Goodbye, Molly

Molly Ivins, dead at 62:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell.

You were loud, brilliant and inspiring. The world's just a little quieter and a little more empty without you.

Woman Arrested After Reporting Rape Is Denied Emergency Contraception

Welcome to the Republic of Gilead:

TAMPA - A 21-year-old woman told police Saturday that a man grabbed her off Howard Avenue and raped her behind a building during the Gasparilla festivities.

But officers investigating the case arrested her after learning she had an outstanding warrant from her teenage years for failure to pay restitution.

She spent the next two nights in jail.

[snip]

Adding to the mother's ire is her claim that a jail nurse prevented her daughter from taking a second dose of emergency contraception prescribed by a nurse at a clinic as part of a rape examination. The jail nurse, said the mother and the victim's attorney, denied the medication for religious reasons.

http://www.tbo.com/news/nationworld/MGB8IXMVJXE.html

Gee, I wonder why so many women don't report rape?

I also question the implication that money this woman owes from her teen years is more important than a crime committed against her.

Friday Bird Blogging: Dark-Eyed Junco

The dark-eyed junco is a northern bird which is much more common in Vermont once winter settles in. I may see them here and there throughout the Summer, but once we're into full on winter, their numbers increase dramatically.

This picture was taken right near our feeders this morning, shortly after I'd restocked them. I've been trying to get good junco pictures for quite some time now, and it's a sign of just how badly they need food on a day this bitterly cold that they were letting me get close enough to get this kind of shot.

Friday Bird Blogging: Ruby-Throated Hummingbird

From time to time, I like to take pictures of birds in sequence and arrange them into an animated sequence. This picture of a ruby-throated hummingbird is one of my favorite such projects.

How We Fail

I wrote this three years ago, when Barney Frank spoke out against the flood of protest marriages in San Francisco. I still think Barney's awesome, but he was wrong at the time about this, and here's why:

How We Fail

February 18th, 2004-- I like Barney Frank. I really do. He's funny, he's articulate, and he was out long before most of the rest of us were. However, that doesn't mean he's not going to piss me off from time to time. Here's a brief passage from the San Francisco Gate, regarding recent events in San Francisco:

Instead, Frank said, San Francisco's move promotes the notion that unpopular laws can be broken or ignored.

"When you're in a real struggle, San Francisco making a symbolic point becomes a diversion," he said.

The above is why Democrats repeatedly fail and sometimes fail spectacularly. It's not that people don't believe in the ideals of the Demcratic party. It's that we don't believe in the will of Democratic politicians to actually adhere to those ideals. As soon as I heard that statement, I thought "gee, would he be opposed to the wrong people eating at a 'whites only' lunch counter, too?'"

I'm not interested in discussing this any further. I'm not interested in being told how I have to be patient and take my 2nd class citizenship for just a little while longer. I could say more, but I think others have said it better. So instead, I'm going to finish this by posting the words of someone who knows what it means to sacrifice one's self to a cause far better than I do:

Letter From Birmingham City Jail

Martin Luther King, Jr.
April 16, 1963

My Dear Fellow Clergymen,

While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas...But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every Southern state with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some 85 affiliate organizations all across the South...Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: 1) collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive; 2) negotiation; 3) self-purification; and 4) direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham...Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of the country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any city in this nation. These are the hard, brutal, and unbelievable facts. On the basis of these conditions Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then came the opportunity last September to talk with some of the leaders of the economic community. In these negotiating sessions certain promises were made by the merchants ˜ such as the promise to remove the humiliating racial signs from the stores. On the basis of these promises Reverend Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to call a moratorium on any type of demonstrations. As the weeks and months unfolded we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. The signs remained. As in so many experiences in the past, we were confronted with blasted hopes, and the dark shadow of a deep disappointment settled upon us. So we had no alternative except that of preparing for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community. We were not unmindful of the difficulties involved. So we decided to go through the process of self-purification. We started having workshops on nonviolence and repeatedly asked ourselves the questions, "are you able to accept the blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?"

