Bumblebees and Teabaggers

The closed road at Mississinewa Lake has access to a path through pine woods, cut for an annual fitness event the DNR holds there. Coming off the path onto the road, I noted a bumblebee walking west.

Put me in mind of a song - "Poor Little Robin" - ("walking to Missouri, he can't afford to fly"), by Sammy Kaye in 1952. I had thought it was by Perry Como, who became ancient history with the introduction of Valium.

That "he can't afford to fly" is perfect for our bumblebee, according to Bernd Heinrich, the bugworld virtuoso of the printed word. Writing in Bumblebee Economics, Professor Heinrich states bumblebees only store (as in eat) enough calories for the proposed roundtrip. Any reason at all - windgusts, interference from other creatures, misinformation from other mates - and the bumblebee walks home. As mine was doing.

Verily, if you don't find this absolutely incredible, you should lock yourself in your car trunk next weekend, do a goodly bit of reflection and reevaluation.

The birds on the wires all flew today, for no particular reason I could identify. The only sure ID's were a couple of redwing blackbirds, with that beautiful orange-and-yellow bar pattern on the upper wing, near the shoulder. A wildlife biologist once told me that researchers blacked out these colors on males, and they couldn't get laid with a blank check.

I picked a painted turtle off the road and took it to a creekside in a woods. It is amazing how good such a totally simple act made me feel. It takes a bit of convergence - you and the turtle, plus the cars that have missed it, and the cars that haven't tried to hit it. I'm not quite on the butterfly-farts-in-Ghana-tornado-in-Oklahoma train, but stuff lines up some.

Like intersecting my bumblebee at that point, "my" Pearson's Mill red tail dropping its catch just feet away, looking out a window as an oriole flies past, a turtle in the road I didn't hit but glimpsed enough to back up a couple hundred yards to "save".

I had wanted to post some comments on the teabaggers, but I'm just not up to it. This, though:

I tend to be the least bit liberal, am a strict constitutionalist, strongly in favor of the Amendments and the Bill of Rights, and especially sensitive to the guarantees of Human Rights, an atheist with a fondness for the Ten Commandments and that gem from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". My feeling is that "Golden Rule" would solve just about every social dispute, if it were heeded.

Never mind that all the teabaggers are fucking idiots. What most especially gripes my ass is their usurpation of one of our hallowed moments in American History, the Boston Tea Party. How this in any way relates to the drivel and verbal drool they spew confounds me, except as an act of civil disobedience, also known as sedition.

Rave on, morons. The only people listening are Republicans, who fear a split in the flock, as anyone dumb enough to vote Republican could find your crap attractive.

Seriously, I cannot understand how airheaded gasbags like these don't blow away in a moderate wind.

Driving home this evening an oncoming car and mine nearly scissored a kestrel intent on roadfood. Clean miss, happily.

A kestrel on a wire is the same size as a turtle dove. The difference is the kestrel has no neck. The mourning dove has a long neck and a very small head.

Don't be fooled by that diminutive cranium. The bird has the brain power to propel those few ounces of feathers and hollow bones to speeds of 55 mph. Know how fast that is? Try this: buckle up, set the cruise control on 55, then open the door and look down.

Bird brain, indeed.

Time and Beauty

Monday was the Longest Day of the Year, made even longer by Mitch Fucking Daniels, the same self-serving asswipe who gave away the Toll Road to, quote, Balance the Budget, endquote.

The woebegone State of Indiana had but two guaranteed money-makers - the Toll Road and the Hoosier Lottery. The above named fuckstain gave away the Toll Road and tried to privatize the Lottery.

Never mind the funds generated by the lottery aren't allocated as promised. That promise has been abnegated several times by the people you sent to State Legislature. And, if you didn't vote, the fault is yours.

Although Hoosiers had been opposed to DST for almost 35 years, Daniels kicked it up our collective ass for no apparent reason. Except, of course, because he could. Now, schoolbusses run the majority of their annual routes in the dark. Can you say "unsafe"?

Tuesday - Thursday was my worst three-day span not spent in ICU.

But the raptors are out in abundance. What a display, what great clean fun!

Got my softly larded self out the door before 8AM last Sunday and found "my" Converse Cemetery red tail on his usual perch.

The cemetery is an elongated rectangle, with one lane in the middle on the long axis. In the old, western third of the grounds, there are two evenly spaced pine trees of some age along this middle road, and the buteo perches high in a south-facing dead area in the inner tree. On Tuesday, I kept to the outer road, and he stuck around for my walk.

This is a first, and a Big Deal, a little bit of tolerance, the tiniest hint of acceptance. I never would have, could have, thought this could happen.

