the weblog of robin camille davis

This is a photo of a photo of the original California flag, raised in Sonoma in June 1846. It was created for the Bear Flag Revolt, a 26-day rebellion staged by Anglo settlers in California against the Mexican government (since CA was Mexican territory at the time). An independent “California Republic” was declared, with a president (William B. Ide) and everything. It was all a big to-do and hullaboo, but the rebels soon found out that the US had declared war on Mexico over a month earlier.

Bear Flag rebels: “Oh.”

And US forces soon occupied the territory. The president of the short-lived California Republic ended up enlisting as a private. Following a series of battles and sieges, California was ceded to the US in January of the following year. The Bear Flag Revolt’s “sole legacy” (according to a pretty smug Wikipedia) was the flag itself.

The bear on the flag has been redrawn as variously stantat (standing either on four feet or up on two like some kind of bear-person) or en passant (walking, likely toward freedom and/or crippling budget deficits). The red stripe, originally painted with a mixture of berry juice and brick dust, has remained. The early bears look pretty pathetic, more like marmots than anything fierce or intimidating. Thankfully the bear’s been redone.

More on the various flags of California here at this website curated by a retired history teacher.

One of the handiest things I’ve ever downloaded is Jumpcut. It extends your clipboard to 40+ items, which are easily accessed from the top of your (Mac only) screen:

I use it A LOT. Like you know when you’re filling out an application online, and you’re afraid you’ll lose everything when it times out on you? That has happened to all of us. You can copy/paste your responses into Word, and copy/paste them back out if you have to… Or you could just use Jumpcut.

Or like when you paste something into a chat window and press Enter before making sure what you pasted was what you wanted, and you forgot that the last thing you copied was actually something embarrassing…? Well, anyway. Jumpcut. There you go.

The other day, I watched Desk Set on Netflix Instant, starring a loudmouthed Katharine Hepburn and an aging Spencer Tracy. She’s the head librarian at the reference room of the Federal Broadcasting Company in New York; he’s a visiting engineer working on a secret supercomputer project that, it is rumored, will render all the librarians obsolete.

“Desk Set” (1957) continued »

ROAD TRIPS + STOPS ALONG THE WAY

Bottom line: San Diego to Providence, summer 2009, with Meredith & Crow

• Paulden, AZ, to visit Caiti [ + Grand Canyon]
• Albuquerque, NM ( + Los Alamos)
• Denver, CO, to pick up Crow
• Fort Scott, KS, to visit Deven
• Petersburg, IL, to visit Jordan
• Chicago, IL, to visit Taylor
• Niagara Falls, NY ( + Buffalo)
• Kingston, NY, to visit Arune ( +Woodstock)

Top line: Providence to San Diego, summer 2010, with Meredith

• Youngstown, OH
• Champaign, IL
• Chicago, IL, to visit Taylor again ( + Madison, WI)
• Rochester, MN, to visit Joanna
• Custer, SD, to camp ( + Mt. Rushmore + Wind Cave)
• Yellowstone, WY, to camp
• Spokane, WA, to visit the Johnsons
• Vancouver, BC, to visit Elyse
• Portland, OR, to visit Nicole ( + Seattle)
• Crescent City, CA, to visit… what were their names, Mere? [Bill + Becky]
• Palo Alto, CA, to visit Christina and Christine ( + San Francisco)
• Echo Park, CA, to visit Becca

Middle line: San Diego to Champaign, IL, summer 2010, with Mom

• Sacramento, CA ( + Donner Pass)
• Battle Mountain, NV
• Laramie, WY
• Des Moines, IA

Conservative approximation of number of miles driven during these road trips: 11,274

I want to be this:

It’s part of the new fall/winter collection just released by APC. It’s all pretty great, for both men and women, and in typical simple APC style… But I have just two questions.

A.P.C. continued »

We visited an extremely silly Dave Eggers show at Electrical Works in San Francisco. You can see pretty much all of it here. This suspicious chihuahua was probably my favorite.

• “and stuff”
• “type thing”
• “_______-wise”

There are more. Suggestions?

N.B. “Like” (as a filler word) is too easy a target to nominate for this list, particularly because the author utilizes it often.

we are driven to distraction, cursing contrition
contradicting convictions, criss-crossing losses
we are fostering affection
afflicting ticking time bombs
kissing lips, hips, skipping steps to better forget or get
what is you &
what is not possible,
we make possible
cross-crossing possibilities, we
undo, we
untie, we
uncover belated lovers’ letters’ rougher bluffing
scrubbing clean our crazy ailing all our
cheap thrills will sink, bottom heavy
levy love on me, we’re never
cursing convictions or contradicting correction
we fix a slick unmixing,
a thick untwisting, we
stand up
bow out
out run ourselves.