Driving As Fast As We Can

I had a funny conversation while Skyping with my twin brother the other morning. Well, it was funny to me, but that's because I have a terribly morbid sense of humor. You don't know that about me but it's true. My brother is a sweetheart of a man. He is a social worker who serves the schizophrenic and bipolar community in the county just south of where he lives. He commutes 80 miles daily (that's round trip), and is very conscious of his mileage and his carbon footprint. Well over a year ago, he decided to not drive over 60 mph, which is slow for California drivers on almost any highway, but that was his commitment. Until the other day, when it occurred to him that the earth is a complete mess, and is really not going to recover while we humans are still on it. So rather than driving slowly to impede the slow destruction, he's decided to drive as fast as he can to assist in the demise. He told me, "I'm driving 75 mph now." We laughed about it until tears rolled down our cheeks. I told him I wanted a bumper sticker that says:

We roared.

Except some part of us was solemnly serious. We grew up in a household without formal religion, so we always placed our faith in our fellow humans, in community and in government. But we see that even a faith in things that can be seen and known can be as absurd as any other. We had a dark awakening, a bleak epiphany accompanied by a bit of hysteria. Perhaps there is a certain relief in not believing anymore that we can effect a change, work to make things better. That head-banging gets old pretty fast, well I mean after 40 years of it, you finally do have to see what's in front of you. A handful of earth-firsters and recyclers are not going to save the world. For the most part, it's already over. Is that an awful thing to say or think out loud? It won't be a dramatic 2012 scenario, but the slow agony of little losses that will eventually amount to the loss of everything. Do you see that too? Or is there some shining hope on your horizon that actually makes sense? We see there is hardly the will in our government to end wars; provide a basic human right to health care; or even to have a serious conversation about global climate change (Oh Copenhagen, you can drop dead). We're a mess on every measurable scale. It is completely acceptable to privatize profit and socialize loss; to protect the mighty while they stand on the backs of the weak and fallen. Our fellow citizens exalt inanity; foster the apotheosis of insipid politicians; and stare blankly at television screens while eating foods that will never in a million years actually nourish them (but have a shelf-life lasting that long). It's a mighty bleak landscape, one that requires maximum speed for traversing.

So, how could we not laugh? We laughed. I mean really laughed. Like there's no tomorrow.

Objective Reality

Can we agree that there is an objective reality? That an otter is an otter, and a butterfly is a butterfly, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican. Can we agree that a vice-presidential candidate should be able to take follow-up questions and answer them with some degree of coherence and logical syntax, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican?

Perhaps not.

We were just wondering.

The two otters were photographed late Saturday afternoon in Monterey Bay. The Common Buckeye butterfly was photographed Friday. Although, since reality is defined by our own predilections, we can decide what these are whenever we want to. In fact maybe they'd like to be vice president someday. They could you know.

The Benefits of Distraction

Pain. It truly is a distraction. I can't have a sustained thought without wincing, especially if I move too quickly. I have no idea what I did, but for a full week now my lower back has been giving me grief. Every now and then I descend into the darkest of thoughts, it's not really a back ache, but something terribly wrong with my kidney, my colon, my descending aorta. I am going to die any minute, I swear something is about to rip apart and the face of an alien is going to burst from inside me. Pain.

So, I've been distracting myself with Suduko. Game after game. I don't want to read or think. I want to put numbers into squares and pretend that everything makes as much sense as that 1-9, over and over and over.

Still, the world outside of those squares seeps in. I hear there is going to be a debate tonight. Someone named Sarah Palin-- who doesn't know any other Supreme Court decision besides Roe v Wade, who believes global climate change is not man made, who knows that dinosaurs roamed our 6000 year old earth along side man, who knows more about oil and energy than any other American, whose foreign policy experience is limited to governing a state that has an island where Russia can be seen-- is going to debate some guy named Joe. You know, the one who talks a lot and says stupid things, but who really has actual practical experience. What does it matter? Doesn't confidence trump everything? And, that Palin girl is so nice and pretty.