My pup was circling a three-foot wide headstone at Thrillkill Cemetery as fast as he could go, reversing once or twice, as I hobbled over. As I was getting there, he caught a little animal and threw it, and it returned immediately to making tombstone laps.

It was a baby chipmunk, completely out of its mind, ready to vote Republican, and I got the puppy away to give it a chance to live, should its heart slow to about eight thousand beats a second.

At Pearson's Mill, there is a nice steep road to the top of the hill above the him/hers. There is a ditch along a stretch, with a concrete lining, owing to the steepness of the hill and the massive amounts of dollars wasted on these three flood-control reservoirs. The bottom of the ditch is two and three feet lower than the road. As I was struggling up the hill, reading a book, my collie pup came thundering up the ditch, and, as I looked, saw "my" Pearson's Mill red tail at my waist level, leading the collie by scant yards, and he dropped what he had and made a hard right when the bank leveled and headed on up into the woods. After I found where my breath was hidden, I searched in vain for his lost prize, and guessed he hadn't killed it.

One day this past week was bluebird day, with at least three confirmed on wires along a stretch of road. The next day the Indigo Buntings had usurped those beauties, and I saw two for sure and three very probable (behavior, size: the light wasn't good for color, a stellar reason to learn your birds without it) along the same stretch.

I drove under two kestrels, sitting as close together (forty or so feet) as I've ever seen. They just about always fly, and the first one did, quickly, but the other spread her wings in balance, backlit by the sun, so beautiful, stunning, before she, too, flew. Take a look in your rear-view mirror. They alight in their own tracks.

And I saw a Baltimore Oriole just north and east of town, on the wing, in an area I have never seen anything. For me orioles are always major, as our paths so seldom cross.

"Baltimore" Oriole is one the taxonomists got right, changed to "Eastern" Oriole then changed back.

Not so brontosaurus. I learned this prehistoric leviathan when I was 5, from an older neighbor's dinosaur set. But, after I graduated college with a degree in geology, the name was changed to something I don't know to this day. Why? Again, don't know. It's not like it was named "sparrow" or "caterpillar" or "rugby", something confusing.

And Haileys Comet. At least we thought so, until it (sort of) showed up. It was a fizzle, and then there was supposed to be a typo, so after 75 years it became a.) not worth waiting another 75 years for and b.) Halley's Comet, although few cared by then.

Not at all like Hale-Bopp, which showed up like a death star, in the eastern sky and headed for us, apparently full on, early one morning in March 1997. It looked like the apocalypse, and it was for 39 members of the completely ridiculous cult Heaven's Gate, named after the worst movie in history, until Waterworld. Now that was a comet, unlike the abysmal Kohotuek, all but invisible to the naked eye, and no death toll. There have been eclipses did better than that.Remember the Neanderthal? Good for you. Except they're "Neandertahl". Guessing one showed up one day, said "All ya'all got it all wrong".

Two mink crossed the closed road I routinely walk at Mississinewa. They are all but indistinguishable from weasel at the forty yards my 60+ year-old-eyes spotted them, and I was inclined towards weasels, as mink stink, a very heavy musk, and the dogs didn't pick it up as we crossed their trail.

But they were just too dark, and mink they were, and mink they'll stay.

Rooting around in i tunes I found a band named "Anal Thunder".

Feel free to preview any or all of their songs, tell me what you think.

Although I highly and strongly recommend Pepper by "Butt Hole Surfers". Don't be off-put by the band name, and don't miss this song.

I found the Thunder looking for another - "Band of Skulls" - improbably recommended in the New York Times Book Review.

The book review has long been one of my very favorite magazines. I subscribed for years, but recent financial adjustments have priced it out of my reach. I take this moment to Officially Damn to Hell the three people most responsible for this. May you all die slowly and painfully and burn in the hottest corner for eternity.

I read the book review online now. As does any pre-Korean War baby with achy bones and an unsuitable computer chair, I prefer a hard copy 87 to 1. Plus, my attention span could only be mapped using fractals (thank you, Anne), and sitting in my chair for more than a couple minutes is about as likely as if I had fire ants in my pants.

There are two new books about, one a chronicle of Custer, the other Quannah Parker and the Comanche Nation.

Custer has been rescued from ignominy and dereliction, making a judgement call that cost the US the lives of 257 men, good and true, and his flaming asshole self.

Custer was a moron with much charisma, graduating last in his class at West Point. (What recent idiot president does this bring to mind?) He was rather more successful as a cavalry officer in the Civil War (hell, even Bush nutz learned to fly a plane), but the review, by Bruce Barcott, whose "Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw" I liked very much, gives credit to a Custer-led charge for turning the tide at Gettysburg. I am by no means a scholar, but I take issue with this particular assertion.

