"LIVE WITH IT OR CALL YOURSELF SOMETHING ELSE"

A jaw-dropping  story from the AOL news screen that illuminates a little bit of why I no longer consider myself a Catholic.  Or even, really, a Christian. 

Priest Denies Communion to Supporters of Gay Catholics.

ONE FOR THE BIRDS

As the Senate prepares for nuclear meltdown, the new "Energy Bill" wends its way through Congress, the roadless forest rule passed by Clinton is rescinded by Bush - leaving formerly pristine forests now open for logging and mining by the Fat Cats who control our government - we try to protect and enjoy what remains to us of natural space, land preserved as habitat for plants, birds, animals and as a glimpse of the wonders of creation for us, its sad destroyers.  Robin, of Midlife Matters, just sent around a wonderful post from her weekend in Ohio, and I'd like to share the birding trip G and I had Saturday.  We went with a small group led by a naturalist from the Cape Henlopen State Park Nature Center to a place we'd never heard of, Thompson's Island.  To get there we had to wend our way through a condo complex between Rehoboth Beach and Dewey Beach.  The preserve, which Richard - our naturalist - says is part of the State Parks land, encompasses forests, marshes and wetlands, and the banks of the RB/Lewes Canal. 

As we went through the first part of the forest, we heard many many birds calling, but the canopy was too thick to see much.  At one point the canopy opened up, and the warblers were so numerous we couldn't decide where to look first.  The canopy was high, and the sky a hazy grey that produces unfortunate backlighting.  Even so, we saw black and whites, American redstarts, a female summer tanager, yellow-rumps (butter-butts), one black-throated green, and pine warblers. 

When we got to the water there were many common terns gracefully looping and diving, yellow-legs, dowitchers, one spotted sandpiper on the mudflats, a couple of great blue herons, a green heron, a louisiana tricolor heron, clapper rails constantly heard in the grasses, but never seen.  There was a wonderful osprey sitting on a snag very close to us, guarding his nest in the marsh at the edge of the woods. Two osprey also flew overhead, one carrying home some lunch.  At one point, to everyone's surprise, a bald eagle flew overhead - quite low - going so fast it took our breath away.  He was on a very definite mission.  There were several pair of eastern king birds in the trees near the marsh, squabbling over territory, as it seemed. 

For me the best moment of the trip was coming across a pair of tree swallows building a nest in a cavity in a snag, just off the trail.  They were both flying in and out with strands of dried grasses, taking turns sitting on top of another snag in the sunlight, thinking about decor, I guess.  The male was so shiningly blue in the sunlight; I've never seen one so blue.                          

   Tree swallow on fence.

As we returned - an hour over the time we were supposed to have spent - through the woods we first heard, then saw, several red-bellied woodpeckers.  For a birding farewell, just before we came out of the woods into the parking lot, there was a red-eyed vireo flitting around in the branches right above us - we first heard, then saw it also. 

I'm sure I have forgotten some of what we saw  - G kept the list, and I don't quite know where it is right now.  Though we were very close to human habitation, and much too close to boats coming down the canal ignoring the "no wake" request, it felt magically apart from all that.  Had we seen no birds to speak of, it still would have been a wonderful morning.  But we saw so many, heard many more, got muddy feet, mosquito bites  (and G found a tick this morning, two days later, though we had assiduously searched our bodies for them ASAP), knew we were in a place that has been saved from condos, marinas, giant beach houses, kept safe for small shining birds to peacefully build nests in hollow trees.

SUNDAY SIX, YAWN

Yesterday we were birding all morning, and I will write about that pretty soon.  But right now I'm feeling very lazy, so am going to take the fun road and answer Patrick's Saturday Six.  Which now are the Sunday Six, whether that's okay or not.

1. How many scars do you have on your body?  Where are they?
 
Any body that makes it to my age without scars has not lived much of a life, is what I think.  I will only mention the outstanding ones.  On my right index finger, a large V-shaped scar from a broken glass when I was eleven, poorly stitched together by an intern.   Right palm and wrist, carpal-tunnel surgery scar. Left shoulder, a four inch scar from surgery to remove a bonespur on my acromium.  Small scars on my belly from laproscopic surgery.  Left elbow, inch long scar from putting elbow through glass door as a teenager.  Bottoms of both feet, scars from cuts obtained jumping off barn roof, landing on pile of boards, as a kid and never telling parents about it for fear of tetanus shots.

