A Sharp Skinned Hawk and a Cardinal - Scene from the Kitchen, a Backyard Drama
Topic: Life
While chatting on the phone I look out my kitchen door onto the non-existent fire escape and there on the other staircase is a fluffed up hawk just sitting. Waiting for a bird to catch? I shriek into my friend's ear, "a hawk! Sharpskinned, I think. Hard to tell it's so puffed." "Probably cold. He'd have white spots on his back and white tail bars." advises my friend. "Coa-lld?" my barely concealed indignant reply. "What is he doing?" I wonder as he sits and sits. Then he shifts his position and reveals he's been sitting on his quarry - a red bird. I think it is a cardinal. My friend says it cannot be a cardinal as they just fight too hard. It must be a Hollywood Finch, also known as a purple (or house?) finch. To me this looks much redder than those birds.

Hawk shifts again. I thought at first he was shifting because his prey had moved. Now I clearly see the red beak of the cardinal. I must get off the phone to get some photos.
First photo was at 11:24 a.m. Hawk had already been sitting there at least 5 minutes but was giving some plucks at his feast. It struck me as a young hawk because of its posture. He was always fluffed, often with his head down into his shoulders, as if he wanted to do the baby bird 'feed me, feed me' ritual.
11:25 am.


11:31 a.m. After 23 pics through the glass door, I move to the other room so I can open a window and shoot from there. Instead of 12'(?) away he is 20' away. He does not move as I open the window. Still sits on the trophy occasionally tearing at it. I shoot boring pics hoping there will be some varied positions.




Cat enters the scene (enlarged view)
A cat has entered the scene. Neither cat nor hawk is aware of the other. The cat is coming to investigate whatever, and, not finding any cats to tussle or socialize with, and being unaware of the quiet hawk above him, he goes back where he came from.




Here you can see his breast feathers askew - the strong wind? the cardinal had put up quite a fight? or just a rumpled young hawk who doesn't yet groom his feathers well?


He turns around with his prey and moves it a few boards over.


Shifts the prey again and feeds a bit more.


He's turned around and moved the cardinal closer to the edge again. His  tail is pushed down against the boards more. Then in a flash, at 11:58 a.m., he takes off. I get a shot of him flying off under the porch eaves with his meal.

Writing in Bits and Pieces Through My Facebook Comments
Topic: Life

"...know what you want to be when you grow up?" ...'F' wants to meet God while still alive, essentially wanting proof of his existence and to know that there is purpose to our existence in the big scheme of things-

Ok 'F' - here is the dilemma of Man. We can never prove it one way or another, much as people may think it can be proven. Therefore, if it is a matter of belief no matter how you cut it, I say, believe what makes the best sense to you - follow your own authority. I 'believe' much as you would like to 'know' for sure to be true. Hey, if you met 'God' how could you even be sure you're not meeting yourself? And, does existence without purpose really make sense that it could be? Who really wants to live in such an existence? If I ever believed for a second that it was purposeless, I would pull out. Yep. I'd be outta here so fast. What would be the point, is my feeling. And, Man really cannot live without purpose. Doctors have known that since there have been doctors - any patient who's given up faith in life, does not have much chance of surviving a bad illness or trauma. (Do I proselytise here? and, no particular religion either.)

Still don't understand what I want to be when I grow up!

Mimicking of a bird singing across the street (5 years ago!)-
https://catinkacards.tripod.com/birds/my-bird-whistle-phrase-1.aiff

Get ready to do this in spring  when the birds return. It is fun.

I just listened again to my original recording this snippet comes from. One can faintly hear the bird singing across the street in the pauses between my whistling mimicry. Several rounds of Bird sings a few phrases and I try it - a kind of call and response bird song. The whole file is too big to upload though.

Illustrations on styrofoam coffee cups:

http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2010/02/cups-as-art.html
These were neat - but I just didn't get why one would intentionally put such detailed work on that kind of material. Perhaps the form related to the image in ways I didn't see? It's one thing if that is all there is to work on.  Ohh - I get it, they're dirty cups and being recycled, not going in the landfill??

A broken furnace -
Oooh again :(....hope they were successful. :)
Hah! - So this furnace has a rebellious stubborn petulant personality!?

