| Prairie Dogs: The Inconvenient Animal |
[Dec. 7th, 2009|12:00 pm] |
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http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2009/12/prairie-dogs-inconvenient-animal.html Before I begin, I want to thank my readers for their thoughtful and incisive comments on the last post. In reading them, I realize that there were a few things I did not make clear in my attempt to make a punchy, readable post. First, the hunters to whom I refer are hunting on a small strip of land, maybe ten acres at most, that adjoins our 80-acre one, a strip that they own. So they're taking deer that live largely on our land, something that inspires a conflicted mix of protectiveness and jealousy in me. Protectiveness, because I love watching deer (there were seven in our meadow this morning, and there's a fawn out there right now, in the snow--so plenty of them made it through!)
Jealousy? Yes. I am jealous of people who have the desire and wherewithal to take wild meat off their own land rather than buying sad, often tasteless bits of cow or pig, raised miserably in feedlots and stanchions and packed in Styrofoam and Saran. I'm not there yet. I may never get there. I have never learned to use a gun, and I'm not sure I have the right stuff to point it at a living animal and end its life to feed myself. But a big part of me wishes I were. Because to me, hunting on your own land makes some kind of elemental, vital sense.
My beef had simply to do with these particular hunters' bad behavior, being inconsiderate and sloppy. With being confined to my house for a solid week in gray old December. With the disgust at having to guard my tender boy from the shock of seeing a bunch of carcasses in his driveway. That's it. I believe in that kind of subsistence hunting; I see the need for it in every nipped-off branch and wildflower in the forest understory, and I wish I could do it. I'm not bashing hunting; I'm bashing bad behavior.
With that, on to North Dakota, and prairie dogs, and a whole 'nother kind of hunting, a kind I do not believe in.
Adorable, cuddly beasties or scurrilous varmints? You either love prairie dogs (and I suspect that 99% of my readers fall into that camp with me) or hate them. How can this be? Prairie dogs are universally persecuted for their way of life—of turning prairie or pastureland into a honeycomb of burrows and chambers. I have to confess that a prairie dog town is not a handsome thing, until you begin to watch the little animals going about their busyness, until you glance up to see the ferruginous hawk circling overhead, and down to see the gopher snake slithering into a burrow, or a burrowing owl claiming one hole as its own.
 For there is a whole suite of animals that benefit from those burrows, including snakes, foxes, burrowing owls, Swainson’s and ferruginous hawks, and badgers. Most notably, black-footed ferrets depend on prairie dogs. This vanishingly endangered weasel was thought to be extinct until a farmer’s dog brought one to a Meteetse, Wyoming doorstep in 1981. Perhaps 200 black-footed ferrets survive in the wild, bolstered by an aggressive captive-breeding and release program. Nationwide, only six black-tailed prairie dog populations now exist that are large enough to support reintroduction of black-footed ferrets. The ferret will always be endangered, because the prairie dogs will always be kept on the brink of extinction. Read on...
From 1916-1920-- the year of my mother’s birth-- state, Federal and private agencies spread strychnine on 47 million acres of prairie dog towns, from North Dakota to New Mexico. New Mexico’s Animas Valley hosted a prairie dog town that, in 1908, comprised 6.4 million animals spread over 1,000 square miles. By 1938, the town had contracted to 50 acres. Between 1920 and 1958, when I was born, North Dakota had reduced its prairie dog towns from over two million acres to about 20,000 acres; by the time I was in college, in 1978, there were only 9,000 North Dakota acres in dogtowns. South Dakota, my natal state, has less than 300,000 acres in prairie dog towns, but a third of the continent’s surviving animals are in that state.
 I've only seen a handful of prairie dog towns in my life, all small--minuscule by comparison with their former numbers. This one in North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt National Park was a special delight, because the animals were acclimated to humans, and we could watch their behavior, which is charming by any measure. It was a stark contrast to the behavior of prairie dogs that I watched on a remnant bit of fallow farmland in Nebraska. Those animals simply disappeared when my car pulled up, and I saw no more than the tops of their heads until I drove away and got out the telescope. Even then, they were on high alert, barking and flinging themselves into the air to warn the others. They had clearly been persecuted, and were clinging to life on this prairie remnant.
