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.