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There is a grey heron that lives by the Water of Leith in Edinburgh. It ranges from Dean Bridge to Canonmills. I’d not thought that an urban burn would have fish enough for it, but still it endures.
I used to walk that way of a lunchtime. Eventually, I became quite superstitious about that heron. Every time I would see it, standing in the water with the intense stillness that its kind seems to exude, my day would improve. Bad mornings would be followed by good afternoons. Good days became perfect.
Here in Noord-Holland, herons are ubiquitous. They stare at me fixedly from the reed beds in het Twiske, and peer unblinking from beside the canals near my office. Amidst the common rabble of ducks and gulls, beside the vanity of the swans, they stalk like aristocrats or priests, somber and watchful.
I guess I’m very lucky these days. Odd how it feels like being paranoid. All those eyes, watching…
All those eyes, watching…
An appropriate note on which to enter RoomOpen Thread 101.
Is this where we learn the basics of open threads?
(OK, kinda lame, but it's the best I can do right now.)
Sorry for the repetition. But it's an apt repetition.
(must click all links...)
Shortly after we moved to Oregon 30 years ago, we bought our first house. It was very cheap; one of its drawbacks was that it sat at the bottom of a saddle curve of terrain, so during the winter, when it rains a lot here, we got water flowing in from two sides of the lot. We also had very poor drainage so there was about 4 inches of standing water all winter in our backyard. The good news was that we had a lot of frogs living in our own private wetland, and so for several years we had a resident heron living off the frogs. It was like having a living house spirit in bird form; or maybe like having Hiroshige decorate your back yard.
A fair number of people in my neighborhood have decorative ponds in their garden that they stock with fish, sometimes very expensive fish. I overheard a neighbor complaining bitterly about the loss of an insanely expensive koi, which he blamed on our next-door neighbor's cat. Now, Maxi is guilty of his share of scraps (as the notch on his ear can attest), but in this case he was innocent. Turned out that a heron was the culprit. Some people actually have bronze heron statues next to their ponds.
I could have sworn that read "Threat 101" when I first saw it. Are we up that high? PaleGoldenrod Alert!
I get "stack overflow at line: 619" when I click on the Leith link then I hit OK and the photo comes up. I guess we can Leith it alone.
Friends of mine had a resident heron in their ornamental pond, until the pond was clear of koi. Being country folk, they regarded the heron with something akin to the same resigned amusement associated with watching the goats eating the gooseberries.
101 = (1x2²) + (0x2¹) + (1x2&sup0)
101 = (1x4) + (0x2) + (1x1)
101 = 4 + 0 + 1
101 = 5
And 5 is how many moderators ML has.
By God!
I have finally figured out Da Abi Code.
Serge @ 9 ...
I get "stack overflow at line: 619" when I click on the Leith link then I hit OK and the photo comes up. I guess we can Leith it alone.
I'd Leith as not - who knows what you might be forgetting!
xeger... I am not going to commit any further punning, even though the thread's subject was birds, a subject rich with possibilities. And, non, je ne egret rien.
Sue and I watched most of the 1997 miniseries of The Odyssey last night. I've never read the original so I don't know how good the adaptation is. Sue went "Hey!" when we realized they had dropped the Siren episode. Still, it had a good cast, especially Armand Assante, Greta Scacchi and Isabella Rossellini. (Let's not forget Irene Pappas as Odysseus's mother. Ever seen her play Penelope?)
xeger #11 & Serge #9: All together now: The Leith police dismisseth us.
Three herons patrol the shore across the road from my house. Occasionally they squabble over territory, but mostly they just stand very still and loom over the oystercatchers. Of all birds, I think they look the most prehistoric in flight -- something about the hunching, the shape of the head, the spread of the wings, the surprising size.
----------
Those of you who said that I would start enjoying Deep Space Nine more in the middle of the second series: you were right! Thank you for suggesting I stick with it.
----------
My crappy laptop is almost dead. Only one USB port works (the other got rammed inside the machine and is presumably lodged somewhere it shouldn't be). The battery only stays fully charged for one minute, then plummets down to 0%. There's something wrong with the little hole that the power cable plugs into -- it's loose and jiggly and this doesn't seem like a good thing. The lid doesn't stay shut when you put it down. And, after a recent falling-on-the-floor incident, the mouse clicky thing is unresponsive half the time.
So I'm thinking of getting this shiny Lenovo laptop as an unnecessary and undeserved gift to myself.
I'm a bit ignorant about computers and programming these days (all very different from learning BBC BASIC at my primary school's computer club, which had the only computer in the village), so I thought going down the Linux route might force me to learn more about the innards. Is this a good idea?
To derail slightly, as one of the ex-presidents of the University of Edinburgh Science Fiction and Fantasy Society, I have been asked to provide a film/TV series for Conpulsion. The idea being that in one of the rooms will have a projector rigged up, and people will drop in and out if they have time free. My real question is, what should we show? One suggestion was the Call of Cthulhu silent film, but if people have better ideas I would love to hear them.
Madeline Kelly @ 17... I think they look the most prehistoric in flight
That's pretty much the way I feel when roadrunners show up in our backyard. They're slightly better flyers than chicken are, but, when they walk around and hunt, or when they just stare at you, it's a bit creepy. In a good kind of way.
