This is for Read Write Poem. I used the read write word #10 prompt where you try to write a poem using the words provided in a list. It was an interesting exercise. Usually when I write I know what I want to write about. Well, sort of. Sometimes. Anyway, this time, I only knew what words I would use and this poem is what they wanted to do. The words I used were: fugitive, starlet, covet, graft, vise, ecstasy, iron, virus, paparazzi.
It is interesting that the words shaped themselves into something that deals with my continued surprise that with 2 wars and an economic meltdown we still seem to be more concerned with the doings and undoings of celebrities than anything else.
Season 5 of Lost has been light on literature. I haven’t seen any books featured in the episodes, and only one has been clearly referenced: The Little Prince by French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I must admit, I miss the heady days of Seasons 2 and 3 with the hatch library and the book club meetings over in New Otherton. I’ll take what I can get, though, and I like what I got.
A children’s book, Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince is a wonderfully created fable about love and friendship, and how once a thing or a person has been loved, it becomes unique in all the world to the one who loved it.
The story begins in the Sahara Desert where the narrator just survived a plane crash (an incident based on a real event in Saint-Exupéry’s life) and is approached by a young prince from the small asteroid B612. The narrator befriends the prince who tells him of his home and his travels.
Asteroid B612 is a small place with 3 volcanoes and a single rose that the prince loves dearly. The rose plays games with him, however, and he decides to leave and see the rest of the universe. His travels take him to other asteroids where he meets various adults who don’t understand or value what is important about life.
Eventually he finds his way to Earth where he meets a fox who teaches him about love and the way love makes the beloved unique in all the world. The fox tells him the great secret:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
The prince meets other roses, but because he does not love them, they are just roses. Eventually, coming to understand how much he loves his rose for its unique and special nature, he desires to return home.
His wish to go home is what has brought him back to the Sahara and in search of a snake who tells him that one bite will take him home. The prince tells the narrator not to be sad, that it must be this way because his body is too heavy to go back to his asteroid and so he must allow the snake to bite him so he can leave it behind and travel home.
The snake bites the prince and the next day, the narrator awakens to find that the prince has gone.
Despite the prince’s apparent death, the narrator takes comfort in knowing that the prince is still out there and that he has returned home to protect his rose.
It’s a beautiful story with lots of interesting ambiguity. I will definitely be checking out more of Saint-Exupéry’s work.
It is also the story of John Locke.
Ever since the end of Season 4, we have known that Locke must die in order to save the island. He probably has to die to return, and while we don’t yet know the exact mechanism for this, I think it’s clear from the title of the episode “The Little Prince,” John Locke will be coming back to life, and that he had to die to return home to the island he has come to love.
In case the reference in the title isn’t enough, the name Canton Rainier on of the side of Ben’s van, which first appears in this episode, can be rearranged to spell reincarnation.
John Locke, the little prince of the island, is coming back to life.
The reincarnation angle gets extra play with this week’s episode title “316.” I suspect it refers to the coordinates to get back to the island, but it is also a reference to John (not John Locke, though) 3:16:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
The Little Prince, then, is meant to hint at the reasons for Locke’s death, and while we don’t know the reason for its necessity, I believe it is another clear hint that Locke will be coming back in some form. I believe the island grants everlasting life. Just look at Richard Alpert. The question, then, is to whom is this gift granted. It doesn’t seem to have been granted to Ben Linus. And why does it seem to have been given to Christian Shepard?
All this everlasting life business ties into the theories I proposed last year after reading Adolfo Bioy Casares’ The Invention of Morel, in which I argued that the island projects the dead. This is in fact why Alpert does not age and I suspect Locke will not age anymore once he returns to the island.
There was another interesting reference to The Little Prince in the name of the French crew’s boat: Besixdouze. That’s French for B612, the name of the little prince’s asteroid.
On a lighter note, Annie from The Transplantable Rose sent me a link to this clip some former Austinite friends of hers made when they traveled to Oahu. They visit some of the Lost sets and even reenact a few scenes:
Be sure to check out the rest of my Lost book posts at The Lost Book Club.
Ever since I started birding I wanted to see a woodpecker, so I was quite happy when I saw a Ladder-backed Woodpecker in a tree in my yard in Oct 2007. Since then, I’ve learned how to see these little guys and now, I’m getting to where I can find them on the trail fairly easily.
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
Yesterday, while doing my GBBC count by the pond, I heard the drumming and so walked in its general direction, stopped and waited for my ears to guide my eyes. It turns out, he was right in front of me, tapping away on the lower trunk of a tree, which gave me a new appreciation for the effectiveness with which his striped back camouflages him.
A Ladder-backed Woodpecker hides in plain sight
Once they start pecking, woodpeckers seem to be pretty single-minded birds and so as I was not deemed a threat, he let me get pretty close for a few pictures.
A Ladder-backed Woodpecker lets me get close
I watched him for a while as he pecked and tapped at the tree searching for bugs. They have a tendency to spiral around a tree, but this one stayed in place and let me take pictures. I guess he knew the only real threat was that I wouldn’t get a decent shot and there was no way he was going to be out of focus. Eventually I stopped shooting and just watched him do his thing, which is really the whole reason for going out to look for birds in the first place. Eventually, this tree grew tiresome and he flew off to the high branches of another one.
