The 27th day of the fifth month of the year of Emergence

Happy Memorial Day weekend everyone.

  If you don't have a clue and need to know what Memorial Day is all about, please check out the following link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day

This is the weekend, in fact the last Monday in May, that we honor fallen heroes that fought for the freedom we all take for granted.  If you detect some cynicism, go right ahead.  This is the summer kick-off weekend for most of us.  Another excuse to go to the mall and shop.  Backyard barbies, hot dogs, beer, and hamburgers.  Maybe even the beach.

  All that is for the majority.

  For those who have lost family members in the fight to allow the rest of us to do the above..........God Bless You!

And for the self centered idiots in Washington.................We're watching you!  And your day will come because you don't fight in such as way that you should be honored by the rest of us!

This holiday is for the true heroes.

The 26th day of the fifth month of the year of Emergence

Why is it?  Some days one just feel nostalgic and you have no idea where all that comes from.  It can't be the slides I am scanning at the moment, unless one can get all fuzzy about a beaver dam on central Maryland's Eastern Shore.  So it's unlikely that was the trigger.  Perhaps the steaming cup of Pikes Place next to my key board.  So what is it.  The older I get the stranger my mind seems to get and the unexplainable become totally rational to me.  Maybe no one else, but "I can see clearly now" to quote an old song.  It's wonderful because I am reaching the age that people say "No wonder he behaves that way....look at how old he is"!  Screw um!

Probably just an overactive imagination that conjures up 55 year plus memories of a life long gone.  As kids we became water rats when school was out in June, took our shoes off until September when we had become crispy critters covered with bay mud and salt water.  They say you can never go back.  Whoever said that, has no soul.  Of course you can go back, just don't try it physically.

There were four of us who hung together.  Two natives of Rock Hall, Maryland, Paul and Sonny.  I think Sonny's real name was Festus, but we never used it.  Who in the world would name their kid Festus?  These two guys were barely high school graduates and the salt of the earth.  Sonny lived a hard life and has now passed on.  I think Paul still hauls lumber on the Eastern Shore.  Jim and myself made the final four.  Both outlanders who either had to fight or hide behind Sonny and Paul for protection.  You see new kids in town were not viewed as part of the plan until they were tested.  Took us a couple of years, but we didn't care.  Both Jim and I had little outboards and we four spent most of the time on the water.  Fishing, crabbing, swimming, and water skiing.

Our biggest problem back then was raising enough money to keep the boat gassed up, go to the movies on Friday night, and fill up on cheeseburgers.  It must have been bliss for our collective parents because most of the time we were not to be seen nor heard.  Money was really not a problem.  All we had to do was load the boat up with dip nets, bushell baskets and automobile tire inner tubes.  Yeah, I'm that old.  Tires had inner tubes!  The basket would go inside the tire tubes and we would drag that around on a rope in the shallows of Eastern Neck Island looking for crabs.  We would dip crabs for a half day and earn enough to invest in our other way of creating spending money.  The crabs got sold and that staked us enough to play the pin ball machines in the restaurants.  At that time in Maryland, they actually paid real cash for the games won.  A nickel a game.  We were good at it.  Five dollars of crab money could easily turn into twenty in game winnings, and the week was made. 

The 24th of the fifth month of Emergence

Sixty seven degrees before seven in the morning.  I've set the water sprinkler in the back and checked the bird feeders.  Suet is needed for the wrens, mocking birds, and red belly woodies but the rest seems to be in order.  No exotics yet.  Hummingbirds haven't shown up nor have the gold finches.  I am not sure that we will get either but I am busy building the back yard nature habitat just in case.  I am finding that the cardinal is the most elusive bird to capture with the camera.  They are really sensitive and all I can figure is the quantity of feral cats roaming the neighborhood keeps them nervous.  Most of the birds simply ignore the dogs when they are out and plating bombs in the yard.  Probably more accurate are mines the dogs set to capture their human keepers.  One wrong step and -----------BOOOOOOOOOOOOM---------- ya gotta wash the soul of your shoes.  So part of the morning ritual has become pooper scooper detail and I'll bet you just don't need to know all that this early in the morning.  But I have found that the plants grow better with the addition of Cow Poo and not dog stuff.  The chickadees are in the middle of growing young, as I guess are the rest of the birds, and they are looking a little rough.  Loosing feathers, molting, and just looking like most parents with young kids.  Haggard!  I think I have located a wren's nest but need to check closer.  Tomatoes seem to be coming along but if I could figure a way to eat Fennel, I would be in fat city.  Stuff grows like a weed.  Probably is.  We've eaten our way through all the lettuce, spinach, and that green internal steel wool called broccoli.  I have some green beans coming, carrots, and spuds.  Bear in mind this is all being grown in a ten by six raised garden, so if we get two servings we're lucky.  Like I said earlier, the lettuce was valued at about six dollars a pound.  But it gives an old man something to do.

