migrateblog

SPRING IN CHICAGO

2007-03-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

Whew! That was a long breather from this blog. Here is the latest spring roundup (not many migrants in the bunch, but I'm enjoying the raptors):

1 COOPER'S HAWK
1 RED-TAILED HAWK
1 MERLIN
2 KESTRELS
2 AMERICAN GOLDFINCHES
1 BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE

A strange urban wildlife phenomenon: I've seen this red-tailed hawk twice in close proximity to our house in the past week and a half: once it dove in to the alley as i pulled out of the garage on my way to drop baby at the sitter's, and once it alighted on the tree just in front. I pondered it sitting on a branch: what is so attractive about our house?

That afternoon, Stella the cat killed her first mouse.

This was actually the third mouse we've seen in our apartment. The cat left it charmingly on the baby's toy mat, where the baby's dad found it while holding baby, upon which the cat threw herself into a tumbling, roly poly fit of joyful purring. So much for the toy mat.

Horrified, I put mousie in the dumpster out back.

And returned to find the cats chasing another mouse.

This time, the BF managed to get the cat to hold the mouse in her jaws, open the door, hold cat aloft outside over the back deck, and release the mouse to the ground below and to relative safety. Phew.

But, wait--WAS it relatively safe out there? Or did we abandon poor mouselet to an even gruesomer fate: being torn apart and eaten by a raptor? Perhaps the spate of mouse sightings in our apartment has more to do with the raptor migration arriving in town and that big guy haunting our little abode.

Don't quite know what to do about this one. Baby will be crawling soon, so spring-loaded mousetraps and poison are both out of the question. Any thoughts out there as to a humane way to solve our rodent conundrum?

Sasha Sylvia age 1 1/2 weeks

2006-10-10T09:40:00.000-07:00

face3
Originally uploaded by unionmaidn.

WELCOME BABY!
September 28, 2006 1:51pm CST
8lbs, 3 oz
20.5 inches long

Lakeshorebirds

2006-09-23T15:54:00.000-07:00

This morning, our first together without workplaces to attend to, we went to IHOP for breakfast, after which it seemed like a good idea to take a walk along the lake. Rainclouds threatened, but weren't quite ready to give up the goods, in that Midwestern way they sometimes have. First day of fall, seventy degrees, not a spot of sunshine anywhere.
We got to the beach and the light was tricky. It was one of those mornings where the lake horizon blends mistily into the grey of sky, and only the textures of water and cloud set them apart visually. Few people were out, despite the late-season warmth, and as we walked we spotted some gulls frolicking at the end of a corrugated steel-plate jetty, along with two more sedentary, S-necked darker birds which I couldn't name right away. Here, let me get the Peterson guide:they were DOUBLE-CRESTED CORMORANTS. My first migrating shorebirds of the season, yay!
I watched the cormorants preen and dry their wings for a bit and then slowly sauntered my baby-carrying bulk down the beach to the pier. At the entrance to the pier is a fenced-in dune vegetation area, where we spotted two AMERICAN KESTRELS hunting for their lunch. They danced midair among the butterflies for awhile, and one made a laughable semi-dive for a squirrel which was probably twice its size. They eventually flew back into a willow, tired of the chase.

Fall Warbler, not much else

2006-09-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

Since I'm enormously preggers, not exercising much beyond climbing three flights of stairs to the apartment, and therefore not getting out to bird, I was nervous that I'd get through my last day of work without seeing any good fall birds. But! The BF came to pick me up and as we moseyed back to the car, I spotted my first fall guy--a PALM WARBLER just loving the ground as those ground-lovin warblers do in migration. It being my nature to worry needlessly, I worried that he'd crashed into the glass-paneled front of the Medill School of Journalism, but in fact he was just fine.
Earlier in the day I'd also seen a pair of NORTHERN CARDINALS cavorting in a yew bush, and then later that afternoon I saw what I thought might be a shrike but was probably just a large sparrow on a light fixture on a building exterior.

I and the Bird #31: A Challenge

2006-08-29T20:50:00.000-07:00

OK. Since we're just past the anniversary of this I and the Bird Blog Carnival, which is, after all, a collaborative effort spearheaded by the spectacularly tireless Mike, I thought I ought to do something a little special with it. Thing is, all your contributions were so different! So I'm now, at 11pm on a Tuesday night, setting myself a challenge: I will write a haiku for each post in this week's edition. You guys know what haiku is, right? Three lines: five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables. I promise neither quality nor consistency but maybe a little entertainment for you all as you take the pleasurable journey through all the entries. They're so worth reading that I think they merit my finest poetic effort! Let the games begin! (P.S. I am allowed to break the rules any time I feel so inclined.)

From West Virginia
Elvis-or is it LVIS?
Has flown the building

Feeder or birdbath?
Steve Bailey has the answers
If you want more birds

Thought I knew cardinals
KTCat has proved me wrong!
Oahu dreaming...

Peregrine's breathless
Over his first sightings of--
Well, read it and see!

UK daylight fades--
Not Marc's usual birding time
Look what we have here!

In birding Eden
David's quest, once thwarted, now:
New Guinea, Part Deux.

Minnesota Deb:
A sad discovery, but hey--
Positive ID!

It's a what? A what?
Too noisy, I can't hear you.
Plus: Australia pics

Down Under, a trip
Rewards Duncan and his wife--
A clue: it's Powerful

Wayne, birding by train
Spies and photographs--a what?
You'll just have to read

Pull back the covers
Get up! Go see some plovers
Then read Mike's latest.

Here's an elegy
Via ornithology
Laura,nightjars,loss

Rob's raptor photos
A captivating trio
Soars over Boise

Let's envy Charlie
Whilst birding Nigeria
What's this species called?

More New Guinea thoughts
From artist Carel this time
What colors! Such skill!

Bzzzz! goes the hummer
A jewel of a pic from Jayne
Georgia's ruby throat

Thomasburg babies
Grown in a watering can
Time for flight at last!

Rocky mountain highs
For Patrick and Beth's trip out west
Crossbills! Siskins! Yay!

Don't miss Dave's sunset
An unexpected guest came
You won't believe it

Bird book buffs take note:
Amy's got the scoop for you
Awesome interview

Juvenile birds?
How can you tell? A lesson
From John of DC

How to find shorebirds
In Arizona, you ask?
Ask Rick. He knows now.

If you've got a yard
And think you've seen it all there
Keep watching! says Nuthatch

Breaking news--RARE BIRD
If you can, drive to NH
Lillian's pics beckon!

And that's a wrap for this edition. In order, the blogs are: Bird Stuff,Fabienne.net,The Scratching Post,Peregrine's Birdblog,The Hornet's Nest,The Wanderling, Sand Creek Almanac,Trevor's Birding,Ben Cruachan Blog,Tai Haku, 10,000 Birds, BirderBlog,Rob's Idaho Perspective, Charlie's Birding Blog, Rigor Vitae, Journey Through Grace, Thomasburg Walks, The Hawk Owl's Nest, Via Negativa, Wild Bird on the Fly, A DC Birding Blog, Aimophila Adventures,Bootstrap Analysis, The Stokes' Birding Blog.

Thanks so much to all who contributed--first timers, welcome aboard! And returning posters, welcome back. Hope you've enjoyed this little exercise--and seriously, don't forget to read all the posts--especially timely and exciting is Lillian Stokes' photo essay on the now-present possible Western Reef Heron in Maine and New Hampshire. It's an end-of-summer treat for birders everywhere!

Good Birding,
Mariya

Troubled Thrush

2006-08-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

So on my way back to my car from an errand this morning in Evanston, I heard a distressed, loud, robinlike PEEK! coming from the sidewalk. Just past the hood of my car, standing on the pavement, there it was: a small thrush. I'm now fairly certain it was a WOOD THRUSH, something we don't get all that commonly around here. The bird PEEKed again, and looked right at me. Neither of us moved. A feeling began to brew inside me that something was wrong here: the bird wasn't hopping or attempting to get away from me at all.
And then I noticed it had no tail. None. Where a tail ought to have been, there was a perfectly horizontal line of short feathers poking out from its butt area--but these in no way constituted an actual tail. My mind reeled: what could have caused this? Was this bird a mutant, a genetic anomaly of some sort? Had it been attacked by a predator? How had it lost its tail so neatly?
And more urgently, why wasn't it flying? Did it have a balance problem because of the lack of a tail? It seemed to be a young bird, so I stepped back to observe for a minute. I looked up and noticed that the building abutting the sidewalk had a glass exterior wall all the way around the first floor. The bird could have smacked into it and gotten temporarily stunned or hurt. But it was on its feet, and as this thought floated across my brain, the bird hopped up onto the windshield of the car next to mine. Great. Now it was on someone's car. Was I going to have to bag it and bring it to the wildlife rescuers? At eight months pregnant, I'm about as likely to accomplish this as to win a figure skating competition. The bird PEEKed again and hopped/flew up to the next car, a tall SUV, where it could see over the tops of people's heads. I cursed, pulled out my phone, and dialed 411 with the intention of looking up the wildlife rescue team for our area. But I couldn't remember their names. Nor was I certain that intervention was the correct route here.
It was one of those standstill moments, where you are alone with the chaos of things and have to decide what you are going to do about it. Was this bird going to be able to fly again?
And again, as the question floated up, the bird answered me. It flew quickly and quietly across the street to a young gingko tree, where two other birds awaited it and began to chatter. Happy that I wasn't going to be called upon to save a life, but troubled that I really hadn't wanted to save it in the first place, I got in the car and drove away.

What do we do in the face of an individual nonhuman life in need of help? If the bird had been motionless or bleeding, I'd like to think I would have bagged it and called it in. But then what? And is it really worthwhile to try and save an individual of a species like that? Or should we limit our concern to problems that impact birds at the population level? This remains a troublesome and unresolved issue for me.

bird, interrupted

2006-08-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

i haven't birded since we moved. Six weeks! it's not that getting around is so tough now that i'm eight months preggers--it's that getting UP is so tough. I grieve the loss of a gigundous park 1/2 block away in our old neighborhood. There have been a couple of woodpeckers, including a neighborhood RED-BELLIED, in the past few weeks, but i need to come to terms with the fact that (a) I am having a kid and that may hamper my ability to get out birding on a regular basis and (b) I live less than a mile from the lake now, so the avian populations I'll get will be different--fewer woodpeckers and raptors and prairie birds, more shorebirds. It makes me whiny at times: but I don't KNOW anything about shorebirds! I don't even LIKE gulls! Is this all I have to look forward to--herring gulls and the occasional sandpiper or tern?

And on the baby front, are there any birders with babies out there? How do you manage it, especially nursing moms? Do you just take baby out when s/he wakes up at 5am and come back at 8am for a nap? That could work...my partner is a big morning sleeper so that would give him the time he needs...so much of this is still unknown. we shall have to see!

Learning to Weave the Nest

2006-06-28T11:38:00.001-07:00

I'll attempt this creative response to Mike's challenge of meta-bird-blogging: why blog about birds?

Few practices in my life have survived the vicissitudes of my young adulthood. One practice that persistently yanks me back is writing. (You thought I was going to say birding, yes?) I am all too aware of my dilettantish dippings into one mind-body practice or another: I've done yoga, sitting meditation, activism and organizing, visual artwork, jogging. Most of these practices have lasted years, but after a while my laziness or depressiveness gets the best of me and I stop. But not writing--for me it is necessary to read and write constantly. Words stick to me. Sometimes I feel I wear them like a coat of feathers, and if I just get enough of them on me, I will learn to fly.
Enter the great blue heron that dipped in flight across my field of vision three feet away in Boston in 2000. At a time when depression was consuming me, making me disappear even to myself, that bird confirmed my existence in the world. I couldn't do much just then, but I could pick up a pair of field glasses and look at birds. And in looking, I slowly began to notice other things: a polluted river, a threatened woodpecker habitat, glass-fronted skyscrapers, exurban development taking over the wilderness. In short, I began to see the human-built contexts within which these birds survive. This blog, started while I was in graduate school, has given me a space to explore those contexts and to record the birds which I see for myself. I try to stick to listing what I see, rather than what I wish I could see or ruminating on or anthropomorphizing the animals. In cultivating my power of observation, I hope to be able to cultivate that power in others. In a world when our opinions and perceptions are fed to us by popular media, it's one of the most profound things we can do: to see things for ourselves. If we follow the birds, we can begin to see the real impact of human land use. In caring about birds, or any group of organic beings which bring us joy, I think we can get more motivated to do something to stop the excesses and wastes that are harming the ecological systems in which we live. So for me, I guess it isn't really about the birds--it's about people, and about finding out for myself what is going on.

Learning to Weave the Nest

2006-06-28T11:38:00.000-07:00

nuthatches in NC

2006-06-21T15:26:00.000-07:00

Well, the wedding weekend provided precious few moments for wandering with field glasses. What with relatives and family friends descending from the sky, I had to focus more on their movements than those of our feathered friends.

The one cool birding moment I did have came as S. and I were climbing the steps back uphill to the cabin where we were staying (the wedding was at a church camp with surprisingly comfy facilities, so we had a private room in a cabin with our own potty. Yay!). I spotted a WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH doing its hoppity-creep down a tree trunk, and shortly there were three more! Their bright blue backs formed a cheerful community all on the same tree. We enjoyed them for a few moments, and moved on.

BWP (Birding While Pregnant)

2006-06-10T14:14:00.000-07:00

Folks, this is like what birding is supposed to be: I suddenly weigh more than 15 pounds above normal, so taking it slow is now compulsory for walks outdoors. So what do I do to combat the boredom of a long, slow walk? I bring field glasses. Today in the park, there wasn't a lot to remark upon, but there were:
4 AMERICAN GOLDFINCHES
1 EASTERN KINGBIRD (fancy fellow!)
2 FOX SPARROWS

The kingbird was an especially lovely thing to watch, and it reminded me of the brevity of spring and how fortunate we've been to live near a large park. We'll be moving at the end of the month, northward and lakeward, up to Rogers Park. Our parks there will be either small Potawatamie Park (good for new baby strolling perhaps?) or lakefront beaches (time to learn those gull and sandpiper species once and for all!) or huge, enormous, carnivalesque Warren Park. That park is so comprehensively recreational, it even has batting cages.

