I love the art on pulp novels and, seeing as how I live in Paradise Cove which is, despite all the gentrification, a trailer park, I'm particularly fond of this sub-genre.

Remember this?

Well now it's this:

Just days after the post about all three card catalog computers at the library being on the fritz, someone found an electrical short and fixed it and voila! Working card catalogs, always in use. Thank you, LA County library!

Meanwhile, if you were looking to browse a bit of JD Salinger

whose death on Wednesday ate up acres and acres of newsprint (really nice piece by LAT book editor, David Ulin,) the Malibu branch of the LA County Public Library was ready for you:

Pink and blue, everywhere you looked this morning:

Even the water looked pink. (ish.)

When we first moved to the Cove, a family of roadrunners lived near the creek bed on the path to the beach. But then the real estate boom happened and so many golf carts came to the Cove that the path to the beach soon turned into the road to the beach and the roadrunners (irony!) moved further up into canyon. (The family of California quail that lived in the underbrush also vanished.)

So I'd see the roadrunners up at the barn -- that's where this photo was shot -- and on the road to the barn and in the open space around the canyon. And then another real estate boom happened, and by 'boom' I mean acres and acres of open space were scraped clean and huge houses were built and fences erected and it's now been over a year since I've seen any roadrunners. Or quail. Or, come to think of it, bobcats.

But there sure are a lot of big new houses for sale.

So it's gorgeous here today, sunny and warm, and the beach is empty and there's that tenderness to the air, that mix of moisture and movement that's nowhere near a breeze but still isn't stillness.

I've said it before -- The Little Dog needs a blog of her own.

And an intern to answer her email.

Can't help it.

Love hawks.

This one's hunting the Point Dume headlands the day after the storms.

It takes a few days for the waves here to get sorted out after a storm.

Today was that day.

The sun's out now, chilly and bright, and the surf is kicking up. In the canyons, though, the rain still flows. It's dripping down slick rock faces, collecting into creek beds, it's edging out onto canyon walls, into rimfalls like this one.

It's Escondido Falls, brought to life whenever it rains and, when it rains a lot, produces a double stream.

Greetings from Malibu, where it's thundering down rain right now, and only the steady roar of the storm-crazed surf can drown out the cries of local TV reporters on the hunt for images of the apocalypse.

The photo above is the horizon this morning, close-packed clouds as far as the eye can see. And below is a brief moment of respite yesterday afternoon.

Waves wash in...And sand washes out. But we don't have any kind of sea walls or fake reefs or other 'protective' measures here in the Cove, so over the course of the year, the sand washes back in again. The sand cycle.

It wasn't until I downloaded this photo that I saw Maisie, watching my every move and obviously thinking "Dude, that's the wrong f-stop," as I tried to get a rainy day mushroom's view of the world.

I had a bad case of blizzard envy in December, when every part of the country except California was busy having some sort of weather. And now our turn has come, with the beach all torn up by surging seas, and the birds I love so much seeking shelter.

Great white egret on the wing:

Pelican surfs the shallows:

Sandpipers (plovers?) search for food.

We woke to a crimson glow this morning, sun stuck on the horizon behind a pile of clouds. And within moments of hitting the beach, all color was quenched and just this pale, pale disk, the last of the sun we'll see today, hovered for an instant, then vanished.

Here's the view from the Point Dume headlands on Monday afternoon, right after the storm rolled through.

And below, it's the low-tide surf at the Paradise Cove pier:

Brrr. And wet. And gray.

Our little trailer park not only comes with a restaurant attached, it has an ATM machine, too.

I love the little moments of public rebellion that turn an office, all cubicles and corridors and acoustic tile, into a workplace.

Some days, writing days, these are my colleagues. They hover over the barn, their faces so fierce, even the parrots are silenced.

We've been having a bit of winter weather here the last few nights, sudden fog that surrounds and drips and hovers and, even in the morning light, lingers.

So Patsy's love affair with the laptop continues and, as she settles and nestles and kneads the keys, the laptop responds.

With a security check.

The mouse is inactive during this test.

Ditto the cat.

Like the rest of us Angeleños with even a shred of awareness, the hawk perched in the sycamore knows we have seasons. Winter now, with bare trees and a late, thin sunrise.

So he waits, feathers fluffed, for the chill to dispel, for the sun to climb, for the thermals to warm and lift him, keening as he hunts high above the hills.

It happens every winter, the middle of December through the middle of January bring us low, low tides (more about those later this week) and slow, glorious sunsets. So expect to see a few more in the coming week. So beautiful, I can't help sharing.

Twenty-ten -- are you going to play nice?

I love the line of gulls perched on the pier, watching the sun rise, waiting for the first light of day to take flight.

The bluffs around Paradise Cove have been crumbling for centuries, but this sign, one of many that come and go, appeared just a few weeks ago. Wonder how long it'll last...

Sunrise at the pier -- a beautiful start to 2010.

Here's the last sunset of 2009, around the corner from Point Dume. And, this being Malibu, sunset surfers.