Today is my immigration anniversary— or to be more exact, my migrant anniversary, since movement & legality don’t always coincide. All of us migrants have them, official & unofficial, not always on the same date. Private feast/fast days of loss & relief.

One good thing. ❤️

It feels somehow right for the times that I’ve felt more earthquakes in the past six months than in two decades of living in California before now.

Good to be welcomed into a huge community remembering her today. (That tee shirt! ✊🏻☮️❤️)

Last night for a work-related do, I wore my lovely cappuccino silk Posh Frock™️ for the first time in more than a decade. Was troubled by a prickling in the small of my back. Took it off at evening’s end to find a dry cleaner’s paper tag stapled into the seam. Not exactly a princess with a pea, moi.

Sweet simple chicory. I can never see it without being transported to the chalk Downs, the Ridgeway, & my mother praising its humble loveliness.

One of those days when I could have — would have — yearned to have — walked forever, if time only allowed (sigh). Migratory siskins & Western bluebirds gathering in the dry grass & on the wires. The honey scent of coyote bush. Wind beginning to reveal the far bay in scraps of fog & bursts of light.

This would actually have been my dear Yorkshire-Lancashire granny’s most awful terror. (I can’t laugh at her too much, although we always did — as I am myself somewhat afraid of… tortoises.)

New album drop from The Spectral Horde.

The perfect listen on my way to a Sunday ramble. (Sadly, not by train.)

Fascinating stuff! The history & class politics of England’s footpaths. “What I wasn’t expecting was to fall in love with the infrastructure I was walking on.” Saw Jack Cornish interviewed by our dear Jamie N last year but this was all new to me. @countrystride.bsky.social

This is not the fascism that makes trains run on time.

Late-summer camouflage. Wee beastie had small, uneven horns & a wet-vinyl nose. He stayed so very still, as close as we were.

Which movie do you consider to be perfect?

Here to note that Tom Hollander’s audiobook rendering of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ is very very good indeed, my brothers. As was evident when I listened to his ‘A Legacy of Spies’ (Le Carré), he is exceptional at doing nasty. (May also be a good actor, dunno 😉)

anti-abortion = anti-women, it doesn't get more simple than that.

Correction: it’s Birders of Palestine

Male Palestinian sunbird (Cinnyris osea), photographed in Gaza by sisters Lara & Mandy Sirdah, aka Palestinian Birders. This one on its way to NYC, to one of the friends who helps me (here in my infinitely better circumstances) to keep looking up — & singing —

A very large, muscular visitor on the desert camera last night. First time we’ve had confirmation (sort of) of a cougar/mountain lion nearby. (Just behind the house!) Thrilling — & a bit unnerving. Not exactly a classic wildlife photo, I realise.

Pre-dawn suburban wanderers: raccoon saw my still, forked death shape, stood up tall with his fingers spread, sniffing the damp air. Bumbled away like a strange hunched cat. Or half-cat, half-witch.

One for the ages. All of us, clutching our labradors at 4am as the world collapses around us. Also, a reminder to thank & appreciate your veterinary workers.

One of my favourite moments in a film ever: David Niven in A Matter of Life & Death, thinking he has died & woken in the afterlife — “Oh, I always hoped there’d be dogs.”

Couldn’t afford a long run this morning, but I could squeeze in some stolen minutes of hills & unadulterated sky. It’s bread & roses. Pure bread* & roses. *all right, I confess I stopped & bought a bun too

Peace at the start of the day, peace at the close of it. So much in between to make me forget that.

Trans rights are human rights.

I cannot be expected to work in these conditions.

How your email finds me:

Proud of & grateful to my UK comrades for resisting this. photo by Jordan Pettitt/PA

The California conkers (buckeyes) are well on their way. We’re in that confusing microseason here when the afternoons are hotter than they’ve been all summer but the nights are cool & dewy, birds gather in great numbers, & all around are signs of autumn.

The moon is a tilted cup; the horizon, embers of fire. It’s cool still, an owl calls, & the robins have just begun muttering under the trees.

The obscene contrast between these two images.

You know how Germany and South Africa have had to (and still are) coming to terms with the dreadful things they’ve done? It seems like the US is an example of what a country is like when they refused to go through that process Looks like they’re gearing up for yet another dreadful thing to regret

1. first coffee of the day, with a swirl of creamy milk half-sitting on the crema 2. when a dog looks earnestly into my eyes & kisses me on the lips 3. when a dog leans against me 4. the honey-orange scent of coyote bush 5. slipping just-showered into clean cotton sheets

SPUDLET

Really feeling it tonight that I am one of the 100s of thousands of people watching their life’s work be destroyed, day by day, by the US government. Many are in far worse circumstances than I. But I’m hereby claiming my right to spend one evening in weeping & despair. Then back to the work.

Could things please, please stop getting worse for a minute? UC Berkeley, bastion of campus dissent & free speech, has provided the federal government with the names of 160 employees & students accused (not adjudicated) of antisemitism (definition unknown). Judith Butler is one of them:

Misogynistic, ableist reviews only strengthen these damaging attitudes and beliefs. This is a perceptive critique of a critique - one that tells us more about the reviewer in the Scotsman than the book he's reviewing. #booksky #naturewriting #lifewriting #memoir #chronicilllness #longcovid

Reminding me of the time I walked into my 5th-floor office to see a squirrel jump out onto the window ledge with my lunch apple in its mouth. No trace remained of my sandwich, left on the desk with the apple.

I’m glad that Daniel Friebe ( @thecyclingpodcast.bsky.social ) has been direct in his critique of the total absence of the UCI in light of the huge protests at the Vuelta a España. But it’s really striking that no one involved—commentators, officials, riders—seems willing to use the word “genocide.”

I used to drive through Folkston, GA, often. I had no idea it harboured this place of institutional cruelty — of course I didn’t! Because the disappearing of undocumented migrants is key to the policy…

Why do you think so many fascist agitators are abusers! They want to hoard the cruelty, not abolish it! They see it as the privilege of the truly human to dehumanise! For them it's the sovereign who decides the state of molestation!

Today we’re getting one of those wild season-shifting days here when the temperature rises 35 degrees (F) by afternoon. Now in the dewtime the diminishing moon lingers overhead & under the trees the migrant American robins cluck in quiet protest as I pass.

COYOTE CAM! 🥰😍

Nothing to put one off swimming quite like noticing a tarantula hawk wasp by the poolside.

"The US insists no one has died because of aid cuts. Shahnaz and her baby's deaths are not recorded anywhere. Neither are countless others." I don't believe in vengeance or hell. I can only hope the people who did this will see & realise what they've done & spend the rest of their lives atoning.

Something somewhere, around & above me in these woods, is humming with bees. I’m absolutely mystified as to what it is.

Instead of reading the news this morning, I baked. Much to be recommended in this, occasionally, for renewal of calm. I’m taking Russian black bread & ginger scones to a friend — & here in the old car it smells amazing, for once!

The most perfect, gentle, golden September morning. Deer in the fields — & in the road ahead — & sadly, on the roadside, with vultures. Yet still the peace that comes from a few early migrant birds singing, Sunday, the drive to the coast.

The ice pack on the back of the neck was an excellent addition. 👍🏼🙏🏻

Ok, let’s hope your good advice helps because I’m ready to do the thing!