21/12/2015

The longest night

Happy New Year!

Last night we rode Santa's holiday train

The winter solstice this year occurs on Tuesday, December 22, 2015 at 04:49 UTC. At the moment, I'm in Portland Oregon so that means the solstice happens here today, the 21st, at 8:49 PM. For me, the winter solstice marks the end of the old year and the beginning of the new so .... wishing all a good new year.

Baby Chance wasn't so sure about Santa
but he liked the candy cane, his first.


The train wasn't going very fast. Cyclists were passing us on the bike path that follows the tracks but it was enough to make for a thrilling ride and shaky cam photos.

Off into the longest night

19/12/2015

Somebody cares







Love Song to the Earth

02/12/2015

Shelby morning update

Nobody likes Shelby. Nobody, that is, except M. Lee. M. Lee is Shelby's one and only advocate here at the Bird Park. This morning the magpies refused to come down from the trees for breakfast and that can only mean that either Shelby is lurking somewhere nearby or he recently killed somebody and everyone is still spooked.

Of course Shelby has a right to eat. That's M's argument, circle of life, it's only fair, a hawk's gotta eat. Mine is that the Bird Park is not a natural environment. Peanuts, tiny puppy kibble and piles of seed do not naturally appear every morning in the Nevada desert. To Shelby the Bird Park is a fast food joint. Next Bubba will appear, then Hank and Tootsie Pie, Mable and Jack and in about a week they will have eaten everyone. So I run Shelby off.

28/11/2015

Local news at 11:05, or if you prefer, 23:05


Barcelona street 01
Barcelona street

Moving on. Not that I have anything particular to say this evening. I'm just tired of looking at the last post. What did I do today? Mostly organized stuff, cleaned things. Printed out some notes I took this summer that I many eventually work into a poem. And I repaired a painting I did about 25 years ago. At some point it had picked up cardboard fuzz or something. Whatever it was I sponged it off with q-tips.

And I had a nice, long phone conversation with my daughter-in-law this afternoon. Seems Baby Chance is fully committed to walking now and, in fact, insisted on it during their mile+ forest hike today. By the time we see him in December I expect he'll be unstoppable. That'll be fun.


26/11/2015

Happy Tofurky Day

I posted this image on Imgur. If anything it will probably cause a shitstorm. Go figure. Anyway, Happy Gratitude day to everyone.

View post on imgur.com

25/11/2015

Local news at 2:11

It's snowing. That explains why so many birds dropped by for breakfast this morning. Even Plonk's pigeon brigade stopped in, including one very lovely, all white bird. Nobody is there now as I write this but I'm sure the quail are cozy under the very bushy twin lilacs. Anyway, it's not very cold but it is sticking and kind of pretty.

22/11/2015

Bird Park November update

The little birds showed up today. Like I said, it takes them about a week to catch on that I'm back. Finches, they're not the brightest birds in the world. Now everyone's here, Maggie and her tiding, the quail, the doves, the finches and sparrows and Penny Robin. News travels fast. I put out apples a couple of days ago and Penny Robin came this morning. Robins love apples.

But wait a minute. The pigeons haven't come by yet. They're part of the gang. And Minerva, Charlie and the rest of the murder have yet to put in an appearance. I would love to see Charlie again. Before we started our trip last spring, he and I were beginning to bond. Last spring he established a secret meeting place so that he could get his very own peanuts and eat them in peace. Maybe this winter, once we finally settle in for awhile, we can pick up where we left off.


19/11/2015

Holiday turn around

We're back in Nevada now. We got back to the states a month ago but went right to Oregon to visit family. Big changes. Baby Chance is starting to walk. Thea is now in first grade. Leo is in pre-K and Frank started pre-school. Of course it was wonderful seeing everyone but the gkids absolutely enchant me. We'll return in a few weeks for a holiday visit. Among other things we'll get to see Thea be a princess soldier in "The Children's Nutcracker", her first ballet, and afterwards we'll take all the kids on the Portland Holiday Express.


In all, we were gone seven months but I was certain that Maggie Magpie would show up at the Bird Park the next morning. I put the seeds, peanuts and tiny puppy kibble out and indeed she was. The surprising thing was that she was not alone. Lots of magpies came plus some blackbirds and this morning the quail were out there as well. The little birds haven't showed up yet. Generally it takes them about a week to catch on. When they do, the Bird Park will be in full swing. It's good to be back but M. Lee is already planning the next adventure.

