Postcard of the Day
Apr. 20th, 2025 06:17 pm
Last night, a big gust of wind knocked the nest out of the tree at the National Conservation Training Center, which has given us eaglecam views of that nest, and ones before it, for years. This year we'd been amazed to have 3 eggs hatch, and 3 eaglets growing, and getting a lot of fish brought to them, and even while the NCTC and US Fish & Wildlife workers and institutions are threatened, there was this bit of hope, and joy, in those 3 babies.
One of the constancies of nature is, however, death, and all 3 baby eagles died from the 90' fall.
The NCTC folks left the bodies there long enough to be sure both eagle parents had seen. The parents are clearly stressed, they report, but alive and otherwise seem well.
It breaks my heart. As do the fans of the webcam are breaking my heart, in the chat at the eaglecam channel. Go there at your own risk.
But next year.... well, maybe there's next year. Usually there's next year, and for a long time now there's been next year.
In baseball they say "There's always next year," but it does depend on whether we take care of the game. Famously in the Star Trek future, baseball is no more.
For a lot of things, there's only next year if we make it happen.
Postcard of the Day
Apr. 11th, 2025 04:41 pmI didn't hide the recent scary clown card behind a cut, but I will do that with this oddly absurdly-comic--yet--disurbing one---an image of a sculpture by an artist called Cecil Wakefield of drunks carrying a drunk's coffin behind a preacher with an open book.
( Click at your own risk. )
( Click at your own risk. )
and the prophecy is again fulfilled
Apr. 9th, 2025 04:09 pmIt has snowed in April. They told me when I moved up here that it always done, and so far it always has done. For nigh on a full quarter century now.
LJ's notifications tell me now and then that a new achievement has been achieved by someone who's not been here in forever. Today![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shmuel reached a Blog's Birthday, as did lovelikeyeast the other day. It's like they're popping up to say hello, these fascinating folks I used to know, and have a vague idea of the broadest of circumstances of the lives of now.
Had my next-to-last swim class last night. Got really spent 3/4 of the way through. One of the teachers thought it could be as simple as my greater swimming ability being more work than I'm giving it credit for. I'm certainly in lousy aerobic shape, with the bad knees mucking up my main old exercise (walking)---that's part of why I'm trying to get good enough to swim-swim, as in laps. But it was frustrating, last night. Also felt like I had gas in the belly. Plus I hadn't slept well the night before, though, and it was a jam-packed and stressful work day. Then after swimming, wet head and no socks, I went and pumped gas for the car, and picked up some disappointing take-out, to cap off a day of not eating very well. And now I've just eaten popcorn for my first meal of today, as that's what my sorry self wanted, on this unexpected off-sick day.
Tomorrow's the day the gas line fixers are supposed to come, as another step (and I hope not too scarily expensive a one) in the never-ending washer & dryer saga. I comfort myself via the thought of my having taken this plunge before the tariffs got ahold of prices and the depression begins. Those f-ers in the House could stop this insanity, after the Senate managed to pass a bill to that effect, but they won't.
And here I stop myself from typing (more) words (than those in this sentence) about the Supreme Court and fear and a kind of deep aghastness that might rightly be said to approach horror at the uncertain prospects of laws being enforced when judgments go against the orange disaster.
I've impulsively bought more little things after my round of insurance claim replacements that I still haven't tested all of (fan and printer and DVD player still to go). Did install the VCR and test it on a cheap test tape (Disney animation from right before computer animation--- about a dog, called Balto), and am poised to watch the videocassette of the hard-to-see noir The Devil Thumbs a Ride. I want to see if a fellow copy ed and her hubby want to see it, but I don't know if they have a VCR, and my place needs some work to be guest-friendly again, plus I've got them on my mind right now for other reasons involving health.