My back hurts. Maybe it's not my back. Maybe I'm channeling the pain of a universe that's tired of our stupidity, our duplicity, our expediency. I'll just tag an extra $100 billion on this bailout bill and hope for the best. Stupid humans.

Didn't you think that we could be more than this? I did. I really did.

Bailouts, Ducks, Puppies, and Pelicans

Lots of things bug me. I'm just that kind of person. Bristly. I expect to be frustrated, thwarted, annoyed, and pissed off on a daily basis. I don't mind admitting that. I'm no maven of positive thoughts. I'm practically cursing under my breath at all times. But, there are some things that seriously push me over the edge. Hard.

Yeah, it bugs me that we're bailing out the financial market to the tune of $700 billion dollars. It's not that we didn't expect it, we did. Not exactly this unbelievable amount of money, but this bailout was inevitable. It's what Republican administrations do. They talk god, guns, and gays while robbing the coffers and lining their own pockets. They invest and pretend it's not a gamble. Only after they have mucked it as much as it can be mucked, they cry that the market won't survive their thievery unless we give them tax dollars to prop it up. Yep, the same tax dollars that they rant and rail against paying. How do they get away with it every damned time?

But even more than their global venality, what really has been bugging me is how people treat animals.

Before we left Arcata we went downtown looking for a small shop to buy a particular item that only that small shop sells. While we were looking for the store, we heard a duck quacking. Quite clearly. A duck was quacking its head off somewhere downtown. I looked up into the sky, expecting to see a flock passing overhead. But there was nothing. Then the duck quacked again. I looked over and there on the street corner was a young guy with a big backpack and a box. Arcata street corners are always full of young people heading north and south, with backpacks and all manner of baby critters (kittens and puppies) on leashes and strings. But here was a guy with a duck in a box, and the duck was quacking some message of discomfort. So, he literally held the duck's bill closed. It was all I could do to keep from going over there and smashing him, taking his duck to the marsh and setting it free. I should have called animal protection services, but I didn't. I just added the experience to the sum of experiences that remind me why other humans and I don't get along.

I could rant at length about all the puppies and kittens we saw all summer long tethered to people who had absolutely no business caring for their tender likes. One story says it all: On a day when the temperature was pushing a hundred degrees and the pavement was hot as hell, a shirtless young man was walking the highway shoulder. He had his pack on his sweaty back, and on a leash was a puppy so young and small that it obviously was struggling to keep up. That puppy was walking on a blacktop that had to have been searing his little toes. Oh yes, I muttered every profanity I could think of and looked away. Such unbearable thoughtlessness and contempt for other living things must not be stared at for too long. Otherwise, it creeps into your heart and sours you on the whole of humanity. I know.

There is simply no end of cruelty we visit upon defenseless creatures. There are the big stories of how we are poisoning the earth, heating it beyond livability, degrading the very things we all need to survive. Yes, I think these stories merely convey our general duck and puppy disdain writ large upon the earth. Everyday there are smaller stories like this about eleven pelicans with broken wings. Someone actually snapped back the wings of eleven pelicans, and left them to die. Only one survived. What are the pelicans doing hanging out so close to humans that they can be grabbed and brutalized? Well, the warmer ocean temps have driven their food deeper into cooler water, leaving the pelicans hungry at the surface. There's even a hungry juvenile here that hangs out on the wharf looking for handouts from the tourists and locals who have come to fish. We see him everyday, sitting on the railing, waiting for food.

And yes, probably, for every horrible story like these are the stories of good works being done on behalf of these creatures. But the good works come as a response, are therapeutic interventions after the fact of our contempt, like a game of catch up that has no end.

Yeah, it really bugs me.
I think we should let the markets fail.
I should have stolen the duck and the puppy.
I should learn how to rescue this pelican, to make up for all the rest.

Update

Barack has a much better idea:

First, there must be no blank check when American taxpayers are on the hook for this much money.

Second, taxpayers shouldn't be spending a dime to reward CEOs on Wall Street.

