There was yet another birth in 1971 in the Santa Clara Valley that played into the history of personal computing. This was a new performance arts center on the campus of De Anza Community College in Cupertino. It was dedicated in the year of my birth and it was christened: Flint Center for the Performing Arts.

In my personal history, this 2,600 seat auditorium had been the location of a few field trips and an occasional performance of The Nutcracker around the holidays. The set up of the auditorium is with seating front and center with two side aisles, but without  a center aisle. Perhaps not the best design for a patron with a weak bladder!

After High School I attended De Anza and I even took a film class in the back of Flint Center.

What writes Flint Center into the digital annals of Silicon Valley history was what occurred here on January 24, 1984. In this ominous Orwellian year, a company that started in a garage in Los Altos, was going to take on the Davids of the computing world with the introduction of their new computer. The company would be Apple Computers and it’s new product, which was launched here at Flint Center, was named the Macintosh.

Flint Center was chosen as the sight of the annual stockholders meeting and the Mac team walked the short distance to the auditorium from their building near De Anza Boulevard.

The auditorium was packed in anticipation for Apple’s new computer. The fervor was stoked by the Riley Scott directed ad that was shown during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII. The now famous “1984” ad depicts a dystopian world where mindless drones march in lock step and a hammer wielding woman runs toward the screen thats projecting “Big Brother”. She throws the hammer at the screen and the drones stare on in opened mouthed awe as the screen explodes. The ad ends with he words, “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984””

Steve Jobs, as chairman, opened the meeting by quoting the second verse to the Dylan song, “The Times They Are a-Changin'”. He then unveiled the machine that he knew would change the world.

In the late 1980’s our family owned a Macintosh SE. I liked the design on the computer and the warm and friendly fonts and designs. But soon after that, Apple computers moved outside of my price range.

Flint Center was used for two other Apple events and the performing arts center has been used as a filming location for two of the three films made about Jobs since his death in 2011.

Here is the “birth certificate’ of Calvin Flint Center of the Performing Arts.

When and where was the genesis of Silicon Valley? What started the charge from an agrarian valley to the world’s epicenter of innovation and technology? What was the Pandora’s box that set the change in motion?

Ironically, it was on the campus of a  university whose nickname is “The Farm”. To the rest of the world it is known as Stanford University.

It was on the Stanford campus that an engineering faculty member, Dr. Fredrick Terman, encouraged his students to start their own businesses and keep them in the Santa Clara Valley instead of joining established companies in the east coast. Herman has become known as the father of Silicon Valley. Two of his students heeded his advice and started their business in a humble garage in Palo Alto. Their names where William Hewlett and David Packard.

This garage is now known as “the Birthplace of Silicon Valley”. It was in this small detached garage, in 1939,  that Hewlitt and Packard built their first product, an audio oscillator.

Fredrick Terman also encourage the development of local businesses by convincing Stanford University to develop a 700 acre business park on Page Mill Road, just south of the campus. The park was built in 1951 and early tenants were Varian, Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed, and General Electric. The park was renamed Stanford Research Park and it is still the address of the main headquarters of the company that started in a Palo Alto Garage on Addison Avenue.

In the next post I will sketch another garage that birthed one of Silicon Valley’s most famous companies. This garage sits on land that was once an apricot orchard and the company that starting in this garage changed the face of the Santa Clara Valley perhaps more that the two Stanford grads that labored away in a small green shed in a Palo Alto neighborhood.

 

At my cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the redwood deck that faces northwest, over the San Lorenzo River and the hillside of trees beyond, has become a touchstone for my journaling. This view and this amphitheater has inspired many sketches.

I have sketched this scene over the years in many different seasons and in different light. This view has helping me focus on the natural details that surround the cabin. I have found that by looking at a single location, the possibilities are infinite.

Many different animals visit the deck and the area around it. Chickadees, juncos, jays, nuthatches, acorn woodpeckers, black-headed grosbeaks, wood ducks, Cooper’s hawk, red-shouldered hawk, band-tailed pigeons, squirrels, deer, raccoons and skunks. All these creatures have found their way into my journals.

The redwood tree, that towers over the cabin, off to the right has been the inspiration for a dozens of sketches. I built a chickadee nest box that hangs about 30 feet above the ground. The actives of the chickadees during the spring and summer months have always been fodder for my musings. The above spread was done on Mother’s Day.

For some the “blue jay” of the redwoods is a noisy egg thief that is abhorred but to me the Steller’s jay provides hours of entertainment. The page above is from observing the jays as they bounce up the “Redwood Ladder” after getting seed at the feeder.

 

On a resent May afternoon I was greeted by the ethereal call of the Swanson’s thrush coming from down the hill on the near shore of the San Lorenzo. This neo-tropic migrant had returned to it’s summer nesting grounds. I created a spread to celebrated it’s arrival with a portrait, a map, and a bust of William Swanson, the British ornithologist that the thrush is named after.