I saw this heron on my last trip to Boston. (Not a very good picture.)
My brother had a koi pond behind his house in Florida. A heron ate his koi, so he went out and bought more koi (with predictable results). I don't know whether his optimism outweighed his Ph.D. in ecology, or whether he prefers herons to koi and was just thinking of the fish as expensive heron chow.
Spike@ 18... I'd suggest 1964's Outer Limits TV series.
At one time I worked around the corner (and parked next to) an office complex with a decorative stream running into a pond with (non-expensive) koi; the stream had mosquitofish. After I'd worked there a few years, the egrets checked it out and found the pond. They had to put netting over it to keep the fish in it.
That's successful landscaping.
Downtown LA has red-tailed hawks that most people don't even notice. And there are stilts and widgeons in the river (and yes, sometimes herons or egrets).
"Stilts and Widgeons" sounds like a shop that sells obscure hardware. (Motto: "All trades, their gear and tackle and trim.")
Or a band. Preferably one that plays period music on "those little buglike instruments".
There are actually a a fair number of them in the city - I'm not sure anyone has actually done a count - and it's not at all uncommon to see one perching on a lamp pole overlooking the highways when you're driving, or coasting over the various fields looking for lunch.
Since I grew up before Mariah and Sirocco moved into the area (the presumed progenitors of most of the Peregrines in the area, afaict), it still makes me smile when I see one sitting up on a lamp pole, or perched on a building ledge, or the like, watching the silly humans hustling and bustling around on the floors of the concrete valleys they now live in and around....
Spike #18: Ooh, yes yes yes, Call of Cthulhu. Other than that...are you going for some kind of theme?
Ooh, I love Leith. My wife and I were married there in '94.
As an aside. The Making Light Indices project is still going, I've just slowed down as I've a book to finish writing this month and the number of posts per month increased substantially in 2006.
There were herons living in the miniscule pond next to our house in Newport News. Even when they were stalking along the edge of the water, they looked intensely still.
P J Evans @ 22... They had to put netting over it to keep the fish in it.
It was quite disconcerting, years ago, to find a big tropical fish in our backyard. Maybe it was a flying fish and it had fallen off a nearby tree. Or maybe one of the Bay Area's airborne fishivores had snatched the fish off a nearby bath. Its being half-eaten leads me to think the former, and that it had been attacked by mutant winged piranhas.
My wife found the following at http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/02/sperm_from_bone_marrow.php
British scientists are ready to turn female bone marrow into sperm, cutting men out of the process of creating life.
Now why did she feel the need to bring this up?
ethan @ 25... Please warn Spike that the dvd's FBI warning states that their antipiracy enforcement is accomplished by mi-gos.
I saw a Green Heron yesterday, flying between Long's Pond and the eastern branch of Lake Lois. In flight they are the same size and roughly the same outline as crows, and on the ground they land in th tall reeds, point their beaks at the sky and vanish quite efficiently.
The second day in Britain, our first trip there, I bought a bird book. There were Great Grey Herons in dead trees overlooking a pond on the way to Sissinghurst, but it was the wood pigeons and blackbirds on the ground at the Tower of London that I life-listed first. Seeing Great Blue Herons is largely a matter of looking in the right place: they top the old pilings off West Bay Drive like just more Capital City public Art, and hunt the muddy shallows of Budd Inlet like a convincing argument that dinosaurs still hunt the earth.
On the other hand, when my nephew was five or six a Great Blue needing rest from a vigorous squall landed on top of his swing-set and teetered there for long insecure minutes, all graceless bony angles and half- open wings struggling for balance. My son insists it's wrong that anything that big and gawky should insist on nesting in trees, fifty feet off the ground, but such is their habit.
I was gonna suggest Open Thread C++, but I couldn't think of anything appropriately clever to do with it.
Serge @ 29 -
My wife found the following at http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/02/sperm_from_bone_marrow.php
British scientists are ready to turn female bone marrow into sperm, cutting men out of the process of creating life.
Now why did she feel the need to bring this up?
Because she feels that, deep in her bones, women don't need men? :)
Avram: You could explain that "This is going to be like Open Thread C, but with class." Though open thread C++ should really evaluate to open thread 100, but update Thread C to open thread 101. Now, if you'd made it open thread ++C, maybe it'd work out right. (But I love the idea of thread names with *side effects*.)
Can you tell it's been a long day?
Herons have started to become rather common here, just north of Atlanta, GA. I don't remember them being in the area when I was young. There was a green heron that used to haunt the inlet stream for the little pond in an apartment complex where I used to walk a dog. He stayed for the summer, and left at the end.
The armadillo line is moving north too. When I was a kid in middle GA, you never saw armadillos there. You do now.
My high school has bald eagles. They are also parked directly under the Atlantic flyway, so it is common in the fall to see astonishingly large flocks of songbirds. I remember one evening coming back from cross country practice and stopping to watch this river of birds fly over for fifteen minutes.
They have herons too, but eagles... It's hard to top the coolness of a pair of eagles flying low over the school buildings.
Fragano #16- how do you know that one?
Anyway, I was only brought up in Balerno, went to school at Heriots, which I think instilled in me my liking for historic buildings. But Leith was always a far away, dodgy place.