Third, taxpayers should be protected and should be able to recoup this investment.

Fourth, this plan has to help homeowners stay in their homes.

Fifth, this is a global crisis, and the United States must insist that other nations join us in helping secure the financial markets.

Sixth, we need to start putting in place the rules of the road I've been calling for for years to prevent this from ever happening again.

And finally, this plan can't just be a plan for Wall Street, it has to be a plan for Main Street.

Amen.

A Diatribe

Have you ever read the book or seen the movie "Moby Dick" (the one with Gregory Peck). In it Ahab says, "Talk not of blasphemy to me, man, I'd strike the sun if it insulted me." I've always loved that line. The power and anger in it appeals to some part of me. We have been back in Washington a little over two weeks. I can count on one hand the number of times we've seen the sun. Here's the insult of clouds, they part just before sundown and dazzle us with color, after all day blocking the light and warmth from penetrating into our Vitamin D-starved psyches. Oh sure, it's crazy for me to run outside and curse the sky, but that doesn't stop me. The things I've said would make probably make Ahab blush. Too bad.
Nothing seems as beautiful against the same gray sky, day after day. I photographed an eagle flying as low over our yard as I've ever seen. Eye contact, absolutely. But the photos might as well have been taken in black and white. There is a dullness to this winter landscape that seems punishing without end. Sunday morning temperatures were a freezing 30 F. It warmed up to 40F and there was a soft drizzle. Jean Paul Sartre said that hell was other people, but he must not have ever spent time in the pacific northwest.
And then there's the relentless political landscape. What's with Obama's minister sounding like the kind of person who usually stands on a street corner screaming, the one I cross the street to avoid. Why isn't he talking kindly about his god? Isn't that what ministers or reverends are supposed to do when they are preaching in church? Why would Obama ever listen to a man who sounds like that? I'm disappointed. What's with Hillary Clinton? She's acting exactly as I thought she would. What a freakin' bummer. I answered the phone the other day and the voice on the other end said that he was from the Hillary campaign. I said, "I'm not going to give you money. She's not showing leadership, and I totally hope she loses." He said, "Oh, okay." I have had enough. These two Democratic candidates need to be running against the Republican machinery morning, noon, and night. They should be able to distinguish themselves by their arguments, their appeals, their platforms. I'm tired of them running against each other and playing gotcha on things that are irrelevant. At some point we are going to have to sidle up to one of them and plant the transforming kiss.

Our economy is absolutely in the tank, folks. I don't know about you, but we're trying to figure out which is the best-- having a house and land that will continue to lose value, or converting it to cash which will also continue to be worth less. That's about the gist of it, as we see it. I keep saying to Roger, I sure don't want to have to take one of our wheelbarrows full of thousand dollar bills up to the co-op to buy a loaf of bread. Did you notice how the Eliot Spitzer debacle came at just the right time to keep the pundits off the economy trail? Funny how that happens. Like it was planned, or something. Don't take your eyes off the economy. It's a show you won't want to miss.

Well, that's all we've got, friends.

All photographs taken in the yard: The sky at sunset; the low-flying eagle; a tree frog trying to get to the pond.

Winter Window

We look out the window often. It's hard not to with those waves and clouds pulling our attention like a magnet. Winter is here. It arrived late, but better late than never, right? California needs this rain, otherwise everyone will be drinking reclaimed sewage, and as delicious, clean, and healthful as it is touted to be, we still say no thanks. We'll gladly take the gray skies and the torrential downpours. Every now and then, the clouds part and the sky lightens up, like it did Tuesday morning, and we saw this.

Or later in the day, when we saw this. We came home from the market later in the afternoon and put the groceries on the table. Over Roger's shoulder I saw the Red-shouldered hawk on our neighbor's roof. These neighbors are in the process of building their home, so usually there's commotion with ladders, power saws, and hammers, but Tuesday was quiet. So the hawk came to hunt.
There's only one window in this old house I can photograph out of that hasn't already yielded to ancient, wavy glass. The photographs seem soft from being taken through the closed and rain-smudged window. I don't mind, I took seventeen photographs in the five minutes the hawk perched there.
All of the hawk's movement are found in the slight changes in the direction it looks. Its concentration is only broken by the barely perceptible click of the camera shutter.

