Christmas Mergansers

Steve snapped these hooded mergansers on a nearby pond – a real treat, given we see them so rarely. The adult males at right are in breeding plumage, and are already displaying courtship behaviors – bobbing their heads, stretching their necks, and generally thrashing about. Most mergansers feed on fish, but these little guys feed primarily on aquatic insects and crustaceans (crayfish and such), although they’ll eat small fish too. They’re uncommon breeders in California, and will probably go to Oregon and coastal Washington to nest and lay their eggs.

What I Love About You

This holiday season, I want to take a moment to tell my friends how much I appreciate their love and support. Each of you continues to surprise and amaze me, and as individuals you’ve brought much joy to my life. These are the qualities I love most about you:

Shannon: Your resilience, courage and determination. Your love of kids and dogs.

Kathy: Your work ethic, tenacity and intelligence; your willingness to share Kings’ tickets!

Liz: Your love of the environment and the work you’re doing; you make the world a better place.

Toni: Your sense of humor and remarkable style; your crazy Italian stories. Ti amo, Toni!

Kim: Your commitment to friends, family, and tradition; your desire to understand.

Chris: Your willingness to stretch yourself, and to show us how it’s done.

Laurie: Your candor and your confidence – you’re an inspiration because you’re real.

Lori: Your grace, your gentleness, your generosity of spirit.

Margaret: Your faith. Your love of reading. Your commitment to politics.

Lynn: Your life, so different from my own, has struck a wondrous chord. I long to know you better, and to learn more about Esther and Jonah.

Tony: Your eagerness to expand your knowledge; your outspokenness and smarts.

Andy: Your exuberant spirit and captivating smile; the stories you’ve yet to tell!

Gwen: Your tender side, your humanity, your potential. You’ve got a lot to give.

Firyal: Your illumination of a world unknown; I hunger to learn more.

Rich: Your willingness to be just who you are, in dress and attitude. You have the capacity to change men’s minds.

Alex: Your hard work (all that you’re doing!), your writing talent, your ear for dialogue.

Sandra: Your outlook – so smart and accepting; your knack for story telling. (I love that doggie, Taco.)

Greg: Your ability to paint a landscape using color and description.

Mary: Your warmth, curiosity and sincerity. You tell it like it is.

Courtney: Your spunk, quirkiness and originality. Your love of chocolate.

Bryan: Your programming skills extraordinaire; your calming effect on others.

Glenda: Your devotion to family. The memories we share – they number in the thousands.

Linda: Where to start? You, more than any other, live your life as a best example, showing me every day what it is to be a good person. A woman whose attitude outshines the stars, and whose belief is complete and unfailing.

I love you, my friends. Merry Christmas all.

Morning Egret Pic...Sweet!

Steve's not crazy about this Great Egret photo -- shot this morning around 9:00 -- but I think it's interesting. It's taking flight from a nearby pond, following a breakfast of salamanders.

While Standing in That Long Line at Borders...

Steve and I just returned from Borders Books, which was packed with shoppers. I don't understand these reports that keep telling us Americans don't read anymore. There were four clerks working the counter, and 43 people standing in line. I was number 44. (To paraphrase the man behind me, "Holy crap, people.") And guess what they were buying. Books! (And DVDs of the Planet Earth series, which is maybe the next best thing.) I too purchased a book, and a mini pack of Chapsticks. Because we're reading and moisturizing, all at the same time.

Oh Shenandoah, I Cry To Hear You

After three days of wind and rain, the sun nudged through the clouds this morning, prompting my first walk since Sunday. It was 46 degrees when I left at 9:15 a.m., my hair in a ponytail and my hands in gloves, my iPod playing White Christmas – something new to listen to! Earlier in the week, I’d added a holiday playlist, incorporating a few of my favorites: White Christmas by Bing Crosby; What Child Is This and O Holy Night by the Judds; Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Tony Bennett, and three tunes by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I’d thrown in Oh Shenandoah for good measure, and today, as I walked a creek bank swollen with rain, that song came on.

That quick, my eyes welled and my throat grew thick, and I had to stop at the footbridge to collect myself.

Maybe it was the lyrics. Or maybe it was the swell of the choir, the men’s voices mingling with the women’s, the notion there was a time and place when someone could gaze across a river, knowing all their lives they’d love it like a friend.

Likely it’s the season. The time of year when we all go a little sentimental; when we tell those close to us how much they mean to us, and how grateful we are they don’t laugh out loud when they find us crying in a creek bed.

