploratorium, please join us for the sunrise bell ringing. Bring bells if you have them. We will also be ringing the Exploratorium's bell which I donated at the end of thebellproject in October 2006. The Exploratorium will also host a viewing area in second life.

63rd Anniversary of the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
At 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945 Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki 3 days later. In Hiroshima, each year on the anniversary of the bombing, the Peace Bell is rung in Peace Park. Everyone throughout the world is invited to form a peace bridge by ringing bells at the same moment wherever one happens to be. (In San Francisco, the corresponding time will be at 4:15 PM on August 5th). I am dedicating the sunset observance and bell ringing on Tuesday, August 5th to commemorate all of the lives affected by those events. Let's gather in front of the Asian Art Museum at 8:00 PM and ring bells at sunset (8:13PM PST). Location, directions and transportation info available here.

Fourth Week of July

2008-07-25T21:19:00.000-07:00

7/20 AM A Little Help From My Friend...
Another typical summer day dawns in San Francisco- which means- fog. This morning we also had a little extra drizzle. None of that deterred Malcolm who is always so anxious to help supervise any activity (audio).

7/20 PM Trees in Common
It was already pretty dark and dreary outside just before sundown. This, after a long, sunless day. I figured our little tree could use some excitement, so I rang some small bells for it while Norman rang the big one for all the others. I’m running out of ideas for things to do around the house. Our bell ringing has become such standard behavior on our street now, our neighbors take it in stride. It would be even nicer if they would join us sometime instead of just waving to us. But it’s a start.

7/21 AM Naked Ladies on the Way
While walking around the yard (audio) during this morning’s sunrise, I spotted a single naked lady pushing up through the sand. She’s brand new and not yet blooming. Ann had given me a half dozen of those naked lady bulbs several years ago in an effort to help beautify my yard. Those flowers are still the only thing growing out there besides the super aggressive blackberries and the tall grasses that now form the straw mat on the surface of the sand. That one little flower is the first to arrive this year, and will be the first to bloom since Ann died. Hello, Ann and thank you, again.

7/21 PM Coaxing the Ladies
At sundown, we walked back to where the first naked lady has appeared and saw another one just coming up. We just stood there and rang the bells for the flowers.

7/22 AM Hello from the Crow

In terms of the light, time and weather, there’s not much to distinguish this morning from yesterday. However, from time to time, the huge tree that takes root two doors down provides a platform for some local crows. Loud mouth crows. And one of them just happened by this morning at sunrise. He’s hidden deep among the branches, but his voice is plenty audible. You can see that tree from google earth. It’s really big.

7/22 PM Laid Out
This was my first time back at meditation since the accident. During the break, Norman and I went out to the garden and quietly rang the bells. We had placed them on a bench and looking at them like that reminded me of a tiny, old cemetery.

7/23 PM Tintinnare Tom Bickley @ Meridian Gallery
Sunset occurred this evening during the third part of Tom Bickley’s interactive bell exploration and performance of Tintinnare. Tintinnare means “to ring a bell” and that’s what everyone who attended the performance at Meridian Gallery did for almost an hour and a half. In the first section of the piece we were invited to explore a variety of bells, chimes and gongs that had been placed around the gallery. At all times we were asked to ring and listen with care. Next we slowly walked up to the 3rd floor with the bells of our choosing, letting our motion activate them. The sound and movement reminded me of animals, only instead of walking in a line along the ground, we moved vertically through the space. We arrived on the 3rd floor to find the bell sculptures of Bruce Hasson displayed around the space. Once seated among the sculptures, the audience listened as Tom rang a single Japanese bowl gong. As he slowly and steadily played the gong, he captured, multiplied, layered and changed it’s pitch so that it sounded like many different bells- some large: some small. It was during this section of the piece that the sun set. A few minutes later an alarm sounded, and all hell broke loose as everyone rang his or her bells simultaneously. The piece ended with a long slow section where each person sounded their bell every few breaths for as long as Tom struck the gong. By structuring the piece as he did, Tom guided us through a careful exploration and immersive experience with the bells while gently calling our attention to the ways in which bells have been traditionally used. Thank you, Tom, for a really beautiful evening.

7/24 PM No Need to Plug it in
Someone threw out a couple of televisions up the block. They have been sitting on the sidewalk for a few days and nobody wants them. As we walked by we noticed the western sky reflected in one of the dead screens. So we stopped there and rang in front of the abandoned TVs for a few moments.

7/25 PM Why Bother?
We decided to go see the new Batman movie at the last minute. As we slammed the front door and were running down the steps to the car, I realized that I didn’t have bells or a camera with me. Go back or be late? As we sped to the theater, I shook my keys in the truck for a minute or so as the sun was setting. Not that the movie needs any promotion, but if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a link to the trailer.

How Do the Birds Know When to Wake Up?

2008-07-25T16:36:00.000-07:00

7/23 AM So Many Birds
Finally some sunshine. And many more birds. I don’t know if there are more birds because of the sun or if there are simply more birds out front than in back. Do some birds sleep in when it’s foggy?