Although my great several times removed grandfather lived near the Dean bridge.
And I think I saw an otter on the water of leith up at Currie a few years ago.
Here is a snip of obfuscated text which can be compiled as C++ code and C code and can be interpreted as TeX markup and as a Perl script. The first two lines of the C++ code output are
On the first day of Christmas my only love gave to me
a partridge in a pear tree.
I think the part which begins with #define mysweetdiego is most moving.
Does there exist a poem somewhere which can be read in four different languages, preferably with four quite different meanings?
What worries me most about the water of leith, apart from innapropriate development, is Japanese Knotweed. An evil plant, I want a science fiction plasma gun with which to extirpate it from Scotland.
Serge@19: Yesterday, out in the park feeding the ducks, I threw a big piece of bread to a crow. It held the bread down with one clawed foot and tore pieces of bread off with its beak in a distinctly coelurosaurian manner.
#38: "12 days of christmas" code:
If the code were written in Lisp, would it have a pair bridge in a parse tree?
All trades, their gear and tackle and trim
From one of my favorite poems. Thanks.
guthrie #37: Because I am a native of London. For some reason, people seem astonished by this.
Avram @32:
I'm an idiot. I should have done something like this:
#include <iostream>
#include <blogmagic>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
blog MakingLight = "http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight";
int openthreadnumber;
int openthreadcomments;
openThreadNumber = MakingLight.CurrentOpenThreadNumber();
openThreadComments = MakingLight.CommentQty(openThreadNumber);
// leave space before the 1000 mark so existing conversations can finish
if (openthreadcomments > 950)
{
thread NewOpenThread = new thread ("cleverStartingText");
MakingLight.Post(NewOpenThread);
}
return 1;
}
(My C++ syntax is badly infected by C#, so this probably wouldn't compile even if you could find a blogmagic library to supply the appropriate methods.)
Fragano #43- I didn't realise its use had spread that far. I can't even say it when I'm sober.
There was a line in one of Dylan Thomases poems about the "heron priested shore".
guthrie @39 bemoans Japanese knotweed; Puget Sound has that, plus scotch broom which, away from the insects that can eat its seeds, grows ten feet tall and drives out everything except the blackberries.
There is an urban legend that the Highway beautification program was responsible for the Broom, but in fact the first seeds came here via letter from Edinburgh. It was addressed to David Douglas, from Archibald Menzies at the University of Edinburgh, in exchange for seeds and botanical specimens for douglas fir and big-leaf maple, both of which I've seen when we were wandering lost in the southern highlands.
That trip to Scotland was memorable for people walking up to our group of travelling rosarians in the gardens of Crathes Castle on July 4th and congratulating us for ridding ourselves of the sasunnach, and for me finally life-listing the common eiderduck. The latter was rendered ironic when I saw a raft of fifty out at Kalaloch a few weeks later.
abi @ 44... Where can I get a copy of that cleverStartingText subroutine?
Steve C @ 33... I hope not. Anyway, this gives a whole new meaning to the word 'boner'.
JER #47- What sassenach? I'm afraid I don't quite get the reference.
Thats another of my pet moans- people have been too ready int he past to transplant plants and insects without considering their impact. I have made it my work to get rid of some giant hogweed by the water of leith, but its taken 2 years so far to kill off much of it. Even with roundup and a long handled hoe for when I feel like letting off steam, its still hard work.
Serge @48:
Where can I get a copy of that cleverStartingText subroutine?
Well, actually that was a string input to the constructor. The starting text generation routine only runs on the wetware, I'm afraid, and I don't have access to the source code. I just run the compiled version and see what I get.
Tlönista @ 40... It just goes to show that there are plenty of wonders around.
abi @ 51... Drat. I had presumed you weren't showing the whole program and that, further down, one might find a paragraph thus named with in it the coding for Wit & Cleverness. Oh well.
guthrie @50, I can only believe they were speaking of George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland, who got an eviction notice on July 4, 1776.
Two kilometers east of the ocean, in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the highly eutrophic Stow Lake surrounds Strawberry Hill, San Francisco's 15th highest hill out of the 43 that elevate the city. If three lakes truly makes a Chain of Lakes, then Stow is the easternmost--if one does not count the ponds of the Japanese Tea Garden--and the largest.
The hill was the home to Sweeney Observatory--a viewing platform, astronomical but not for astronomy--before the great quake last century took it down. The high reflecting pond still feeds Huntington Falls.
I have not seen strawberries on that hill, although a few patches of the wild woodland strawberry are said to remain, but there are blackberries and nasturtium fields and a few banana trees by the falls, and south of the hill is the 55 acre botanical gardens at Strybing Arboretum. Come the apocalypse, Strawberry Hill is defensible, with just the two stone bridges across the lake. You must learn to maintain the pumps, though, or eutrophic will turn distrophic.
Each spring the Great Blue Herons return to the trees of Heron Island near the boat house. The Great Blue is a narrow and angular bird, and when they unfold themselves from their resting dimensions to suddenly become visible in the high branches it is a surprise and a wonder. They arrive in January and leave by July.
