Author’s Commentary 1: The Clean Plate Club Murder Mystery

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Liza Blue

Introduction

One of the anticipatory pleasures of summer vacation is lining up your reading.  Generally, I like to consider different categories fitting different moods and times of day.  You can always tote work with you on vacation, but let’s be honest here, this is generally for show only and you just won’t get to it.  The next category is the intellectual book, typically a nonfiction affair on politics, history, the Bible or whatever, but mostly these books are just great props for the afternoon nap.  There are the classics –perhaps you are willing to hang tough through the complexity of a William Faulkner novel.  One summer I did plow my way through Absalom, Absalom! and I’ve to tell you it was a (satisfying) bitch.  But what would a summer be without a great crime novel?  This is the type of book that you can stay up late with, madly trying to get to the finish line to unravel the family dysfunction and find out if the troubled hero actually did marry his long lost sister by mistake, setting off a chain of seemingly incomprehensible and grisly murders.  Soon it is one or two in the morning, you are sitting on the porch with an occasional warm breeze, the bugs are lightly tapping at the screen, and as the lights go off in adjacent cabins you find yourself sitting in a small cone of light with absolute darkness around you.  Perfect.

I was introduced to the crime novel by my friend Kitty, who showed up on a ski vacation with a novel by Ross McDonald featuring the detective Lew Archer.   This was shortly after we had seen the 1974 movie Chinatown, and we agreed that we had just seen the perfect movie.  The movie builds to the pivotal scene of Faye Dunaway alternatively gasping,  “She’s my sister (slap), she’s my daughter (slap), she’s my sister AND my daughter !! – finally revealing the unspeakable key to a series of murders.    Now what a discovery – a whole series of novels trafficking in the same basic plot lines of lurid family secrets and hidden identities.  I subsequently learned that far from a trashy novel, the Lew Archer series were well respected detective, considered the successor to Philip Marlow and Sam Spade, created by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, respectively. 

Lew was the archetypical loner detective working in the sterile and artificial environment of the newly rich in Southern California.  Kitty and I devoured the books and became so engrossed that we both a carried a book in our ski parkas and would whip them out on the chairlift and madly turn the pages with cold and trembling fingers. His novels were peppered with acerbic quips of weary insight, like:

“There are certain families whose members should all live in different towns – different states if possible – and write each other letters once a year – And forget to mail them.”

“When there’s trouble in a family, it tends to show up in the weakest member.  And all the other members of the family know that.  They make allowances for the one in trouble – because they know they’re implicated themselves.”

It’s been almost 40 years since I read a Lew Archer novel, and I decided it was time for a refresher.  There were still a bunch of them in the library and I chose the “Blue Hammer.”  The title sounded familiar to me and I vaguely remembered some great line about a blue hammer.  The novel didn’t disappoint.  The opening wedge into the family troubles was a missing painting, questionably painted by a locally renowned artist Richard Chantry who had disappeared and was assumed dead.  Lew’s investigation turns up bodies and suspects, including the unsolved murder of Chantry’s half brother some 30 years ago.  And there it is at the end – one brother killed another and assumed his identity, the real fathers of the brothers finally emerged, and if you followed the confusing lineage, you realized that one brother’s grandson was dating his own daughter.  Along the way you get:

“I could smell them though.  They stank of curdled hopes and poisonous fears and rancid innocence and unwashed armpits.” 

“I lay awake and watched her face emerging in the slow dawn.  After a while I could see the steady blue pulse in her temple, the beating of the silent hammer that meant that she was alive.  I hoped that the blue hammer would never stop.”

For some years now the top item on my Christmas list has been a plot line.  I would love to write a crime novel, but never felt I had enough oomph to write more than the opening paragraph.  But I’m willing to give it a try.

The missing words in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like stop, post, spot) and the number of asterisks indicates the number of letters.  One of the missing words will rhyme with either the previous or following lines.  Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem.  Scroll down for answers.

 Beneath ***** that look perfect and immaculately coiffed,

Often lies an decaying underbelly that has turned rancid and soft.

Jealousies, scars and dark secrets lurk midst these entrails,

And it is the job of the Lew Archer to pierce these well-tended *****.

He will rout out all ***** and bring them into the truth of bright light

And rescue shattered lost souls from a long sickening night.

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lives, veils, evils 

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Pathologic Memories

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Liza Blue

As an anatomic pathologist, I am frequently in a dilemma when asked what kind of work I do.  For non-physicians the answer almost invariably requires further explanation.  Sometimes I include the explanation all in one breath, “I’m a pathologist.  We do autopsies and analyze anything that is removed at surgery, like an appendix or a lung.”  Most people outside the medical world have some vague idea of what a pathologist does, but this idea generally conjures up grisly images.  For many, pathology is equivalent to blood and guts, and a pathologist is some sort of social misfit working in some dank and poorly lit basement.  “OOO – doesn’t that have something to do with embalming?” asked one visibly nervous secretary. 

During my residency, I had collected various specimens from autopsies that showed the evils of smoking and drinking, including lungs and livers riddled with cancer or hearts showing the effects of hypertension or atherosclerosis.  They were all stored in a large bucket of formaldehyde that I would take to schools for a very vivid demonstration of the consequences of poor life choices.  At one school, a student raised her hand and earnestly asked, “Is someone making you do this job?”  One day my friend Rudd peered into my trunk and said “what’s in that big bucket?”  She was so intrigued that we immediately had an “organ recital” on her driveway, but her equanimity was unusual.  

Pathologists also don’t get much respect among the physician community.  The image is typically of the socially inept or English-as-a-second-language misfit who can’t hack it on the front lines of medicine.  It is perhaps not surprising that pathology departments are often located in the basement of the hospital.  There is a long standing joke stereotyping the different medical specialties, “Internists know everything and do nothing, surgeons know nothing and do everything, psychiatrists know nothing and do nothing and pathologists may know everything, but they are always a day late.”      

While television and the movies have generally portrayed physicians as over-sexed and overworked surgeons, pathologists have been largely ignored, with a few notable exceptions.  In a 1972 movie, the “Carey Treatment,” James Coburn plays the title role – a pathologist, of all things, who sets out to investigate the botched abortion and subsequent death of a colleague’s daughter and predictably becomes embroiled in the violent world of a drug cartel.  Dr. Carey embodies all the traits usually reserved for surgeons.  He is handsome, assumes that M.D. stands for “major deity” and surrounds himself with beautiful women.  He even mouths off to a surgeon over the OR intercom, “Do you want the diagnosis now or do you want it right?” 

The high point of the movie is when Dr. Carey, hospitalized for stab wounds, tussles with a would-be assassin.  When Carey gets the upper hand, the drug-crazed killer offers him a deal and begins to pray.  Dr. Carey then says the immortal words that have stereotyped surgeons for decades, “There is no God in this room, I make all the decisions.”  The writers of this movie must have thought that it was necessary to explain why a lowly pathologist had acquired the persona of a surgeon.  Early in the movie Carey confesses to one of his girlfriends that all he ever wanted to be when he grew up was a surgeon, but that “it didn’t work out.”  While the movie does manage to make a pathologist look like something better than a feeble misfit, one also gets the impression that such a career should not be anyone’s first choice. 

While casting Carey as a pathologist seemed like a curious choice, it began to make more sense when I realized that as a pathologist Carey can be both a physician and a detective, blending two of the basic staples of TV.  The TV show Quincy picked up on this theme.  Quincy was a crusading pathologist who risked his life to investigate crimes.  When we first met, my future husband decided to watch a “Quincy” episode to learn about what I was doing all day.  He was aghast to learn that pathologists routinely got shot at in the course of their work. 

