And to all a good "Night-night"

Maximilian beagle and I have been on a regular schedule of entertainment by Bean.

So, okay, sometimes we entertain her back.

She is obsessed with his leash - tries to hook it to his collar, tries to hook it to her belt loops, tries to hook it to my belt loops. Wants in the worst way to be taking that dog for a walk every minute of the day.

She also has a healthy liking for hugging and kissing Maximilian. He tolerates all of this well in true lazy beagle fashion. Ninety percent of the time he just lies there and lets her do what she will to him. The other ten percent of the time, he gets up and moves to the other side of the room (forgetting that Bean has been a fully mobile human being for some time now).

One of Bean's favorite new games is to combine a parade of stuffed animal friends kissing and hugging Maximilian with a massive group night-night session. The parade includes (but is not limited to): donkey, chameleon, kangaroo, brown monkey, puppy, green monkey, other puppy, slightly lighter brown monkey, caterpillar, Ox the ugly doll, Jayhawk (rock chalk) and panda.

The rules of the game are:

1) Bean kisses and hugs Maximilian first

2) Then each animal friend must have its nose pressed to Maximilian's while a smacking noise is made with one's lips. Here, donkey goes next after Bean's affections are exhausted while the rest of the gang waits in the wings.

3) Then the animal is repositioned over Maximilian's mid-section and schmushed against his middle while an "Awwww" sound is made with one's lips. Then on to the next animal friend and so on and so forth.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

The game is varied somewhat by each animal friend going "night-night" after its Beagle kiss and hug. This entails a pillow being placed under its head, a blanket being drawn up around its chin (and sometimes another animal friend tucked in beside it for company).

What I learn from this is that what Bean views as the requirements for sleepy time are a pillow, a blanket and a good stuffed friend. What else I learn from this is that the limit for Maximlian's patience is very high.

Where do they buy their light bulbs and green olives?

I have been to two places in my life that made me wonder where the folks that live there procure their non-growable essentials.

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1) Moosonee, Ontario

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2) Meat Cove, Nova Scotia

It may or may not be a coincidence that these places are both in Canada. I'm sure there are such localities in the United States as well. I just haven't visited them (yet).

For me, it's a compelling thing to think about. To look around and wonder how every single man-made object you can slap your eyes on got where it is and what trouble and planning that required. For me, it's liberating to be in a place where you cannot just jump in your car and drive the 2.2 miles to the nearest Walmart and get green olives for your pizza or laundry soap for your laundry or a new butter dish for your butter (after you drop and smash the old one because it was slippery).

The alternative may be to get in your freighter canoe to get to the train that will take you to the town (where there still isn't a Walmart) with a small general store (who ships their goods in from the "real" city - green olives probably not among them).

When I was visiting these two places, the thoughts about where these folks get their everyday wares sprang unbidden to my head.

Okay, they may have been a bit influenced by the fact that in Moosonee, this pile of gear represented my whole chance at survival. We brought everything we thought we might be likely to need in a serious way. Turns out we did pretty well and/or got pretty lucky that nothing unplanned happened.

If your window breaks, you have to do something about it until you can get to a place to buy a new one (which may take a long time).

If you run out of toothpaste, you'll just have to make due (possibly for a long time).

If you feel like having biscuits with dinner but can't make a decent homemade biscuit to save your soul, you'll just have to go without biscuits (again, maybe for a long time).

If the batteries die in your Chinese lanterns, no more light in your Chinese lanterns (you guessed it: for a long time).

It's enough to make you stop and think.

People who live in these places (by choice or otherwise), do so knowing that they are more influenced by the land around them than the land is by them. I like this. I want to someday live in a place that impacts me more than I impact it. I want to submit to geography rather than forcing the landscape to submit to me.

The pay-off for such submission is limitless sky and grass and water. It is solitude and peace.

Ask Rick Bass if you don't believe me - he'll tell you all about it.

A track to go with the day

If you have had to go through all of this day without hearing a quote from a Ryan Reynolds character, let me be the one to remedy that for you...