You may well ask, "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc.? Isn‚t negotiation a better path?" You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was "well timed," according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "wait" has almost always meant "never." It has been a tranquilizing Thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied." We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.

I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait. But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can‚t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see the tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking in agonizing pathos: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?" when you take a cross country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" men and "colored" when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title of "Mrs." when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"˜then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro‚s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens‚ "Councilor" or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can‚t agree with your methods of direst action" who paternistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man‚s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

You spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I started thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation, and a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security, and at points they profit from segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred and comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up over the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad‚s Muslim movement. This movement is nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination. It is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man in an incurable "devil."

The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations. He has to get them out. So let him march sometime; let him have his prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; understand why he must have sit-ins and freedom rides. If his repressed emotions do not come out in these nonviolent ways, they will come out in ominous expressions of violence. This is not a threat; it is a fact of history. So I have not said to my people, "Get rid of your discontent." But I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled through the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action.

In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership in the community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, serve as the channel through which our just grievances could get to the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed. I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshippers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother. In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, "Those are social issues with which the Gospel has no real concern," and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader, but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all of their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

M. L. King, Jr.

Friday Bird Blogging: Turkey Vulture

The turkey vulture can easily be mistaken for a juvenile eagle in flight-- the bright pink head is not nearly as visible, and the wings are broad and black, but if you are in Vermont or New Hampshire and see a group of very large black birds in flight that's larger than a pair, you've likely seen a group of turkey vultures (I've seen people mistake these for a variety of raptors).

Even though these birds are scavengers, I find them fascinating to watch. They'll fly in circles, hunting for long periods, before descending on an area to feed. I rarely see them as solitary birds.

Friday Bird Blogging: Great Blue Heron

I've been taking pictures of Great Blue Herons for some time now, and have over sixty posted on my web site.

There's something beautiful about these birds, despite their odd-looking exterior and awkward shape. Seeing them in flight can be breathtaking and watching them hunt for food is like an exercise in Zen meditation-- long periods of wait followed by moments of inspiration and activity.

My experience with herons has changed over time-- before I became familiar with them, I thought of them as something extraordinary and magnificent. Today, I think of them as commonplace, but still magnificent. There's a lot more variation between them than you might think of at first. This particular picture is one of my favorites-- just incredibly rich and vibrant colors in it, and the light capturing the scene of it just perfectly.

Absolutely Disgusted

Doesn't this seem like a tremendous waste of resources?

There were a lot of actual people who needed help at this point. I get why people would be concerned about their embroyos, but this is ridiculous. From CNN:

Baby from embryo rescued after Katrina due this month
POSTED: 4:39 p.m. EST, January 3, 2007

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- The baby album for Rebekah Markham's soon-to-be-born child could include something extra special: photos of officers using flat-bottomed boats to rescue her frozen embryo from a sweltering hospital in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

When this happened, there were some major problems still going on in New Orleans involving human being. But wealthy white people get special resources allocated for them to get a second child.

End of the Year Wrap-Up

So this has been quite the year.

Some time ago, I wrote about Melissa, our bad-tempered calico, who's got a cancerous tumor which has invaded her lymph nodes. At the time I wrote it, I didn't think she'd still be around by this point but, surprisingly, she's not only around, but she's still her usual self-- eating not as much as she used to and sleeping a lot, but still interested in food, and still interested in waking us up at 3am to get pet.

So, it continues, and we're exactly where we were a few months ago-- she may live another day, another week, another month or two, and the only thing to do is to enjoy the time we have left. So I'm doing my best to do this without breaking into tears from time to time, which of course I do every time I talk or write about this, but eventually I get past it and I figure everything is okay for now, which is pretty much the best any of us can hope for.

