Birds on the Bay

It's been a while since we walked the Larry Scott Memorial Trail along Port Townsend Bay. With all the work we've been doing around the house, we haven't had much of an opportunity to venture out just for sheer pleasure and birdwatching. We did notice that all of our southern migrators have gone south, but I was curious to see who was still around. So I left Roger way up on a scaffold and I went down to the water to see the birds of autumn.
I was delighted to see this lovely mallard nestled in the warm sun.
While her mate cast a perfect reflection as he sailed by.
The beach was covered with Black Turnstones. Their return to Port Townsend Bay actually signals that winter is approaching. These birds make a wonderful sound, which was quite a nice tune to walk with along the shore.
I was surprised to see this Bald Eagle. We learned the other day that there are four mated pairs in our area, but we always thought they left in fall and returned to Port Townsend to mate in late winter. Could this be a newcomer?
I thought this was an unusual spot for the Great Blue Heron, perched atop a fence post, but there she was, staring from high up on the cliffs way out to sea.

I picked a grand day for a walk. The sky was absolutely cloudless and the fall-winter shore birds were out. So, it all makes me wonder which birds stay through winter in your neck of the woods?

The Poet Came to the Peninsula

The poet came to the peninsula. Instead of going to see him we stayed home, and I googled his name and looked at photographs of his broad peasant face. Roger and I are such recluses we are nothing like our little Douglas Squirrel who actually knows how to seize an opportunity. We looked at opportunity and regretfully declined. The poet came to the peninsula. He has a voice that the newspaper described as "deep and prehistoric, punctuated by the movement of his big farmer's hands." We could have gone to hear that voice and watch those hands, but we stayed home, and I imagined them instead.

His people and my people have been feuding forever. We have lost all sensibilities of time. His people and my people hold the entire world in our tragedies. We are the mistakes of religion and memory. His people and my people are the marionettes of history.

I have said for so many years that I longed to hear a voice of peace come out of the middle east. I wanted something that would go straight into my heart and remind me that we could all be safe if we really wanted to. That we could take our revenge with pity for humanity and let the world live in peace.
The poet Taha Muhammad Ali came to the peninsula, and our little weekly newspaper published this poem.

Revenge

At times...
I wish I could meet
in a duel
the man who
killed my father
and razed our home,
expelling me into
a narrow country.
And if he killed me,
I'd rest at last,
and if I were ready--
I would take my revenge!

*

But if it came to light,
when my rival appeared,
that he had a mother
waiting for him
or a father who'd put his
right hand over
the heart's place in his chest
whenever his son was late
even by just a quarter-hour
for a meeting they'd set--
then I would not kill him,
even if I could.

*

Likewise...
I would not murder him if
it were soon made clear
that he had a brother or sisters
who loved him and constantly longed to see him.
Or if he had a wife to greet him
and child who
couldn't bear his absence
and whom his presents thrilled.
Or if he had
friends or companions,
neighbors he knew
or allies from prison
or a hospital room,
or classmates from his school...
asking about him
and sending him regards.

*

But if he turned
out be on his own--
cut off like a branch from the tree--
without a mother or father,
with neither a brother nor sister,
wifeless, without a child,
and with no kin or friends or neighbors
and neither colleagues nor companions...
then I'd add not a thing to his pain
within that aloneness--
not the torment of death,
and not the sorrow of passing away.
Instead I'd be content
to ignore him when I passed him by
on the street--as I
convinced myself
that paying him no attention
in itself was a kind of revenge.

Taha Muhammad Ali
Nazareth
April 15, 2006

The poet came to the peninsula. This poem came out of the middle east. Be still my heart.

saturday

it's picture sharing day again. we're breaking with what small tradition we have of putting the pictures in order of receipt. this is a thematic presentation. from the sea to the shore, the intersection of water and land, and then on to land. i have added my own comments in blue text. we'll begin a bit outside the theme, although the island floats in the sea of fog. we are honored to pass on kathy c's remembrance of her friend.

Kathy C. from Minnesota sent this photo:

This is the Hamm’s Bear Island, Burntside Lake, Ely, Minnesota (remember the Hamm’s beer commercials?). But now it is also the site where we scattered Emily’s ashes after her death from breast cancer at 38. Every time I see the lake with the sun shining on it, at the angle to form a half circle, it makes me think of Emily’s dazzling smile. She lived joyfully, even during her cancer years. Every day, she chose joy. That was her gift to the world, and it is how she inspires me.

beginning our theme now, here is some aquatic life.

Dawn sent this photo of a river otter, from a day on the olympic peninsula

Seavu sent this photo of the Jersey coast, because she remembered that here is where Robin spent many a good summer day.

i can see a little girl running over the dunes.

Gary sent this photo of the na pali coast on kauai.

Tara sent the photo of the Capitola, Ca coast.

this is the coast of my childhood. i fished off the pier (make the picture large). i swam along the coast. i played in the waves. also the coast of my nominal adulthood. robin and i lived for 5 years in a tiny upstairs apartment overlooking that pier and monterey bay.

Our neighbors John and Vicki just returned from three weeks in Bali and sent this photo of a sunrise there.

so there we have coasts from jersey to bali. now we go ashore.

kathy a sent this photo of african iris or fortnight daisy.

Kim sent us the roosevelt elk (below) and quaking aspen (above) in Basin, Mt.

Dawn sent this photo from the cascade foothills of a red breasted sapsucker.

yankee transfer sent this photo:
One of the benefits of living in the South is the proliferation of variegated Monkey Grass. This is the border of our front garden, along the walk up to our porch.

another photo from gary. a waterfall on kauai.

here's a monkey in bali, courtesy of john and vicki.

