Frogs and Ravens

Observations - May 31st

It has been very warm here the last few days. Not just hot, but what I call bird-pant hot -- the kind of heat that makes birds stand around miserably with their beaks open, throats fluttering, in an effort to cool off. Of course the lawn has been growing vigorously, and we were having people over for dinner, and so I ended up mowing on one of those hot days. I still have difficulties timing my weather-sensitive activies, it seems, especially when I also need to coordinate them with work or social events. Living one's life in a fairly temperate climate will do that to a person, I guess.

In addition to panting, the birds have been greatly amusing me of late. Particularly hilarious are the antics of our neighborhood flock of starlings. At this point, the flock contains a large number of adolescent birds, still brownish and gawky. They are capable of flying and feeding themselves, but are competent at neither one. When the flock's at the feeder, the younger birds alternate between eating and following the adult birds around, beaks gaping, making horrible raspy "feed me!" noises. (It's such a loud, distinctive, and incessant noise that I can easily track the flock around the yard just by ear.) Sometimes the adults oblige, mostly to shut the whining juveniles up for a moment, but more frequently what happens is that some poor older bird finds itself being trailed by begging birds until it finally gets fed up and flies away. I once saw one bird being mobbed in this fashion by four young birds, all of them chasing back and forth on the road, before the adult flew off. Then, the second hilarious dynamic manifests: the moment when the younger birds follow, flapping awkwardly, and end up running into the older birds and knocking them off their perches! It's clear that the adult birds are heartily sick of the juveniles, but they have no recourse but to endure -- and to flap away whenever they can.

Another set of amusing (to me, anyway) younglings are the squirrels. Most entertaining is the bold young thing that likes to stretch out on the front porch railing, completely flat, with its feet hanging over the sides. It doesn't strike me as a wise thing to do for a prey animal, but it is quite adorable.

The warmth has brought out the insects in force; this morning I found myself picking strange brown leafhoppers off the undersides of the sunflower plants (which are growing at an insanely quick rate). The ants have woken up, and are crusing all over the sunflowers, and, in the case of the big black ones, through the house. There are flies and beetles sneaking into the house these days too -- and after a winter free from them, my swatting and capturing skills have attenuated.

On the positive side, last night D. and I saw the first firefly of the season. (I'd been wondering when they would reappear.)

My crop plants are growing well; there are some good-looking squash and melons, some crazy-fast growing beans, a now-useable lettuce bed, and there are some snow peas on the pea plants that are almost ready to eat. The carrot seeds are sprouting, the basils and mints are growing, and the tomatoes are putting out flowers. It's amazing to me how much the pace picked up once the weather warmed up.

The trees, meanwhile, are coming down from their earlier flowering. The strangest flowers were those of the tulip tree: they are these huge green-petalled things, with a smear of orange at the base of each petal, and huge rings of stamens inside. And these are growing on trees -- which looks very odd to the eyes of this Western girl.

(One thing I am disliking greatly about the heat is the way it seems to be irritating my iritis-weakened eye. It's been achy all this last week, and I can link it pretty directly to the change in the heat and humidity levels. It's bizarre, and more than a little annoying.

Off-Kilter

I apologize for the light and sporadic posting of late. Now that classes have ended, we are on a new summer schedule and I'm still trying to figure out how to juggle things like eating and blogging in the hours that buildings are open, and food is available. Given that the town as well as the campus virtually shuts down except for lunch and dinner and an hour or two on either side, it's getting annoying.

Plus I'm feeling tired. I don't know why.

Politics vs. politics

Once again, there's a dust-up in the political blogosphere in which the specter of the sexist / racist / homophobic / ist-ist "progressive" blogger raises an ugly head. I'm not going to talk about this incident, because it's one of many and it's been well-handled by people who were on the scene over the weekend, unlike myself.

What I am going to talk about is something that I see underlying this recurrent dynamic: the tension between Politics and politics, and the people who rally to those respective flags.

Hrmph

It's a bit disconcerting when you get a bunch of hits to your site from a password protected group that you can't join...

(So if you came from the yoga discussion group at flickr, could you do me the courtesy of explaining why y'all are all coming here?)

Observations - May 19th

I'm trying to remember if fall weather is ever as schizophrenic as spring weather. It's cold, it's hot, it's sunny, it's rainy, it's calm, it's windy... All in all, it makes it very difficult to plan one's outdoor activities. Whoever came up with the concept of carpe diem probably dreamed it up during the spring.

