August 2008 Archives

We've recently obtained limited internet access at our house, and by "limited" I mean "28.8 kps dial-up" access. We're hoping that Woodberry's IT wizards can get us broadband in the relatively near future, but right now we're still deciding between dealing with incredibly slow load times (which I'm doing this morning) or hauling our laptops off to either campus, the Orange public library, or the wi-fi hot spot at the coffee shop in town.

We're also without TV, as we have been since 1999, which means that I've been learning about the various political events of the last week almost exclusively through the (often very slow) internet, along with occasional glimpses at the Washington Post's print edition (which is for sale at the coffee shop).  What have I learned about the upcoming election from all this?

1) Obama is a seriously good strategist. He plans ahead. The choice of giving his acceptance speech at Invesco Field has been ridiculed by some as grandstanding--literally, I suppose--but given that 38 million people tuned in on TV to watch, it's clear that there was more than enough interest in what he had to say to justify the move outdoors. Moreover, those millions tuning in saw a crowd of thousands jubilantly cheering Obama, which had to make the viewers feel as though Obama has the juice to win in November--exactly what he was hoping to show the greater audience.

2) I like Biden even as I fear him. Joe is a bright guy who does stupid things--in D&D terms, high Intelligence/low Wisdom. He's incredibly knowledgeable and experienced, which shores up one of Obama's perceived weaknesses, and his Scranton roots may give the Democrats a welcome boost in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. On the other hand, he does have a tendency to say baffling things at times--his comments on Delaware's 7-11s requiring an Indian accent to go in, for example--and the press is always eager for more gaffes. His plagiarism of Neil Kinnock back in '88 is not defensible, but it's worth noting that when he'd used Kinnock's framing device in previous speeches, Biden was careful to give credit; unfortunately, he failed to do so when he used Kinnock's device in a debate. Still plagiarism, but negligent, rather than fraudulent. On the other hand, I love Biden because he's able to admit his faults and laugh at himself. Some years ago he was speaking to the Judiciary Committee when an aide handed him a piece of paper with some important information; Biden read it, laughed, said, "Apparently I don't know what the hell I'm talking about," and sat down.

3) The choice of Biden is mainly one for governing. Though he offers a bit of help in PA and a bit of gravitas for a young candidate, Biden's not that big an asset during the campaign. Mostly, he just serves to show that Obama has judgment enough to pick an able substitute to take over for him in a crisis.  In an Obama administration, however, Biden will be of great use, offering his broad and deep knowledge of the international scene to a president who'll need all the help he can get.  He's a long-term, rather than short-term, asset.

4) The Sarah Palin choice is strategically baffling.  I get the point that her conservative credentials shore up the base, and McCain certainly needed to keep the GOP's conservatives from voting for Bob Barr or staying home in November. What I don't get is how she fits into the overall strategy.  McCain has already destroyed one tactic he'd been using by announcing his own vulnerability to it; when he declared that he didn't know how many houses he had (and that he had staff to keep track of that sort of thing), he lost his ability to paint Obama as an elitist who's out of touch with the American people.  He still had the not-insignificant advantage of experience, however; even if you don't think Obama is INexperienced, you might still vote for McCain because he has MORE experience than Obama. Moreover, the McCain campaigns attacks on Obama's inexperience have been constant, even to the point of making ads with a clip from the Democratic debates where Biden said he didn't think Obama was ready to be president yet. If that's the strategy you're using, why on earth would you unexpectedly toss aside your strategic advantage by naming a running mate with even less experience than Obama? Palin was elected governor only in 2006; before that she was the mayor of a town with under 9000 people. Obama has been in the Senate since 2004 and for seven years prior to that he was an Illinois state senator, representing many thousands more people than Palin. I think Obama's perfectly qualified and I'll give Palin the benefit of the doubt, but I cannot understand why the McCain campaign would pick a running mate who actually hampers McCain's strategy.

5) Palin's scary in several ways unrelated to experience. She's on record in one gubernatorial debate as supporting the teaching of creationism in public schools, which is a definite red flag for me, absolutist about the Establishment Clause that I am. She's also anti-abortion, though I'll give her full credit for sticking by her anti-abortion guns; in April, she gave birth to her fifth child, knowing from prenatal testing that he would have Down's syndrome. I'm glad she was able to make that choice herself and I feel sure that she'll give her son all the love she's got. As a matter of governance, however, Palin's opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest gives me some concern; I haven't yet found out her stance on contraception, but if she's not at least in favor of the morning-after pill for rape victims, I'm officially worried.