So it goes on, this day-to-day living with this ongoing illness. It's strange that I feel so much more strongly about this with respect to animals than I do about humans. I've known humans who were slowly dying, and I've had friends who have died suddenly and without explanation and I don't really cry for them the way I do about pets. I think there's something about being human that I know -understands- this. We all know we're going to die eventually and we all cope with that in our own way, I don't know whether or not animals understand this, and I just wish that I could know what they actually want. I've been through this with three different pets in my adult life where I have had to personally pay someone to kill them and while, intellectually, I know it's the right thing, emotionally, I still have trouble with it.

And so it continues. One more cat that's dying slowly but living comfortably for the moment, and I guess that whether or not I'm okay with that, there's nothing left to do but make sure she remains comfortable and happy and gets food she likes and has Sebastian (insane manic kittenish cat who, as I write this, wonders why he hasn't been fed yet (though that could apply to any moment, including the ten minutes it takes him to figure out that he -has- been fed) to keep her company when we're not around.

In the meantime, our winter resident red-tailed red-shouldered (I had this one misidentified for over a year--oops) hawk is a constant source of yard drama. Shown above is picture I took yesterday, as either I or the blue jays were pissing it off. You can find a larger version at:

http://juliesmagiclightshow.com/index.php?pic=1102&qty=12&trz=6

I got to watch it fly from tree to tree as it screeched its -very- loud sound. (There's a blue-jay picture there, too).

I haven't been doing as much photography as of late (less time for birding, plus not as much variety in the winter-- it's always a slower season), so I've been experimenting with black and white renderings of older photographs-- I've posted some of those as well-- the thumbnails are shown below the picture.

The other day, I got a microphone attachment for my iPod which I'm thinking will be fun to use. It turns my iPod into a very small stereo field recorder. I tried using it to record a piece of music the other day and I came up with this very cool rendering of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. It's available for download at:

http://juliewaters.com/mp3s.php

I like the way it sounds-- it's not what I would call top professional quality, but it works well for what it is, and will allow me to record concerts and jam sessions without having to bring my gigantic mixer along. I may also use it as a field recorder when out birding-- I've been thinking for awhile of mixing bird sounds into some of my own music so I may do some experiments with that down the line. I'd love to get the sound of the red-tail screeching and use it as a baseline for a piece of music. This may be a whole new area for me to explore.

I'm still thinking that even if I do record a whole album, I'm more likely to do it through digital distribution with a very small run of physical CDs, but I'm getting some nice ideas for pieces to perform. I'm thinking specifically of doing a run of pieces inspired by classical guitar music I used to play, like the Jesu piece I just referenced. I've been working on a Bethoven theme, and would love to do a version of Debussey's "Claire De Lune" which features banjo as its primary instrument, though it may be awhile.

In short, I'm in no rush to do anything new right now, but I'm thinking about it and exploring ideas, etc. Now that I have the iPod microphone, podcasts may become more frequent as well. We'll see where it all goes.

I'm going to mention two more things before I wrap up-- first, I just want to say how amazed I am by what we managed to accomplish in November with respect to rejecting the completely insane rightwing agenda that's controlled our legislature for the last few years and I can only say "more, more, more." Honestly, this group makes me miss the days when Republicans were primarily about screwing the poor and waging war. Goldwater, by today's standards, looks almost leftwing compared to this group of religious zealots.

In Vermont, we actually got even -more- Republicans booted out and a recent statewide recount switched our auditor results from the Republican to the Democrat. I met Randy Brock (the Republican who just lost) and I don't think I've ever met anyone else whose entire demeanor better suggested "middle management at a used car dealership." There's something about him I found inherently untrustworthy, so I'm glad to see him go for that, and a variety of other more specifically political reasons: his office blew me off on an audit request until someone asked about it in one of the political debates and suddenly he was all interested in it, but still delayed any report until after the election. I don't know how much of that was just slowness of process and how much was evasion of the issue, but either way, an audit request in early September shouldn't take until mid-December to resolve when it's an extremely simple piece of information I'm looking for. So yeah, one less Republican in control of an important state office pleases me.