 My maternal grandfather Klaas Clarence Ruigh, who was born in Firth, Nebraska, took my mother to see prairie dogs in Nebraska when she was a little girl in the 1930’s. Prairie dogs were already rare then, and had to be sought out. Everywhere they occur, prairie dogs are hunted as varmints. A Google search for "prairie dog hunting" in 2009 turns up 2,160,000 web pages (up from 167,000 in 2007). This is an ongoing, highly popular activity. Prairie dogs, unlike the deer our neighbors shoot, are never eaten. They are simply wasted, shot at great distances with high-powered rifles, sometimes aided by laser technology, and left where they lie. Our classification of prairie dogs as “varmints” provides justification that borders on religious fervor to the shooters (I will not call them hunters) who make it their mission to “vaporize” them wherever they still occur.
A mother prairie dog bringing home the vegetal bacon.
She's mobbed by her litter of pups, who fall to the feast. I was reminded of a fox bringing a duck to its den.  Prairie dogs provide food and burrows vital to the endangered swift fox and black-footed ferret, as well as the declining burrowing owl. Why should a mammal that by any argument is rare and local and confined to relict populations still be the target of indiscriminate shooting? The simple answer is that the prairie dog is an inconvenient animal. It is unable to live on the fringes of agriculture; its very nature is to stake out a town and inhabit it, consuming acres of land in so doing. Cows and horses fall into prairie dog burrows and break legs; tractors break axles.
 Prairie dogs are expensive animals. And so they go. I recently read a news item saying that the state of South Dakota (which has one third of the global population) had resolved to keep prairie dog numbers at a level just high enough to prevent their being listed as endangered. This is not charity or forward-thinking wildlife management; this is pragmatism. For when the prairie dog becomes endangered enough to make the Federal list, landowners are forced to protect it. Nobody with an economic interest in his land wants that. Thus, we keep them on the edge of the abyss.
We actually want them to stop just short of dying out altogether. If learning this and looking at my photos of prairie dog life causes you to stop and think, to question the ethics and motives of wildlife management agencies; whether state, Federal, or private; to challenge yourself to wonder whether we're aiming for maximum biodiversity or maximum economic benefit in our wildlife management decisions, then this post has been a good day's work.
A Red Hatter, appreciating the protected prairie dogs at Theodore Roosevelt National Monument. She made me smile. Her bumper sticker reads, "It's All About ME!"
As it turns out, an apt description of our prairie dog management practices.
Despite appearances, this is not Bash a Hunter Week on Julie Zickefoose.blogspot.com. This is Question How We Treat Animals Week. Thank you for your attention. |
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| Notification System |
[Dec. 7th, 2009|01:15 pm] |
Hey Guys,
Unfortunately with our last release, and its instability, we were forced to roll back releases. Unfortunately in doing so, it would seem that our notification system has been broken somehow. Our engineers are working on this issue as quickly as possible. We hope to have a patch within the next day, so we can deploy our code and fix the notification system at the same time. Please *bear* with us ;)
Currently all notifications are being queued up so they can be processed as soon as the fix is pushed and verified to be working correctly.
Thank you, |
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| A Holidailies Introduction |
[Dec. 7th, 2009|06:23 am] |
Since Holidailies inevitably brings new readers, I thought it was worth posting an introduction.
Fauxklore is a pun on folklore. One of the things I do is tell stories and some of my stories are original ones, based on folklore. There are a handful of folktales I tell straight, usually ones from cultures that are far enough removed from my own that I'm not comfortable with too much tweaking. But things seem to happen to others and I often look back at sources a couple of years later and am surprised at how little of the story I tell is really there in the sources. I also tell personal stories and a few historical ones. I have been vaguely working on two things that I intend to turn into fringe shows. One has to do with freaks and the other with women mathematicians. I do not spend nearly as much time working on these as I should.
I spend somewhat too much time working at my day job, where I advise senior government leaders on military satellite systems. What I like about my job is that I'm not doing the same things all the time. (I am a firm believer in the short attention span method of career planning). There are annoyances (e.g. having to review a 400+ page budget document in two hours to figure out if it has any impact on our programs) but they're tolerable ones.
Travel is one of my major obsessions. I've been to every U.S. state and between 58 and 65 countries, depending on what you count as a country. I have travelogues up at xenophilia.net but I am way behind on travelogue writing. My most recent trip was to Peru. My next major trip will be to western Canada (British Columbia and Alberta), including going to the Olympics in Vancouver.
Other things I do are various crafts (primarily with textiles and paper, though I tried my hand at glassblowing this past year), reading (mostly murder mysteries), dancing, gaming and puzzles. Anybody who knows me knows I am an ardent Red Sox fan. I also go to the theatre a lot.