 In 1982 I looked forward to the premier of “St. Elsewhere” which was billed as a real life look at residents in a decaying urban hospital.  However, from the first episode, it became clear that the writers had pegged the pathology department as the source of black humor.  Dr. Kathy Martin is a totally spacey pathologist and incidentally a nymphomaniac.  She seduces her living conquests on the mortuary tables and later gets raped there.  Another particularly grisly story line featured a pathologist selling body parts, specifically severed heads.  “St Elsewhere” didn’t do pathologists any favors by portraying this specialty as a type of punitive purgatory for wayward internists.  When Dr. Peter White is accused of Dr. Martin’s rape, all other medical privileges are stripped and he is sent (to the basement of course) to dabble harmlessly in pathology until the charges are investigated.  While he cannot treat patients, apparently he can practice pathology without any particular training.

CSI:Crime Scene Investigation is a current family of TV shows that builds on the basic Quincy formula, with a lot of extra sex and technology thrown in.  Instead of the aging Quincy, the detectives are either hunky men or women with exceptionally tight low cut shirts.  In Quincy, the opening credits featured the grizzly pathologist in front of a line of policemen.  Quincy says, “Welcome to the wonderful world of pathology.”  As he rips the shroud off one corpse, all the policemen faint like a row of falling dominoes.  CSI certainly includes plenty of blood and guts, but manages to glamorize the whole mess with exquisite slow motion simulations of bullets splintering skulls and shredded arteries spurting blood.  The set is filled with all sorts of prop machines with blinking lights while the cast meticulously recreates crime scenes in artfully underlit sets of dark blue light. 

 Now I have worked in the city morgue, and I can tell you it was nothing like CSI.  Every morning we would file into the over air-conditioned morgue that was so brightly lit you wanted to put on a jacket and sun glasses.  Corpses gathered from the previous day were arrayed on stainless steel autopsy tables.  You were supposed to eye all the bodies and then go stand next to the one that you wanted to work on.  It was like picking out a blind date, only a whole lot creepier.  There was occasionally a murder case, which was a lot more work than the “DIBs” patients (i.e. dead in bed).  It was assumed that these poor souls had died of natural causes and thus warranted no more than a cursory autopsy.  Occasionally the chief coroner would sweep into the room like a minor deity, particularly if there was some case that might require a press conference.  Dr. Stein had become a faddish celebrity in Chicago when corpses of dozens of victims were unearthed under the basement of John Wayne Gacy, who held the top spot of serial killer for several years.  Dr. Stein also was in the news during a prolonged heat wave in Chicago that killed many elderly people.  I remember his complaint was not so much that the people had died, but that he was running out of storage room in the morgue. 

Certainly forensic pathology has advanced in the past 25 years with fluids and fibers taking center stage, but even discounting the march of technology, it didn’t look like Dr. Stein contributed anything to the examination, and certainly the pathologists in the morgue were no crusading crime fighters like Quincy or the CSI cast.  I remember one beautiful spring day we all felt like a road trip, and someone suggested that we visit a crime scene and try to find a bullet.  Four of us hopped into someone’s convertible and arrived at what looked like a peaceful leafy neighborhood.  We walked around to the back to inspect a porch where the crime had supposedly been committed.  A bunch of neighborhood residents were hanging out on the porch, some were smoking dope.  When we explained who we were, the residents visibly relaxed, and one said out loud to the group, “Don’t worry, its not vice, it’s just homicide.”   We chatted with the folks for a while, made a token look for an embedded bullet, and then called it a day, headed back to the office, and wrote up a report saying that despite a diligent search, no bullet was found.  No estimating angles, laser beams tracing a bullet’s path, and no discussion of whether or not the weapon was a Glock with a right twist.

So what do I care if the TV shows are unrealistic?  With three different versions of CSI on the air, all in endless reruns on cable TV, I should embrace the newfound glamour and respect for pathologists.  When someone asks what I do, I will now say with pride and conviction, “I am a pathologist, like CSI on TV.  We solve crimes and make the world a safer place.”

The missing words in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. share the same letters, like spot, stop and post) and the asterisks indicate the number of letters.  One of the missing words will rhyme with either the previous or following line.  Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem.  Scroll down for answers.

As the autopsy starts, the pathologist reaches for her —— knife,

 Slices open the body and searches for why this soul lost his life.

 She inspects lungs and bowels that still glisten and quiver,

 And samples each organ by cutting out a representative ——.

 It turns out that human —— look just like what you buy at the store,

 That’s why she has no longer eats organ meats for dinner any more.

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Answers:  silver, sliver, livers

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Let Yourself Go, Part 2

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Liza Blue

My father began to contemplate retirement in the early 1980s, and thought computers might be a suitable focus for his newly acquired free time.  When Nick spotted a computer seminar, we thought that this would be the perfect introduction.  As the speaker tried to explain the difference between RAM and ROM, I could see that he was rapidly losing his older audience – eyes were glazing over.  Then one older gentleman raised his hand and asked a simple question about spread sheets, “Who types in all the information into the computer?”  The speaker was visibly nonplussed by this question, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Why you do of course.”  I could see all of my father’s age group absolutely shut down, and the speaker totally lost his audience.  My father’s working life came equipped with a secretary, and I don’t think he knew how to type.  The only vague sense that he had of computers was that they were supposed to make his life easier.  This clearly was not going to happen if he not only had to learn how to type, but also know what to type in if he wanted to use the computer to prepare a spreadsheet. 

From that point on, my father just new technology go.  Occasionally, he would ask, “What is this cyberspace?”  Nick emerged from some family event exulting that he had finally explained cyberspace to my father, but multiple other family members chimed in that they had provided the same explanation.  Basically, Dad really wasn’t that interested and just used cyberspace as a conversation device.  He had decided that it wasn’t worth it to keep up with technology and that he was old enough to manage without it.  After he retired, he developed two hobbies that probably had not changed since Ooga MaGook invented the wheel.  He would spend hours in his wood shop with sandpaper, a screwdriver, hammer, rags and other simple tools.  At his hobby farm, he could be found in the barn in his fancy cable knit sweater shoveling manure or lifting hay bales onto a cart.   This strategy worked for about 20 years, but as technology evolved at a dizzying pace, he suddenly found himself totally out of touch with technologies that had now been woven into every day life – microwaves, cell phones and the internet.

One day I spent a great deal of time trying to explain to Dad the difference between a microwave and an oven.  Of course, adding to the challenge was the fact that my father was a traditional husband who had never cooked anything, and probably didn’t want to learn.  I painstakingly explained that while you could put tinfoil in the oven, you could not put it in a microwave, and while you could put Saran wrap in the microwave you could not put it into the oven.  The next day I arrived and was horrified to see that he was heating up a Styrofoam cup in the oven.  Although I considered the difference between a microwave and oven pathetically obvious, I also realized that this type of distinction might be difficult to keep straight if I was starting from square one, as my father was.  Another time he was at our house and spotted a bicycle cable that was tightly coiled and had a fancy looking lock holding the coil in place.  “Is that a new kind of computer?” he asked.  I initially thought I might be in the same realm as the psychiatrist who had written the book, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.” Then I realized that my father had no concept of what a computer might look like and had probably only heard how computers were getting smaller and turning into “lap tops.”

We have a basic strategy for whenever my father comes for dinner involving the good scotch, shrimp with cocktail sauce, no vegetables, and after dinner some sort of internet demonstration.  He has been particularly interested in Google earth, where we were able to show him an aerial view of his own back yard, his child hood home and the boarding school he absolutely detested.  Iron ore ships on the Great Lakes or antique cars are another abiding interest.  But even as he was looking at the amazing technology of the internet, his basic question had not changed in 25 years. “Who types in all of this stuff?” he asked.