Two herons have already arrived in the nesting trees. The 2008 Heron Watch Program starts in April on each Saturday: April 12, 19, 26 and May 3, 10, and 17.
guthrie @ 50: May I recommend to you Charlotte MacLeod's The Curse of the Giant Hogweed? It won't help much with the hogweed removal, but it's a great fantasy/mystery.
I remember fondly the winter walk near Columbia MD, where Shymala and I turned a corner and saw a great blue heron maybe 10 feet away, standing as still as if it had been sculpted there. We spent quite some time communing with it, and it with us.
We have egrets in New Orleans -- and ravens. Both are seen in large numbers around the Tulane campus main library. In NYC we have falcons -- and pigeons.
And rats in both.
But as far as I know the falcons are the only ones to eat the rats. They eat the pigeons too.
It is now the Year of the Rat, or the Year of the Mouse, whichever you prefer.
Gung Hei Fat Choy!
Love, C.
UK Advice on eradicating Giant Hogweed with a chunk of history on changing plant names and confused taxonomy.
I've had this song from 1776 stuck in my head off and on as I've been watching campaign coverage. If you haven't seen it before, it's a treat.
We have land,
Cash in hand,
Self-command,
Future planned...
Mary Dell @ 60... Argh! Now I've got an ear worm burrowing into my brain. I'd better find myself some singing by John ("They'll run their pen through it!") Adams to chase the other guy out.
Dave- thats pretty much what I have been doing- spraying glyphosate on it in May, and coming back and cutting up the survivors and ones that I missed. I don't know who owns the land, and a lot of them are on the effectively public ground of the water of leith walkway.
I've got a variety of pictures of herons and other interesting things on the Water of Leith, but they were taken using my film camera, so are not scanned in. I spent many afternoons walking the dog(s) down the old railway line. Unfortunately I now live near Falkirk, although there are some nice areas around here. Ahhh, those were the days.
Am I the only native Edinburgher on here?
Guthrie: do 15+ year transplants count as "native" for these purposes?
Mary Dell (#60): Note that "Cool, Cool, Considerate Men" was not included in the original theatrical release, because Richard Nixon objected to it when Jack Warner gave him a private screening of the movie before release.
In another note (pun most definitely intended), I think we need to put together a playlist of Making Light-related music: "Vindaloo", "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (both the Hurra Torpedo and Bonnie Tyler versions), the Matthew Sweet/Susanna Hoffs "And Your Bird Can Sing", at least one Whisperado track....
guthrie @62:
I got as far as naïve in 14 years, then left before I had my t*.
-----
* which means I'm hungry
Charlie- for the matter of knowing what it is like now, how to live and navigate in it, yes, 15 years is enough.
I guess I'm feeling a little nostalgic tonight, and in that way, being an immigrant from elsewhere does not count.
I think there is something you gain about a place growing up in it, a sense of it changing as you grow up, plus as a child you form bonds and memories and attitudes that are non-rational.
I remember when they put the new flagpole on Edinburgh castle, IIRC they got a Sea King in to lift it. Or when you coudl drive both ways up Princes street, and Saturday morning shopping was a fractious affair due to the huge numbers of people. Or when there were the green and the Red buses. Or when Kinleith mill had workshops and industrial units, and people actually worked there, even if the mill itself was shut.
Oh yes, and Scotland could actually win at Rugby, and we had real winters with snow that lasted for a week, and was sometimes heavy enough to ensure that those who lived outside the not yet completed city bypass had to be sent home early from school.
Abi- clearly you had a narrow escape. I am impressed with your ability to weave such a web of references to open a thread.
guthrie @66:
I did not really escape. Click on the link for "Edinburgh" in the text for how I feel about the city.
I never learned to speak like a Scot, but I don't expect to love Amsterdam the way I love Edinburgh. Robert Louis Stevenson said it best.
I will say it fairly, it grows on me with every year: there are no stars so lovely as Edinburgh street-lamps. When I forget thee, auld Reekie, may my right hand forget its cunning!
There's an annual migration of Pacific Golden Plovers from Alaska to Hawai'i, and some of them occasionally turn up in my yard.
There's a better picture of one here.
They have stilted legs and they're very skittish, but they also can be seen in the middle of the street in front of my house in the mornings. I always want to shout "Cars, you idiots, cars!"
Can someone tell me what the Moderator of the Church of Scotland does? I came across that reference in a YouTube excerpt from Monty Python's Flying Circus and became quite intrigued.
Linkmeister @ 68... "Cars, you idiots, cars!"
That reminds me of when I was living in the Bay Area and one day found a peacock and his hens walking along. Considering that this was a busy street, it's a good thing that they decided to use the sidewalk.
Abi- ahhh, so you have it bad.
Serge- the moderator of the C of S is basically the president/ head spokesperson for the organisation. Such a cunning title.
But Pythons genius, there is probably some sort of actual history involving the C of S and "special effects". I recall watching the sketch on those brothers, one was called Dinsdale, and hunted by a giant hedgehog. It was basically a mickey take of the Krays, but as a teenager I didn't know anything about them, just found it funny.
The wildlife area in Sepulveda Basin this morning had herons, egrets, Canada geese, and a couple of squadrons of white pelicans.
(The geese were in the lake, and the egrets were in the goose meadow.)
