The Birds! ...in the Hitchcock sense...

On hearing quite a lot of strange noise yesterday—squeaks, squeals, and even the sound a door makes when it is in desperate need of WD40—I followed my ears to the patio out back. I must give you the setting; we have what is called an “outdoor room” on the back. That is a porch or patio with 3 walls and a roof because it is recessed into the footprint of the house as though it is another room, but without an outside wall. They’re great – I want at least 2 in our new house! But I stray. My ears finally led me to the ceiling corners of this outdoor room where I saw cliff swallows clinging in each corner, anywhere from 2 to 4 birds per corner. When I opened the door, they flew off and I thought that was the end of it. But as with Hitchcock’s classic, the birds had a different agenda. They returned – and returned – and returned again. Each time I opened the door, they flew off, but we noticed a large and increasing number wheeling around the back of the house. And, every time they flew off, the corners where they had been clinging seemed dirtier. I looked more closely and realized that they were daubing mud into the corners to make nests. So we vigilantly chased them off and they, with equal determination, came back. Until the sky turned heavy and dropped a curtain of rain, bringing them to shelter somewhere else. We had noticed the flock of cliff swallows swarming – do birds swarm? – around the front of a house up the street a couple of weeks ago, and assumed they were building their mud-daub nests in his front porch corners. We commented that we didn’t envy him and wondered what he might do to disperse the colony before the colony made a mess of his porch. Now, Hitchcock has moved down the street to our address. An unwelcome avian neighbor.

Also out back and just off the edge of the patio, we have let a thistle plant grow. This specimen has grown to a noteworthy height and has thrown a dozen or more blossoms. Now that those blossoms have gone to seed, we have had as many as 4 Lesser Goldfinches at a time perched on the seedheads. A couple of house finches have tried to harvest the thistle seeds, but the stems bend under them since they are so much heavier. They aren’t easily deterred, but it’s a challenge for them to stay upright and eat.

There is a really gorgeous Bullocks Oriole that has moved into the neighborhood. I noticed him first in the Agave blossom on the next street, which is in peak bloom – brilliant, psychedelic yellow and orange. I didn’t see him until he moved – he is as brilliant as the blossom. He was there for a couple of days, and then yesterday, I saw him in the scrub oak next to the kitchen window and this afternoon, right out my office window. I’m glad he’s hanging around and brightening my view.

Other fauna…and be forewarned! While not a Hitchcock remake, if you’re squeamish of squiggly things, skip this part! In the last two weeks, I’ve seen two – 2! – tarantulas on the side of the road. Nutmeg took one sniff, and decided she didn’t want to investigate further. I, on the other hand, stopped to study the creatures as large as my hand. Also along the roadside, I saw a horny toad. These are critters that Nick remembers fondly from his childhood in the Tucson desert. He used to play with them and carry them home. Don’t you imagine his mother and his sisters were just thrilled! And, we opened our front door to take the dog out the other day and there was the largest grasshopper I have ever seen. This was Hitchcock to be sure – that bug was about 4 inches long. When it spread its wings, I thought – PARASAILING! Finally, we discovered a many-ped on the back porch early one morning. I call it a ‘many-ped’ because I didn’t stop to count its legs, but there were a lot of legs along its 4 or 5 inch wiggling length. Sheesh – just get a little rain, and see what crawls out of the crevices.

As I sat here writing this email, Nick called me to look out the window and check out the two six-packs of deer feeding right alongside the house. One was so close to my window that all I saw was its hair (fur?). If they were bold earlier in the year about coming around the house, now that their food sources are drying up down in the arroyos and along the stream beds they are brazen now. Just hang on, though, the monsoon season is starting. It has rained some part of most days for the last week. Just in time: the 4th of July is almost here.

In closing, I have to recommend a web page I found by accident on the Washington Post website. It is called, “onBeing” and consists of short video interviews of people. The videos are about 3 minutes on average, and the interviews are of average Washington people – except they are mostly far from average. I have now watched most of those listed. They are by turns funny, hilarious, surprising, moving, sad, insightful and passionate. Spend a few minutes and you’ll be hooked. Apparently a new video is added every Wednesday. I’m hooked.