"Now it's a great feeling when you find the right track to go with the day. And today, I have found the absolute... perfect song. The other... perfect song." [Cue: "Everyday People" by Sly and the Family Stone (whose records are filed under "S" for Sly and Stone at my parents' house... another story for another day)]

(In case you don't know what I'm talking about because you've never seen the movie, you should see the movie. But until then, this should get you caught up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWGlkmw2lyM&feature=related).

I relish the days when there is a perfect track to go with the day. And I really see no reason why this shouldn't be possible every day. It's just that some days, the perfect track packs more of a punch than others.

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the lobby of a hotel in downtown Halifax, NS, waiting for my mother to get herself (and her 90-lb duffle bag (which to be fair may have only weighed 75 lbs. at that point)) from the Halifax airport to the hotel (We weren't picking up the rental car until a couple of days later when we had planned to leave Halifax and explore the rest of the province. For the time being, we didn't need a vehicle to explore Halifax itself.)

Anyway, I sat and sat and sat. People came and people went. I just sat. Luckily, the hotel folks had hired a fellow to play his guitar and sing for the customers as they were busy coming and going. Only in my case, they were paying him to play his guitar and sing while I sat and waited.

Eventually, the troubadour played this song, and I smiled to myself because I knew this was it. This was my perfect track to go with the day today. He didn't sing it quite like Willie does, but he did it justice in his own way.

Now why this song was the perfect track for my day as I sat some 2,200 highway miles from New Orleans, is a complete and utter mystery to me. I wasn't in (the U.S. of) America, it wasn't morning, I wasn't on or all that near a train... But it never matters why. It just matters that the song hits you between the eyes (ears?) and makes your day better for having heard it.

For the record, today's song is:

Isn't it bouncy and beautiful?

Birds: Part II

Back to the business of posting some bird photos again. Today's theme is birds of various colors. I'm limiting these to friends we can see right here in North America. I'll leave their perhaps more obvious counterparts from the Tropics alone for the time being.

This is a Summer Tanager, a member of the Cardinalidae family and a specialist on capturing and eating bees and wasps. All red.

This fellow is a Blue Grosbeak, also of Cardinalidae. He's obviously wondering who that strikingly handsome bird in the water is and whether he poses any threat.

This is a Prothonotary Warbler. Named for clerks in the Catholic Church who wore bright golden robes. (Other birds named for Catholic officials: Northern Cardinal, Orange Bishop.)

Tundra swans in an (apparently) empty cornfield on NWR land in mid-winter. They've been out feeding all day and are about to go huddle together on or near a nearby lake to keep safe and warm on this winter night.

American Bittern. Hard to spot, huh? That's not an accident. He's hiding and doing a pretty good job of it.

There was a cat yowling outside of my window last night...

I took a blogging break. I went away for two weeks (one for work, the second for vacation). And then I had to take a third week just to catch up from being gone for two weeks. But now, I've put writing a post at the top of my list, and it's actually getting done (for the record, things at the bottom of my list often stand a better chance of being checked off than those at the top, not sure why, but sometimes I can use this knowledge to trick myself into doing something that needs to be done).

Anyway, here I am writing in spite of missing lots of sleep last night because of a waxing moon, a yowling cat and a beagle who noticed both. It's good to be back - mostly.

At the beginning of this first week back, this is what my brain looked like on the inside. Maybe it looked a little that way last night as I was trying to sleep too. But mostly, now that it's a Friday, and things have come back under some semblance of control, the stack of papers on my desk is completely gone, laundry is done, fridge is fuller than it used to be and some nasty statistics have been wrangled with to the point of needing to sit for a while and stew, and I got a haircut...

my brain can look a little more like this - relaxed.

I'm sure I'll get around to writing more about the trip I took sometime (maybe I should put that at the bottom of my list), but for now, these are a few haphazardly selected photos.

It rained a lot where I was, but at some point, the beach rocks got a chance to dry out and then big drips of water started falling from the sky again. This was the brief moment in between dry rocks and newly wet rocks.

This cormorant misses me, I can tell. Do you see the way he is looking out to sea for me to come back?

Well, this beagle missed me too. It's not captured by this shot, but I'm told he waited patiently for my return by staring down a dirt road watching for clouds of dust.