The current neglected chore is mowing. Given that it's a time-consuming, strenuous, and fussy chore, it's not exactly something you can just pop out of the house and do on the spur of the moment. It doesn't take an enormous amount of planning, but it does require certain convergences of conditions: it cannot be raining, nor about to rain, nor can the grass be wet. (Not being baking hot would be nice too, not that that's been a problem lately.) Unfortunately, these conditions have not been met for about two weeks now, meaning that the grass is verging on choke-the-lawnmower lushness. Seriously, the last I mowed, the mower began making unhappy growly sounds whenever I pushed it into the thicker grass. The grass now is, of course, about that thick and lush. The grackles disappear in it when they dip their heads to seek or nab worms; I see these vague birdish outlines bobbing gently up and down in the long grass, with occasional punctuating lifts of black heads adorned with glittering eyes and bright yellow beaks. Rising, falling, bobbing, weaving, rustling and hunting and pecking in the grass.

I may have to raise the mower blades first.

The rain that's been causing all the complications has been moody in its own right. For a while it took the form of sudden afternoon downpours. Then it turned into soft peaceful drizzle that made me homesick for the Pacific Northwest. Now it's favoring dramatic rushes on the winds of cold fronts, with lots of thunder and thick fat drops. I'm afraid to know what new variant will show up!

Most of my seedlings are weathering (heh) the rain well enough. The sunflowers and alyssum are going crazy with growth. The canteloupe, alas, is struggling with the cold and the damp, and I've tipped my cap to the beans and squash seeds I planted just before the rains. It's been so chilly and soggy that I figure there's nothing left of them but little decayed morsels under the soil. I guess I'll have to try again later when it warms up for real.

Not that the local animals aren't benefitting from the rains. The rabbits have become positively bold with the lush growth everywhere; they sit hunkered out in fairly plain sight in the middle of the day, pretending that their mottled brown coats blend in with the thick green grass. There are baby birds everywhere. There was a young robin on the back deck, fluffed up and gawky. An adolescent grackle stared anxiously up at me from beneath a chair on the front deck. On the way to work, I almost stepped on a juvenile chipping sparrow hidden in the grass. Another sparrow huddled in a gap above the basement door, peeping thinly last night. Good thing that there are a lot of worms about!

The young squirrels are pretty hilarious, too. I think that the reason squirrels are so good at getting into feeders and whatnot is that they're born devoid of what looks like common sense but is in fact just instinct. So they bumble about, unencumbered by any notion of danger or fear, which means that a lot of them get hit by cars or eaten by predators, but also that the ones which survive are smart, smart, smart, with a lot of clever tricks in their bag.

These ones aren't quite there yet.

(Pictures below the fold.)

Storm's Eye

I think I have found what is going to be my favorite place in the library, perhaps in the whole campus. I am sitting in a windowseat on the top floor, looking out into a raging thunderstorm. The sides of the bay I'm sitting in are nothing but pure, unadorned glass, jutting out into space over the otherwise straight, bare side of the west wall. The fat, wet drops of the the rainstorm are hurled into the glass, while behind me the tops of the maples behind the library are being whipped by the wind. As the water pours off the edges of the roof and other windows, the wind snatches up the drops and swirls them around my nook, making them seem like bubbles in a turbulent sea, air and water reversing their roles. The evergreens bordering the parking lot below, normally so stiff and proper, are gyrating and swirling like the wheel-mops in carwashes. I can see to the horizon, across the tops of wind-wracked trees and a rising mist, all the way to a faint glimmer of sunlit clouds and lighter sky...

Somewhere, below me in all the wet chaos, a small wild grey cat with one bad eye is hiding, while I sit up here, warm and high and dry.

Grey/gray
Turbulence
Wet and hissing
Hunkers down
Among the beating leaves
In the dark wildness
An eye gleams

Signs of Wisdom

One of my handicaps here in Red State is that I haven't lived here very long, and thus have no gut sense or even memory of what a "typical" year or season looks like. I remember the grass being short and slow-growing in the fall by comparison with what it's doing this spring; is that because the fall was dry, fall not spring, the spring unusually wet, or the spring being spring? I simply don't know what my observations mean, as I have no context for them.