I tell this story not to poke fun at a lovely older man, but to wonder if I am unwittingly making similar decisions that will come back to haunt me.  Without at least a toe hold on a virtually vertical learning curve, in several years I could be as befuddled as my father.  Maybe I have already made this fateful error.  I have never really needed a cell phone, as most of my work is done from home with minimal travel demands.  Additionally, I felt that I was making a noble (if wrongheaded statement) about the folly of instant access.  One time on a business trip I was supposed to be picked up at the airport by a car service.  When there was no sign of a ride, I realized the folly of eschewing a cell phone.  It was late at night and there were few stores open, so I had to wander around looking for change for the pay phone.  Ten minutes later I was again wandering around looking for a pay phone.  When I finally called the car service number, the phone rang in the pocket of the slovenly person sitting next to the phone eating a greasy hamburger.  My ride had been sitting right next to me.

Now I get extremely anxious if we are driving in a car and Nick hands me his cell phone to make a call.  While the first generation of cell phones resembled real phones, twenty years later and umpteen successive generations of blending cell phones with computers and hifis, this cell phone bears no relationship to what I would consider a phone, in fact it looks like a miniaturized airline cockpit.  Nick would get exasperated as he once again tried to guide me through the steps, which involved double clicking, scrolling and negotiating a miniscule key board.  In one instance, I hesitated and held one key down too long and the “phone” interpreted this as a signal to call the last number received and I ended up calling myself.  

 Clickers now dominant our lives.  As a child I was amazed that my parents grew up without TV.  Now my children are amazed that I grew up watching TV without a clicker.  A profusion of household appliances now come with clickers, including a floor fan where one of the clicker selections is “breeze,” which translates to a random selection of fan speeds to simulate the real outdoors.  We stayed in a ski condo once where the table in the living room had 6 clickers artfully arranged in a fan shape.  I knew there was no way that I could decipher this array and actually was looking forward to a weekend of cards and board games.  However, the teenager in our midst got both the DVD and TV up and running in no time.  I have tenuous control over our own TV clicker, but often call on Nick for more problematic issues.  One time the dog rolled over on the clicker and the TV went black; the situation was only resolved by a phone call to India.  As part of Nick’s job, he often visits his clients in their home.  One of his value added services is to coordinate clickers, if needed.

So what do I keep, and what do I let go?  I will think about it this afternoon as I seek refuge in digging weeds with a shovel.  

The missing words in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like spot, stop and post) and the asterisks indicate the number of letters.  Oneo f the missing words will rhyme with the previous or following lines.  Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules or the context of the poem.  Scroll down for more answers.

 Technology advances every day as the earth ——-

 With new innovations that the human mind creates.

 Ancient Egyptians were probably puzzled by the ——- stone,

Now, millennia later, I am just as flummoxed by a cellular phone.

 If keeping up with technologies is something you dread,

 Watch out, soon your ——- will need a clicker to pop up your bread.

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Answers;  rotates, Rosetta, toaster

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Let Yourself Go, Part 1

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Liza Blue

One day I was sitting in the kitchen as my mother arrived from the grocery store and starting unloading groceries, as she had probably done almost once every day for at least 30 years.  But she hummed and there was a joyous zip to her step.  She suddenly turned to me and said in a triumphant tone, “You won’t believe it.  I saw Sally in the grocery store.  I have not seen her in about 10 years, and she has LET HERSELF GO!”  I had only heard of Sallie by reputation as an elegant member of Lake Forest’s social elite, but my mother offered me no further details on this peculiar nugget of information, probably because she did not want to display the cattiness she was secretly enjoying.

Quite likely glamorous Sally was the life of a party, surrounded by a phalanx of sycophantic men only too eager to laugh at her jokes, pour her a drink, or swing her around the dance floor.  Lake Forest was populated by a swell set, who might hire the band Cream to play at their daughter’s debut, rocking out on a dance floor placed at the bottom of an empty swimming pool.  While this might have been Sally’s milieu, it was not something that my parents were part of, I think by mutual agreement.  I never thought of my mother as a beautiful woman.  Several times she confided in me that when she was younger, some people thought that she looked like Ingrid Bergman.  However she always said this with a roll of her eyes and a shake of her head, implying that everyone was crazy to think that she could ever aspire to the cool elegance of this international movie star.  While I could see the vague resemblance to Ingrid Bergman in pictures of her in her twenties, at this point she was deep into the throes of mothering 6 children, and clearly had no time for elegance. 

My mother never had any interest in style, almost to the point of excess.  She could spend the entire day in a one piece bathing suit that looked more like a children’s romper.  She loved playing tennis in her bathing suit, and on the occasions that she was required to wear white, she seemed to delight in producing some rumpled old outfit, and completed the look by wearing black socks. 

She abhorred shopping and had only a couple of outfits for the few formal parties that my parents did attend.  One of her classic outfits was her pink “peek-a-boo” dress.  This dress featured a really rather sedate rectangular cut out centered above her modest cleavage, but she loved pasting things into the cut out.  I remember one evening she sailed off to a party with S&H green stamps decorating her chest.  Collecting green stamps did not carry any social cachet in Lake Forest, and in fact was something that you would only do very discretely, but my mother chose to blatantly wear them on her chest.  Another evening she pasted dark black dog hair in the cut out.  I truly don’t think that this was premeditated and was not designed to send any particular message, she just wanted to cause a stir.  I envision her looking into the mirror, thinking, “How should I enhance this dress tonight,” and glancing around the room, she spotted the lazy dog, grabbed some scissors and thought, “That’s just the ticket.”  My father was so horrified at this performance that he banned the peek-a-boo dress to the back of the closet, never to be seen again.

Clearly from a starting point of Ingrid Bergman, my mother had “let herself go” in terms of elegance, but she did it such a conscious and refreshing style.  Perhaps she knew that she could not compete with the upper echelon, but more likely she simply had no interest and considered this a losing long term strategy anyway.  Certainly, my mother craved being the life of the party, but her strategy centered around playful humor and clever wit.  In addition to her sartorial tweaks at elegant society, she was always ready to entertain with a poem or skit to commemorate birthdays and weddings.   She amassed all these efforts into a bulging blue binder.  Leafing through it I can see the passage of time, with poems written for the same person on his 40th, 50th and 60th birthday.  I can envision party after party where she arrived with a guitar that she discreetly hid in the coat closet, waiting for the right time for her performance.  Leaping up after dinner, she would begin her serenade, which frequently included a chorus that all the celebrants could raucously participate in. 

Sally might have burned brightly, but as my mother so triumphantly realized, Sally’s tenure in the spot light inevitably succumbed to age and disrepair, while my mother could still command the stage and bring the house down well into her 70s.  I remember one time when I was about ten I asked my mother what the word “sexy” meant.  She replied, “It is a woman who is really fun and makes men laugh.”  Even as a 10 year old, I thought that this definition was missing some key ingredient, but it was not one that mattered to my mother.

 The missisng words in the following poem ar anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like spot, stop and post) and the number of asterisks indicate the number of letters.  One of the missing words will rhyme with the previous or following lines.  Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem.  Scroll down for answers.

If you want to live ******* as a society queen,

And epitomize glamour and monopolize the party scene,

You can’t let yourself go, and will need to count each calorie,

And you must amass a wardrobe that looks like a stylish fashion *******.

 If you rely only on looks, you must treat aging like an ******* that must be treated,

 But the ravages of age are a force that is not easily defeated.