7/24 AM Fog Gets in Their Eyes
Yesterday there were so many birds out front. I wasn’t sure if it was because it was a clear morning for a change or if it was because I was in the front of the house instead of the back. So when I went out the front door this gray morning, I didn’t know what to expect. It seems that when it’s foggy (audio), there are less birds out at sunrise. Period. Front or back. It doesn’t seem to matter. The next test is to see if there are as many of birds in the backyard on a sunny morning as there were yesterday out front. Since this is the summer, I may have to wait a while for the sun to shine again. If the birds sleep in, do they stay up later at night?

7/25 AM The Jury is Still Out
It was not very foggy. Nor was it so clear this morning. Not a good day to advance the experiment. So I recorded (audio) that one bird who is always out back, and except for one little buddy, he seemed to be alone. So who knows? Maybe that little bird, along with the occasional visiting crow is King of the back yard. After recording the sunrise, I went inside to listen and couldn’t find the recording on the disc, so I ran back outside to see if I could re-record. And the soundscape had completely changed. The bird was gone, it was noticeably brighter and the world was a different place. Only minutes later. I did eventually find the recording. I had accidentally recorded over one of the June mornings.

Third Week of July

2008-07-20T14:00:00.000-07:00

7/13 AM Sleepy People and Wide Awake Birds
This morning, we walked out front of Norman’s nephew’s house in Philadelphia. The trees around here are so big. Huge, beautiful old trees. And they are full of singing birds. So we quietly joined them (audio) for a few minutes and then went back to sleep.

7/13 PM Gaggle of Geese
It was less than a month ago that my father and I had gone down to this little island along the Delaware River in Lambertville. This time, the gate to the dock had a padlock on it, and we were unable to go down to the river at sunset. We carefully walked along a wall that edged the riverbank and rang for a few minutes in anticipation of the sunset. Just as we were about to leave, some geese who had been standing near us entered the river. So we rang for their little parade.

7/14 AM David and Goliath
Rainy morning in Lambertville, NJ. We’ve seen enough of the playground across the street and the Fire Dept looked pretty good in the rain. So Norman took shelter under a nearby tree, and we greeted the day from there.

7/14 PM
Another 12 hour non-stop flight from the east coast to San Francisco. This time, it was from Philadelphia. Reason? The plane had a gas leak. As we wandered around the airport waiting for the new plane to arrive, we saw the news about this weeks’ New Yorker and all the uproar on the television. At sunset, we paused at one of the empty gate areas that had a TV on in front of the window and accompanied both the sunset and all the hoo-ha.
Since I just got home an hour ago and decided it wasn’t worth going to bed, I am sitting here waiting for the sunrise before going to sleep. The birds started going about 15 minutes ago and the sun is due to come up in another 5. It’s a nice way to view the sunrise from the end of the night for a change.
Here are some links to the commentary about this weeks' New Yorker cover:
Daily Telegraph
NPR Roundtable
FOX News
Seattle pi
Aljazeera English
Huffington Post

7/15 AM
OK! I have greeted the morning (audio). It seems very dark today. Plus I haven’t figured out this new camera. It makes everything look dark. I was pretty foggy myself this morning and am going to bed now.

7/15 PM
It is dark outside. Something is wrong with the light. The aftermath of the fires? It’s just too dark too soon. Not stormy- it’s very still. Not foggy, either. It is simply not light enough just before the sunrise or sunset. It feels ominous.
When I was in Philadelphia, I smelled smoke and I wondered if it could travel that far. Here’s a link to someone in New York who wondered the same thing.Also the light was not right there either. The sky was hazy and the sun bathed the ground in a beautifully warm orange light. It looked like the light just before sundown when the sun is very low on the horizon. The light on the east coast was beginning to look like the light looked out here in the Bay area soon after the fires started. For the last few weeks, depending on the weather patterns, it’s been either gray or orange. But now it’s simply dark.
Here are some recent satellite images of the spreading smoke and a photo of the sky in Vancouver (less than 800 miles from San Francisco).

7/16 AM Ding Ding Ding Went the Trolley
Foggy and cold, as usual. When I woke up, I heard that one very loud, persistent bird out in the back. But by the time I got out there, he had flown off a ways and was much quieter. Norman was afraid to come out because Malcolm would run off, so he opened the door wide enough to stick his wrist through. And that’s how we greeted the morning (audio). Even the streetcar chimed in today.

7/16 PM Blessing Dead Fish
Today was Amir’s first day here. He arrived from India yesterday and slept for almost 20 hours. He’s surprised at how cold it is here. So we lent him a coat and hoodie and little cap to wear. This evening when we went out back to ring the bells, I invited him to join us. Unfortunately, he still feels obligated to accommodate us so he came outside despite being too cold. I would like to know if they ring bells in the mornings and evenings in the town where he comes from.