The Battle at Gettysburg was lost by the South because of rare tactical and field blunders of leadership by the officer staff, from Lee down. There was hesitancy to advance when an advantage offered, and the subsequent debacles, such as Pickett's charge, coming much too late and directed at a strong, easily defensible ridge, when the entire rear of the Union Army was all but undefended.

Lee picked the wrong battle to be indecisive, but may be forgiven some, as his best General, easily one of the very best generals of all time, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, had been killed less than two months previously. And, his most reliable scout and fire extinguisher, cavalryman J. E. B. Stuart, was caught up in the fun of easy pickings of supply depots 20 miles in the Union rear, costing Lee valuable reports of battlefield salients and weaknesses.

In my readings, Custer is mentioned only as being there. Much, much more is made of Stuart not being there, the only blemish on a stellar career, yet cited by some southern historians as "the" reason the South lost Gettysburg, and the war. But there is plenty of blame to spread around Lee's officer corps to make Stuart's absence all but meaningless.

I will absolutely pass on another book on Custer. The story of the Comanche Nations appear to be must-reading, and certainly a necessity is an upcoming release about the Lakota (Sioux).

Never mind those are the guys who kicked Custer's ass to hell. Crazy Horse belongs on any list with Jackson.

I spent this month in 1966 as a 17-year-old in basic training near San Antonio, Texas. Just the most wonderful place for a kid with the lowest self image and literally starving for approval.

We bunked on the second floor of our barracks. One beautiful June Texas morning, the DI (training instructor, or "Drill" Instructor) threw my foot locker out the window. The reason? So obvious, really. There was some toothpaste residue in the neck of my tube. In the interests of National Security, the neck of a toothpaste tube had to be cleaned, on the inside. Somehow, that morning, I must have missed some.

We had a few Negroes, and they kept together in a far corner of the barracks. Being from Elwood, Indiana, I had never spoken with a Negro. Ever.

(Note: this was before a race a thousand thousand shades of brown came to be called "Black". With all due respect, I will point out that the Jockey Club of America took the opposite tack: all dark horses are "dark bay or brown". This includes Sunday Silence, the beautiful velvety black stallion with the map of India on his forehead.)

So one evening I made my way down to the corner, and said something I thought was witty. The oldest guy of the group threatened to cut me if I ever came near him again. I left.

Later a couple of the other guys were there said not to worry about it, he was full of shit.

So I didn't worry about it, although I did consider beating the shit out of him for a couple of days. But, wisely, I let it go.

And stayed away.

At the railroad crossing next to the Converse Cemetery Thursday evening, a couple of meadow voles were scampering about, and quickly made the tall grass. According to the Princeton guide to mammals of North America, this is the most prolific mammal on earth. Easy to believe, as I'm almost 62 and I've already seen two.

There has been a dearth of raptors about. "My" cemetery hawk, not seen in months.

"My" Pearson's Mill hawk - same.

So few American Kestrels, one or two, and too often, none. Like today.

This may be the season, for the natural reason, but I am derelict in manner, appearance, attitude, and in matters necessary to present even a mediocre blog, and really don't feel up to the research necessary in cross-referencing a half dozen and more books on the subject to provide dependable information.

So, yeah, they're all off screwing and hatching and fledgling and shit.

Except today I spotted a pair of red tails about a quarter mile away, high, about sixty yards apart, crossing an open field to a woods.

If you were with me and I pointed this out, you would tell me to roll down the windows, as it stinks in the truck because I'm full of crap.

Counting stragglers and lost strays, there are a few over 700 bird species available for viewing in our beloved country. There are about 200 here in Indiana in a given year, many for a very short time and in very spotty locales.

If you never thumbed a bird guide, never paid the least attention, you know about twenty birds by sight or song, about 10% of every species that dares to show face hereabouts.

A casual weekend with some glass and a guide or two, and you'll get to about forty, and you are ready to identify about everything you'll encounter in casual observation. As important you'll immediately know what you don't know, which saves oodles of time, should you find yourself interested in just what the hell you're looking at.

The First Rule of Identification, according to me, is, If it's not supposed to be here, it probably isn't.

Don't buy a Western Field Guide unless you are heading that way.

Petersen Guides are Biblical in the bird lover's library, a Rosetta Stone to put a name on a tiny bundle of feathers.

I don't own one. I have over 20 guides to birds (yeah, you're right, I've never actually read any of them), but none are Petersen's. Because the "range" maps, where the birds most always are, are in a different section from the identifications - descriptions, pictures, habits, etc. Which is in direct conflict with the First Rule: all those things may seem apropos, but if it ain't supposed to be here, it probably ain't here.