   

2. What is the last junk food you ate in such large quantity that you actually felt guilty afterwards?

       Is ice cream really junk food?

3. What is the closest spot to your home where you go when you feel like you need an afternoon escape?

      The beach at Cape Henlopen State Park, for a long walk.

4. Of those in your collection, what movie have you watched the most times?

      Shrek.

5. Have you ever felt discriminated against?  What about you do you believe led to the discrimination?

      I have to say no.  And this is true even though I am a lesbian.

6. RAPID FIRE QUESTION #3:  Have you ever hired a:
    a. Maid
    b. Lawyer
    c. Chauffeur
    d. Plumber
    e. Photographer
    f. Realtor
    g. Gardener
    h. Personal Trainer
    i. Psychic/Spirtual Advisor
    j. Mortician

        Lawyer, Plumber, Realtor, Funeral Home services.  Is there more to this question?  Hasn't everyone hired a plumber at some point?  Or else they don't have plumbing in their dwellings. 

THE JOYS OF COMPOSTING

Things sometimes converge strangely and fortuitously, in J-land as well as life, don't you find?  I have been planning an entry on the subject of composting, mulling it over as I have worked my own compost bin - extracting glorious finished stuff to work into the garden soil, adding mulched leaves from last fall to start the pile cooking anew.  Then, just this morning, I opened my email box to find a note from my pal Tank Gurl asking about compost - should she be putting her garden byproducts into a compost pile, instead of bagging them up for the city to remove?   The answer, of course, is a most emphatic "YES!"

I have been composting for as long as I can remember.  My parents (avid gardeners, both of them - my father grew vegetables and fruit trees, my mother grew herbs and the most amazing flowers) composted all through my life with them, and it was a natural step to start my own compost heap as soon as I was no longer living in boarding school or university dormitories. 

Composting is actually, yes really, one of my chief pleasures in life.  Does this sound as if I have a wretched life?  Well, maybe - but there is something about taking what would be regarded as trash and seeing it turn into living soil, full of earthworms and unseen beneficial bacteria, that is not equaled by much else.  It's working with nature, to create life.  Or, as the I Ching says:

-- "Man's work with Nature that furthers Nature's aims is the work that rewards him the best."

My compost is composed of garden waste (weeds that have already made seeds are put in a pile way in the back of the yard, to remain there for unknown ages, until the seeds are cooked out), grass clippings, fallen leaves that have been mulched so they're in smaller pieces, kitchen scraps of a vegetable or fruit nature  (no meat scraps), eggshells, coffee grounds, tea bags.  My favorite form of compost container is a chicken wire pen, but as we live in an area with critters who would pull such a pile apart, here I have a bin of plastic slats and  removable top.  The finished compost is pulled out of the bottom of the bin - not the most convenient or accessible method, I have to admit.  My old bin was destroyed in Hurricane Isabel, when a crape myrtle tree was knocked over onto it.  I'd had it since we lived on Cape Cod - we actually moved both bin and compost down here.  Imagine that. 

The best site I know for more information than you could possibly absorb is on Journey to Forever.  Both the preceding picture and I Ching quote come from that site.  Once you get into it, you won't want to leave for a long time - be forewarned. 

Last year I wrote an entry about Tim Dundon, "The Compost Guru."  He built a 30 foot-high pile of compost, over a period of thirty-five  years, in an L.A. suburb.  It's an amazing story, one that really hit my soft spot.  You can read his story here, on the wonderful Path to Freedom site. In the sidebar to Tim's story are more compost links. Be sure to browse the picture galleries, from which I give you a few samples:

    Whole TREES are growing in this pile.

   This is a shot of vegetables growing ON THE HEAP.

Tim's story has a sad ending, however.  He had built this heap on a piece of land owned, but unused, by a cemetary.  He had offered a large sum of money to buy the land, but had been refused.  Despite the fact that a good compost heap has absolutely no offensive odor at all, apparently his neighbors had long wanted to find a way to get rid of him.  Last month his pile was bulldozed and spread out on the land, which isprobably going to be used for development.  Tim is selling his own land and moving elsewhere.  To start afresh (so to speak), I'm sure.

