Tag Archives: Birds

Trolls and Trollettes

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Herring Gull at Asilomar State Beach

I was going to make this post another political rant, but instead I’ll offer up this cautionary tale about blogging and the perils that blogging entails. Simply put, if you keep your mouth shut, other people may think that you are an idiot, but they can’t really be certain and unless you say something dumb there is no way they can prove it.

However, if you have the temerity to write a blog, then on a regular basis you end up spewing forth on whatever subjects strike your heart. Unless you are very smart, very careful and/or very timid, eventually you’ll say something stupid. Then your idiocy becomes a matter of degree. 

I know that I have successfully demonstrated my idiocy from time to time, but my stupidity pales compared that of a professional dumb-ass. To that end I give you Mr. and Mrs. Mark Harris. During a trip to Epcot at Disney World, a couple of weeks ago, Mark Harris and his wife were offended to find a ‘Mexican’ employee working at the amusement park’s American pavilion. According to Disney this pavilion showcases the different cultures in the United States. Why should I speak for Mr. and Mrs. Harris, when she makes her points so much more succinctly in their blog. 

OK, I’m an idiot to try to sneak by you such a patently partisan story. These people happen to be Republicans. Next week, I’m sure that there will be an analogous story about some Democratic idiot. My underlying story is that such people should not be writing a blog. Doing so offers them no benefits that I can see.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t count myself in the above august company. Don’t let my above self-effacing convince you otherwise. I may occasionally write a bad blog post, but I’m not a bad blogger. I’m no great writer, but I’m not a bad blogger. I say this, because I don’t try to say hurtful things.

Pacific Loon

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Pacific Loon

This Pacific Loon was photographed last May in San Francisco Bay, near the Golden Gate Bridge. It was the day of the Golden Gate’s seventy-fifth anniversary. There were thousands of people onshore and hundreds on the water and this bird showed no fear. It looks a lot different then the loons here in the Midwest, the Common Loon.

The remnants of Hurricane Isaac arrived in Saint Louis on Friday morning. It rained off and on through the day and then proceeded to pour on Friday evening. We had planed to go view the bicycling races around Lafayette Square, but it just seemed too wet. Television footage showed that the races did go ahead, but there were almost no spectators.

I work in rooms that are virtually cutoff from the outside world. There are no windows, most of the computers are not connected to the internet and my only phone is not an outside line. Late Friday afternoon, a security officer comes down the hallway announcing that there is a tornado warning. Not knowing any better, we all troop down to the basement. We were on the top floor of a building that has a notoriously bad roof, so there was no messing around.

On our way down, we pass a window and see sunlight coming in. A few of us go outside to investigate. None of the clouds looked like tornado clouds. At which point two things happen, a manager yells at us for going outside in a tornado warning and then a receptionist tells everyone that the warning has expired.

I don’t think that there was any warning in the first place. My radar App, which reports these things, didn’t and no sirens ever went off. What triggered this whole ‘drill’ was a pop-up warning that appeared on those computers that were connected to the internet. The pop-up did mention a tornado warning and if you read no further then mistaken conclusions could be leapt to. If you read the whole thing then what it really said was in the event of a tornado warning, don’t go outside. There were tornadoes later that night, but none of them were in Saint Louis. 😳

On my way home last night I stopped by Schnucks. The college students have returned, so the store was crowded. WashU and SLU draw students from around the country. On exiting, I overheard a pair of students, “It is raining and it’s still hot out. How can that be?” It was only 78 °F, but the humidity was 82%, so it felt ‘hotter’ than it was. All I can say is welcome to Saint Louis boys.

Anne and I walked to breakfast on Saturday morning. Our radar App showed Saint Louis to be at the center of a huge arc of storms. The storms extended from Kansas City to Iowa into central Illinois. None of the storms were particularly close to us, so we felt safe walking to breakfast. One of our neighbors said that her rain gauge had over two inches in it. This is well short of the forecasted rain amounts, but the storm is not over yet. The wind has been a non-event. We went to breakfast and walked home and got back minutes before another downpour began.

Seagulls on the Rocks

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Seagulls on the Rocks at the End of the Beach

This week I had a major breakthrough at work. It wasn’t really a breakthrough and only from my small vantage point could the words ‘major’ or ‘breakthrough’ become involved in the discussion. This was on Monday morning and I basked in the glow of my so-called success all day. At day’s end when Anne and I compared our respective days, I finally had something positive that I couldn’t talk about.

I had to brief management immediately after my noontime walk. Monday’s weather was steaming, so I was positively melting when I did the brief. That probably helped prevent them inspecting my results too closely. They had to look over my shoulder to see the screen. Afterwards, in the cafeteria, with piece of pizza in hand, one of the managers saddled up behind me and asked to the effect, had I already worked that piece of pizza off. Of course not.

I don’t feel that I can can really claim credit for any success here. Primarily, because I can’t explain it. It is like the bluebird of happiness had landed on my shoulder. I felt blessed. I have benefited from such luck in the past and I could try to exercise this luck again here, but like George Jetson before me, I had somewhat mindlessly just punched some buttons and like a lucky slot machine gambler come out a winner. This experience reminds me of Arther C. Clarke’s Third Law: ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ I’m just one lucky gull.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

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Goldfinches in Our Garden

If it is anywhere near as dry there, as it is here, then “not so well” is the answer to the question, “How does your garden grow?” This weekend’s contra-summer weather, read comfortable, continued into Sunday morning. Anne and I eschewed our usual Sunday pursuit, worshipping at the church of the spoken wheel and strode out arm-in-arm to toil in the Elysian Fields that is my mythic representation that what in reality our postage stamp of a yard is.

We mowed, trimmed, weeded; pruned, hacked and pretty much beat our already prostrate yard into helpless submission. At one point, Anne proposed dead-heading the front yard’s coneflowers. This struck me as odd. First, it is my last name that is synonymous with an implement of vegetative mutilation. Second, there are ‘weeds’ in our yard that Anne has placed under protected status. Finally, I’ve never heard of dead-heading coneflowers. This restraint was later rewarded. The photo above shows a pair of goldfinches picking seeds off our coneflower’s heads.

It sprinkled in the afternoon, a lazy summer Sunday afternoon. These few drops were enough to dissuade us from going cycling. “I’m melting! Melting! Oh, what a world! What a world!” Anyway, Anne went to the yarn shop and I wrote this post. Oh, what a world! What a world! 😉

Seagull and Sunset

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Seagull and Sunset

To recap today, let’s see, what did I do today? There was beach walking, followed by beach sitting. I never did make it into the water, so there was no swimming or kayaking. Instead I read on the beach. Eventually though, I needed to do something, so I went for a little bike ride, nothing much. I got back in time to shower and shove off for fish at the Cozy Inn, whitefish that is. That was pretty much my day.

Now I am blogging about it. It was a much quieter day then yesterday. There were no marooned Canadians. The wind was up, so were the waves. It was too rough for Dan to go sailing or for anyone to go kayaking. While biking I stopped in at the state park. The yellow flag was up. It was yellow for rough water. Last time it had been red for poop. A windsurfer was coming up from the water. I asked him if it was rough and he said that it was “hella” rough out there. I noticed that he had a helmet on, which seemed odd, so I asked him about it. He said that he didn’t wear a life vest, because it interfered with the windsurfing harness that he wore. The board was his personal floatation device. His only concern was the danger of getting knocked out by the sail. That’s why he wore the helmet and “besides, it makes my mom happy.”