I've also impulsively lined up some activities, despite looking forward to now longer having my swim class nights booked, and dreading going out in the cold to chorus practice pretty much every week. Never woulda thought I'd turn into someone who had to fight her hermit-a-tude actively, begrudingly, and only semi-successfully (and always a little ambivalently). Most of what I'm lining up is just for me, and that rather undercuts the part about being with fellows. Yet I will be with fellows, at a ball game, and at films---like this weekend's screening of Compensation (1999), which I'd never heard of, and it seems a lot of folks didn't, though all signs are that it's going to be gooooood. Just not with fellows, or a fellow, who's my fellow.
It's been so long since I've had the wonders of intimacy with a fellow who's, by default, going to give a go at being into what I'm into, or at least want to hear me tell of it, while I am doing the same for (let's face it) her. Oh, sure, it's possible with a him or a them, in theory. But it doesn't seem possible with anyone any more, and that's a kind of underlying elongated absence with no end in sight or imagination that makes the stresses of the likes of my day yesterday so tiny by comparison that it's wild I even noticed them.
LJ's notifications tell me now and then that a new achievement has been achieved by someone who's not been here in forever. Today
shmuel reached a Blog's Birthday, as did lovelikeyeast the other day. It's like they're popping up to say hello, these fascinating folks I used to know, and have a vague idea of the broadest of circumstances of the lives of now.Had my next-to-last swim class last night. Got really spent 3/4 of the way through. One of the teachers thought it could be as simple as my greater swimming ability being more work than I'm giving it credit for. I'm certainly in lousy aerobic shape, with the bad knees mucking up my main old exercise (walking)---that's part of why I'm trying to get good enough to swim-swim, as in laps. But it was frustrating, last night. Also felt like I had gas in the belly. Plus I hadn't slept well the night before, though, and it was a jam-packed and stressful work day. Then after swimming, wet head and no socks, I went and pumped gas for the car, and picked up some disappointing take-out, to cap off a day of not eating very well. And now I've just eaten popcorn for my first meal of today, as that's what my sorry self wanted, on this unexpected off-sick day.
Tomorrow's the day the gas line fixers are supposed to come, as another step (and I hope not too scarily expensive a one) in the never-ending washer & dryer saga. I comfort myself via the thought of my having taken this plunge before the tariffs got ahold of prices and the depression begins. Those f-ers in the House could stop this insanity, after the Senate managed to pass a bill to that effect, but they won't.
And here I stop myself from typing (more) words (than those in this sentence) about the Supreme Court and fear and a kind of deep aghastness that might rightly be said to approach horror at the uncertain prospects of laws being enforced when judgments go against the orange disaster.
I've impulsively bought more little things after my round of insurance claim replacements that I still haven't tested all of (fan and printer and DVD player still to go). Did install the VCR and test it on a cheap test tape (Disney animation from right before computer animation--- about a dog, called Balto), and am poised to watch the videocassette of the hard-to-see noir The Devil Thumbs a Ride. I want to see if a fellow copy ed and her hubby want to see it, but I don't know if they have a VCR, and my place needs some work to be guest-friendly again, plus I've got them on my mind right now for other reasons involving health.
I've also impulsively lined up some activities, despite looking forward to now longer having my swim class nights booked, and dreading going out in the cold to chorus practice pretty much every week. Never woulda thought I'd turn into someone who had to fight her hermit-a-tude actively, begrudingly, and only semi-successfully (and always a little ambivalently). Most of what I'm lining up is just for me, and that rather undercuts the part about being with fellows. Yet I will be with fellows, at a ball game, and at films---like this weekend's screening of Compensation (1999), which I'd never heard of, and it seems a lot of folks didn't, though all signs are that it's going to be gooooood. Just not with fellows, or a fellow, who's my fellow.
It's been so long since I've had the wonders of intimacy with a fellow who's, by default, going to give a go at being into what I'm into, or at least want to hear me tell of it, while I am doing the same for (let's face it) her. Oh, sure, it's possible with a him or a them, in theory. But it doesn't seem possible with anyone any more, and that's a kind of underlying elongated absence with no end in sight or imagination that makes the stresses of the likes of my day yesterday so tiny by comparison that it's wild I even noticed them.