Partridge in Ryan’s Pear Tree

Steve took this picture of our neighbor’s pear tree yesterday. Here it is, the middle of December, and just look at the leaves still clinging to the branches; it’ll be a week or two yet before they’ve all dropped, but in the meantime we’re enjoying the late fall colors, as are the robins. They’re down from the hills, huddled and puffed up against the cold, escaping the snow in higher elevations.

What's a Coffee Lover To Do? (Quit Drinking It, For One)

In Indonesia, as habitat shrinks, elephants leave the forest and in their exodus trample illegal coffee fields inside the national park Bukit Barisan Selatanit. The park is protected, but some of the land has been burned and cleared to grow Robusta coffee beans, which are commonly used in Europe and North America to make instant coffee. And when elephants crush the crops, farmers kill them. (At this park, only four creatures of a herd of 60 now remain.)

Nick Watt, of ABC News, reported on Dec. 11 that Nestle, which makes Nescafe, buys coffee from the region -- "forty percent of it from local traders." The company says, through its spokesperson, that it has no way of knowing where the beans they buy come from, and that they “might come” from illegal sources. The spokesperson also said (rather unfortunately, in my view) “law enforcement is not our task,” adding that it is “working with local farmers to increase output from legal, existing plantations.”

Adam Tomasek, of the World Wildlife Fund, said coffee producers in Europe and America really don’t know for certain where the coffee they’re buying comes from, and that is the root of the problem. According to Tomasek, a consumer can have “absolutely no confidence in what they are purchasing."

It sometimes seems the world is going to hell in a coffeemaker, but the good news is the World Wildlife Fund is trying to stop the killing -- a difficult challenge, given that wild elephants and humans really don't get along.

I'll Have What She's Having

There was a piece in the Washington Post recently by Blaine Harden comparing Japanese bloggers to American bloggers, and delineating their differences. Americans tend to blog for what the reporter termed “abrasive self-promotion,” while Japanese bloggers “rarely trumpet their expertise.”

One Japanese blogger – a woman named Junko Kenetsuna – writes five times a week (in Japanese) about nothing but her noon meal, calling her blog “I had my lunch.” What I love about Junko’s story is that of the 300 or so people who occasionally read her blog (most of them friends), she gets almost no online comments or feedback from any of them, although she had hoped she might.

I laughed out loud when I read that, finding some comfort in the knowledge I wasn’t alone.

Being something of an abrasive self-promoter myself, I’ve been wondering how to get more people to read and then comment on my 60-second essays. Certainly a piece in the Washington Post helps, as does a video like this one, featuring the gentle and soft-spoken Kenetsuna.

Root Baskets from Reclaimed Wood

I saw the photo at right on the Viva Terra website, and was intrigued by the notion that root baskets are carved from reclaimed wood. Curious about how that worked, a little research told me that some of these reclaimed baskets come from the root of the Chinese fir tree – it seems that once the tree is harvested, farmers dig up the root and sell it to artisans, who then carve it into baskets, bowls, serving trays and vases, and who in turn sell their wares to people like me.

Which got me wondering about reclaimed wood in general. A little more “digging” (ha, that’s funny!), and I learned that wood reclaimed from existing structures, orchards, old warehouses, buildings, bridges, or even from city trees that have succumbed to disease or storm damage, saves our landfills from wood products that can (and should) be recycled, and contributes to the salvation of old-growth forests.

Now, when Steve and I contemplate installing a hardwood floor, we’ll definitely investigate the pros and cons of using reclaimed wood – an idea that had not occurred until seeing that pretty root basket.

Et Tu, Haiku?

Rolf Nelson wrote this haiku as a poetry assignment. (See at right.) He sells it printed on shirts and hoodies. You can buy them at threadless.com. In response I say:

Rolf is out of shirts
A small will squeeze Steve's innards
Extra-large will do

Get Ye to the Yukon

Our good friend John Cornely, executive director of the Trumpeter Swan Society, is looking forward to seeing us (that’s you, me, and all our friends) at the society’s 21^st conference during the week of April 17 – 19, 2008, in the Yukon. Presentations will focus on swans in western Canada and Alaska, and there will be an all-day field trip to view swans south of Whitehorse on Friday, April 18. The conference will be held at the High Country Inn; rooms are $99/night (Canadian). Save the dates – and your allowance. You’ll also want to spend some time viewing flocks of migrating trumpeters and tundras.