We head southeast toward the end of next week for sister #2's wedding. I'm hoping (perhaps unrealistically, but hope often has that quality anyhow) for a break in the festivities that will allow for some birding time. And my brother Ethan finally watched Winged Migration all the way through and called to say he loved it, so perhaps I'll have a birding buddy this time other than...well, you know, other than the Unborn Child I carry everywhere with me. The UC doesn't really have much choice in the matter. I told my brother that if he'd only suggested he might be willing to go on birding trips with me last winter, I might not have felt the need to CREATE a whole new human being just for that purpose!

Humboldt Park birdwalk--the payoff

2006-05-22T14:22:00.000-07:00

Boy oh boy was yesterday a good day in the park. Since we're hopefully moving northward soon, it felt like the park was giving me a farewell glimpse of all i'll be missing in Evanston. Here is a sampling of what I saw (i'll omit the common species and get right to the good parts):

1 HERMIT THRUSH
1 GREEN HERON (awesome)
1 AMERICAN REDSTART
12 COMMON YELLOWTHROATS
1 MAGNOLIA WARBLER
3 SWAMP SPARROWS
several SONG SPARROWS
several FOX SPARROWS
2 ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAKS (heart-stoppingly cool bird)
3 RUBY-CROWNED KINGLETS
1 FLYCATCHER (not sure what species)

All this in one hour of walking! I love Humboldt Park. I know a couple of other birders go there, but I've never seen one. The green heron flew right over me and camouflaged himself perfectly in some foliage. People must have thought I was nuts, standing there staring into a plain old bunch of leaves for fifteen minutes without moving. I wasn't sure if he was a Little Blue or a Green. I was rewarded with another, decisive glimpse when he finally had enough of the red-winged blackbirds chasing each other around his branch and flew up to a different tree. Voila! Green heron it was.

climbing thermals

2006-05-18T21:43:00.000-07:00

this isn't much of a birding post, since i haven't been much of a birder lately. But i've been shifting my eyes to the sky whenever i think of it, and noticing the swallows and other birds turning slow gyres upward in the late afternoon and early evening (well, except for yesterday, when it first thundered, then rained and then hailstones the size of small grapes clattered onto the pavement and brought down nearly every leaf that's opened on every tree on the block in the past month.).

anyway what the birds are doing is climbing thermals; that is, finding vertical cones of air that are warmer and circling to the edges of the cones until they reach the top, whereupon they get cold and go in search of another thermal. Thermals can reach remarkably high into the atmosphere. A birder last spring noted that sandhill cranes go really high, even out of eyesight range. But I haven't seen any sandhill cranes this year.

so i've been wondering just what to do with my writing, this little thing i've been doing all of my life, which flows as easily as water and is as hard to do without for any length of time. and the thermals thing kind of gets to me. It makes me think that there are pockets of kindness, of metaphorical warmth, in the world where my writing might be welcomed and read. That there is a kind of cold field of emptiness which seems uniformly hostile--e.g., the publishing world--but which in fact may contain areas of hidden habitability, places where my work could live and climb and thrive. So i'm going to try for it.

If i locate one, i hope I'll feel it right away and start climbing.

Wish me luck.

Dear Mr. Meanspirited English Professor:

2006-05-09T18:57:00.000-07:00

I know the emotional impact of seeing the website I designed with your bush-league looking research project as one of the 200 links included alongside many more professional-looking sites must have been profound. I know that you must have felt a sinking feeling when you saw that the link I included to your project was a crummy but still-functioning one from 2003, and it must have smarted when you Googled your own project and saw that old page still comes up first, which is why I even included it.

I can even understand, at that point, why you would want to pick over the entire site I designed, page after page, and compile a list of snivelingly trivial complaints which you could later use to justify arguing to my boss that the site--and by extension my being paid to create it--is "a waste of scarce resources." Some of those complaints, sir, I must admit are reasonable and I will probably work to remedy those problems.

But then--and I mean this in the most deferential of ways--you lost it, buddy. Saying that doing a good job on the site "would require someone with patience and subject expertise, neither of which is possessed by the person who designed this" is just downright frothing at the mouth. Calling my work "slipshod and amateurish" and suggesting I be replaced on the project immediately would sting if you were a webmaster OR if the work in question was, say, a dissertation on Chaucer. But you're an English prof and I'm the person they paid four hours a week to design something simple. Your emotional outburst, therefore, is a bit puzzling and a little embarrassing. For you.

Not that you intended for me to see it. For that I blame my boss. Which is another story, an even sadder one since I wasn't given a chance to defend myself from your screedy email attack. So you're not entirely at fault here for having lost control and sent a ridiculous, disproportionately angry note to someone about something relatively minor. You figured (or, to give you perhaps undeserved credit, hoped) the person you sent it to would have the decency not to forward it.

But said decency was absent here. So I have read it and I'll just wrap up here by asking: Did you really think anyone would miss the eensy weensy sentence in your email about the icky link to your own research project? Even my boss caught it and admitted it was probably what prompted you to write. Unfortunately for me, my job is now at risk because I failed to provide a more updated link to your work which is, presumably, hiding somewhere on the Net? Because a half hour of my amateurish, slipshod searching couldn't find it.

Ever Yours,
Mariya Strauss

I got to ride my bicycle again!

2006-05-08T11:52:00.000-07:00

We dusted off the bikes and rode in Humboldt Park, gliding through the trees and softball fields in the glorious spring weather. We saw scads of REDWINGED BLACKBIRDS, as usual, I had a couple of SWAMP SPARROWS, and Scot spotted a very handsome HAIRY WOODPECKER pounding away at a maple.
I have two bikes, one a rugged mountain bike with a jillion gears and fancy brakes. I bought it specifically to keep up with my boyfriend at the time, who enjoyed riding at breakneck speeds through Rock Creek Park in DC, taking every possible opportunity to hop "offroad" and skitter through rocks or mud or whatever. I was pretty much terrified whenever I was on that thing. It has that mid-1990s mountain bike seating arrangement, which pitches your upper torso forward enough so you can't see too well what's going on around you, but not far enough forward so that you can comfortably rest your elbows on your handlebars if you want (like a racing bike or 10 speed). I still ride it whenever serious mileage is called for.
But my bike of choice is my green cruising bike I got as a hand-me-down last year. It goes about 0.2 miles per hour and I can sit upright on its springy big seat. the brakes are almost nonexistent--but so what? It's the perfect birding/pregnancy bike. I plan to use it around the neighborhood, until I can no longer wrestle it down the stairs.

From Cyclops to Argus Panoptes

2006-04-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

Whenever I bird with other, more experienced birders, it seems like we morph into a single, gigantic, distributed organism with eyes all over its body, like the Greek character Argus who had like 1000 eyes. This morning I finally found my group (after wandering the length of the park for like 1/2 hour) and they were sharp enough to catch heaps and heaps of birds I hadn't ever seen at Humboldt Park before--even though I bird there like twice a week! Kind of humbling. So here's a sampler of what we saw:
KINGFISHER, which had caught a fish, flew to a low-hanging branch and proceeded to slam the fish against the branch repeatedly until it was able to swallow it;
2 female BUFFLEHEADS
4 WOOD DUCKS
GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLETS
RUBY-CROWNED KINGLETS
YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLERS
RING NECKED DUCK
6 HERMIT THRUSHES
BROWN THRASHERS
SWAMP SPARROWS
SONG SPARROWS
CHIPPING SPARROWS
FLICKERS
WOOD THRUSH
GOLDFINCH
BROWN CREEPERS
HAIRY WOODPECKER
DOWNY WOODPECKER
AMERICAN CROW
WHITE-THROATED SPARROWS
and the usual multitudes of CANADA GEESE, HOUSE SPARROWS, RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS and HERRING GULLS.

What a terrific morning in the city! Suburbanite birders on our walk complained about the amount of trash in the park; I said it was a vast improvement from early March, when you had to dodge flying McDonald's wrappers and syringes along the mini-wilderness area in the park called the Prairie River. The cleanup crews are doing their best and making improvements along the way--finally there is now a white dividing line along the whole bicycle trail, which gives the enormous chaotic park an air of civilization.

Yesterday S. and I had to drive out to drop off our new Toyota for some work at the dealership--new tires and paint protection as promised when we made the purchase--and we stopped off at the Chicago Botanic Garden for a walk and some lunch. Awesome place! The paths wind through endless cultivated gardens and flashy annuals and bulbs like narcissus and ranunculus. The smells on such a warm day were intoxicating. The only birds I had there, though, were a GOLDFINCH, millions of ROBINS and some MUTE SWANS, which I noted are so invasive and toxic for the pond/watershed habitat that no other water birds will nest near them. They just chew everything completely to bits and leave nothing for anyone else. How American of them--you'd think they were a native species, but they aren't.

Shovelers were in the puddle.

2006-04-11T14:29:00.000-07:00

Awesome! We went for a walk yesterday and saw five NORTHERN SHOVELERS chasing each other in a large puddle at the far end of the drained lagoon in the park. They cared not a whit for the fact that two largish, full bodies of water lay within a quarter mile. They hadn't been there a couple days ago. I didn't have my field glasses so I'll have to try again today--but the spoon-shaped bills and brown and white and green markings were unmistakably those of the birds in my book--which I had memorized in case of just such a sighting. Another life list bird for me...
Also, there were some white geese which could have been ROSS' GEESE or LESSER SNOW GEESE. Not sure on the ID on this one. They seemed right at home among the Canada Geese and Coots on the lagoon.

Run, Run! No, Wait! Wait! Wait!

2006-04-04T18:01:00.000-07:00

The title of this post comes from a dad I just witnessed trying to teach his kids how to fly a kite. The kids weren't getting it at all, and then the older sister tried to make her little brother run with the kite just to see him do it, and the dad put his foot down. This being Humboldt Park, about four older teenagers were watching from their bikes.

Also in the park just now, I saw my first-ever COMMON GALLINULE up close and personal drifting and diving in the cold lagoon. There was also a sparrow which might have been a SWAMP SPARROW, but could also have been a WHITE CROWNED SPARROW, I'm not sure--and bazillions, once again, of RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS diving for cover from the approaching helicopter. It's finally spring here--meaning fifty degrees in the sunshine--and the ice cream truck is hopefully blaring its incessant jingle which we are condemned to hear eight hundred thousand times a day for the next five months.

du du du DU DU, du du du DU DU (La Cucaracha), doot du du du du du DU...

the new blog is finally here.

2006-03-31T16:18:00.000-08:00

So I've started a new blog. Please be aware that the new one is more of a free-form journaling space for S. and myself on topics related (or at least in the vicinity of) to our UC (that's Unborn Child for the still-not-aware-of-our-situation). The UC will not be contributing to the blog at this time, except in the form of rhythmic glubs heard through a deep-vein microphone with this warm jelly stuff on it.

Enjoy,
Mariya

p.s. I saw a FLICKER today at Humboldt Park, along with what I suspect were two KESTRELS but I wasn't able to confirm those.

several life list birds in Phoenix!

2006-03-26T15:27:00.000-08:00

I'm afraid I won't remember this when i get home, so here's a dispatch from the desert weekend:
GILA WOODPECKER --3
ANNA'S HUMMINGBIRD -- at least 4
CURVE-BILLED THRASHER -- 1
VERDIN -- 1
BLACK-NECKED STILT--2
DOWITCHER -- at least 6
RING-NECKED DUCK -- 4
AMERICAN COOT -- 4
RED-NECKED GREBE -- 1
GREAT EGRET -- 1
GREAT BLUE HERON -- 1
GREEN-BACKED HERON -- 1
HOUSE FINCH -- at least 6
LAWRENCE'S GOLDFINCH -- 1
BROWN-HEADED COWBIRD -- at least 6
BOAT-TAILED GRACKLE -- common

The first 5 on the list, the Red-Necked Grebe and the Lawrence's Goldfinch are all life list birds for me. Yay! Thanks to Libby for taking me around and giving me access to all these fab birds.

It looks like the Lawrence's Goldfinch is actually the star of the bunch. They normally breed only in California, being occasional winter migrants to southern Arizona, which is where I saw this one. Thanks also to Kate for her amazing spotting abilities!

there. i spilled the beans.

2006-03-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

S. and I keep rolling with the changes, just rollin' along like the tumbleweeds we really feel like. Latest in the series: a new member of the household is on its way. For those just tuning in, I am indeed Pregnant and due in September. And yes, we're quite pleased about this development, for the most part.

For those interested, I will not be discussing the Miracle of My Unborn Child in this space. This space will remain a testbed for ideas, a repository for birding observations and stories, and a place for dialogue with you, the gentle and appreciated reader.

So Never Fear! A new blog will soon appear! To track the changes, update you on fun and disgusting evolutionary tricks of gestation, and perhaps even include a guest blogger or two to ruminate on new motherhood (not that we're pretending there is anything to be said that hasn't already been said, but...you know...awwww, we just get that mushy feeling sometimes!).

More to come in a brand new space when I get back from the desert...Stay Tuned!

it's 6:30 and still light out!

2006-03-19T16:26:00.000-08:00

pardon my excitement over the vernal equinox. it's not especially impressive here in the big bad ci-TAY, but the birds and the dirt and the gangsters in low-slung jeans are all out daily now to welcome the sun as she rolls on in. even the snow we had last Thursday melted in the morning without a peep. (peep is such a springlike word! real and marshmallow baby birds rejoice!)
so. today we strolled along the path at Northerly Island on our way to the Shedd aquarium for a real day away from cat puke and stacks of dirty dishes. We spotted two KILLDEER (a sure sign of approaching warmth) and later I saw what I think was a SAVANNAH SPARROW en route to Canada and points north. And this was at noon! Being there at sunrise must be so awesome right about now.
The only crappy part of the day came when the snippy aquarium worker came over to kick us off of the fake rocks we had perched our tired buttocks on to watch the dolphin show. Hating dolphin shows as much as I do snippy aquarium workers, I was only too happy to oblige, but S. limped sadly away, turning to look one last time as the dolphins began their show. He really wanted to see it, but the seats were 100% taken. We even tried to sit in the wheelchair-only section but then a person in an actual wheelchair showed up and we were shamed off the risers. Boo to the aquarium for their limited seating and crappy attitude-having workers!

being busy is only part of the issue.