 Better have a plan B, because eventually wrinkles will line your face,

 And you might be ******* forgotten as younger women clamor to take your place.

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*Answers:  regally, gallery, allergy, largely

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The Committment Conundrum in Three Vignettes

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Liza Blue

1: No

As we headed out on our bike ridewe were suddenly accompanied by an uninvited dog. We got off and tried to shoo him home, but he didn’t move. I clearly did not want a tag along dog – we were headed out on a long ride, around a lake and between two mountains, basically to the middle of nowhere. What if he pooped out or got lost – what obligation did I have to bring him home safely? But at the same time, I did not want to spend time taking him back to the garage where we had gotten our tires inflated and find the owner. But the dog looked fit, and I was pretty sure that he was Thor,a dog that was always running free in this backwoods community. I turned to Thor and said, “You can join us, but I want you to know that You are On Your Own – YoYo.” Off we went, and Thor loped happily alongsideof us with an easy and confident stride that looked like it could go onforever.

We had a peaceful picnic at the secluded mountain lake and treated Thor to leftover sandwich bits. I was not looking forward to the long ride home – the road was very rutted with multiple ups and down. But Thor was delighted to be on the move again. As we jolted down a rocky ridge, Thor suddenly took off into the brush and disappeared. It was decision time. Here we were about 8 miles from home with a missing dog in thewilderness, and even if this dog was savvy, I couldn’t imagine that he could find his way home alone. What effort should we make to find Thor? Any effort was an unpleasant thought, since it would require thrashing around dense and buggy underbrush. Then again, it might be better to make a token effort now, so we could absolve ourselves of any responsibility if we returned empty handed.  If we didn’t have any commitment to the dog, did we have any commitment to the owner? A strong friendship with the owner should transfer a commitment to the dog, and even though I was pretty sure that the owner was Gary, the garage mechanic, that was not enough of a friendship. We stopped and had a brief conference and decided to YoYo Thor – we went ahead without him.

When we got home, I sent Nick over the garage with the unpleasant task of informing Gary that Thor was missing. We had carefully scripted the conversation to imply that the dog had really lost itself through no fault of our own, and although that we would be able to provide the directions to the vicinity where he took off, we would not be part of any search party. As Nick went through his spiel, Garylooked up, shrugged his shoulders, and pointed behind his desk and said “he showed up about half hour ago.” There was Thor resting peacefully – he looked up as if to say, “You dumbasses had to bike all the way around the lake. I took the shortcut between the lake and the mountain and beat you home no problem.”

2. Yes

A group of 5 of us were heading down Mt. Homer to Mountain Lake. There was no trail, and the terrain was occasionally steep, so we spread out as we picked our way down. As usual, I lagged behind and then lost sight of them. However, we all intuitively knew that we would regroup once we reached the trail along theshore. But when I reached the lake, there was no sign of the other four and there was no response to my yelling and whistling. I could only conclude that they had gone ahead without me.  But when I reached the picnic table along the beach there was still no sign of them.  I was steaming.  How could they have left me behind? I trudged on home alone, becoming more livid and bereft with each step.  Abandoned on the side of the mountain.

Meanwhile, back along the trail, the other group became increasingly concerned when I did not show up. None of us had realized that I had somehow gone down a different ravine than they did and actually emerged ahead of them on the shoreline trail. They started yelling, but the blustery wind dissipated both their cries and my whistles. Their unspoken conclusion was that I must have fallen, and was lying up there somewhere in an unconscious heap with blood trickling out my nose, or more ominously, my ear.

Ned Houston, who was experienced in wilderness rescue, was first to give voice to these troubling thoughts and make them an uncomfortable reality – “I think that we better organize a search party,” he said. He quickly coordinated the 4 of them into a grid, going up and down the mountain 25 yards apart and constantly calling back and forth to each other. Nick said that by the time they called the search off, he had climbed Mount Homer two more times. Eventually, Ned sent Serin, their swiftest runner, to either gather forces for a more extensive body search, or see if I had inexplicably gotten ahead of them. In the meantime, as I walked home, my steaming had segued to fuming as I plotted how to most dramatically communicate my anger. When we finally reunited about half way home, my fury quickly evaporated and I was touched to realize that they were totally committed to finding my potentially lifeless body.

3. Probably Not

I was having a picnic with the Berry’s at Mountain Lake. We had driven upthere, but I wanted to walk home, and the most logical route was up and over Fortress Mountain. They decided that they were going to drive around the Fortress and climb it from the gentler side and we would meet at the rocky outcropping that was about 2/3rds the way up their side. Just then, their son Sam and two of his friends showed up and liked the sound of my route. “Is it all right if we join you?” Sam asked. I said sure and off we went. They quickly got ahead of me and were deep in conversation when they made a curious choice to take the right hand fork in the trail, while I knew that the more direct route was to the left. I could have called ahead to them to let them know what I was doing, but I did not. It all came down to how I interpreted the phrase, “is it alright if we join you?” I decided that the boys were simply asking permission to share the same trail space in case I was intending a solo, contemplative hike. I concluded that the phrase “is it alright” did not signify that there was any expectation that we would hike as a cohesive whole. Besides, given my slower pace, I thought they would catch up tome once they realized their mistake. I veered off on my own.

However, there was no sign ofthem as I headed up the Fortress. I began to think that they were concerned about my absence and were mulling over their responsibility to loop back and find me. Although I felt a bit guilty about their potential consternation, the only thing that I could do at this point was press ahead to the Fortress and wait for them there. I crested Fortress Mountain and came downthe other side to the rock outcropping, and surpisingly there they were. Sam had realized his mistake, but had made the unusual decision to walk around the mountain on a buggy road and then climb the Fortress from the other side instead of backtracking a wee bit to follow me. This was a scenario that I never anticipated. Sam came over and apologized that we had gotten separated. I had arrived shortly after them, but I wondered if the looming dilemma was how long should he wait there for me and also what would he do if Idid not show? I knew that Sam was well aware that the trail that I was on was steep and rocky enough to vex even the most nimble mountain goat, and certainly one with my quavering sense of balance.

Surely he could envision a slightmisstep sending me tumbling down the rocks. impaled by a shard wedged in the gnarled roots, followed by that telltale trickle of dried blood coming out my ear. What was his interpretation of the phrase “do you mind if wejoin you?” What type of commitment/panic button did it imply? There was no timeto delve into these tricky questions as we packed up quickly and all headed safely down the mountain.

The next day I found myself sitting next to Sam at a cocktail party so I ventured forth. “Sam, when I wasn’t at the Fortress when you arrived did you think something might have gone wrong?  Was your concept that we were hiking as a unit, or were independent?”

Although Sam was in law school, he was not yet in the habit of overthinking things to the same extent I was, at least not on vacation anyway. He said, “I hadn’t really thought along thoselines.”

I pressed further, “How long would you have waited for me before you left the Fortress?” I had clearly put him on the spot and he squirmed. He said, “It is hard to put a number on that type of thing.”

Though he tried so hard to be tactful, I had my answer, I had been Thor’d, YoYo’d – left to my own devices, a far cry from the attentive search and rescue of Mount Homer.  While at first taken aback, I decided to embrace my Thor-ness and accept the compliment. Like Thor, I know all these trails intimately, I am reliable, durable and can always find my way home, and as I complete my 60th year, I do not need to be rescued.

The missing words in the following  poem are anagrams (i.e. share the same letters, like spot, post, andstop). The number of asterisks indicates the number of letters, and one of the missing words will rhyme with either the previous or following line. Your jobis to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem.  Scroll down for answers.

When is it time to push the panic button and call a red *****?

Are you so inept that someone should assume you are lost or even hurt?

