Return To The Center

Fourth of July, 2008

Sky blue
Rusted through
Machine stamped
Patriotic camp

Made in China.

 

2008:07:03 22:24:20 Candle Light

 

Noctua Pronuba - Large Yellow Underwing Moth

This guy stealth-hitchhiked home with me on June 22nd. 

He was snuggled under the big flap of my messenger bag that I carry all my work junk in. He really surprised me when I flipped the bag open.  Lucky for me, he just sat on my bag and let me take some pictures of him.  I had forgotten that I took his portrait until I was flipping through the memory card tonight. 

As moths go, he’s pretty big, about an inch and a half or so. Noctua started out in Europe.  People who study these creatures think that his ancestors were introduced to this country in 1993 in Connecticut where the first record of them was made.

 

Babies Adams Update

The Adams’ homestead is looking a bit ratty these days, at least from the point of view of it being a decorative hanging geranium.  Reluctance to disturb the little family has led to a bare minimum of maintenance on the plant. Geraniums need to be dead-headed when the blossoms fade.  We’ve not done that.  You can see the little dessicated flower carcasses hanging at the end of straggly stalks.

The plant has filled out with green foliage closer to the bottom though, almost as it it knew it had to protect the four impossibly small and helpless newborns that huddle together amidst it’s stems. 

I poked my head out this morning to take a quick peek in the planter.  I don’t touch it any more so I have to rely on the wind to turn it enough in my direction to look in on the Adams chicks.  This morning as their nest slowly rotated back and forth in the breeze I counted four brown heads with outsized yellow triangle beaks.  They were all huddled in a clump together in their nest.  Their heads bobbled back and forth but with more control than just a few days ago.  I was just about to go back into the house when one of them opened its mouth and uttered the faintest “cheeep cheeep cheeep”

I got the camera and tried to get it to focus inside the nest.  The combination of motion and small viewing portal afforded by the geranium leaves did not make for the best image.  The black arrow points to an upturned chick mouth.

Abigail has been very busy feeding her brood. Yesterday D saw her swoop in, perch on a stem and bend all the way over with tail feathers pointing straight up to provide the babies with some food.

So far so good…

 

2008:07:02 22:19:38 Lightning Strike

 

frog and toad

When my son was just a little boy, the books he learned to read on were the Frog and Toad series of stories.  We would sit together on the couch and he would read to me. When he first started out, some of the words in the stories had to be painstakingly sounded out.  I know now how he might have felt as he assembled those words in his brain before saying them.

The above thirty line poem is called Pop Song Ge or Dharma Nature Gatha.  The poem is chanted every morning at Mun Su Sa.  When I used to go to the temple in the 90’s it wasn’t part of the liturgy, so it’s new to me.

Each two-part line is a teaching about what the Dharma is.  The poem was written long ago (~650CE) by the Korean master Ui Sahng. 

Ten or so years ago Gahk So Sunim taught me the Korean alphabet. I can sound out the Pop Song Ge slowly by sight, but not fast enough to keep up with the speed of the chant at 5:30 in the morning. 

As you look at the letters of this post, you don’t see letters. Not really anyway..  You see words. I see words.  When you see ‘jump’ you don’t have to think in your mind “OK that shape is a ‘J’ and it sound like ‘juh’ and the next shape is a ‘U’ and it sounds like ‘uh’ and the next shape is an ‘M’ and is sounds like ‘mmmm’ and the next shape is a ‘P’ and it sounds like ‘puh’ and when you put them all together it says ‘jump.’”  When it comes to reading Korean words, that is exactly the process I have to go through.  In addition Korean words have sound combinations that my Saugus/Boston/New England Yankee mouth is not at all used to making at first, so that takes a bit of practice too.

For the chants that I learned a decade ago, I can mostly keep up, mainly because I have half memorized them, so my ‘reading’ is assisted by memory.