A Matter of Civil Liberties

An article on the front page of the Sun-News drew my attention and my thinking. The story itself was about kids getting tickets—and creating an altercation with the citing officer—on the main street of Silver City for riding bikes and skateboards on the sidewalks. Not many will argue that their civil liberties take a back seat to sidewalk safety. The town councilman who was interviewed as part of the story stated that a bigger issue in town is noise. Motorcycles rumble and roar down main street to and from the Buffalo Bar! Cars-as-amplifiers boom hip-hop and rap! Tourists leave and say they will never come back! The town is working on a noise ordinance but it’s taking too long! It’s true that there can be a dozen or more Harleys parked in front of the Buff and when those babies are fired up, well, you might be forgiven when you duck for cover. And the cars-as-amplifiers will literally vibrate the store windows as the cars cruise down the street and back up and back down again. The buildings set up a sympathetic harmonic – not pleasant, for sure – until you feel as though shake-and-bake was just the appetizer. The town councilman notes that a well-known author left town early because of the noise and further the councilman stated that she might write a nationally-read condemnation, which the town “doesn’t need” when it comes to impacting tourist revenue. I heard the owner of an in-town hotel say that he and others would like to see the Buff shut down because of the noise. That was while we were standing in line to get into the Buffalo Dance Hall (which is next door to the Bar) for a performance that was anything but quiet!

So here’s where I got to thinking. On the surface, the issue of civil liberties is not the issue – the question is rather one of town income versus town nuisance. That is, tourists versus Harley-noise and boom-cars. On that level, I’d go for noise control and town peace and prosperity. But pause….The tourists and leisure-seekers are a majority of…uhmm…white middle aged people with disposable income in cars with out-of-state license plates. Critical to the prosperity of our town – keeps business flowing for hotels, motels, B&Bs, stores and restaurants and gas stations and on to the secondary beneficiaries. The drivers of the cars-as-amplifiers appear to me to be largely young Hispanics from the local community, nee local high school. So what about their civil liberties – although their argument would be stronger if you could hear them! Sorry, couldn’t resist. And closer perhaps to home – at least closer to me in age – a bunch of the Harley riders proclaim themselves Vietnam Vets. They may be long-haired; they may be leather-clad; they may even get into a fight in the Buff from time to time. But they paid their dues. And another large percentage of the Harley riders appear to me to be Hispanic, again from the local community. Their culture may be beyond my ken. But still...

I thought it interesting that at the Blues Festival on Memorial Day we all gathered in the park to jam together. We all stood at the foot of the stage listening and moving to Coco Montoya or Ruthie Foster—a single community. But the fissure in the landscape shows up again the moment $$ are at stake. So when the town councilman and the local business people push for a noise ordinance and for closing the Buffalo Bar, where will be the balance between the common good for the community and what’s good for all members of this community.

Ok, enough thinking already – for the nonce, at least. Nutmeg has a job! One she volunteered for and seems to thoroughly enjoy. She retrieves the paper every morning. One day she grabbed the paper as we came in from the morning walk. And carried it to the kitchen. For which we (of course) gave her a treat! It took 3 days, flat, for her to connect paper-with-milkbone! Now, all I need to say is “paper? Let’s look for the paper!” and she’s off. She will even look under the scrub oak and in the rocks, because that’s where the paper ended up on one day each. And she’s so proud of her job performance. I don’t think there’s anything else that makes her look as top-o-the-mornin’. Can’t you just see her?