If it gets ***** and *****, and you’re still a no-show,

Who has the responsibility to determine your status quo?

Don’t worry if no one is concerned – it may not be as bad as it may seem

Just ***** your opinion, accept the compliment and the boost to your self esteem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Answers;  alert, later, alter

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Marco Polo, Ouija and Snickers

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Liza Blue

As I passed by a pool filled with kids on a muggy day, I realized that they were playing the game Marco Polo.  I had played this game as a kid, but thought it was perhaps a faddish or very local thing, but here it was again a generation later.  Marco Polo is an aquatic version of blind man’s bluff.  One poor sucker is the “it” person who is supposed to swim around in the deep end with his eyes closed.  When he yells out Marco! the rest of the swimmers are supposed to yell out Polo! to give him some sort of chance.  I don’t know why we were calling out Marco! Polo! and not, say, John Wayne! Gacy,! and I certainly did not know who Marco was.  In fact, when I did eventually learn that he was an explorer, his identity was so wrapped up in water, I just assumed that Marco Polo was a sailor.   It wasn’t until many years later that I discovered that he spent 24 years walking across Asia.  

The sounds of the kids voices made me smile, because I positively knew that every kid playing that game was cheating.  There was no way that anyone could tell if you opened your eyes a crack under water, and you would be the biggest sucker in the world if you didn’t peek just a little bit.  When I played, I remember looking through the eyelashes of my eyes, opened just enough to see the shadowy forms of arms and legs treading water.  Quite frankly, there was no way you could possibly catch anyone unless you cheated, and the real talent of the game was not to be too obvious about peeking.  If you caught someone too quickly, you would be roundly accused of cheating, but if you flailed around just long enough, everyone accepted the pretense. 

As I thought about Marco Polo, it occurred to me that this might be the first time that many kids learned that you can cheat and get away with it.  I am not talking about the big guilt-laden moral compass here – the one that keeps you from being sent to the principal’s office, or keeps you from shop lifting more than once, or the one that keeps neighboring moms welcoming you into their kitchen with milk and cookies.  I wouldn’t even call this a compass, but more of a personal list of rules that we are willing to break.  My husband Nick did not grow up near a swimming pool, so his introduction into rule-breaking was more abrupt.  He has a very distinct memory, at age 7, of driving with his mother in a Ford sedan.  At the corner of Lake and Greenbay, right next to the Kentucky Fried Chicken, she made an illegal right hand turn.  Nick had been carefully trained to follow all rules, and this wanton disregard for authority threw his well-ordered world into chaos.    

“Mom, you just made an illegal turn,” he gasped.

“Oh, honey, some rules are made to be broken,” she said.

“But how do you know the difference?”

“Honey, don’t worry about it, I just do.”   

Our own personal list of breakable rules probably fall across a spectrum ranging from rules that can be broken with no consequence, to rules that seem petty and finally to things that are downright illegal.  The no consequence rules include things like cheating at solitaire.  As I kid, I remember overhearing my younger brother Tim saying under his breath, “On Mondays, it is okay to move a ten into a space.”  Minutes later he looked up beaming and said, “I won!”  I sometimes cheat at solitaire by peeking under a stack of cards to determine which king to move into a space, but I would never do something as egregious as moving a ten into a space.  But I respected Tim’s creative rules. 

Moving along the spectrum you have of course the example of Marco Polo, but I also remember a period of time in High School when Ouija Boards were in vogue.  You sat around a game board consisting of letters and you all put your hands gently on a triangular device with a little peep hole in the apex called a “planchette,” which slid along the Ouija board.  You would attempt to call forth some sort of spiritual element and then ask questions, and the planchette would spell out the answers.  Forget the spirits, I found that it was easy enough to imperceptibly push the Ouija board around, and soon I was wisely advising friends on love lives, future professions and other particularly thorny issues.   

Yes, I cheated on a Ouija board, but let’s be honest, this is the only way it could ever work, i.e. you need a group of gullible believers and at least one skeptic to push the planchette around.  In fact, the directions of a Ouija board advise that you should never use the board alone (duh!) and that the Ouija board is not good at picking lottery numbers.  Much like Marco Polo, Ouija skill involves maintaining a pretense by intentionally garbling some answers.  There were some occasions when the planchette was difficult to secretly move around – I felt some reistance.  Believers would say that this was due to the real presence of spirits, I think that is more likely that there was another person like me, trying to impose their will on Ouija.   

Moving further along the slippery slope you have the example of my mother who routinely fudged on age restrictions at both ends of the spectrum  – in order to get the child’s lift ticket for her grandchildren on the ski slope, and for her to qualify for the senior discount.  There are plenty examples of petty rules involving cars.  When you rent a car, you cheerfully sign a document that attests that you will not drive on dirt roads, and that you will be the only driver.  Forget it.  Now we move into illegalities.  Like Nick’s mom, annoying traffic lights are rules meant to be broken.  Even if arrested you could always claim ignorance – i.e. “I didn’t see the ‘no left turn sign’.”  And of course there is a certain comfort in numbers.  When you are stuck in a traffic jam, that open shoulder begins to look very inviting, and as soon as someone starts scooting up the side, plenty of drivers will follow.  In fact, you can probably divide drivers into those who are willing to be the first to use the shoulder, those who are willing to follow, and those who stubbornly refuse to take advantage of the newly opened “lane.”  Personally, I am willing to be that first shoulder pioneer.  I justify this move as a public service and am fulfilled when I see other cars quickly fall in behind me, appreciative of my leadership.  Nick is a more reluctant follower since he claims that he actually saw someone get arrested in the midst of a traffic jam.   

At the end of the spectrum, there are things that are deliberately and definitely illegal – like shoplifting.  My father might have been the only child never to have cheated at Marco Polo, but in his 80s we caught him shoplifting.  It was really an innocent mistake, but there he was eating an illegal Snickers bar.  The scene was a gas station attached to an Arby’s restaurant where we had stopped during a long road trip.  He had picked up the Snickers in the gas station, presumably thinking that he would pay for it as part of his Arby’s lunch. 

I said, “Did you pay for that Dad?” 

His face turned ashen.  We told him he could go back to the gas station, explain his innocent mistake and pay for the Snickers but he flat out refused.  My father was more concerned that the cashier – a pimply farm girl – would think that he was a shoplifter.  Basically, in his mind it was better to be a shoplifter than to have someone think that you might be a shoplifter.  It was consistent with his reluctance to enter a police station, which he was periodically required to do to retrieve wayward dogs.  He didn’t like to go in broad daylight, because people might see him and then assume that he had done something illegal.      

The next day Nick called my father and in his best disguised authoritarian voice said, “Mr. Brown, we have video taped evidence of you shoplifting a Snickers bar in Abrams, Wisconsin.  What are we going to do about this situation?”  My father’s panicked spluttering was so distraught that Nick immediately revealed the ruse.  I don’t think that the poor man was ever the same.  After all, he had to revise his list of rules that he was willing to break,  a list that had served him well for over 80 years. 

The missing letters in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like spot, stop, post) and the number of asterisks indicates the number of letters.  One of the missing words will rhyme with the previous or following lines.  Your job is to solve for the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem.  Scroll down for answers.

I think that we all have a mental ***** of rules that can be broken,

Cheating at Marco Polo or solitaire are examples of which I have spoken.

Only the most obedient soul or complete chucklehead

Has not run a ***** yellow light or even one that is red.

And driving on the shoulder should not bother you in the *****

Particularly if there is a traffic jam and the highway is lightly policed.

But to ***** something, like shoplifting as a kid,

Should only happen once, since guilt will make your regret what you did.

