REBELLION IN AMERICA

natural man

Kathmandu fell apart, Everest avalanched, cops at war with young black people in Baltimore, Crips and Bloods united in Baltimore to protect black people from the cops. Al Sharpton is going to Baltimore, following the cameras again. At least he has a new hairdo. Follow the news and see shameless people of every variety. Put a camera in front of somebody's face and they'll say anything you want. Seems like it would be a more certain way to get information from detainees than torture. Just aim a camera at them and they'll tell it all. Maybe this only applies to Americans. I'm glad to see rebellion against police brutality by the people the cops are most brutal toward. No matter how much it's justified, American police kill more people than anywhere in the world such that it's beyond shameless. Executioners. Maybe they like this word better than murderers. It looks more every year, and escalating fast, like the American police are at war with the American people. It's been growing since Nixon times "law and order." Next, "war on drugs." I saw something about a cop demanding respect and laughed. Took me way back to childhood, daddy demanding respect. I'd think, show me something I can respect. Didn't dare say it. Saying I'm glad to see the rebellion, I don't mean I'm glad to see the cops rally to an opportunity to beat up and torment young black guys in the zoo. I'm glad to see years of unspoken racial tension come to the surface, racism come forward and be proud. Only on the surface can social or personal issues be settled. It looks like American racism is having its day. The white robes are back, though this time they're blue. 

dogwood

The nature of the police state is racist, so racism is the nature of the police state. White people who still believe we have a democracy are freaking out over the people-of-color population now being 50/50 with whites. From here on, people of color outnumber whites. Democracy was shut down in the South after emancipation; the black people outnumbered the whites. Now, False News buffoon, Ann Coulter, mummy of an old belief system, is calling for literacy tests again for voting. Like voting matters. I have a hard time taking any of it seriously. Manipulation by corporate propaganda through television, by corporate control through legislation and the courts, including the supreme court, is how we live in America now. The land where money has been worshipped from the beginning is now ruled by money for money's interest only. Citizens are now enemies of the state, especially the poor. Fema has empty concentration camps all over the country. They are waiting for social conflict the manipulators know will be created in the near future. The police state is characterized by a dismissive arrogance toward the people, as illustrated by the governors in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, Florida and Kansas, to name a few, the entire US Congress, Senate, and the White House. Mammon does not like democracy. Mammon likes police state. Fascists always destroy their own countries. The fall of America is wrapped inside its fascist takeover. Like the old apocaloptimist said, It's gonna get worse before it gets better. The rest of the world will roar with sighs of relief.

bag lady rest area

I cannot offer a solution to what I see, except the momentum must play itself out. It will play itself out and I will stay out of it the best I can. Can't stay out of the economic collapse and can't stay out of manipulated social attitudes. I can be aware, however, of the manipulation enough to recognize it and bypass its influence. My closest friends pay no attention to news, government or history. I applaud them and never encourage them to give current events any mind. The only thing I have to say to them that I feel valid is get out of debt as fast as rationally possible. I tell Justin when hard times are here, you will be all right--you're able to make it without a steady job, by taking whatever job comes up, like house painting, carpentry, auto repair, hunting and much else. You will be helping people who cannot help themselves, the people who have only money, devoid of inner resources. They'll be paying you. Your role, because you have inner resources, will be helping others. Just don't let discouragement take you over. Hard times have a way of ending. Even the Civil War came to an end, whether yankees believe it or not. Younger, I wanted to get involved in social movements, be a part of the change toward democracy, but learned in 1968 the press was complicit with the corporate coup of five years before. The manipulators own the television networks and the press. They rule. Best for me to stay home and not get beat up and tormented by cops or killed without recourse for nothing. Better to stay at home, read a biography of Van Gogh and listen to recordings of Tibetan monks singing.

bridge and shadow

I'll give carrots to donkeys, hold my cat friend, Caterpillar, give sunflower seeds to birds, be a communal food kitchen for my near neighbors. If they eat anything in the christmas tree fields two-thirds of the way around the house and donkey meadow, they die. I suppose that if I give them plenty of what they like, they won't need to explore into the christmas tree fields for something to eat. Keep them close to the woods across the road where they live, away from the bugs coated with herbicides etc that have already killed everything that lives in the water. The world I live in is physical, emotional, mental and spiritual poison. I have no choice but live in it, but I don't have to be of it. Like in childhood under arational control, I'd think, You can control my body, but you can't do shit with my mind. My mind is my own. Of course, quite a lot of warping of the mind occurred that I've spent the rest of my life recovering from and reparenting. My search for innermost self, who I really am, is my spiritual path. I found an affordable (then) little hermitage on a back road to walk my path. I'm here for my own spiritual reasons, none of them social. I like to contribute to my community, though only in meaningful ways with purpose, not the frivolous. Justin told me recently when he was in high school he told his buddies to stay away from that old man on the mountain--he'll shoot your ass--he don't care. He said he did it because he knew them and wanted them to leave me alone. I treat others right, don't draw attention to self. A few days ago I was buying a pack of white paper for the printer at a new corporate store in town, the only place it's available. At the counter I was asked if I had my card. If so, I don't know. Was told to punch my phone number into a key pad. I asked, Why? To see if you have a card. I said, "I don't care. I just want to buy this." She looked at me like she couldn't believe somebody would refuse a three cent discount, if any. I said, "I am not of this world." It actually flowed out of my mouth without thought. There it was. She let it go and rang up the sale.

rock face

photos by tj worthington

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MY LIFE IN THE THRILL KILL WORLD

donkey jen

It is a moderate time of winter this week. A few days of sunlight and cold. The sun makes the cold feel better than cold under dark clouds. By chance, I saw a weather report for the next week. It looks like every day above freezing and every night below freezing. It's not bad. The floor is not quite so cold. After maybe four winters with two bird feeders, the bird community has worked out a flow that works for all concerned. Blue jays, one black and white woodpecker with red on top of its head, and other big birds go to one feeder. Chickadees dart in for a seed between the big birds. Snowbirds, nuthatches, chickadees, the smaller birds use the other feeder. Cardinals go to both. The birds have an understanding among themselves, something like the way animals of the African plain gather around a watering hole in peace. The family of red squirrels that live in the pines around the house use the feeder the small birds go to. Gray squirrels from the trees across the road use the one the big birds go to. The squirrels don't take everything. They eat what they want and go on. I throw seeds on the ground for the squirrels so they won't go to the feeders so much. They're not a problem, but the birds have to wait when a squirrel is at the feeder. I see the birds in peace with each other, the whole variety of birds, big to small. The blue jays are not aggressive with the smaller birds. They wait their turn when another bird is at the feeder. They perch on the rhododendron branches waiting for next opening. They live in peace. The feeders are the communal station for nearby birds. The hawks know the feeders are here. Among the tree limbs and rhododendron is not an easy place for a hawk to maneuver. They wait outside the grove of trees to nail birds coming and going. I suspect one is living in a grove of white pines up the hill behind the house. I hear it from time to time. I've seen a sparrow hawk fly in here, but it didn't do any good. The birds scattered. The hawk had no reason to wait, perched on the bird feeder, and flew. 

