Jake Turner

this is my nephew jake. he lives in my home town:
new york new york (it's a wonderful town !)
this picture was taken on jake's 16th birthday.
november 7th. 2004. happy birthday jake !!

here's another picture of jake. sleeping on the couch
with leonard when he came out to california in 1996.



jake came out again last summer & we had a great time.
come again soon jake, we all miss you. happy new year !!

Balloon Man

Boing Boing: Balloon man

Cluster balloonist John Ninomiya has a web site archiving his high-flying adventures:

"Five years ago, I decided to fulfill a childhood dream by learning to fly with a cluster of large helium balloons. I have made twenty-three helium cluster balloon flights since that time. All of them have been among my most magical flying experiences..." With half a dozen pilots worldwide, cluster ballooning remains something between an extreme sport and a personal eccentricity.

Link (via Slashdot)

It Takes Less Than A Minute

The Animal Rescue Site

i wasn't going to blog today. i need to tear myself away from the blogosphere and attend to some chores around here. get more wood from the woodshed and start a fire so i can turn off this bloody expensive electric heater. have the BMW towed to Napa because the breaks seemed to have gone south. (gave the make, year & model number to the AAA lady & she asked: "now is 74 the model number?" "no" i answered, "74 is the year - 2002 is the model number") take a bath, which means moving the radiator from room 16 (the computer room) to the bathroom to warm it up. finding somebody to come and haul away the old wood-stove which is staining the deck with rust from the rain. & most important of all: loading the back-up files from my firewire drive to kays "new" G3 powerbook that a friend gave her because some asshole broke into her office & stole her iBook. i promised her last night i would get it done today.

so while i'm "holding" for AAA on the cell phone someone calls and i push the OFF button instead of the ON button and lose both calls. the cell phone says that jessie has called so i call her at the gallery and the machine picks up instead so i call her cell phone & leave a message. i don't want to use any phones or go on line & the house is cold so i put on a jacket and start emptying the ashes and then jessie calls back. she wanted to let me know that she was forwarding a group mail, which she hates doing, but a friend has sent it to her and it helps abandoned animals and all you have to do is click on the link and when you get to the site you hit the purple button. "it takes less than a minute" she says. "no problem" i tell her.

so after calling AAA and cingular (because yesterday i hit the ON button instead of the OFF button after i finished a call and when i went back to get the phone, a long time later, it was still ON. "there's not much we can do about this" the cingular lady said. "how long was it on?" i asked. "113 minutes" she said, "but you have 600 minutes left on your 1.000 anytime minutes plan so you should be ok". good grief— what next ? well one thing after another and i finally got back to room 16 &; jessies e-mail and hit the link and hit the purple button and 113 minutes later i got up and staggered out of the room.

so during that time, i went to the animal rescue site and gave 6 bowls of food to a rescued animal in a shelter or sanctuary. i did something or other about u.s. wilderness & i saved some wildlife habitat. i went to the hunger site and gave 1.1 cups of staple food. i went to a site that has a cow with a balloon coming out of her mouth that says: "what's a blog ?" where i met up with some "strong women". i went to the ranger rick site (i love ranger rick !) i didn't go to the camel vaccination site or the mercy corps water kits site because i was afraid. i did spend a good deal of time looking at sox with cats on them as possible xmas presents for friends with whom i have sworn oaths NOT to exchange xmas presents. (i can tuck them away for birthdays, i told myself.) i didn't feed a rescued horse & i didn't help save the jaguars for which i shall burn in hell but i did save 11.4 square feet of an endangered rain-forest & i didn't buy any socks.

so
now you try it:The Animal Rescue Site

FREE AT LAST

the Elephant Sanctuary

"From Chains to Sanctuary

Lota the Elephant is finally Rescued
after Years of Suffering

Hohenwald, TN (November 17, 2004)
Lota a circus elephant that has been the focus of three
lawsuits, the inspiration for an international petition
for her release and responsible for raising awareness of the plight of captive elephants worldwide, will finally be released to the Elephant Sanctury in Tennessee.

do you know about the Elephant Sanctuary?

do you like elephants ?
well you will love this place. i have spent more hours than i care to admit at this web site, looking at all the pictures & reading the diaries. although the stories of these elephants are sad and terrible, the great thing is that they all have happy endings. these old girls get to spend the rest of their days in a place that must seem like heaven to them after the hell they've lived through. i guess it's a sancuary for me too. (it must be time for my nap in the woods.)


here's a picture of Lota and her friend Misty,
(released from Hawthorn with Lota)
Home Free in Tennessee:

Diary - November 22, 2004

Lota and Misty are really settling in. Lota has taken to the food with a zeal. She is eating non-stop. At this rate she will gain her weight back in no time. We are collecting samples for lab work to get a total picture of her health. In the meantime, we are coaxing Lota to start eating her supplements of vitamins and minerals which in some cases is an acquired taste. She is in good spirits, sleeps outside at night and purrs whenever her caregivers approach and pet her. Misty is a character, full of energy and play. She has a stiff front leg but that does not stop her from running around her yard trumpeting when Scott coaxes her with the 4-wheeler. Both Lota and Misty appear to be experiencing some joy in their lives.

there are still 14 elephants chained up in a warehouse at the Hawthorn Corp in Illinois. the sancuary is trying to raise the $ to rescue them so if there's anything you can do to help-

FEEL FREE !