So one of our favorite *****  involves my father and his mistake

He stole a Snickers and never recovered from angst and heartache.

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Answers:  slate, stale, least, steal, tales

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Shakespeare Wrote Doggerel

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Liza Blue

For about 2 years my mother and I worked together on a book of children’s poetry called Ned’s Journal, which described the “small and big life adventures of Ned,” a 10 year old boy.  We were pleased to secure a publisher, Tatra Press, whose only previous publication was a guide to men’s clothing.  While the book sold briskly in the 60045 zip code, sales fell dramatically off outside our home town– in fact there were virtually none – but that didn’t really matter.  The principle goal was to get the book published.

My mother-in-law, who fashions herself as an arbiter of art and good taste, took a look at the book and said, “Why this is doggerel!”  I bristled and gave Pat an unrecognized withering look.  But then I realized that Ned’s Journal had that universal doggerelish beat of da-DAH, da-DAH, da-DAH/ dah, DA-da-da, DA-da-da dah.  Then my pride of authorship kicked in and I thought yes, Pat is right, this is doggerel, but it was damn fine doggerel.  The issue really was why doggerel was dismissed as an art form.  I wondered how this poetic genre had gotten its poor reputation but had to go no farther than the on-line definitions of doggerel.

From Wikipedia

Doggerel describes verse considered of little literary value. The word is derogatory, from Middle English.  Almost by definition examples of doggerel are not preserved, since if they have any redeeming value they are not considered doggerel.  Doggerel might have any or all of the following failings:

  • trite, cliche, or overly sentimental content
  • forced or imprecise rhymes
  • faulty meter
  • misordering of words to force correct meter

From www.dictionary.com

dog·ger·el
n.   Crudely or irregularly fashioned verse, often of a humorous or burlesque nature.

The derogatory tone of both these definitions is dispiriting, one can almost sense the contemptuous sniff from the anonymous Wikipedia author.  If one judges literary value by what is taught in colleges, well, yes, doggerel may be wanting, but my contention is that doggerel is important to our lives and it should not be so cavalierly dismissed as an art.  How many wedding albums include yellowed pieces of paper memorializing the awkward verse of a toast, how many birthdays and anniversaries are enlivened by friends and family standing up, willing to embarrass themselves by singing a poorly metered verse in a quavering and off-key voice?  Such efforts are typically greeted with joyful groans and cheers in acknowledgement of the creative effort reflecting heartfelt good wishes.  We all might like to write sonnets like Shakespeare, but realistically we settle for doggerel.

According to Wikipedia, overly sentimental content is a fatal flaw, but as I was sitting in church this past Sunday leafing through the hymnal, it occurred to me that many of these Presbyterian hymns could be classified as doggerel based on sappiness, to wit:

“Now the darkness gathers, stars begin to peep, birds and beasts and flowers soon will be asleep.

When the morning wakens, then may I arise, pure and fresh and sinless, in thy holy eyes.”

Don’t you agree that these verses to the hymn “Now the Day is Over” seem trite and oversentimental?   And I am sure that I could find other hymns with off kilter meter to show that our treasured hymns fulfill multiple criteria for doggerel. 

The online dictionary definition also states that doggerel can be defined by its “humorous and burlesque nature.”  Here I see an opportunity to elevate doggerel to the rarified status of Shakespeare, since this towering linguistic icon suffuses all his plays and sonnets with incessant sexual puns and innuendos – the type of sophomoric puns that could be punctuated by a rimshot and an audience groan, progressing to burlesque, bawdy and then downright raunchy references.  Shakespeare had the challenging task of appealing both to the masses and the English courts.  Plays were wildly popular in Elizabethan England, and it is estimated 1 in 8 Londoners went to a play every week, ranging from the lowly laborers and apprentices, to country gentlemen, to aristocrats to Queen Elizabeth herself.  Apparently bawdy and raunchy sexual wordplay was a real crowd pleaser across the entire spectrum of society. 

The sexual puns that would be obvious to Shakespeare’s audience are now interpreted by modern readers as the epitome of English eloquence, simply because half of the time we probably don’t realize what Shakespeare is really talking about.  By cross referencing “doggerel and Shakespeare” into Google, I stumbled across an interesting book called “Filthy Shakespeare,” which translates Shakespeare’s jargon into today’s vernacular.  One of the first things you appreciate is the overwhelming number of idioms for “penis.”  Basically you can assume that anything that is longer than it is wide is a phallic symbol.  Also Shakespeare’s name itself is a sexual pun, since Will was a colloquialism for penis,  vagina and sexual desire.  And sorry to report this, but the word Shakespeare can roughly be translated to “masturbator.”  So you can only imagine the kind of teasing the poor kid had to put up with. 

Examples of Shakespeare’s idioms for male sexual organs include (but are certainly not limited to): beggar, carrot, dewlap, holy-thistle, instrument, kicky-wicky, little witness, needle, pizzle, potato-finger, pudding, three-inch fool and weapon.  The corresponding female idioms are more numerous than males and include bird’s nest, bogs, dearest bodily part, low countries (including the Netherlands), medlar, rudder, salmon’s tail, snatch, tongue and velvet.  Puns on sex itself include:  boggler, change the cod’s head for the salmon’s tail, dance with one’s heels, dribbling dart of love, fill a bottle with a tun-dish, horsemanship, nose-painting, paddling palms and tickle one’s catastrophe.  And I am just scratching the surface here. 

Shakespeare certainly did not have to depend on clever idioms to get his point across.  The following is an example of his signature word play, where the word “will,” repeated 13 times, can mean either Will (referring to a Christian name), or “will” referring to either a penis or vagina.  In this sonnet, the Poet wonders if he can join the ranks of the Beloved’s lovers:

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,

And Will to boot, and Will in overplus.

More than enough am I that vex thee still,

To thy sweet will making addition thus. 

With thou, whose will is large and spacious,

Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?

Shall will in others seem right gracious,

And in my will no fair acceptance shine?

The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,

And in abundance addeth to his store;

So thou, being rich in will, add to thy Will

One will of mine to make thy large Will more.

Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill;

Think all but one, and me in that one Will. 

 Okay folks, here is the translation from one Paula Kiernan, author of Filthy Shakespeare:

 “While other women can only wish for sex, your sexual desires are fulfilled by your Will, and you’d get my penis in the bargain, in fact you would get an excess of sex.

I can perform better than all of your lovers put together and I will keep tormenting you with my sexual advances. 

Will you not, with that vagina of yours which is large and spacious from so much use by other men, let me hide myself in you?

Are other men better endowed, and I cannot measure up? 

The sea is all water, but it still receives rain, and adds to it abundantly.  It’s the same with you. 

Even though you are already rich in the number of your lovers, I am asking that you accept me as a lover.  I am already aroused and my penis has grown larger. 

Please stop saying no to my reasonable advances.  Think of all your lovers as being a single one, and treat me as the only one that you desire.”

Now that we know what Shakespeare was talking about, I certainly think that this sonnet meets the burlesque and humorous criteria defining doggerel.  I thought it might be quite challenging to show that Shakespeare also meets the second important criteria for doggerel – that of faulty or awkward meter.  However, we need look no farther than the fourth line from the bottom (So thou…).  The sonnet is written in iambic pentameter, meaning that there are 5 pairs of words, with the accent on the second word in each pair.  Each line should thus contain 10 syllables, but low and behold, this single line contains 11 syllables.  Apparently Willy Shakes has played fast and loose with the rules of the sonnet game, force fitting the word “being” into one syllable! 

I rest my case.  Shakespeare wrote doggerel. 

So the next time you raise a toast at a birthday, wedding or other event, and stand to read your little ditty, hold your head high – you are in the company of greatness.