That's when it turns its gaze on us, where we are looking out at it from the winter window. We have a rare moment when something wild looks back.

We ran into an old friend the other day. He's a decade older than Roger, and two decades older than I. We had a nice chat along the railroad tracks about the state of the world and politics. He said, "Oh you two still believe things will change. You know you're going to have to give that up. Things don't change. They really don't." I thought about it for a while, and suspect he is right. I hadn't realized how much I still held on to that hope that things would someday be just as we would like them. How silly such hope seems. Based on what would we nurture such desire?

Otter in a Stormy Sea

It's still raining. We've had enough rain to bring us up to average rainfall totals for winter here. But it is still not enough yet to prevent water conservation measures this summer. If things continue as they seem to be going now, though, Santa Cruz may finally see its water supply full. It is interesting to have so much rain falling in such a short amount of time. We try to get out and walk when there is a windy lull, which there happened to be on Saturday.
We headed out to the wharf, where we noticed this little sea otter riding in the waves. We said to each other that it seemed small and young. So I started to snap a few photos when it started to make plaintive cries.
I turned on the video to see if I could capture that sound, but you'll notice all we got was the sound of the wind. I think if you watch the video closely, and I apologize for the lousy quality, you'll see the otter raise its head several times out of the water. That's when it was crying. What a sound it was, as high as a gull's cry. Then, we noticed a larger otter off in the distance dive down under the waves.
Maybe we're making this story up. But it looked to us that the larger otter came over and brought the smaller one some food. A very kind and motherly gesture. We watched for a while.
The smaller otter stopped crying, and the larger one stayed a while beside it. We think that face has a very satisfied smile on it. But that could easily be an anthropomorphic assumption. Still, it's a story that works for us.

A few updates: We are fairly certain that the large fossil we found is whale bone. It was much too large and heavy for us to move. The beach is only accessible at minus tides, and the fossils are only sporadically uncovered and visible, as the sands shift often with storms.

The sunset photos were slightly (ever so slightly) enhanced by saturation, but that was only to recreate the sky as we saw it. Photos hardly ever represent what our eyes perceive. I tried to show what we saw. It was truly magnificent, and yes, almost psychedelic.

Finally, could anyone out there tell us succinctly what Barack Obama's platform is? He won a very great victory in South Carolina on Saturday, and we are glad for him. He's getting a lot of endorsements, and a lot of people talk about how he makes them feel, that he's inspirational, shows leadership, and who he reminds them of. But we're not sure he is a progressive liberal Democrat. Does anyone out there know for certain that he in fact is?

Sometimes we feel just like a little otter, out in a stormy sea.

Suburbia Birds

above neighborhoods
shopping malls and parking lots
wild birds fly free

on backyard fenceposts
wee birds with their yellow rumps
stand out like candy

Update on life: My mom is out of the hospital. She's feeling much better, but tired. The doctors have no idea what's underlying her illnesses. There is a PET scan in her future. We're hoping for the absolute best outcome, of course.

Update on politics: We have become completely disillusioned, disgruntled, disheartened, and disenchanted. Don't like what's become of our democracy. We're old. We remember when it was not always like this. We are screaming most of the time. It's a good thing you don't hear us. We curse a blue streak.

From Toilet to Tap

One of the reasons Roger and I moved to Washington was for the water. Not that it had any profound properties like magic elixirs, just the very fact of it. It rains in Washington. There is no water shortage. But now that we are considering moving back to California we are facing the prospect of coming back to a state that has to provide water for a population of nearly 38 million people.

Water. There's simply not enough of it to go around. But this post isn't about the coming shortages, the environmental crises. Nope.