7/17 AM At Least I Don't Bite
Please excuse me for the lazy (yet intimate) sunrise observance from the bed. After taking some powerful meds before going to sleep last night, I was very groggy this morning. I wasn’t the only one- Malcolm did not like to be woken up so early and he let me know how he felt.

7/17 PM Changing the Cones on the Bridge
Norman, Amir and I walked onto the Golden Gate Bridge at sundown just in time for the lane changing truck to drive by. I chose to stop at this spot on the bridge because I love the sound the cars make when they drive over the joint in the roadway. It reminds me of people talking and complaining. We nabbed a tourist and rang bells amidst the wind, traffic and nattering tires.

7/18 AM Fog Dots
Those are fog dots on the lens. This heavy fog didn’t phase that one, lonely loud little bird who reports for singing duty (audio) every morning right on time.

7/18 PM Music Minus All

Amir and I walked down to the beach and arrived just in time to see the last smear of red vanish into the waiting bank of fog. It’s generally so windy down there that I’m not going to even try to record the sound. Imagine the sound of waves constantly rolling towards the shore. Now turn up the volume on that before you add the sound of the wind blowing so hard you have to yell to be heard. Into this mix we rang our tiniest bells.

7/19 AM Tree Holes at Sunrise
After two years, we are finally getting a tree in front of our house. To commemorate the occasion, I included the waiting holes in the sidewalk in this morning’s sunrise observance. It’s too bad the woman running for the streetcar couldn’t just zoom down on her way past the almost trees.

7/19 PM Baby Trees!
The trees are in! Five of them on our block. Thank you Friends of the Urban Forest. It sounds like it’s a good thing we planted those trees considering how hard the guy with saw is working to cut up those lucky few trees that didn’t burn in the fires.

Our Tree...

2008-07-19T21:10:00.000-07:00

After the tree had been staked and planted, we applied the label with the name of the tree to the side braces. According to the Friends of the Urban Forest, that's the christening.

General state of things

2008-07-14T19:36:00.000-07:00

I am still recuperating from the accident. Thank you everyone who wrote to me- It was really nice to hear from you. My neck is doing much better and the pain has migrated down to the bottom of my spine. I am coping and as you can see, my sun observances have been modest: people I know, wherever I happen to be. For a little extra excitement, this week, I went back east for a wedding. Norman's nephew got married and the family converged on the Amish country. Check out the sites of Hershey, Lebanon, Quentin, Harrisburg and Philadelphia.

Second week of July

2008-07-14T15:06:00.000-07:00

7/7 AM What Do They Use to Put Out The Fires?
This morning was not so foggy, but it smelled odd. Not like smoke, but like fertilizer. I wonder if the chemicals they are using to fight the fires have saturated the air enough to carry along with the rest of the airborne residue. Does the moisture from the fog somehow obscure the detection of scent. Maybe that’s why it hasn’t smelled like chemicals until now: a combination of long term use of chemicals sprayed on the fires and an absence of the usual heavy moisture. Any ideas about this?

7/7 PM Car Alarm and Cowbells Duet
This recording is from the backyard. It’s a warm evening, and although you can hear foghorns in the distance, it’s clear here for a change.

7/8 AM Not Ready to Get Up?
I had just finished the morning ringing when I heard a window slam down two doors away. The bells are not an unpleasant sound, but the timing is not so good if you are not ready to get up.

7/8 PM Sunset in the Parking Lot
Driving home just about sundown, we detoured by the beach. Since we couldn’t quite make it to the shoreline, we pulled into the parking lot across the street and rang from there. A noisy little corner in the world.

7/9 AM Cymbal Phrases
It really felt like a conversation between that little bird and me this morning. He was great! (That's my comfy new "Miami-J" neck brace)

7/9 PM The Air is the Wrong Color
Our friend, Paul is Malcolm’s best friend and he is coming to stay with Malcolm for a few days while we go to a wedding. So after dinner this evening, we went up to the corner and walked around with the bells. The air is still very smoky, and everything is the wrong color.
Some updates as of today:
Big Sur
Butte County
General Northern California

7/10 AM Bells, then Airport
Today was the first day this year that we actually had to wake up at sunrise for some other reason than to ring bells. After ringing at sunrise, we continued on to the airport and flew to Philadelphia to go to a wedding and visit family. I wonder if there will be many bells at the wedding?

7/10 PM United Took my Pills
That was the most on time, uneventful, no-need-for-excuses flight I’ve been on in a few years. We left on time, and we arrived on time. No waiting on the tarmac, no weather reports, no scripted apologies. I had forgotten what it had been like to travel before 9/11. The one thing post 9/11 has made easier was for people to go through your bags and remove items. Which they did. When I arrived, I went to take a pill for the pain in my back, which was excruciating after sitting for 6 hours. Someone had taken them. I’m glad I only packed two pills. I only hope that whoever took them needs them more than I did. Now or sometime in the future.