2006-03-10T17:06:00.000-08:00

things that are currently making me happy:
*warblers have again been sighted at Montrose Point. For the uninitiated, this means that the spring migration has officially begun.
*making an upside down heart with my thumbs and forefingers
*enamelled copper jewelry
*i'm going to Arizona to see Libby in a couple weeks and we're going to plan her wedding and look at birds in the desert--finally i get to do that.
*my new sweatshirt hoodie i bought for eight bucks at the Brown Elephant(even though it says "Crunch" in that fake Asian-looking chop suey font on the back in electric green)
*time for contemplation in the morning
*someone else has been cleaning the cat litter lately
*closing my eyes and seeing clear swimmy things
*the warmish weather
*eating french fries two days in a row and chocolate pudding at lunchtime
*the thought that i have only read the tiniest fraction of the good books that there are (see the Bookslut link on the sidebar if you don't believe me).

the first woodpecker has crossed my path.

2006-03-03T07:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, exiting my building at Northwestern, I nearly stumbled on the stone steps when a DOWNY WOODPECKER flew directly across my line of vision, lighting on the trunk of an ash tree not ten feet away. Sans binoculars, I was still able to see the black spots and streaks along its back, the slight crest of brilliant red on the head, and the small forked tail--in all, the perfect package to remind me of the difference between February and March. I'm guessing that the last woodpecker I saw was in October or November--maybe now it's time to start taking the long way in to work again, through the manicured wilderness of Northwestern's central campus landscaping.

Stepping out of my creative doldrums for a moment, I have got to echo the crescendo-ing chorus of critics who are recommending Seth Kantner's great book Ordinary Wolves. If you've ever ever wondered what it's like to not only live in, but to BE FROM the Alaskan wilderness, the sharply focused details of this novel based on the author's young adulthood outside a remote Inupiat village will crease new folds into your brain.

Welcome March!

And if you haven't already visited the links on the sidebar of this blog, do yourself a favor and check out Heaven, the poetry blog of Mairead Byrne, and Achewood, the dry dry humor of Chris Onstad.

i have not wanted to make art in a long time.

2006-02-17T16:48:00.000-08:00

february is just endless, isn't it? so much of one's energy goes toward just making it through. like right now, sitting on the couch wearing a thick scarf and scritchy long underwear under my jeans, typing while my white cat tries to stick her paws up my armpit.

But I can't blame the long winter for my choice not to make visual art since graduation. I literally have not made anything but Christmas cards (which were great fun, I'm not discounting those, but let's face it--they don't carry much in the way of nuanced visual symbolism) since last May. I saw a friend walking downtown the other day carrying a large cylindrical container the size of both his legs, hurrying toward a gallery where he was hanging his work in a show. Seeing the anxious focus on his face, I felt a dry twinge of recognition and vaguely wished I had the motivation to bring forth work.

See, but here's the thing (and I'm teaching an art class right now, so I've had plenty of opportunity to think about these issues): I no longer find anything interesting in visual metaphor. Someone's got an installation about the isolation of having a speech impediment? Sounds clever, but not interested. A show of prints about the emotional costs of advancing technology? Snore. Even art about things that touch my life in real ways, like food or aunthood or birds--all of it is currently failing to billow my skirt.

At the same time, I find myself dipping back into the well of loneliness in my past for things to write about. I don't think I'm wallowing in a period of artists' block, not rejecting all forms of creative expression--just the ones I find tedious. It's a disturbing thing to realize--getting an advanced degree in art may have ruined me for making it. The green and tender shoots of stories keep pushing up through my frozen sediments, though. There may be hope for me yet. I've just gotta keep my eyes to the sky.

my material wants are beginning to snowball.

2006-02-08T18:59:00.000-08:00

boy oh boy do i want some things. besides the car i mentioned a couple of posts ago, i now want a new pair of binoculars and a spotting scope, as well as a GPS unit and a handheld personal video player/camcorder. and do i deserve these things? as much as any industrialized-world member of the privileged classes does! which is to say, well, no.

ah, it doesn't matter. i've become one of those people who convinces themselves that they would throw themselves more passionately into their hobby if they just had THE RIGHT GEAR. how many times have we all heard THAT before? but i really think that in my case it's true! birding has become sort of a theoretical thing for me, Bahamas warblers notwithstanding--I just don't get out there like I want to, even though I live right next to a huge park! woe is me. really i'm just sort of bemoaning my restlessness in midwinter as i type confessions to my blog while my boyfriend is out watching the Grammys and probably getting to see all the cool outfits which I can't see cause we DON'T EVEN HAVE A TELEVISION.

which, yes, all right, was my decision since i am an incurable addict and will lose up to 6 hours on the couch if we had one. But still!

How dare he!

whoa. ok, the slide into materialistic self-pitiiful wallowing will hereby come to a halt. sorry everyone! smooches! (esp. to Erin!)

this crazy winter weather makes me wonder.

2006-02-03T08:07:00.000-08:00

I wonder if the snow will stick this time (it hasn't been, recently).
I wonder if winter will last longer this year because it's taken so long to get itself together.
I wonder if the rain we had this morning will mean ice on the roads.
I wonder if the donuts at the bakery are fresh enough to warrant the walk.
I wonder if I will do the laundry like I promised.
I wonder what the birds are doing in weather such as this.
I wonder if my boyfriend's car will make it through the weekend.
I wonder how long I will last writing on the couch before I fall back to sleep.

I need to meet more people.

2006-01-28T10:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, as I felt a giddy flutter of happiness when the clerk at Quimby's Bookstore told me I didn't have to show ID because "Aww, you've been in here," it occurred to me: I should get out more. Maybe I could be feeling the giddy flutter more frequently! Maybe people would start recognizing me at the bar and the coffee shop, not just the nerd heaven down at Quimby's, where a red-letter day is when the new Chris Ware comic book comes out or Jessica Abel comes to do a book signing.

All of which brings me to my current dilemma: should I invest in a car with my hapless boyfriend, given his history of financial misdeeds and my history of financial hyper-cheapitude? The current situation has long outlived its sensibleness: we ride everywhere in his ancient Honda two-seater thugmobile, which is referred to by all members of my family as "that deathtrap" and which occasionally draws alarmingly envious looks from our local neighborhood teen boys, in whose eyes you can almost view the reflection of the car tricked out with a spoiler, iridescent paint and one of those super-loud exhaust systems that signal the approach of a very fast dragster.

Plus he currently drives me everywhere, which lends an unpleasant note of dependency to the relationship.

Thoughts? I like the Subaru wagons, mid-90s models. Then he could transport his eight thousand pounds of ugly DJ equipment to his gigs out in Hick Haven, and I could go birding and take myself to the bar and what have you. Go out more, I mean.

sunsethouse

2006-01-21T13:40:00.000-08:00

sunsethouse
Originally uploaded by unionmaidn.

sunset facing southwest from New Providence Island, Bahamas

birdpix2

2006-01-21T13:24:00.000-08:00

birdpix2
Originally uploaded by unionmaidn.

more YELLOW-CROWNED NIGHT HERON

birdpix3

2006-01-21T13:23:00.001-08:00

birdpix3
Originally uploaded by unionmaidn.

birdpix1

2006-01-21T13:23:00.000-08:00

birdpix1
Originally uploaded by unionmaidn.

We saw this YELLOW-CROWNED NIGHT HERON in a remote village on New Providence Island in the Bahamas. The birds down there are utterly fearless, and as relaxed as the local human population.

Other birds spied in and around Nassau during the past week: PALM, BLACK-THROATED BLUE, KIRTLAND'S and PRAIRIE WARBLERS, RUBY-CROWNED KINGLETS, KESTRELS, NORTHERN MOCKINGBIRDS and something I regrettably missed photographing but was most likely a CLAPPER RAIL. Other wildlife we encountered were Bahamian lizards and snakes, near the tall jack pines that line the beaches along Paradise Island. I did not notice any unusual gulls among the RING-BILLED and HERRING gulls.

there are invisible owls everywhere

2006-01-12T17:01:00.000-08:00

Sometimes being a birdwatcher is like being paranoid--if the definition of paranoia is that you believe you possess knowledge that no one else has. Like the knowledge that, as the sun sets, owls are alighting on branches all around me, and my eyes never quite adjust to the dimness in time for me to catch a glimpse. Owls are one type of bird i really want to see more of--I've only ever seen one in the wild, and its wildness was called immediately into question due to the fact that we saw it at the zoo. But it wasn't in a cage or anything, that's why I say it was in the wild.
I was told by an Audubon naturalist once that you should look deep into every hollow hole in a tree-trunk to check for a pair of eyes glowing back at you. Who can resist that kind of invitation? So i've been looking ever since, with no result. I've stopped repeating that advice to people until such time as I've verified its value independently, e.g. seen a dang owl.
There's been a flood of snowy owl sightings in Illinois recently, including one subject line of an email claiming to have found an owl that had been killed by a car. This evidently happens quite often when there is an irruption of a certain owl species in an area outside its usual wintering grounds. Snowy owls are supposed to occur here, but not really in the numbers that people are seeing them now. ANyway. How ironic would it be if I missed seeing my first snowy owl cause I went to the Bahamas in January?
I want to amend that definition of paranoia above. I think there is a darker sort of edge to it. Webster's second definition (the non-pathologizing one) is "a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others"; in other words, lack of faith. I definitely have been suffering from that lately and am aswirl with thoughts of how to have more faith. More trust in the world, in others, you name it--there is that in me that wishes to control all aspects of a situation because i think no one can do a better job with it than me. Sha right! The paranoia I'm guilty of has its roots in a family history rife with betrayals of the small and large kind--and it wasn't always necessarily me being betrayed or doing the betraying. And I'm certainly not capable of doing a better job of most things than anybody else. So I caution myself to have a bit more compassion all around--compassion for myself for being only human (and a fairly dilettantish and anxious human to boot) and compassion for those around me who are only doing their level best, after all.
In other news, the delete key has been my friend today. In other news, i enjoy typing "in other news" almost as much as I enjoy saying it to begin many sentences.

I did not know coral was so hard to grow.

2006-01-08T18:49:00.000-08:00

Pop quiz! Which public city aquariums in the US grow their own coral in-house?

the answer: well, I can't remember exactly. But the list isn't long. And it includes Chicago, Monterey Bay, New York, Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Hawaii.

We waltzed past the security checkpoint in the Shedd Aquarium into the elevator that shuttled us into the coral reef exhibit, blissfully ignorant of the fact that this was a special thingie with separate admission--admission that we never paid. Oh well! Facing us now were floor-to-ceiling walls of blue light, branching, massive, brain and other corals of every color in the spectrum--and they were undulating, alive. We were looking at an ecosystem which in a wild sea situation would take, oh, nine hundred years to grow--and the invisible hands at the aquarium had done it in five. Evidently growing this stuff takes like seventy horticulturalists and marine biologists and about eight different types of gro-lights and temperature gauges and swirling currents that swish up against the baby coral plants just so. Actually corals are animals but they only stick to one spot their whole life so it is easy to think of them as plants. S. wished for a camera for like the ninety hundredth time today. I wished for nothing.

Except maybe an ichthyologist. The Shedd does this funny thing with the exhibits where they give you demographic and lifecycle information about a select species among the eight or nine that might be sharing the same bit of watery real estate, and leaves you to sort of guess about the other guys. I find it quite tyrannical, actually.

As jaded as I've become about the spectacle and the simulacrum, I should have found this entire aquarium yawnworthy. Instead I was engrossed and found myself in love with boa constrictors all over again. Oh, and penguins. God damn those attention stealing penguins.

I am nervous about my upcoming trip.

2006-01-06T07:36:00.000-08:00

For some reason I have been feeling some pressure about getting back into birding. Our upcoming trip to the Bahamas might be a case in point. It's not a birding trip, and I know it sounds decadent to be heading to the Islands in the middle of winter, but I am hoping to see at least a few life list birds while we're down there. But what if I don't see any? Now that I have this blog, I feel obliged to give the people at least one or two images, at least a recorded sighting of a Stripe-headed Tanager or a Clapper Rail, if not the world's largest colony of West Indian Flamingoes on the southernmost Bahamian island of Inagua.
ok so i am getting kind of excited now from looking at those pictures.
But the pressure is still there. Maybe this has to do with my recent insights into what birding does for my creative process--it isn't quite necessary, but it serves as a generative sort of sediment for growing new projects...what would you call that...fertilizer! Birding is the fertilizer.
So now I am not just birding to look at birds anymore? this is getting confusing. Isn't there a thing in science where once you start observing something then the thing you are observing starts to change because it is being observed? It feels like that. That is the pressure I am feeling.
I don't even know if this is making sense.

And hey--did anyone have any thoughts to share about the story? I'm ready to hear them whenever. I just realized it took me a month to post the whole thing, so I'd like feedback about the pacing of it as well. Was i too slow to post? I never know how quickly people are getting this stuff.

Trumpet--End

2005-12-30T18:57:00.000-08:00

Link to previous installments

...And the Girl awoke early, to a steady rain against her window. The porno magazine had fallen to the floor, its colors dulled by the diffuse light of the cloudy dawn. She climbed out of bed and put on her cardigan sweater, the one that had held the magazine, stuck her feet into her slippers, went to her dresser, flipped shut the lid of her trumpet case and latched it, grabbed its handle and ran on her tiptoes down the stairs and out the door. The block was quiet, the rain light. She raced through it, looking both ways each time she crossed a street, and arrived, panting and damp, at the park. She looked around her at the wet wood of the benches and chose one, placing the trumpet case on the edge and assembling the instrument as she caught her breath. As raindrops fell on the brass surface, she wiped them away with her sweater sleeve, working her lips intently. She stepped up onto the bench and surveyed the grassy field and the baseball diamond. She was exhilarated by the thought that no one knew where she was, indeed no one in the neighborhood, probably, was up and moving except her, that she could do something unobserved but real. And she brought the trumpet to her lips and blew the Haydn solo, all of it, playing to the rain, even-toned and strong, a little fast maybe, her eyes closed as her vision went inward and melted into all of her other senses, as she became the piece she played and became the rain, and became the bench and became the air and let herself become.