It's about reclamation. I think it is a remarkably good idea to reclaim sewage and treat it so that it can be used to water golf courses, flush toilets, even irrigate agriculture. But, I don't think it should ever be used for drinking water. It sounds like a profoundly uncivilized and vile idea taking effluence and turn it into drinking water. Sorry. That's just disgusting.

I've learned that such practices are well under way in parts of the world, and yesterday's LA Times informed me that Orange County will be unveiling a state of the art reclamation plant that will be providing drinking water in a year. Here's how they're doing it:

Basically, the facility takes treated sewage, which would have been discharged into the sea, and runs it through an advanced filtration system.
snip
The effluent is first pumped into the reclamation plant from the sanitation district's sewage treatment facility next door. The brackish water, which smells of deodorizer, flows into 26 holding basins equipped with 270 million micro-filters -- thin straws of porous material with holes no bigger than three-hundredths the thickness of a human hair.

From there, the water is forced under high pressure through a series of thin plastic membranes housed in rows of white cylinders. Next, it is dosed with hydrogen peroxide and bombarded with ultraviolet light to neutralize any remaining contaminants.

At this point, the water is free of bacteria, viruses, carcinogens, hormones, chemicals, toxic heavy metals, fertilizers, pesticides and dissolved pharmaceuticals.

Though it is good enough to drink, the scrubbing isn't finished. Once the state approves, up to 70 million gallons of treated water a day will be pumped into the county's giant underground aquifer. It will be cleansed further as it percolates through the earth to depths up to 1,000 feet.

"This is as advanced a reclamation system as you are going to get right now," said the director of regulatory affairs for the Assn. of California Water Agencies..."

Would you drink this? Is it just me, or does this seem insanely wrong?

Updates:
Impersonal- It looks like Obama and Huckabee took the Iowa caucus. I don't think either of them will wind up on the the top of the ticket. Neither of them are electable. I think perhaps Iowa has finally been rendered utterly meaningless. As it should be.

Personal: My mother had an appointment with her primary care physician on Thursday. His interpretation of lab results from her emergency room visit in mid-December and her recent hospital stay was rather shocking and eye-opening. We have been seriously mislead about her condition. She actually may be experiencing congestive heart failure and needs to see a cardiologist on Monday to determine the cause of the fluid around her heart. Lab results also show that she has 30% kidney function. None of this was EVER reported to us in the hospital. Ah, American Health Care, the proverbial envy of the freakin' world, a lot of money for useless crap, like everything else in our culture. Grrrr.

Have a great weekend, friends.

Photo borrowed without permission. Chairman of the sanitation district board sampling the final product.

Life: In and Out of our Hands

What do we have control of? Not very much, when you think about it, certainly not life, suffering, or death. Maybe a little bit, when you think about smaller things like breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The balance we strike must be between these things, or not. What do I know? I'm no philosopher, just a daughter, just a wife, just a Democrat watching Iowa. We want John Edwards to win. We have no control, only desire.

Hospitals can be bruising. My mother continues to mend, slowly.

(Photo of my and my mother's hands at the dinner table.)

If You Want It

Single payer health care is yours
if you want it

Habeas Corpus is yours
if you want it

Senators and representatives who work for their constituents are yours
if you want it

A country that does not advocate torture is yours
if you want it

A president who does not claim instruction from god is yours
if you want it

Smart environmental policy is yours
if you want it

A government of the people, by the people, and for the people is yours
if you want it

We want it.

What do you want for Christmas?

Word Wednesday

We put it on the table.

Hot Enough for Impeachment?