This May I organized and participated in the biggest event in any fourth grader’s life at my school. Our annual three day, two night trip to the Coloma Outdoor Discovery School (CODS). My school has been part of this program for 23 years and CODS had just celebrated it’s 25th anniversary.

Coloma is the site of the event that changed California’s and the Nation’s history. In January of 1848, a carpenter from New Jersey, named James Marshall, spotted something shining in the tailrace of the sawmill where he served as construction superintendent. This was the “discovery” of gold that led to the Gold Rush of 1849, which is cited as the largest mass human migration in human history. California would never be the same. Just like my Greenhorns would be forever altered in their three day journey from being a Greenhorn to  becoming an experienced Sourdough miner.

The CODS campus  lies on the banks of the South Fork of the American River, just upstream from the site where the carpenter’s eyes fell on the shining beacon of gold. We are literally living in history, in a location that was ground zero for the enormous flood of emmigrants and immigrants that transformed the Golden State.

Each morning I would head out of my digs with my journal and paints. In the early morning, nature returns to the campus. The first harbinger of the dawn is the California towhee, with it’s emphatic “cheep” call. It is soon followed by the contact call of the California quail, then the harsh reprise of the western scrub-jay (Aphelocoma californica). Coloma is a place of truly California birds. When I stepped out of my door a covey of quail was to my left and six black-tail deer was to my right. The space in-between was populated with Canada geese and their downey goselings. The “wake-waka-waka” call of the acorn woodpecker was coming from the trees above.

I turned left, the quail scuttled off to the brush and I headed downstream  with no destination but an urge to capture my experience in ink and watercolor. To my right was the American River, the river that Sam Brannan emoralized on May 12, 1848, when he held aloft a bottle of gold dust and announced to the crowded San Francisco street, “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!”

I headed out to the very edge of campus, just shy of Troublemaker Rapids. I saw a pieced of exposed granite surrounded by grass. I had not seen his rock before. Two mortar holes were worn into the granite. These holes were created and used by the native people of Coloma Valley to pound acorns into meal.

Acorns were a valuable food resource to native Californians providing protein and carbohydrates as well as a source of vitamins A and C. The grinding rock was silent now. The ancient grinding songs are gone but the sound of the swollen river working its way through Troublemaker Rapids and the calls of acorn woodpecker and scrub-jay, the other inhabitants of Coloma Valley that use acorns for sustenance, remain.

I set down my paints and journal and walked to the banks of the American and filled my cup with the icy snowmelt. I returned to the grinding rock and I started my sketch.

Sketching the grinding rock on the CODS campus with the waters of the South Fork of the American River.

My second sketch was found much closer to my digs, across the dirt road in fact. Like the thousands that rushed into Coloma Valley in 1848 and 1849 this was an invasive species. It is known by many derivative monikers. My favorites are “stink tree”, “ghetto palm”, and “tree of Hell”. It is known to science as Ailanthus altissima, and it’s common name is tree of heaven. It’s native home is the celestial kingdom: China.

The tree was brought to California in the 1890’s by Chinese immigrants, who sought their fortune in the gold fields. It is commonly found in abandoned Chinese mining camps.

What really interested me was the two active cavity nests that were in the upper reaches of the truck. The bottom cavity was being used by a pair of European starling. Each time the adults returned with food, the begging calls of the chicks could be heard from the front porch of my digs. The upper hole was occupied by acorn woodpeckers.

For me this tree and it’s tenants are a metaphor for Coloma and California since the time of the Gold Rush of 1849. Here was a tree from Asia being occupied by an evasive species of bird, the European starling that has spread in it’s own Manifest Destiny, from coast to coast and north and south. Just when these thoughts get me down, the Acorn woodpecker returns to her nest with a beak full of insects for her hungry chicks. This is the true native Californian, occupying the upper nest cavity. Her brood will ensure that the laughter-like waka-waka-waka call of the bird that the miners call carpentero, will always fill the Coloma Valley.

It is impossible to believe the emotional and spiritual intensity and pure, classic beauty that can be produced by a man, an animal, and a piece of scarlet serge draped over a stick.

Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

A traveler visits a foreign country to experience a different culture, to see exotic flora and fauna, and sample strange cuisine. And some of us travel to be challenged, to broaden our perspectives, and to see how the rest of the world lives. I can think of few experiences that can be more challenging to a vegetarian nature- lover than attending a corrida at the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas on an Easter Sunday afternoon in Madrid. Why did I attend such an event? I have had an obsession with bulls and matadors from an early age.