I grew up on Long Island, went to MIT for undergrad and Berkeley for grad school and then lived in Los Angeles for 17 years. I've been in Northern Virginia since 2002. My retirement plan involves New England, with a condo in Punta del Este, Uruguay for the 4 months of the year that New England is uninhabitable. Except for the days, that is, when I decide I really want to live on a boat. Which would mean owning a lot fewer books and a lot less yarn.
That's probably enough to start with. |
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| Winter with Young at Heart |
[Dec. 6th, 2009|05:57 pm] |
The weather forecast yesterday was for rain in the morning, followed by 1-3 inches of snow. When I set out to run a couple of quick errands in the morning, weather.com claimed there was light rain, but there were actually already big wet fluffy snowflakes. Not a big deal since it was a short trip to the dry cleaners, CVS (to pick up photos), and the supermarket (to mock all the people buying toilet paper, bread, and milk, instead of the perfectly reasonable eggs and salad stuff I needed).
The snow was sticking by the time I got back. Fortunately my afternoon plans were doable by public transit. The walk to the metro (which is, essentially, crossing a 6 lane street) was mildly annoying. But there was just rain in the city when I got there.
My outing was to see the Young at Heart Chorus at the Warner Theatre. I'd enjoyed the documentary about this group of elderly people (ages 70-90+) who sing rock songs. I'm pleased to say their energy and enthusiasm was as much fun in person. I'm particularly glad they did "She's Not There," which is one of my favorite rock songs of all time. It was clear they were having fun and that always makes a concert more enjoyable.
Today was sunny, though not really warmer. I had a hard time getting myself started in the morning, but I did actually finish the entire Sunday paper on Sunday. (That is, alas, not always the case). Even though I had other things undone, I did go off to knitting group. I've now finished 2/9 of the back of one sweater. (I can tell that, since it's done in nine blocks.) And I passed around my "it's not stash, it's souvenir" alpaca from Peru for everyone to fondle. I'm really going to make an effort to go more often next year, but I've said that before.
And now I should make an effort to actually do some housework. |
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| Buck Fever |
[Dec. 6th, 2009|12:12 pm] |
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http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2009/12/buck-fever.html It's over.
As of today, gun season in Ohio ends. It's been a fun week. There's been a big pickup truck parked in our turnaround, smack in the middle of it, nobody able to get by, and that includes us and the paper delivery guy and the myriad other delivery people who use it. There's been a series of hunters perched in a tree stand a stone's throw off our driveway most of the week, too, all hunkered down in flame orange. We haven't come out of the house even to walk to the mailbox, figuring we might look a bit too much like whitetails. I'm still haunted, years later, by the memory of the woman in Maine who wore white gloves while hanging out her laundry in her own backyard and was gunned down by a hunter just inside the woods. He thought her hands were a deer's tail. A deer that was hanging up sheets on a line. Buck fever is a weird thing. So needless to say, all hikes were canceled for the week. Which makes me just a tiny bit cranky. And ever so slightly crazy. Like this post.
warning...graphic photo coming up.
On the third morning, there was this,
parked right where Liam and Phoebe wait for the bus every morning. Phoebe, at 13, is cool. And it was dark when she got on the bus, and I saw it, but she didn't. Liam, at 10, is not cool. And neither am I. I am not cool about a truck full of corpses in my driveway where my tender-hearted boy is concerned. Hmm. What to do?
The trick was to keep him from seeing them as we waited for the bus. (No, he doesn't read my blog). So, knowing this vision awaited us at 7:45 AM, when the sun would be coming up, Bill and I kept sweet Liam facing us in the car, engaged and gabbing, and then we flanked him like Secret Service agents as we walked him to the bus, and somehow we kept him from seeing it.
Helicopter parents? Hardly. We just know our boy. If I had seen that in my driveway at age 10, I would probably be the vegan CEO of PETA right now. Or ninja black, blowing up things for Earth First! And though I'm sure those are interesting life choices, I'd rather my son not start his little day with a bunch of dead deer in his driveway. He loves deer.
On the fourth morning, the hunters left, leaving only footprints, a pile of plastic trash, a bunch of reflective flagging, some bloody latex gloves, a few candy and snack wrappers, a badly barked tree, and a huge gutpile under where they'd had their tree stand. That's how we could tell they were all done. If you hope to shoot some more deer, you don't leave a gutpile under your stand. Hey, it's their land, and they can do what they want. It's not what I'd do. I'd pick up after myself. As we will pick up after them. At least the crows are enjoying the innards.
But you know, I hunt, too. I especially like hunting bucks. Like this one, who came into our meadow the first afternoon of gun season. Sweet little six-pointer. Had 'im dead to rights.
 Blam!