I am culling, sorting, scanning, and filing old slides.  Through the first of eight or nine file boxes which represent about 30,000 slides.  It is long and tedious work, but somebody's got to do it.  Throwing out about 80% of the original attempts at being a photographer.  But I am still selling stuff and that is gratifying.  Not to mention finding things that I had long forgotten and memories which I will never forget.  Some better left alone, but I keep beating that skeleton back into the closet.   Or maybe that's plural.  Enjoy the Chickadee, here before the rages of parenthood overtook it.

The 23rd day of the fifth month of the year of Emergence

Things are beginning to warm up here in central South Carolina.  I think we made ninety-six degrees yesterday and the rest of the week looks like it will be warm.  Beach time!  Too much to do however and the beach has to wait for a while.  The yard work still consumes a bit of time, but the neighbors keep saying how great it looks.  Hey from 2000 miles up, it still looks like a postage stamp but it's fun.  Had our first tomato from the Victory garden and there is another turning orange, so it won't be long till we have too many.  Can't wait, those plastic things from the grocery store are tedious. 

Busy scanning old slides, culling the ones that looked good ten years ago that I just laugh at today.  I guess that means I am being more constructively critical now that I know what's good and what's not.  At least I hope so.  If I can cut the 20,000 slides down to 5,000 or so I would be happy.  It would free up all kinds of space in the file cabinet and that's a good thing.  Course I could just trip over some photograph which would make us all millions, but that's unlikely to happen.  No "Mad Bluebird" hiding in the stacks I am afraid.  Keep looking for him though.  I wonder how Michael is doing, I havent' talked to him in a while.

http://www.themadbluebird.com/

Today's entry in the pretty bird contest is a pine warbler who visited a month or so ago.  Since we evidently have no gold finches to visit, this is the most yellow bird we see here.  Nice image.

The 21st day of the fifth month or Dooms day!

DROP THE SUNFLOWER SEED!

This is what happens when you pull the trigger on the BB gun the same time you do the camera.  It's my sunflower seed!

Oh, and if you can't read this well I guess that guy was right.  I'll put this on auto publish anyway just to hedge my bet!  OK I don't know how to do that, so I'll just have to risk it.  Well, we made it overnight and I just see some fool said that we need to wait till six eastern time to see if the world has ended.  I think I will wait till tomorrow to write tomorrow's entry.....just sayin!

The 20th of May, year of Emergence

Friends of mine had tornadoes in their back yards yesterday.  Thankfully no damage done but some neat pictures and video taken.  That's one photo I can do without even though I think in the next life I would love to be a storm chaser.

Had the crown put on the tooth yesterday and am now thinking of having implants for all those what should have been around it.  Actually, I only need one next to it and then I can play beaver.  How green is that, literally eating twigs and bark.  All I can say is, don't let you teeth go cause they will.

This little guy was a member of a family of eight on Chincoteague Island in Virginia.  Like every other wild animal they are cute when young but then grow up into something else.  He/she will probably terrorize someones golf course and not end up looking anything like the wild goose in the song about where my heart goes.  You can find a print of "A little goose in my life"  for sale on my Etsy page by clicking on the link to the right.

It's Friday and I hope you all have a "Masterful" weekend.  Me, I am going out and chew on some hemlock, mow the lawn, and train some squirrels.

The 19th day of the fifth month of the year of Emergence

Flash, it's all over the news!  Coffee is good for you.  Seems like it tends to stem some of the worst types of colon cancer.  I knew there was a reason for stumbling into the kitchen every morning with one eye closed.  Fool around with getting the water just right and the number of tablespoons of Pike Place measured out.  I mean other than the massive benefits of the caffeine we all knew about, this is great news.  Course you need to drink six or more cups a day for it to do the job.  And still you need to exercise to get the full benefit.  Can you just imagine those test mice, running around all strung out on that much coffee.  They would have had to reinforce the walls to the maze.  With also brings to mind those office workers running around their cubicles for forty hours a week.

