go on Saturday and you can call it a date

a couple years ago I posted this about the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s annual nationwide bird count. it’s coming around again this weekend; this year it starts on Friday and goes through Monday (February 13-16).

it’s pretty straightforward and you can go to the website for answers to other questions. questions like: why count birds?

another answer to that why? comes recently from the Associated Press.



for those of us hurriedly skimming through blogs at work, trying to catch up and letting our “fingers do the walking,” the National Wildlife Federation has put together a very accessible little brief that tries to answer the larger, trickier question: “why care about birds?”
the report shies away from the well, they’re alive. like us. answer and goes for something they’re hoping we can better relate to: “birdwatching makes a significant contribution to Utah’s economy.” here's something your car dealer who moonlights at the state legislature might pause to consider, once his intern has highlighted it for him: “$237 million in 1996.” the remaining net value of Utah songbirds gets summed up more or less as, “boy, but they sure are handy as moth eaters and mascots.”

and if birds still don’t get our attention, there’s always climate change’s gadfly equivalent of al-Qaeda and the four horsemen of the apocalypse: Killer Bees!

related: all your fishbase are belong to EOL

crossroads w/ snow

a warning: this takes forever to load on Vimeo.

Martin Frobisher’s voyage to Baffin Island “for the finding of a passage to Cathay”

But when the people perceived our departure, with great tokens of affection they earnestly called us back again, following us almost to our boats: whereupon our general taking his master with him, who was best acquainted with their manners, went apart unto two of them, meaning, if they could lay sure hold upon them, forcibly to bring them aboard, with intent to bestow certain toys and apparel upon the one, and so to dismiss him with all arguments of courtesy, and retain the other for an interpreter.

The general and his master being met with their two companions together, after they had exchanged certain things the one with the other, one of the savages for lack of better merchandise cut off the tail of his coat (which is a chief ornament among them) and gave it to our general for a present. But he presently upon a watchword given with his master suddenly laid hold upon the two savages. But the ground underfoot being slippery with the snow on the side of the hill, their handfast failed, and their prey escaping ran away and lightly recovered their bows and arrows, which they had hid not far from them behind the rocks. And being only two savages in sight, they so fiercely, desperately, and with such fury assaulted and pursued our general and his master, being altogether unarmed, and not mistrusting their subtlety, that they chased them to their boats, and hurt the general in the buttock with an arrow, who the rather speedily fled back because they suspected a greater number behind the rocks.
…
But a servant of my Lord of Warwick, called Nicholas Conger, a good footman, and uncumbered with any furniture, having only a dagger at his back, overtook one of them, and being a Cornishman and a good wrestler, showed his companion such a Cornish trick that he made his sides ache against the ground for a month after. And being so stayed, he was taken alive and brought away, but the other escaped

-George Best, 1578

huzzah for sabotage! for the orphan sculptors! and a cowboy secretary!

a little follow up on our sabotage stories from a couple months ago.

in a nutshell:
Muntadhir al-Zaidi was "severely beaten" by security officers leaving a "large blood trail" where they then dragged him across the carpet. broken hand. broken ribs. internal bleeding. an eye injury. a limp. still in jail.

Tim DeChristopher may still also face federal prison but he does have a website. and in the meantime he’s been interviewing on a lot of local and national of TV and radio shows (including all things considered today). they’ve even done a shoot of dreamy, rustic press photos.

but what’s this about all those leases the BLM auctioned last December? canceled as of yesterday. interior secretary Ken Salazar’s got our backs this time. here he is addressing a bunch of Colorado hippies last summer.

and did you see this?! while some of us are just blogging comfortably by the south window, watching magpies and scrub jays, a tall glass of water at our left hand, others are taking to the streets, rolling up their sleeves and building big monuments. like the giant shoe sculpture that Laith al-Amiri and the orphaned children of Tikrit made in fiberglass, copper and concrete.

names for the baby

some possible candidates:

1. Boris Aurora Borealis Brooks
2. Judas Prescott Nixon Brooks
3. Neil Diamond Phillips Brooks
4. *Juanita/o Vanitas Brooks
5. Waltzing Pneumonia Brooks
6. Guano Bonanza Brooks
7. Kyle
9. Belvedere Wheelbrow Brooks
10. Calypso Fishkite Brooks
11. Yigüirro Arenal Brooks

*family name


of course, we're still open to suggestions...

palimpsest

The plodding lunar footprints left by all these geese

the shoeprints of a small child post-holing down and then up
over the rimed crust, onto which she stamps soft green goose turd

the affectionately parallel tracks of a couple quail across a backyard, intersected
by the bootprints of an adult male dragging a dead