 And I shot him again, as he plunged into the purely theoretical safety of our 80 acres of posted land. I particularly enjoyed taking that last shot.
Bill posts the borders every year. He takes it seriously. Here, he's using the newspaper delivery bag with which he delivered the Marietta Times as a teen.
 Since he's taller than most anybody around here, and he stands on a joint compound bucket when he posts, trespassers have a harder time ripping our signs down now. Learned that one the hard way.
 That's a big bear, scratching on his tree.
I got a real nice ten-pointer last week. Baited him with sweet talk. He came right in. Lung shot.  Another lung shot  and then a flank shot  and a parting shot.  Never did manage to drop him. Never wanted to.
It's sixteen degrees, a pink and blue dawn, powdered sugar on everything. Finally, a real killing frost. No roses will make it through this one. Three deer feed in our meadow, materializing from dark blobs to a doe and her two fawns. Somehow they've had the sense to stay here all week, in the center of our land, wide open and often visible from our house. The gunshots ring out all around as I write, in a closing day frenzy. Tomorrow, I walk again. |
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| Catching Up |
[Dec. 5th, 2009|08:00 am] |
I have again signed up for Holidailies, so you can look forward (or not) to daily posts from 7 December through 6 January.
It's always a bit tricky catching up after a vacation, even a relatively short one. It didn't help that work offered up two crises right away. One involved rewriting the response to an investigation so that what the program office gave us actually answered the question. That's something I can do almost in my sleep, except that I had to smooth things over with the person who wrote the original response. The other was thornier politically, but it was the sort of situation in which the right thing for me to do is mostly keeping my mouth shut. (Which is not always easy.) I do admit to being amused when a senior government official (a man who has a well-deserved reputation as a character) resorts to quoting Monty Python.
The week culminated in the annual group luncheon at Maggiano's (which includes various alumni, who have been known to fly in from various far-flung places). It's basically way too much mediocre food, but one goes to events like this out of social obligation, not culinary enjoyment. We'll have a pot-luck at the office on the 16th and one at my corporate office on the 21st, which will be less formal (but no less obligatory).
Catching up at home is not any easier, either. I have finished unpacking, but my study looks even more like a hurricane just blew through it than usual. Oh, well, the things that have to get done will. |
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| Hamster Loaf, Zickefoose Underwear |
[Dec. 4th, 2009|11:09 am] |
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http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2009/12/hamster-loaf-zickefoose-underwear.html 
These social networking sites, I dunno. You can get kinda wrapped up in 'em. Like last night, I posted a photo of my HamLoaf, which is a meatloaf shaped like a hamster. Before cooking, it has a distinctly fetal quality, which several of my Facebook friends pointed out. I can assure you that it is much more appetizing when nicely browned. My little family can demolish an entire HamLoaf in a sitting, with only a little fighting over the crispy feet and tail. 40 comments came in about HamLoaf, including requests for the recipe (there is none; I just throw stuff together). Yeah, Facebook can be fun.
Social networking aside, I ask you: Why not sculpt your meatloaf? It's right up there with stopping to smell the flowers or to notice the dropping on the trail, in my book. Everything is there, waiting to be sculpted, smelt, identified, and it's all good, all free for the taking.
Moving along that train of thought, we all wear underwear, so why not have amusing underwear? Even better, why not own amusing underwear sporting anatomically accurate Zickefoose art?
In my career as a freelance illustrator, I've painted band logos on drumheads, Jersey cows on milk cans, bird feeders on packaging. I've done dozens of wildlife t-shirt designs, horse portraits, dog portraits, cat portraits; I've even done art for two marble headstones. I've done several kickin' tattoos which are walking around on live human beings. Nothing is off limits when you're trying to feed your family and pay the mortgage with art. And, like the flowers and the meatloaf and the dropping, all those experiences were good for me, all grist for the mill. I've enjoyed every minute of it, although the headstone gig did get a little weird.
So when Bill of the Birds asked me to help make real his idea, which had aged for about 15 years, of designing bird boxers, I jumped on that like butter on a pancake. Behold:
Need help with the joke? I thought you might.
They're kind of subtle.
This is my husband's humor, what makes living with him special, each and every day. (Thanks to Anne Taussig for invaluable design and production guidance.)
Christmas is roaring up. These boxers would make the perfect surprise gift for your husband or boyfriend, who lurks on my blog but never comments. Lurky lurk lurk.
Or for you. Yes, you! (I know this is primarily a chickblog; I'm not kidding myself.)