A great blue heron would often take up residence around the house I grew up in, we had a small pond and a neighbor had a larger one. Watching a heron take flight never loses its appeal, they are wonderful creatures.
Anyone get a chance to read the Firefly novel Steven Brust posted on his website last week? I am in the middle of reading something else but the temptation to put that aside is hard to resist, Brust's books are so much fun.
Constance Ash @ 58
There's a small lake on the LSU campus in Baton Rouge that has flocks of egrets numbering in the hundreds sitting on the water at the right time of day. Unfortunately, my camera battery packed it in the day before I saw them while taking a walk around the campus, so I have no pictures. My son and daughter-in-law live there, so I'll probably be going down to visit in the next year or so, and I'm taking an extra battery this time.
Herons are my totem bird, I loves them and it's always a good day when I see one. 'Round here they like to hang out in all the suburban ponds during the summer. I only recently found out they don't migrate, they just hole up in river/creek sloughs where there are a lot of trees and water doesn't freeze for most of the winter.
They introduced peregrine falcons to our downtown in the mid-90s, and they took to it and a steady pigeon diet quite well.
And bald eagles come up the Missouri river, take a left at the confluence of the Kaw and Missouri and go on up to Lawrence, were they roost in abundance during the winter. Once when I still worked downtown, my boss called me to come to his office, he didn't usually do that. When I got there (he had a corner office) he handed me his binoculars and pointed toward the Broadway Bridge. A pair of eagles were flying gracefully over the river and through the bridge. Really cool.
Because of our parkway system, we have wildlife all through the city, some of it annoying, some of it pretty cool.
Serge @ 70
I think I've mentioned this here before, but it bears repeating. Incidents involving cars (or pedestrians with dogs) and peafowl are not uncommon in the hills just west of downtown Portland. The zoo there keeps a flock (herd, committee) of them, but they're not fenced, and often go walkabout in the surrounding parks and affluent residential areas. The furthest I've run across them (almost literally) was a mile or so from my house, which is on the opposite side of a major freeway, then up and over one of the medium-sized hills from the zoo. And there's no road over that hill; they had to have followed the hiking / bike trail.
guthrie #45: It has spread to many parts of the world, I assure you.
This may be the place for a ballade I wrote a while back, entitled, simply 'cattle egrets':
the bird sits calmly on the cow's high back
removing parasites if that's the word
the farmer's friend when poor farmers lack
the dips and sprays the wealthier preferred
to kill the ticks and aid the healthy herd
avian paradox that sits out in plain sight
the elegant egret most useful tick-bird
that comes from africa and yet is white
above us the high winds turn clouds to wrack
something like that we think must have occurred
the winds grabbed the birds up in their sack
and with a speed that should have blurred
the sight as somewhere we've referred
hurled these poor flyers westward in the night
new migrant status on each wing conferred
that comes from africa and yet is white
hard working mountain peasant in his shack
to wealthier men's opinions that deferred
now learns that these big fellows have the knack
to eat large vermin and are not deterred
by sight or sound or by restraining word
from relieving cattle in their itchy plight
the farmer will not have this helper slurred
that comes from africa and yet is white
prince in this opinion all men have concurred
that nature in her wisdom has the right
to send our farmers the companion bird
that comes from africa and yet is white
Bruce Cohen @ 76... As for Hera's mascots that showed up near our then-house... Concord is many miles away from the Oakland Hills. The only other place where I'd have expected them to come from is even less likely: it'd have involved their walking on the very busy bridge that goes past the Mothballed Fleet, then 10 miles more to our house. It is a mystery.
guthrie @ 71... Jokes within jokes, eh? I love those.
There's been a Great Blue Heron nesting alongside a pond next to Sligo Creek Parkway, just under the Washington DC Beltway. Sometimes I take the slow route just to look for the bird.
My parents are the only people I know who have seen the fabled red heron, though.
Avram @ 32 ...
I was gonna suggest Open Thread C++, but I couldn't think of anything appropriately clever to do with it.
Object? String people along with class? Inherit? Inherit class?
So there we were on a Sunday afternoon, laundry safely in the machines at Canonmills Laundry, and ourselves sitting in the Orchard bar (that used to be the Northern) while having a quick play with the internet tablet, when we find this thread....
Somewhat disconcerting, as we'd looked for the heron earlier as we crossed the bridge.
#76 and 79
They can fly. They roost in trees (and I've seen them on top of utility poles).
Re Tor's new program: Patrick, if those are the age categories of interest, perhaps you could consider just changing the "30+" to "Old fart"?
P J Evans @ 84... True, but peacocks, like roadrunners, don't fly long distances. With all the freeways and the bridges and the delta's nooks and crannies, it amazes me that Captain Peacock got anywhere without being turned into a pancake.
I spent part of a day in Edinburgh, and have always wanted to go back. Graeme and I swore we would go there for our honeymoon, but it's been 8 years now, and we have yet to make the trip. Somehow, every time we get the money and vacation together for a trip to the UK, his mum wants to see us for some reason, and it's quite a drive from West Wales to Edinburgh. My hope is that when we manage to move back to the UK, that we can move to Scotland, where we'll both be equally foreign.
My true excitement is over the new Open Thread though. I've been waiting.