donkey jack

At first, I didn't like the idea of the hawks invading my bird sanctuary. It wasn't long before I caught on. The feeding station is here to feed hawks too. They're birds, they live here, it's communal, they're welcome. They're part of the balance. I once saw a Cooper's hawk land just beyond the window, a big bird with impressive wingspan. It looked in the window, saw me and flew. A red tail lives nearby. I see it sometimes sit on a wire or sail by. It is Justin's hunting buddy. When he was using his tree stand, he said the red tail would fly up and perch on a branch uncannily close to him. Soon after, a deer would appear. He learned the hawk knew he was hunting. The boom of the rifle did not make the bird fly. It stayed in place, just a few feet away. The hawk knew Justin was a predator too, who went after the big animals the hawk couldn't handle. The hawk knows Justin's truck. I think of the thousands of years the Indians lived in peace with mountain lions, rattlesnakes, bears, wolves. Europeans discovered the world was round and went looking for gold. The age of discovery on one hand---the age of genocide on the other. They not only annihilated Indian civilization on two continents, but killed about everything else too. Killing became American tradition unto an attitude pervasive all my life I trained self away from: if it's living, kill it. Buffalo Bill's genocide of the plains buffalo made his name, got him fame and fortune, ostensibly to starve the Indians into submission. Someone I know heard something on the deck in the night. It was a possum. He went and got his gun and shot it. And I say within, Wha? I wanted to say, It was only passing through. He knew. Something to kill. Easy target. Hear the gun go boom. Nailed the sucker. Good shot. By this time in the life, I have emotional, as well as physical, reactions I suppress from view hearing somebody tell about killing something. I'm not a good actor.

donkeys and their shadows

I've noticed my hunting friends like to watch my face while they tell me about a kill. I do my best to keep a poker face, which gives me away. I've heard some stories that make me want to cry. The hardest time I had keeping reaction from showing in my face was the time my friend Jr told me about shooting a hoot-owl out of a tree at a hundred yards, watching my face to see me hold it. One of the great ironies of my life came the night of the morning Jr left the body. Parking at home, when I opened the car door to get out, I heard a hoot-owl in a tree so close my first thought was, why didn't you fly when the car drove up? Next thought, It's Jr telling me he's all right, saying hi and thank you. I wondered why he chose an owl to speak through. At the house I looked up owl in Jamie Sams' book, Medicine Cards. I already knew the wisdom part, but wanted to see what else the book had to say. Owl fit Jr. He was the one I call the only man I've known all along the way who had true wisdom. I found the owl is also the deceiver. It flies on silent feathers and sees the unknown. Both these aspects of owl point particularly at Jr. I was not the only one who knew him to see the deceiver, but knew I was the only one to see his wisdom. I mentioned to two of his friends of many years, separately, a few weeks after he'd been gone, "Jr was the only man I've ever known I'd say without hesitation had wisdom, the real deal." I knew neither one would allow him wiser than themselves. Also knew neither one would see wisdom in him or anywhere else. It's a bible word with no meaning in the now, like prophet or king. It's not a word you hear much on tv. Both men without much school education, though both with PhDs and post-docs in experience, answered after a pause of a few seconds in the same words, "Jr did have some wisdom about him." I took it for affirmative, knowing neither one had seen wisdom in Jr, consciously, and knew both had seen it unconsciously. I wanted to bring it into their consideration to add a new dimension to their memory of Jr.

found on a maple

I personally do not like guns, though had two that were given to me, didn't want either one. After several years of catching dust, I gave them away to get them out of the house. I'm of the belief that guns attract guns. I also believe I'd rather be killed than kill, though haven't had a chance to test it and don't want the chance. I do not believe I'm safer with a gun. A possum wants to sleep under the house, you're welcome. A coon wants to eat leftovers at a bird feeder in the night, you, too, are welcome. It's communal. Coyotes come around in the night, I don't need to kill them. I step outside and yell big and loud, GIT. The giant's left his barn. The coyotes leave. My reputation as a human precedes me. Everything is afraid of humans. The animals left in the wild tell their babies the humans can kill you just by seeing you, they go boom and you're dead. A wild animal weaned by its mother cannot be tamed. A wild animal brought up from birth by humans is easily tamed; it hasn't been trained by mother who knows to avoid humans, rule number one in the wild. They'll kill you just for living. American cops kill three people a day, one of them an unarmed black man, woman or child. It's not safe to be a human in America either. Then we have the homicides and all the other -cides. My way in this world is to go in peace. Merely having a gun in my mind is not peace. Some friends taught me to fill half gallon plastic fruit juice jugs with water and blow them away. I had a .45 that shot magnum hollow points. I went out one day and blew holes in a few. Never touched it again. Hot dang, blew up a plastic bottle. I liked the balance of the weight in my hand. I liked the feeling of power when it went boom. OK, I experienced it, now what? I'm suspicious of "power" so readily available. As for the balance, a brush feels better in my hand. I'm of the belief that guns, like money, create more problems than they solve. A gun is an instrument of hate. I don't trust hate either.    

yard art

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A PEACEABLE KINGDOM

gray squirrel

Feeling good today, sun is out, a little wind, temperature 60, a nice spring day, birds singing. Feeling good on the inside such that it's not swayed by what is outside. If it were rainy and cold, I'd still be feeling good. When it's cold, I like to take a nap this time of day. The fresh leaves, the birds passing through on their way north for the summer, the air outside the windows visible in the small oak leaves wiggling, and behind them the rhododendron branches moving up and down, leaves in motion reflecting evening sunlight in sparkles of white light dancing on the green. A bluejay stands on one of the branches pecking at a sunflower seed to open it for the meat inside. Some of the chickadees and snowbirds have stopped flying away when I open the door. A few of the chickadees will stand on a branch in the rhododendron just a few feet away to watch me put seeds in the feeder. They greet me with their clicking sound. The squirrels don't run far when I go outside anymore. They used to fly up a tree like the giant that lives in the shack was going to puff up like Godzilla and snatch them with dragon teeth, swallow them in one gulp. By now they see the giant is about feeding them. They hop to a nearby tree and hide from me on the other side of the trunk, or go to a branch not too high and watch the giant serve their daily seeds.