It all started with reading The Story Ferdinand written  by Murio Leaf and illustrated by Robert Lawson. This 1936 classic is about a young bull that gets chosen for the bullfights in Madrid because of his supposed bravery and ferociousness, in reality he sat on a bumble bee. Ferdinand really just wants to sit under a cork oak and smell the flowers, instead of charging the matador. Once in the ring, he smells the flowers in all the ladies hair and he could care less with participating in the ancient and brutal art form. The Story of Ferdinand was banned in Spain for its overt pacifist message in a time of brutal world aggression. But as a child I loved the simple black line illustrations and the simple but powerful tale.

A corrida is a odd mix of the strange and familiar. The trumpet sounds and the paseo enters the ring led by the two Alguacils dressed in costumes of the reign of Philip II. The three matadors follow in their suits of light sparkling in the Madrid afternoon sun followed by their Cuadrilla. The Matadors doff their hats to the directors box, and spectacle is ready to begin.

The paseo at Las Ventas, Madrid, the most famous bullring in the world.

The bull that came out of the toril gate on that Easter afternoon was no Ferdinand. This bull was willing to charge the cape and could care less about the few flowers that adorned ladies hair.

The toro charged around the ring and the first matador came out holding his cape in both hands. The bull turned for a pass. The toro caught the matador with his horns and raised him into the air. He landed on his side and bull lowered his head and gored the matador. Toro: 1, Matador: 0. But in this traditional dance of death, the toro seldom wins. And this corrida was no different.

 

Many of the villages in the Spanish countryside have a Plaza de Toros such as the ring in Trujillo which was opened in 1848 and closed in 1998. This bullring now provides a habit for a nesting colony for the lesser kestrel. As this agile predator stilled above the red tiled roof of the ring, I reflected on this very different dance of death.

Corvidsketcher, sketching the Plaza de Toros La Piedad in Trijillo, with lesser kestrels flying above.

Life bird number one was a wood pigeon sitting in Neptune’s hand in the Plaza del Castillo seen from the bus coming from Barajas Airport to Atocha Train Station in Madrid. I figured this was an auspicious start to my Spanish birding adventure.

The next morning I got common blackbird (Turdus merula) in front of the Prado on a walk from my flat in the Lavapiés neighborhood to the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu. On the walk I got many house sparrows and rock pigeons, the official species of many American cities. This trickle of life birds, two in two days, was just the opening act of the deluge of aves to follow.

My birding adventure started in earnest on Monday morning. The calls of swifts (the cinematic soundtrack that represents pastoral spring or summer) directed my gaze skywards to the narrow grey window of sky between the buildings of Lavapiés. A lifer on the way back from the coffee shop was not a bad way to start a birding adventure.

Pau picked me up in front of my flat and we left the traffic of Madrid and headed south west for the province of Extremadura. On the drive out of Madrid to Saucedilla these are the lifers seen from the car, without binoculars: grey heron, spotless starling, kestrel, marsh harrier, booted eagle, white stork, red kite, hoopoe, common buzzard, black, and griffin vulture.

We stopped in the small village of Saucedilla to have a bocadillo e una caña in the small cafe. After our repass we walked across the square to the 16th century Church of St. John the Baptist. The church was covered with jawdaws and we circled the church looking for our prize. Three lesser kestrels flew in  and hovered above the church. Bingo! In the area around Saucedilla other highlights included: purple swamp-hen, purple heron, spoonbill, water rail, bearded reeding, Savi’s, Sardinian, fan-tailed, and sedge warbler, black-winged kite, and Iberian grey shrike.

At the close of the day, Monday March 28, I added 42 new bird species to my world list. The highlight at the end of the day was a little owl (Athene noctua) perched a stone wall seen from the porch of our base camp at Casa Rural Las Canteras.

On Tuesday we headed out to Monfragüe National Park where I added 26 new species. See the previous blog post on Parque Nacional Monfragüe.

On Wednesday we explored some reservoirs in Extremadura. Highlights included: red-cresteted grebe, shelduck, lapwing, greenshank, the “blue bullet” kingfisher, great spotted cuckoo, great bustard, bee-eater, and Scops owl. Total lifers: 22 species.

On Thursday we were attempting to find the Eurasian eagle owl with the assistance of a local farmer. We missed out but found an abandoned nest. Highlights included: little bustard, Montagu’s harrier, pallid swifts, and green sandpiper. Total lifers: 7 species.

On our last day in Extremadura we headed to the mountains and the monastery town of Guadalupe. Highlights included: jay, nuthatch, sparrow hawk, and green woodpecker. Total lifers: 6 species.

On April 4th, in San Sebastián I added two more species: firecrest and yellow-legged gull.

My guide in Extremadura was Pau Lucio. I would highly recommend him if you plan to bird this amazing part of Spain. His guiding company is called Birdwatching Spain and more info can be found at their website: http://birdwatchingspain.net