Approaching the Solstice

December 13, 2008
Sunset 4:29 PM Brooklyn, NY


It was brisk here today, even in the sunshine. So I just wandered out into the shelter of the back of the building at sunset to see what I could see and to say goodbye to the day. The trains rattled by on the bridge as usual and there was a steady stream of cars passing in both directions. There’s no way to see the sun from there, but it is possible to see some reflections in the windows of a very tall loft building on the other side of the bridge. A somewhat more subtle but prettier indicator is the pink reflection coming off the dome of the bank down the street. I watched the pink fade and checked in with the window across the way and just stood there ringing the bell each time it faded away. Eventually the color faded too.

OM to the train

December 12, 2008
Sunrise 7:10 AM. Brooklyn, NY.

Connie and Liz stayed in Brooklyn with me overnight and we all got up to ring the bells this morning. It was too cold for me and too noisy to stay outside, so Liz and Connie greeted the day and the subway passengers. Connie also sang - very calmly in the face of all that noise. She and Liz recorded their greeting and we sent it to free103point9 for tomorrow’s daily broadcast.

More or less fog

December 1 & 3, 2008 
Sunrises 7:06 & 7:08 AM. San Francisco, CA

More photos at sunrise from my backyard in San Francisco. Same view. More or less fog.

This evening (12/3), we arrived home a few minutes after the sun had set but rang the big bell anyway, just in case anyone wanted to come over and join us. Nobody did, but Mr. Paul from across the street came out and stood in his driveway although I think that was a coincidence.

Who's Who- Sunwatching on the Radio

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"

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

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.

Where have all the birds gone?

11/26 AM

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- sometimes. 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.

Third Week of November

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.