Gizmo was a tiny Pekingese
with a striking resemblance to the mogwai – we call them gremlins – in the movie of the same name. That movie was how I learned the three important rules of gremlins:
Sparrows on Mars?
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Author Archives: John
Birds are doing it
I have pictures of them chasing each other around the wood, playing tag, showing off, and sometimes producing copies of themselves.
Make room for Ellie
When many of us think of the woolly mammoth, I’m guessing we think of Queen Latifah, or at least the voice she gave to Ellie the woolly mammoth in the “Ice Age” movie franchise. For the record, the ice age ended about 11,000 years ago, and so did Ellie and her mate, Manny.
What I’ve learned about dogs
One thing I’ve learned about dogs is, “don’t buy one.” The only dog to ever live with me that I paid for didn’t stay long.
Actually, I think someone stole him to hunt deer – you could use dogs in Virginia when I lived there. I bet he didn’t object when the dognapper promised a life in the woods. In a way, I don’t blame him.
Party time on Marsh Creek
LBelow and in front of the porch rail, the surface of Marsh
Creek is smooth like a 200-year-old farmhouse window pane, smoothly rippled as
the flow wanders and eddies its way to lower elevations. Reflections of creekside
oaks and sycamores decorate the translucent surface of the flow, itself browned
from nearby mountains’ muddied runoff – poor man’s fertilizer, some farmers call
it –in rounded jaggies across the stream. A short way up the creek, mated Red-tailed
hawks and a few Bald eagles prepare for their new families.
Across the glassine stage at the foot of the hill there pass pairs of Canada Geese, a few mallards and their current loves – Canada geese mate for life, mallards for convenience – and a clan of mergansers.
Clean water could become pricey
Like the rest of us, when the cost of some new endeavor outweigh
the potential benefits, we balk at increasing our expenses. My mom had an aging
pickup and wondered whether it was time to trade.
We call her “Mother” Nature
If a company can be granted personhood, why not a lake,
especially a lake that is a primary freshwater supply. Voters in Toledo, Ohio answered
that question last month, saying Lake Erie has the right “to exist, flourish,
and naturally evolve” – rights normally enjoyed by a person.
Handmade with love
One night
when the temperature was hovering way too close to the bottom of the
thermometer, I decided to look for a hat.
Showering in palm oil
When we in Adams County take a shower, when we slather margarine on a piece of toast, or spray non-fat grease on a frying pan, we may be adding another family to the next caravan of Central American refugees heading north.
Pairing up
Red-tailed hawks are
warming to togetherness, indicating, more accurately than that four-legged
critter from Punxsutawney, that the weather also is soon to warm. Of course,
most Red-tailed hawks do not have television cameras staring at them to record
whether they see their shadow while swooping down on an unsuspecting breakfast.
Still seeking an ideal
A friend sent me a story this week. The story was under a
headline, “Oklahoma man praised for heartwarming exchange with little girl at
airport.”
Snow, cold and snowthrower gas
It snowed last night. We had some snow – in November, I
think – that caused me to drag out the snowthrower. Since then, the machine has
been gathering dust in the garage, with still almost a half tank of last winter’s
gasoline in the tank.
You kids settle down …
Maybe by the time these thoughts are in print, Congress will
pass and President Trump will sign an agreement that will reopen our government
and put an end to the adolescent schoolyard shenanigans in our nation’s capital.
Signs of (nearing) spring
Starlings are back. Murmurating clouds on snack break turn
large sections of local lawns black where they hide what is left of last week’s
snow “storm.”
Hawks and people need green space and water
One of the many wonderful
things about living where I live is I am not required to travel far from my
home to see wonderful stuff. Like on the recent afternoon when I went driving with
a fellow photographer along a nearby road and found four Red-tail hawks in the space of about a half mile.
The trees are warning us
Readers of J.R.R. Tolkein are familiar with Ents, those
long-talking, slow-walking ancient creatures of Middle Earth. They are among
the few beings to have survived to the current age. It seems they eventually took
root, owing to their extreme slowness, and became what we know as trees, those
flexible, sometimes giant, beings that wave in the wind.
Antiques and New-tech
Getting old is like keeping an antique car running. It’s a
constant effort to replace worn parts, some of which are no longer available,
and tinker with the parts you can’t replace, and put up with the creaking and
inflexibility of the parts you can’t reach. Someone told me this week ankles
are now included in the list of parts that can be replaced. I don’t need one,
but its nice to know, along with shock absorbers (knees) and oil pumps
(hearts), we now can buy new u-joints (ankles).
Wendy Sue and Santa
A few decades ago, when I was in the U.S. Navy, I was a crewmember in a P-3 Orion patrol plane. One of my jobs, it turned out, was to talk with Santa via radio. Let me explain.
Cap-and-Trade could help
With the Trump administration bailing on environmental efforts and proceeding with as much haste as possible to dismantle regulations put in place by “the previous administration,” states and industry are having to pick up the load. And they’re doing it, in the same way that Elon Musk is taking over NASA’s space exploration role. Electric cars, reusable rockets and taxpaying jobs may do more about climate change than any amount of political rhetoric.
If not our vote, our respect
Country music performer Garth Brooks filled Notre Dame
stadium in October. The show was carried on CBS Sunday night. It ran until 10
p.m.
Sunday night at 10 is the usual time for “Madame Secretary.” For the non-political TV watchers, Téa Leoni portrays the Secretary of State in a show based on political news, mostly world wide, that occupy presidential work days.