Oh, and in 1999, she was apparently backing the candidacy of Pat Buchanan, which is in itself enough to call her judgment into question.

6) Old Man River. Ignoring the very real human and property costs and focusing only on the trivial political side of things, I'll just say that RNC officials have got to be a little nervous at the way Hurricane Gustav is developing in the Gulf, particularly now that we're at the anniversary of Katrina's battering of New Orleans. The last thing the GOP needs during its celebration at the Mississippi's headwaters is for the news to be full of footage from the river's mouth, especially if it involves levees failing, streets flooding, and refugees being plucked from rooftops in an eerily familiar manner... and even more especially if it's happening while George W. Bush is speaking.

I've been saying this for years: we need calendar reform.

There is no reason on earth--aside from sheer bloody-minded adherence to tradition--for the New Year to begin on January 1st.  The celebration, when it comes, practically lands on top of another celebration (one which may stretch out over a whole month) which has left us exhausted and overspent, which is one reason why I've spent the vast majority of my New Year's Eves lying stuporous in front of the TV, marveling at Dick Clark's Cylon-like skinjob, rather than leaping drunkenly around the streets waiting for something to explode.

New Year's Day should, one presumes, be a day to start something afresh, to abandon the old and stride into the new, to forget yesterday and focus on tomorrow.  Unfortunately, it ends up in most cases being a day where one simply cannot forget yesterday because yesterday's excesses are kicking the insides of your skull and making you focus entirely on them. The best you can do for a view of the future is to think "I'll never do THAT again," but that's a little negative, to my way of thinking.

And when you do eventually get done with your vomiting and get back to work... you're BACK to work. It's the same work. In many schools, you don't even get to start a new semester; instead, you get a few weeks of review and study in the dim chill of winter, now drained of the promise of Christmas break, and then you get exams.

This is why the year should begin on September 1st.

Think about it. For at least twelve years of your life, your year DID begin on (roughly) that date. You gathered your new school supplies, stuffed them into a backpack (new if you were lucky), put on at least one article of clothing you hadn't worn before (a lot of the stuff from the year before didn't fit anyway), and stepped into your homeroom to begin a new grade. It was in fact time to focus on the future, to take on new roles, learn new things, and establish new viewpoints. Fall has promise.

Fall promises something special: change. Fall promises that the impenetrable wall of green around you will turn and begin to let light through. Fall promises that the monarch butterflies will sail by, that the geese will point their Vs southward overhead, that everywhere you'll see bronze and maple and pumpkin against the crystal blue above. Fall promises a new football season: tailgating and marching bands and the collision of bodies grown bigger and stronger over the summer.  Fall promises a chance to be more than you were before.You might try out for a team or audition for a play this year. You might meet a new girl, or dance with that guy you'd been crushing on for two years. You might earn higher grades this year, or make the cheerleading squad, or get into the college of your choice.

You don't need a resolution in the fall.  Fall IS a resolution: This too shall pass. January's only resolution is "Don't let that draft in."

Fall is a brand-new box of flat-nosed yellow pencils, waiting to come alive in your hand, to become notes and stories and sketches. January is a half-empty ballpoint pen, a bit balky at times, slightly chewed on the end, that's being used to finish sums you started adding when you left work in December. 

Fall is a first kiss, a bit uncertain, a bit too long or too short, perhaps, but electric with the promise of more. January is a peck on the cheek in the kiss-and-ride lot, carrying only the promise that you've got a long train ride ahead and you'll have to hope the guy next to you doesn't fall asleep on your shoulder and drool.

Fall is the waitress arriving unexpectedly with your order, a plate redolent with possibility and served with a smile. January is the busboy arriving to refill your water glass; he's interrupting an important point in the conversation to fulfill his glum obligation, and he might even spill it on you.

In short, as you go about your business over the next few weeks, whether it's hitting Target to find those Hannah Montana spiral notebooks you've been ordered to bring home, or pulling into overcrowded parking lots trying to figure out which of the surly black-shirted teens is the one you're supposed to let into your car, consider what you're actually doing: observing the New Year.  Toot your horn, raise your glass, sing "Auld Lang Syne," whatever.

But don't let anyone tell you to wait until January.

August is a notoriously bad time to go birding.  It's too late for most breeding birds, too early for most migrants, and it's always stinking hot, without the heat being in any way a novelty.  Yet for some reason, I always end up taking a good long birding session, either somewhere on the road or near home, smack in the middle of it.  Two years back (I think) my neighbor Shari and I went to Canaan Valley NWR in West Virginia on an unsuccessful quest to get me a life bird; last year I went to the low country of Georgia to poke around for a lifer, again in vain.

