crows

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When I was a kid, a neighbor had a crow for a pet. I was altogether fascinated by that bird. It was huge and black; it walked with a dignified, clerical stride; and it was astonishingly clever. It was so smart it hardly seemed to belong to the bird family. It was was almost as if some sort of spirit being was inhabiting an unnaturally large bird’s body. The bird was so large I found it a little scary and intimidating, but I was completely taken in by it.

Ever since I’ve been a fan of the crow. A fan of all the larger Corvidae, actually — ravens, jackdaws, rooks, magpies — but mainly the plain old common crow. One of the things I love about crows is that despite their size (they’re burly bastards; they get up to about 21 inches from beak to tail) they’re almost invisible. People simply don’t notice them most of the time. Cardinals, they notice. Goldfinches, they notice. Blue jays (also Corvids, by the way), they notice. Bright, cheery, colorful birds — even the tiniest of them — get noticed. Crows get ignored. It’s like they have the power to cloud the minds of humans.

From the day I first picked up a camera, I’ve wanted to take a good photograph of a crow. Not a good ‘nature’ photograph that includes a crow. Not a documentary photograph. Not a ‘pretty’ photo. What I wanted was to take a photograph that showed crow-ness. I wanted to shoot a photo that depicted crows as I understood them. That desire became more intense after I discovered Karasu, the book of photographs by Masahisa Fukase. Karasu means ‘ravens’ in Japanese. The English-language version of the book was called The Solitude of Ravens. They were the most amazing black and white photographs — strange and wonderful. Fukase’s ravens were feral and furious; they looked supernatural and dangerously smart. I wanted to photograph a crow the way Fukase photographed ravens.

And I tried. For years I tried. If I saw crows — in town, in the woods, on a bike path, it didn’t matter where — I’d often follow them. I have been led astray by crows more times than I can count. But I never got a shot I liked. Never.

Yesterday on my Thursday Walk for Utata I happened to hear some crows flying overhead. I was talking on my cell phone at the time and had to end the call rather abruptly. “Oh god, crows…there are crows…lots of crows…have to go…bye.” I couldn’t see where they were coming from; a bulding blocked the way. But as I cleared the building I could see a tree filled with crows. Filled.

So I rushed to get there. I needn’t have hurried though. Crows kept coming. And coming. And flying away and coming. For an hour crows came, landed in the trees, rested a bit, took off, flew away. An hour. The most amazing hour. And they were still there when I left, still flying away, still arriving.

After about ten minutes I realized there were really too many crows. It was impossible to focus on just a few. It was a crow jumble, a mosh pit of corvids. It was almost Biblical. I’ve no idea how many there were. An overwhelming number of crows. There are, for example, 482 visible crows in the photograph above (Yes, I actually counted them, putting a red dot over each individual crow so I wouldn’t count them twice; 482…and there are certain to have been some I couldn’t make out in the tangle of branches).

The noise was staggering. Thousands — tens of thousands — of crows, all cawing and cackling. It created a sort of pervasive white noise. Your brain filters it out. Intellectually you register it as noise, but it somehow seems both physically and emotionally distant. Like if you were hearing it through the wrong side of a telescope — if that makes sense. Perhaps it was just sensory overload.

It never occurred to me to use my camera to video the crows — which I deeply, deeply regret. Instead I tried to find some way to photograph the mass, to show the scale of the murder of crows. It was impossible, of course. Maybe Fukase could have done it. Maybe. I surely couldn’t.

Eventually I stopped trying. I let the camera hang idly in my hand. I just stood there and watched and listened and was amazed.

It was, for me, a truly phenomenal moment — if you can call an hour a ‘moment.’ I don’t know why so many crows gathered together. I don’t know where they came from or where they were going. They were flying off into the sunset. Literally.

I still don’t have the photograph I want. I came a bit closer, but I suspect the only way to show real crow-ness — to show the essence of crow — is to zero in on just a few birds. Three, maybe, or four. Or two. Maybe one. Maybe just a part of one. I don’t know.

But last evening’s experience didn’t cure me. It added another level of enchantment to my understanding of crows.

cool cool cool cool and uncomfortable

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So. Chris Kluwe has been named by Salon magazine as the Sexiest Man of the Year. There are at least four cool things about that. And one uncomfortable thing.

Cool Thing #1: Salon picked a jock but didn’t celebrate him for his jockitude; it celebrated him for his politics, his beliefs, his willingness to express those beliefs, and his nerdiness. Salon is saying being smart is sexier than playing sports. I like that.

Cool Thing #2: Salon picked a guy who used to be best known for kicking a football (an American football, that is; there are a lot of non-American guys who are best known for kicking a football) but is now best known for writing a scathing letter to a homophobic Maryland state legislator. Salon is saying it’s sexy to be politically progressive. I like that.