I'm putting together a playlist of lullabies. So far I have Tura Lura Lura, Summertime, Brahm's Lullaby, Godspeed and Lullaby by the Dixie Chicks, and When You Dream by Barenaked Ladies. I'm looking for songs that are appropriately soothing, but won't make me want to tear my hair out with their insipidness. Availability on iTunes is a definite plus. Folk or Broadway get extra points, as does being in a range that an out of practice soprano can sing. Mostly I'm just looking for some things that are real music, not dumbed down for babies. Any suggestions? Family favorites?
#74 ::: Bruce Cohen
[ There's a small lake on the LSU campus in Baton Rouge that has flocks of egrets numbering in the hundreds sitting on the water at the right time of day. Unfortunately, my camera battery packed it in the day before I saw them while taking a walk around the campus, so I have no pictures. My son and daughter-in-law live there, so I'll probably be going down to visit in the next year or so, and I'm taking an extra battery this time. ]
We're gonna be at LSU rather extensively (as well as in NO) by the end of this month and next month (March), coz of da book(s). Will look out for those egrets.
Until I lived in one I had no idea of how beautiful swamps are, and filled with beautiful inhabitants -- not talking about humans here, but animals, birds, insects. As well as all those that are inimicable to human life, of course -- and that includes human beings too.
Love, C.
RichM @#38: Not in the same way, but Here's a poem interweaving bits of five languages.
#78 ::: Fragano Ledgister
[ . . . from relieving cattle in their itchy plight
the farmer will not have this helper slurred
that comes from africa and yet is white . . . ]
As so frequently, amigo, you hit it right, at the right moment.
(which is why it is so difficult that you hide the stuff these days over there.)
Love, C.
EClaire @ 87 ...
I'm fond of Shriekback's Cradle Song
The Edinburgh heron may have been a sign of improving water. For eight years I lived around Coolidge Corner (Brookline MA) and worked in Kendall Square or Lechmere (Cambridge MA); I commuted by bicyle as much as possible, which meant that several times a week I rode along some miles of the north bank of the Charles River (only 25 miles compared to Water of Leith's 35, and dammed near the outlet). Partway through that time, there was great excitement because a colony of cormorants had established itself on one of the docks (the dam has a lock, so large numbers of coastal cruisers harbor on the river); it was seen as a sign that the long cleanup of an area once called "the world's largest unflushed toilet bowl) was making headway.
Bruce@6: some friends put a frog pond on their out-of-the-smog retirement home for the music; he said the heron that showed up was not naturally blue, but colored by the intensity of his cursing.
Spike@18: Miyazaki is the foremost film fantasist today; there are several possibilities, but I'd recommend Spirited Away. Your audience may be too young to know The Princess Bride, but it should. For something from your side of the pond, Five Million Years to Earth (Quatermass and the Pit in the original UK release) -- sadly, it's increasingly relevant again in view of the rise of hysterical fear as a political movement.
guthrie@45: Ogden Nash referred to it in a poem I read >40 years ago, from a book that was a decade or more older.
RichM @ 38: It's not exactly what you had in mind, but LanguageHat has a story up today on pentalingual sonnets.
I like the SF timeline of inventions, but am I misunderstanding the concept? Aren't the mentions supposed to predate the inventions? If so, the invention of the submarine had already taken place.
David @89: Yes, it's more like a program that fails to compile or run in five different computer languages. Even I can write one of those.
Stephen @93: "pentalingual" itself serving as a mongrel sired by "quintalingual" out of a dam "pentaglottal," I reckon. But it sounds like it describes a person who has five tongues.
Obligatory bird-riff: I wonder whether Antoine Cassar has considered translating Le Flacon into Maltese.
#87: I'm going with Monster's Lullaby, but it was off a compilation filk (Quips and Quarks?) that I had at several hands, so I don't know the original author.
Oh, there's something in my garden, and it's been there for a week
I tried to feed it crackers, but that only made it squeak
I tried to wash its scaly head but all it did was cry
So I think I'll put it back to bed and sing it a lullaby
A monster's lullaby.
Nyah, nyah, your mother eats toads,BTW, don't forget that what they find most soothing is loudish white noise, such as a vacuum cleaner or a computer fan, so don't be afraid to play adult music that's somewhat rhythmic. We're of the opinion that the reason certain genres of music are so popular is because all that most American children are exposed to is the musical equivalent of baby talk. (So-called "primitive" drumming styles usually offer more complexity than your typical pop song. Not to say there aren't good pop songs out there; just that it's a pity that those are all some people can appreciate.)
May you grow a fine wart on the tip of your nose.
Ding dong, the cat's in the well,
So run and fetch another one...
And heron! And another heron (with an egret!)
Maybe someday I'll get a long lens and not have to work so hard to sneak up on them. (My zoom is about what you'd expect from a point-and-click.)
P.S. I defend my right to like crappy pop songs!
I just hate it when people think of them as the sole music out there. :p
I think Pelicans looks the most prehistoric. They have an angularity which reminds me of the various pteranodons.
Birds, in the course of looking at one, do strike one as alien. They are still as anything, then they move.
Janice @ #35, whereabouts in Middle Georgia did you grow up? I spent all my school years in Cochran.
joel @ #42, one of mine too. You're welcome!
ben @ #73, I read it. It was good. The apotheosis of fanfic.
