Birds

I spent part of the afternoon today sitting around in a lawn chair watching the bird feeder in my parent's yard. It's a pretty busy place. Even more so when there's not a person with a camera trying to be very subtle about their movements, but here are the more daring visitors.

And of course these guy are not visitors to my parents' birdfeeder - they're down the road a few miles at the North Fork Lake. These bald eagle chicks (3 in one nest!) are about ready to fly out on their own. we didn't see the parents anywhere. That may be because they're hoping the kids will get the hint....

More later! This vacation business is keeping me busy.

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Friday: Water

I know, I did excuse myself from this Friday's Shootout, due to the fact that I have no pictures of water whatsoever stocked in my computer, no time to go out and take any, and I'm spending the day (elongated by 7 hours time difference) in planes and airports. But what's there to do in Newark Airport for four hours other than have a $11 glass of pinot grigio and mess around on the web?

So I'll just tell you about water.

I did start this blog as a writing thing, after all. Can't let the pictures take it over entirely.

Water in a way shaped my life. It was a significant part of my learning the value of things, as a listener-in of long conversations (or were they rants? did anyone else get a word in?) in my grandfather's house. He lived in Valley Center, California, a 45-minute drive north from our home in suburban San Diego. As a grower of oranges and avocados in that high desert region, migrant workers and water were the topics of choice.

The cost of water. Scandalous. Breaking the backs of hard-working men.

I heard so much about the scarcity of water and how its price was driving honest growers to ruin, that I never understood toothpaste commercials. (you can see here I've finished that glass of wine.)

Really. Every toothpaste commercial on tv, and even tv shows not particularly selling dental hygene, showed smiling, white-toothed people brushing in front of the mirror with the water running.

Scandalous!

Why on earth run water down the sink for absolutely no reason while brushing your teeth?

We never did that in my house.

We didn't water the lawn, either. We replaced the front lawn with a field of rocks, from which we picked debris and dead leaves once a year or so in a despised, but much needed day.

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And then as a teenager, driving past miles and miles of cotton fields on our way to backpacking in the mountains or along the Colorado. Absolutely horrified to learn that those farmers in the middle of the desert got their water practically free because of government subsidies sucking the river so dry that it hasn't reached the sea for decades now, and the hungry Mexicans who would like to be able to use its water to grow their own crops are just s*** out of luck. Meanwhile, poor countries desperate to sell their cotton because it's all they have, they can't get a decent price because the market is flooded with falsely cheap California product.

I bet it's still that way today.

Another load of brick in the making of a liberal.

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The difference water can make was the first thing I noticed in moving to Minneapolis. What was all this green? And it stuck around all summer! Those people, they don't worry about running the faucet while brushing their teeth. They don't circle around the water bill over coffee in the evening. (Well, being Minnesotans, maybe they do.)

Nor do they where I live now in central France. The hills are green and water is everywhere. It fell from the sky in such abundance a particular week last year it ruined most of my cherry crop. Not so far south of here it's more like California - crops sucking up what there is, demanding ever more; fires racing through the hills regularly.

Water is a funny thing. Abundant here, rare just next door, existing in endless quantities just next door again but so salty as to be useless to us.

A question of distribution we have yet to solve. A question of value and price we need to address more honestly and fairly.

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So that's my thing about water.

Flaking on Friday

Sorry folks, no Friday Shoot Out for me. I'm spending the day on planes, planes and planes.
Though soon I will be in Arkansas!
And then Mississippi!
And then Alabama!
why on earth...???

Will we ever come to the end of Vienna?

Yes, sadly, we will, though not until tomorrow. But don't worry - then I'll go somewhere else and take assorted pictures of somewhere completely different, like, say, Auvergne, Arkansas. Or Florence, Mississippi.So what are the Viennese up to on a Sunday? Lots of things! They're out and around all over the place. They're here in the main square around St Stephen's cathedral, having an ice cream from one of the many, many Eis Cafés.
The tourists are shelling out 95€ an hour to take a caléche ride around town. Divided among four passengers, that's not as outrageous as it seems. And the line of horses moves up slowly - I'd guess a driver waits a good hour to get to the top of the line, at least now in the off-season.
Real Viennese are paddling boats around in the Danube. The banks of the Danube here are actually quite dull. I didn't see any trucks on the road on Sunday, or any freight on the river. In France, trucks are forbidden from the roads on Sundays - that's probably the case here too. It does make for a more enjoyable day.

The one category of working boat in operation on this Day of Rest.

Obligatory swans. Where were they when I was across the way, looking toward the old city, rather than the could-be-anywhere office tower skyline?

Back on the west side of the river, there was some kind of fair going on in front of the Ratshaus, the showpiece of the cluster of government buildings.

The music was all-American covers.

The most fun thing I saw was that in the many parks there were lots of sandboxes for playing in. Including in front of the Ratshaus, where the pile of cobbles meant to repair part of the walkway was turned into a play space. You could make a fair castle with that pile!

For the truly silly pictures, head over to Pink Rabbit Abroad.

Vienna: butterflies and music

Some story to go with your pictures.

Vienna being the city of music, I did get to a concert. Plus there was music at random, in parks and subway stations and streetcorners, being offered up by people trying to get by. Concerts in the grand opera started at 50$; Mozart's Magic Flute at the Peoples' Opera House was more affordable, but sold out, alas. But I happened on a presentation by current and former students of the Ljubljana University School of Music, being held at St Peter's Church downtown.

The setting was astounding; a baroque church (a church has been on the site since 400 AD now, but the current version is not so venerable) fully decorated inside. St Peter's is small and intimate. The organ music thrummed through the stone floors and wooden pews, coming up through the kneelers as well as through the air. The Gregorian chanting that separated the organ pieces filled the air.

We started with some traditional works, working our way toward more modern sacred music. The fugues and sonatas were sublime, the audience listening with eyes closed to the ornately gilded surroundings. And then, on to two 20th century works.

Aïe! Aïe aïe aïe!

The "Apparition of the Eternal Church" sounded more like a soundtrack rejected from a 1970's B- horror flick. This travesty, sadly, was followed by worse, an atonal mess better left unheard. This was the last piece, and about half the audience left before it was over. Including me. I felt badly about that, especially since the musicians would be coming out from the hidden choir area above to greet the audience later.

So that was my exposure to music in Vienna. Hit & miss, but I'm glad to have gone and experienced it.

I've got one last batch of pictures for you, but my flight is boarding so that will be for tomorrow.

Ciao!