7/11 AM If the Sun Rises Upside Down, is it Still A Sunrise?
There is a leaking pipe out in the parking lot in front of the hotel. At first we thought it had rained, but after returning from the wedding, the puddle was still there. This 90º heat would have dried up any standing water. The wedding was in the backyard and it was as cool as it could be under a canopy. It was a short, quiet ceremony uniting 2 families of five daughters and one son. It was an honor to be there- difficult to sit- but worth the trip. They didn’t have any bells by the way, but people sang.

7/11 PM Go Phillies?
What a crew! This is the cheering section for the Phillies taking a break at sunset to ring bells together. What we lack in agility, we make up for in spirit.

7/12 AM Staying at the Four Seasons Hotel

Another morning in Quentin, PA.

7/12 PM Congratulations Kris and Steven!
As we were listening to the pre-dinner wedding speeches, the sun was setting. So all of us at Table 12 rang very quietly. The PA was so loud, we just sparkled over the top of the general noise.

Midway through the Year!

2008-07-07T20:15:00.000-07:00

Gravity, Wind and Death ... Reflections At Six Months
July 1st was the 183rd day of the year. Because of the leap day this year, that makes July 1st the midway point of the year and of this project. It seemed like a good point to reflect on what I have observed and learned so far.

I have come to more fully understand the nature of the commitment I made at the beginning of the year. I am at the point where I realize that I could stop now if I wanted to. I am not compelled to continue; however I wish and choose to do so. It is not because I vowed to observe the sun as it crossed the horizon each day and to ring bells at those moments. I have internalized the practice and integrated it into my daily life. By doing this, I have come to understand something about the nature of vows. It’s probably obvious to others, but I’ve always had to “learn the hard way” as my grandmother was so fond of pointing out to me.

Making a commitment to do something regardless of what may happen (like taking a marriage vow, for instance) ensures that one will honor the commitment in the face of the unknown. One will persevere if and when it becomes difficult to do so. It’s the hanging in there that produces a shift. The shift that I experienced was from external practice to the internalization of the “why”. It’s very hard to describe. It’s as if the repetition and commitment were necessary to achieve a certain state of mind and understanding that would not have been possible in any other way.

Again, I am only speaking for myself. I am one of those people who learns by direct experience much more effectively than by abstraction. I feel as if I am on the edge of understanding something about the elemental. It has something to do with the value of regular, conscious and direct experience with those things that don’t change and don’t rely on human intervention- like the movement of the earth. Or things that are inevitable- like death. Our close relationship and awareness of these things present opportunities to be grounded and to recognize the ways in which we are all related to the physical world and to one another.

So I have started to think more about other things that could be considered undeniable, incontrovertible- ultimate truth - type of things like the movement of the earth and death. I am not a scientist, so I am merely musing from the position of an observer and speculator. However, as far as the movement of the earth is concerned, besides the sunrise and sunset, there is gravity. We can start with the evidence and observation of the physical force of gravity in our lives and move out from there. The observation of the effect of gravity in our lives is another place to begin to notice the ways in which we are all connected.

I think that all of this is also a way to prepare us and to help us think about and deal with death and the inevitability of our own mortality. Maybe the overarching conceptual frame has a lot to do with Buddhism and the practice of awareness, but I am also trying to narrow the frame for a moment to something contained and directed. Something that encompasses the personal- like the availability of the breath- yet also something that can be visibly and consciously shared with many other people at the same time. That’s part of it. The sunrise and sunset. Gravity. Wind (the movement of air). And yes, mortality.

I am interested in the ways we experience these things sonically – listening and making sounds as a way to both observe what is happening as well as to mark the moment in order to share the experience with others.

Focusing on and being reminded of how we are all connected to each other and to the world – at least in that moment of awareness- anchors us in reality. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the other. Speculation of all kinds. For a moment it all ceases. Maybe with practice we can become more adept at separating out what is real from what is imagined.

Beginning of July- Up and Down

2008-07-07T19:46:00.000-07:00

7/1 AM Day # 183. Half way through the year!
OK. So this is really the middle of the year. Half way through. I had been thinking of ways to get further afield in the mornings and I still intend to try out some of the ideas. I can revisit the Ferry Terminal any day now. However, I am not running out so fast now. Since we got rear-ended last night, I am somewhat incapacitated. Because I can’t turn my head at all, I cannot drive for an indefinite period of time. And even though I was in the emergency room until after midnight last night, when the alarm went off this morning, I was actually grateful and almost happy to get up and look out at that grey foggy morning and ring a bell or two. So I will continue with some variations on the close-to-home observances for a spell.

7/1 PM Up on the Roof
The sky was really beautiful and pink again- I’m afraid it’s due to all of the fires. Norman went up on our roof to capture the last bit of sunlight that was visible beneath the encroaching dark layer of smoke and fog.

7/2 AM Many More Fires The microphone is set up in front of the house, and I have wandered off down the street to the right. The smoke is back. You can smell it. There are now 1460 fires burning. The break in the air quality and the momentary sunshine were the result of shifting weather patterns and not because the fires were being eliminated.