In any case – I find the concept of myself as a ‘reader’ vaporized every morning as I stand in the near dark fumbling my way through Master Ui Sahng’s masterpiece.

“The nature of the Dharmas is perfect. It does not have two different aspects.
All the various Dharmas are unmoving and fundamentally still.
They are without name and form, cut off from all things.
This is understood by enlightened wisdom, and not by any other sphere.
The One is in the many, the many are within the One.
The One is many the many are One.
Numberless kalpas are the same as one moment.
One moment is the same as numberless kalpas….”

Partial translation from www.kwanumzen.com

“Hello Frog.”

“Hello Toad.”

 

 

WMD, Saddam, Democracy, NO-BID OIL CONTRACTS!

It just doesn't get funnier than this...

NY Times Article Money Quote:

"In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts, advisers and a senior State Department official said.

It is unclear how much influence their work had on the ministry’s decisions.

The advisers — who, along with the diplomatic official, spoke on condition of anonymity — say that their involvement was only to help an understaffed Iraqi ministry with technical and legal details of the contracts and that they in no way helped choose which companies got the deals."

Get that? -  US Government Lawyers and private sector consultants were just HELPing... boy would I have loved to be in on *that* exchange:

My God... I'm dizzy... the room is spinning..

At least this is one Iraq war reason that might just stick!

2008:06:29 12:27:06 Just Say No

It was nice and cool today in Newburyport.  The clouds kept most of the sun off us.  There was lots of enthusiastic support with just enough stern disapproval tossed in courtesy of our pro-war fellow citizens. 

With the threat of thunderstorms in the area, I left the tall aluminum flagpole in the car.  No need risking being a lightning rod, literally and figuratively.  It would be all the peace movement needs, one of us getting fried by a lightning strike.  Mr Dobson, Mr Hagee, Mr Robertson would be crowing about how it was an act of G-d smiting the pagan anti-war moonbat with a thunderbolt from the heavens.  Instead I stood holding my favorite (and pretty durn hard to argue with) sign “Not one more death.  Not one more dollar.”  

Speaking of which:

US Dead 4,113
US Wounded (Official) 30,333
US Wounded (Estimated) 23,000 – 10,000
US Troop Brain Injuries 320,000
Iraqi Dead (Estimated) 1,225,898
$532,491,137,583

welcome to the world baby finch

After lunch today I went out to put a little water on John & Abigail’s hanging geranium.  As usual, she flew off.  Through the foliage I thought I saw some movement.  Then a tiny head poked up and a little yellow triangle of a mouth opened.  No cheeping,  just wobbly side-to-side head movement like it was too heavy to hold up.

I think this must be a relatively recent occurrence since it appears that baby finch’s eyes have not really opened yet.  Baby does have a big mouth though!

I couldn’t see if other eggs hatched although it looked like there was another fluff ball to baby finch’s right.

John has been very attentive of late.  I witnessed him fly to the nest and perch on one of the orange hanger supports.  He looked down into the nest and then he lowered his head way down and opened his mouth, feeding either Abigail or baby finch.

A hatchling is a wonderful development.  Still – they have so far to go. 

 

i could not have said it better myself mr vice president

 

 

jeff jacoby makes me wonder about pride and victory

In a recent opinion column, Jeff Jacoby wrote what I consider to be a condescending response to the MoveOn.org “Answer to John McCain” ad.  In a friendly and fatherly tone Mr Jacoby tells the young mother in the ad that he knows how she feels about her child  and how she will feel about her child in the future.

The condescension is not what troubles me.  I am very familiar with that tone from my pro-war fellow citizens:

• You peace activists are children.
   
• You’re ignorant.
   
• You’re freaks.
   
• You don’t have jobs.
   
• You don’t have lives. 
   
• You’re “faggots.”
   
• You are “America Haters.” 
   
• You’re unrealistic. 