I like to wear boxers while gardening on really hot days. They're like super-comfy short shorts. And it's easy to sprint for the side door when you hear the Fed-Ex truck rumbling up the driveway.
So. They come in M, L, XL and XXL. And you can order them HERE.
 I know I cannot have the hamsters, but I fervently hope they will give me a piece of HamLoaf. I know the difference. I cannot eat hamsters, but I can eat HamLoaf. Right, Mether?
Right, Chet Baker. But not too much, because there are onions in it. |
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| LiveJournal Major Notes: LiveJournal: The First Decade, AIDS vgift fundraiser, LJ_Photophile poll! |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|03:21 pm] |
LiveJournal: The First Decade
Just in time for holiday shopping, we're thrilled to announce the release of our ten-year anniversary anthology. Published by Blurb.com, the book showcases a decade of extraordinary talent drawn from LiveJournal users around the world. This must-read compilation features stories, memes, photos, comics, editorials, graphic content, and more, including: -
Excerpts from Oh No They Didn't (a/k/a
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) ohnotheydidnt), the largest community on LiveJournal, covering celebrity gossip, entertainment news, and pop culture
- A look at post-Katrina New Orleans from the journal of Poppy Z. Brite
- Gripping narratives, including a poignant reverie on a blind date
- Photography that spans the globe, ranging from old-fashioned Polaroids to underwater photography
- Mouthwatering dishes from food_porn
What began as a late-night inspiration back in Brad Fitzpatrick's college dorm in 1999 has grown to encompass nearly 25 million users worldwide, with journals and communities covering every conceivable hobby, passion, and topic. To get your copy, please visit the Blurb Bookstore. For updates and entries from book contributors, please join lj_turns10.
Tweaks and enhancements- You can now ban a user from all of your communities and journals at once. To access this feature, hover over the person's userpic and choose Ban user everywhere from the drop-down menu.
- Follow LiveJournal on Twitter!
Give a little to help a lot!
In honor of National AIDS Awareness month, we've added a new charitable vgift. For each red ribbon you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine (we'll cover credit card fees). You can read more about IAVI at lj_cares. While we're on the subject, we raised $740 from our November fundraiser for Love Without Boundaries, which supports emergency healthcare and adoption of Chinese orphans. We thank you for helping us help others.
Photos of the weekWe're back with more incredible pictures from our super-talented LiveJournal photographers. Congratulations to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ilya_gorokhov, who is the winner of our very first lj_photophile poll.
We hope you'll continue to post, vote, and comment! A gentle request: Please post only one photo at a time and limit size to 350x350 (so images display properly on friends pages). And now, without further ado, get ready to cast your ballot and view more awesome user content after the jump!
( Read more... )
Curtains
Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay safe and snug out there! |
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| Medora Magic |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|12:19 pm] |
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http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2009/12/medora-magic.html Bluebird Bob, from a couple of posts back, told us we had to visit Medora, North Dakota. I know that when Bob says you have to see something, you have to see it. So we left a day and a half to explore the South Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Monument in extreme western North Dakota. Medora is the little frontier town just inside the park. It has touristy stuff, which lots of people like. That's good, because it keeps lots of people there, and you can pretty much have the park to yourself. We only had eyes for the wild places.
I have to say that of all the parks I've visited, TRNM is the mostest. It's almost ridiculous how scenic it is, and stuffed with fabulous animals. Which are not stuffed. Which are alive and rockin'.
But let's set the scene. We were amazed at the colorful formations, the badlands we'd heard but never seen. The kids wanted to explore and climb, and Bill and I went along. We quickly found out that the many-hued formations were made of the slickest, most glutinous clay we'd ever stepped in. Yiiiikes. I went down hard and came up absolutely covered in wet clay. This put me in a very foul mood, because I knew I'd get it all over the car. Liam and Phoebe had slid down a hillside on their pants, not realizing that this clay was forever. So we were all instantly filthy and gummed up. I stripped the kids down, Bill dug their suitcases out of the overloaded SUV, and we changed them right then and there. Pah!
The day definitely improved from then on. We found some honest rocks for climbing and jumping.
 And picture-taking.
 The spaces went on for miles. We were happy again.
 Nearby were some grassy hills to climb.
 Creviceflars.
The little black dot is our first Medora bison.
 Bill wants a closer look.
 I drop to the ground in worship...
 photo by Bill of the Birds
of blue penstemon.
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| For a Moment, Happy |
[Dec. 2nd, 2009|12:05 pm] |
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http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2009/12/for-moment-happy.html All too soon, it was time to head east, back to North Dakota. Oh, it was hard to leave Montana, so we made one last stop at Makoshika State Park, which is a paleontological site southeast of Glendive.