You can be an expert just by watching the birds you know a little bit. The term "birding" is in vogue, but I reject it. To me, it smacks of "tallying", adding a bird to your "list" and moving on.

Because if you watch birds, like the magnificent red tail hawk, you will know that the only other bird of this size you will encounter regularly is the turkey vulture, and, as noted here previously, these birds soar and glide, moving literally miles through the air without so much as a wing flap. Majestic, stunning, captivating.

Buteos, including red tail hawks, have a distinctive, tell-tale, flap-flap-flap glide flight, and the second time you see it you will know it for life.

Unless you are a hideously slow study, which begs the question Why are you reading this stuff, anyway?

Not convinced to take another look?

Find some swifts or swallows. Doesn't matter which. If you want to know which, one has a forked tail.

These tiny rocket ships will reset your appreciation for amazing. They fly at blazing speeds through the most crowded yards, often seeming to scorch the grass, and make turns, swoops, dives, and vertical ascents that would render one unconscious at the very onset, if on-board.

Here's a fun part: see if you can spot that fork tail.

Good luck and much sheer joy!

For Krystle, an Angel Driven Away

Our system of measuring time is totally illogical, and may in fact be the stonewall keeping most of us from understanding modern physical assessments and definitions of the dimension we occupy.
Today "is" June 4, 2010.
On June 4, 2009, at about 10:40PM, in front of her darkened home, wrapped in a black shawl against a cool night, 14-year-old Krystle Danae Gingerich stepped into the path of an animal-transport semi-trailer rig, rather than face once again what waited for her in her own home, the kind of horror and degradation which should be the bane of any god, and never expected in the Amish Community.
That very community, with its literal interpretation of a book rewritten a hundred, a thousand times over the Centuries, at the whim and whimsy of anyone in position to direct a redaction, a deletion, an addition, a complete overhaul, left a muddled document with the Big X intact, but open to enough speculation to keep televangelists and other firebreathers, and that beached whale of the christian world, the catholic church, at sea for over 2000 years.
Along the way some moron gave "man" dominion over everything on earth - birds of the air, fishes of the seas, beasts of the lands, women. "Go forth and multiply." Well, we have. Billions upon billions, using the land and its resources as if our goal is to reduce the earth to sand. And very soon.
We are proceeding nicely apace.
And we are determining which of the Big X means more than the others.
Christian Nations waged the most lethal wars in the last 200 years, as we continue to become more efficient warriors. Some Christian Nations, even in the face of the unequivocally worded "Thall Shalt Not Kill" regularly exercise a death penalty.
"Honor Thy Father and Mother" is a joke.
The commandment isn't TO "Bear False Witness".
And somehow, in all this "confusion", Wesley Gingerich, a god-fearing amishman, raped and sodomized and humiliated his baby daughter until, a year ago, she found refuge under eighteen wheels.
Time has been routinely posited as another dimension, yet we cannot measure time in the most rudimentary sense.
The most pressing need is to measure night and day, but night and day are the same length only two times a year, and not where you are.
There is the year: a measure of the time it takes the earth to circumnavigate the sun, 52 weeks, 365 days.
But yesterday, Thursday, was the night Krystle died, June 4, 2009. So today is the anniversary, one year later, because there are 365 days required to make an orbit of the sun. But it takes 365 1/4 days to circumscribe the sun, so every fourth year, we have to add a day.
There are 12 months, each approximating a period of the moon.
But the months range over 4 different totals of days, none of which equal the 27 1/3 days it takes the moon to orbit the earth. So there are 12 months but 13 "full" moons, except in leap year, when there are 14. The hours in a day, which don't effectively measure the light/dark of a day, which changes every day, are made up of hours, which, actually, don't mean much. There are sixty minutes in an hour and sixty seconds in a minute, for no reason I know of. Much past cooking stuff, which should always be done to temperature anyway, neither seems to have intrinsic merit. Tenths and hundredths and thousandsths of a second are required for clocking most sporting activities.
The Official Clock used to be calibrated on the growth rate of hair on a lamb's testicular sac on a hill overlooking Dunforth, Scotland.
Okay I made that up. Now it's measured by rate of decay of a single aluminum atom. It is, according to NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) accurate to plus/minus 1 second in 3.7 billion years. Which should tell you everything you need to know about our "time". It is precise to about half the age of the earth, and apropos of absolutely nothing.
So if you have even a clue what time it is, or the date, or the Century, forget string theory.
You ain't gonna get it.

A beautiful blonde baby has been in the ground a year.
She can forget about justice. She ain't gonna get any.
Rest In Peace, Sweetest Princess. There was none in your life.