82 thoughts on “As the Crow… Buys”

  1. an eagle of course the beauty of opening the wings and riding the wind currents makes me want to read jonathan livingston seagull again

    tim jones

    >

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  2. hey clyde
    do you want to try the keyboard”\
    send me you address at the timjones2020 gmail address. if you decide to switch out of the i pad i may be interested in your i pad if you want to bail

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    1. Keyboard?
      I ordered a keyboard, about which I will write a blog when I get a new computer next week, not the lemon, but a new one. I love my iPad, except for the auto correct, which I do not turn off because Iit helps me more than hurts. The blog about the keyboard will relate to China.

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        2. What makes it discomfiting is that I’m old enough to remember when a whole cart full at the grocery amounted to about $35.

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        4. Those are the sorts of things I primarily buy. All that means is that my $50 purchase would have cost $75 elsewhere.

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  4. Rise and Soar Baboons!

    I am with tim, an eagle is just too alluring and powerful to pick anything else. On the road to my new office I go over the Bloomington Ferry Bridge. At the South end of it is an enormous and very visible active eagle’s nest. Sometimes I can see both parents tending it. Sometimes they are flying around over the river and bridge.

    We have a bird trying to nest immediately outside of and above our front door on top of the pergola. We knock down the nest. Bird starts over. Today we are trying obstructive techniques, placing objects in the spot the birds have chosen. Maybe that will work?

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      1. I made some tri color lasagna once with homemade pasta . The colors came from spinach for the green pasta and sweet red peppers for the red layer. The colors stayed pretty vivid. I haven’t made homemade pasta for a while.

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    2. Eagles are impressive, to be sure, but I wonder if we get to pick the kind of bird we are or if we are better off being the best version of the bird we find ourselves to be. We can’t all be eagles, either in nature or in metaphor.

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        1. ME, TOO. Definitely an ostrich.

          Today I ran an errand that was a longish drive and then went to two different places to shoot (and then after supper went to a third place) – so more time in the car than usual, and I REFUSED to turn on the radio which is usually tuned to mpr and their never ending news. I needed a break from it for the sake of my mental health.

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  6. The turkey vultures have returned to town and are circling our neighborhood again. The are good citizens and keep the area clear of squirrel and bird carcasses. It is disconcerting to see 8-10 of them circling directly over our house.

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    1. I’d like to meet the sort of man who identifies with red-tailed hawks. One interesting aspect of red-tails is their extreme morphological variety. (They have several identifiably distinctive “races.”) Red-tails offer a strong argument for discounting surface appearances and concentrating on more significant observations of how the critter lives. This is true for humans as well.

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    2. I’d be a hawk. Great eye sight from lofty heights (good for observation – like your husband’s psychology practice…or the sorts of gigs I tend to work), handsome without the ostentation of a bald eagle (you can take the girl out of the Scandinavian Lutheran church, but you can’t take the Scandinavian Lutheran out of the girl…), and they provide a handy service keeping the population of rodents and rabbits at bay (I like rabbits, I really do – but they have become a nuisance animal in my neighborhood…).

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  8. I want to be the bird that sings early in a.m. and last shout out in the evening. I’ve been trying to identify it, but can never find the binocs when s/he is visible. According to my book (with taped songs in it), could be just a house finch. Robins are also pretty good…

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    1. Many of the birds we are hearing and seeing right now are transient. I’ve been seeing a lot of warblers lately.

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      1. That becomes remarkably complex, Bill, in terrain such as where I now live (but maybe I should add that I’m a transient, too, who won’t be here long). In the Midwest birds “migrate” by flying long distances north or south. Where I am now, the landscape is crazy up-and-down. Birds that want to change their scene here can fly any direction (N,S, E or W) and by doing so go up a mountain or down a valley, effectively changing the world they live in. By choosing an altitude they get to choose the season they inhabit.

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  10. I might like to be a white blackbird.

    The white blackbird, who is spurned by all the black blackbirds, at least has the consolation of looking out of the corner of its eye at the whiteness of its wings.
    – Jean-Paul Sartre

    Interesting that race relations are strained in non-human species too.

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    1. Have you ever seen a white blackbird? I never have, but I suppose its possible they exist. I wonder if it’s a fact that they are spurned by other blackbirds or if that’s just a trope. White squirrels seem pretty well accepted by their brethren.

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      2. I have never seen a white blackbird; I don’t think we have them in North America. The context of the quote from Sartre, if I recall correctly, was related to the French phrase la merle blanc, which is an idiom meaning a rare bird, or something unusual. You can find photos of white blackbirds if you google, so I suppose they live somewhere.

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      3. When I was in high school, we had a white blackbird that hung around our yard for the longest time. My zoology teacher was curious to see it, so invited her to come home from school with me one afternoon so she could see for herself. I wasn’t making that up, and the bird, reliably, made an appearance. I think I may even have mentioned this on the trail once before.

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        1. Such birds are called “leukastic” and they have no melanin, so their feathers are white. We had a leukastic finch at tbe feeders this winter.

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      4. Well, that may be true about the squirrels, but it is well known that squirrels are perverted rodents that have terrible ethics.

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  12. I would probably be a crow or a magpie. I love my jewelry and bling as well as pretty clothes. I can peruse catalogs, browse online and fill my virtual cart — but never buy as it’s just not in my budget. Just looking, ya know …

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    1. Funny! When I was a kid (young enough that people called me Stevie) I occasionally heard a bird call my name. I was convinced that any day that happened was going to be a lucky day for me. The bird was the eastern phoebe.