The missing letters in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like spot, stop, post) and the number of asterisks indicates the number of letters.  One of the missing words will rhyme with either the previous or following line. Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem.  Scroll down for answers.

Doggerel in honor of Shakespeare 

For centuries mothers have had to ****** their children to pick up their clothes,

 I imagine a conversation between Ma Shakespeare and Will and here’s how it goes.

 “Mother I doth protest mightily that into my quarters you have ******,

 And methinks your accusations of irksome slovenliness are wrongly charged.

 I shall be ****** in whatever artful raiment I so chooseth and what’s more,

 ‘Tis much simpler to pluck my garments when they are strewn on the floor.

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Answers:  badger, barged, garbed

 

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Spring Diary: Chapter 6

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Liza Blue

May 18th

I now have spent some six weeks with my daily walks, and I have come to appreciate the slow unraveling of spring and feel attuned to the changing season.  I imagine that many people are only vaguely aware of the evolution, perhaps just subdividing spring into early and late.  But I have notice that the sound of the wind has changed from the light tapping of bare branches to the rustle of leaves; the progress of the owlets, who have now left their nest and are hidden in the willow tree by a veil of slivered leaves; of the pond that is slowly drying up and no longer beckons blue winged teals; the kinglets who are now mostly gone and the swarms of redstarts who have arrived.  But no matter how attuned or oblivious one might be to earth’s orbits, no one could miss the symbol of spring that I saw today.  A pair of Canada geese were gently shepherding their flock of 8 ducklings across the pond.

New Birds Seen

Eastern Kingbird

Eastern Wood Pewee

Redstart

May 20th

Again the woods and fields are quiet and I am not sure why.  But this time I spend the walk looking at the pattern of tree bark.  Several years ago I had taken a class on identifying trees in winter, i.e. without the distraction of leaves, the identification depends on the tree shape, branching pattern and buds, which may be hopelessly out of reach.    There is the thickly furrowed bark of the burr oak, looking like a comfortable pair of wide wale corduroys, the peeling bark of cherry trees and shagbark, which look like the flakes of sunburned skin, the diamond shaped pattern of ashes, which probably house some exquisitely adapted insects, and finally the cracked bark of the white oak, which quite frankly look like the pattern on my calloused feet.  Perhaps my weight and the weight of the tree have produced the same fault lines in their supporting structures.

May 25th

My brother in law is the contractor for our basement remodeling and sees me traipsing in and out with binoculars and bird books.  Bemused by this new phase of bird watching, he  likens it to some elaborate Easter egg hunt.  I don’t disagree with him.  I am reminded of the children’s magazine Highlights, which has been in every pediatrician’s and dentist’s office that I have been in for the past 40 years.  The best part of this magazine is the page of hidden pictures, where you try to identify the bunny rabbit in the pattern of the clouds, the baseball bat in the tree, or the old man in the bushes.  It was always a major disappointment if someone had already selfishly circled the hidden objects, ruining any sense of discovery.  Today I was in the unusual position of being more knowledgable than my birding companions.  I carefully did not gleefully point out birds or blurt out the identification and spoil the sense of discovery, and only offered assistance when asked. 

May 28th 

Well the bulk of the birds have passed through, and the birds that remain are busy with the task of mating and nesting and no longer see the need to sing loudly from an exposed perch.  My daily walks and diary entries have become sporadic.  In the evenings, and sometimes well into the night, I have become entranced with playing the on line word game Boggle.  This game consists of a 5 X 5 grid of letter cubes, and the task is to find as many words made from adjacent cubes as possible within a two minute period.  Another elaborate Easter egg hunt, and I find that I can go birdwatching here too.  Oddly enough the Boggle birds that I have found are mostly seabirds that I have never seen, but only know by name, i.e. murre, gannet, scaup, smew.  I even have a category of flightless Boggle birds that include dodo, moas, and rhea.  I would consider it a real feather in my cap if I could find the more challenging ostrich and penguin.  The game awards you a bonus point if you are the first to find a word, and I always score bonus points with my birds.    

 

 

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Spring Diary: Chapter 5

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Liza Blue

May 11th

I look back at my entry of April 26th, where I smugly talk about being able to pick out the strands of individual songs.  Now, in the thick of prime migration time, I realize that this is a load of self serving crap.  What was I thinking.  I am surrounded by whistles, trills, clucks, burrs, and other assorted songs that are all running hopelessly together.  Particularly vexing is the goldfinch, who has a varied song that is easily identifiable if it is sung in its entirely.  But often, I only hear snatches of it, which sound like new arrival and set me on a quest.  After circling a tree, and exposing myself to the scourge of ticks, I discover with great disappointment that it is only a goldfinch torturing me with a small snippet of his song.  At one point, I was sure that I was hearing a new warbler.  I carefully identified the tree, spotted the flitting bird, and lifted my binoculars only to find another goldfinch.  Well, that is okay, I thought, at least when he sings, I will register this variance as a goldfinch song.  And just as the song wafted down to me, through the binoculars I say the target goldfinch carefully stuff a wad of blossoms into his mouth.  I thought, “Well, here is a new method of torture, he is a ventroloquist, too!”  I was reminded of the old Ed Sullivan show where a ventriloquist would try to enhance the illusion by having his dummy talking while he was swallowing water.  I presume that there was another bird in the tree, but I was never able to find it.

New Birds Seen

  • White Crowned Sparrow
  • Blackburnian Warbler

 

 

 

May 12th

I have been frequently seeing red tailed hawks circling over the meadow, but they have been silent until now.  Today, the soaring hawk repetitively cried, an agonizing harsh cry which may me think of wild and untamed nature, with a hint of danger.  But I was a little disarmed when I realized that this auditory cue comes predominantly from television ads and programs, who insert the sound of a red tailed hawk whenever they want to create an image of something that is really out there.  Remember those ads for trucks that are improbably parked on top of a precipice?  Inevitably there will be the sound of a red tailed hawk in the background.

New Birds Seen

  • Golden winged Warbler

May 14th

This weekend I am on a quick trip to the Upper Peninsula Michigan to stay in our family’s cabin along the shores of Lake Superior.  This cabin has been in the family for several generations and has accumulated books and possession for probably 50 years.  I was looking through the musty bookshelves and stumbled across an original 1934 Peterson field guide to birds.  The book was very hopefully titled, “A Bird Book with a New Plan.”  Peterson’s “new plan” was to helpfully put a small arrow next to the key features of a bird.  Like any great idea, this plan seems pathetically obvious in retrospect, but Peterson’s field guide was the inspiration to generations of amateur naturalists.  In 1934 my mother was only 7 years old, so presumably this book belonged to my grandmother, or perhaps to the owners that preceded by grandparents.  My grandfather bought the cabin from an elderly, childless couple who both died one winter, and he took possession of the cabin and all its contents, including the unfinished knitting project on the nightstand and the hairbrush with embedded silver strands of hair and all the books.  As I flipped through the book, I hoped to find some markings, or stumble on someone else’s life list, but no such luck.  I did discover that many of the pictures of the birds were in black and white, which thankfully have been replaced in my 2000 edition, and the pictures were tiny and cramped on the page.  With a little additional searching in other bookshelves in the cabin I found a 1937 edition, a 1947 and a1960 edition, with each edition with progressively larger and more colored illustrations.  Here I was continuing on the cabin tradition of following birds.