Two kinds of squirrels dine here, gray and red. The reds are pine squirrels that live in the white pines around the house, this area their territory. A gray is close to the window foraging through the pine needles on the ground, staying behind greenery aware the giant is inside the window. It keeps an eye on me from time to time to see if I'm still in place. The giant watches the squirrel with the same thrill upper-middle class Americans get on a camera safari in the Serengeti to see lions and rhinos, leopards, herds of antelope from a cage on wheels driven by a local man armed with stopping power. I don't care that my squirrels and birds are not exotic. They are living beings same as the exotic varieties. They are the untamed people in my world. Watching a squirrel play chase with its friend, I am watching the spirit of life in squirrel form, not far from a monkey form. They have hands they hold things with, all four feet are hands. They have claws to help them climb. I've seen squirrels leap from one tree to another, jumping from almost a twig at the extremity of one tree and sail through the air straight up like standing, all four feet forward and open to grab the small limb at the extremity of the next tree. I've seen them run through the canopy in the forest from tree to tree as freely as on the ground, better. The ground has leaves and sticks, rocks, logs. Up there in the trees a squirrel can get around pretty good.

 

In my adult life I have focused a great deal of attention on seeing the consciousness in the non-speaking animal world where I live. I learned first hand from living with dogs and cats, finding that I can know the "person" there, the consciousness, the mind. They have all the mind we have except for the forebrain activities where the capacity for reason is located. The four-leggeds are only one leap in consciousness from my consciousness. In the time of taking care of my neighbor and friend in the time of leaving the body, I discovered when his mind went away (dementia), I could communicate with him same as before, but without words, like I do at home with my four-legged friends minus forebrain. Their inner peace tells me the forebrain is as much a curse as a blessing. I watch the squirrel through the window knowing if I had raised it from a baby, bottle-feeding it, we would be able to communicate. We'd be friends. The squirrel would probably be surprised at how illiterate I am to the way squirrels communicate and what they have on their minds. The same consciousness as in a cat or a dog. It could be fun understanding squirrel nature like I understand cat and dog nature.

A dove the same color as the ground is bobbing around in the shadow of the rhododendron, wary of being seen. If I were to open the door the dove would fly straight up making its vibrato squeak that sounds like a rusty hinge vibrating. A dove is a good catch for a hawk, making them extra cautious. All the birds are wary unto instantaneous flight response to the unexpected. The cardinal, too, seems wary as the dove. He makes an easy hawk target. They have a hard time hiding. This feeding station has such a network of branches around that hawks are disoriented when they fly into the feeding zone. All the birds scatter, leaving the hawk to sit on the roof peak of the birdfeeder and assess this webbing of limbs easy to fly through, but all maneuvering attention is focused on missing the limbs. Leaves filling out on the limbs will make a canopy over the feeding station hawks will not be able to see into. Red squirrels have a life span of one year, I presume because they are hawk targets. I have four red squirrels now. It tells me they're safe here. The new pair look a little bit smaller than the others, making me suspect the pair that live here have multiplied. Baby chipmunks (ground squirrels their old-time name) scurry about in the shade under the rhododendron, looking for food and playing chase at the same time. I like having my peaceable kingdom where everybody is safe from hawks. The two gray squirrels have become four. A chickadee carried a sunflower seed to a rhododendron branch, held it with a foot, pecked and pecked at the shell, ate the treat inside and flew in a straight line back to the feeder.

*

BIRDS AT THE FEEDERS

slate junco aka snowbird

Today's big adventure was a gathering at the library between 12 and 1, lunch at the library while hearing a presentation on the birds that come to our birdfeeders. Cecelia Mathis gave the talk with slides of photographs she'd made of birds at her feeders. It was not an academic talk, but a casual talk identifying the varieties of birds that come to our feeders in this county. It was not overloaded with info we did not want to know. The part I found most valuable for my own interest was identifying the female versions of the various birds. I was especially shocked to see that a red-wing blackbird female looks like a sparrow. They are something of a marsh bird that loves cattails for nesting in. The nearest I've seen red-wing blackbirds is down the mountain at Pine Swamp. She mentioned about juncos, aka snowbirds, they prefer the higher elevations, talked like she didn't see many where she was. I mentioned I have fifty of them, which kind of astounded everybody. I'm at about the highest elevation in the county. Maybe that explains why I don't see them other places much. The primary question I went there with was answered. I was curious to know if the almost black slate-gray snowbird is the male and the lighter gray one is the female. That's how it works out.

It seemed like everyone in the audience was as interested as I was in what Cecelia was saying. I came to realize that we who enjoy feeding the birds and watching them are similarly minded in our fascination with birds. I had a family of chickens for pets when I was a kid, and again in my first ten years in the mountains. With all the dogs and coyotes now, it's not practical to have chickens and allow them outside a pen. The chickens I kept here started with a rooster and a hen. She sat on some eggs and suddenly I had a family of banties. The kind I had as a kid were Cochin banties, black with feathers on their feet. The ones here in the mountains were every kind of bantie. They were beautiful birds. They ranged in the meadows around the house eating bugs. The rooster kept an eye out for hawks, sounding the alarm and taking his harem to shelter when he saw a hawk circling. After a coon slipped into the chicken house one night and killed several, they would not sleep in the chicken house again. They flew to a white pine branch to roost at night.

One of the hens, Miss Hen, was the bottom of the pecking order, almost no feathers on top of her head from being pecked by the other hens. She stayed aside from the pack most of the time. I bought three peacock eggs from Elmer Mitchell in Whitehead and put them under Miss Hen while she was in her setting spell. When her babies hatched, she loved her babies. It wasn't long before they were the same size she was. She stayed separate from the other hens, surrounded by her three beautiful chicks that were getting bigger and bigger. She seemed to grow prouder of them as they grew. In the winter nights she roosted between two of them. Only her beak was visible between them. The hens never pecked her again. The peacocks grew into mighty birds and Miss Hen was still their mama. They loved her as much as she loved them. It sounded like a Tarzan movie around here. It was exciting to see one flying down the road about 4 feet above the road, just sailing from the top of the hill to the bottom. They were beautiful fliers. After a few years all three peacocks came down with a disease peacocks get from chickens and they expired. Then dogs started catching the chickens and I gradually let them go as the dogs took them out while I was at work. I gave up having chickens.