The last thing I'll mention is that this "winter" we're having is scaring me, in a serious way. It's been unseasonably warm here, which happens sometimes, but the behavior of the animals is just really different and suggests, to me, not just local unusual weather, but something more global. Migration patterns seem to have shifted considerably this year-- a lot of birds still around that are constantly surprising me and, scariest of all, bears not -hibernating-.

So one of my goals for this year is to figure out new ways to affect my energy usage and waste and keep it lower than it's been. Having bought a Prius is good. Composting all our food waste is good. If I could carpool with people, I would, but I don't see it working given the sort of driving I do (commuting 200+ miles on various days from week to week don't make for good carpool companions). But I can, at least, try to work something out with my students, or other people teaching that night, this Spring-- see if I can can arrange a carpool with three of them for the consistent ride to teach, and encourage them to do the same. Anyway, this whole thing wants me to figure out how to change how I use energy-- investigate solar panels to supplement the power-- I can't imagine a windmill working on our small amount of land, but the solar panels make perfect sense, and there are plenty of other options.

It's just got me thinking-- I don't see how we'll fix this without finding creative ways to approach things.

That's it-- much longer than I expected. Be well, everybody and have a good new year.

Friday Bird Bloging: Snowy Egret

The snowy egret is a bird I've seen rarely in Vermont, but frequently down at Parker River Wildlife Refuge. It's about half the size of a great egret and a lot more mobile and it's distinguished by its black beak and yellow feet (I think of them as akin to clown shoes just because of the garish color).

Watching one of these creatures hunt is an entertaining experience. Instead of casually standing still, being very quiet and blending in until it spots prey, it aggressively goes after its prey, but does so with an odd, diagonal, pattern. You can see it stand for a bit then suddenly just dart about five or more feet to grab something out of the water.

This particular picture is from Parker River Wildlife Refuge in Plum Island, MA, but my first sighting of a snowy was in coastal Maine, on a dark and wet day, when we spotted a small group of them on some rocks in a nearby river. At the time, it was true excitement to spot and photograph a new bird for me, but even years later, I love watching them move, dart, weave and bob about.

As usual, the image links to larger pictures or a list of thumbnails.

A New Experiment

I've been working on various arrangements of Bach Pieces for solo flatpick guitar-- the most recent one is my rendition of "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring." I just posted it at http://juliewaters.com/mp3s.php.

How the Brain Tunes Out Background Noise

Crossposted from my psychology blog:

Last year, Live Science published a nice little summary article (How the Brain Tunes Out Background Noise) about our mental process and how our perceptual process will tend to phase out the aspects of our surroundings which are routine or predictable:

The "novelty detector neurons," as researchers call them, quickly stop firing if a sound or sound pattern is repeated. They will briefly resume firing if some aspect of the sound changes. The neurons can detect changes in pitch, loudness or duration of a single sound and can also note shifts in the pattern of a complex series of sounds.

"It is probably a good thing to have this ability because it allows us to tune out background noises like the humming of a car's motor while we are driving or the regular tick-tock of a clock," said study team member Ellen Covey, a psychology professor at the University of Washington. "But at the same time, these neurons would instantly draw a person's attention if their car's motor suddenly made a strange noise or if their cell phone rang."

I'm interested in how this applies to driving-- there's a lot we need to attend to, as drivers, and a lot we don't even notice on a conscious level. How much of what we do when driving is necessary and how much of it is background? Do some people tend to have more trouble with the distractions than others? Do some of us have the ability to better distinguish background noise from necessary information?

As I am known to do from time to time, I will use birding as an example. When I'm looking for birds, I pay a lot of attention to the sounds and calls of birds, but I suspect that, after a short while, I do not pay any attention at all to familiar birds. Once I know that there are American Robins around, do my ears pay attention to them any longer, or do I just mentally dismiss them?