It was these three paragraphs of Mr Jacoby’s column that set me to wondering:

“……Today, thanks to that change in strategy, our prospects for victory in Iraq are brighter than ever. "Don't look now, but the US-backed government and army may be winning the war," The Washington Post editorialized recently. Just the other day, a Page 1 story in USA Today highlighted how dramatically things have improved. "Roadside bomb attacks and fatalities," the June 23 story began, "are down by almost 90 percent over the last year." Of course there are no guarantees in wartime, but I think the chances are excellent that the war in Iraq will have ended in victory before your Alex is old enough for nursery school……

……Whatever our political differences might be, you and I both hate war. My family has a long history of military service, and like my father and grandfather before me, I know only too well how terrible its costs can be. The sacrifices of war are not mere abstractions or political talking points to me. I could never be blithely indifferent about placing in harm's way the brave Americans - among them my two youngest sons - who wear their nation's uniform and volunteer to defend its security and freedom.

And who knows? Perhaps your baby boy will grow up to be one of those brave Americans himself. The world will still be a dangerous place, and we will still need young men and women to stand guard against those who would harm us. If Alex chooses to step forward, he will have the support and esteem of a grateful nation. And, I feel quite sure, of his proud and loving mother.”

Mr Jacoby seems to conflate the need for national security with what Mr Jacoby’s fellow conservatives have perpetrated in Iraq.  Iraq was in no position to harm the United States.  They had no WMD.  Yet we pre-emptively invaded, ransacked, and are now occupying a formerly sovereign state.  As this is being written, US oil companies are bellying up to no-bid oil field contracts, and our “President” is negotiating for as many as 50 long term US bases in Iraq once the war ends. 

Mr Jacoby seems fairly confident too about prospects for victory in Iraq.  What does the word “victory” mean when applied to something like the unjust destruction of another country?   

What does the word “pride” mean when applied to something that has needlessly produced 4,013 dead Americans, tens of thousands of wounded Americans, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi’s, millions of displaced Iraqi’s, strengthened Iran’s influence in the area, and will cost American citizens trillions of dollars?

Can you be “proud” of your “victory” in a profoundly immoral endeavor?

 

Qwirkle Qween

A game craze called Qwirkle has swept the homestead.  D and I picked it up when we visited the Currier Museum of Art last week.  Since then it had been an addictive source of fun (as well as the current tag line for RTTC “So – that’s your big move?”) for D, The Scientist, The DJ, and me. 

Qwirkle can best be described as a sort of Scrabble played with shape and color – really nice for those of us without big vocabularies.  After several games played late into the night, The Scientist has been the overall Qwirkle Qween, with a record of 3–2–1.  I have been diligently bringing up the rear in all games so far.

Highly recommended.

 

I don't usually brag but --

…..I’m related to people who use this as their primary keyboard….

SUPERCODER 2000
“Air cooled coding keyboard for professional use”

 

2008:06:25 07:32:23 abigail returns to her nest

 

Abigail and John Update - Incubation

Egg position 06/20/08

Four days ago, Abigail’s eggs looked like the above.  Six pale blue speckled eggs laying together in a bunch. 

I’ve become a subscriber to Birds of North America, an amazing bird website run by Cornell University.  They have excellent information about John and Abigail.  For instance, now that Abigail has laid her eggs, she spends most of the day sitting on them to incubate them.  She also, according to Cornell, turns her eggs from time to time.  I wanted to see this for myself, so when she was away from the nest for a moment today, I looked down and – –  

Egg Position 06/24/08

– – sure enough in the second picture, the eggs had changed positions.  What a good Ma!  The Da must be doing his job too.  Cornell U says that if he doesn’t feed her enough while she’s incubating the eggs, she will abandon the nest and look for another mate.

There were terrible downpours and yesterday evening.  Abigail and the eggs stayed relatively dry under our overhang.  They rocked back and forth in the hanger, but everyone was safe. 

As far as watering goes, D has been able to water the plant without disturbing the nest, so the Geranium is doing his job as well – affordable housing for a new family, safe from predation.