So much for current events.  This dove is one of my back yard buddies.  We have a pair who seem to have taken up permanent residency, in fact one was sound asleep in the middle of the feeder the other day.  Must have thought he died and went to heaven.  Soft spot in the sun and all you can eat just below your chin.  I think I enjoyed that same feeling years ago in some restaurant in New York City.  That was during my lost decade.  Anyway, like the carrier pigeon (these birds must be some distant relative), the dove has a lot of hidden and subtle coloration's.  The blue around the eye is just electrifying and the iridescence on the neck is brilliant in the right light.  Double click on the image to get a full screen.

This aint' your grand ma's standard pigeon.  Actually the dove is quite a sporting bird and wing shooters travel to South America each year to shoot them in abundance.  I for one could never hit them with a shotgun, preferring to lay in wait for larger and slower moving prey.  They fly erratically and fast but at least stay in the open areas.  If they are so hard to hit with a shotgun, you can just imagine how hard it would be to get a meaningful flight shot with a camera.  I'll have to think about that one a bit.  It almost sounds like work.

I did go out and splurge yesterday on some squirrel repellent equipment.  I have not been spending money for some time on things which are, to me, toys.  This equipment, purchased --Gasp-- at Wally World, is of the Daisy variety.  That's right folks..........Gun like!  BB caliber.  This thing can be pumped to create the strength you need.  I can pump it up twenty times and it shoots like a canon, or just a couple of times and it stings.  Stinging is good, drawing blood not so much.  I just want them to know that it is I what owns the sunflower seeds and not them.  And if they want some, either they pose pretty or get stung on the way over the last branch.

  I actually educated two yesterday afternoon.  Great fun, for me at least.  Last year my neighbor thought he would live trap them.  Thought he only had a couple who were pests.  Well, when he stopped he had relocated (against the law down here) forty of the little critters.  So, we don't just have a couple of em.  And their brazen little critters, sorta like all those pigeons in the major cities that we actually trip over. 

Have a good day all and prayers go out to all those folks along the Mississippi River. 

The 18th day of the fifth

No, I have not been working on a fifth for 18 days.

Just the date.

This morning the hour is a little more reasonable than yesterday.  Still in the sixties and just another really nice day coming up.  We have had, for this area, an incredibly nice spring with low humidity and reasonable temperatures.  Probably go to 110 in the shade for July through October but we count our blessings now.  Took the first tomato out of the Victory garden yesterday, and that's a good sign.  Have been eating green stuff from there for about three weeks.  I think it cost somewhere around $30 per pound for the vegetables we have so far picked, so it's sorta like drilling your own oil.

This image is one I made in Florida  some time ago.  Normally these birds are pretty much loners except at breeding time.

The other time we can see them together is when both are feeding.  Then we run into other photographic problems like depth of field in low light conditions.  Luckily for the photographer, these guys stand stone still a great deal of the time and shutter speeds can accommodate the light levels in some cases.  In this case I just got lucky because when on the nest they are very actively building, tending to eggs, feeding young and arguing.

The Great Egret, as is the Great Blue Heron, is a tall and slender example of the heron family and can provide some of the most elegant of poses.  Some of the other birds of the same family like the Cattle egret are more stubby and stout and have to be really worked hard to get anything that looks elegant.  But different strokes for different folks.

The 17th day of the fifth month of the year of Emergence

Skip's early! 4:12 am!

I have no clue as to why I am awake, but the Ambien has worn off and it is time for the Pike Place Roast to kick in.  The coffee named for the first Starbucks store at Pike Place in Seattle, opened in Washington State in 1971.  It's where it all started for them back in the day.  I took my cup out on the porch just to watch the steam rise in the brisk air.  No such luck, only sixty degrees outside so I had to settle to lay my nose on the edge of the cup to get the first wafts of aroma.  Sorta like a wine taster....smell it, sniff it, savor it, swrill it, taste it....then spit it out.  God what a waste.  I suppose if I were Jack London and it were the Klondike in mid may back in 1897 I could see the steam rising from the cup.  But alas I am not and it's not, so I will just have to put up with the double rations of caffeine Starbucks serves up in each cup.  (That's the way they get u hooked you know.....urban legend)

I do have to tread quietly so as to not wake the animals residing here in the kennel in which I live.  In turn that allows my better half at least another hour of sleep.  Fortunately our early warning system (the cockateal) still recognizes "dark" and the chawawa is soundly buried in the folds of our bedding.  That is a good thing because between the two of them they posses the brain power of a good sized Lima bean.  The third four part of the triumvirate, Missy just knows that I am stupid to be awake at this hour and in turn ignores me completely.  You know the same Missy that chases thunderstorms to exhaustion.  Hers and mine.