Doesn't it just figure that the week we decide to get the house ready to put on the market, the temperatures soar off the charts? Did we make the gods angry or what? Seattle hit a record-breaking 98F on Wednesday. I was out painting the front porch and cursing all the global climate change naysayers. No wonder everyone says hell is hot. It certainly felt hellish to me. Our kitty cat Bonsai found the coolest space he could, stretched out on the tile floor. No such languid stretching for me or Roger, it's all work work work.
While I was painting the posts on the south side of the house, I noticed a little someone watching me. I wonder what Blanche's little nestling makes of all this crazy activity. This little one is quite the charmer. She only hides when we let the cat out, or when other juvenile Violet- green Swallows come and do fly-bys.
Her parents are so good to her. They fly around all day long bringing her all sorts of yummy insects. I've seen them out at dusk, swooping and swirling, catching the last of the day's meals.
While I was photographing the baby, beautiful Blanche came by and brought a snack. I think she is really looking good, and she's turned out to be such an attentive mom. I hope she comes back next year. If all goes well, we won't be here, but it's been a good yard for her to successfully raise her offspring.

While we're out working, I'm always looking around, but I also listen to Air America on the radio. I'll say this: The talk almost all day on Thursday was about impeaching the President. It was serious talk, and it was hard not to do a happy dance up on the ladder, but I was definitely only dancing on the inside. I heard someone say that the President doesn't even have to break the law to be impeached. He just needs to be incompetent. I think Bush has long since met that benchmark. It's past time to go, George, and please take Cheney with you. Everyday that you are in office I miss my good county and my Constitution.

And, finally, I know I've been remiss about Good Planets this month, and I apologize to SBGypsy who is hosting it. Please, if you have a beautiful photo that captures something special about our earth, please send it on Friday to sbgypsy AT hotmail DOT com.

Thanks, everyone, and have a great weekend.

Paying Attention

There is a price to be paid for paying attention. From watching the big disasters like Supreme Court decisions that roll back the intentions of Brown vs Board of Education or curtail First Amendment rights to high school students, to the small things like noticing the Tree Swallows abandoned nest with six dead baby birds inside. The cost for both is exacted in outrage, shock, and despair. I've never known how to look away. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a rubber-necker, I can drive past an accident and avert my eyes, but these collisions on the political scene, or the ones in the yard where the cheeping and chirping from the nest box abruptly stop, these I drive past slowly and stare in disbelief.

In my former life, when I advised university students about their responsibility as young journalists, I always kept in mind the great tension between school administrators and their students, and the desire of one to curtail the first amendment freedom of the others. So, to see the Supreme Court hand down a ruling in a case that seemed so unbelievably frivolous, it sent shivers down my spine. On this, this ridiculous case of a sign that said Bong Hits 4 Jesus, the court took a tough stand, and showed how scarily far to the right it could veer. But for them to start dismantling Brown v Board of Education is a thing of such gravity it takes my breath away. It may be that Brown v BE is not the best way to achieve balanced racial integration in public schools, but without it there is no legal precedent or incentive to try. We are seriously being undone in our past battles, in wars we long thought were fought and won. Not so, simply not so.

The Robert's court is a cruel court (interestingly Justice Stevens agrees). It is more cruel than nature, which wields its lethal sword with no conception of politics or justice. The young and old, infirm and poor all fall, but never by design. After two days, I finally asked Roger to check the Tree swallow nest box. There had been so much activity. The sweet sounds of the babies, and the parents flying in and out all day long. Then it stopped. Or did it? Perhaps I was just tuning in and watching when the babies were quiet, and the parents were out hunting. That seemed a reasonable conclusion (not really) on the first day, but on the second that was just wrong. Roger opened the box and found six dead abandoned babies. Now why would that happen? I emailed Dawn, a friend who comments here, and she said it's possible that the parents may have gotten sick, or one parent died and the other just stayed away. Who knows? Not me.

If you pay attention you will be treated to horrors and beauty, to things you never thought you'd see, wished you hadn't or reveled that you had.