May 15th

For the past several years there has been a bald eagle’s nest about a mile down the beach.  When the eagle nests in the spring, there is minimal foot traffic beneath him, but as vacationers swell during the summer months, there are many visitors to the beach.  Although it is easy to see the bald eagles in and around the nest in August, at this point, the eaglets have been fledged and the eagles seem oblivious to our presence.  As I approached the nest, I noticed that there was an eagle sitting on the nest.  I turned my head to watch two common mergansers in the cold waters of Lake Superior, and when I turned my head back, I realized that the eagle had left the nest, was joined by another and were headed directly toward me.  I had just finished reading the bird guide which described the eagles “enormous beak and sharp talons,” and my anxiety grew as the eagles swooped down low and passed directly overhead.  They then circled around and headed back again toward me.  As they passed overhead I could actually hear them calling, which sounded like scratchy radio static.  I quickly beat a hasty retreat. 

New Birds Seen:

  • Common Merganser
  • Hooded Merganser

 

 

 

May 16th

I stopped by the house of local residents Steve and Lorraine Ferguson.  They had set up a bird feeder in their back yard and a bird bath with running water.  As I was chatting, I noticed a bevy of sparrows enjoying the handouts and refreshments.  Steve mentioned that for the past four days a Harris sparrow had been at the feeder.  I had never heard of a Harris sparrow and when I consulted my bird guide, I realized that this sparrow is generally found farther west and was distinctly unusual here in the along the shores of Lake Superior.  As I looked at the sparrows fraternizing peacefully under the feeder, I had a rare opportunity to appreciate the relative sizes of these birds; in order of size, much like a group of siblings lined up by age, there was the diminutive chipping sparrow, the stout white throated sparrow, the sleek and confident white crowned sparrow, and if I may be permitted to read into the body language, the bewildered Harris sparrow, who was perhaps wondering what wild wind had landed him unexpectedly in this obscure corner of the north woods.

New Birds Seen

  • Harris Sparrow
  • Common Goldeneye

Pictures courtexy of Allen Siegle

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Spring Diary: Chapter 4

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Liza Blue

May 5th

The last few days have been disappointing with few additional birds.  Where are they?  A whole new wave of migrants should be arriving any day now, although the cold north winds have probably kept them at bay.  Although I am pleased that I am increasingly recognizing bird songs, I realize that that this led to a change in my birding experience.  At the beginning of my learning curve, when I heard a new bird song, I would carefully stalk the bird, clumping through brush and mush until I finally spotted it in the binoculars.  With a rush of discovery, I would triumphantly confirm both my tenuous identification based either on call alone or visual alone.  The blue-winged warbler will always hold a warm spot in my heart since it was the first bird that I identified with the two pronged approach of sight and song.  It was at least a decade ago in Hartford, CT, where I was visiting the corporate office of Aetna on business.  The office was situated on a lush suburban campus, but a ring of brush was left intact.  At the end of the business day I headed to this margin in my work clothes, consisting of a thin silk skirt and a pair of party shoes.  (As a child, party shoes described any shoes that could not be used for sports.)  I first heard the unusual song of the blue winged warbler, which sounds something like a tiny person snoring, perhaps Sleepy from the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  I then spent a good hour chasing the warbler around, in the process totally ruined my shoes in a swamp, and my very fashionable skirt was left matted with burrs.  But when I finally put the sight and song together I was giddy with excitement.

Today I heard a blue winged warbler and felt little compulsion to track it down.  Although wearing appropriate attire, I would have to depart from the beaten path, and the grass was wet and I am scared of getting ticks.  I also heard a Northern Waterthrush and merely nodded my head toward it in acknowledgement.  Perhaps my enjoyment of birdwatching is transitioning from the rapturous excitement of discovery to a quieter grateful appreciation.  I have noticed that in our bird banding group, our leader Caleb takes bird walks in between banding episodes without the benefit of binoculars, instead just appreciating the birds he can hear. 

But I also rejoice knowing that I am standing on an infinite learning curve, and with a little nudge of intellectual curiosity, the trajectories of this curve can head off in infinite directions.  Who knows, maybe five years from now I will have abandoned the crutch of binoculars, or will instead by besotted by dragonflies or butterflies, or perhaps like Darwin, earthworms will become my passion.

New Birds Seen:

Solitary Sandpiper

May 7th

We are now in the peak of the migration, with the early migrants still lingering, and newly joined by the later arrivals, so each tree is alive with birds.  I am reminded of a cocktail party we were once invited to years ago.  The invitation said from 6-8PM and I thought that we had made a mistake by arriving promptly at 6.  There is a certain awkwardness about being the first arrivals, and so it was with some discomfort that I approached the apartment door.  To my surprise, I heard the party in full swing inside, and I wondered how it was that everyone was so prompt.  And then just as we were about to enter, others left, thanking the hostess profusely for the lovely evening.  I was puzzled.  I later discover the hostess had invited three waves of people, some from 5-7, some from 6-8 and some from 7-9.  We were in the middle wave.  I feel that the migration is now in the middle wave.  Soon the kinglets will move on, to be replaced by the last wave of flycatchers.

New Birds Seen:

Pine Warbler

Magnolia Warbler

Chestnut Sided Warbler

Rose Breasted Grosbeak

May 8th

I certainly should not be surprised at seeing a house wren in the field, although its name certainly implies that this should be a backyard bird.  In addition, the sweet jumbled song of this bird instantly brings back memories of summer lunches on my grandmother’s patio.  I suppose my interest in birdwatching traces most directly back to her, although she may have picked it up from her grandmother in the early 1900s.  Although she was more of a horticulturist, she always had bird feeders in her gardens and several birdhouses for house wrens on her patio.  I realized that certain bird songs, although most often heard in the deep background, can serve as audio prompts for powerful memories.  Many years ago our family celebrated a family reunion in Montana, and our host and guide suggested that we go on a canoe trip.  We were a sporting and adventuresome lot, and he naively assumed that we all knew how to canoe, which, it turned out was totally erroneous.  So off we went down some narrow river.  Although there were no rapids, there was a swift moving current and constant hairpin turns.  Disaster immediately struck, as one after another all but two of the canoes capsized.  I was in a canoe with my mother and daughter, and though we remained dry, my mother did have one near death experience; her head got caught underneath a wire cord stretched low across the river.  As our canoe moved swiftly forward I was unable to guide it toward the spot with the highest clearance and instead headed for where the cord was slung at its lowest.  The cord hit her square in the chest and then as our canoe moved forward, the cord marched up her chest.  As she leaned back the cord got caught on her neck and strained against her chin.  The bow of the boat plowed down and we tipped wildly as my mother tried to escape the imminent garroting.  With a big splash she escaped.  I was only momentarily relieved as I realized that I was up next and I would have to do a flat out limbo to escape a similar fate.  The story has been passed around our family many times, told and retold and embellished.  But the one thing that brings it immediately back to me is the song of the yellow warbler.  The narrow stream was bordered by brushy willow trees, which were absolutely filled with yellow warblers madly singing to establish territory.  I was in the stern of the canoe, and every moment I lifted my binoculars to try and spot one, the canoe would quickly careen off and slam into the bank on the other side.

 One day while driving in the car, the bird tape came on and out came the beeping sound of the white nuthatch.  The white nuthatch is a commonly heard bird in the woods of northern Michigan where we vacation.  I mentioned to my daughter, “I’m sure that you have heard this bird before at HuronMountain, particularly on the hike to PineLake.”  A smile spread across her face, and she said, “Yes I knew that I had heard it someplace before.”  I am sure that from that moment forward, the song of the white nuthatch will be an auditory anchor for a whole raft of summer memories.  

New Birds Seen:

Scarlet Tanager

Orange crowned warbler

Yellow Warbler

Warbling Vireo

Red Eyed Vireo

Nashville Warber

Wood Thrush (song only)

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