****END****

Trumpet -- Part 5

2005-12-23T09:48:00.000-08:00

LINK BACK TO PARTS 1-4

The Prisoner who had turned off the television felt around the floor of his cell for his stone. His hand went directly to it and he felt its cold sharp hardness turning in his hand. Until now, the stone had been his key, his means to an end which was now only distantly real to him, an escape into the world of kids and wife and swimming pools, which he remembered but had forgotten to cherish. Until now. He turned the stone in his palm, warming it gradually and considering the elegant, violent plan he had set for himself to get free of this place. It was a thought he had built over the years as carefully as a house.

The slicked-back-hair Prisoner talked continually from his cell on the opposite side of the wall, talked in an urgent, nasal voice of what they had seen, his voice ragged under the harsh lights which only dimmed a little after the final caging of Prisoners for the night. When he ran out of things to say about the Girl, he talked of the usual things, of money, and sex with Ana, and of revenge, but his voice kept coughing itself into little pieces and eventually it trailed off entirely.

The Prisoner with the stone said nothing, but he knew that things were different. The stone remained in his hand, an insignificant thing, suddenly no longer worthy of his dreams of escape. He looked down at it as though he had only just found it. The stone was not large enough or sharp enough to act as either tool or weapon. No way. He had been asking too much of it for too long. The truth of this thought broke over him like a wave. There was no escape, only the life he had made for himself, wherever he went. He wiped his palm across his eyes and smiled a quiet smile of relief. He lay back on the hard mattress, laced his fingers behind his head, and chuckled.

Toward morning it occurred to both the Prisoners that the visitation from the Girl had been a gift, a tiny fissure in the impassive blank wall of time which contained their lives. She was like the arc of sky they had over the exercise yard, which brought back to them an awareness of miracles, of the extreme improbability of every single phase of cloud and moment of breath and convergence of lives upon a single spot, and yet there they all were. Each Prisoner held in his mind the image of the girl's inquisitive, young, unfamiliar face and floated off into a sleep of gratitude unlike the sleep of any other Prisoner.

****STAY TUNED FOR THE CONCLUSION OF "TRUMPET" AFTER THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY. YOU TAKE CARE, NOW.*****

Trumpet -- Part 4

2005-12-16T07:50:00.000-08:00

LINK BACK TO PARTS 3, 2 AND 1

The Girl's thoughts spun faster and faster, trying to comprehend all the strange things she was hearing and seeing. Her own door she had left wide open. She hoped her brother wasn't hearing any of this from the other side of the wall. She couldn't risk breaking eye contact with the magazine to get up and shut the door, so she lowered her voice.

"What? Have I ever opened a magazine and seen real people inside who talked to me? No. What does, uh, One oh two wing--"

"It's like saying cell block 102. We at Marion Prison, Joliet, Illinois, kid. You're on the TV. And I don't know how you got in here."

The man stared at her for a moment, and she stared back. He turned around and asked his associate something in an urgent tone, then raised his arm tentatively, his hand hovering just outside the rectangle of the magazine page.

"Look, ahh, we got to turn this thing off and go to dinner. Can you be here same time tomorrow? I mean, be looking at your magazine, whatever it is? We got some questions for you."

"I think so. I don't know, though. I'll try."

"OK. Yeah, OK." The Prisoners seemed to be backing away, still looking at the Girl. Then they disappeared, and the cognac-naked lady picture took their place.

She closed the magazine and thumbed its pages quickly, feeling the stiff edges shuffle across the flat of her thumb and the air whoosh out from between them. Again and again the Girl shuffled the pages with her thumb, glancing at the green light of the clock-radio on her night table--and with a rush of adrenaline she understood that she had communicated with the men across time as well as space. It was eleven-eleven ,and they had mentioned dinner. She had no idea when dinner would be served in a prison, but it was probably earlier in the day, like six or five o'clock. Some no-nonsense time.

She lay on her back and imagined their lives, the lives of the Prisoners. What sort of food did they eat? Grown men, with someone telling them when to eat, when to go to bed, what to wear. And what had they done to be placed there, to have lost their freedom...Especially the man she had spoken with, what had he done to be imprisoned? Armed robbery, maybe. He had appeared strong, intelligent, not angry or crazy like a violent criminal. No, probably it was grand larceny. Or civil disobedience, like Martin Luther King, Junior. The man grew more virtuous in her mind with each passing moment. He had embezzled to give to the poor people from his home town, he had faced down a platoon of bulldozers threatening his farmland, he had stolen medicines from a pharmacy to save his child with asthma...Her thoughts were sucked into sleep as if through a porthole into outer space.

...And the two Prisoners sat in their cells that night and did not sleep. They thought wonderingly of what they had seen, the tele-vision on the television. Who was the Girl? What had caused her to appear in their midst? They thought of questions for her, cursing themselves for having ended the conversation first. Was she American? Where did she live? Had there been any clues in her appearance as to her location or identity? Oh, why hadn't they asked her more questions instead of arguing with each other? Perhaps if she appeared again they might be able to arrange a different sort of contact, like letter-writing. But what if she was from another time? What if she was really dead, and was communicating with them from her own time of many years ago, or from the future? What if she was currently an infant, and the 102 Wing TV had just given them a glimpse from the future?

Trumpet -- part 3

2005-12-09T18:00:00.000-08:00

LINK BACK TO PART 2

LINK BACK TO PART 1

She opened the door and went into her parents' room. No one was there, the room dark. TV off. The Girl listened. Only the metallic clanking of the radiators.

She had seen something, too, besides the pictures of naked ladies and sofas, in the magazine pages. But she couldn't remember. It was as if she'd been in a trance and was only now coming back to herself with no memory of what had occurred. But the voices were clear enough, in her head anyway. Strange.

She picked up her trumpet and shook it. The spit valves, uncorked, flung bits of moisture everywhere. She depressed the valves, practicing the Haydn solo's fingering. She was not allowed to practice for real after nine thirty.

But the magazine beckoned her. She felt fevered, chilly, tried to think of what Ms. Shumer from Fourth Grade Gifted Program would do. The Scientific Method. She went back to the bed and flipped methodically through all the pages, stopping at each one for exactly five seconds: one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand. Flip. No voices this time. The Girl sighed and flopped onto her side, her hand toying with the magazine's pages. Suddenly she did hear something.

"Hey, man, it's that kid again. Or some kind of hand, look like a kid's hand. Man, what happened to the game? Damn!"

She sat up. She looked at the open page, an ad for an expensive cognac with a giant curvy bottle that a small naked woman leaned against in profile, her head thrown back, her spine tracing a gentle "S" in answer to the bottle's contour. Then the Girl saw something else: a man's face, peering at her from behind the image-or not quite behind, but instead of, so that the real estate where the bottle had been was now occupied by this dark, intelligent, unsmiling face. The Girl brought the magazine up to her eyes to get a closer view.

"Change the pinche channel, man, come on! Carajo!"

"Man, don't you think I'm trying to change it? It won't change!" As the first man turned his head, she saw ropy muscles stand out on his neck, then got a quick look at his companion, a slight man with a mustache and slicked-back hair. Both the men kept glancing to a spot at the back of whatever room they were in.

The Girl spoke.

"I'm really here, you know. Hello hello."

Silence. The face in the page frowned profoundly, clouded with alarm, then vanished. The Girl waited. Then she heard voices again, lower this time.

"Naw, man, I didn't hear nothing."

"OK, man, I am telling you (vicious stage whisper) this ain't no TV program. Wake up, motherfucker! That little girl just spoke to me, and I am not crazy, ok?"

She tried again.

"Hey-where are you guys?"

Silence again.

The Girl glared hard into the page, trying not to blink and feeling hot irritation gather behind her eyes. Yet the faces of the two men did not reappear. She relaxed. A bass voice spoke quietly. The first man.

"Uh, hey kid? If you're really talkin to us, blink twice. No, once, blink once."

She blinked. The man's face reappeared.

"Uh-Are you looking at a camera? I mean, is somebody filming you?"

"Filming me? No, I'm looking at a magazine. I see your face, though. It's like the picture's there, but then you take its place. Are you guys really seeing me on TV?"

"Yeah." The man rubbed his forehead and eyes, letting his fingers come to rest like pincers on the bridge of his nose. His collar was a coarse khaki and looked stiff. "On the Rec Room TV. On One Oh Two Wing. Has this ever happened to you before?"

The Girl's thoughts spun faster and faster, trying to comprehend all the strange things she was hearing and seeing. Her own door she had left wide open. She hoped her brother wasn't hearing any of this from the other side of the wall. She couldn't risk breaking eye contact with the magazine to get up and shut the door, so she lowered her voice.

"What? Have I ever opened a magazine and seen real people inside who talked to me? No. What does, uh, One oh two wing--"

"It's like saying cell block 102. We at Marion Prison, Joliet, Illinois, kid. You're on the TV. And I don't know how you got in here."

i'm interrupting myself. just for a minute though.

2005-12-08T09:24:00.000-08:00

We interrupt this story to bring you a bit of bird news: I saw three DARK-EYED JUNCOS yesterday on Northwestern's Evanston campus. And there have been lots of CANADA GEESE and MALLARDS flying around the North Branch of the Chicago River as S. has kindly driven me to work these last several days. Readers of this blog will hopefully enjoy the story I am posting on this space. The first 2 installments can be found here (part 1) and here(part 2). Enjoy!

Trumpet/Part 2

2005-12-04T20:58:00.000-08:00

Below, part 2 of Trumpet. See previous posting for Part 1. PART 3 IS HERE.

****
The Girl reaches down and touches the stack of magazines, about a dozen, and without hesitating grasps and pulls them from under the loose wooden slats of the fence. She wipes her hand, front and back, on her jeans and shuffles the magazines slowly. They are porno magazines, each one with a cover picture of a smiling, writhing woman dressed in lacy bra and panties. Some of them are in foreign languages. They look kind of boring, actually. Or at least, all the same. She spreads them on the pavement and stares a moment in the low light, wondering what to do with them. Should she report it to other kids on the block? Or try to stick them back under the same fence? Or throw them in a garbage bin further up the block? But night is coming, and action is required. So she takes off her cardigan, picks up the topmost magazine, and wraps the sweater clumsily around it. She will read it later.
***
She didn't remember about the magazine until much later that evening, after a fight with her brother which left her dizzy with anxiety and loneliness. She loped into her room and sat heavily on her unmade bed. Quickly the loneliness transformed into a feeling of freedom, as she unwrapped the sweater to look at the curious photographs of naked women. She hummed to herself the Haydn trumpet solo: black, flowing hair with shaved vagina, oiled breasts and inexplicable high-heeled sandals, hands buried in hair like a shampoo commercial, softly glowing lights, pillowy cushions and purple velvet sofas, legs kicking in an upside-down splits, glistening lips parted softly in seductive snarls, smoky makeup over heavy-lidded eyes, all those poses of yielding...

"Wait, wait, y'all- What is that?"
Pause.

"You see what it is, it's a little kid, man. Why's she up there on that screen, though? Man, get over there and fix that TV."'

The Girl closed the magazine with a slapping sound. She'd heard something--or rather, someone. People talking.

She opened the door and went into her parents' room. No one was there, the room dark. TV off. She listened. Only the metallic clanking of the radiators.

An Occasional Series

2005-11-30T17:36:00.000-08:00

Winter Story Series Part 1 (part 2 is now up. Read it.. I make no apology for the sudden shift in content. It is winter. Stories are needed.

Trumpet
by Mariya Strauss

the Girl kicks a piece of asphalt and it skitters a long way down the alley. the garage doors and fences lining the alley blot out the dim light from the setting sun and cast one blended shadow over the pavement where she walks.

Earlier she had eaten a pear in the kitchen and gone upstairs to practice her trumpet. Its bell vibrated to her touch, cold and dry against the blue crushed velvet interior of its case. She puffed her cheeks out methodically, puckering and wetting her lips to limber them up. The Girl spoke softly to herself. "I gotta learn this piece, I gotta learn it." She assembled the instrument quickly, looking over the scattered sheets of music which lay on her dresser, and selected two particular sheets which together made up the short Haydn trumpet solo. She lifted the trumpet, her lips and tongue furiously working in anticipation, and her shoulders relaxed...
***
In the alley, she carelessly meanders from side to side, weaving exaggeratedly, drunkenly between the garages. The weaving takes on its own bored rhythm. Sometimes to spice it up a little she kicks a rock, watching its path as it reacts to each tiny jolt from the uneven pavement. Darker and darker grow the shadows of the houses and wooden fences. It seems to her that no cars have passed through for a long time. She stops at one fence, an old wooden back gate with vines of morning glory (although the flowers aren't blooming now, it isn't morning, but she fingers them idly anyway) poking through, and feeble dandelions sprouting from beneath. As she looks,something glossy and papery glints at her from under the fence.