"delhi naps peacefully as the sun sets."


here's a great picture of delhi from the elecam.
delhi was confiscated from the Hawthorn Corp
in November 2003 and moved to the sanctuary.
she was the first ever USDA confiscation of an
elephant. her story is horrifing and heartbreaking
but here she is, a year later, napping in the twilight.

FREE AT LAST

Dylan Smiles !

Dylan Smiles !

In this photo from video supplied by CBS, Bob Dylan smiles during an interview on Nov. 19, 2004, in Northampton, Mass., to be aired

Sunday Dec.5, 2004, on CBS's '60 Minutes'
magazine television show.(AP Photo/CBS)
Fri Dec 3, 2:35 PM ET Yahoo! News

Bob Dylan Says He's Not a Prophet

Bob Dylan's songs may have spoken for a generation
in the 1960s, but he never saw himself as more than
a singer-songwriter. "`You're the prophet.
You're the savior.' I never wanted to be a prophet or
a savior," Dylan tells Ed Bradley on CBS' "60 Minutes."

"Elvis maybe. I could see myself becoming him,"
Dylan says. "But prophet? No."

The idea of such a perception made him feel like
an "impostor," he says. "It was like being in an
Edgar Allan Poe story and you're just not that
person everybody thinks you are, though they
call you that all the time."

He added, "If you examine the songs I don't believe
you're going to find anything in there that says that
I'm a spokesman for anybody or anything, really."

One of Dylan's songs, "Like a Rolling Stone,"
was recently named the top song of all-time
by Rolling Stone magazine.

"No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged
and transformed the commercial laws and artistic
conventions of its time, for all-time," wrote senior
editor David Fricke.

But it's an honor Dylan downplays.

"You know, the list, they change names....
quite frequently, really. I don't pay much attention
to that," says the 63-year-old singer, who recently
published his memoir, "Chronicles: Volume One."

The interview is Dylan's first TV
interview in 19 years, CBS said.
Sunday Dec.5, 2004, on CBS's '60 Minutes'

I'm Bored Today

Slashdot | In Japan, Old People Talk to Robots

from the just-visit-your-grandmother dept.

stupidfoo writes "AFP is reporting that, starting today, "Japan's growing elderly population will be able to buy companionship in the form of a 45-centimeter (18-inch) robot " designed to help them avoid senility. The robot, named Snuggling Ifbot and developed by Dream Supply, will be able to respond to verbal commands. "If a person tells Snuggling Ifbot, "I'm bored today," the robot might respond, "Are you bored? What do you want to do?"". It retails for 576,000 yen (5,600 dollars) and there is no English version currently available but "its makers plan to program the robot in English -- not for export, but to teach the language to Japanese children.""

Got an old Mac? Send it to school.

Got an old Mac? Send it to school. - The Unofficial Apple Weblog - apple.weblogsinc.com

Posted Dec 3, 2004, 10:35 AM ET by Barb Dybwad
MacTreasures is accepting donations for their 2004 Christmas Macintosh Donation program. The program repurposes old Macs for use in U.S. schools. Your donation is tax exempt.

To start the donation process, send an email to unusual@mactreasures.com with the specifications of the equipment you are donating and the city and state in which the Mac is located. You will receive further information regarding the logistics of the donation and the tax exemption.

Surfing the Desert

In the Mojave
by Chris Clarke

surfing the desert and drifting east from the owens valley to death valley & down to the east mojave where we use to love to wander, i stumbled across another desert lover who has written a wonderful piece about the mojave. chris clarke is not exactly a desert rat, or like us, another desert rat wannabe, he is the editor of Faultline, California's Environmental Magazine which is a great on-line zine put out by Earth Island Institue which also publishes The Earth Island Journal & the (free) Island Wire Newsletter. Chris also writes a blog: Creek Running North he writes about the desert & the mountains & his neighborhood & hiking & nature & sometimes love & going back to buffalo where we both lived in another lifetime. he's a really good writer & i enjoy him a lot.

(leonard wants to know: who's that in the creek?)


meet ZEKE in the comment below !!

leonard died last august

friends of leonard can still visit his website

meanwhile, leonard has been sending
messages and doing a lot of blogging.