Christmas tree to the woodpile

the scattered symmetry in the paths of juncos and mice around the compost pit

the theoretical footprints of a snow flea

the cuneiform runes pressed into muddy snowmelt by wild turkeys

the ecstatic scratches and departing wing sweeps left by crows
crowding over the gutpiles stiffening between auger holes on a frozen lake
and the ragged scouring of magpies on a deer carcass

keep a long cold library through January.

corrugated plastic birdhouse

here are some patterns from the EPA.


related posts:
where jettisonned turkey timers go to die
liberty OBO
invention as the mother of necessity

lion hunt

I don’t know whether it’s the economy or just a general lack of interest in things like crime scene Christmas trees and homemade fireworks, but fish without faces has marked a recent flagging trend in the comments department. so I'm forced to respond with a little sensationalism.

over the last several years I’ve met a few guys in town who, um, hunt mountain lions. I guess this can mean a lot of different things. for example if you want to shoot a cougar and all that you can put into a lottery, maybe get a tag, bring your hounds, bring your guns and so on. more people around here are into this than you might guess. a couple of my neighbors have their own dogs and, with or without tags and guns, will go out pretty regularly in the winter to track down and tree cougars and bobcats. there’s also a guy that goes by “Mad Dog” (seriously) who has a flooring store at the north end of town and a reputation of hassling cougars, pulling their tails and stuff.

anyway, so of course I’ve been really curious about all this for a while. I ended up asking a guy named Gary (not Mad Dog) if I could tag along sometime. yesterday morning Gary called to let me know they’d found some tracks in the new snow and I got out there (Pigeon Hollow) as soon as I could. after waiting around a little by the trucks and hounds for some logistics to get sorted, I climbed onto Gary’s snowmobile and rode “bitch” up to where we could begin tracking on foot.


how many hound dogs will fit into a 50 gallon plastic barrel? three, it turns out. that’s Mt. Nebo on the far horizon.


on the left: a cougar track and snow fleas. on the right: some bobcat tracks that Gary and Mark (Gary’s brother) also pointed out to me along the way. the cerberus on the end of Mark's leash are Bonnie and Diego. I should also say that the two photos below were taken on the way back. when the dogs are tracking they're way off the leash and miles ahead of any of us.

Gary and Mark are both turkey farmers, Sanpete natives and really nice guys. they talked with me about growing up tracking mountain lions, their observations on the behavior of cats and dogs, and how they both currently have sons who are on the wrestling team at the local high school. they also showed me the general area where the big herb farm was discovered this past fall.


ok, here's the juniper the dogs led us to.



and here's Mark climbing the tree. he has our attention.


this time around Gary and Mark weren't packing. after we got a good look and I shot some ok photos, the dogs were called off and the lion ran away. once we made it back to the snowmobiles I rode down again behind Gary, holding Diego over the saddle on my lap.

"I startled a mountain lion.
It turned from the road and was gone...

If anyone ever kills it,
he'll have taken more wild beauty than he can ever make.

He'll owe the universe a cougar,
and I hope in my too tame guts he has to pay."
-Rob Carney

"He yave not of the text a pulled hen,
that saith that hunters ben not holy men"
-Chaucer

orange peel flares

The Witness

In a stable lying almost in the shadow of the new stone church, a man with gray eyes and a gray beard, stretched on the ground amid the animal odors, meekly seeks death like someone seeking sleep. The day, faithful to vast secret laws, continuously displaces and confounds the shadows in the wretched stable. Outside stretch the tilled fields, a deep ditch filled up with dead leaves, and the tracks of a wolf in the black mud where the woods begin. The man sleeps and dreams, forgotten. The bells calling to prayer awake him. In the kingdom of England, the sound of the bells is already one of the customs of the afternoon, but the man, while still a boy, had seen the face of Woden, had seen holy dread and exultation, had seen the rude wooden idol weighed down with Roman coins and heavy vestments, seen the sacrifice of horses, dogs, and prisoners. Before dawn he would be dead and with him would die, never to return, the last firsthand images of the pagan rites. The world would be poorer when this Saxon was no more.

We may well be astonished by space-filling acts which come to an end when someone dies, and yet something, or an infinite number of things, die in each death—unless there is a universal memory, as the theosophists have conjectured. There was a day in time when the last eyes to see Christ were closed forever. The battle of Junín and the love of Helen died with the death of some one man. What will die with me when I die? What pathetic or frail form will the world lose? Perhaps the voice of Macedonio Fernández, the image of a horse in a vacant space at Serrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?

-Jorge Luis Borges, 1957
(Translated by Anthony Kerrigan)

luminaries

I ripped these off from Dave at Via Negativa, whose site you should check out today because his postcards from a conquistador are exquisite.