7/2 PM Surprise
It’s already pretty dark because of the fog and smoke even before the sun goes down. I started filming out front looking down the street and went out back to join Norman and ring a few bells. Once in the back, we started ringing our bells and all of a sudden we hear other bells in the air. I thought I was imagining things or else just hearing some random wind chimes. But it was our neighbors from 2 doors down. They were standing out on their porch ringing their bells, too.

7/3 AM Comme ci
Dripping. The trees were dripping fog.

7/3 PM Comme ça
It’s still foggy. California’s still burning. It looks about the same now as it did this morning. From fog to fog, it was nice in between in other parts of the city. After setting at 8:36 PM for the past 10 days, the sun has finally begun its retreat this evening.

7/4 AM I Missed It (again)!
I woke up at 6:30 AM- 35 minutes too late. This is the 3rd time I’ve missed the sun observance, and all 3 times have been in the morning. So…in lieu of the documentation for this morning, here is a link about the beneficial effects of fires. This is in a world with no people and what would be best for the trees.
Very briefly, here are 2 ways that trees and other vegetation benefit and actually need fire to propagate and thrive:
“Fire Dependence: This concept applies to species of plants that rely on the effects of fire to make the environment more hospitable for their regeneration and growth. Fire Adaptation: This concept applies to species of plants that have evolved with special traits contributing to successful abilities to survive fires at various stages in their life cycles. For example, serotinous cones, fire resistant bark, fire resistant foliage, or rapid growth and development enable various kinds of plants to survive and thrive in a fire prone environment.”

7/4 PM Fires, not Fireworks

We went to Berkeley to Carl and Sue’s house for a 4th of July BBQ. When we left our house, it was fogged in. But over on the other side of the Bay, it was sunny and pretty warm. Some people were evacuated from Big Sur today. The firefighters say that the fires in that region won’t be contained until September. So far, the effect in the Bay area is the air quality which you can see and smell.

7/5 AM Big Sur Smokes the Sunrise In San Francisco
I walked up to the corner this morning so I could look to the east and west. The air is smoky- most likely from that huge fire in Big Sur. There are still 300 fires burning throughout the state. All of the green areas on the map.

7/5 PM Sunset. Fire or No Fire.
With so many fires burning, it was a rare, clear afternoon out here by the ocean so we took the big bell out for the sunset. It was windy as usual and it didn’t smell like smoke for a change. A woman approached Norman and asked him why he was ringing the bells. He told her it was for the sunset. That wasn’t a good enough reason so she walked away to get into her car. When she was near, I invited her to ring the big bell at the back of the car. She asked if it was for good luck and I thought about it for a moment and then said, “Sure. Why not.” The rest of our conversation is obscured by the wind, but after I pointed to the sun passing below the horizon and said you can’t argue with that, she smiled. She liked the idea of people agreeing on something, too. So then she rang the big bell- several times.

7/6 AM
Heavy fog. Growing up in central New Jersey, I never knew about foghorns. I’d heard of them the same way I’d heard of “peas in a pod”. But I had never actually experienced either foghorns or peas that didn’t come in a can. After having shelled hundreds of pods to get a handful of peas, I now really appreciate peas in a can. Usually the fog burns off enough by 9 o’clock. So before I woke up so early everyday, I had only heard the foghorns late at night or in the evening if it was a particularly early, heavy fog. On of the unexpected delights of going outside at sunrise is the encounter with the morning fog. Heavy, white and wet it envelops the world and everything in it in a small and cozy wrapping. And then the gentle and insistent tones of the foghorns. Low, soft-edged and several different notes form a never repeating, random melody. It’s a wonderful alternative to the sunny experience. Peasoup with music.

7/6 PM
I left some of my bells and the camera in someone’s car this afternoon, so it will be audio only for the next few days. Since I can’t drive because my head is restrained, I will have to rely on the United States Postal service to return my treasures in good time. When I went out to ring this evening, someone else was already making some noise, so I just joined in with my cowbells.

Suggestions for Improvements?

2008-07-06T19:23:00.000-07:00

A Little More Blah, Blah...

Until now, each observance of the sun crossing has involved the ringing activity itself and the documentation for each event. The range of detail, planning and elaboration has varied considerably for each of these aspects. Some of the mornings and evenings where I have prearranged events or travel away from home required planning and some effort. Compare these observances to the ones where I either roll out of bed in the morning or just capture the evening wherever I happen to be. I like this range of commitment and variety of experience and plan to continue to expand and experiment with it in this second half.

My first inclination and plans were to expand it on the end of greater effort and complexity and more engagement with others. However, since I am somewhat incapacitated for at least this coming week, I have decided to begin with extending the more minimal approach to continuing to observe and document this twice daily interaction. So, for now I will produce a series of short gestures, primarily audio, around the sunrise and sunset each day. These will take place for the most part around my neighborhood, and we'll see how that goes.