It should be noted that yesterday's excursions to the doctor (for me) and the vets (for Missy), report that both of our septic systems are in fine working order.  She may continue eating cat crap in the back yard and I can continue to attempt to kill myself with way to many high fat foods, too few twigs and bark, and too little red wine.  I think that if I could drink two glasses of red wine each night like the French, then I might also get arrested in a $3000 a night hotel in New York City for doing the illegal nasty with a house maid.  But then I guess when you have too much money, you end up doing even more stupid stuff than I've done in my life.  Me, I just have to live long enough to be recognized as being old as an excuse for my behavior.  If all this is TMI, just deal with it.  I still have another two hours before anything stirs around here.

I want to thank my good friend Ethel for inquiring about my health after reading yesterdays blog.  Good friends are where you find them and this lady is one of those good finds.  She thinks that I am a moron, but still likes me.  Hey, is that a friend or what?  I know that there are dozens more that just didn't have the chance to read yesterday's missive, so to soothe your rabid concern.....everything is OK!  And thanks in advance for your thoughts.

I have included a new image which is a portrait of a yellow rumped myrtle warbler.  I call him the "Wigged-out Warbler".  First because of the stare and second because he is all puffed up to show just how mean he can be.  That is until he detects movement, then he's gone faster than you can spell yellow rumped myrtle warbler.  Or as they say in the Islands, that's a grey, white, and yellow bird Mon!

You all have a good day, the 18th is coming.

The 16th of the fifth month of the year of Emergence

Well good monday morning to you.  We had a fine weekend here in central South Carolina but were limited to yard work and a develping medical problem for me.  So I am now spending the early hours trying to round up the appropriate doctors, cancel an existring dental appointment and trying to figure out how to get the dog to the vets in the late afternoon.  Life is good!

I worked on a couple of images which I am probably going to take to the Easton Waterfowl Festival in Novemeber.  Every year, getting ready for this show (22nd now) is  major work and choosing the images is only the first of the process.  Still in the planning stages, but am thinking at this point that "Smalls" may still be the way to go.   The first candidate, and that's all they are at this point is a reworked Louisianna Heron I captured at the Alligator Farm in Florida.  I still this he is pretty striking.

Another choice may be this Titmouse from the back yard.

Or how about "Trashing About"

Well, you all have a great day I'm off to see the plumber.

The 14th day of the 5th month of the year of Emergence

What are you all doing here?

It's Saturday or hadn't you noticed.  You need to be at the beach and not reading something on the computer.  Hey, I need to be on the beach and not posting something on the computer. 

This is a trilogy I did a couple years ago.  Each section of floating frame measures 12 x 18 inches and is a view of Edisto Beach here in South Carolina.  The rocking chair was evidently left in haste as an offshore storm was working it's way onshore.  The sea oats in the foreground sure look like they could use some water.

The 12th of the 5th of the year of Emergence

You know your in a bad neighborhood when you need five male escorts!

Or maybe this lady American Merganaser just has something special.  How do ducks say "She's hot"!

Often times, when I make a photo it just seems like it would make a great jig saw puzzle.  Do people still do them?  Can we buy them digitally for the little things that our kids have their thumbs into all the time.  Who knew back in the day that the technology would be what it is.  At the current rate, future generations will have no fingers, just opposing thumbs and a pad where the other four fingers used to go.  Evolution you know!

Or that some unknown somebody or other could write all this drivel and publish it every day.  And that someone would actually spend 42 seconds to read it.  It's sorta like when the debit card prints out "Approved"....It's a modern "Mur-a-cul".

Or maybe they just came to take her away...Haha.

  I have experience with that!