Nochebuena (Christmas Eve)

…
It is impossible, in these singular dates of martyrology, to not be moved by the Roman Pontiffs, last representatives of the heroic age. And if we compare a Leo, a Pius or a Benedict to the crises of our lives, there’s not agnosticism enough to repress a wave of sympathy for them. Under the goofy stare of Pope XIII’s, we open our own eyes to the blaze of the sun. The wide and rural forehead of Pope X oversaw our understanding of acrid forbidden fruits. And Pope XV, the ornithologist, with the doddering senility of his spectacle frames, weighs us down with black eventuality: that of the Pope of death. But our breath is stilled under him, or under his successor. We feel that his blessing falls on these December celebrations with the ominous sorrow of the year 1000, between the astrologers’ conical caps, the ethereal marvels, the leprosy, the bellicose hunger and the saffron manes of the Barbarians.

The Boy, sprout of Psalms and of Bathsheba -“she who was of Uriah”- lies in the stable like petal in wheat. His hand, barely reaching out, all the way from Bethlehem sweeps away the myths, both the subterranean and the celestial. Juno, who skated across the rainbow, is lost irreparably. The heart of councils and proconsuls is emptied of its cult, overcome by an incredulity that was, through nobility, certainly less obtuse than that of the subscribers to the “Red Library.” And our household Christianity, on the other hand, pales in comparison to the transmigrant instinct of the Magi.
…

-Ramón López Velarde, 1923

huzzah for sabotage!

well folks, I think at this point it's safe to say that December is shaping up to be a pretty spectacular month for monkeywrenching. a week ago the clattering of sabots was heard the world over when Muntadahr al-Zaidi pitched both his shoes at our own valedictorian in chief in the middle of a press conference.

Shoe 1: “This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, dog!"
Shoe 2: “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!”

I bet that by now everyone’s seen the footage, but just in case.

then, just this last Friday, Tim DeChristopher walked into a federal oil and gas lease auction in Salt Lake City and ordered the lobster. about $2 million worth. I won’t try to summarize the story beyond that. it’s just too beautiful so you’ll have to check out the Salt Lake Tribune, New York Times and KSL articles for more details (and video). also, see my brother’s blog for a nice catechism on the subject.

Al-Zaidi and De Christopher remind us of both the elegance and desperation that make for the finest acts of sabotage. now they’re going to need some pretty good lawyers. you can follow up with Tim and his progress in this direction over here at one Utah.

btw, here are some related sundries.

mercator projections

ATM

all twisted metal
and the money?
a thousand? more?

and then maintenance
arranges the most
absolute trade mark:

after that Monday
another tenant makes
a tattered memorial.

pinyon cones burning

related: January 2008

legs in a fence

related: 3 autumn landscapes

kids, screens, ARCADIA, IMMERSION

children photographed while playing video games
by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, 2000
part of the installation ARCADIA
...let’s see, 2000; that's like post Rygar-Lemmings, circa Doom-Grand Theft Auto? pretty good, right?

then, just recently the New York Times published this slide show of photos by Robbie Cooper.
and the youtube video is definitely worth seeing.

last month's article in the Telegraph is pretty good too. Sam Leith even makes a nice comparison to early silent reading, maybe a reference to St. Augustine’s shock upon walking in on St. Ambrose reading silently to himself. he also gets into Cooper’s set up, which is sort of borrowed from Errol Morris’s Interrotron technique.

here’s Robbie Cooper’s blog.

related posts: about toys, fire in the fish tank

thanks for:

the hard wind and rain that finally blew into town on All Souls Day, ripping through all the corrugated plastic campaign signs on the roadsides, throwing them into the streets and passing cars

the nopal cactus that the Palmerin family has been lovingly cultivating for us

eight years with my lady, for how well she cuts my hair, and how she tells me when I’m full of crap

the local Wal*Mart, for showing at least a simulacrum of conscience and foresight, now selling some reusable shopping bags, sweatshop t-shirts with trees printed on them, a Bill Nye “eco-logical” paper recycling kit, and for having recently painted the store façade a more fitting desert-storm tan

Obama – Biden

car passed inspection

the disgruntled employee of the Holliday Inn in Henderson NV, who, having caught wind of her immanent firing, stuck it to her bosses by booking my family with the super-discounted employee rate. so punk rock

my little girl, her developing talent of honking people’s noses, her excitement with ants, and how she broke into this last time the congregation sang “All Creatures of our God and King”

cheap rent on a warm duplex in November

acorn squash and black beans

how the animals get to the zoo: a book report

some. related. posts.
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this just in: Derek sent me some pages from a pretty ballistic little children's book which you can see over here - Do you know what I'm going to do next saturday? Well, sir...let me tell you!
I'm sure you'll agree it's a preferable alternative to renewing the elementary school library's subscription to Soldier of Fortune for next year.