Other improvements I would like to make:

I would like to give bells away to people so that they could keep them and keep on ringing! If anyone has a source of inexpensive little bells, please let me know!

More visibility. I would like to do more official events and performances (like the Chapel of the Chimes). The Autumnal Equinox is coming up in September. Does anyone have any suggestions or contacts with places that might like to do an Equinox event? Or places related to planetary or other scientific content. The Exploratorium?

How about pre-performance sunset observances. In San Francisco, from August 17 – September 6, the sun will set between 7:30 and 8:00. Anyone out there willing to have the audience share in the sunset bell ringing?

How about other meetings? Anyone out there willing to start your evening meetings with a group bell ringing? It’s really fun and a great way for people to come together.

Maybe there are early morning meetings that would be open to bell ringing. Churches?

I have received only one invitation for a “house call” so far. It’s for an early morning bell ringing, and I’m going. Anyone else?

OK for now.

Accidents Will Happen

2008-06-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

6/30 8:36 PM (again), San Francisco,
The sun is back! Patches of clear blue sky appeared this afternoon and the air smells better. Unfortunately, no light gets into the room in the ER where they perform CT scans. Which is where I was at exactly the time the sun was going down. Fortunately, Norman was my emissary, and he was the witness and bell ringer this evening. If I had had the presence of mind, I would have kept a little bell with me and would have rung it on the way to the CT scan. However, I did think of it afterwards and shook the handful of my jewelry that the technician had asked me to remove for the X-ray. (I’m OK. Details later).

"Where's Waldo's Bell?"

2008-06-30T23:58:00.000-07:00

This has been a pretty solitary week- staying close to home.

One thing I have been trying out this week is a new approach to the audio recordings. Because it’s no longer necessary to perform or document each bell ringing observation as if it was the only occurrence, I don’t feel I need to start, ring and stop just as the sun is rising or setting. The primary reason for doing this is not so much to go out and ring bells, as it is to practice and spread the awareness of our relationship to something ineffable- like the movement of the sun. If this is so, then why not focus more on the uniqueness of each moment, each occasion. So that’s what I tried out this week. Instead of focusing on the bells, I’ve taken more of a “Where’s Waldo?” approach to their presence in the recordings. Find the bells if and when you can, locate them in the space by listening to how they sound in relation to the other sounds. Maybe this approach will lead to a greater appreciation about what is unique and special about each event. As the midpoint of the project approaches, I have been reflecting on how it’s going, what I’ve observed and where it might go from here. I had planned to go into some detail about that this week. And then suddenly, I was in a minor car accident. Norman and I are both OK, but I am not up to speed. Not even close. I am not able to drive, so that puts a new wrinkle into my ability to go further afield in search of new and varied situations. For the moment. Also, since day # 183 is the actual midpoint of the year, and it occurs on July 1st, I will wait until next week to go into more details about my thoughts and plans for what comes next.

California on Fire.

2008-06-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

Sunrise Recordings. You can see the progression of the fires in the morning photos this week as the smoke gets more and more dense with each passing day. You will notice that I didn't catch on right away that the dark and foggy mornings were a direct result of the smoke from the fires.

6/23 5:49 AM, San Francisco
So foggy. So normal for the summer. All the streetlights were still on. Without the sunlight, they were the only points of light. Sunrise is LATER today than yesterday. woo hoo! Have a listen.

6/24 5:49 AM, San Francisco. SUNRISE AND SUNSET TIMES ARE THE SAME AS YESTERDAY AND WILL BE THE SAME TOMORROW!!!!
The bells don’t have to figure so prominently in the documentation anymore. Enough already. Since we have been listening to the mornings for a while now, let’s just listen to the mornings. I’ll set the recorder up somewhere and leave it in place while I move around the area with the bells. I am curious about how the bells sound from far away. I’d like to know which sounds carry the farthest and how the bells mix into the morning soundscape when they don’t figure so prominently.

6/25 5:49 AM, San Francisco
I set up the audio recorder outside kitchen door in the airshaft between the buildings and then walked around ringing the ship’s bell indoors. This is the last morning the sun will rise at 5:49 AM. Tomorrow we shave another minute off the morning light.

6/26 5:50 AM, San Francisco. Hazy Mornings From Distant Fires
As I walked away from the house this morning towards the south, one of the streetlights went out. It’s extra hazy these days because of the fires in Southern California

6/27 AM California Burning. Covers Solstice Sun
Foghorns dominated the sound this morning – more so than usual. The smoke from the fires has thoroughly mixed in with the fog and there is no direct sunlight. A whiteout. It looks about the same as the sunset last night. Same color and amount of light… The biggest clue to which way the sun is headed is the streetlights. Do they come on or turn off?