This year, however, I wasn't pushing for a lifer, so I was able to relax a little bit and enjoy the chance to wander up and down the section of the Rapidan River that borders Woodberry's campus. Accompanying me on this trip was Darcy Levitt of the Audubon Society of Northern Virginia; I'll be visiting the ASNV's December 4th meeting to do a reading and chew the fat with some of the members, so Darcy and I decided to do a little birding together before school started and my schedule became completely insane.

We picked a good morning--Saturday--with temperatures in the low 80s and the air moving at a friendly clip, even in the forest along the river. The greatest concentration of biomass seemed to be spiders, of which there were seemingly millions, most of them stringing webs across the trail. (At one point, my cap was wrapped in a decorative swatch of webbing that looked like something from an Indiana Jones movie.) We did spot a few other non-birds during our trek, though: a variety of small toads hopping about the trail... swallowtail butterflies flitting from leaf to leaf above us... two rusty young deer standing on a small green island in the middle of the river, staring at us... and a disturbed nest of snake eggs, all very close to hatching, judging by the nearly-perfect young snake I pulled out of one broken shell.

But we were there for birds, of course, and we were given what we came for:

*In one thick-foliaged sycamore, a handful of busy Blue-gray gnatcatchers kept us distracted from the tree's other denizens for nearly ten minutes, but we eventually spotted the telltale field marks of a male Summer Tanager, a female Baltimore Oriole, and several other unidentifiable warblery birds.

*We had a small nondescript seed-eater settle in a tree by the path for several minutes without ever yielding up a single useful field mark. It had a thick triangular bill, with a darker upper mandible, but the rest of the bird was pale brown without anything else to go by. No heavy streaking anywhere, no clear cap, no lines through eyes or on malar areas, no wing bars. The throat was perhaps a bit whiter than the breast, but not by much. It wasn't until I got home that I found (in the incredibly useful Field Guide Companion by Pete Dunne) that one bird's lack of distinguishing features is itself a distinguishing feature: the young and/or female Indigo Bunting. I checked out a few more field guides, and I'm convinced: it was too close and too nondescript to be anything else.

*A variety of flycatchers were about; we picked up both calls and some clear looks at Eastern Wood-Pewees, but there were calls from Acadian Flycatchers, too, and one Eastern Kingbird on a wire fence in one of the pastures uphill from the river. I'm not sure we didn't see a Least Flycatcher or two, but I'm not paid enough to stress out over Empidonax flycatchers when I've got them both on my life list already.

*We got a beautiful piece-by-piece I.D. that began in the middle of the river. While standing on some mid-river rocks to admire a couple of Belted Kingfishers, I spotted a slim brown bird arrowing across the river.  Darcy followed its flight back to the south side, where it skulked in the mid-storey foliage for a bit before returning to the north side. It was thrasher-sized, but it wasn't behaving like one at all, and I hadn't noticed any streaks underneath, and the wings (but not the tail) seemed rather rufous-colored... I began thinking it was a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. But of course it wouldn't come out. We returned to the bank and began hearing a soft, dovelike call, sort of a cowlp cowlp cowlp, and an occasional brief rattling cluck.  Poring over my Sibley and National Geographic guides, I discovered that both of these were definitely cuckoo-like calls. The calls continued over the next ten minutes or so, and Darcy and I became convinced that it was in fact a cuckoo--the first I've seen on campus, and the first I've seen at all in some years.

*After we left the waterside and cut up through the pastures, the insect eaters appeared in force. We saw dozens of Eastern Bluebirds, some immature, pouncing on bugs from the low branches of some cherry trees, while above us swirled a near-cyclonic mass of Tree Swallows, Barn Swallows, and Chimney Swifts. (It was 11:00 a.m. by this time, so the swifts were definitely off their usual schedule.) A few more gnatcatchers popped up, as did a few American Goldfinches, some Robins, and a Chipping Sparrow or three.

*On the way back to the car, we moved back into the riparian forest, where I got a brief look at a male Scarlet Tanager in a young paw-paw tree, and where a glowing blue-violet male Blue Grosbeak posed nicely for us at the edge of a meadow for several minutes.

All in all, we got nearly three dozen species, enjoyed a beautiful day on the river, and laid out the plans for December's Nature Night program.  I'm looking forward to it.  I'm also happy that when I get there, I will no longer have snake-egg yolk on my hands.  Ewwww.

It's finally happened.

Thing One has his Learner's Permit.

Approach with caution.