Early this month, trudging along my usual exercise route on a notably windy day, I noticed a big nest high in one of the cottonwoods: maybe 40 feet up. I wondered idly whether it might be a nest for the hawks I sometimes see.
Equally idly, my eyes wandered over and down a few branches and stopped. What was that lump? Closer examination gave the answer: my first great horned owl in the wild. Continue reading
On my way into the Gilbert Water Ranch in search of black-crowned night herons, black-necked stilts, and whatever else raises its wing to be counted, I glance at the cactus garden near the entrance. Just checking for gila woodpeckers, which nest in the cavities in these saguaro cactuses.
And there it is. Like the cushion face before it, I’m not sure what creature this is, but creature it surely is. I mean, look at that face! Maybe it’s missing one tusk? Or is it a unicorn with a monocle?
On the way out of said park (albeit on another day), I catch another cactus winking at me. Ike? Is that you?
A week is a long time in politics.
– Attributed to Harold Wilson
If that’s true, then 10 days must be a lifetime. I expect it feels like that to the principals of the Wilson-Raybould and SNC-Lavalin mess. Continue reading
A pretty widgeon.
Ah, oddball vocabulary: the wages, not of sin exactly, but of reading Regency romances in my teens. This dismissive comment about some young lady stuck in my mind. The modern equivalent?
Cute, but not too smart.
So when I first saw the lovely ducks at our local community center’s pond — with their beautiful shiny green stripes behind their eyes — I was amused to learn that they were American wigeons.
On Valentine’s Day, here’s a currently non-PC view of the sexes from the inestimable G.K. Chesterton. His essay starts by discussing a proposal for the co-education of children and moves, here, to a general commentary on the sexes.
I can reach my meaning best by another route. Very few people ever state properly the strong argument in favour of marrying for love or against marrying for money . . . . The argument is this, that the differences between a man and a woman are at the best so obstinate and exasperating that they practically cannot be got over unless there is an atmosphere of exaggerated tenderness and mutual interest. To put the matter in one metaphor, the sexes are two stubborn pieces of iron; if they are to be welded together, it must be while they are red hot.
Every woman has to find out that her husband is a selfish beast, because every man is a selfish beast by the standard of a woman. But let her find out the beast while they are both still in the story of “Beauty and the Beast.”
Every man has to find out that his wife is cross — that is to say, sensitive to the point of madness; for every woman is mad by the masculine standard. But let him find out that she is mad while her madness is more worth considering than anyone else’s sanity.
This is not a digression. The whole value of the normal relations of man and woman lies in the fact that they first begin really to criticise each other when they first begin really to admire each other. And a good thing, too. I say, with a full sense of the responsibility of the statement, that it is better that the sexes should misunderstand each other until they marry. It is better that they should not have the knowledge until they have the reverence and the charity.
We want no premature and puppyish “knowing all about girls.” We do not want the highest mysteries of a Divine distinction to be understood before they are desired, and handled before they are understood.
Those whom God has sundered, shall no man join.
Well, all generalizations are false, eh? I’m especially wary of one that separates people into two great lumps: That doesn’t leave much room for nuance or for individual differences.
But in a society in which we seem ready to deny any differences between the sexes, it does leave room for some reflection.
Excerpted from “Two Stubborn Pieces of Iron,” originally published in The Common Man, 1950; anthologized in “In Defense of Sanity.” Additional paragraphing is provided to suit our current attention spans.
Yes, again.
There’s an argument to be made that one can have enough photos of fabulous black-and-white long-legged birds — perhaps even too many — but you won’t read any such nonsense here.
What you will read is that standards go up. Just as “too many” is a null concept, so is “too good.” Continue reading
Minding my own business, knitting or somesuch — my mind definitely elsewhere — I glance up at some noise and give a start.
On our fourth rental session in this house, with these same cushions, there it is: my first sight of this face. Once seen, it’s sort of obvious, no?
As I get the shot, I wonder what kind of face it’s reminding me of: what kind of creature. That sure isn’t obvious.
Maybe it’s one of those animated dragons in the trailers right now. Maybe it’s a Backyardigan, to which I was introduced many years ago by a then-preschool grandson. Maybe it’s not a creature at all: just the right arrangement of features to trigger facial recognition.
And that makes me wonder whether this whole pareidolia thing applies to babies. From early infancy, babies pay more attention to human faces than to other objects — even, it seems, to cartoonish human faces and to line drawings of faces — but I couldn’t find any studies with more stylized shapes.
On my default walking route — past roadrunners and cottonwoods and hawks, oh my — I pass a big blue donation box for clothes and shoes. It’s for some charity, or wants us to think so, at any rate.
This is my typical photo of a red-tailed hawk: out of focus and nearly out of the frame.
Posted: 2025 Jun 21
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
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