We never found the dig or any fossils, but the scenery was terrific. Transformative. We drank in the evening, making the most of Montana's midnight sun, when it stays light until almost 11 pm in June.
A mule deer doe came walking carefully up a draw, her attention ahead of her.
 Her huge ears swiveled side to side as if she were apprehensive of ambush.
 Oh, the light was so beautiful. I could see myself painting the scene with her just so, touching light across the grasstops and casting the foreground in deep violet shadow. Oh, to have world enough and time...for now and for the foreseeable future I'm painting birds, but someday...deer.
Suddenly she vaulted into space.
She pronked high, looking for danger.
 Her springy tendons and slender, resilient legs carried her high up into the air, over and over.
She wasn't so different from my daughter, whose lightness I envy as I grow closer to the earth.
The grace in these children comes alive when they are allowed to gaze out over miles of wilderness. It turns into something electric, something beautiful, infused with the spirit of the landscape.
I couldn't stop trying to keep some of it for the coming winter. And now I'm glad I did.
 There is a thought scrabbling around in my head that's hard to catch and contain, so it's going to come out in pieces. It's about happiness, that most elusive of human emotions. If emotions were birds, happiness might be a rail, skulking through the dark reeds of dissatisfaction.
 You can take trips with your family, and think back on them, and think, "Yeah, that was a great trip. I was really happy out there in Montana."
And what I'm thinking is: Why does that feeling have to be remembered as just part of a great trip, isolated in occasional memories, floating out there on its own? Why not look at that trip as part of a continuum of good things, an integral part of your great life, and think of it when you step back to take stock, as we so often do?
Because this is your life, this moment in Montana. And these are the people you love most.
And you set up a camera on a tripod to record this moment, this evidence that you were happy for a while.
Believe it. You are.
These are the gifts that wilderness can give to us. Small wonder we turn to it again and again.
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| MogileFS Maintenance |
[Dec. 2nd, 2009|12:18 pm] |
**EDIT Thu Dec 3 23:24:15 UTC 2009 **
Hey Everyone, we are about to run the last alter job that we need to on our database servers. This will effect userpics / scrapbook / vgift images for the next few hours. Have no fear, your images aren't lost, there is just a really intensive process running on the servers which store the information for mogilefs. Thank you for your understanding and all the LJ love...
Hey LJers,
I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;)
Thanks, |
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| Bob's Bluebirds |
[Dec. 1st, 2009|12:18 pm] |
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http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2009/12/bobs-bluebirds.html 
It is a rare privilege to be shown a place that is special to someone. Visiting Bob Niebuhr's mountain bluebird trail not far from Great Falls, Montana, I think we may have seen the most beautiful bluebird box trail on the planet.
The Man himself, author of beauty and grace, written on the land in bluebirds fledged from his boxes.
 A caravan of cars snaked from the Mountain Bluebird Trails conference site to Bob's turf, and we hopped out to check boxes along the way. And to breathe. Oh, the air was so sweet and cool.
 Mountain bluebirds are bigger than either western or eastern bluebirds, and they often lay clutches of six pale blue eggs. Being broad of shoulder, they need an entry hole that's 1/8" bigger than their smaller relatives, too.
Some three-day-old mountain bluebirds.
 Mountain bluebird babies are lovely, smoky brown and even-colored, unlike our dappled gray eastern bluebird babies. These are about 13 days old.