EClaire @ #87, I'm partial to "Baby's Boat's a Silver Moon" and "Spin, Spider, Spin". I don't know whether iTunes has either.
B. Durbin @ 96 ... is full of egrets :)
I love crappy pop songs, don't get me wrong! "Toxic" is insanely catchy! It's just better done by Nickel Creek than it is done by Britney Spears. I just want some things I can sing that I like the lyrics to, I like the sentiment behind, and that have some musical complexity behind them. I mean, I can put "Rhapsody in Blue" on repeat, but it doesn't give me the same satisfaction of getting to sing to the baby bump. Ooh... maybe I'll start singing "I've Got Rhythm" when the kicking starts!
P.J. Evans: I see the red-tails, and the Cooper's, and the Great Horned Owls. Once I saw a Gyrfalcon (transient).
I've seen the occaisional Heron, and Egret.
The Nivens put koi in their pond. Fuzzy saw a Great Blue Heron eat them. She netted the pond before they put in more koi.
When we were in Galapagos, we saw several Great Blue Herons (and some lava herons, much smaller, and with a much more desperate look). One of them "punched" a California Brown Pelican (we also saw California Sea Lions, and California Oystercatchers) in the breast with his beak.
Most surprising was the pelican doing nothing more than back up.
Either they have much denser feather than I thought, or the heron pulled his punch.
The fish market looked like this
Spike @ #18: I'd definitely concur with your choice of "The Call of Cthulhu." Or any other cinematic work shot in Mythoscope®.
Serge @ #30: Please be accurate. Mi-Go are, simply, mi-go. There is no singular, nor is any article appropriate, except for, optionally, "the." I'd hate for you to become a victim just because of a grammatical lapse, but they can be hyper-sensitive.
re "home" and the sense of place and nostalgia.
I am not a native Californian. I have, however, become one, pretty much to my very bones, in the, almost 33, years I've lived here.
I recall when I discovered this, back in August of 1988. I was coming home from a trip to Tennessee (where I got my driver's license, and then drove a car out of state). I hit the swinging downhills of the 210, into the San Fernando Valley, and a song I didn't like (until that moment) came on the radio, and I was singing, like madman, along with Randy Newman that I loved L.A. Because it was true. And I've discovered other places I love as well. At least one I am more than willing to live in. I understand Lee's dilemma, and I know why he made the choice he made.
While I was in Iraq a friend of mine (native of Devon, living in Lompoc) sent me a mix of assorted British folk music, which included,
I don't know if you can see
The changes that have come over me
In these last few days I've been afraid
That I might drift away
So I've been telling old stories, singing songs
That make me think about where I came from
And that's the reason why I seem
So far away today
Oh, but let me tell you that I love you
That I think about you all the time
Caledonia you're calling me
And now I'm going home
If I should become a stranger
You know that it would make me more than sad
Caledonia's been everything
I've ever had
Now I have moved and I've kept on moving
Proved the points that I needed proving
Lost the friends that I needed losing
Found others on the way
I have kissed the ladies and left them crying
Stolen dreams, yes there's no denying
I have traveled hard with coattails flying
Somewhere in the wind
(Chorus)
Now I'm sitting here before the fire
The empty room, the forest choir
The flames that could not get any higher
They've withered now they've gone
But I'm steady thinking my way is clear
And I know what I will do tomorrow
When the hands are shaken and the kisses flow
Then I will disappear*
It brought tears to my eyes, and I sing along with the chorus, whenever I hear it now. It's richer for my having been to Scotland, but I still change the lyric, because California scans.
*Caledonia, Dougie MacLeod © 1982 Plant Life Music Ltd.
EClaire @ #87: I'm partial to lullabies, too. The duo Trout Fishing in America has a few very good ones on their numerous CD's. And "Fire and Fleet and Candlelight" is a good one, although Buffy Sainte-Marie's version is a bit histrionic.
Bruce/Serge: Peafowl fly. They are horrid pests.
For something so large, they fly quite well. They, like herons, are fond of roosting dozens of feet above the ground.
We had a cock which lived in the neighborhood and kept trying to mount the geese. This annoyed them, and the ganders, no end.
But to harm one is a 5,000 dollar fine in Arcadia. We had a friend the city was trying to bill for hitting one when it ran in front of her car, in the dark of night.
Serge @#61: here you go.
The things I write are only light extemporanea
I won't politics on paper; it's a mania
So I refuse to use the pen in Pennsylvania.
Serge: I've seen peafowl fly a 1/4 mile. They didn't seem exhausted when they landed.
EClaire @ #87, you might try Linda Ronstadt's entire album of lullabies. It's a hokey concept (turning rock songs into lullabies), but there may be a little gold there for your purposes.
Terry Karney (#104): When talking about songs of home and Scotland, I'm reminded of the Proclaimers[1] song Letter From America.
[1] Unjustly, they're only known in the US for one song. As good as "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" is, it's not even my third favorite of their songs; I'd put "Letter From America", "Act of Remembrance", and their cover of "King of the Road" ahead of it.
Christopher Davis #110: I like "Throw the R Away".
Christopher Davies: I have Hit the Highway and Sunshine on Lieth. I had the latter years before Benny and Joon.