Thanksgiving Kestrel

2005-11-25T07:24:00.000-08:00

Driving up to Morton Grove to visit uncle L, we were nearly sideswiped by an AMERICAN KESTREL as we exited the highway. I observed that it was a chilly day to be a raptor--most of its potential meals might be underground or sheltered someplace cozy.
Being sheltered someplace cozy is basically all I desire right now, and can't take for granted any longer now that winter is upon us in the frozen north. The cold and unrelenting gray have descended, along with a nasty upper respiratory infection, and both kitties are finally on the upswing from their respective illnesses. Stella and I found ourselves locked in a battle of wills when i tried to force open her jaws to take a pill--she finally opened her mouth on her own to take it, poor sweetie! As if she wanted to tell me, I'm your friend, all you need to do is ask!
I am considering doing a winter story series in this space. Self-publishing is so dang easy and it's tempting to use my blog as a testing ground for my fiction during times when birding slows. What do you, dear readers, think?

cobblestone days, asthma nights

2005-11-21T14:54:00.000-08:00

going to the country remains a seductive journey for me, but when I actually go in the fall or spring or summer I invariably have the wind sucked out of my sails (quite literally) by asthma. This weekend was no exception.
Athens, Ohio is a joy to visit, with meandering cobblestone alleys, hilltop cemeteries with big blowzy pine trees, and a healthy undercurrent of anarchist collectivism (The Wire, , Casa Nueva). I recommend the seasonal blackberry chipotle salsa at Casa! mmmmmm.
But nighttime brought on the wheezes, with the chest-tightening tension of wondering when the next breath would come. Ernie's noble donation of a clinical massage helped, but at the birthday party that night I passed the point of no return that asthmatics everywhere dread.
Fortunately I had the presence of mind to call S. and ask for advice. He had none, other than to second my hope that there might still be a few molecules of albuterol left in my 3-year old inhaler. I hung up and turned to see another partygoer, who said: "I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but are you having an asthma attack? I'm asthmatic, and I can go get you an inhaler if you need one." And so my guardian angel at the party saved us all from a needless trip to the ER. yay!
Two other bits of wildlife-related news from this past weekend: On Friday night, after I'd arrived in Columbus and while Ernie was driving us back to Athens in the darkness of the highway bypass, I am disgusted to report that we ran over a dead deer at 65mph. EEEEEWWW! The rest of the weekend of relaxation was punctuated by trips to the auto shop and car wash, which, oddly, provided us with one of the more entertaining and satisfying moments of the weekend, in which we were able to pressure-wash the blood and guts off the bumper and down the drains. mmmmm....deer guts.
And finally, from Libbywiz we have this frightening tidbit:
Mantis Eats Hummingbird!
I don't know about you, but the Praying Mantis now gets my vote for SMLTBOIO (Species Most Likely To Become Our Insect Overlords).

the snow flies again

2005-11-16T13:51:00.000-08:00

winter has arrived on the prairie. flurries of worries and flakes are swirling outside. i still haven't been birding since my last posting but am reading the observations of others--it's owl season at last! Also waterfowl are plentiful along the lakeshore, with SURF SCOTERS and WHITE WINGED SCOTERS showing up at various harbors in the past 48 hours. I keep scanning the shrubbery and low trees on Northwestern's campus, but all I seem to get are starlings and a bunch of freaked-out robins.
I'll be heading to southeastern Ohio this weekend to celebrate my birthday in style with my friend E. (She's in training to become a massage therapist. Can you say freebies?)
Am gravitating more and more these days toward the world of print, rather than merely virtual, publishing. Advice, tips, crushingly personal criticisms are all welcome. (Actually, strike that last, would you? No CPCs.)

assistant sleepers, homegrown wildlife etc.

2005-11-13T20:02:00.000-08:00

I guess I'm on a bit of a birding hiatus, since I haven't gotten out to bird in a while. So I'll briefly note here the forces which have intervened to keep me and my field glasses apart these past few weeks:
1. Ear mites. Harriet Tubman woke me up one day moaning piteously and rubbing her ears on every angular surface in the house, so I've been faithfully antagonizing her morning and night by cradling her in one arm and sticking a dropperful of medicine into her ear with the other. A satisfying gob of poo-colored gunk comes out with every treatment, so I'm happy. Also, with the colder weather the cats are sleeping with us more. S. calls them the Assistant Sleepers.
2.Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season One.
3.A short story I wrote last week about a little girl who plays the trumpet and gets into a bit of mischief with a porno magazine she trashpicked in the alley...oh, dear. That didn't come out sounding very good. But it is! I like it, anyway. Shades of Kafka? Oh, never mind.
4.Dealing with our cell phones. Any of you dear readers who are considering getting a Cingular Wireless phone, DON'T! They are an irresponsible, greedier-than-usual phone company, which is saying something since the one we had to switch to is Verizon, which wanted $200 for our phones unless we agreed to sign a 2 year contract which would have cost us a bundle more altogether. Anyway, Cingular shut us off when we refused to pay the insane $691 they thought we owed them. To make matters worse, S agrees with them, so I may be all alone in my dispute which I intend to argue before whoever will listen, be they the Supreme Court or the Better Business Bureau, or whoever.
4.Go Fug Yourself. Just go.

juncos fleeing the scene of destruction

2005-11-09T09:11:00.000-08:00

I had two JUNCOS this morning on Northwestern's Evanston campus, which were evidently flushed from their hideout by the onslaught of noise generated by two ginormous trucks and a hand-held concrete grinder being wielded by renovators at one of the buildings. This was maybe 8:15 am. Poor birds. Poor college dorm dwellers. But I'm sure you were all grateful to be awakened in time for class, right?
And why was I at work so early, you might ask? Money trouble, etc etc blah blah blah, figured I could get some brownie points with the boss for showing up a few minutes early down in the mines. Er, library.
But the server we use to temporarily shelve our files, which we then remove once we are at another computer station, and which thus allows the eager student workers on the scanning project to continue painting the roses red by cleaning up images that are so crappy they should never have been part of an archival collection in the first place, is down.
So here I am, back with you, beloved migrateblog readers.
Please take a moment to visit some of the updated links on this blog. Worth it! Especially Bookslut, which is like literary nicotine for me. Thanks!

What's a Blog Carnival?

2005-10-28T16:58:00.000-07:00

The Blog Carnival I and the Bird Issue 9 is out. I just learned about this-- a blog carnival is a sort of "best of" compilation of blog entries around a single theme. I and the Bird comes out every other Thursday--and they've linked to one of my posts, but the other writers are quite worthwhile reading--especially the dude who went birding in Western Australia!

Enjoy.

birding from the train

2005-10-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

from the el this morning, in the vicinity of Lincoln Park, I saw a KESTREL perched gorgeously on a porch railing.

also lots and lots of AMERICAN CROWS.

hope=the thing with feathers

2005-10-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

one of the loneliest moments of the past year for me was back in February or March, after S. shattered his leg, and I was taking care of him almost full-time and trying to finish grad school simultaneously. There weren't many discoveries to be made for me artistically then--i was just trying to survive and take a couple of pictures, you know? And I couldn't get out birding much at all. So I began collecting, archiving the observations of other birders--I joined the Illinois Birders' listserve, and started trying to think about what I could do with all these amazing texts. I noticed that someone had posted a sign in the graduate art studios for a crit session--on Saturdays, in his studio. So I went down there, took the train downtown on a Saturday hoping for---I don't really know, some kind of a group crit, maybe, or at least a beer.

Well it was just two guys. Fine with me. I plopped down in a chair, feeling out of place, and shared the birders' texts. I felt like these 2 painters were far, far away from me, but they listened politely, and one of them said, after reading through some of the texts, So this birdwatching, it's about hope, right? It's about these people's hope that they're gonna see something unusual, something they've not seen before. And you're just taking, and presenting that hope in another context? I felt it was an incomplete, a cursory assessment. I felt I had let my birders down, had let their motivations be glossed over and misrepresented. Surely there were more complex motives than the hope of a choice find behind all that effort and concentration!

Today I came out of the Norris campus center, blue as could be, what with S's continuing health problems and our boring, relentless financial woes, and looked up to see a pair of--what were they? They were cheeping down churlishly at the passersby from a branch, and with the diffuse but bright sun radiating from behind cloud cover , i couldn't get a good look. But they were red--or at least one was. BAh. Cardinals, most likely, i thought. But--could they be something else perhaps? i couldn't see, but the beaks looked like they might be thinner, and the long tails bobbing as they sat--could they be Vermilion Flycatchers? My mood brightened and I moved backward to extend my view and try for a serious ID. They bobbed their tails, had a dark spot up on the head, but I still couldn't make out the head shape, and then--they flew down toward me, lighting on a lower branch of a nearby tree. I peered past the foliage and saw--they were cardinals. My feelings and wishes and hopes aside, cardinals they were and cardinals they had always been.

I don't have a neat wrap-up for this story. I didn't notice how special cardinals were from seeing this pair. I grew up with cardinals, cardinals are just all right with me, cardinals are just all right, oh yeah. But I will say that one of the benefits of birding, for me, is revelation of just this sort--everything is just what it is, not what I might wish it to be. It takes me down a notch or two, consistently. And i did feel my burden lightened, only slightly, by seeing them.

sunday buteo

2005-10-18T17:20:00.000-07:00

So on Sunday morning, I am jogging in the park again (wearing my glasses for once so I can tell when the large forms looming before me are trees and when they are large middle-aged karate practicers who think they've met me before). It's a beautiful morning, and I see quite a few waterfowl there, including those dang COOTS, bunches of MALLARDS and several AMERICAN BLACK DUCKS. Jogging, jogging, jogging (a brief word about the way I particularly do this: it's more of a lope. You might say that I run the way McDonald's makes salad--we've both been at it a long time, but never gracefully, never skilfully, and always with great internal protest and self-doubt).
So there aren't many other birds about, and I jog across the road from the Lagoon to the path along the Prairie River, and my cellphone vibrates in my Velcro pocket. It's S, wanting to know where he should pull in to pick me up. I tell him to meet me at the Field House parking lot, and figure I can probably loop the River path in the time it'll take for him to get there. I sign off, put the phone in my pocket, and across my line of sight flies a raptor, most likely a buteo. I approach the tree it has lighted on, and yes, it's a buteo, and it's twelve feet away from me. About the size of a large crow. Really beautiful, turning its head 180 degrees to search for food. These birds are absolutely fearless, it's awesome.
I've since identified the bird as a BROAD-WINGED HAWK. And found a new psychological reason for birding: it gets you out to exercise!

warblers galore-blers

2005-10-15T14:13:00.000-07:00

Due to the sweet chauffeuring of The Leg, I was able to get out to Montrose Point at last yesterday for the first time this fall. Warblers there included PALM and YELLOW-RUMPED, as well as a possible Cape May which S. saw. We also saw a variety of thrushes, including Gray-Cheeked and Swainson's thrush among the plentiful Robins. Then there was a pair of flycatchers which were tough to ID. I am fairly sure at this point that they were SAY'S PHOEBES--no eye ring and the bit of rusty yellow on the underbelly.

That location never ceases to amaze me--dozens of small lively things wheeling and diving and hovering in the yellow light and prairie grasses, without a care about the big ugly bipeds standing and gawking and drinking lattes out of big sippy cups. You can get close enough to these migrants to observe plumage colors without your field glasses.

this week

2005-10-13T12:33:00.000-07:00

Evanston is a funny place--a university town, with the accompanying sense from people that they are smarter than you and that everything functions better because of this, which is often true, despite my best anarchistic wishful thinking. Even the birds are better than in the gritty city to the south: this week, I had an OVENBIRD, a RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER and a MERLIN on Northwestern's campus, signaling the onset of real migration season.
And, in Humble Humboldt Park, I had 7 AMERICAN COOTS. I was right about those things, dang it. And also, a brown duck looking for all the world like a FULVOUS WHISTLING DUCK, though I know that's unlikely, keeping alarmingly close company (!) with a Canada Goose!

Pakistan

2005-10-10T05:02:00.000-07:00

My heart and thoughts go out today--and all week--to the survivors of the devastating earthquake in Pakistan. May more lives continue to be saved in its aftermath.

saturday in HP

2005-10-10T05:00:00.000-07:00

just wanted to mention that on Saturday in the Park I had several WHITE CROWNED SPARROWS and lots of other common sparrows. It's hard to bird and jog at the same time!

not much today

2005-10-07T06:31:00.000-07:00

Didn't see much this morning--or rather, I did, but the birds were all flying way up high and feeding/bugcatching and I couldn't get a good view. Tantalizing glimpses of what I think may have been a FOX SPARROW and a VEERY, and the highlight toward the end of my walk was three AMERICAN COOTS. These birds actually run on top of the water and then swim a while. They are gregarious and silly-looking, with a blobular yellowish beak and sooty black body.
Does anyone have a recipe for apple pie they'd be willing to share?
After the week I've had, I just want to BAKE.

Flickering again

2005-10-02T08:09:00.000-07:00

Between 8:30 and 9:45am at Humboldt park, i saw 2 AMERICAN KESTRELS, 13 FLICKERS, 25 WHITE-THROATED SPARROWS, 2 WHITE-CROWNED SPARROWS, 1 PHILADELPHIA VIREO, 5 RUBY-CROWNED KINGLETS, 9 AMERICAN CROWS, 1 VEERY, 1 BLUE JAY, and scads of RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS and EUR. STARLINGS. No sign today of the Brown Creepers and warblers I had just 2 days ago.

I guess we can only speak for ourselves, so that's what I'll do--not to presume that all birders do it for the same reasons, or even similar ones.

I started birding to ward off depression. I was hooked the day I left the gym I belonged to in Dorchester, MA, at the mouth of the Neponset river, wiping tears away and shivering in the cold fall weather. A silent, enormous great blue heron dipped as it flew and passed directly in front of my face, from right to left, continuing on through a brick archway opening on to the river.

I guess at that time birds held romance for me. They were witnesses to everything we did to and for one another here on the ground. They revealed none of what they'd seen, making them the perfect companions for depressives like me and my roommate, who lent me her binoculars so I could bird.

When I started grad school, I began to see birds as a metaphor for myself. It's really embarrassing to admit this. What a heavy-handed artist I became, for a while! I thought their migrations and subsequent returns to their breeding grounds were like my family's itinerant scramblings for a foothold on happiness from Chicago to Tennessee to Maryland. And now I was back in sweet home Chicago. I made art about this. It was a convenient but way overblown comparison, and deep down I knew it, and thank heavens my advisors called me out on it before it was too late for me to look more closely at my motives.

I'll continue later with an explanation of the role birding plays in my current life... I'd like to hear comments so far...

Fall warblers have arrived

2005-09-30T06:58:00.000-07:00

between 7:30 and 8:30am today at Humboldt Park, I had several species of woodpecker, including 8 FLICKERS, 2 DOWNYs and an incredible 4 BROWN CREEPERS (in the spring I think I saw one during the whole season, and it was at Montrose Beach, the most biodiverse spot in the state). I also noticed that the warblers have finally arrived--6 YELLOW-RUMPED and one BLACKPOLL (at least that's my best guess from checking my field guides). I also had 3 SWAINSON'S THRUSHES and 1 SWAMP SPARROW, and I think I may have seen a BROWN THRASHER but didn't include it on my posting to the birders' listserv.

I'd like to address the issue Abbyg raised, which others have also asked me about, which is: what is birding about, psychologically? Is it about the hope of seeing something rare, or about learning how to look at what has been around us all along (read the comment on my last post)?