It Was A Quiet Week in

Silver City. No, really! No pictures, even. After weekends of Blues Festival, Rodeo, trip to Tucson, this was a quiet week. Allowing me to collect a few small observations to tag in my memory. Downtown Silver City on Saturday, after a meditation service, we did what people enjoy doing in small towns…

• We went into Dianne’s for freshly-baked bread – whole wheat molasses flaxseed, in this instance. I usually get either the cinnamon raisin or cranberry walnut for breakfast toast, but this week the cinnamon raisin didn’t come out well and the cranberry walnut doesn’t come out at all until Sunday. Nick got a slice of house pizza – 1 ½ inches thick, bready “crust,” piled with vegetables – at 10:30 am.
  
• We walked down to Javalina for coffee, but decided against sitting in the sun in the Adirondack chairs on the sidewalk in favor of walking back up to the Farmer’s Market before they closed.
  
• Nick stopped back up at the car for something, while I went on to the market. This market doesn’t have fruits and vegetables – not yet, anyway – but there was a couple from Hatch, NM. Hatch is the self-proclaimed Chile Capital of the World. Rightly so, and a wonderful little town; we drove through there down from Albuquerque coming to Silver a couple of years ago. Do you have any idea how many types of chile peppers there are?
  
• I bought ground MILD red chile pepper and a bag of dried green chile peppers. You need to know that the state motto is: “Red or Green?” Added those to my container of hot red chile (ground) given me by Skee and my locally-grown ground Chipotle purchased at the hippie store (the Food Coop). I hope to learn to cook appropriately with these colors-flavors-heats. Am already experimenting a little with hot chile and chipotle on grilled chicken wings. Pretty good! Better than, well maybe not, but differently-good than my famous grilled wings back in MD. Now curious about whether there’s such a thing as Southwestern Spaghetti Sauce.
  
• Also bought, from the same Hatch couple, a bag of paper-shell pecans. Pecans is one (bad English, I know, but logical in this case) of the big cash crops of NM. These are smaller than the pecans, also paper-shell, grown by my grandfather and sent in large boxes to my mom when I was growing up. I think I bought them in-shell as much in recollection as anything. Funny, though, that I always just hated having to shell them as a kid; never could get those nuts out in whole halves.
  
• Nick joined me, and as we walked down the row of vendors, we were greeted by an acquaintance we met at several WILL courses (Western Institute of Lifelong Learning). As I’ve observed before, there is a core of people that attend different courses through WILL, and you see them time and again. But it was nice to be hailed by a new friend. We chatted for some little time, and then went along our way.
  
• We went into a “mall” of antique and collectible vendors that we’ve not visited before, and wandered around a bit. Neither Nick nor I are inveterate shoppers, but we do like to peruse, occasionally, the unusual and unexpected. And we found a coffee table that Nick liked a lot and I liked ok; it was hand-carved in Mexico, appeared to have some age, made of oak, I think, and was interesting in its details. It was priced reasonably, and since we can always use an occasional table here or in a new house, we bought it.
  
• Heading back to our car, to go ‘round and pick up the table, we were hailed again by a couple we’ve met and of whom we have become fond. Fortuitously so. Saturday happened to be Nick’s birthday AND the birthday of another friend mutual to us and the couple just encountered. We had planned to get the birthday babies together later at Isaac’s and had left messages for this couple to join us. And here they were, with a ready answer and a free evening.
  
• After a little time at home to walk and feed Nutmeg, blow the dust off things a bit – a lick-and-a-promise, as my mother used to say -- and position the new table, we went back down to town and settled into Isaac’s front window seating. Eventually, all six of us were there, and the toasts (beer or soda) were raised in health, birthday cards were passed, and wishes well-wished. Because I had been carrying around my bag of green AND red chiles, our friends took advantage to give Nick a recipe book of New Mexico cooking.
  
  I have to tell you that, on the heels of Saturday, I feel as though we are becoming part of a community. Feels good.
  
  And the icing? I had to deal with some computer problems today, so took the day off. I chose today in part because I was invited by another new friend (but connected to the co-birthday-celebrant) to lunch “with the girls” so that I could begin to meet and extend my connections in the community. What a pleasure to sit and be part of a circle of companionship.
  
  Wishing you fair Saturdays and warm friendships, ss