Then I had the cats, Peck, then TarBaby, Tapo and Caterpillar. No birds around here then. By now only Caterpillar remains and she stays inside all the time now. I brought home Junior Maxwell's bird feeder he never used after he died. I bought another one just like it and put both of them out front, maybe thirty feet apart. I've always liked having birds around. My grandmother kept me in canaries and parakeets when I was a kid. I had two green parrots when I moved to the mountains. I built a big cage of chicken wire for them. They preferred the small cage. The big cage seemed to disorient them. Gradually, they died, one at a time, of strokes. Now I feed the birds of the neighborhood. They come in from a small section of woods behind the house and the woods across the road. Two red squirrels live in my shed I store scrap wood in. Two gray squirrels come from across the road late in the day and pick up seeds left by the birds. I call the feeding station my Peaceable Kingdom. A variety of birds exist here peaceably among other birds and the squirrels. I spread the sunflower seeds over the ground and in two open feeders. There is plenty for everybody. No arguments, no fights. Once in awhile I'll see a couple of snowbirds flying up at each other, jumping into the air every time the light on the ground, and then one flies away and the other one goes chasing it.

A female downy woodpecker goes every day to a place on the birch tree beside one of the feeders, and it pecks at a spot on the side of the tree maybe eight or so inches in diameter where surely it must be finding some bugs. A female snowbird often stands on the side of the tree beside the woodpecker, just 2 inches away, and watches the woodpecker. The woodpecker flies off and the snowbird takes up pecking in that section of bark. I feel like the two birds have become friends. I've often seen friends among hens. Cows have friends in the herd too. I've never seen birds become friends cross-species. I assume they are friendly, because the snowbird is easily within the woodpecker's strike zone, but it never pecks at the snowbird. Birds tend not to be comfortable within pecking distance of one another. It amuses me when I look out there and see the snowbird standing beside the woodpecker. It's not every time, but enough that I see the two birds know each other. I prefer feeding the birds that live around here and watching them outside the window to having a bird in a cage. They seem happy in the cage, that is a bird that has only known a cage. I could never put a wild bird in a cage. That would be something like solitary confinement for humans. The caged birds, though, regard the cage as protection. It's their space nothing else can enter. It feels so much better all the way around to enjoy the birds out in the open living their lives as birds live.

*

SUNFLOWER SEEDS

ai weiwei sunflower seeds

more

Talking on the phone with my friend Carole a little bit ago, my eyes were gazing out the window at a downy woodpecker picking at a place on the bark of a birch tree where it stops by every day for whatever woodpecker food that place supplies. It is the female of the pair that visits the birdfeeders. I saw a snowbird standing close to the woodpecker on the bark watching. I wondered if that was the same snowbird I see peck at that area of the bark sometimes. Snowbird watched the woodpecker from just an inch or two. The woodpecker wasn't hammering. It looked like it was picking up bugs with its tweezer bill. Woodpecker flew off. Snowbird started pecking at the bark in the same place. Evidently this snowbird has been watching the woodpecker and learned to extend her range of foraging to bugs in tree bark, if that's what it is.

I have a culturally diverse feeding station. Nuthatch, cardinal, titmouse, snowbird, wren, woodpecker, chickadee, bluejay, sparrow, red squirrel, gray squirrel. No cats around. Caterpillar is past wasting any effort to catch one. She just gazes at them through the window, a cat movie. The birds are really hungry this bitter cold morning. I throw a lot of sunflower seeds to them on a day like this. They need all the energy they can get to keep themselves warm through the night. They're my miniature chickens. It appears to be a balanced place where the big birds don't bully the little birds. There is plenty of grub and space for everybody, so nobody has to rule the roost. When a squirrel wants to sit in the feeder and stuff its jaws, it doesn't deprive any birds. There is plenty on the ground for them. These are the birds of my neighborhood, my neighbors, the ones that live in the trees around the house and across the road. When I go out the door they don't all fly away. A few chickadees fly to a tree branch nearby where they can watch to see if I'm bringing anything for them. A few snowbirds hang around too, watching from rhododendron branches.  

I feed the crows on a patch of gravel beside the mailbox the other side of the road. Yesterday it had snowed a half inch in the night. I was going to wait until I took the netflix dvd to the mailbox to take the crows their day's ration. I saw a crow up here at the house standing at the edge of the road watching the birds pecking from the ground. The crow was wanting to get in among them for a morsel, but hesitated to step in among the trees. Too vulnerable a place for a crow. It alerted me that the crows are hungry. Snow on the ground. I took them some seeds. This intense cold has about doubled the population of bluejays feeding here. They're big birds; they need a lot more than a chickadee. Chickadees are the ones that speak to me when I step out the door. On the way to the car I'll pass under a chickadee or two or three and they'll call to me. It's fun to be known by the birds of my hood.

Every day when I scoop a cup of the big sunflower seeds, I cannot help but think of Chinese artist, Ai Wei Wei, from the documentary about him called NEVER SORRY. An art project he exhibited at the Tate in London was called Sunflower Seeds. I think it was a hundred million sunflower seeds made of porcelain and individually hand painted, made in a town traditionally known for their porcelain. He hired hundreds of people to carry out the work. The exhibition amounted to a space that looked about the size of a basketball court. But camera's distort size and I can't really tell. I'll say it's half a basketball court. Anyway, it's covered with the porcelain seeds four inches deep. A perfectly flat surface that can be walked on. He encouraged people to walk on it. Floor sculpture is not new anymore. I think Carl Andre in New York might have been the first to use the floor. He put a collection of flat tiles on the floor, like linoleum tiles, but made of some sorts of steel. He also arranges bricks and blocks of wood on the floor. He too invites the viewer to walk on his tiles. At YouTube is a 14 minute video, AI WEIWEI: SUNFLOWER SEEDS, that shows the people working on the project.

DISINFORMATION REALITY ON THE AIR

 

It's been ongoing humor to see how the conservative / liberal agendas play out in absolute resistance to each other. The repubs in their 30+ year attempt to destroy, put out of business, the democrat party have failed. They put all their eggs in the Reagan basket, the bottomless pit. I have come to suspect it so much, though still hesitate to say I believe it, but I see it that the republican half of the voting population, or a quarter of the population, given that only half the population votes, are the portion of the American citizenry that has fallen under the spell of what William Casey, CIA director early 80s, said of the American people, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false." There it is. It is an active Disinformation Program going on at least since then. The repubs are now in self-destruct mode. They've had for their agenda destroying the democrat party using false information so long that it has become their momentum. Winning elections with lies, racism and transparent chicanery has evidently run its course. This last election trumped Karl Rove, the cutting edge of the Disinformation Program's propaganda politically. It trumped hairdoo Donald Trump too. And Ted Nugent. What a laugh he has made of himself. As a rocker he has what it takes, but as a mind, never mind.