Before I comment on this issue I would like to get some responses from readers...

My 1st Hummer

2005-09-29T07:26:00.000-07:00

Today on the Northwestern U. campus, I had my first ever RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD, 2 WHITE-CROWNED SPARROWS and a RED-EYED VIREO. Man those hummers are fast! It zipped around the path, hovered for a split second in front of me, and zoomed off.

yay hooray!

migrating humans

2005-09-27T07:52:00.000-07:00

There's been so much upheaval lately, i feel compelled to swing my flashlight back around to the world of people and their movements. Birds still have something to do with it, though...
In Jacques Perrin's amazing movie, Winged Migration, the director/narrator observes toward the beginning that the true meaning of the word "migrate" is often lost when we think of it merely as a moving-away; the subtext of a true migration is always, with birds, the promise to return.
I think about that promise when I contemplate the abandonment of New Orleans, and (closer to my life albeit much less traumatic) the half-dozen or so friends who are in the process of leaving Chicago, perhaps for good. What does it mean for a place to be suddenly bereft of a presence, 12 presences, 450,000 presences? Does the place miss you? Does the place hope for your return?
Looking through my field glasses at the animals who pass through this place, such an expectation--that these birds will come back next year, and the next, and their offspring will find their own ways here in their time, and on and on--seems preposterous. Why should they come here? What is here for them, except some artificial ponds in a park, a fountain or two, some trees?
Disasters happen. I suppose there is a difference between those who have been blown or flooded from their homes by a hurricane and those whose stay in a place was only temporary to begin with.
My dad works for a national association of programs which provide education, housing, counseling and other services to migrant farmworkers all over the USA. I have learned a bit about the life lived by these folks who move around from crop to crop with the seasons, and their movements might more accurately be called migrations: they leave a place, a shelter, a piece of land, with a truck and a promise to come back next year, to pick the same crop again at harvest time. Tracing their movements on maps might show up as more of a line of flight than a recognizable pattern.
These are the absences people learn how to live with. The people of New Orleans are having to learn to live with a lot of absence. A lot of people will not be coming back. Then again, perhaps they will cycle back to that place somehow. It isn't settled yet, I don't think. Nothing seems reasonable to expect.
I'm struggling, too, to define my own expectations. People I've grown close to are leaving, and experience tells me I won't see some of them again. To Singapore, Barbados, China, San Francisco, Maine, New York, Texas, Seattle. The kind of return they make in my life might not be a geographical one.
But i have my memories, and my artwork. The totality of their absences might make another kind of presence, if I figure out the right response.
Does anyone have any books to recommend on this subject? I'll be reading the Great Fire of London by Jacques Ribaud, which is about life after the death of a spouse, and I love reading Louise Erdrich whose books are filled with people and ghosts appearing and disappearing again. Others?

bloodshot

2005-09-15T18:42:00.000-07:00

good Lord. Nine hours at work and three hours on public transportation, and I come home to a nice dinner cooked by my unemployed layabout of a boyfriend.
RIGHT.
Oh, he STARTED dinner. He started cooking the fish, reading the directions carefully off the wrapper, which said, "place fish on greased broiler pan and bake in 425 oven 14-19 minutes. For best results, brush with butter." He joyously rubbed some butter on the fish. He lovingly placed the fish in a piece of tinfoil, placed the tinfoil in the broiler, turned the oven on 425, and left the room to ask me if I wanted the fish broiled or baked. "What do the directions say?" I asked. He read them back to me.
"Dude, I think "bake in oven" means you're supposed to bake it in the oven," I said. We laughed. He opened the broiler. He grabbed the edges of the foil. I said, "Pick up the whole broiler pan and stick it in the oven." He said, "No, I'm just going to put the foil in the oven." I shrugged.
Two minutes later, smoke was pouring out of the oven.
Now my eyes are itching, both smoke alarms are going off, the cats are diving for cover, I'm swinging the porch door back and forth and coughing, and S. says, "Let's just let it burn in there."
WTF is THAT? Ancient Bahamian Kitchen Fire Secret?
That shit ALMOST worked on me, until I snapped awake (thanks to the alarm, maybe), gave him the finger and made violent, frantic arm movements signaling him to yank Fishy back out of the oven. "We're doing this MY way now," I shouted/coughed at him.
He peered into the oven and pointed to the puddle of grease on the bottom. "Is that the source of the smoke?" He asked. I just stared at him. He grabbed a wet, soapy sponge and dabbed at the stain. It released a fresh cloud of smoke and hissed. "Maybe we should use some sort of oven cleaner," he suggested.
Ya THINK?
We used the toaster oven for the fish. Many curse words and a few thrown punches later, we're about to sit down to dinner. I'll let you know how it is.

The Humboldt Bird Restaurant

2005-09-11T08:30:00.000-07:00

I met another birder on the path today at Humboldt Park, where I dragged S. at 7:30am. This birder, a cheerful neighborly lady, lit up when I told her I was new to the area.
"Oh boy, oh boy, just wait!" she said. " You'll see what this place is like. It's like a festival, like a giant restaurant to these birds in the fall and spring. I used to see the red-tailed hawks fly over from the incinerator towers (she pronounced it 'incinyerary') and come back carrying, sadly, either a bird, or a fish, or whatnot. I bet they were just lookin' at Garfield Park and Humboldt saying to each other, Which restaurant shall we dine at today?"
She'd seen exactly what we saw, 12 KILLDEER and 3 SWAINSON'S THRUSHES, as well as some OVENBIRDS. We'd all spotted some warblers that were tough to ID, though I'm pretty sure I had a COMMON YELLOWTHROAT, a MAGNOLIA and a BLACK-THROATED GREEN. The killdeer were pretty cool, I have to say. They didn't care a whit about the dogs carousing nearby.

Flickerland

2005-09-09T06:29:00.000-07:00

sorry for the gloominess of that last post.
this morning in the park I had 2 AMERICAN GOLDFINCHES and 8 FLICKERS, all in the same tree! That tree must have had some good bugs.

bully kitty

2005-09-08T18:07:00.000-07:00

my cats are fighting each other again. it came up quickly today, hope it doesn't continue. Enough.

the past week has felt ponderously, leg-draggingly heavy to me. Plagued by nightmares every night, wrecks of airplanes leaving me helpless on the ground, fights between me and shapeless dark things, desperate feeling but powerless to do anything.

The days are better though. Feeling the distance from family more acutely now that so many refugees's faces are in the news, seems strange to have entered this familial diaspora by choice when so many have no choice. Feels liberated and lonesome all at once.

How can so much sorrow be absorbed? The man next to me on the train this morning cried the whole 35 minute ride. His breathing was heavy, and then he was just sobbing. I did not look at him, just out the window, letting the 7:30am sunlight filter past me, I hoped, toward him. Who knows what made him cry? It doesn't matter. I felt weirdly grateful as I made my way to work, thanking the trees and the silence for making enough room for all of us.

data entry volunteers needed

2005-09-05T14:54:00.000-07:00

This is one way anyone anywhere can help: a unified database is being constructed from the many smaller local databases for families of people missing in the states affected by Hurricane Katrina.

While data entry seems like a fairly un-dramatic way to help, I'm finding it easy (takes about 70 minutes to get through a batch of records) and it eases the mental stress of knowing that so many are in need of connecting with their loved ones. Ethan Zuckerman is the db manager, those with more IT experience may be able to volunteer to help on the back-end of this project.

The PeopleFinder Project

those with other suggestions for how to help, or seeking ways to help, click over to http://wheretosenddonationsforkatrina.blogspot.com and read on.

Best,
mariya

Hurricane

2005-08-30T06:56:00.000-07:00

My thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Biloxi, Mississippi, New Orleans and the surrounding areas devastated today by Hurricane Katrina.
Oh, and the New York Times reports today that the Ivory Billed sighting may be inconclusive. Thanks, guys. We get it, 'k? We're just a little amusing tidbit for you to consume with your morning triple mocha soy frappalatte. Birders are like the last people on earth to learn that the media is only your friend when you look like a hero, not when the story is complex and filled with uncertainty, as this one has been since February 27. I don't know of any birder who isn't aware that there's still a chance the Ivory Billed isn't out there. These party crashers are just rubbing it in.

failing better

2005-08-28T20:28:00.000-07:00

and did i go to that bird walk on Saturday, ladies and gents? no, the drumroll peters out to a stutter, i did not. Did i drink instead and hang out with friends till late evening on friday? yes i gloriously did. it felt nice.
another thing i'm super embarrassed about: several weeks ago, at a bar, I made a point. Emphatically. So emphatically did i make this point (and you can be sure that said point is long, long since forgotten, probably even since the moment i uttered it) that I slammed the edge of my left hand perpendicularly against the flat of my right palm. Bam. And felt something...go.
A moment later, eyes watering with pain, I was holding my left hand under the table, waiting for the pain to subside and hoping no one had noticed. No one had. This was several weeks ago. The hand hasn't healed. I'm fairly certain I did something at bone-level, like some sort of hairline fracture or pinched nerve or some such. When I turn my hand just so, or try to lift anything heavy, I feel as if my hand is snapping in two. I feel like such an ASS. It's as if my protector spirits are smacking me awake from my delusion that being right is the most important thing. NO, YOU MORON, they are saying, COMPASSION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. ARE YOU NEW TO THE WORLD OF HUMAN INTERACTION? FIGURE IT OUT, YOU BATSHIT FREAKO. HERE, WHY DON'T YOU TAKE HOME A HAIRLINE FRACTURE OF YOUR METACARPAL AS A REMINDER THAT WE HAD THIS LITTLE CONVERSATION?
ah well. maybe i'm being pessimistic. maybe it's only a sprain. but lucky for me (and for you as well, dear reader), i'm enough of a hypochondriac that
we will soon get to find out.
which reminds me: i saw a BAT tonight at Humboldt Park. Yay!

i mean saturday

2005-08-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

um, the LaBagh bird walk is this Saturday. At 7am.
sorry for the omission.

Humboldt Pie

2005-08-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

... okay, I stole that from the name of a cafe in my new 'hood i'm hoping to visit soon. but it is in Humboldt Park, the Jens Jensen-designed glorious greenspace after which the 'hood is named, that I glimpsed the unmistakable orange-and-black of an ORIOLE this morning on my first run in the Park.

An auspicious sign, it has to be, despite the dark clouds dripping rain overhead and the financial woes that seem equally menacing.

...speaking of birding, does anyone in the Chicago area wish to join me on the LaBagh Woods Bird Walk at 7:00am at the Forest Preserve off the Edens Expressway? Go to this linkfor details. Leave a comment here if you want to go, especially if you have a car!! Carpooling = good, right?

tree roots leave an impression

2005-08-22T05:15:00.000-07:00

...in my BACK! we went camping this weekend, our first 3 day weekend getaway since a year ago this month. the buildup of expectations caused by job changes, money stress, and moving had almost annihilated any possibility for enjoying the trip--but we managed to really breathe easier anyway. Together we spotted not too many birds, since we mainly only had eyes for each other (i know--ew.), but we did see
2 AMERICAN GOLDFINCHES
1 LEAST FLYCATCHER
1 RED-EYED VIREO
5 AMERICAN CROWS
several sparrows I couldn't ID, and a village of angry chipmunks. Don't get 'em mad! Sheesh!

i of the tyger

2005-08-12T18:45:00.000-07:00

what a summer. a certain unrest has definitely been burning bright in the shadows of the night, not enough for me to talk about here, but still--I haven't been sleeping well.
Everyone should read Jonathan Franzen's Reflections piece in this week's New Yorker, called My Bird Problem. It gives a surprisingly sensitive and painfully accurate treatment of how birding can turn a self-centered, blase urbanite into a vulnerable, earnest Conservationist. The parts about feeling joy at the mere existence of birds resonated with me: "The California towhee generally, the whole species, reliably uniform in its plumage and habits, was like a friend whose energy and optimism had escaped the confines of a single body to animate roadsides and back yards across thousands of square miles. And there were six hundred and fifty other species that bred in the United States and Canada, a population so varied in look and habitat and behavior--kites, hummingbirds, shearwaters, snipe--that, taken as a whole, they were like a companion with an inexhaustibly rich personality."
Anyway, I can't provide a link here because the New Yorker won't let you see it on their site. But go get it. It's also funny. That is all.

Leaving Logan Square

2005-08-06T20:09:00.000-07:00

winding down the move this past week, i glimpsed a pair of AMERICAN GOLDFINCHES feeding on the sunflowers in the back yard of the old place. Our move takes us not far to the south, and a bit west of where we were--and i'd like to take a moment to appreciate Logan Square, palm over my heart.
Even though we were in the borderlands of the neighborhood, in an isolated house that has sat hauntedly on its corner for 130 years, we managed to extract some of the pith from this rapidly gentrifying place: Las Asadas, the taco shack with its new orange menu sign and tiny barstool counter. S. sang its praises whenever I left town, reverting in a flash to ordering chicken tortas and taquitos with salsa verde rather than cooking on the stove himself. Why not, it was damn cheap. And there was Cafe Lula, as Ira Glass writes, arguably the best neighborhood restaurant in the city. I'm a cheap date, so I liked the reasonably priced yet consistently yummy items on the menu, plus the fact that you get a free mini-appetizer consisting of whatever the chef is experimenting with that week.
Never mind that these usually resemble a fried cricket with some sort of spicy mayo, I appreciate the gesture.
Osco Drug. What can I say. You were like my reluctant yet reliable childhood friend, the one who never really got who I was, but was there for me anyway. You had limitations, but these were clear and well-marked, so no surprises: stocking Monistat, but locking it in a plexiglas case so I had to suffer the humiliation of having a male employee open it and walk me to the front counter; a produce section consisting of seven avocados and a box of pallid tomatoes; and a reliably bad computer system, which always misses the sale items, requiring the cashier to call for a price check even when i KNOW i am, like, the eighth person that day to purchase that particular sale item. It got so that I would get the sale item, bring it to the front, and let everyone in the line go ahead of me because i knew it wouldn't show up correctly in the computer.
And finally, the Blue Line train at Western and Milwaukee. As long as I have memory, this will be my favorite CTA station. I got to know its particulars so well: the elevator that takes you to a bridge above the train platform, where, if you are trying to take the train on the other side of the platform, you must get off the elevator and walk across the bridge, where a second, secret elevator operates between the bridge and the platform but doesn't descend to street level; the kiosk on the west side of Western, which allows riders to use their passes to get on without going into the station, but at their own risk(several times I had the misfortune of getting my card stuck or otherwise malfunctioning at this location, causing me to enter the byzantine system of CTA pass rescue); and on and on. They even now have a Dunkin Donuts inside the station, a mystifying development given the CTA's injunction against eating and drinking on the train. Maybe they expect people to simply hold their donuts?

women weighing in

2005-08-03T19:30:00.000-07:00

And now for a break in our regular programming to bring you a bit of socially motivated theater. Those by-now-familiar Dove ads are generating a lot of controversy here in the Windy City. Some of the best commentary has come from Wendy McClure, a writer whose views on the subject I highly respect. She's also very, very funny. And the Sun-Times published her piece! awesome. Read it here.

movin on up

2005-08-02T11:54:00.000-07:00

life is happening to me now, almost too quickly to record here. So instead i will report that i saw several AMERICAN CROWS, a few WHITE THROATED SPARROWS and what I believe was an EASTERN PHOEBE on the campus of Northwestern U. this week.