A survey on favorite mayo version -
Hellmans mayo - but I usually just get a house brand.
Sorry - I didn't answer this as soon as I saw it, and then it got buried.

.
Testing the timing of items on the FB feed -
Well it's taken me about an hour to read all the updates that have added up since yesterday and finally find this. i was looking for it because I saw you mention it when I went to answer that other notification. Yep - there sure is a lot to have to wade through before you reach the spot you left off at. At some point we just won't be able to catch up! It just keeps coming. Maybe we'll all get overwhelmed and quit!

A video of grandfather taking his grandson fishing with the Andy Griffith Show theme playing, and more about Facebook changes -

This was adorable. Neat that you can only hear the theme but the action still has a silent film feeling.

I let the movie load in another tab. Every few moments I'd hear a snatch of the theme. It's always a funny kind of company when I do download a video because of this snatches of sound that come through on the other tab. it's like other people are in the room! When it is finally quiet, I know its done loading and I go play it through. I was willing to look at it because it was only 2.5? minutes long - I knew it was manageable.

I think the timing of the notifications and updates is still out of sync (I'm hoping) and that it should improve as they work out their kinks. Like every time Google goes thru an upgrade it takes awhile for the servers to be in sync - one location has one set of data, another has another set of data. It seems like every time FB makes a change, we go thru this other aspect. It should be temporary.

And yes, they've got it rigged so that we have more stuff going thru the feed. They want to keep us hooked. They do this by making sure we've always got something new to look at. So we may have to counteract that by posting something a few times or make a comment on it. I think comments bump a post up to the top of the feed. You did see that they renamed the main feed options to 'top news' and 'recent news' (or something like that)? The default is top news - the things FB 'thinks' most pertains to you. Then you're meant to switch to most recent. That's where posts get bumped to the top by any new comment ( I think).

Some people are now going right to their lists of friends on the left side of the screen. That gives you only status updates. Selecting it is something that needs to be done everytime you open FB, if you want it.

What I do like about this recent change is that seeing what others do, where they go, leads me to discover other things. I can see that others are being affected by this aspect. You notice when someone finds a friend you might also be interested in, so you can and friend them too, or a group, or whatever.

It sure does move fast though. And some things get repeated too much for my tastes - like those funny named groups that people join - every time that happens it gets announced like the "I packed my grandmother's suitcase" game! That just gets so boring to hear about.

Things do move down fast with the new FB. I read somewhere they want to keep it moving fast so that we'll always see something new.

A dog word/reading trick -
Hey! I just read the dog thing and got a kick out of it. Found it by coming here to see your reply. Did you realize when you check a notification via the red button you go to the person's wall post but it doesn't show all the other stuff on their wall. Don't know if it was always like that. Anyway, it does show your status, which right now  yours is the dog trick

Watch out for Facebook phishing emails -
You told me a long time ago to do Facebook thru FB rather than the emails, for that very reason. Not long after you told me that I got a fake email from a friend - it had a bogus link. Thank goodness something about the whole email smelled fishy.

Today I got one supposedly from FB but it was to my domain mail - that gave me heads up. It had  a zip file with an 'exe' extension and it told me I was to update my account or something. I should have sent it on to FB but I  just dumped it as spam.


A day without Facebook 'Event' -
I guess one has to go look at the event!

Nope - not for me. If it were not for FB, who knows when I would have come across you 'T', or anyone else here, discovered what some former classmates had grow up to be...

That's why it is so delightful when the computer breaks down!

Google Buzz -
If you thought Google's Buzz was more secure or private than FB initially:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/189607/google_buzz_then_and_now.html/

An elderly dog who was not doing well with the recent deep snows and cold -
Is that someone shaking off snow?!

A beautiful model of a whaling sailboat -
Looks straight out of a Winslow Homer painting except it needs wind in the sail. Beautiful.

A question of Facebook's history and ownership and direction -
'M' - here's the history. oh it's so long. I read halfway...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

They're in Antigua  while on a Guatemala vacation -
What happened to Guatemala?

