[All filmography by Lulu. Ginna edited and produced it. The first song is There Ain't No Bugs on Me by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman. The second is Doc Watson singing Summertime. Corky is the name of the woman who handles and tells us about the bats.]
Then we drove along a maze of dirt roads that cut through glistening rice paddies like swollen veins.
Our destination was the far end of the Yolo Causeway bridge, whose underbelly is home to 250,000 (if you don’t include this week’s 125,000 babies) Mexican Freetail Bats.
It was interesting to see how the bats conduct their mass exodus from their roosts. Normally they live in caves, flocking from the mouth at twilight. No caves here, but apparently they still need something symbolic of an opening. For unknown reasons, a quarter of a million bats have decided a certain tree is the “opening,” and they fly along under the freeway from far and near until they reach it, emerging only then. They appeared in four waves. First, we’d see flashes of orange under the bridge as wings caught the sunset. And then seconds later, thousands of the tiny creatures — looking much bigger than they actually are — burst into the open, flapping up and over the tree in a fluid cord that thickened as it spiraled into the darkening sky.
The organization that sponsors this class is the Yolo Basin Foundation. They lead fascinating-sounding trips out into this northernmost part of the Delta, which is loaded with birds and natural drama. Check ‘em out. I’d like to go on more little outings.
As a belated b’day present for Lulu, we met up with P & J for a performance at the Freight. It was Cheryl Wheeler, who gave us her usual abundance of gut-laughs and music-induced emotion, pausing only for hot flashes. Her final number — and her last song ever at the original Freight — was the classic hound-oriented song, Howl at the Moon. Her descriptions of her life in rural Massachusetts made me want to live in New England.
Here’s a video A Certain Someone posted on YouTube:
Afterwards, I got to keep my Lulu for one whole night! She edited my final revisions of my application to SIT, for which help I am eternally grateful. How could I have spawned someone with such literacy skills!
Yesterday was my day to tutor my Bhutanese refugee. Before the lesson I met her at Oakland’s annual Refugee Day, an occasion I’d not known existed. Here’s a picture of her with her granddaughter.
One granddaughter. Many granddaughters. During part of the day’s ESL instruction we worked with singular and plural. I spontaneously flew around the room with plastic Aquafina bottles in my hands and placing them here and there.This bottle. That bottle. These bottles. Those bottles. Either it was helpful, or she had no idea what I was talking about: one or the other.
She’s been coughing a lot since I’ve known her, but today more than ever. I’d had a suspicion of why, but was afraid to acknowledge it. Sure enough, she has TB. She’s being treated for it, but ran out of medicine over a month ago. Also, some of her teeth are falling out. On Monday I’m going to try to get her a doctor’s appointment. She can’t do it herself because of her lack of English. She also doesn’t have medical insurance.
I’m also going to write to my volunteer agency to find out if it’s better if her social worker does this stuff, rather than I.
