MONDAY MEMORIES: MONTEREY 1999

I've been working at cleaning out cupboards, closets, boxes, and the like, and I ran across some pictures I haven't seen in a while. I guess that is one of the joys of cleaning: you find thngs you didn't even know you had!

In 1999 our family took a trip to Monterey Bay over one of the three-day weekends. Sam had just gotten his first surfboard (which he still has), and was pushing as only Sam could push to try it out in some real surf, so part of our trip had to be to go to the beach, even though it was freezing cold. We also rented kayaks and paddled around the Bay, seeing all kinds of fun animals.
Rachael was 18 and graduating in a few months, Sam was 14 and in 8th grade, and Andrew was about to turn 11 and in 5th grade. Good times. It is hard to believe it has been ten years.

MUSINGS ON ART: BANKSY'S GRAFFITI

In a previous post entitled March Serendipity: But Is It Art? I highlighted an improbable art show that opened in the bowels of the New York City Subway. June's serendipitous art moment has to do with my interest in an infamous British street artist (read: tagger or graffiti-ist) named, simply, "Banksy."

Banksy's graffiti first appeared around 1993 on trains and walls around Bristol, England. During the next decade, his work cropped up all over the United Kingdom, as well as in places as diverse as Vienna, San Francisco, New York, Barcelona, Paris, and even Israel.

No one seems to be sure exactly who Banksy is, but his work is very distinctive. He combines some freehand painting with stenciling and uses jarring satire of present culture or politics as subject matter. In typical tagger fashion, his works appear suddenly, unwitnessed until completed. Banksy himself is reported to have said, "I am unable to comment on who may or may not by banksy, but anyone described as 'being good at drawing' doesn't sound like banksy to me."

Here, for your viewing enjoyment, is some of Banksy's work. Let me know if you think it is art or not.

More recently, Banksy has satirized some famous paintings, but that's the subject for another post.

For more information on Banksky, see his website.

PERU: MUSHROOMS IN THE JUNGLE

Did you know there are about 14,000 known varieties of mushrooms? That's a lot of fungus amongus. I read recently that the itt-bitty spores of mushrooms are the hardest naturally-made substance on Earth. They are very durable. In fact, there are actually scientists who think mushroom spores are capable of space travel and that some fungi found on Earth may have originally came from outer space! (I think that if you believe this, you just might be from outer space yourself.)

Americans are relatively light mushroom eaters. On average, we consume 4 lbs./person/year. However ASIAN-Americans eat an average of 9 lbs./person/year. In Asia itself, the Chinese consume an average of 22 lbs./person/year, and in Japan it is a whopping 29 lbs./person/year.

Mushroom farming is picking up speed in the U.S., and wild mushroom foraging is becoming a very popular hobby. See this website if you are interested in foraging. Some people have a business of harvesting wild mushrooms from remote areas they keep secret, then selling those mushrooms to upscale restaurants for large sums of money. Who knew?

We saw many mushroom varieties in Peru that we had either never seen before or seen only in pictures. We didn't have the courage to try eating any of them. It's probably a good thing. Here are a few:

The colors and shapes were wonderful--much more variety than the ones we get in our lawn in California. We were wishing Andrew, our budding mycologist, had been with us to help identify them.

So that's it--the highlights of our Great Peruvian Adventure. It's only taken about two months to process it all on this blog, but now that I'm done, I'm wondering:

WHERE ARE WE GOING NEXT, BOB????

PERU: BUGS AND BIRDS AND BATS, OH MY! Peruvian Animal Adventures, Part 2

As previously mentioned, once we got to the jungle, we didn't see any domesticated animals (other than dogs, of course). When we first got to our cabanas, we did see these little guys sneaking around the grounds:

At first we thought they were capybaras, but we learned later that they were agoutis, rodents related to the guinea pig but larger and with much longer legs.

This, if you can believe it, is a termite nest high up on the trunk of a very tall tree. The black viney-looking stuff curling around the trunk below the nest is actually a tunnel, built by the termites, which they take to get from their nest to the ground.

This snail was at least as big as my hand:
A "cute" little tree snake:
A true centipede:
I hate spiders, I really do. This tarantula was humongous:

And this was the biggest spider web I have ever seen. Ever. It was at least 12 feet long:
A beautiful moth:
And an unusual cricket:
Bats lined up like on a tree trunk during the daytime:
A monkey leaping from branch to branch:
What the natives call a "stinky bird." Apparently it has exceptionally bad breath:
A beautiful blue and gold macaw:

This gorgeous bird, called a "trogon," lives in the top of the rainforest canopy:

And our final wild animal sighting, a caiman, swimming in the Madre de Dios River at night. I'm glad I was in a boat!

UPCOMING: 'SHROOMS (Final Peruvian post)

PERU: BUGS AND BIRDS AND BATS, OH MY! Peruvian Animals, Part 1

This post is somewhat inappropriately titled since for the first half of our trip, the only animals we saw were domesticated ones. However, I didn't think a post entitled "Llamas and Dogs" sounded all that interesting. The bugs and birds and bats will be featured in the follow-up to this post.

I love llamas. I think you'll be able to figure that out by looking at these pictures:

Isn't this cute? A llama chilling with two women down the street from our hotel.

We saw lots of llamas at Machu Picchu.

In fact, they use llamas to mow the grass there. Genius.

Aren't they CUTE? I want to have one in my backyard. Think of what we could save on gardeners and fertilizer! (A pet llama would certainly be preferable to a pet rattlesnake, don't you think? I DO.)

Even the Peruvians themselves think llamas are cute. In fact, they like them so much that they had one sculptor put a llama on this poor lady's head. (Actually, they asked for a FLAME to be on her head, and the Spanish word or flame is "llama," and, well, you get the idea.)

In case you, like this sculptor, are confused about llamas, this poem should help:

The one-l lama,
He's a priest.
The two-l llama,
He's a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
There isn't any
Three-l lllama.

--Ogden Nash

Okay, let's move on.

Other than llamas, the animal we saw the most of was dogs. They were EVERYWHERE. I've never seen so many dogs in my life. If happiness is a warm puppy (thank you, Charles Schultz), Peruvians are the happiest people on earth.
This poor lady obviously doesn't have a dog, so she had to take her donkey out for a walk instead. (Still better than walking a rattlesnake.)

And these Peruvians are REALLY confused about why their dogs make such funny noises:

So there you have it. Llamas and dogs.

As a preview of my next Peruvian Animal Post, here is a picture of a lovely visitor to our hotel room in Aguas Calientes:
Totally creepy. (But they get bigger in the Amazon.)