Some close-ups

An unknown catepillar. See the wooly bear below for comparision.
Final days of gathering for the bees.
The crickets were moving towards the house. Several usually embed themselves inside. My father, whose hearing is diminished, doesn't notice them.
Crawling up a window. In 24 hours it moved up about a foot.
Did you know wooly bears appear near the first frost?

1927-2002

My mother died six years ago today of pancreatic cancer. I miss her. This picture is from a Kodacrome slide taken some time in the early 1950s, before she married.
One of her paintings. Sanderlings.

For the birds

In case you couldn’t tell, my head is exploding over this election. For a breather, last night I went to an Audubon lecture. One of the editors of the forthcoming Second Atlas of Breeding Birds in New York State gave a talk. Some highlights: 244 species breed in the state. The American robin is the number one breeding species in the state; 20 years ago it was the song sparrow. More species have expanded their breeding territory than have lost territory in 20 years; in some cases, your conservation dollars have had an effect. The bad news is that grassland species (horned lark, upland sandpiper, etc.) have taken a big hit, because their habitat has disappeared (what there was has been turned into monoculture, mostly corn, and as the guy said, nothing lives in corn.) Common ravens, one of my favorite birds, has expanded nicely, although since they like forests and rocks, it’s unlikely you’ll see them in the city. I’ve heard them up at Bear Mountain, though. (I’ve seen them in Scotland and up on Mount Tam’, north of San Francisco.) Did you know that Treasury Secretary/Goldman Sachs zillionaire Henry Paulson was a big birder? Hmmmmm.

Here’s a great picture of a Le Conte’s sparrow, quite rare for our parts, which was down at Plum Beach yesterday. That’s Brooklyn, baby, just off the Shore Parkway.

This time of year, the night sky is full of birds streaming south.

Words

James Woods has a piece on the Republican attack on language in the New Yorker that’s interesting in a sickening kind of way.

This strategy is an assault on meaning and truth, a slander against learning, and, above all, an attack on thought, reflection, and analysis. My god, how this goes to the heart of democracy and citizenship like a cold knife! Surely I’m not the only one who sees the terrifying shadow of fascism’s love of action, of irrationality, of emotion, in this? Of course, we do have a native anti-intellectual strain and today our education system rather spectacularly fails to produce citizens, but let us also consider the counterweights. The drafters of the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and Common Sense, I think we can agree, all had a way with words. Consider the seven Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, which make all recent debates sound like baby-talk. Think of the Chautauqua movement, the spread of libraries, of workingmen’s discussion circles, of adult education. Think of the cities that were overflowing with newspapers and journals; in 1800 in New York City there were five daily papers; by the 1860s there were 17; in the 1830s there were 35 different penny-papers here in the city.

Think, above all, of the great belief in bettering yourself through education; of the pride all those displaced European peasants (my ancestors among them) who’s children and grandchildren were the first to complete high school and/or to go to college; of the rebellious act that learning to read was for slaves; and of the vital importance of the schoolhouse in the smallest, remotest communities.

I am reminded of the Bush acolyte who infamously told Ron Suskind that we in the “reality-based community” were losers, because they, the representatives of “empire,” would created their own reality when they acted. Yes, well, we’ve seen what’s resulted from eight years of that action, now, haven’t we?

It really comes down to this, doesn’t it: How the fuck can anyone vote for these people again?

I am not his friend

What a nasty little man John McCain is turning out to be. It now makes sense that he called his wife a cunt in front of couple of reporters when she made a joke about it his thinning hair. It’s amazing how all the media blowhards were suckered for so long by his “Maverick” branding. Some theorize it’s penis envy, a bunch of fat-assed mouthpieces trying to get some of that manliness rubbed off on them by jonesing for his war record (which, come to think of it, meant doing his part to kill two million Vietnamese). I wonder if they’re sorry now, as the McCain campaign goes after the media like Joseph Goebbels and Little Miss Taliban Sarah Palin’s fans act like brownshirts in front of reporters? As Lincoln Chafee, one of the surprisingly few sane Republicans in recent memory says, McCain’s flipped on all the big issues they used to work together on. He’ll stop at nothing to win the Presidency, as the cynical Palin pick so nakedly showed. And for what, to continue Bush’s legacy of corruption and disaster in Iran, Afghanistan, New Orleans, the Justice Department, the deficit, the housing mess, the banking crisis, the economy…? But I was talking about the man. Did you see him, with his cadaverous smile, refer to Obama as “that one”? Did you see him refuse to shake the man’s hand after the debate? What a shit!

Lunchtime

Some local tomatoes with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Lunch, from the Borough Hall farmer’s market. While I was outside, I couldn’t fail to notice the completely blue sky. Beautiful. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen, except for thin white slivers of contrails coming from the south. I've always thought they looked like razor cuts across the skin of sky. And, as artificial clouds, they contribute to global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere, especially at night. We're taking the poetry out of everything.

I am

... drinking vanilla cream soda and rum and Grand Mariner and a dash of orange bitters. Candy, yes, but deeply satisfying during these End Times of the national election. Thirty more filthy days to go.

... reading Alvaro Mutis, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll. From the inestimable New York Review Books Classics imprint, about which I have waxed in the past. Also deeply satisfying, although not at all sweet.

... seeing Paris Vu Par, the omnibus from Chabrol, Rohmer, Rouch, Godard and two other guys I’d never heard of. Very disappointing. My cinephilia was not satisfied. Loved the 1965 color of Paris, but the boys were tres sexist and you know, it just doesn't age well.

... hunting mosquitoes. One or more got inside this morning when I popped out into the Back Forty. Their last hurrah, I suppose. I was bit on the wrist, neck, and foot within minutes. This evening I got one, a low flyer, but it was bloodless, so there may be more about.