The Furthest Thing From My Mind

Tuesday was a busy day in the yard. We had out of town guests over the weekend, not to mention a serious downpour on Sunday, so we didn't get back into garden or yard clean up until Tuesday. I spent most of the day out on the orchard side of the yard in one small area, pulling tansy, yanking volunteer coreopsis and lavender. Roger was working on the other side of the yard in the garden. He screened the compost and made beautiful rich soil for planting beet and carrot seeds.
It was quite a productive day. I found this snakeskin while I was weeding the coreopsis. I pulled a small bush from the ground and found these papery remains snaked throughout the small branches, as if the snake had slithered through the tight space allowing the stems to help it out of its skin. I thought first of Pablo, who had also recently found a snakeskin in an entirely different setting. I thought how great it is to read blogs from all over the country to get an idea of what people and snakes are doing out there in the woods. I also thought of Dick Cheney, although I felt bad for maligning the snake with such a connection. I've been reading three days of the Washington Post's expose on the man, it's hard not to think of Dick after finding the cast off husk of creepy, slithering, belly-crawling critters.

I came in the house wanting to write a post about the snakeskin, but I sat at the computer and just couldn't come up with the right metaphors. I gave up and decided to go out to see Roger and how things were coming along on the garden side of the yard. I walked out the door in his direction, but that's when I heard the crows making a blasted racket on the side of the yard where I had just pulled all those weeds and flowers. I thought, Oh shit, I must have exposed a nest. The crows have been raiding the song bird nests all over our yard. Damn. I ran over there shouting my fool head off at them. I heard the juncos making their click clicking sound. They're just like a neon sign pointing to their nests, so I took it as confirmation that their nest was in trouble. One crow was on the shed roof, two were in the fruit trees in the orchard.

"Get out of here. Go on. Shut your mouths and get out of here." Oh yeah, I was yelling and running straight into the orchard, and the crows were still cawing and cawing. That's when I saw it, a bobcat not more than 50 feet from me. It was standing still in the orchard next to the fence watching me. It nonchalantly tried to slip through a 3" x 6" part of the fencing, but chose a space that it couldn't quite fit through, so it backed out and tried a bit higher where the spaces are larger. I stood there with my mouth in mid-yell. It stopped on the other side of the fence, turned around and looked at me. I looked right back, and waved "Oh hi." It opened its mouth and said something back, but I was too far away to hear. Then it disappeared into the trees.

I ran into the house to get the camera, and then straight out the front door to the road. I thought I might catch it crossing the road, heading up to the hill on the other side, but it didn't go that way. I ran further up the road past our neighbor's house to where two new houses are being built. I stood there with a view of both roads. Sure enough, the bobcat came out of the trees far down the road where the new houses are. I clicked this one photo before it disappeared again.

The bobcat is obviously still spending more time in the yard than we're aware. If the crows hadn't alerted me, I would have never known. That's what I get for being lost in thought about Dick Cheney and really bad Supreme Court decisions. A bobcat was the furthest thing from my mind.

Do you have any really good metaphors for snakeskins and Dick Cheney?

Seeds in Spring

The birds are wild with song and sex. All around our yard and on the trails, there's happy singing and feathers fanning. Their preening elegance knows no bounds. Soon there will be nests.
We have been out and about. There have been a few sunny days. Not enough to make up for the months and months of dreary bleakness-- but still we saw our own shadows, and we didn't run and hide. There are blossoms on the fruit trees and veggie starts in the greenhouse. The promise of a future always begins like this.
We are heartened by the seeds of change taking root in Washington. A Democratic congress is finally using its power of checks and balances. We heard Henry Waxman described as a bulldog, who, once he has a hold of your pant leg is not going to let go. He's got a few very interesting pant legs in his jaws. His relentless tenacity holds a promise. This is very good and interesting. We feel the new winds blowing in Washington, blowing the dust off of the old stories and the new. We feel optimistic and hopeful, but that could very well be the simple result of the ultraviolets streaming into our psyches.
Are you basking in the ultraviolets of spring and planting seeds out there? What do you think will happen with the US Attorney scandal? Do you think Gonzales will resign? Do you know if Monica Goodling ever passed the bar exam? Will Karl Rove and Harriet Miers testify under oath? Will we bomb Iran this month? These are the questions the winds of spring swirl in the dust of seeds.

(If you are going to click on any of these pics, click on the Great Blue Heron. It's a color photo, but it looks so much like black and white.)