6/28 AM Smoke and Flame
So smoky. If you take a deep breath, there’s a good chance you will cough it out. And that’s the “good” air near the ocean. You can’t even smell the smoke anymore, but it will make your eyes itch and water. It’s even worse across the bay and that’s not very far. The smoke doesn't seem to affect the sound very much. Birds get up, papers get delivered and the streetcar runs pretty much on time.

6/29 AM We Haven't See the Sun In Days

More than 100 thousand acres have burned so far. The air quality is bad. Hard to breathe. And we here in San Francisco are the fortunate ones.

6/30 AM Too Excited

In my excitement of approaching the halfway point in this project, I jumped the gun. I thought today was the day, but upon closer (any) calculation I realized that because of the leap day in February, the 183rd day is half a year. And that's tomorrow. I am actually glad that I made a mistake, because now I have a second chance to do something special to mark the occasion. Consider this ringing a preliminary...

End Of June SUNSETS

2008-06-30T21:38:00.000-07:00

6/23 8:36 PM, San Francisco No Cows on the Boulevard
Still foggy. We headed out to the corner with all of the cowbells and walked toward the so aptly named, Sunset Blvd.

6/24 8:36 PM (again) San Francisco, Stop! Thief!
Someone came into the Church during our meditation and stole a woman’s bag and jacket. When it was time to leave, people offered the woman something warm to wear and a ride home.

6/25 8:36 PM (again) San Francisco, Can You Hear Me Now?
The sky was such a fuzzy pink this evening. I don’t remember ever seeing it like that before. There are 800 fires burning in California right now. The most in recorded history at any one time. So while Norman strolled down to the corner with his chimes, I took pictures of the sky.

6/26 8:36 PM (again) San Francisco, 800 Fires
I trailed behind Norman and Carl as we walked down the street towards the ocean. The sun was just a little orange ball in the sky today. You could look right at it with your bare eye. The smoke from the fires mixes in with the fog to produce a heavily filtered muted light all day long. But come sunset, it was just as grey as the morning.

6/27 8:36 PM, San Francisco 500 Fires
We walked down toward the beach this evening at sunset. The air is so smoky now it’s hard to breathe. And we are 100’s of miles from the big fires. Here’s a map of the fires at the moment. They are all over the state. The sky is a uniform grey all day now with wisps of smoke laden fog blowing up the streets. Mid-day was a light grey and both the sunrise and sunset were a darker shade of grey. Just to get some idea of the number of fires- here’s a map showing the location of fires as of today.

6/28 8:36 PM (again) San Francisco, Intermission for the Sunset
Norman and I went to hear Pamela Z's new piece, Pendulum. Despite technical difficulties, Pamela is an incredible performer, and it was a wonderful evening. Unfortunately, I had to step out in the middle of one piece to catch the sunset. When I returned, Pamela was playing the piece Syrinx, where she recreates birdcalls with her voice. By slowing down actual bird song and learning it in her range at human speed, Pamela could then speed her voice up into the bird range and we humans certainly couldn't hear the difference. I wonder about the birds? Would they answer back or just be a little confused?

6/29 8:36 PM (again), San Francisco
This evening, Norman’s longtime friend Victor came to visit us on the way back to North Carolina. This is the end of Victor’s annual visit to his family in Sacramento and he stopped by on his way to the airport- just in time for the sunset. Thank you, Victor.

HOUSE CALLS ANYONE?

2008-06-25T18:37:00.001-07:00

6/22 PM HAVE BELLS, WILL TRAVEL
What about house calls? Please invite me to join you. I would love to visit and observe the sunrise with anyone who is already up at that time. We could ring bells together. Is anyone interested? Contact me here.

We hadn’t rung the big bell around the neighborhood for a long time so this evening in the middle of dinner we got up and Norman went out to the curb where the car was parked. Another mundane regular everyday event. I like how it has become a taking-in-stride kind of activity on the one hand and a grand event on the other. Other aspects that I like are the mini dramas that have occurred i.e. the series at the ferry building or the stalking of waiting strangers. I would like to develop more opportunities regarding the early morning search for interaction with other people who are out and about. Someone I met recently was so right when she said my project demands that I extend myself to seek and engage with other people, especially in the mornings.

Third Week of June- MOVIE SUNSETS

2008-06-24T20:43:00.000-07:00

I documented the evening sunset observances with little movies:

6/17 PM Going, Going, Gong
On my way out the door I noticed the final bit of sunlight on the curtains and decided to stay inside. The gong is a birthday gift from my sister. Thank you Lisa. This one is for you.

6/18 PM Rare Sunset at Ocean Beach. It's Warm!
Norman and I met Liz and Ramona at Ocean Beach for the sunset this evening. They took the streetcar and we met them as they got off the train. When we first got to the shoreline, we saw streams of pelicans flying north – like bird-cows going home. Today had been such a rare, hot day in the 90’s that there were lots of people on the beach scattered among the dunes or walking along the shore. All of us were staring and enjoying a beautiful, clear and not-windy moment at the beach. People actually applauded when the sun went down.