The part I object to most is what hits me at home. Of course, ongoing inflation and no increase in income for the working people over the last 30+ years is a big one. Mostly, it's that I live in a world of people, wherever I am in America, who have become part of the Disinformation Program by falling for it. Fox tv channel is a very active part of the Disinformation Program. Limbaugh is the out-front spokesperson. I chose to use person instead of man. Where I live, the word man has a bit of respect about it. Person is diverse. Somebody on death row for murder and rape is a person, while not necessarily a man one can respect very well. Like I can't call Limbaugh a pig because I respect a pig more than I do him. He's one that belongs on death row. He stirs hate with rant. Skepticism and questioning are, alas, not American virtues, which Limbaugh as republican philosoph takes advantage of to the hilt, meaning all the way in. Yes, some of us non celebrities do think about things, but if you want to find one, you have to go seeking. What do you go by? A certain alertness that television has not yet turned to slumber. There is a difference from the bright-eyed smiling fake front and true alertness that doesn't necessarily smile all the time or parrot political (television) correctness with enthusiasm. Fake alertness you see everywhere. All the publications Rupert Murdoch "bought" were turned into organs of the Disinformation Program. So are the CEOs and owners of the other networks purveyors of the Disinformation Program. You want corporate government? Here it is, like it or don't.

Though I only see television a few hours a week, mostly football this time of year and racing the rest of the year, I can see the psychological manipulation with a bit more clarity than someone asleep in tv. It's not an anesthetic for me. I can't doze for very long in a state of mental torpor watching commercials of guys in the stands at the football game holding the label of their beer bottles and cans toward the field to work a mojo on the game. It's slightly humorous in a locker room fraternity way the first time. I'm glad to see the big corporations are at least doing more commercials with humor. It's dorky corporate humor, though an attempt nonetheless. I only listen at home to non commercial radio. NPR is not commercial free, but their commercials are shorter and directly to the point about it. Don't think I believe NPR is independent of the Disinformation Program. Initially, I believe they set out to be. Then the Disinformation Program began in earnest, the Reagan Revolution, and repubs have been trying to get NPR off the air, or at least as misrepresentative as Fox, ever since. Reagan sliced NPR's budget down to the bone, like he did everything of benefit to the American people, the 99%. The people at NPR were attempting something like BBC here, which they found unacceptable in the Texas of the world.

I sit here looking out two windows between sentences at an overcast, wet, slightly sprinkling day. It's the kind of wet you can walk to the mailbox and back with slight wetness on hair. The colors are vivid at their very best with light fog in the distant trees. I love how colors come out when rain wets them. It gives them a vivid lightness of being. Rhododendron leaves rich green with white accenting them, the branches dark lines like in a Japanese painting. Every shade of reddish light brown leaves carpets the ground, curled and making a chance collage with pine needles, sticks and twigs that also fell from the trees. I spread two sizes of sunflower seeds over the ground. I've been watching the birds of all sizes pecking peaceably, a red squirrel searching, picking up a seed, biting through the shell and eating the seed inside. The red squirrel then runs and looks for another. A time comes when the squirrel is full and starts tucking the seeds away in pockets it makes with its front feet, tiny hands. It runs to get more and tucks them into a another little pocket called a midden. I will be surprised if sunflowers don't take up from at least some of the places they're tucked away. Birds scratching find a lot of them. It feels good in my spirit to see the snowbirds hopping about, scratching, flying, and the nuthatches, the bluejays, the titmice (titmouses?), a small black and white woodpecker with a red dot on the back of its head. Chickadees and titmice chirp to me from nearby branches when I go out the door in the morning with the day's ration. The birds of my mountain are so much more enjoyable to me than anything on tv that it doesn't feel right using them in the same sentence where tv is mentioned. The difference is that I love my bird friends and I don't love tv. Major difference.


*

A SAFE ZONE FOR BIRDS



            red squirrel

This evening's film, Jane's Journey, put me in a somewhat pensive mood. Wanting to get to some painting, wanting to open the laptop and write to you, needing to get up and refill the cup with Kenyan coffee and put a bowl of dry catfood outside the door for the possum. Possum comes by after dark for leavings. Initially, I put Caterpillar's unfinished "wet" food of the day outside next day for Martha the dog or Posie the possum, whichever found it first. If Martha didn't drop by during the day, Posie found it after dark. A gravel parking place across the road I shower with sunflower seeds in the mornings for the crows and whoever else wants them. By the end of the day the seeds are all consumed; at night Posie goes about eating the shells the birds discarded for the seed inside. A pair of red squirrels, also known as pine squirrels, live in a white pine close to the house. They run the ridge of the roof to a pine limb, then another pine limb, down the pine to the ground by one of the birdfeeders. I throw sunflower seeds on the ground for the squirrels so they won't have to raid the birdfeeder. At first, I wanted them squirrel proof, but found if I feed the squirrels too, they don't raid the birdfeeders. Originally, the birdfeeders were closed up by a plexiglas storage bin for seeds that the coon, whose territory includes my space, would break into at night, throw the roof off and get the leftover seeds.

Seeing there was no way I could keep the coon away except by trapping it, not an option, I decided to forget about the feeders holding several days of seeds, dismantled the seed bin and left an open space with the tray at the bottom to put two kinds of sunflower seeds in every morning, enough for the birds and the squirrels to consume in one day. Every morning the 2 birdfeeders are empty and I don't have to latch the lids anymore. I put hooks at both ends of the roof to keep hard wind, coons and squirrels from throwing it off so much. Wind is the only force the hooks work for. Squirrels and coons have no problem with hooks. They have hands like ours with claws for fingernails to help them climb trees and fight. Between the birdfeeders is a huge rhodedendron where I throw a fistful of seeds as high into the air as I can throw and let them sift down through the leaves to the ground. This gives the bluejays, the bullies of the birds because they're the biggest--the law of the jungle, a place to peck around on the ground and let smaller birds have the feeder. And the other way around; when bluejay is at the feeder, smaller birds peck on the ground. None of them are particular about feeder or ground for picking up seeds; the seed is all they want. Also, the seeds are spread evenly over a large enough area under the rhododendron that several birds can peck about and stay out of another bird's pecking range.

So it costs me a little bit a month for the seeds and allowing for the "mauraders" who are not bandits if I put something down for them too. About daily, a red squirrel will step inside the birdfeeder shelter, sit there with tail curled nibbling at the seeds. This happens after the seeds on the ground have run out; they're available to the birds too. This miniature forest out my front door between the house and the road has enough small trees with branches and rhododendron growing that hawks don't have a chance. I saw out the window a Cooper's hawk fly to the ground and stand surveying with a hawk's eye the obstacles for big wings that inhibit maneuvering. Another time I saw a beautiful gunmetal blue sparrow-hawk fly into the wooded zone and sit on the ridge of one of the birdfeeders, it too surveyed the obstacle course. The hawks flying into this zone cannot fly with abandon, it slows them down and distracts their focus of attention. The birds feeding all fly away the moment a hawk enters the wooded zone. The small birds can fly through the tree limbs with ease. All escape.

