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WaterGirl

You are here: Home / Archives for WaterGirl

On The Road – Albatrossity – Yucatan #1

by WaterGirl|  February 22, 20215:00 am| 46 Comments

This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging

On the Road: Week of Feb 22  (5 am)
Albatrossity – Yucatan #1
Gin & Tonic – Stockholm #2
🐾BillinGlendaleCA – Forget about it Jake, it’s Chinatown
way2blue – Agrigento / Villa Romana Del Casale, Sicily
ChasM – In The USSR #2

🌺  And now, back to Albatrossity!  

Albatrossity

In 2011 Elizabeth was working on a book that combined her interests in landscapes, archaeo-astronomy, and time. The book was to be published in 2012, just before the end of the world event that was allegedly predicted by the Mayan calendar. So naturally she wanted to go to see Mayan cities and observatories, to put the final touches on the book. We found a perfect tour, visiting various Mayan sites in Yucatan, and convinced my brother and sister-in-law to join us for the spring equinox in the land of the Mayans.

Some weeks before the trip, the US State Department issued a travel alert for US citizens traveling to Mexico, based primarily on an uptick in drug-trafficking violence near the US-Mexico border. As you probably know, that is nowhere near Yucatan, but nonetheless most of our tour group dropped out of the trip. We looked at a map and decided that was silly, so we kept to our plans.

When we got to Cancun, where the trip was to begin, we found out that only four of us, along with two other members (a retired 82-yr old woman from Boulder, and a 40ish advertising executive from Atlanta) were still on the tour. Our 14-person group was reduced to 6, plus the tour guide (an American archaeologist based at Tikal, in Guatemala). It was wonderful to be able to explore these sites with a small group, and to spread out in the buses which were designed for more people. So here are some images from that time, when travel was possible and the sun was shining.

On The Road – Albatrossity – Yucatan #1Post + Comments (46)

On The Road - Albatrossity - Yucatan #1 9
CancunMarch 18, 2011

Our flight into Cancun landed in the evening, and we went straight to the hotel, which was on the beach. We didn’t see much of it that evening, but the next morning we watched a beautiful sunrise while strolling on the beach and watching the frigatebirds wheel overhead.

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Cancel Culture

by WaterGirl|  February 21, 20216:00 pm| 254 Comments

This post is in: Guest Posts, Medium Cool with BGinCHI, Popular Culture, Culture as a Hedge Against This Soul-Sucking Political Miasma We're Living In

In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in.

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Cancel Culture

Each week, WaterGirl and I sift through the hundreds of cards & letters we get from people all over the world. In this week’s mailbag we were fortunate to spot citizen dave’s suggestion that we do a post on so-called cancel culture that coincides with the premier of the HBO documentary “Allen vs. Farrow“.

As citizen dave points out, the definition of cancel culture is: “Cancel culture (or call-out culture) is a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – either online on social media, in the real world, or both.”

Dave suggests that in this week’s Medium Cool, we (paraphrasing him) discuss how a revelation about an artist caused you to reassess or stop enjoying their work. Feel free also to critique “cancel culture” as an idea.

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Cancel CulturePost + Comments (254)

Open Thread: Spring Fever

by WaterGirl|  February 21, 20214:07 pm| 94 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

After two and a half weeks of zero (insert “degree” here) weather, we are finally going to reach 37 degrees today.  How quickly we bounce back – I am looking at the flower and vegetable catalogs today and thinking about Spring.

For me, Spring means gardening and flowers and vegetables.  How about you guys?

Totally open thread.

Open Thread: Spring FeverPost + Comments (94)

NPR: How To Sign Up for the Covid Vaccine In Your State

by WaterGirl|  February 20, 20212:00 am| 26 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

Brachiator posted this in the comments of a dead thread, and I thought it should be seen more widely.

How to sign up for the Covid vaccine in your state.

Open thread.

NPR: How To Sign Up for the Covid Vaccine In Your StatePost + Comments (26)

Guest Post: Albatrossity – From the Heart(land)

by WaterGirl|  February 19, 20218:00 pm| 51 Comments

This post is in: Guest Posts, Open Threads

A thoughtful essay from Albatrossity.

It’s sometimes hard to process our relationships with the natural world, and I was reminded of that, brutally, this week. The midsection of the continent has endured an intrusion of Arctic temperatures when the polar vortex weakened and then herniated. Here in my part of Flyover Country we had a week and a half of intermittent snow showers, steadily dropping temperatures, and cloud cover that eliminated our normal solar daytime heating cycle. We watched the thermometer as if it were an oracle, and it emitted increasingly ominous pronouncements.

All through the week the overnight lows crept ever lower, and the daytime highs never really lived up to that name. The birds in the neighborhood responded, as they usually do, by ramping up their feeding and foraging activities all week long. Seed-eating birds were happy to find the feeders, stocked with sunflower seeds and dried berries. Our five winter-resident woodpeckers gobbled down the suet. And the acres of buckbrush, cedar, and honeysuckle behind the house set the table for the frugivorous waxwings and thrushes.