Or, on the other hand, we can think about music: when I am listening to a fairly common and unoriginal melody, I may not notice it at all on the surface, but I may notice unusual harmonies or arrangements of that same melody. Or, alternatively, unless I specifically attend to it, I may not even notice the chord progression of a tune, once it's gone through once or twice. Unless the music does something interesting, it may fade entirely into the background-- how often have you not even realized what song was playing on an intercom until someone pointed it out to you?

Ambigrams

Crossposted from my psychology blog:

---

This picture is an ambigram, an image which can be viewed in more than one way depending on how you perceive it.

The thing about this sort of image, in particular, is that it manages to convince you visually that you're looking at two completely contradictory views at the exact same time.

What does this tell you about perception, and the way our brain processes conflicting stimuli? Can you see it as both images simultaneously, or merely as one, then the other, alternating based on how you squint or tip your head?

Friday Bird Bloging: Northern Harrier

There is something about this particular view which makes me glad I'm not a mouse.

The Northern Harrier is one of my favorite hawks to watch. It hunts low to the ground and will do so with careful deliberation. This particular shot is one of my favorites, and helped sell me on how great digital photography can be-- this was one of over a hundred pictures I took in a very short period, and very few of them were anywhere near this quality. With nature photography especially, there's really something to being able to get off as many shots as are humanly possible in a very short period in the hopes that just a few will be the quality you're looking for.

Friday Bird Blogging: The Belted Kingfisher

For years, I tried to get good pictures of kingfishers, but with very little luck. They will stand still for long periods, but not always where they're easy to spot, and when in motion they fly -very- quickly. This particular shot is a favorite of mine, not for the quality of the images, but for the fact that I managed to get a series of shots which capture a specific moment. When the kingfisher sees prey in the water, it will fly directly above the prey and simply hover, flapping quickly while it prepares for a dive. Then it drops directly down into the water and, if all goes as planned, plucks a fish out and flies out with its meal. What you see here is the "before" picture. My next plan is to get a picture of the kingfisher the moment -after- it gets is prey, with fish in hand (or, technically, beak).

My not-so Dumb-Ass Election Predictions

Shortly before the election, I posted this:

In national news, I expect the House to break with 233 Democrats and
202 Republicans. I'd like to see the Republicans drop below 200 in
the house, but I don't expect it. As far as nearby races go, I
expect Paul Hodes to win in NH, which was unheard of three weeks ago.

I expect the close Senate races to reflect a six-seat gain for
Democrats, picking up Missouri Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode
Island and Virginia. Ford and Pederson will both lose and Menendez
will hold his seat.

Now that all the results are in (at least on the official level), it actually looks like I got the numbers right after all.

How the hell did that happen?

Friday Bird Blogging: The Downy Woodpecker

The Downy Woodpecker is a great little feeder bird. It's not as striking as its larger counterpart, the hairy woodpecker but it's the sort of bird that will, if you're careful, let you get incredibly close looks at it while it's feeding on suet, giving you wonderful opportunity for some amazing detailed looks, such as this one.

2007 Calendar: Wildlife Photography

So I decided to collect together some of my photography into a nifty 2007 Calendar. It's some of my favorite pictures from this year-- pictures from Parker River Wildlife Refuge, the Connecticut Lakes Region of New Hampshire, Southeastern Vermont and Lighthouse Point.

If you're interested, you can find the calendar, as well as several other items I put together (such as a wall clock, a poster and a set of postcards) at http://www.cafepress.com/juliewaters

Scott Adams on Music

Scott wonders Why is Music Legal?. My favorite line:

Music is clearly unsafe. Suppose you’re in a perfectly good mood and a depressing song comes on. That could make you sad and break down your body’s natural defenses. You could get sick and die. Thank you very much Tori Amos.

Friday Bird Blogging: The Northern Mockingbird

Any number of times, I've heard an interesting sound while out looking for birds, only to discover that it came from a mockingbird. Even so, I'm rarely disappointed; these are striking birds, with a true elegance to their appearance.