The 11th day of the fifth month of the year of Emergence

This is another of my Chincoteague Island great blue herons.  This guy is dressed left for some reason and is obviously giving something or somebody a "Craaaaaaaaaaaaank" or two.  That really isn't the sound they make but is as close as I can get.  I think the Michner did a better job of their call in his epic "Chesapaeake", but I try.  By the way, if you can get through the first fifty or so pages of Michner he is a wonderful read.

These blue herons weigh in at only around two and half pounds, but with all the feathers they look much bigger.  Big wing spans too.  I am not sure why I like this image except he is talking left and the grass texture leans to the left.  The focus leaves something to be desired as well, but the overall scene pleases me.  The distant background frames the subject as well.  Remember to double click the image for full screen and enjoy.

Cinco De Miyo times two of the year of Emergence

It's just amazing to me that some critters in the wild, or perhaps more so in captivity, can get such pleasure from taking a bath in what clearly is not the same water that you and I would get into.  I know that's not proper English, but you get the drift.

Take a zoo for instance.  For the birds, like flamingos, the choice of bathrooms for no.s one and two are the same source of their bath and drinking water.  So when somebody says that bird smells like s**t, it probably does.  No I mean in real time.  But when they do bathe, they seem to be deriving such joy in just flopping into something wet.

Can a bird smile.  Sometime you would think.  I mean these are some of the great imponderables in this world and require some real thought.  Oh, and do birds have ones and twos, or is it all just twos?  Maybe a college study or thesis could be undertaken to determine the sheer pleasure a bird gets from a bath.  Ought to get some kid through at least the Master's Degree level somewhere, and maybe with a government grant to boot. 

Me ----- I always try to keep he bird bath clean.

The ninth day of the fifth month of the year of Emergence

This is a black crowned night heron which I found on Chincoteague Island in Virginia.  These are stocky birds with large heads and short necks.  They don't have the grace of an egret or great blue heron and weigh less than two pounds.  About mid sized as herons go.  But the neat thing about this guy is that he was almost hidden amongst the brush of the shoreline.  Just about the time I came along, a shaft of sunlight found it's way through the underbrush.  It's almost as though he was in the spot light and on stage!  Always rather be lucky than smart, but grateful for the chance.

 There is a spot along the road between the toll gates of the Chincoteague National Wildlife Reserve and the beach.  There are canals on either side of the road that provide the wading birds with a convenient feeding area.  Just a 300 mm lens away!

Here is a link to some pretty fantastic panoramic photography.  Wish it were mine.

http://www.360cities.net/

"Mother's Day", the 8th day of the fifth month of the year of Emergence

I write this in tribute to one of the two women who have put up with my BS for most of their lives.  Both of them mothers and both pretty darn good at what they did.  The first is my own mother and the second is my ex who was a fantastic mother as well. 

My mother's hands were rarely still.  Here she was making a quilt and it kept her busy during those years after my father died.  I don't think that she ever stopped grieving.  If she wasn't doing something crafty, it was cooking or gardening.  In her former years is was Dad who did the gardening and in her latter years it was me.  In both instances she was always the project foreman and that was that.  Took me a few years to learn that.

If she wasn't actively supervising, she was holding a cup of coffee which seemed to be permanent.  Until she was eighty she was also a Chesterfield smoker.  How she put up with them is forever a question in my mind.  Even when I smoked in my youth, I could not stand those things.  No filter and strong as hell.  The woman lived on them and coffee.  She lived to 83 notwithstanding all of the addictions.  She did stop smoking cold turkey at 80, because the new doctor told her it would kill he.  From that day forward a carton of nine packs and a pack of ten cigaretts rested in a kitchen draw.  Never touched again.  She was a perfect example of the addadge that "Growing old ain't for sissies".  Tough lady, an I miss her. 

The other two best mothers on the planet aren't my mothers, but I love them as if they were.  My daughter and daughter in-law.  Actually two daughters.  Have a wonderful day you two and ex as well. 

Two days after Cinco De Mio of the year of Emergence

Breakfast

One of the fascinating things about being a wildlife photographer is that you get to watch the critters do what they do best.  And like all of us that go to Mickey Dee's -------- that's eat!

First, when nature is putting on the feed bag, the object of our quest is most intent on feeding and not on the photographer so much--------we can get closer.