22/10/2015

Gothic morning though a dirty window

This was this morning.


It's about midnight now and we're headed for the airport and back to the US. Travel time will be, in all, about 48 hours.

20/10/2015

Bosnia's Old Bridge

View of the bridge (Stari Most, 1558) .... taken from the top of the minaret (1617) at the Koski Mehmed Paša Mosque (1552).



View from the bridge .... the mosque and minaret are just left of center.



Sadly, after two days of shelling, the original bridge was deliberately destroyed by Croat forces in 1993 during the civil war. The commanding officer who ordered its destruction was tried as a war criminal and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Thanks to an international coalition, an exact reconstruction of the bridge began in 2001 and completed in June of 2004. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


03/10/2015

#extremecivilisation


Modern art at London's Tate Modern
Life or art? Who imitates who?
Art installation at Tate Modern
August 20, 2015
George Monbiot, author and blogger at the UK Guardian, recently launched the hashtag #extremecivilisation and invited suggestions. Here, for your reading pleasure, is an excerpt from his blog at the Guardian listing some of the modern breakthroughs by today's geniuses which are sure to make our lives better and easier on planet Earth.

There may be flowing water on Mars. But is there intelligent life on Earth?
~George Monbiot

A couple of weeks ago I launched the hashtag #extremecivilisation, and invited suggestions. They have flooded in. Here are just a few of the products my correspondents have found. All of them, as far as I can tell, are real.

An egg tray for your fridge that syncs with your phone to let you know how many eggs are left. A gadget for scrambling them – inside the shell. Wigs for babies, to allow “baby girls with little or no hair at all the opportunity to have a beautifully realistic hair style”.The iPotty, which permits toddlers to keep playing on their iPads while toilet training. A £2,000 spider-proof shed. A snow sauna, on sale in the United Arab Emirates, in which you can create a winter wonderland with the flick of a switch. A refrigerated watermelon case on wheels: indispensable for picnics – or perhaps not, as it weighs more than the melon. Anal bleaching cream, for… to be honest, I don’t want to know. An “automatic watch rotator” that saves you the bother of winding your luxury wrist-candy. A smartphone for dogs, with which they can take pictures of themselves. Pre-peeled bananas, in polystyrene trays covered in clingfilm; Just peel back the packaging.

#extremecivilisation


29/09/2015

Cool hermitage


15th century hermitage in cliff face

Fabulous 16th century hermitage built into the cliff face in Marjan Park - Split, Croatia



27/09/2015

Supermoon over the Seven Seas


Swami and Minerva on the Adriatic Sea
Adriatic sea from Split's bell tower
We're going to miss tonight's supermoon eclipse. It happens here in Croatia at the very inconvenient time of 3:47 AM tomorrow morning and I just can't seem to talk myself into getting up at three to climb the hill in the middle of the park to see it. I'm sure I'll kick myself when I see all the photographs in the morning. But we are hoping to see the supermoon rise over the Adriatic Sea this evening. The Riva promenade in front of Diocletian's palace is right on the water. That should be a good place to watch moon rise if it's not cloudy.

As for the palace itself, Diocletian built it some 1,700 years ago. It was his retirement home after stepping down as Emperor of Rome. Supposedly, he just wanted to kick back and garden but, being the iron-fisted bigoted bastard he was, retirement didn't stop him from having people put to death because he didn't like their religion. I think a lot of people must have been relieved when, after five years of "retirement", he died but Romans did built to last. Sections of his palace stand to this day and are the main attraction for the flood of tourists who visit here. We've spent the last couple of weeks exploring it and the rest of the jumbled maze of streets, stairs and buildings built into, on, over, under, against and often with the enormous stone blocks that were once the palace. The ancient city of Split is a small but amazing place.

So.... on with the night.




via i.space

24/09/2015

Late at night....

Late at night and almost beyond the edge of human hearing, giraffes hum....



Via New Scientist

22/09/2015

Happy Autumn Equinox 2015

Event Time in UTC, Time Zone

8:22 AM
Wednesday, September 23, 2015

That's 10:22 AM here in Croatia.

Once again, they are saying that tomorrow it's supposed to rain. In any case, today is a lovely day for the equinox. I hope you are enjoying it as well.