Evanston turns out to be ok, though it's a little like the rich stepson Chicago acquired by marrying above its station. The whole city seems...entitled. Exaggeratedly so. This can be a good thing--for example, i witnessed a scene on Wednesday morning that would have been unthinkable anywhere else , except maybe Canada or Singapore: an entire city block of parked cars being towed, all at once, by a fleet of tow trucks, to make way for the street sweepers, which, if the parking sign fine print is to be believed, only pass through there four days a year. We're talking about at least 15 cars being towed simultaneously from a single block, in a city of 55,000 people. My point is, they have that many tow trucks! Anyway, there is a fair amount of the snootery one might expect from such a place. But hey, all the public restrooms are really nice, and the Dunkin Donuts has WiFi internet. So who's complaining?

post-

2005-07-28T21:34:00.000-07:00

i packed the binoculars today—last in a box that was full of shoes and photographs—we worked sluggish with fatigue, flopping on the mattress, listening to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, dreaming of the future
when will i be out in the field again?
it’s a myth by the way that all cat’s tongues are rough
our shoes are all worn completely out. my newest pair got a hole in the heel today and i had to sit down in the parking lot at the bank on a slab of concrete and loosen the laces. people pushed their kids in strollers past me on the sidewalk.
oh yeah, and my plants both died while i wasn’t looking, which i guess was a long time. not looking has caused me a lot of problems lately—i almost lost a toe on the train when the doors opened and caught my flip-flopped foot in the hinges. Anyway, time to start looking again. Seriously.
you want to know what i’m writing, and i say i don’t know. Good.
we play a little game in this process of moving. it’s called, what will get thrown away? will it be the red kids’ table, vaguely useful but now merely taking up space? or perhaps the bear-brown shaggy blanket weighing 200 pounds that has sat in the hallway all year? or will we successfully discard the wheelie stereo and broken speakers, whose only redeeming feature is its occasionally functional turntable? our only mode of resolving this question seems to be exchanging a mutually hostile glare from time to time.
i meditated on the train, too—part of my ongoing campaign to shove my imagination aside long enough to look hard at what is. and to learn about dying a little, about where breathing ends and begins again. when i managed this, briefly, today, i was rewarded with a glimpse of a friend exitiing the same train, walking with head down on the platform, a person i would not have seen or recognized without clearing my mind first. tra la la.

the Chicago Spirit Squad

2005-07-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

SHout outs to A. for inviting us to help out at the Disability Pride Parade. it was good to march as an ally, and good to be a part of it. Hope it gets even better turnout next year.

Conversation today between S. and me:

S(softly): So, do you think any of the members of the Chicago Spirit Squad (an adult team of cheerleaders who performed at the parade) might have been...gay?

Me: No. No, I think they were entirely all straight. (muffled laugh) Straight as an arrow.

Pause.

Me: Straight as a ruler.

S: Hm. Straight as a non-Euclidean reference mollusc?

this, friends, is why i love him.

concentration-illy-olly-ation

2005-07-19T14:52:00.000-07:00

Was that a MERLIN i saw today, on the campus of Northwestern University? Strange to think i never once visited that place the whole time I was growing up in this area, and had to wait till my thirties to get there. I think I heard a couple of years ago at the 10 year reunion that Rob L. who went through elementary, junior high and high school with me works over there. Rob, if you're out there reading, holler back. It's been awhile.

thanks to all of you for the positive vibes and thoughts as i sputter down the runway headed for takeoff post-grad school. This week, my emotional turbulence wasn't helped by:

1. The fact that we have to find a new apartment
2. The fact that I have to find a new job.
3. The fact that black goo started spewing up out of our bathtub drain for no apparent reason on Sunday.
4. The fact that the bathtub drain then stopped up, and the black goo spewed whenever one turned on the faucet for the sink.
5. The fact that said black goo was not Texas Tea.
6. The fact that our landlady, who makes the occasional cameo appearance in this blog by virtue of her status as slumlord (which I am now elevating to SlumQueen, the next stage being SlumBitch), told me that she shouldn't have to insist that the plumber come immedieately, because "Can't you guys just brush your teeth in the kitchen sink? What's the problem?"
Geez. Thank God I never did pay her for December rent--and she never noticed. We'll just sit on that little piece of information, now , won't we?

now what?

2005-07-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

where did this sniveling, tantrum-throwing tornado of classless misery come from, and what has she done with the real me? no one in Blogworld wants to hear about how little sleep you had last night, but that's all i can seem to manage to express. ugh. i think i finally conked out, post-panic attack and post-argument, around 6, got up again at 8:30.
3 hours of peacemaking and blueberry pancakes later, i'm wondering where all of that vitriol really came from. i think it erodes my already tenuous emotional stability to feel so disconnected from my creative self. A piece is coming due next month, more projects await a dusting-off and effort in order to come into being, i'm finally seeing how suckingly empty the page can be once school is over and you are left with your own negative voices and drained bank account.

in other news, has anyone else been having really bizarre dreams lately? it's as if the gestalt is shifting into darker territory, at least for me, where i have to participate in game shows which end with prizes for the winners and elaborately conceived deaths for the losers. Sort of a Lady or the Tiger scenario, updated with lethal injection technologies.
ANYWAYS
trying to get back to birding. trying to see my way clear to a new apartment, new job (hopefully, hopefully soon) and new projects.

plus one more

2005-07-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

i forgot about the OSPREY, four of them, seen from a sea kayak on the Chesapeake Bay.

i'm baaaaaaack

2005-07-12T10:44:00.000-07:00

Birds seen on my trip to the beaches of Delaware:
COMMON TERN
LEAST TERN
BROWN PELICAN
GREAT EGRET
LAUGHING GULL
BONAPARTE's GULL
HERRING GULL
RING-BILLED GULL
GREATER BLACK-BACKED GULL
BANK SWALLOW
TREE SWALLOW
BLACK VULTURE
TURKEY VULTURE
RED-TAILED HAWK
PURPLE GALLINULE
GREAT BLUE HERON
SWAMP SPARROW
WILLET
RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD
FISH CROW
MOURNING DOVE
MALLARD
WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW
BROWN THRASHER. My dad was particularly excited to discover the thrasher, hopping quietly along some underbrush along the Bay. I thought the Willets and Purple Gallinule were the most spectacular, the Gallinule being a life list bird for me (this is a bird i've never seen before). Vultures are pretty freakin cool, too, esp. up close. And an Egret is a sight to behold, taking slow flight, white and low among the sea-green marsh grasses in the gathering dusk.

Rejection Collection

2005-06-27T21:35:00.000-07:00

Hi All,
I'm publishing my call for submissions here, in case anyone reading would like to participate. Writers and visual artists are all welcome!

To My Artist Sisters,

I am putting together a poster, working title The Rejection Collection, consisting of a collage of scanned and photocopied rejection letters, starting with my own recent job and residency rejections. I am humbly asking for your contributions to this project!

If you have any rejection notices from institutions, companies or individuals which are connected in some way to your being an artist—job rejections, fellowship or residencies, grants, publications, universities, foundations or corporations—I want them! Please email me at the address below--you can either send me the text of your rejection, or I'll give you my address in my reply email and you can mail it to me on the original letterhead--I'll scan it and send it back to you. NO ONE’S REJECTION WILL BE TURNED AWAY!

Respond to:
editor@fzine.com

I will not be using anyone’s name or contact information —they will be blacked out for the final display.

Thanks and I look forward to seeing your rejections!

Forward freely, friends.

Sincerely,

Mar-Mar

never ever ever finished

2005-06-24T12:12:00.000-07:00

So, my friend Y-N came over for dinner the other night. She's from Taiwan, and is a graduate of the same degree program as me, Designed Objects. We come out of very different art backgrounds: she's a traditionally-trained industrial and package designer who used to be a CAD jockey at a big tech design firm, whereas i've got this pieced-together Frankenstein monster of studio, social science and art history coursework on my resume. Basically I'm a forklift driver who can recite Baudrillard.
I have no ambition for design, and few prospects.
Y-N got into it with me. She has a nasty habit of pulling rank with regard to her experience in the design world, even though she knows I don't long to succeed there. I showed her my new drawings, which share a little in common with topographical map markings, a little with thumbprints, and a little with seashell forms--a series of spirals that i Sharpied onto some index cards, a form of doodling that i've been doing for years and only just noticed in a more formal way. Y-N looked at them.

"These are fingerprints," she announced.

"OK, yes, i can see the connection there. That's cool," I said.

"What are they for?"

"For? Oh, I don't know yet. They feel like a model for something, an object maybe."

"ALL your work is model for something else. All your work. You never finish."

We stared at each other. Y-N weighs in at about 85 pounds, soaking wet. I clock in at around 150. We squared off.

"What are you saying?" I asked. "That I can never finish anything?"

"You never WANT to finish," she replied. "You only make model. That's you."

Mikhail Bakhtin, Russian art theorist from early last century, talks about an element he calls "unfinalizability," that quality of a work which makes it impossible to nail down or fix, which keeps it alive in the mind and eye of the audience or viewer, but which often results in the artist failing to achieve recognition. Bakhtin used to write that he was only interested in work that was unfinalizable, which you could never quite get to the end of, which niggled at your brain like an unresolved ending to a novel. In fact I think he was, specifically, talking about novels.

In any case, I thought about Bakhtin when she said that. I thought about the places I went in my mind when I was making the drawings, and why they needed to be so plain and unadorned and on index cards instead of Arches paper. i thought about presenting them as doodles, as art that we make when we are supposed to have our minds on other things. How the doodle represents a kind of line of flight of the brain (you thought I wasn't going to mention birds in this posting, didn't you?) and often helps us concentrate even more on the lecture or phone conversation or whatever we are doing for real at the moment.

I am interested in others' thoughts on this.

Goodbye, Stanley Marie

2005-06-21T14:29:00.000-07:00

As in, the kitty belonging to R. who i took care of 2 weeks ago. R. called me yesterday to let me know the sad news. Stanley was a loving kitty, a grouchy arthritic grandma who would lethargically lay about the couch on a Sunday afternoon while the person in her life read the paper. She will be missed.

Worldly concerns press in on my fragile sense of artistic identity. A baseball game, the blaring lights of grocery stores, birth, death, car break-ins, visits from friends, and the need for making money have conspired to derail my best creative intentions. The most i could muster this weekend was gazpacho (thank you TDog for the tip about blanching the tomatoes first!).

But new acquaintances deepen into friendship, the migrants have almost all gone and I am left looking at my hands and wondering, what next? Sunim, the Buddhist spiritual teacher at the Zen temple, said this week that failing to cultivate one's mind after attaining human life is like coming home broke from the treasure island. I also have this opportunity to cultivate awareness--inquiry-- which is all I ever felt the need for intuitively anyway! Inquiry can seem masturbatory at times--except when I manage to see my own prejudices and learn to background my own ego and see what is actually there, instead of what I want to see. Birding is perfect for this. And yet I haven't birded in ages.

can i revisit, re-integrate artwork into my days, my life? this blog posting feels like a first step.

Happy Summer Solstice to everyone reading this.

procrastibation; or, That's not OK

2005-06-16T20:25:00.000-07:00

(small, self-pitying sigh)
i guess i'm overcommitted. And what is the first thing to go? My poor blog, neglected and waiting hopefully in the dusty corner of the Internet for me to pay it some much-needed attention.

And now that I need a way to distract myself from the pressing concerns of my very last classroom assignment in grad school, where shall i turn, but to my trusty, abused blog? Part of the reason for my radio silence recently is this blasted 3 week intensive class which has been kicking my booty, what with forced creativity in terms of writing and revising my artist's statement and grant proposals. Makes me not want to make art anymore, that's for sure.

Excuse #2, the Big One: My new nephew, Noah, was born on April 7 at 4:54 Eastern time, in Bethesda, Maryland. Suddenly I seem to have been replaced by an auntier, head scarf-wearing version of myself who never uses swear words and who buys secondhand childrens books at every corner bookshop.

Oh, and i received an amazing gift today from R. R.'s dad, Neal. Thank you so much for the wildflower ID book, Neal! I've been wondering more and more about the ground from which the figure emerges in the field of birding!

Thesis defense: Parents' Edition

2005-05-31T14:55:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, in Calvert County, MD, I saw 1 EASTERN BLUEBIRD, 1 RED-TAILED HAWK, and several NORTHERN CARDINALS. Heard 2 RED-BELLIED WOODPECKERS, as well. I also saw, back in Silver Spring this morning, an EASTERN PHOEBE.
Memorable Memorial Day Moments: when my mother asked me to explain why I think my art deserves to be made...an interesting question i think we should ALL get from our mothers. sometimes, lately (and by "sometimes" i mean "constantly") she is in Spicy mode, engaging the tough issues we discuss by lobbing piquant (and by "piquant" i mean "explosive") rejoinders at me across the space between us. This was one such moment.
I survived it fairly well, i must say. Why does my art deserve to be made? Only because I believe in it. I believe my writing and art has a contribution to make to the whole of humanity. That's all, and hopefully, it is enough. I don't know. I told Mom something along the lines of what I wrote in my last posting, that none of us knows the value of anything we do at the time that we do it, we can only swing our hammers and hope to see some progress in our lifetimes. BUt often we don't. So any work that tries to give the world something new is an act of faith.

on toward morning

2005-05-25T06:04:00.000-07:00

when i see something, i rarely--almost never--know what i am actually seeing.

the reminders in my life range from the small and silly--mistaking a gull for a White Heron in downtown Chicago-- to the large and complicated, like walking past the same sketchy-seeming, cigar-smoking, sunglasses-wearing, grizzled, raspy-voiced alcoholic on the corner twice a day for two years, assuming he was the lookout for the crack dealership across the street, and then one morning he is there, the crackheads are gone, police are everywhere and a small signpost reads, NO LOITERING--DEA!