The info about Ladder-backed Woodpeckers on All About Birds is interesting. They eat mostly insects and arthropods that they pry and tap out of trees. The page also describes their habitat as “desert and desert scrub” neither of which really describes my neighborhood, though this is the northeastern portion of their range. They are considered year-round residents, and according to All About birds are declining in Texas. Despite any declines, here at the edge of their range, they are the woodpeckers I see most frequently in the neighborhood. The others are Red-bellied, Golden-fronted, and Downy Woodpeckers.
Yesterday was grey and cool, the sky wanting to rain, but I walked down to the pond anyway for Day 4 of The Great Backyard Bird Count and managed to avoid the intermittent rain. It’s not my backyard, but it doesn’t have to be. I also brought the camera this time and got some decent pictures including some of my best of this Ladder-backed Woodpecker.
A Ladder-backed Woodpecker strikes a classic pose
The trail didn’t yield many birds. I searched for the bluebird and goldfinches I had seen on Friday, but they weren’t around, though I did get to watch a single Lesser Goldfinch sing from the top of a leafless tree. Most of the action was down on the pond.
Ring-necked Ducks and Gadwalls
I really enjoy watching the ducks paddle around the small pond. It’s especially amusing to watch the Gadwalls dabble like the one in the picture with his rear end in the air. They’ll bob like that for a short time before righting themselves.
Gadwall
I counted more Gadwalls than anything else, but I know I undercounted them. It’s hard to count ducks when they’re always moving around so I tend to err on the side of undercounting. Still, I didn’t realize how many there were.
Official GBBC Day 4 Tally:
Turkey Vulture (2)
American Crow (1)
Lesser Goldfinch (1)
Ring-necked Duck (20)
Eastern Phoebe (1)
Ladder-backed Woodpecker (1)
Yellow-rumped Warbler (2)
Gadwall (74)
American Wigeon (3)
Pied-billed Grebe (3)
Carolina Chickadee (1)
House Finch (1)
All in all this was a good Great Backyard Bird Count for me. Hopefully next year I’ll be better at this and will see even more birds.
The birds and I pulled double duty this weekend as we were counting and being counted for both Project FeederWatch and The Great Backyard Bird Count. The two projects have slightly different rules, mainly in that PFW requires 1 count for 2 days while GBBC has separate counts for each day. Also, PFW counts should only include birds that come to the yard for things I provided (food, shelter, water, landscaping), whereas GBBC includes any birds seen in the count area, so I included the robins and crow I saw hanging out in the neighbors’ trees.
Mainly, I saw the usual suspects, although a raptor did fly low over the feeders on Saturday. It’s the second time I’ve seen one in the yard since December, but unless he’s eating House Sparrows, he’s not having much success as my counts haven’t changed much lately.
What kind of raptor? He moved faster than any bird I’ve ever seen so I didn’t get a great look at his markings. His wings were sharply pointed, his long tail wasn’t fanned out, and when he reached the neighbor’s house he did an abrupt rolling turn and was gone. Speed and pointed wings.
I immediately assumed him to be an accipiter, either a Cooper’s Hawk or a Sharp-shinned. These two are hard to distinguish, but I went to the guidebooks and searched online to see if I could do it. None of the pictures really looked like the bird I had seen. The wings were too pointed for one thing and the brief glimpse I got of his underside just didn’t look like the pictures. After flipping through to the falcon section, I saw a picture of a Merlin. That was my bird.
This brings up another issue. While I don’t begrudge birds of prey their meals, I don’t like the idea of my feeders becoming a buffet for all the local raptors. I’ll have to keep watch and see if the Merlin becomes a regular visitor. If so, I’ll bring the feeders in for a while.
Other than that, the only interesting thing about the weekend was the moment when I looked out an hour or so before the Merlin flyby and saw the feeders full of birds, each one holding perfectly still like little statues as if time had stopped in the backyard. I guess they saw the Merlin before I did.
I’m happy to report that American Goldfinches are continuing to bring friends and a few of them are starting to show traces of their gold breeding plumage.
It’s time again for the annual Great Backyard Bird Count, which doesn’t actually have to be done in a backyard. I’ll be birding all four days and submitting this weekend’s Project FeederWatch counts to the GBBC as well.
Last year, I had this to say by way of explaining the GBBC:
The Audubon Society and The Cornell Lab of Ornithology are sponsoring The Great Backyard Bird Count running from today through Feb 16. Anyone can participate. All you have to do is count birds over a span of at least 15 minutes and record the number of individuals you see. This helps the Audubon Society “create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent.” You don’t even have to do it in your backyard.
Today, I started out by going down to the pond since I’ve got my pond trail big year going. It’s also where I birded on Day 1 of the GBBC last year. I’m happy to report that I was able to ID substantially more birds this year. I guess I am getting better at this. I even saw an Eastern Bluebird, which while not a new bird is a new one for this trail.
