Wasn’t that the title of a Cat Stevens record?

Until Saturday, I had never seen a woodpecker. Heard ‘em, but never seen one. Then, last Saturday morning while sitting out back with the pups, I heard a faint rustling high in a tree in the backyard. I looked up and saw an unfamiliar bird with a striped back climbing along the upper branches of the tree.

This isn’t a great picture, but he was moving quite a bit, and I was trying to get something (anything!) so I could ID him before he took off. Fortunately, I got this and by zooming in with Photoshop, I could figure out his species. (I’m pretty sure I’m right).

Later, I put a woodpecker block in one of the hanging feeders. Hopefully he’ll come back so I can get a better look at him (and hopefully a better picture of him, too).

Still, adding a new bird to my list made for a great start to a really nice weekend.

For the past two weeks, we’ve been eating lots of soup. It’s cool outside. Weather for soups and Guinness and nice single malt Scotches.

I used to hate avocado. Not anymore.

Everything is always better with onions.

Yes, you read that right. Weekend Hound Blogging is no more. Long live Friday Hound Blogging. I join my friends George and Fred (and every other blogger, it seems) in celebrating the hounds (and sometimes Simon) on Fridays. Weekend blogging is just not what I’m into as longtime reader(s?) of this blog have surely noticed by the dearth of Weekend Hound Blogging of late.

So, for today, Joey prowls the backyard sporting a fine combover ear.

The tree on the left was of interest to Daphne on Wednesday night. She went out around the witching hour and started barking at the tree. Three barks, which brings her lifetime bark total up to ten. She was bouncing around the base of the tree. I’m assuming she treed a possum or a racoon, although she claims it was an Orc bearing the mark of the white hand.

And, happy adoption day to Phoebe who celebrated her second year with us on Monday by getting her nose bitten when she stepped on Daphne while Daphne was sleeping. I guess what goes around comes around, but it was nothing a bit of H2O2 couldn’t cure.

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Want to make a fast friend by saving a greyhound in Central Texas? Check these pups out. Or go here to find a greyhound near you. You can also go here to find out why greyhounds are running for their lives.

If you have dogs who need proven leadership, go here to find a cat.

It’s been awhile, but my ‘pod has been dead. I got it fixed, but now I’m having to winnow down 60g of music onto a 40g pod. Much of the narrowing consists of choosing the best versions of various Miles and ‘Trane tunes. I mean, I only really need one or two of the millions of Coltrane’s “Naima” or Miles’s “Bitches Brew” that I have.

So far, I’ve gotten through everything except the albums that begin with S and T. I need to make more room before I do that though.

*’s by the ones I’ve seen live…

1. “Fiesta” - The Pogues - If I Should Fall from Grace with God
2. “The Logical Song” - Supertramp - Breakfast in America
3. “The Late Greats” - Wilco* - A Ghost is Born
4. “Get Up” - REM* - Green
5. “Hellhound on My Trail” - Robert Johnson - From Four Till Late
6. “My Country” - Midnight Oil - Earth and Sun and Moon
7. “So Com Voce” - Thievery Corporation* - Mirror Conspiracy
8. “The Chain” - Fleetwood Mac* - The Chain
9. “House of Hand Wash” - Garage a Trois - Emphasizer
10. “Floods (Version 2) - Flin Flon - Chicoutimi

That dot is the Space Shutte Discovery and the International Space Station. They flew over my house this evening, a bright star in a starless sky racing from Northwest to Southeast. I think they waved at me as I raised high a pint of Guinness.

It’s hard to imagine anything cooler.

Here’s a link to NASA’s satellite sighting info site, which gives sighting info for almost anywhere in the world.

The sky, today, burns October clear, blue as flame beyond words
The wind, today, blows through cottonwood leaves, whispers of words
The birds, today, abandon my feeder, save a grackle, lost from his flock
I am lost for words today
Today, I am that grackle, those leaves, this sky, these words, lost in a flock of
  Cottonwood leaves

Guest blogging at In the Pink Texas again.

File this under I meant to blog about it a week ago…

A week ago Friday, we caught Sonic Youth at Stubb’s. Great show, as always, made even better by the fact that they weren’t touring in support of any album. Their most recent release was the brilliant (perfect, wonderful) rerelease of Daydream Nation (my favorite album).

I love seeing a great band with a long history free to play whatever they want rather than focusing on the new material. This time around, they played a few tracks from their most recent ’06’s Rather Ripped, “The World Looks Red” from Confusion is Sex and spent the rest of their show playing songs from Daydream Nation. To put it in perspective for me, this would be like going to see Pink Floyd and having them play Dark Side of the Moon. Sheer bliss.

For years, I’ve kept track of the Daydream songs I’ve heard them play (I haven’t missed an SY show in Austin since ‘92). I’ve heard “Teenage Riot,” “Candle,” and “Eric’s Trip,” but Friday at Stubbs’s we were treated to all of those along with “The Sprawl” and my favorite of theirs “‘Cross the Breeze.” They even closed their set with all three songs form “The Trilogy.” Brilliant.

They sounded great, enormous like jet planes flying too close to the ground, their feedback noise jams drawing the thinnest line between order and chaos across the night.

I even bought a shirt.

The Meat Puppets opened. I’ve never seen them. but I’ve heard them. After the show, I wodered why I don’t have more Meat Puppets on my iPod.

One of my cowokers loaned me a favorite book of hers, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Sprituality by Donald Miller. The cover of the book was a deep shade of blue with a picture of the top of a bridge as if taken as the car was racing underneath. I’m such a sucker for a blue book.

While reading it, I had an overwhelming urge to listen to Wilco. It seemed to fit. At the end of the book Miller writes about what he was listening to while writing it. The Pogues were on the list and so was Wilco. Especially Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I hadn’t ever thought about whether a book could sound like what the author was listening to while writing it, but I guess they can. This one sounds like Wilco. That’s a good thing.

Miller writes about how he came to be a commited Christian while somehow avoiding becoming one of the right-wing Republican Christian fundamentalists that seem to tick him off. He even laments the difficulties of being a Christian writer who refuses to write right wing rants (try that ten times as fast as you can).

The polictical stuff aside (which tended to make me like him even more) it’s a heartfelt and thought provoking book that shares the author’s struggles with the difference between religion and spirituality. Being a Christian vs. Christianity as an institution.