I am about to become an aunt, and i wonder this about the new child: will the child be less foolish than me when it comes to presuming that s/he knows something for certain? the certainty, the feeling of it, the weight of it once my brain takes it on, is what gets me into trouble, not the fact that i'm wrong or right. Is any of this making any sense? This is a lot of the reason why I watch birds: they insist on being themselves regardless of what I think they are. Perhaps i can get a good enough look to identify them, perhaps not; but the ambiguities are as interesting as the certainties, and sometimes more fruitful in terms of dialogue: the birders on the listserv will often debate a bird's identity for weeks on end!

Caspian Tern

2005-05-22T18:36:00.000-07:00

Haha! I saw my first CASPIAN TERN on Friday. With me at the time were dear friends from very different cross-sections of my life, Libby and Vero, who had never met each other before...we were enjoying a strong warm summery wind off the aqua-blue lake, reclining somewhat uncomfortably on the concrete steps at the harbor in front of Buckingham Fountain, and observing seagulls doing dumb-ass things with each other. "Hey, look at that one. What is it doing? Trying to get the food out of the other's beak?" "Here's another one hovering near the pigeons. Does it think it's popular enough to hang out with them?"
Gazing at one gull flying high across our field of vision over the water, I saw a flash of orange triangular beak and black cap, and said, "That one is NOT a gull." I looked it up when we got home, and sure enough it was a Caspian.
I thought of NB, who is writing a book about the Arctic Tern--well, its kind of about other stuff too-- not quite the same bird at all, but still.
I've also been seeing lots of AMERICAN GOLDFINCHES, at long last.

heroes of observation

2005-05-17T12:45:00.000-07:00

Witness Doug Stotz, my favorite ecologist of the moment, from the Field Museum of Natural History here in Chicago, birding in Grant Park, the urban oasis on Lake Michigan today:
"Out in Grant Park today, 17 May, it was not bad. The only migrant that
was really common was WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW with 260. The number two
migrant was LINCOLN'S SPARROW with 21. I had 20 species of warbler,
including my first BLACK-THROATED BLUE, WILSON'S and CANADA of the
spring. The most abundant warbler was AMERICAN REDSTART with 16. Other
birds of interest included a RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD, NORTHERN
MOCKINGBIRD, and PURPLE FINCH."

Yes, that's right: he saw 20 species of warbler. In the Olympics of birding, Dr. Stotz would totally win a medal.
And anyone who can spot a hummingbird in a tourist-filled urban park--we're talking highly, highly evolved birding sense. I am humbled and jealous.

baby gooses

2005-05-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

Congratulations Tdog and J on getting engaged this weekend! May you enjoy some long afternoons together this summer, planning and dreaming your future.

This morning, a little late birding at Diversey and the CHicago River: three TREE SWALLOWS, a GRACKLE, four mating MALLARDS and four adult CANADA GEESE, two of whom are new parents of seven yellow fuzzies! afterward i observed to S. that maybe we see pigeons as being such a pestilence because we never get to see their babies. After all, Canada Geesse are pretty rough on the environment, tearing apart riverbanks and pushing out other species. But we put up with them because we see their whole families and feel that kinship.
So, you might be wondering, where ARE all the pigeon babies?? Stay tuned...

bittern-ess

2005-05-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

The readings have been quite well-received so far. Audiences this past weekend varied from four to twenty, and included, among others, my parents (in from Maryland), sister (in from Asheville, NC), and Ernie and CJ (in from Athens, OH and Washington DC, respectively). I walked on air out of the gallery on Saturday--thanks to these loving presences and other Chicago friends present at the readings, everything felt just perfect.

And on Saturday morning, the 7th, R's dad (in from Omaha) drove out to Logan Square to pick me up. We went to Montrose Point--aka the Magic Hedge--where we birded happily for several hours. Neither of us was particularly sharp that morning--he's losing his eyesight, i had only the excuse of a lack of coffee and a rusted brain--but we managed to catch sight of a few gems:
2 COMMON YELLOWTHROATS
1 BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER
2 EUROPEAN GOLDFINCHES
1 SWAINSON'S THRUSH
1 BROWN THRASHER
25 WHITE CROWNED SPARROWS
2 BALTIMORE ORIOLES
1 AMERICAN BITTERN
1 OVENBIRD
The bittern had attracted lots of attention by the time we saw it. a few bold birders were sneaking up on it with cameras. this is a largish marsh bird, well camouflaged that day amid the tall brown grass, with yellow eyes and a long, curved sharp bill that points to the sky for hours at a time, a meditative posture that no one can explain, but which makes the bird appear vertical, as if it were some sort of conduit.

may snowflakes

2005-05-03T13:13:00.000-07:00

On May 1, we had a couple of snow flurries. maybe not so unusual for the Midwest, but S. was horrified enough to start looking for jobs back East.
I have missed out on most of the spring migration. Perhaps tomorrow I will venture out in the early morning to join the birders on their walk thru Lincoln Park. This has been a difficult time, finishing graduate school without progressing to the next thing quite yet...without knowing even what the next thing will be.
I think I will begin posting here some of the writing remixes from the birders' list serve. I have had one university professor down in Champaign ask where the work is published so she can use it in her class on nature writing! This was tremendously gratifying and I plan on mailing her some copies of the unpublished manusX....

Birders Rejoice! The Ivory Billed lives!

2005-04-28T11:20:00.000-07:00

This video will tell you a bit about the discovery of an Ivory Billed Woodpecker on Feb. 11, 2004 in the Cache Swamp in Arkansas. What a miracle! What cause for jubilation ! I've had a dumb grin on my face all day. All birders should be joyously relieved to learn of its existence.
This bird has come to represent the crisis of human land use encroaching violently upon wildlife habitat. This bird has nearly become extinct due to logging. Yet many homes, mine included, are of wood, and I use paper and paper products every day. WE just haven't prioritized the use of technologies which might have less impact on our fellow beings, even when those technologies already exist. Why?
I wonder if it has to do with our concept of "use-value"--the way that we in the Western world think our survival depends on certain things but not others. Birds have no obvious use-value--they cannot be bought or sold, they do not provide food, they are not cute and obviously intelligent like dolphins or monkeys, they make ok but not awesome pets, and they don't bear loads for us like pack mules. And yet, as the president of the Chicago Ornithological Society once told me, birds are a vital part of the ecology of the planet, and we won't like it when they're gone. But how to make that an immediate, urgent fact for people who don't already understand it?

public readings

2005-04-26T12:55:00.000-07:00

Chicagoans and visitors to Chicago are invited to join me for a series of public readings of my work-in-progress, a prose poem entitled I I See. This is a piece which consists of a remix of words from the posted observations of Illinois birders to the internet, along with sentences from this blog. It all comes together, you'll see!
WHERE: 847 W. Jackson Blvd, Third Floor
WHEN: Saturday , May 7 at 7:00pm, Wednesday May 11 at 5:30 and 7:00pm, and Friday May 20 at 5:30 and 7pm.
Hope to see you there!

injured kestrel

2005-04-21T10:26:00.000-07:00

on this mighty windy morning, i heard, and then saw, an AMERICAN KESTREL fighting the wind to land on the spire of a Victorian building in Wicker Park. I was looking into the sun, so it wasn't a great view, but this bird seemed to have in its beak a bunch of nesting materials, or perhaps stringy entrails. Its tailfeathers seemed to be flopping wrongly, almost as if they were about to be torn loose from its body. i wondered if it had just experienced some trauma as it struggled for purchase on the rounded brass spire. Once it gained footing, it lifted its wings again and was borne off on a gust of wind. i couldn't follow its trajectory over the building, and lost sight of it behind a chimney.

ish yooz

2005-04-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

since i've mostly been struggling to stay on the mechanical bull that is my emotional self this week, rather than birding or reading or blogging, i don't have much to report today. but i did get to see family friend Beauvais Lyons, printmaker and artist extraordinaire who is director of the Hokes Archives at the University of Tennessee. Very inspiring artist who is steadily gaining notoriety and who, i think, will likely be viewed as a very important artist in the American intellectual landscape.

AND

They are tearing down the Milwaukee Avenue White Castle!! this is huge news for:
--the pigeons and seagulls of the parking lot which is about to be churned to asphalt dust to make way for whatever luxury condo/luxury car dealer/luxury office building they are going to build;
--the grizzle-bearded, raggedly dignified and silent shopping cart man who lives in the tiny, illegally occupied vinyl-sided shack in the middle of the sidewalk three feet from the White Castle front window;
--the crackheads of the alleyway behind the Congress Pizza across from the White Castle, for whom White Castle is their non-pizza binge alternative. I had to step over one of them yesterday, which I haven't had to do for almost a year, so i can tell they're particularly depressed about these developments.

gull dreams

2005-04-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

i've had the strangest dreams lately...the immature greater black-backed gull from Saturday appeared that night in my tequila-soaked dream. it was standing alone in a parking lot, and turned its head slowly, slowly, to look my way.
last week i dreamed i had my own elephant. she was a female Asian elephant, trained to accompany me on my journeys into the city ( in the dream i think i lived in a city like Bangalore or Dubai, not Chicago, which is weird b/c i've never been to India--altho it figures prominently in my travel fantasies) and anyway, this elephant knew me really well. Sometimes i would walk beside or in front of her, sometimes riding on her back. She was really docile and quiet, and larger than all the other elephants (did i mention that in this dream, most people had elephants?). She ate surprisingly little for a pachyderm.

ruby crown

2005-04-16T09:09:00.000-07:00

this morning at Diversey and the Chicago River, behind the Cub Foods parking lot, i had my first RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET since moving here from maryland! it was like a small gift.
I also saw a COMMON (YELLOW-SHAFTED) FLICKER, a TREE SWALLOW, and a pair of RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS. Also i think there was an immature GREATER BLACK-BACKED GULL, which was kind of exciting because it's so humongous and rare for this area. but i'm not really experienced enough to be sure about it.
And, at the feeder here, a COMMON REDPOLL, one of the coolest birds i've seen here.

jogger-not

2005-04-15T20:53:00.000-07:00

...or juggernaut, whichever you prefer. three things:
1- The Leg is starting to get better. Meaning longer crutch-walks outside, meaning i do fewer dishes, meaning the whole house breathes a little easier. Thank you again to everyone who has offered kind words, stopped by, called etc. during this time. I felt so good today i went jogging for the first time since, oh, November...
2- I will be reading a collaborative poem by a bunch of ragtag layabouts, aka poets, at the 1926 N Halsted gallery this Sunday, between 3 and 5 pm. (Others will be reading too--you won't just have to endure me sucking my drool back in for 2 hours. Promise.)
3. Stella the cat had her first encounter with the dogs next door. It didn't, er, go too well. They are a couple of nimwit schnauzers, one with three legs, who poop in one corner of their yard and then when someone walks by, they run the length of their chain-link fence, barking excitedly and escalating the hype until the person passes, whereupon they begin a painfully long decrescendo into relative quiet. Unless someone else walks by. They aren't hostile, exactly; i think "overresponsive to visual stimuli" best captures it. They have doggy ADD. I brought Stellito out on her leash and she made for the fence. Not my fault, dude. I was talking with our neighbor when the dogs spied Stella. Presented with this juicy target, they commenced freaking out, so Stella, horrified by their poor manners, did what she does to defeat dogs like Orbit, the downstairs neighbor dog: she hissed. Orbit, when hissed at, runs away with his tail between his legs. End of story. But these dogs did NOT get the hint. They escalated, leaping at the fence and barking their heads off. Stella froze, then took off topspeed for the shelter of our porch, forgetting that she was still on leash and harness. Poor kid. SHe nearly took her own head off. I picked her up, her ears flat against her head, and endured her claws digging into the flesh of my shoulder as i brought her back into the house. Guess she'll have to miss the next neighborhood barbecue.

Nestbox Cam

2005-04-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

omg, you GOTTA go to this site and look at the eensy weensy fluffy baby birdies being born in their nests!! it is the awesomest thing ever and i wish i'd had this idea before the Cornell Ornithology Lab did, but i guess they are, in fact, ornithologists and are therefore spending way more time dealing with birds than i am.
holy crap, that's cool. thanks to Eva in Las Vegas for the link.

dreams do come true

2005-04-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

i just had a pretty good day. there are three of us putting a mini-show of our current work together in the vast labyrinthine hall of mirrors that will be the Graduate Exhibition (May 8-20) at the 847 W. Jackson gallery. we are curating ourselves, meaning that decisions such as what color to paint the walls in our little alcove, or what wine to surreptitiously serve our opening night visitors in conspiratorial violation of the house rules, are entirely our own. Meaning that we have to come up with our own "theme," which is normally (and by "normal" i mean the freakishly illogical and disempowering set of operating procedures used by galleries as a result of massive art-world inbreeding) a curator's job.
So anyway, we finally did it! Came up with a theme, i mean. It's "resonance," and although i advocated vigorously for a verb, this noun seemed an acceptable compromise. Come see the show! come hear me read my written work, which seems to be growing parasitically in and around my visual expression, and which i suspect (and sort of hope) will eventually take over as one of my main art forms. Come hear and experience Tamara's immersive sound environment! Come experience David's amazing heart-bell machine! ok, ok. i feel like a carny.
May 7th is the opening. May 8-20 is the show. that is all, for now.
oh, and Joseph Grigely just won a Guggenheim award. It's not the Macarthur, but someone must have heard my prayer.