I loved seeing my first mountain bluebird babies, but I was blown away by their surroundings. What heaven it would be to have an excuse to drive Bob's route once every week.  We compared notes on development and predator deterrents. The Science Chimp always loves to talk shop with other bluebird box landlords.  And of course, she had to get her nose into every box.  As did Science Chimp Junior (this was taken in North Dakota.)  Everywhere on Bob's trail, wildflowers nodded in the breeze. This was the finest stand of prairie smoke I'd ever found. A few lupines add their blue.  Not sure what this is. It looks a lot like a Gaura I planted in my garden this year, but it's much denser and more compact. Yoo-hoo, Caroline from South Dakota?  A natural garden.  Ever dream of having that Montana ranch, brushing out a brood mare's tail, and riding out each morning to watch the sun ascend over the rolling hills?  Me, too. Tree swallows were gettin' busy, too, enjoying Bob's lodgings.    Mountain bluebirds hovered and dove on grasshoppers.   Heavenly, the only word for their blue. Well, maybe celestial. Same meaning.  Wonder if anyone would pay me to live out here and run these boxes when Bob got tired of it? No, he already has good volunteers who help. Rats. And he doesn't show any signs of getting tired of it.  I'd do it for nothing, anyway.  A northern checkerspot stops in its meadowbouncing.  More prairie smoke.  A shy larkspur  and some lupines.  A neighbor brings two little grandsons, still in their jammies, on his four-wheeler, to chat with Bob, who seems to know everyone. Liam looks on in envy.  Bill of the Birds gazes out over the expanse.  I try not to imagine this place in the dead of winter  preferring summer meadows and birdsong to howling blizzards. And so it will stay in my memory, always June, with the song of warbling vireos  and lonely barns against the sky  and Bob fixing a loose roof on a bluebird box  sending thousands of new bluebirds out into the Montana skies making the world a more beautiful place with every mile he drives.  I salute you, Bob Niebuhr, and all those who work for bluebirds. Thank you for bringing our little family to Montana, to find ancient runes and hunker down in tipi rings, to float down the Missouri River. You've made a place in our hearts that we will always come back to. Thank you for all you do to bring beauty to the land. You are appreciated.  last two photos: Bill Thompson III |
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| Home |
[Nov. 30th, 2009|08:45 pm] |
I made it home with no difficulties. American Airlines is definitely chintzy in the service department, but with the amazing fare I had between Washington and Lima I can't really complain. ($250 round trip all in, even including the departure tax from Lima.)
I have plenty of catching up to do, of course, both at work and home. But that's normal. Some day I may even catch up on travelogues. (I am, alas, four behind now.) |
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| Tipi Ring Magic |
[Nov. 29th, 2009|12:58 pm] |
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http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2009/11/tipi-ring-magic.html There are magical places that we come to in our lives, places that leave a print on the soul. Such was one promontory over the Missouri River in Montana, last June.
Somewhere along late September I lost the Montana thread, so caught up in the splendor and hubbub of the fall that I couldn't go back. But as I look out at a fine sleety drizzle falling on gray twigs, I need a little sunshine, a little remembrance of Montana.
 I need a Western White, bobbing in the warm mid-June breeze.
 And a horned toad, delighting the kids with its existence, sending me into a reverie of the first one I ever found, in my uncle's hedge in Iowa. Such a dear little lizard.
The weird and wonderful wildflowers that nodded in the breeze on this promontory confounded me.
 This one I know: Gallardia, or something like it.
 And scarlet globe mallow. I know you.
 But oh, what we didn't know could fill volumes. Who made these rings of rock, and when? Plains Indians, weighing down their tipis with the rocks at hand, leaving them in perfect rings, undisturbed for centuries. Left there, for children to wonder at.
 We touch these rocks, that they touched so long ago. We imagine roasting bison over a campfire, vaulting on our paint ponies for another hunting expedition, flensing hides with flint and bone.
 The clouds roll over us in an endless summer parade and we listen to what Bob knows.
 And the rocks and the wildflowers are the same as they were then
But we are forever changed, having been here, having seen what they saw, having touched the rocks they gathered and used.
 We will always long to return.
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| Just Wow! |
[Nov. 27th, 2009|08:58 am] |
I'm taking advantage of free internet at the hostal (that is correct Spanish spelling, by the way) for this brief note.
One of my theories is that famous places are famous for a reason. Certainly, catching that classic view of Machu Picchu (which requires climbing a lot of steps at high altitude) fell into that category. But the Nazca Lines were even more of a thrill in some ways. It is incredible to contemplate that these vast drawings in the desert, which are seen most easily from the air, were made by people who couldn't see them the way we can.
I've noted before that one of the reasons I travel has to do with the sense of awe at seeing sites like this. It definitely makes up for the lengthy bus rides and bad mattresses and so on.
Off to Lima today and flying home Sunday night / Monday morning. |
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| LiveJournal Major Notes: Security, Mobile, Facebook, Writer's Block, and Notes |
[Nov. 25th, 2009|02:07 pm] |
Tweaks and enhancements
- In order to improve site security, we've temporarily suspended the ability to change passwords for old email addresses that haven't been used for over six months. For further information and support, please visit our customer care page.
- We've launched a new mobile site with an enhanced UI at m.livejournal.com. View spotlights, post to your journal, read and post to friends pages, and more, no matter where you roam! Please let us know what you think, since this will eventually replace our existing mobile interface. You can update your mobile preferences on your account page.