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  15. Cuckoo.
    Bought computer.
    Sandy got very sick.
    Computer crashed.
    Sandy still sick.
    Computer fixed.
    Sandy got better.
    Computer crashed.
    Sandy got sick again.
    Took back the computer.
    Sandy still sick.

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    3. We went through a very emotional couple of weeks, which set her off. This afternoon she is recovering.
      What a fine day it was outside today.
      Sorry I skipped some blogs, like yesterday.
      Will have a new computer early next week.

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      1. No need to apologize for missing some blog posts, NorthShorer. Just drop in when you can. I personally absolutely cannot keep up with daily blogs so I stop by when I can, which is 2-3 times a week, usually. Nobody’s kicked me off yet for missing so many days.

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  16. As I said last week, barn swallow. Their speed and grace. Fun to listen to in the hay mow. Their nest construction. Color. Tanacity–hard to drive away.

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    2. No, I feel even less like doing the little bit of cleaning that I usually do.

      I feel the urge to get outside and take long walks or just sit outside. I don’t feel like gardening, but I have to do a little to maintain what’s in the yard; still have to spread the chicken manure that Ben brought me around the various berry plants and herb/flower beds. I’m the laundry person in this household and I feel the urge to hang up the laundry to dry, but that usually fades after I hang up what feels like the thousandth sock of the week.

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  19. I remember a time when spring cleaning meant washing the drapes, washing and repainting the walls, and varnishing all the floors. Now, I admit I might be particularly lax, but I have never felt the need to do any of those things. For me the warmer weather means more of an opportunity to lounge in my zero gravity chair in the back yard. Screw housework!

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    1. struts or springs? springs are tough, struts are laughable but feel rewarding when you get done. i am never cleans when i am done working on cars. the mechanics are now little weenies who put on little rubber gloves so they dont get oil and gas on their skin. i hate gloves… cant stand them and so i get oil and grease all over and need to have car mechanic clothes that will bnever be my sunday go to meeting clothes again. i kind of have a life that doesnt work well with sunday go to meeting clothes. i can put em on but by the end of the day they are not what other peoples clothes look like at the end of the day. i guess i just live life in an untidy way. me and life get along fine with it but it takes a toll on clean space

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  22. I do feel periodically like dust mopping under and behind furniture, wiping down the windowsills, etc. Usually not a seasonal urge, though – more like when we’ll be having overnight guests.

    Once a year I want to re-organize the basement, and that usually involves some kind of deep cleaning.

    Spring, though, means setting up the outdoor spaces (esp. this year when I’m playing in them for the first time. I have an herb garden and a reading spot; now need to set up a potting area…

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  23. We are moving daughter out of the rental house she shared with three other young women. Their vacuum broke down last fall and they hadn’t vacuumed since.

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  24. when i get started on a cleaning project it turns into a perpetual piling of stuff that gets organized and reorganized into boxes and bins with a shoebox full going in the trash and the rest being re assigned to new organized box of boxes

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    1. BiR’s article hints at the horrors that can follow when we give into the impulse to cleanse our homes in spring. I take pride in keeping that impulse under rigid control. Whenever I’m tempted to break out the Chlorox or start my vacuum cleaner, I take a glass of wine. If that doesn’t work, I take one or two more.

      BTW, I’ve written a blog piece that will run tomorrow AM. Have a great Sunday, y’all!

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  26. This is a PSA for Clyde, it’s an announcement made by Mike Pengra:
    “Mankato friends! See you Wednesday at the Kato Ballroom for live music and fun. We start at 10am with the Chione Quintet, the MN Valley Brass Quintet, the The OK Factor and the GSharp men’s vocal group from GAC. And it’s FREE!”

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  27. I don’t do a methodical spring cleaning, but I find that more hours of sunlight brings more energy. And with more energy comes a little more cleaning.

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  28. Spring is when I stare into the basement and kick myself for not doing more to organize down there while it was cold and miserable outside, ‘cuz I sure as heck don’t want to do it in the nice weather. I did get myself to recaulk the bathtub finally, though – open the window to let out the caulk stink, take a break between taking off the old and putting on the new to sit on the front steps (letting the scrubbing off of the old dry a bit y’know…). I hate caulking – or rather that it needs to be done. But it’s done. Gonna ignore the dirty windows today.

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  29. Small apartment. I have a spread sheet on cleaning tasks. I distribute the non routine tasks through the year. Next up, cleaning over kitchen cabinets. About worst task for my broken old body. Greasy and dusty up there. I put wax paper down and replace it every ten months or so. Makes task easier. Sandy dusts all my carvings about every three months. If that were my task, I would throw them out. Sandy likes cleaning windows, weird, huh? But she cannot do the bottom part of patio door. So we will share the task when she is a little stronger. Cleanliness is a high virtue in Russian culture, which Sandy picked up from her father. I grew up in a farmhouse, where outdoors is more important than indoors. My mother’s spring cleaning consisted of taking things outdoors to air, beating the rugs, which she had made, and cleaning the cupboards. My sister hated the cleaning tasks as a child/teen. My mother wrote her jobs on a blackboard in the back hall. Cleo says the list always just got longer. Now she is a cleaning demon, still is at age 75. My heavens! My sister is 75!

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