I love to watch them out the window, especially knowing my birds and squirrels are safe. I love having a pair of squirrels that amount to the same as hawk fodder, a lifespan of about a year, because hawks evidently get them all. This pair of red squirrels live successfully inside this zone that's hawk proof. It's been a year that I've been seeing them. I understand the environmentalist principle that feeding the critters influences them away from the grains they'd otherwise eat. It also turns out to be responsible for bird overpopulation of a given area beyond what can sustain them without people feeding birds. It's not like the birds are immortal. The seeds I feed them are healthy for them, seeds they can't find in their "natural environment." What about all the birds in the days when farms grew fields of grains to feed the horses, picking up the remains of the harvest from farm to farm? Following farming used to sustain huge bird populations, though the way monoculture farming is done now, it's death to the birds with chemicals that poison the bugs the birds eat. I'm not doing that. In fact, I'm not unbalancing anything. Even here in the mountains the human element is eradicating the birds as fast as it can be done. That doesn't strike me as natural balance.

The so-called natural world is so far out of balance that giving birds a safe place to have their choice of two sizes of sunflower seeds puts a miniscule spot of the planet into a little bit of balance for a short space of time. The more they eat here, the less they'll eat in the christmas tree fields 2/3 of the way around our safe zone. They sing to me spring and summer. This spot of ground was not a good haven for birds before I let the seedlings grow into saplings then trees and planted rhododendron, small ones dug up from the woods years ago. The so-called natural world is under assault by the human population responsible for a high rate of extinctions hourly around the globe for more than half a century. Assault is a gentle word for what is happening to the critters and to us, we the meat people.  Is that a healthy planet? Duh. Is that even a question? When everything living dies off, it will be too late to build a rocket to some moon of Saturn or into another solar system. The part I really don't get, and am afraid of going so far into a jaundiced point of view to get it, is why the human people who have been to college (corporate execs in skyscrapers = ivory towers) keep on with the destruction. The answer, though, is obvious as 1+1, even if you want to make it 11. Money is the only purpose. The only. It's gone so far by now the evidence is everywhere it's too late to turn around the mega-force in unstoppable motion until the house of cards skyscraper, after taking over our government, collapses of it's own too-big-to-fail. What comes next we've yet to see.

*

TO HUNT OR NOT TO HUNT

tantric painting

Driving on the Parkway after dark is an interesting challenge concerning the deer that see headlights and think they're two floating lights, not imagining it is a ton of steel, plastic and glass in motion. Yet dogs get it and cats get it. Bobcats get it. Possums don't appear to get it. I used to drive like these critters were in the way. That has changed. I finally got it that I'm driving through their world. They know those smelly, noisy four-footed gigantic beetles stay on that track where nothing grows. They stay off it during the day. But at night, it doesn't register that those lights are the same as the giant beetles that zoom by during the day. Deer in the headlights makes a good metaphor for the look in the eyes of people working in Japanese and Chinese restaurants when you say something to them not from the menu. It makes me want to leave Japanese and Chinese-to-English phrase books with them. Somebody says, "What time does the bus depart?" and they can see it written in dancing chicken footprints. Maybe cell phones do that now. It's not annoying. It's just dazed people from a culture entirely different from ours, languages entirely different from ours. I'd be dazed in the same way working at a Hardees in some Chinese mountain town too small for a dot in atlases. Somebody say to me, "What time does the bus depart?" I'd probably say, "Ohio gozymas," that poorly. I can't help but be sympathetic with these people making a living in a place where everybody looks down on them, and they're proud people, just like we are.

There is so much to be sympathetic about, I'm wondering if sympathetic concern might be an affectation we learned somewhere along the way thinking it was real. I think it might have been "real" in a tribal setting where everyone is intimately connected with everyone else, where nobody has their own business. Sympathy seems like it is right for people nearby we know well, but to hear about an earthquake in China where a school caves in on the kids, the grief of the parents, I feel for everyone concerned; sympathy is what I feel. Then the Japanese tsunami nuclear disaster. It messed up a lot of people, dogs and cats. I'm sympathetic. Every day on the news children shattered by landmines, "smart bombs" killing indiscriminately, tormenting twice that many with pain, grief and agony. I see pictures of little black refugee kids like skeletons and I feel sympathetic. I want to help. I can't do anything. Don't have money to send, can't go volunteer in a refugee camp, and if I did have the time and money, there'd be no end to it, running from one rescue mission to the next, all of them too late.

It's hard to pull in from not feeling a twang when I hear news stories about other people's misfortunes. But I also need my energy here where I am, in the world I live in, with the people I live among. That's where my sympathy belongs, where I need it first. It's hard not to avoid being wrenched every day by somebody's agony someplace in the world. It seems like paying too much attention to the agonies out in the world on tv, in other countries, albeit artificially, diminishes attention that is needed at home. It's a narrow line to walk, a razor's edge even, finding how to be aware, even prayerful, of what is happening around, but with the dispassion of knowing it is outside my jurisdiction. That's somebody else's immediate concern. I have plenty of immediate concern here at home. In my spiritual path I've come to see that everyday life is where it's at. I have learned I find much more interesting people in the ones I already know, the people who live nearby, the people I see wherever I go in my world. I'd rather know the people I know of these mountains than somebody famous in NY or LA or anywhere I am not. The pop world keeps us believing that wherever we are is not where It is at. It is always somewhere I am not.

Yesterday, talking with my friend Justin about the thrill I had from a full week of focus on one theme, writing wide-open, four straight days from getting up to turning in, fingers dancing on the keyboard, Caterpillar frustrated because she couldn't hold my attention for more than a few seconds at a time, a touch on top of her head that says I'd love to pet you, but I'm involved in the part of the human mind that cats don't have, the forebrain, thinking abstractly, putting thoughts together to tell a story. I believe she reads me telepathically, which makes me wonder what she sees when I'm thinking about a fiddler I've never met in a time I didn't know first-hand. She went off to her bed seeing there was no penetrating the peasoup fog. Four straight days of total focus on one theme and a full day of rewriting, writing new paragraphs to fill in blanks, then two more days of rereading and clarifying sentences that needed it, changing words, even nit picky words, like changing an in to a with. These sorts of details matter. I'm still in the charm of that fixation. Heard five minutes of news once a day to keep abreast of Syria and Turkey. Finally, today I've reached the place that rereading as editor has become boring. I want to do something else.

