A sunrise and a sunset- can you tell the difference?

I am in the library. Sunshine glare is pouring in off the sea through the wide windows. It’s getting filtered through the linen curtains but still makes my hair and my shoulder hot, and the side of my face. To my right are the book stacks. I can see all the back issues of Science magazine, Zoomorphology magazine. Behind me are the titles like Neurobiology of Invertebrates: Gastropod Brain, and Standard Catalog of Shells. Octopus. Cephalapod Behavior. A Survey and Illustrated Catalogue of the Teredinidae. I have been in heaven all morning as I work on my paper. I can watch the light change over the water, see the divers come and go on the dock below me: one minute they are all standing around planning their day in their cute little fleece jumpers. The next time I look up they are in their dry suits, hefting air tanks and BCDs onto our little aluminum dive boats. Next time they are gone, the dock is empty, and there is the Aukelet buzzing off into the channel, a gleaming comet with the sun glinting off the windows and a frothy wake angling out to dissipate behind it.

Here are some pictures that I took, not of today, but from our cruise on tuesday. Sunrise and Sunset. Can you tell the difference?

sunrise?

Awake yet?

Sunset?

Lyrics For Kelly

Woah!

I know I like you, and I know that you like me.  I wish we could love each other, but there’s no parking on my street.

Woah!

We could get something started.  I think I’d buy you a toothbrush.  We could walk around naked in the morning light.  If you could just crash here tonight.

I have a coffee pot, but it’s too big for one.  I have some beers in my fridge but I don’t want to drink them alone.  I really want to love you, so bad and so hard, but parking in my neighborhood is like a chastity belt to meeeeeeeeeeeeee.  Woah!

I’d make you an omelette and we’d both eat off the same plate.  Then we’d call in sick to work and be together the rest of the day.  I really want to love you, so bad and so hard.  I really want to love you, so bad and so hard.  I really want to love you.  I really want to love you ooo woah.  woah.  I want to love you!

Magic Mountain

I went to Six Flags Hurricane Harbor today with my friend Kelly and her two pre-teen charges, and everyone was worked up about how Six Flags is selling all their property to “some developer” and this is the last summer that either the water park or the amusement park are going to be open… after 45 years! On an LA time scale, that practically makes it a cultural institution, at least deserving of historic landmark status. But no, come November, the bulldozers and lumber trucks will take over, converting this centerpiece of every SoCal childhood into yet another nondescript people-house farm. Shock and sentimental disappointment aside, the pending sale invites interesting discussion in a variety of fields. How does the resource consumption of an amusement and water park compare to that of a housing development on the same number of acres? What about the revenue and jobs generated, one versus the other? Probably even more interesting than either of those two questions though, is the much deeper question of whether the potentially increased generation of revenue can outweigh the possibly increased strain on the resources available to any group of humans, anywhere. The facts to find out are: how much money does SFMM make? How much would a development? Who gets that money? and then, Where do all of the resources (electricity, gasoline, water… maybe food and employees, too?) come from? This case is especially condusive to study, because the site has already been developed for almost half a century; we are not building housing on virgin land, nor introducting a resource load much higher than that already present. In the case of housing vs. amusement park, the conscience war is clearly two-tiered. There are housing advocates, who will necessarily side with the devloper, because new housing is always needed, to drive prices down, and allow more people to live comfortably. But it must be pointed out that this is almost never a consideration to the developer. He is only in it for the money. How can we reconcile a developer’s natural acquisitiveness with the needs of lower-income families? And how can we reconcile those latter needs with the needs of an Earth, possily on the brink of ecological collapse?