Second, the best wildlife blind or hide is a car.  The things that creep, crawl, fly and run don't seem to be bothered so much with the automobile.  They have seen so many of them zipping about that they don't feel threatened.  Sort of like the pedestrians in New York City as they go about with middle fingers extended.

This series is one of the few that I took at Ding Darling reserve down on Florida's Sanibel Island.  A good spot to see the long legged wading birds amongst other critters.  For the uninitiated this is a great blue heron fishing for something that I have yet to identify.  Probably a small fish of some kind.  Remember you can double click the image for full screen.

The Stalk

The Strike

The Extraction

The digestion----------how good am I?

For all those gorging on big macs, aren't you happy we don't have to go through this just to consume our daily allotment of grease?

Time for another cup of Pikes Place, you all have a great weekend!

The sixth day of the fifth month of the year of Emergence

Fifty one degrees this morning, which is unusually cool for this time of year here in Shangra La.

Choices today, as the Pikes Place Roast starts to work it's magic. 

Memories of things gone by are the first intrusion into what my mind should legitimately be doing elsewhere.  This image was made on the shore of a body of water called the Chester River.  It lies on the eastern shore of Maryland's Chesapeake bay.  This particular spot is the product of a two mile walk on a trail called "Duck In".  The Duck In trail is in the Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge.  A great place in the fall to watch migrating ducks, geese, and swan.  This image has be digitally enhanced by eliminating the original color and creating a sepia tone.  By doing this, the scene seems to approximate my fantasy about what the place looked like sixty years ago.  That was when my father took my sister, mother, and I out there to look for eagles.  I think there were two resident birds within the whole refuge.  Now they are prolific.

Of course sixty years ago wasn't ancient.  There was a time that I thought 1900 was ancient and anything before that was in the realm of the pyramids.  But I do remember those Saturday evening drives from our little community of Gratitude,  through Rock Hall, and down the only road to the refuge.  The excitement we kids experienced as we entered, what felt at the time, to be at least the old wild west or at most the darkest of Africa.

  This was back in a time were family's actually "Went for Rides" as a source of entertainment.  Our parents would point out things which became educational even though we didn't know it at the time.  A hawk or turkey buzzard floating magically on air currents we could only see because they were floating on air currents.  Swans in the wild, which viewed at our tender age were just awesome.  We had only seen them in small city parks that smelled --- well, like small city parks.  Here were thousands rafting on the bay and flying overhead.  Who knew a swan could fly anyway?  A raccoon running through the headlights or for that matter the much more occasional white tail deer.  My father would spot an eagle and we would scramble for the side of the car to see it.  This would be the only violation of crossing the center line of the back seat into "My space".  "There see it, now get back on your side"  "eeeeeeeuuuuu!"

"Daddy he poked me"  Then the long right arm would make that swing from the front seat drivers side, sweeping the air around us in an awkward ark across the back seat.  It was supposed to be a slap at both of us, but always just turned into an airball.  All the time my mother, riding shotgun and smoking her Chesterfields would simply say "you kids just settle down now".

Bless em.  I miss them both!

The Fifth of the Fifth of the Eleventh, the year of Emergence

A face book friend wrote a short story about her son who, as kids do, caused family turmoil with a skateboard injury.  My comment was that the Lord puts kids on this earth just to provide the parents with some stress and strain.  Sort of parental educational kind of thing.  A test.  In the long run, it's OK.  The growing process that is.  At least with my kids it turned out pretty darn well. 

But speaking of tests...........

My bird feeder is simply built as a trap to lure unsuspecting song birds within camera range so that I can make an image that, God forbid, someone wants to buy. 

 I sell photographs. 

 The good Lord also has a great sense of humor, unless you hadn't noticed.  This rodent, yep they are rodents right up there with mice and rats....don't let the bushy tail fool you, is one of about two hundred thousand or so that consume copious amounts of MY black oil sunflower seed on MY songbird lure.

The age old question is how to get rid of them.  Well, you don't.  They're just like kids in that respect. You have to deal with them in the hopes that they will become better squirrels and use somebody else's back yard feeder.  And when they become of age, you just have to hope that you implanted the right values in their little heads.

If that fails, let the border collie mix chase them.  But since she can't climb all she does is delay the inevitable. 

I'm thinking pepper spray.  But then would I do that to my own kids?  Probably not, but it might have  come to mind at times.

The base of the problem is that you people don't want to buy photos of squirrels.  If you did, I would have a million of em.  Yep, that's the basic problem.