6/19 PM Wherever You Are, Whoever You're With
Krys Bobrowski, Karen Stackpole and I make up the current configuration of Vorticella now that Erin Esplenade has moved to Montana for her new job. So the three of us met for rehearsal in Oakland this evening in preparation for the Chapel of the Chimes summer Solstice event on Saturday. We all paused for a moment and observed the sunset with the entire household.

6/20 PM Sunset at the King of Thai Noodle House
. I took a dinner break from Kinkos where I was making invitations for tomorrow evening at Chapel of the Chimes. In the restaurant, I asked permission before ringing the bells inside. One young man wanted to know what I wanted the staff to do, and I said nothing. I just wanted to know if they minded us ringing the bells at the table. He said it was OK and then was very curious about it. He asked me “do you believe in something?” and I said no it was just about observing the sunrise and set. However, afterwards when I thought about it, I realized that I do believe in something although it’s hard to articulate. I believe in some unassailable connection we all share as living beings and the importance of recognizing and expressing that connection.

Third week of June- SUNRISE SOUNDS

2008-06-24T17:40:00.000-07:00

SUNRISE SOUNDSCAPES
I have returned to San Francisco from New York this week, bringing a nasty summer cold with me. While I haven't much energy in the morning for adventurous excursions, I have documented the soundscape of each morning as I observe the sunrise. I am a slacker this week. Sorry. Despite my lethargy, I did make a surprising discovery- the earliest time for the sunrise does NOT coincide with the solstice. The sun rises a minute later and holds there -all week long. Here we go toward winter...

6/16 AM Someday, a Tree
Cold outside and cold inside. I also have a cold. It’s summer in San Francisco. Besides the temperature, the biggest difference between mornings here and mornings in NY is how much quieter it is here. I walked around with those cymbal bells on strings, and you can actually hear them and hear them move from place to place. It’s such a different feeling wondering if people might actually hear the sounds of these bells as they wake up. This is the last morning of the earliest sunrises. Tomorrow, the sun will rise one minute later than today. Hallelujah! Am I the only person who is glad about this?

6/17 AM
While I am recovering from my air-conditioned induced cold, I am just ringing the bells around my house. Here’s an audio recording from the first morning that the sun begins to rise later. Although the sun is continuing to set later in the day, the sunrise has reversed its direction and now begins the inevitable march towards darkness.

6/18 AM
We rang inside the house this morning. The cell phone alarm I had set for the sunrise went off while we were ringing the bells. It made me realize how routine the whole thing has become. But I am so tired in the morning and still feeling sick so I have no energy for anything more adventuresome yet. Maybe next week…

6/19 AM
The still camera is on the fritz. I like recording sound only when I am at home so I will concentrate on that for a while. This morning I left the microphone just inside the doorway and ventured out into the back, passing over the threshold as I rang the bells. I like this sound only routine in the morning.

6/20 AM
While sun is still rising a minute later than it’s earliest moment for the year, we will continue to slowly inch into longer nights when the sun rises yet another minute later on the 23rd. This morning’s audio recording is from the back yard.

6/22 AM Morning After (the solstice)
Even though the sunrise and sunset times are shifting a minute here and there, the amount of daylight each day is 14 hours and 57 minutes. We will continue to have this much sunlight for the next few days. Today is same as yesterday. This morning I wanted to do a quiet, gentle ringing after yesterday evening’s exuberant one.

Summer Solstice AM and PM

2008-06-21T23:53:00.000-07:00

Low Key Sunrise
Early this morning it was still hot- left over from yesterday – and so unusual for San Francisco. Late last night the house was too hot. It felt like we had left the heat turned on by mistake, and this morning it was still warm. All of the windows in every room were open to cool off the house. So this morning when I woke up, the scarf that stands in for a curtain was moving very softly back and forth by the window. There was no need to leave the house as the outside had already taken over. This summer solstice was warm and very bright already. So we rang the bells in he bed. Even Malcolm was more curious than sleepy for a change.

MultiKey Sunset
The bell ringing this evening at the Chapel of the Chimes was really beautiful. While the video captures only a sliver of the indoor/outdoor experience, the audio recording captures the sound and spirit of the event much better. Because of its length (11 minutes), the audio recording is highly compressed so that it would fit on the ftp site.

This evening’s event was magical and once begun, it was hard to stop. There were close to 100 people ringing bells, jingling their keys, singing, crashing cymbals and continuing to perform their own music through the sunset bell ringing observance. I walked around 2 adjacent spaces with the recorder and captured the local sound. However, people incorporated the observance into their sets and Norman went outside and rang the loud bell in the back of the car. The exuberance of this experience reminded me of the evening sunset celebrations in India. I would love for this to happen everyday.

One scheduled performer withdrew from participating this year. He objected to the bell ringing on the grounds that it would be bad luck. From what I understand, this bad luck is somehow related to Vampires and is based in Chinese thought. I certainly do not wish to invoke or cause any harm with this activity and would like to know more about it. Does anyone have any information or insight into this?

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