Carol sent these photos from the southern cal desert:

I tried to decide where to take my house guest visiting from Tahiti that would be a real treat for her. She had never been to the desert and was very delighted in the beauty found in springtime.

another from john and vicki. terraced rice paddies in bali.

Susannah sent this photo of the "gardener" posing with some Oregon Grape.

____________________________________________________

thanks again to all who sent pictures.

neighborhood art

when we go out the door afoot for our usual local walk we take an indirect sort of route to port townsend bay, about a mile a way if we walked straight on down to it. we do a loop of sorts in that neighborhood and return home via our meandering path. both ways we pass a house with the most inventive and comical, whimsical creations. folk art in the extreme. hand made. a slowly changing display of wind machines and oddly anthropomorphic characters. we have seen the perpetrator of this wonder just once, while he was rearranging rocks in his yard (rocks from the soil, not the low walls in the pictures).


there is a lot of work invested here. someone is quite industrious. and humorous. what's in your neighborhood?
_________________________________

got good earth pix for saturday? send em.

Schadenfreude and the Apples of Autumn

The best October Surprise we've ever seen.

We're experiencing a major case of schadenfreude. It's true. We're taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune. The Republicans are in meltdown mode. We're watching and finding it incredibly uplifting. Their circular firing squad fills our hearts with joy, as they begin to succumb to the outrages they usually inflict on Democrats. We are happy to see them suffer for their scandals and abuses, and delight in watching them get what they have long deserved. I must admit, though, that we're also very cautious. We've seen horror movies like Halloween. We know how many times Jason can rise from smoldering ashes. In modern nightmares the monsters never really die. Still, we are savoring the moment when at least the villains falter, legs buckle under them, and their hateful tongues lash out at each other. It's a moment of joy, and we're taking it.

According to Wikipedia, the concept of schadenfreude occurs in so many languages. It has a universality. I would like to think that the joy is especially derived from seeing tyrants suffer, not merely the random suffering of just anyone. It is the tyrant's pain that elevates us so.

* Arabic: shamat (shamtan, taking pleasure in the misfortune of others)
* Czech: škodolibost (škoda, damage, harm, or loss, libost, pleasure)
* Danish and Norwegian: skadefryd (skade, pain or suffering, fryd, glee).
* Dutch: leedvermaak (leed, suffering or sorrow, and vermaak, entertainment)
* Estonian: kahjurõõm (kahju, damage or harm and rõõm, joy)
* Finnish: vahingonilo (vahinko, accident or damage, ilo, joy or happiness)
* Hebrew: שמחה) : שמחה לאיד, joy, איד, misfortune)
* Hungarian: káröröm (kár, loss or damage, öröm, joy)
* Lithuanian: piktdžiuga (piktas angry, džiaugsmas joy)
* Russian: злорадство (зло, evil or harm, радость, joy)
* Scots Gaelic: aighear-truaighe (aighear, delight or joy, truaighe, misery or wretchedness)
* Serbo-Croatian: pakost
* Slovak: škodoradosť (škoda, damage, harm, or loss, radosť, joy)
* Slovenian: škodoželjnost (škoda, damage, harm, or loss, želeti, to wish)
* Swedish: skadeglädje (skada, damage, glädje, joy or happiness)

In Thai, the phrase สมน้ำหน้า, som nam na, can be interpreted as: "You got what you deserved"; "Serves you right"; or "I'm laughing at your bad luck".

It's autumn, the trees are bearing fruit. We're out picking apples and pears, and we're smiling about so many things. We're looking over our shoulders waiting for the monster's shadow, but we're still laughing at the Republican's bad luck. สมน้ำหน้า!

***We're still collecting photos for Saturday's Good Planets Are Hard to Find. If you've got a photo you'd like to send, please email it to newdharmabums at yahoo dot com.

When Opportunity Knocks

Roger put up a baffle beneath the bird feeder well over a year ago. Its purpose was to keep the squirrel out of the feeder, and it absolutely does the trick. At first the squirrel tried everything it could to get beyond that baffle, leaping over and over from a rock that's about two feet away. But, after a while, it gave up and seemed content with the seeds that the other birds spilled to the ground. There's definitely plenty of that. Birds are surprisingly picky and messy. They'll toss out peanuts and sunflower seeds still in the shell for something more to their liking. We have quite a variety of birds that come only to feed beneath the feeder, as well as the squirrel. It really is the perfect arrangement.
We raised the hook the bird feeder hangs from a while back to accommodate a new feeder, but that new feeder didn't work out. So we hung the old feeder back up at the new height. Unfortunately, it is now too high for me to reach without contorting into stretches that are absolutely forbidden for people with chronic back problems. So, now I take a little step ladder out to the feeder when I refill it. The other day after I had partially refilled the feeder (dang, I ran out of food) and rehung it, the phone rang, so I inadvertently left the ladder for the very first time, for less than an hour.
Imagine my surprise when I went back outside and saw that the little squirrel had discovered the opportunity and seized it. I was really taken aback by that quick and ingenious behavior. Pretty smart for a little rodent that's never been on a step ladder before. Pretty smart, indeed. Would you call this tool use? I might.

This and That

We've had a lot to do lately. Doing fall clean up in the garden and yard, still working on the house, socializing with friends over dinner, and sadly attending the memorial service for one of the first people we met when we moved to the peninsula.

So, I've rounded up a few photos I shot last Friday, a few sights from a foggy morning. It's quite a lovely moment to catch all the spider webs in the early light, still covered in dew.



I've also been testing rye bread recipes. I finally found one that really makes a dense, delicious, old-world bread. I've been doing my rye bread dance all around the house. This is the real thing.
These came out of the oven Monday afternoon. Roger completed the shingling on three of four gables. We're doing the shingle dance too!