We have a heated bird bath on the back deck that hosted ever-increasing flocks of robins and waxwings, as well as the occasional Hermit Thrush and Eastern Bluebird. Their honeysuckle-heavy diet was glaringly obvious, as piles of orange poo accumulated in rings around the water tub. We added a second water bowl; it immediately attracted customers and its own ring of poo.

Guest Post: Albatrossity – from the Heart(land)
Cedar Wawings (and one American Robin) mobbing the birdbath

For all the winters that we have lived in this house, we have had Hermit Thrushes as fellow travelers. We see them early in the morning at the bird bath, sporadically through the day, and at night occasionally spot one heading down below the deck, where we suspected it might be roosting in that relatively warmer microclimate. This year we had at least three, one with very dark breast spots and two with lighter spots. All three were frequent visitors at the bird bath, even scrapping with the much bigger robins for a space at the trough, as the week went on and the temperatures became more frightful. We hoped that they were getting enough to eat; we could provide water, but they were skeptical about the raisins and other dried fruit bits we put out for them. So the food they found on their own was the food they depended on.

Guest Post: Albatrossity – from the Heart(land) 1
Hermit thrush defending its space in the bird bath

The night of February 14-15 was the killer. On the deck our thermometer registered -14 F; the official temperature at the local airport about 4 miles away was -21 F. Dawn came, and I saw a couple of robins and one of the light-spotted Hermit Thrushes already at the bird bath, not drinking but simply warming up in that micro-space that was not -20. I was hopeful that they had made it through, and the forecast said that warmer temperatures were on the way.

But the day went on, and the numbers of robins dropped to 2 or 3 at a time (compared to 20 or 30 the day before), and no more Hermit Thrushes were to be seen. Same for the next day. They might have moved on (but to where?), and that is the story I kept telling myself.

Today, with outside temps in the mid-20s (double digits above zero!), Elizabeth investigated under the deck. The worst fears proved true. Huddled in dry leaves, against the side of the house, was a Hermit Thrush. It was the dark-spotted one, who had arrived in mid-November and cheered us nearly daily. Cold, stiff, and nearly weightless; it was feathers, skin, and bone but not much else.

Guest Post: Albatrossity – from the Heart(land) 2
Hermit Thrush, three days before the killing cold.

This killing weather doubtless took many birds, and this was just one. But it was personal, and I felt it more keenly because of that. But I also understood, at a level slightly removed from the gut-wrenching sight of that pitiful carcass, that our fellow travelers on this planet are paying a very high price because of us. Our usurpation of spaces and resources makes it ever more difficult for other species to find space and resources. Despite all we tried to do to help this creature, and others like it, we (all of us) killed it.

Most of us have precious few tangible, emotional connections to the world around us these days, even though we depend on that world. The planet that provides food, water, shelter, and space to our fellow travelers does the same for us, but we’d rather not think about it too much. We’d prefer to think that we are special. Moments like this, where that dependence is intellectually and emotionally in-your-face obvious, are increasingly rare, and perhaps that makes them increasingly painful. This hurt.

One bird. What difference does that make?

A world of difference.

 

Guest Post: Albatrossity – From the Heart(land)Post + Comments (51)

First It Was Wildfires, Now Ice: Texas Check-in

by WaterGirl|  February 19, 202110:23 am| 106 Comments

This post is in: Balloon Juice

When the wildfires were raging in the west, we had posts where BJ peeps could check-in and let us know how they were doing and what it was like on the ground.

We have lots of Texas peeps on BJ, and even if you’re not in Texas, many of us have family and friends there.  Please use this thread to let us know how it’s going for you and people you care about in Texas.  This way we can keep up with how you guys are doing without having to catch any particular BJ thread.

Also, if you are aware of any resources for folks in Texas, please share those in the comments.

As always in terrible times, look for the helpers.

THANK YOU to all who are making calls with us to people across the state of Texas, connecting them with warming centers, shelter, food and water. We’ve just opened another shift starting at 3pm CST, please join us: https://t.co/dEaTI6YxR3

— Beto O’Rourke (@BetoORourke) February 18, 2021

Update from last night:

First It Was Fires, Now Ice: Texas Check-in

First It Was Wildfires, Now Ice: Texas Check-inPost + Comments (106)

On The Road – TheOtherHank – Raptors

by WaterGirl|  February 19, 20215:00 am| 30 Comments

This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging

TheOtherHank

I’m no Albatrossity, but from time to time birds pass in front of my camera. I scrolled through my library had found enough for a couple submissions. This first set is of raptors I have managed to photographs

On The Road – TheOtherHank – RaptorsPost + Comments (30)

On The Road - TheOtherHank - Raptors 6
Pacifica, CA

My two boys played their share of youth sports. Sitting next to a baseball diamond or swimming pool watching them play was a good opportunity to see soaring birds. This, according to the Albatrossity rule that it’s always a redtailed hawk, is a redtail that was flying around over a little league baseball game.

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