Moonlit Clouds

First Baptist Church Altar Window

Visual treat on Ninth Street, Wichita Falls, Texas.

Red-winged Blackbirds Singing

Fifty seconds of happy singing.

Neighborhood Red-tailed Hawk

Dissected Strix varia Pellet

        Undigested bones, fur . . . on my drive way. Eek.

     View short footage of a Barred owl eating . . .  from Mark Moran's website "Study of Northern Virginia Ecology" in which you may find other information about Barred owls, including their calls.

         In addition to the Barred owl, we now have a Red-tailed hawk.

Flying Around the Storms

Even in flight one's way home may seem a bit circuitous, rather than in the usual direct line.

Kingcade at the Kemp

      I view Gary Kingcade as the quintessentially altruistic spirit. Delaying his own work in art for forty years, Gary taught high school children how to create. Now retired, he discusses that a singular influence in his life has come during his intercontinental motorcycle rides. Spotting memorials along the highways or along the bottom of canyons, he stops his bike to study them, then allows the experience to assimilate inside him to later emerge as an image on his canvas. "Empty your cup," he says. "Listen to your paintings . . . The good comes out when I listen to my paintings." 

      "Thoughts I had about how things should be done," he said, "I threw those out the window." Kingcade indicated that once he allowed a painting to emerge on its own, he became "a vehicle" to create it. He said that as an artist he "was not the driver." The new techniques that he began to practice excited him, and art became -- not hard anymore -- fun. "I had fun. It just happened. I thought art was hard. It's fun." I think that he experienced his recent epiphany thanks to the freedom of thought and preoccupation from his job as teacher, enhanced by the motorcycle rides.

        Of the acrylic work shown above, Kingcade described the technique to achieve the effect on the canvas: he applied paint, and then covered it with plastic, scrunched it up, and allowed it to dry. "I was tempted to lick the canvas to see if it tasted as good as it looked." 

Dust in the Wind, acrylic.

        Above, I show Kingcade's foray into the juxtaposition of the painted image and structural architecture from the "Yard Gods and Guard Dogs" series, Sentinel, acrylic, wood, antler, metal, string, feathers, and ribbons upon which visitors feel welcome to write their names and well-wishes.

To Scare the Crows, Yard Gods and Guard Dogs series, acrylic on canvas held on the wall by antlers.

Top, 40 Miles to Green River - East, acrylic, four feet long; left, Waterslide, watercolor; and at right, Kaleidoscape, watercolor.

40 Miles to Green River - West, acrylic, six feet long.

Gary Kingcade, at the Kemp Center until mid-March, 2012.

Perfect Practice Makes Perfect

         Patrol officers practice motorcycle skills and thus remain efficient and safe. Watch out you speed demons!

Barred Owl Art

      I have a Barred Owl Jackson Pollock living in my tree. 

Barred Owl feces on my driveway.

Poetry: My Own Ideal City

      I love reading Erika Meitner's "Ideal Cities." I read it again and again. Reading it helps me focus on the humanity and easily dismiss the concrete, the dirt, the pollution, the disease, and the crime. Its sweetness comes to fruition at the end, leaving me with feelings of hope. In her honor I write my own "Ideal Cities." Unsurprisingly, my version includes birds. I'm hopeless that way. Enjoy writing your own poem or prose about your version of an ideal city.

My Own Ideal City

No city is a panacea but ideal cities
will have parks where yellow-headed
blackbirds amble back and forth
in front of a webcam triggering
images for children to see on monitors.
Ideal cities will allow the last of
the katana winds to blow someone's
hat off his head and down the street
where a homeless man will scoop it up
and wear it to warm his head when
the snows fall. Ideal cities foster
mice which kittens leave on
your doorstep as gifts. Neighbors
in ideal cities will listen to a
jazz aficionado play his clarinet
off-tune and they will stomp
their feet to his beat and someone
will sing that his wife left him
but could she bring the dog back?
Ideal cities will have large trees
at each corner where children's kites
get caught and then get shredded
by peregrine falcons to build their nests.

Poetry: The Day after the Tornado

The Day after the Tornado

Walking along the wheat fields
I was checking on the cows and the fences
when along the creek I heard a whimper

A mound of soft silky mud
moved
as the small dog underneath it
rose on his shaking legs

his ears drooped
from the weight of mud and his dismal luck
his back arched and shivered
his eyes locked on to mine
as if asking one of two questions --
Will you help me?
or
Will you hurt me?

I scooped him up in my arms

I phoned John once I climbed into the truck
Would  you warm some milk on the stove
for the puppy I'm bringing home? The tornado
must have blown him across the Southwest.

At home the dog drank warm milk,
We washed him up and patched him up
and concluded he was a spaniel breed
of some sort, any sort, his ears lay back
this time in a sign of contentment

That was seven years ago and no telling how old he really is
the small dog I found along the creek the day after the tornado
his ears are now grey, and his muzzle is now grey, and his legs
don't shake anymore for all the running he does chasing
and capturing squirrels and birds -- just for the fun of it
and for all the swimming he does in the creek -- just for the fun of it
and for all the jumping into our arms when the winds pick up.