I also finally got a really good look at the Least Grebes in the pond. Turns out they’re actually Pied-billed Grebes, the crafty devils. I’ll need to go back and change my ebird data for the past few weeks, but the upside is that I get a new life bird.
Still, a fine list for an hour’s stroll:
Turkey Vulture (3)
Northern Mockingbird (2)
House Finch (4)
Eastern Bluebird (1)
White-winged Dove (4)
Ladder-backed Woodpecker (2)
Gadwall (57)
Ring-necked Duck (41)
Pied-billed Grebe (3)
American Wigeon (2)
Black-crested Titmouse (2)
Chipping Sparrow (2)
Eastern Phoebe (1)
Mourning Dove (2)
Blue Jay (1)
American Crow (1)
Yellow-rumped Warbler (1)
No pictures today. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll bring the camera along on my GBBC adventures.
It was beautiful out yesterday, a good day for a quick bit of birding along the pond trail. Saw some goldfinches – American and Lesser high in a leafless tree feasting on seeds. I watched them until they flew in brilliant yellow streaks across the sharpest of blue skies.
A few minutes later an accipiter flew overhead. He was almost gone before I even noticed him. Cooper’s or Sharp-shinned, I couldn’t tell and probably couldn’t even if I could have hit pause on life. Call him Stan. He was beautiful, quick and silent. He ducked and wove the air through the trees and was gone faster than a dream.
Probably heading to my house to eat the rest of the House Sparrows.
(formerly titled “It’s Like a Whole Other Country”)
On a high plains concrete ribbon
(there is nothing) north of Amarillo,
telephone poles stand like crucifixes
after the condemned have blown away.
It’s like a whole other country
On the plains of San Jacinto, a story is told
in blood, in oil, where Houston routed Santa Ana;
hundred years go by, blood is dry, and
oil gushes forth from Spindletop.
Recoiling back to sacred ground
A monumental obelisk marks the battle field,
but the great refineries offering smoke, fire,
filth to heaven hide it from I-10. These are
the real monuments here: the refineries,
The highways
Rolling on to San Antone and overpriced margaritas,
overdone river walk and Hard Rock Café, once
Mexico’s northern town, now we visit the birthplace
of our finest ghosts. Remember that old Alamo?
Legends larger than life
Shrine to Texas heroes, and the arrest
of Ozzy Osbourne. The church still stands,
tomb of Crockett, Travis, Bowie, beseiged
now by hotels, offices, power lines.
Sparking into lucid dreams
They say there’s another Alamo near Del Rio,
built for a John Wayne movie set. More real than
the real one, the screams of ghosts and musket fire
still echo, reverberating loudest at the fake Alamo.
Drowned out by open windows
Stopping in at Luckenbach, we drink a round of beers
No one really lives here, but they all come out on Sundays
singing songs by Willie, Waylon and the boys.
Throw back a couple beers with passing strangers.
Let the journey be a story
Under these stars, above old dinosaur bones and
Indian camps, traveling interstate lifelines like
blood through arteries, we find freedom on the
highways, concrete and legend, forever
Binding this place to myth
—
This is for Read Write Poem. This week’s prompt was to find poetry in relaxation or slogans. I spent some time thinking about slogans and finally decided to learn the tourism department’s slogan for Texas, which became the title of the poem.
For Week 13 of Project FeederWatch, the Lesser Goldfinches decided to come around, which was especially exciting because they were a life bird for me, and my 10th for 2009. Goldfinches (Lesser and American) are both new to me and so I spent most of my feeder watching time this weekend watching them.
One of the best things about the Lesser Goldfinch is that they are permanent residents around here and so hopefully, they’ll keep coming to the feeder even after the Americans leave in the spring.
Lesser Goldfinch
The nyjer bag seems to be the big draw (thanks again to my sister and her family for giving it to me for Christmas) and so I hung the fancy nyjer feeder, which hasn’t drawn a single goldfinch in the 2 years I’ve had it, above the bag. The bag is still favored, but some of the American Goldfinches finally discovered it, and not a moment too soon as the nyjer bag was getting a bit crowded.
At one time I saw 4 American Goldfinches and 2 Lesser chowing down on the nyjer seed. A few House Finches even came by, but they were more interested in the nearby hummingbird feeder, which I put back out this weekend on the off chance of seeing an early hummer.
American and Lesser Goldfinch
The goldfinches are especially fun to watch because of their acrobatic nature: they seem as happy eating upside down as rightside up. The feeders are close to the window too, which makes photography sort of easy, but upon seeing these shots, I’m thinking I ought to clean the windows.
Other than the goldfinches, all of the usual suspects made appearances, the doves finally showing up just before dark on Sunday evening. At 16 species, this was my best count period for variety, though I’ve had higher numbers of individuals.
Two observations: Blue Jays only seem to come on Sundays. It is the only day of the week I’ve seen them the past few weeks. Doves are much scarcer than I thought they’d be. I knew the white-wing numbers decrease in the winter, but I never realized by how much.