- We've upgraded from Beacon to Facebook Connect to improve dual posting. If you've already signed up for Facebook Beacon, you're good to go. If you wish to update your Facebook Connect setting, visit Account Privacy settings and scroll down to the option labeled: "Send information about my updates to Facebook." You can choose Always or Ask each time. Remember to save (on the bottom left corner of the page). To learn more, check out FAQ 249. While we're on the subject, if you happen to be visiting that side of town, please join our Facebook fan page for a touch of home away from home.
- You'll now receive the Writer's Block Question of the Day in the body of email notifications. To sign up for Writer's Block notifications, visit writersblock and choose the Watch Community option. Next, update your Writer's Block notification settings by checking the box to the right of "Someone posts a new entry to writersblock."
- Paid and permanent users can now view, add, and edit Notes of commenters. Notes will appear beside the username of comment posters (instead of stars) on S1-themed comment pages.
Send some lovin' thanks to your friends with our holiday vgifts!
Photos of the weekWe're so delighted with the immense talent of our growing, global lj_photophile community that we've decided to introduce a poll. Each week, we'll choose a half-dozen photos (based on user comments and staff feedback) and ask you to select a photo of the week. The winning photo will be announced in the next newsletter. If possible, please limit photo size to 350x350 to ensure that images display properly on friends pages. We want to thank you again (and again!) for sharing your passion.
Check out this week's photo poll and more fantastic user content after the jump!
( Read more... ) CurtainsThanks for joining us. To our American friends, have a fantastic Thanksgiving. To all of our international neighbors, we'll eat a little extra for you! |
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| Wildlife Banquet |
[Nov. 25th, 2009|12:46 pm] |
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http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2009/11/wildlife-banquet.html 
Those kwazy kawdinaws. This is a November baby cardinal, photographed on the Day of the Dead, November 1, 2009. Not more than two weeks out of the nest, he is, and begging like mad for some sunflower hearts. Cardinals are the most prolific birds on our place. They nest from April through October. Think it has anything to do with the sunflower subsidy? Me, too. I have a hard time believing cardinals living on the edge of a woods miles from any human habitation are still feeding babies in November. I'd love to be corrected on that, by the way.
I enjoy offering a variety of foods to wildlife. We welcome squirrels, and enjoy seeing them try to get past our baffles. Squirrels very quickly get the picture, and figure out ways to circumvent mere baffles.  However Chet Baker, our own Offisa Pupp, soon sets them straight and sends them packing, tails fuzzed to the fullest, for the trees. No squirtle gets by Offisa Pupp. He busts 'em all.
This squirtle ate a grape or two, but he was really trying to figure out if he could jump from the birch snag to the feeders, bypassing the baffle. He made it, but in the end he moved on. Too much heat from Chet Baker, crusin' around in the black and white.
An eastern chipmunk enjoys the grapes, too.
Who's that with the gentle eye, back in the woods?
 The button buck moseys out and samples some Russian prune leaves.
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| View from the Tower |
[Nov. 25th, 2009|05:59 am] |
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http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2009/11/view-from-tower.html  For those new to this blog, we have a 42' tall birding tower atop our house. It lets us see incredible things, opens up our eyes to the glory all around us. Many of our 184 species of birds have been seen first from this tower.
The tower is in its prime in May, September and October. Not only can you hear for a ridiculous distance all around, but you can see flyovers for miles. And oh, the trees. The beautiful trees.
Before it's too long gone, I have to show you some of the fall splendor we enjoyed from the birding tower on Indigo Hill. I look at these pictures, with the leaves now gone nearly a month, and can't believe what a feast it was. But it's gone until next October, and I'm glad I took so many photos.
 The gold trees in the foreground are mostly sassafras, with some tupelo (red) worked in.
I suppose I could work on some kind of tourism board for southern Ohio, a place that probably does not spring to mind as a prime fall destination. But it is. It is achingly gorgeous. And it is in spring, too, except that the golds are replaced by filmy reds and greens and yellow.
The north view off the tower. All our weather comes from here.
Now panning northeast, turning clockwise:
 East view, the front yard and vegetable garden (with Liam on a tire swing):
 and looking south, down the meadow.
 The sumac in the meadow was spectacular this year, painting a tapestry of reds and golds.
 While the sunshine shots are lovely, I really dig the way autumn foliage looks when skies are leaden.
That same north view looks so different on a blue-grey day, especially when some of the leaves have fallen.
 There's a fairy tale quality to the landscape.
 
I click and click, hoping to capture those qualities of light. Oh, my.
 Oh, my oh my.
If you're intrigued by the tower and want to learn more, read the full story of its conception and execution at my web site, under Writings/A Room With a View. |
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