Justin told me I get the same thrill out of writing and painting that he gets out of hunting. He said, "Hunting is better than sex. Sex is the same over and over. Hunting is different every time." We talked about the thrill of attention focused absolutely for a period of time. He sits in a deer blind or in a stand in a tree for hours without moving or making a sound. He takes his four year old boy with him, teaches him silence and patience. He takes his five year old girl, too, and teachers her the same. Justin hunts to eat. He gets Welter Ham in Whitehead to butcher his kills like beef and keeps it in the freezer. At the moment he has the head of the last buck he shot with a nice rack in the freezer waiting to be mounted. Justin also takes Crystal hunting. She's good. He aims to put both kids through gun safety courses where they can learn more than he could teach them. He could teach them plenty, but the course does it better. Also, like in learning to drive from somebody besides parents, there is no parental tension in the way. I cannot allow myself to kill even the spiders in the window corners. Yet I know they're about killing to eat. Everything living kills to eat. Chickens eat grasshoppers. Cats eat mice. Coyotes eat cats. We eat lunchmeat from the grocery store, steaks, hotdogs, bacon, chicken nuggets, and we don't kill anything. No dragging in a dead squirrel, peeling the skin off, etc. Justin was taught to hunt before he started school. I said of the baby, Vada, "She'll have her first buck when she's six." Justin said, "Before that."

In my own Way, I have no problem with killing for food. I don't even have a problem with somebody making a kill and leaving it for the coyotes. Who has a problem with road kill? Same difference. I will slow down to a stop if necessary to avoid hitting a critter of the night. I've had raccoons, possums, cats, dogs, squirrels, rabbits dart under the tire from the side, no time to even lift foot from gas pedal. I don't like it, but remind myself in God's way of seeing that it is a blink of an eye leaving the body suddenly. I say a prayer for the being's soul every time I nail one or see one on the road. I can't help but see them people like us, consciousness in a particular form. They're in the same realm of consciousness as our dogs and cats. If they were tame, we could connect with them like we do with our pets. I do enough killing without intent just from living in the world as it is now, driving everywhere we go. It's because I see the four-leggeds as my friends I haven't met yet. I think of them as the true Innocents in our world. Humanity mows over them like they're nothing. I have a hard time seeing a deer hanging by back feet, guts tumbling out on the floor. I can't do that. It has surely come to me from previous lifetimes, my never wanting to hurt anybody or anything. I never learned to want to hurt somebody in a fight and never learned to want to see one of God's baby's die by my intent. I don't believe I have the right when I'm not needing the food. That's when I join the food chain, saying a prayer of gratitude for the soul of each one killed. I make sure my hunter friends understand my reticence about killing is for myself and does not extend beyond myself. I admire their skills and enjoy hearing their hunting stories. I can't help but think there is enough killing going around; I don't need to participate in it just because it's going around. And deer aren't going to get overpopulated because I'm not killing them.

I'll go on feeding my friend the possum that lives under the house. I put out extra seeds on the ground by the feeders for the red squirrels that came marauding. I feed them and they leave the bird feeders alone. I decided when I put the feeders out that I would accept whoever in the neighborhood came in to the food kitchen. It's a good shelter for the small birds out of sight of the hawks and in such a thicket the hawks are unable to maneuver. Chipmunks dart through the leaves on the ground and become invisible when they're still. I have a small peaceable kingdom inside my circle of trees around the house. The gray squirrel that lives across the road drops in from time to time. Putting out enough for the bluejays too, they don't bully the other birds. This is the world I want to live in. Can't do anything about it beyond my property line. Out there in the rest of the world it is going to be what it is going to be. In here, in my circle of trees the critters have a free food kitchen with seeds they like. It's unrealistic to want the peace I want for myself for everybody else in the world. That's their choice, and their business. In my world the birds sing and the pair of red squirrels chase each other round and round like kittens.


*

NOMAD MIND

     sharp shinned hawk

Sunday afternoon I was reading when a flash caught my eye's attention at one window to my right, a bird larger than usual flying by the window with white underside. I saw it in the next window land on top of the bird feeder for a look around. Its back was gun-metal blue up the back of the neck and top of head, orange cheeks and a black line above the eye. It's colors were vivid. I sat without moving. I knew it could see me through the glass if I moved. I stayed still and watched. The colors in the bird above are not nearly as vibrant as the bird that stopped by here. Possibly it was a young bird or maybe they come in degrees of brightness. Anyway, the bird stood on the birdfeeder roof looking around. All the birds were gone and out of sight. It was a sparrow hawk that evidently had been watching the activity around the birdfeeder and made a dry run. I've seen a bigger red-shouldered hawk land in front of the window I'm facing. The colors in its feathers were alive with an inner light. It stood on the ground looking around. It looked in the window. I wasn't moving. Our eyes met and the bird flew away. What a show it was to see it lift off. Unfold the wings up high, one downward thrust and the feet lift off the ground, the next thrust it's flying.

I confess to feeling awe at such moments seeing one of the beings on the earth that is threatened to extinction by human arrogance living its life as if it didn't matter. I enjoy seeing the chickadees, nuthatches, titmice, snowbirds, a pair of cardinals, one woodpecker. I also like to feed them to keep them out of the Christmas tree patches where the bugs are poisoned. The two young squirrels that took up here have nested in the attic. The chipmunks have gone into hibernation behind a rock wall. The squirrels' bellies are rounding out nicely, beginning to favor Paula Dean around the middle. They're storing up for winter, fattening themselves and putting away supplies. I'm glad to have them here. I'll feed them and let them have a good place out of the weather. I like watching them, seeing them go about their everyday lives, picking up sunflower seeds the giant that lives in the house offers for all the neighbors around here putting by for winter; the chipmunks, squirrels, possums, raccoons. Now I'm attracting hawks as well. I'll have an entire eco system out my windows. Spiders in the window corners make it just right.

I go for a walk in the woods and maybe see a chickadee once, hear some crows, maybe see a pileated woodpecker fly by. I stay at home and the birds come to me. I go walking and they fly away. I step out the door and they explode into the air from the ground around the feeders. The chickadees don't go far. They make their clicking sound at me. They watch me take the seed to the feeders in the mornings and sometimes in the afternoon. They know it is the giant living in the house feeding them. They fly less far away now than they used to. When I walk to the car, the chickadees watch me from the branches using their clicking voice. I noticed when I was looking after Jr, feeding the crows apple slices every day off the front porch and throwing them leftovers out the back door, we had relationship going. They knew I was giving them the food. They were grateful and became my friends, in spirit. They stayed out of neighbor Harry's garden. I'd be happy to have a similar relationship here with the birds of nearby territories. I don't want to tame them. Dogs like you when you give them food they like. Cats do, horses do, pigs do, every animal I know of has an affection for the human feeding it. A gratitude kind of affection.