It's wetter now than it was in the fall, wetter and lusher than I remember from the summer. That is the extent of my knowledge.

Except for one thing. Local wisdom, conveniently displayed for all to see, on local signboards.

Usually the signs don't say much. Those in front of churches tend to offer either Come to Jesus welcome/threats, or mildly humorous/irritating homilies that depend on a weak pun for the humor. Other businesses tout new products, exhort viewers to call for carpet cleaning, remind you that your car is in need of a wash, and so on.

But there are a couple of signs that can be counted on for genuinely funny comments. One guy is a very regular "poster"; he has something up new every week, and sometimes every day, when he's on a roll. The other guy doesn't post much beyond his store's weekly sales, most days, except when something like oil prices or mango exports pushes a button.

So, this week it's been cool and drizzly, and lush and green, and making me homesick for Oregon. I couldn't tell if this was typical late-spring weather, or what. So I was grateful to read these two signs:

---

CALL NOAH WE
MAY NEED AN ARK

---

WHEN DID WE MOVE
TO SEATTLE?

---

Thanks, sign guys!

Wildbranch 2006

I got the tickets!

Three Years Old and a Week

Frogs and Ravens is three years old, as of May 7th.

Yaaaaay.

Same Song, Same Dance

Let's see.

Synopsis:

We're facing a potential, yet real threat that has global scope. Check.

One crucial point relative to this threat is our ports, border crossings, and national transportation network. Check.

International cooperation is needed to deal with the threat effectively. Check.

Should the threat manifest in the United States, it will require effective and timely federal intervention to minimize damage. Check.

We have received warning ahead of time about the probability and scope of this problem, and can deal with it effectively if we put our minds to it. Check.

The Bush Administration's response to this problem:

Downplay the seriousness of the threat inasmuch as dealing with it will get in the way of business of usual. Check.

Ignore the transportation aspect of the problem. Check.

Assume an us-first, go-it-alone attitude to the problem. Check.

Defund the agencies capable of handling the repercussions domestically, use them as rewards for supportive but incompetent cronies, and place an emphasis on local management -- even though it is a large-scale problem that needs to be handled on the large scale as well as small. Check.

Pretend that the repercussions will be minor at best, or that the problem can be dealt with by superficial, short-term individual lifestyle choices. Check.

Distract Americans and gin up political support by saber-rattling at an unrelated group of people or an unrelated problem (Iraq, Iran, North Korea, steroids in baseball, Mexican immigration...). Check.

Divert needed national resources and manpower to handle the aftermath of the saber-rattling, short-changing the agencies and groups needed to handle the actual threat. Check.

Spend all available press and air time dwelling on the unrelated problem, while saying little to nothing about the actual threat. Check.

The mainstream media's response to the problem:

Run a short piece about the problem deep inside the paper. Check.

Isolate the few aspects of the problem that make people feel worried, helpless, angry or afraid, and dwell on them at sensationalized length. Check.

Downplay coverage of practical options for dealing with the problem. When covering them, emphasize those that involve individual lifestyle choices, particularly choices that are available only to wealthy or middle-class, dual-income households. Check.

Provide extensive, "objective" coverage of superficial promises by the Adminstration that something will be done, without further analysis of promises' feasibility or cost. Check.

Disparge critics of the Administration or the press by casting them as alarmist, "angry," incapable of seeing the larger picture, doing this for "political reasons," or even anti-American. Check.

Provide extensive coverage of Democrats waffling in public, tepidly protesting in a feeble way, or assertively backing up the Administration's talking points. Check.

The Democrats' response:

Waffle in public. Check.

Self-flagellate while making calls for "civility," "cooperation," and "unity." Check.

Talk about how they should talk about the issue. Check.

Support and reinforce the Administration's talking points. Check.

Undercut and disparage members of the party who offer criticism of the Administration. If said criticism is delivered in a passionate manner, or includes criticism of the party leadership, cast critic as "angry" or "radical." Check.

Froth at mouth about "leftists," "radicals," and/or bloggers. Refuse to say anything negative about the mainstream press, right-wingers, or coporations. Check.

Invoke Nader when the chatter about third parties gets too loud for comfort. Check.

It doesn't matter whether we are talking about terrorism, global warming, or bird flu. It works out the same every. damn. time.

I don't know about you, but I'm really, really tired of this.

Cross-posted at Shakespeare's Sister.