So, you have an environment to tend in your own back yard - put your hand in the hand of Mother Nature, and build that glorious heap!

        

 

OH FRABJOUS DAY! CALLOOH! CALLAY!

(She chortled in her joy.)  Spring semester has, at last, ended! At ten this a.m. I finished conferring with my dept head about some of my students and their grades, entered the grades into the computer, kissed everyone goodbye and came home to begin establishing some kind of Real Life for myself.  It will involve a lot of gardening, reading, kayaking, and hopefully returning to journal reading and writing.  I have been woefully remiss, and do thank those of you who have stuck with me through this hiatus in journal participation.  I've missed it dreadfully.

I'll still have the afterschool kids for another couple of weeks, but they are mostly fun.  When the summer semester starts, mid-June, I'll be back at the college for a class or two.  But I'm not going to think about that now. NO!  The sun is shining, the irises are blooming, the lettuce is fresh and green and young.  Every time I go in or out the kitchen door a bright shower of goldfinches sparks up from the feeders in the crape myrtle. 

I wish I were a cat right now; I'd lie down in the sun and purr - as Molly is doing in front of the door this very minute. 

 

EMPTY NEST SYNDROME

It's hard to believe how fast the eaglets grew up, and now one of them has already left home for a new home in Vermont.  Not under his own speed, but under the aegis of a program to replenish the eagle population there.  I have been as out of touch with the eagles as I have with everything else except the last weeks of teaching, giving tests, counseling students, working with my afterschool kids, and trying to get a few things planted.  I've only gone online once or twice daily, to check in on news and email.

In that time many things have happened.  You can read all about this fascinating transfer in the EagleCamBlog, and also see some kickass pictures of the transfer.  If I was only seventeen again, and knew what I know now about my real interests in this world, I'd start all over again as a wildlife biologist.  Of course, if I were seventeen at this particular point in history, I'm sure I'd be a completely whacked-out junky goth freak.  So maybe it's just as well.

Maybe I'll go back to school once this life of busy working is finished and study to become The Oldest Living Wildlife Biologist. 

Anyway, during the past week they took eaglet #2 off to the north country, and the other two will soon be ready to fledge.  I now feel that I really know what the Empty Nest Syndrome means - I am so sad that they will be gone.  The ospreys, in the meantime, are gearing into the beginning phases of this process - so we can start all over and get attached to these birds.

JOKE

So, a woman walks into a curio shop in San Francisco. Looking around at
the exotica, she notices a very life-like, life-size bronze statue of
a rat. It has no price tag, but it looks so striking she decides she
must have it. She takes it to the owner: "How much is the bronze
rat?"

"Twelve dollars for the rat, a hundred dollars for the story," says
the owner.

The woman gives the shop owner twelve dollars. "I'll just take the
rat; you can keep the story."

As she walks down the street carrying the bronze rat, she notices
that a few real rats have crawled out of alleys and sewers, and begun
following her down the street. This is a bit disconcerting, so she
begins walking a little bit faster.

Within a couple of blocks, the group of rats behind her grows to over
a hundred, and they begin squealing. She starts to trot towards the
Bay. She takes a nervous look around and sees that the rats now
number in the thousands, maybe in the millions, and they are all
squealing and coming towards her faster and faster. Terrified, she
runs to the edge of the Bay and throws the bronze rat as far out into
the Bay as she can. Amazingly, the millions of rats all jump into the
Bay after it, and are all drowned.

The woman walks back to the curio shop. "Aha," says the owner, "I'll
bet you have come back for the story."

"Actually no," says the woman. "I came back to see if you have a
bronze Republican."

Just in case any Republicans ever read this journal, I apologize in advance.  It's just a joke, okay?  (Pretty good one, huh?)  Actually,  no one is going to be reading this journal, if I don't get back into the loop fairly soon.  Another week should do it, grades handed in, a training in the new language lab, maybe even the lawn mowed.  And I'll cease to be an indentured servant.