There was a time I felt like the chickadees especially were scolding me every time I went out the door for scaring them. That didn't seem to be part of the spirit of the encounters. I listened more closely and it sounded like they were saying hi to me in bird language, thanks for the goodies. A dog that is afraid of people and won't come near, will stand at its safe distance when it sees the human feeding it and wag its tail. Birds are not unconscious. In the early part of my life I had birds. I like birds. I like having chickens. Can't have chickens now with neighbors that hate roosters, dogs and a road that is now a race track. A man named J. Allen Boone wrote a book some years ago, Kinship With All Life. He tells of his experiments communicating with flies and garden gophers. When I see a mud-dauber or a wasp flying around in the upper part of a window where the bottom half is open, I've learned I can help one find the opening by slowly telling it to fly a bit lower, a bit lower and lower until it finds the opening and flies away. I stop and stand still so it won't read me as a threat. 

Dimestores sold parakeets when I was a kid. The time I went to buy one, the girl working there didn't know what to do with the birds. I said I'd get the bird. I opened the cage, put my hand in, went to the bird I wanted, picked it up and put it in the little take-home cage. My grandmother taught me about birds, handling them, catching them, not hurting them, befriending them. I've an idea it won't be long before more and more people are having chickens again and making a garden. We're going into hard times and it's looking like free food will be the first thing to come back. Growing one's own. Between the time about everybody gave up gardening and the next time we'll need to be knowing how to work a garden, scientific study has revealed the way to more conscious gardening, like not depleting the soil and growing the most in the least space. I don't like to think about the future. It is totally unpredictable. So many trillion or gazillion variables all going at the same time. We can make educated guesses going by patterns of behavior in the past, which sometimes bear out pretty close, but never exact unless by the same chance as any other outcome.

And, strangely, the past is every bit as nebulous as the future. The only thing I could say of the past to bring it within imagination reach of what we might call "reality" would be memory. Take Alleghany County, for example. No history has been written of the county. The farthest back present county history goes is as far back as the oldest living person remembers. The historical society has been so alone for so long in a community that cares next to nothing about its past, it's almost been like a secret society just by the way it worked out. Now they have their museum space and Roy Hunt to do research and make decisions. They're fired up by the chance to get some projects done and show the community remnants of its past. I've found from reading history that it's largely information without soul, without life. While it's happening is when it lives. Later, it's just a memory by whatever means, newspaper article, video, mind. I have found my memory so very faulty over the last several years, I don't put any store in my memory any more. In my case, it's like dreams, George Washington crossing the Delaware, it cold and miserable. There is George Washington feeling it and there is me reading about it. Hardly the same. 

* 

MY FRIENDS THE BIRDS

     snowbird

Indian Summer has come and gone. Winter has spoken. Below freezing last night, below freezing tonight. Wind today to make wind chimes ting and birds flying in a bee line to the feeder, picking up a seed and flying away in a bee line. It looks like they're storing seeds. I heard somebody talking about birds say a chickadee can remember over a hundred hiding places where they store seeds for the winter. He said on a ten hour night in cold winter, a chickadee has such a high rate of metabolism that it can die in the night if it doesn't get enough to eat during the day. We always have nights like that in the winter. Snow on the ground makes it worse for the birds. I'll keep my bird friends well fed that live near here through this winter. Before, with cats, I discouraged the birds coming around. Now it's a new treat to have birds, watch their behavior. I go out the door and they fly in all directions. The brave ones fly to branches just above the feeder. A titmouse makes its clicking sound at me. A chickadee makes a clicking telling the giant to go away. They're super cautious, hyper aware of every movement all the way around them. They're quick as a cat at reacting to a new sound.



I open the door and it looks like a slow motion video of shrapnel flying out from an exploding hand grenade when the birds fly off in every direction, a silent explosion. Flying birds ascending to the upper branches of the trees, on the edge of the open sky where they know for certain they're safe, unless a hawk comes along. I walk my path to the car listening to the birds above make clicking noises at me. I mostly think they're annoyed with me for scaring them. But I also wonder if they're saying Thank You in bird talk. They all know I put the seeds in the feeders. I put the seeds in every morning and throw some on the ground. They fly to tree limbs in all directions and watch me go to the feeder. Before the giant that lives in the house went to the feeder, it was nearly empty. After the giant went back inside the house, the feeder had an abundance of the kinds of seed they all like, small black sunflower seeds. Small woodpeckers dive in for a few seeds.



The warblers rule the feeder, the reason I throw some on the ground. The smaller and slower birds, like snowbirds, titmice, the cardinal pair, especially doves like to stay away from those darting warblers with a spear for a beak. They move so fast walking, pecking, climbing, flying, and they dart when they fly, they make the doves a nervous wreck. Before the warblers discovered the feeder, the doves were regulars. I throw seed on the ground for the doves now. I'm afraid something might have got the towhee. It's a calico thrush with a nice taWeet for its call. They are awfully vulnerable as they like to scratch in the dry leaves on the ground. Caterpillar didn't get it. With no cat marking territory now a rambling cat might have passed through here and found the towhee. We have feral cats all over the mountain. Haven't seen it in several weeks. The ancestry of the Air Bellows and Whitehead feral cats and the pets go back to one calico Maine Coon, who was the great great great great grandmother of my cats. A black cat down in Whitehead was TarBaby's daddy. I hated it when I saw him dead, a roadkill on hwy 18. Highways are rough on cats.



I'm a bit torn about spoiling them to reproduce more as they have far more to eat than their territory can furnish otherwise, so when I croak, I leave an overpopulated area of spoiled birds without their food source suddenly and they all die the following winter during a month of snow on the ground and temperatures below zero at night. My doing. However, that's a worst case scenario, and events never come to pass nearly as disastrously as imagined. They'll get by and if they don't, well a lot of other birds don't make it too. I can't help that any more than I can stop road kill. It's beyond my reach. So I feed the birds and watch them out the window. I learned the joy of watching birds at Jr's house where we spent long stretches of time watching the hummingbirds at the feeder outside the window, and the crows on the lawn where I threw them apple slices, and the raincrow that lived in what I think was a blue spruce that was planted for possibly an outdoor Christmas tree to put lights on for his last wife. It was maybe 12 feet tall. The raincrow liked to stand on the tip top of it and look all around. A crow come around and he'd dive-bomb the crow and peck a feather out of his back.



I know the s'posed-to of conscious ecological thinking. But I'm not that, so why should I limit my decisions to that mind? That thinking is for the people that think that way. I'm not one of them, so I'll do my birdfeeders my way. I'll do like Sid Vicious who took Frank Sinatra's song My Way, destroyed it by singing it as bad as it could be done, and made it his own. I'll do it MY WAY. And there is Nina Hagen, who took it from Sid Vicious and made it her own. "She's the mother of punk, so what the funk?" I'm a rebel. I won't do bird feeders like I'm supposed to if I want to be an ecologically conscious certified cool dude. I'm self-centered about it because I like to watch the birds flying about and pecking on the ground. They're in continuous motion. It's like watching basketball on tv without the noise of the announcers.



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