The fourth of the fifth month of the year of Emergence

The second cup of Pikes Place Roast is starting to do it's caffeine thing.  I have been sitting in the pergola listening to God give nature a bath since somewhere around six o'clock.  Just amazing what a good rain and the lack of people will do for the thought process.  The border collie spaniel mix has been chasing thunder around the house since somewhere around three.  Or at least if feels as if it was that early when she started.  Seems to think that barking and running after it will somehow scare it away.  A year ago she actually got out of the house and spent two hours and Lord knows how many miles wearing herself out and me thin.  It took two weeks and a vets visit to cure her of the exhaustion and here she is ready to do it all again.

I guess her attitude towards storms is akin to mine towards the photography business.  It's almost innate, or at least something that has some mystical hold over my mental process.  I just have to have the ability to capture that sixtieth of a second of history as I saw it.  As if to say, "Hey, you didn't see it the way I did...so here take a look".  And for me it's then quickly on to the next.  When I sit back (like this morning)  to smell the roses and actually study what I did, well some of it's pretty good and others.....maybe not so much.  Either/or, it's what I do ----------- chasing thunder and barking about it.

The third day of the fifth month of Emergence

If you are new to the blog, and I hope some are, please go back to the first of January to understand the "Year of Emergence".

I am sorting some old slides and thought I would introduce you to a place called Tangier Island.  The Island is in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, just below Maryland's border which puts it in Virginia.  The only way to get to the island is by boat and the kids must take the mail boat each morning and afternoon just to get to and from school.  About a forty minute ride.

Right!  "When I was your age we had to walk three miles through snow, sleet, and rain....stop complaining".  Well, here they still do have to suffer the weather and rough water just to get to school.

It takes about as much time to do your algebra homework as it does to get from either Tangier or Smith Islands (in Maryland) to the mainland at Crisfield, Maryland.  Mail, kids, supplies and tourists alike ride this boat. The watermen's catch also gets to market on this boat.

Combine the watermen's twang of the south with a hint of Elizabethian english, and you pretty much get a snapshot of these folks.  Both islands were discovered by John Smith in 1608 and not a lot has changed since.  I say that with tongue in cheek because those folks still just live a simple life out there.  What cars there are on the islands are not even licensed, roads are narrow and some not even "black topped" but made of crushed oyster shell.

Fishing and some tourism are the only industries on the islands, and you can still get a fantastic seafood lunch in both places.  Incomes are basically derived from a life on the water, and crabbing seems to be the dominant income producer.

But as with most places ---- kids will be kids!  Remember riding your bikes side by side and holding hands?  Pure Americana!  And that's Main Street.

And simply put, that is Tangier and Smith Islands in the Chesapeake Bay.

The second edition of the second of the fifth month

I would be remiss if I did not mention the news of the day here.  A collaborative effort finally bore fruit for the United States.  A , no The worlds leading ideologue was taken from the planet in a military action undertaken by the best military in the world.  Congratulations are in order for a lot of people starting with those of the New York Fire and Police Departments, two US administrations, and a lot of different intel people.  Job well done folks!

Yes it took awhile.  But the message is clear.  Don't mess with Bubba or we'll kick your ass.  We are, after all, the United States of America.  And for 200 years we have shown the world what a free people, a solid constitutional government, and honest entrepreneurial work can do.

The second of of the fifth of the year of Emergence

A wonderful pair!

These guys made their nest in the rookery at the Alligator Farm in St. Augustine Florida.  Now they probably didn't know that the farm has been there for a hundred years, nor that it was in St. Augustine.  Nor were they looking for the fountain of youth or a beach upon which to lay out.  All they knew was that this was a pretty good place to build a nest along with hundreds of their closest relatives and friends.  A special place in April, May, and June.

The first day of the fifth month of the year of emergence

Things I miss!

Being on my boat on the Chesapeake and seeing the "Watermen" doing what they do best.  Fishing!  Here a waterman is fishing for oysters with a double Patent Tong.  He is using only one hence the list to starboard.  For the uninitiated that's the right.  Remember starboard has more letters than port, as does right to left.  Only way I can remember it.  These tongs are sunk into the bottom open, like salad tongs, then closed presumably around oysters which are then hoisted aboard and sorted.  Long hard work, but they are their own bosses!