Prose: Address to My Triplet Sister

Dear Sis,
    I write to say that deep down inside you reflect the good habits of a good person. Never mind that they don’t show, that you don’t let them show. I see them. Our sister seems them. Everyone sees them. Your altruism, your generosity, all that time you spend with the kids from the eastside Y teaching them how to cook fresh foods and taking them to the farmer’s market every Thursday. Everyone sees your goodness even though you don’t tell anyone about what you do. And that’s why you can get away with everything. Sweet people get away with things. Especially pretty ones like you.
    When was the last time you sat back and took three deep breaths. I know you are patient enough to do that because you are patient enough to wait for a Prairie dog to stick his head out his mound. She’s just sick about you shooting those doggone Prairie dogs. You ought to be more discreet about it, like move your hunting stand away from the town and pick up your empty shells. Whatever she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
    People who love you walk beside you. Wasn’t it Hazlitt who originated that? I’m trying to say that she loves you and lets you get away with the hunting. Think of that every time you do something dunderheaded like shoot those prairie town rats she takes the grandkids to watch.
    You will have to slow down in your middle age. You still look foxy – the three of us do – but your tomboyish lifestyle is going to catch up with you. And I think you’ve shot enough Prairie dogs. And after shooting bobcats and antelope and all those exotics in Africa, what is it that you see in Prairie dogs?

Waving at Jet Fighter as We Fly By

        A T-38 Talon on hold while MyMrMallory lands my plane on runway. 

        While the jetfighters consume eight hundred pounds of fuel per engine per hour, I feel embarrassed to make him wait for my little airplane to land!

        A poem written by Buck Wyndham, Pulling Closed, describes the incomparable feelings jetfighters experience when they fly. Wyndham also describes, as beautifully in prose as he does in poetry, some of the details of the Talon.

Green Bugged Flight

      The sky looked as shown below when MyMrMallory and I took off in the Scissortail. I wanted to practice my landings and he wanted to practice ILS approaches, all accomplished beautifully, I say modestly.
       Then we discovered the hemocyanin spots on the windshield. In other words, bug splotches. The greenbugs have returned. We fly over wheat fields, and during this time of year aphids (of the order Homoptera) appear en masse to chomp away (with the cows) at the delish wheat. Greenbugs can become a bane on cattle ranchers and farmers, and the cows might have a thing or two to say about having to share so much of their wheat, for as the greenbugs eat, they expel a toxin into the leaves that eventually kills the wheat.
       And so, after the flight, we spent a long time scrubbing my green-splodged wings and cowling, but we did not mind it at all, not in the way a cow would mind, for we had experienced the opportunity to fly.
     

The old tree near the one-hundred year old barn.

Greenbugs.

The Marvel that is Duckie

      Cherie McBride paints in a way that indicates she seems to sense the "character" of each bird.

Squirrels in Residence

Here he is later this afternoon, tucking himself into his bed early.

      A long time ago I placed a box up in a tree. This winter, a squirrel has taken residence in it. I took the image below during the rain showers last night. The lights at the foot of the tree illuminate the box and the little squirrel's head as he rests his chin on his doorway. One cannot see inside the box, but he has a guest inside with him. Another squirrel squeezed himself inside in the late afternoon.

A couple of squirrels slept inside a nest-box during the rain storm last night.

Snowy Owls Now

       Interesting article in the New York Times about the recent irruption of Snowy Owls titled Bird-watchers Revel in Unusual Spike in Snowy Owl Sightings.

Photograph by David Patton from the Albany Democrat-Herald and published with the article in the link above.

Anticipating Waxwings

        Below I show a photograph that I took on February 13th, 2009, at Wild Bird Rescue. I've noticed that the Holly trees around town, and mine, too, droop with branches loaded with berries. Last week, while walking with MyMrMallory, we saw a group of them at nearby Lucy Park. I hope they arrive at my house soon.

Dogs Birdwatching on Eighty-two

       Accompanied by longtime BFFs Hodge and Portside, we spotted fabulous birds this morning while driving along highways 82 and 1180. Among them, Loggerhead Shrike, American Kestrel, Sandhill Cranes (overhead), Tundra Swans (on Mr. Baush's field), Greater White-fronted Geese, Ring-necked Ducks, Lesser Yellowlegs, Killdeer, Burrowing Owl, and huge numbers of White-capped Sparrows.
       At my feeders I saw a larger number of Red-winged Blackbirds, and nary a White-winted Dove. Other birds at my feeders were goldfinches, sparrows, House finches, Inca Doves, and Blue Jays.

Thirsty, Hungry Birds in Winter

Female House sparrows splash in the bird bath. 

Goldfinches at breakfast.