Graydon - yeah, I know. It just didn't look right to me, but red-tails are famous for their variability, it's true. Never mind!
Graydon, Lucy and Echidna - perhaps you're right, though bright sun can make anything look yellow. I'll tell you what was throwing me, though - that short tail. Almost everything that looks like that has a long tail. So if we allow for the possibility that this bird has molted or otherwise lost its long tail feathers, a lot more species open up, including the red-tail and some others. However, they're all beginning to blur together for me, so it's time for me to give up. Frankly, I find it easiest to identify based on behavior, which pictures give us very little of. Oh, well!
Janet - the article seems to say that cats eat meat because they don't have the sweet gene. It seems much more likely to me that natural selection didn't prevent the loss of the sweet gene because their diet had already changed. Interesting finding. I wonder how legit the journal is? I notice that they charge authors to publish.
Lucy and Echidna - I still think it's an osprey. There is white on the head - it's especially visible in picture 11. The head is not well enough shown to really pin it down, but red-tails don't as a rule have that much white on the head, and they have longer tails than that. This bird's shape and attitude look more osprey-like to me. I agree that it's not an eagle. By the way, crests aren't part of the structure of the bird, but are behavioral. The osprey pictures I've been looking at are certainly as dark as your pictures.
Lucy, I could be wrong, but I think it's an osprey. It made me think osprey when I saw it, and when I looked in my nearest bird book (I have a lot of them), the osprey picture looked very similar. A closer look at the head would help, but I'm pretty sure already.
Gene Robinson is indeed the name of the NH bishop. He was apparently at the NYC pride parade, though I didn't see him; our Newark bishop, Jack Croneberger, was there as well. He rode in the Oasis ministry's car, accompanied by the several churches sponsoring the Oasis, including ours. (The Oasis is the Newark diocese's outreach to GLBTI people.)
I met Gene Robinson at an Oasis anniversary service a year ago. He's extremely personable. I liked him.
For anyone still moping about being unable to afford Glasgow this year, round trip air tickets from Newark (NJ) to Manchester (UK) were still at $795 last night, including taxes. There are trains from Manchester to Glasgow and Edinburgh - it's a few hours, but direct. That's how John and I are going.
I priced it again because I wanted to change our return flight by half a day, and I wanted to know the damages. The price hadn't changed at all, so we only had to pay the change fees ($200 each, so bad enough by themselves).
Our beloved choir director, organist and friend is leaving! He's taken a wonderful job at a wonderful church in Asheville, NC, and we are bereft. August 14 is his last Sunday here, and we were due back from the UK that afternoon. So now we'll get back the night before instead. *sigh*
We have 14 foot tall Japanese knotweed occupying the entirety of our northern and western neighbors' back yards, with regular incursions into ours and into our southern neighbor's. We didn't know what it was for a long time, and just referred to it as "jungle plant". Amazing stuff. I'm very glad it's not hogweed....
Charlotte MacLeod. My least favorite of her mysteries, actually, though it's the most openly fantastic of the lot. The rest are full of wonderful silliness.
Jules - I was going to guess that the entire prize would go to the least senior pirate. They would all vote to kill off the proposing senior pirate both in order to kill someone and to decrease the possible number of people sharing in the prize. I'm not sure how the fact that all of the pirates would know this factors in, though.
Bob Oldendorf - we've been seeing fireflies in Hoboken too, for the last week or so. Same climate, so that's no surprise. (I'm not sure why I now reach for "firefly" instead of the "lightning bug" I grew up with. Local dialect?)
P J Evans - It's good to know that cherry tomatoes can be grown in pots. Was that inside? As Xopher has sometimes said, we're wary of planting food plants outside, due to the bad polluted soil in this county. I also much prefer admiring the garden from my bedroom window to actually going out in it (yes, I'm a little strange).
I did just go out and weed on Monday. There were enormous quantities of grasses in everything. The jungle weed (Japanese knotweed, actually) filling the entire next yard had not invaded too much, although it's hanging over the wall, and I need to go back out and deal with it.
Our supposed petunia has turned out to be something that climbs the fence and grows over everything it sees. Very pretty. I think it might not actually be a petunia, though it's possible it's just getting carried up by the morning glory vines in there.
The female holly tree is now as high as my second story window, and shows no signs of slowing down. The daylilies under it have apparently all died - at least, they haven't flowered. So one way to kill daylilies is apparently to grow them under a holly, which, I believe, acidifies the soil. Of course it's possible that the 2-year old child upstairs or the dog downstairs had something to do with it. SOMEONE certainly dug up the honeysuckle. *grumble*
Teresa - I buy basil at the farmer's market, then dry it in a low-humidity bin in my fridge, laying it out on paper towels. I do the same with dill and parsley. If it stays dry enough it works quite well, and makes for, as you say, much better flavor than the bottled variety.
JVP: Your 9:02pm spoem (nice coinage) is from Emily Dickinson. Any key phrase at the beginning.
Michelle K - to be honest, the Northern-style biscuit cobblers taste pretty good, too. But I grew up with pie-crust-style pastry toppings, and pined for them until I found this place. They also absorb the fruit juice and cinnamon, and they taste glorious. (I expect they have more calories than the biscuit toppings - pastry is pretty high-fat. This is good for taste, but bad for one's waist-line.)
Larry Brennan - Newark NJ is also the home of my favorite soul food restaurant, JE's (corner of William & Halsey). Breakfast, lunch or dinner. Biscuits or corn bread (good corn bread) with every meal. Grits (or hash browns, but why would you ever get hash browns when you could get grits?) with breakfast. Pork in everything. Choice of 2 sides with lunch or dinner - yams, mashed potatoes, green beans, collards, mac & cheese.... AND proper southern cobbler for dessert, made with pastry, like God intended.
Juli - thanks for the report on the salwar/kameez. I was wondering how the second vendor's stuff fit.
I've found that most things that call for dry cleaning can be hand-washed, or washed in a machine on gentle cycle with cold water. I wouldn't try it with a lined jacket or similar item, though - the lining could bunch up. Also, if there's any chance the item isn't dye-fast, it should be washed alone. I once washed a lovely pink & lavender dress with a load of other light stuff, and the blue dye in the lavender part of the dress leaked. I now have lots more blue underwear than previously!
The tort reform movement isn't only run by corporate interests, though a lot of it is. I read an e-newsletter called the True Stella Awards by internet humorist Randy Cassingham, who always provides links to citations on the cases he writes about. Randy is pretty even-handed, I think.
Juli Thompson & Mary Kay: I'm going to Wiscon too. See you there!
Eleanor - well said. That feels like what I do, too.
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|---|---|
| 2005 | 36 |
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