Early Summer Santa Barbara

Summer in Santa Barbara often means fire, in fact, we have only two seasons, wet and fire. This year, not so much wet. So I entered May and June with some personal trepidation about the fire this time. Fog is boring, but every foggy day  is a day without fire! The cat paws of dampness reached up the mountain slopes to engulf us after a brief window of bright clear sky and slipped away on light breezes by afternoon. Now in August, we've had boring, but not burning! Light breezes, but no sundowners of dragon's breath.

Brown Pool

Why this is important: 1. Our swimming pool morphed into a brown pool. It's better than it sounds. Seventy-seven tons of gravel and 10 tons of decomposed granite turned our old pool into our new bocce court and a creative one at that. There's none of that straight-line thinking with an over-abundance of granite to be covered by the bouncing balls. The rules play the same and no one gets wet!

The New Pool

Red Rocks in SB

Bocce, on cool summer evenings, is a great game for gathering and sharing with friends and family. On a hot summer day, well, we might be wishing for the splashy sort of pool again. 

2. Hiking is more pleasant and longer, strenuous hikes can stretch further into the sizzling summers days. 3. There are fewer air tankers to cover the fires AND they were busy in Colorado. Ok, the priority might be debatable, but it works for me.

Where you see these rocks the wall of soaring heat usually melts my summer hiking resolve, but we had the good fortune to catch these ice-cream boulders before they melted. Only turkey vultures and a few hang gliders get these views when the heat turns on. How did red-rock material end up in SB where the sandstone came from the ocean? Hmmm.

We hosted our old friend Kaan Kocali who lived with us back in the Twentieth Century (1980s) for all too brief a time. We reminisced about times when Kaan and Jen were teens in what turned out to be the last high school year for both of them. Kaan got a degree and Jen, well, she went to college next. Here they are again at lunch comparing notes on family and careers.

Frieda is Launched

In graduate school I was on the "staff" of Zeitgeist, which we called a sporadical. I liked the connotation of a random periodical and it was also a little radical, at least it was politically painful for some folks. We lampooned the faculty, the psych department and the university from time to time. This blog is reminiscent as a sporadical without much radical, and I was feeling nostalgic.

Here's our first reader anywhere!

We had the book launch for Frieda and had a great turnout of people at the Goleta Library. We read before the launch the worst that would happen would be that only two people show up, but all they want is directions to the bathroom. Sure enough, we had one person looking for the way to the women's room. We had a lockout when the library closed and they didn't tell me they were closing the door to our area as well. Fortunately Bob Ehrmann called from behind the door and we got that remedied! It was fun way to start this book off. We raised over $650 with the launch and the first couple weeks of sales. Thanks for your help and thanks to Kaan for such a good price on the book.

Too soon after the Launch we returned Kaan to LAX and he flew home to Ankara to continue his business in entertainment law.

Here's Kaan talking up the book

NatureTrack.org is now selling The Adventures of Frieda and Her Friends on the product page and profits continue to go to support that great organization. The book is also now available at Chaucer's Bookstore in Santa Barbara and the Book Loft in Solvang as well as (this will help so many of you) the Shaw Stationery and Book Store in Klamath Falls, OR. I hope you'll refer friends who are looking for a kids book to these locations, or have them contact me (nord.nord@gmail.com).

Frieda Figurine

Here is the bonus I wasn't expecting at all. Kaan brought a terrific figurine of Frieda in the depths of despair when she first learns she is destined for... finishing school instead of fishing school. I'm glad I'm old and can gush about things like this and not worry about my manly place in life. Isn't this the cutest thing you've seen? I am more than biased. Mesut Gürkan created the illustrations for Frieda and this little figurine that he sent for me.

Thanks for all your support!