It was quite the surprise to find the having a "hit single" so many years after the album came out (I'd not seen the film, and was surprised). Apparently Mary Stuart Masterson was asked if she had any ideas for the soundtrack and that was what she wanted in the movie.
Sadly one of my favorite songs on that album isn't written by them (My Old Friend The Blues).
They are great.
(Rewriting, closed the wrong window earlier...)
EClaire: I highly recommend 'Didn't Leave Nobody But the Baby', which you can find a great version of on the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. (If you saw the movie, it's the song the three sirens are singing while doing laundry in the stream and vamping Our Heroes.) We used to sing this song, with about a dozen variously ad-libbed verses, while rocking our son to sleep.
Constance Ash @ 88
Here's a googlemap for the lake where I saw the egrets.
EClaire (87), is looking for lullabies:
I just discovered "Mersey Lullaby," on Sandra Boynton's _Blue Moo_. I like it a lot, though I wonder what they were thinking...it seems to be the only song on the album that's not funny.
Guthrie (66), I'm uncomfortable with the idea that growing up in a place is the only way the place can become "home," as I grew up in a thoroughly nasty place and hated it. I spent years in cities and towns that weren't as bad as where I had grown up, even though they weren't exactly right for me. Then I found Cambridge, when I was nearly 30, and I suddenly knew what "coming home to a place I'd never been before" felt like. That was a shock, with Cambridge and the positive senses of "home" both being so new.
There's a small not-exactly-decorative pond in the north part of town that has a flock of Canada geese dropping droppings all around it, and frogs in it. One day I noticed a blue heron in amongst the geese!
(I agree with Terry, they do very much look like pteradons when flying--but there was the day I was visiting a friend in Worcester, who works part-time at the Massachusetts Audobon site in Worcestor, we looked up and saw a pair of birds with -enormous- wingspans overhead, looked in one of her books and the only thing they looked like, were gooney birds! Gooney birds, overhead in Worcester?! but apparently, that's what they were!
"Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby" is Alison Krauss? How is it possible I didn't have this already? And Sandra Boynton's Blue Moo isn't on iTunes, but apparently there's a song on Rhinoceros Tap that's titled "I love you more than cheese." Which, I love a lot of people, but I'm not sure if I love any of them more than cheese... that would be a hard decision. Because... cheese! Thank you for the suggestions so far, I'm making a list. The Proclaimers songs may end up on my shopping list as well, just because I love "500 Miles," and am willing to try just about anything else that is sung with those accents.
I agree with Adrian - some people aren't born in the place they find home. But I think everyone has that place that they fit, I'm just not sure everyone gets the chance to find it. I know I'm homesick for Portland, and finding myself dreaming about mountains now that I've moved back to Central Illinois. I was antsy, and ready to leave Portland when we left, but now that I'm here, nothing seems quite as good. The restaurants are bland, I can't find really fresh produce OR seafood, the voting system is silly, the weather is awful... er, perhaps I've started to rant. In any case, I know that home is out there, and this isn't it. Maybe Portland isn't it either, but it was an awful lot closer.
guthrie @62: not native, but I live in Edinburgh.
And you're probably not mistaken about seeing that otter. There's been one around recently: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7050878.stm
And to tie together the Alison Krauss and songs about home - how about the song "Gravity" where she sings "The people who love me still ask me 'When are you coming back to town?' and I answer, 'Quite frankly, when they stop building roads and all God needs is gravity to hold me down.'"
That sounds much closer to how I feel about the places I grew up.
If we're talking about barely defensible pop and Scottish music, I get to bring up Big Country. I've been listening to their titular song a lot lately. Some of it is nostalgia, some of it is just the pleasure of hearing an electric guitar skirling like a bagpipe.
It's funny how much I talk about places I miss here. You'd think I was constantly consumed with nostalgia and homesickness. It's not true, though -- I try to find something to love about every place I live.
Today it was the way the mist rises off of the canals, blurring the lines of the reeds as their tips shine in the sunlight. The grass was white with frost, and the sky a vivid blue. Although there were no clouds, the contrails of planes scrawled mysterious symbols on the heavens.
Talking of herons, I work a couple of blocks away from Lake Merritt, in Oakland. There's a bird sanctuary in it. Not infrequently when I'm walking by there, I'll see a bird which rejoices in the name Black Crested Night Heron.
Ben Morris@73: I'm a little over halfway through it now, and it's a lot of fun. Nothing earthshaking happens, or can happen; but Brust has the character voices down cold, and it's nice to spend some more time with them.
abi, I know that heron well - used to see it a lot. It always reminded me of the late Donald Dewar MP.
There's also a kingfisher around the Dean Bridge somewhere; not seen it myself, but my father swears it exists, and reports seeing it about once every couple of months.
I think it's the way their legs trail out behind them in flight, and those broad low-aspect wings, but they do look distinctly pterosaurian.
Terry may be interested to know that there was an airline in the 1970s called British Caledonian, that actually ran advertisements featuring its stewardesses and the slogan "I Wish They All Could Be Caledonian Girls"...
I've seen that heron! The spring family holiday of 2005 was a week based in an apartment in Canonmills, Edinburgh, exploring the many and varied attractions of the city.
That first evening as we wandered out in search of
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