Reply to a dislike of recent Facebook changes -
What I do like about this recent change is that seeing what others do, where they go, leads me to discover other things. I can see that others are being affected by this aspect. You notice when someone finds a friend you might also be interested in, so you can and friend them too, or a group, or whatever.

Panda Bears and Groundhog Day! Kids Drawing Class
Topic: Kids Art Class
In honor of Groundhog Day we drew woodchucks, aka groundhogs. I showed the kids photos and a cartoon character named "Johnny Chuck". Which did they want? Everybody call out what you want when I raise my hand! (They had already expressed their preferences in disunison.) When I raised my hand, they all said "natural!"(photo). The child who'd wanted the cartoon version forgot he was to say "cartoon!". We did both anyway! The cartoon reference came from Kidoons.com. They have a whole story line of cartoon characters built around the stories of Thornton Burgess but don't seem to credit the authorship of the stories (as far as I could tell).

We also did Panda Bears in honor of the pandas from the National Zoo who are being shipped back to China today (Feb 4th). We had some sumi-e painting and some photos as references. First we did the photo, then the sumi-e, but in drawing. I ask the kids to color in the black shapes as if there are invisible outlines to color in. We need a descriptive name for this process. One child's name for it is "invisible coloring in". I would like to have as many names as possible for it, so, suggestions please!

Scroll past pics for links to Panda info.









Tai Shan returns to China via FedEx, ABC News story.

Info on Panda's World at National Zoo from the Smithsonian Institute

How the Panda got his black and white markings - a Chinese folktale, and information on Panda Bears

KungFu Panda Stick Puppet to download from HP

Panda Cub at San Diego Zoo

Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? Board Book, written by Bill Martin Jr., illustrated by Eric Carle.

A Day's Worth of Facebook Comments
Topic: Life

Experiment - a day's worth of my comments and messages in Facebook today (and perhaps another day) 

mention of Philly College of Art -
T - did you go to Philadelphia College of Art? I went there '68 - with a break - through '74 (I think), and at one point also the Academy. At least, I lived in Philly til then!

'friends' in facebook significance -
There is no other pleasing and easy word in place yet to signify the facebook version. What the facebook friend circle really is is a network you can turn to to put a word out if you have news, want to share something, or need something - its a cybertown and 'friend' is the leftover word/name from  its origins as a college network. We need a new word for this type of 'friend'!

reply to Mainer about possible old haunts
Wow! I only remember K. H. who later married J. E.. L. T. I met recently through her brother M., and him I only met after I moved up here. I had always heard his name though. I'm still not clear if you are talking about the Spruce Head Community Building or the Rockland rec center dances? I used to go to the Rockland dances every week in the summer for 2-3 summers in '67, '68 I don't even think after that. In Spruce Head I remember we used to hang out outside the community building - by then those dances were considered to be for the older crowd (the music was not cool enough). The cars would be lined up and down the street. There were a few times a bunch of us snuck in there at night during the week and hung out. One time everyone had to hightail it out the back because apparently a cop car had gone by or was coming.

the wolf moon
And, this pic C. struck me as being straight out of your moon video!
The snowy landscape's brightness last night - I could have tried reading by it, but let us read it as a good sign!

Got to have magic.

magic of the moon spoiled by inhabiting it? -
I can't see that happening in our time (or, I don't think I intend to be here to see it happen!) - and if that is what the people living then want, let them have it. People will either realize they love and want the beauty and magic of this life or they won't. Beauty and magic will always be. If we don't have it in our lives, we don't have the energy to live. We give up and die....(is what I think).

my angel band painting
..Thank you! ...Symbols for the other arts - writing: quill & scroll, dance: drum & ?, theatre: the masks, painting: palette & brush. Symbol ideas please...!

 For the angel series - symbols the angels would carry, as they are holding instruments here. Theatre - anything else besides those masks?
...ballet shoes/slippers though!

  ooh I like that angelic harmony coming from an angel band! I forgot already that it needs a name.

Happy Birthday dear friend from cyber-space!

someone's new job -
"..being out there in the community.." - when it comes down to it, maybe that is what a job is really all about, though we  may believe it is about the money.

Angel Band Watercolor Painting in Progress
Topic: Art