Cool Thing #3: Chris Kluwe is an unabashed video gamer. Hard core gamers are known for two things: being dorks and being some of the most vocally homophobic and misogynistic beings on the planet. Salon is saying dorks can be cool and sexy without being dicks. I like that.

Cool Thing #4: In his interview in Salon, Kluwe says he learned how to express himself forcefully (with creative cursing) by spending time on gamer message boards.

You have to hang out on online gaming message boards for about six or seven years and get into a lot of arguments…. With the whole arguing on message boards, I found a very effective style was to present a carefully reasoned, thought-out argument and highlight it with really kind of bizarre swear words where you stop for a moment and go, “What does that even mean?” It’s the juxtaposition between the two. The swear word sticks in your head but you think on it and you realize there was a point too.

Salon is saying it’s sexy to be able to express yourself deliberately and clearly, even if that expression includes comments like “[Y]ou also come across as a narcissistic fromunda stain.” A classic gamer-nerd insult, that. I like it.

The Uncomfortable Thing: I discovered it’s difficult for a straight guy to write something about the Sexiest Man of the Year without starting off with a disclaimer. Like “I don’t normally do a Google Image search for Chris Kluwe Shirtless” or “This is the first time I’ve paid any attention to a magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Year article.” The feeling that you first need to assert your heterosexuality before writing about the sexiest man of the year is essentially homophobic. It’s uncomfortable to realize that even though you support gay rights and despite the fact you have many gay friends, there’s still a kernel of homophobia buried inside you. I don’t like that.

But this is one of the ways you change culture. This is one of the way you shift social attitudes. You celebrate people who stand up for ideas and beliefs that are unpopular. You celebrate people who may not fall into traditionally heroic categories. You celebrate magazines like Salon that celebrate men like Chris Kluwe. And you try to recognize your own stupidity and make an effort not to come across as a fromunda stain.

rogue politics

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There were SO many critically important national election races to watch Tuesday night that we can, I think, be forgiven for overlooking the contest between Democrat Colleen Lachowicz and Republican Tom Martin. They were both seeking to represent the 25th District in the Maine State Senate.

Colleen Lachowicz, social worker

Martin, the incumbent who won the seat in the last election, is the owner of an excavation and construction business. Lachowicz is a social worker who works for a non-profit mental health agency, treating adults with mental illnesses. She has a Master of Social Work degree and is a licensed foster parent. And she’s a level 85 orc rogue called Santiaga in World of Warcraft.

During the campaign the Republican Party of Maine suggested that her participation in the online gaming community made her unqualified to serve in the state senate. They even created a website called Colleen’s World in order to alert Maine citizens about her “disturbing alter-ego” and  her “time-consuming double life.” The site includes comments Colleen made in WoW discussion groups.

To his credit, Martin said he was unaware of the attacks on Lachowicz (which were promoted by the Maine Republican Party rather than by Martin’s campaign) and he didn’t condone them. Still, the attack brought international attention to the state campaign and Lachowicz garnered the support of gamers from all over the world.

It pleases me enormously to be able to say Colleen Lachowicz is the new respresentative for Maine’s 25th District. Come January, an orc rogue will be sitting in the Maine State Senate.

Santiaga, Senator from Maine 25th District

There are two lessons Republicans can learn from this. First, if you embrace diversity, you win elections. Second, DO NOT FUCK WITH GAMERS.

in which i say something crazy about republicans

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I spent part of this morning reading some of the more extreme conservative political blogs. Two things stand out. One, of course, is that the United States is doomed because President Obama is going to steal everybody’s guns and deny them the right to buy gold and he’s going to give Mexicans and black folks free houses and hi-def satellite television. But they’re also saying with some consistency that Gov. Romney lost because he wasn’t conservative enough.

Gov. Romney concedes the election

On the surface, that sounds sort of logical. But it also suggests that voters went to the polls and said to themselves “That Mitt, he’s just too liberal…so I guess I’ll vote for Obama.” Or maybe it suggests conservatives just decided not to vote for anybody and sat on their patriotic asses all night. In the conservative blogs I saw lots of accusations of fraud, lots of paranoia, lots of anger, and lots of blaming.

What I didn’t see was a recognition that this is no longer the United States of Angry White Men. The harsh Ayn Rand “I’ve got mine, go fuck yourself” approach to conservatism just doesn’t resonate with the population of the U.S. as it now exists. Four years ago we elected a black man named Barack to the presidency of the United States. Last night we re-elected him. Think about that. A black man. Named Barack Hussein Obama. That right there is evidence that the American demographic has shifted toward inclusiveness and away from resentful exclusivity. But we still continue to see Republicans strive to restrict and reduce individual civil rights and liberties in everything from marriage to voting to immigration to a woman’s right to exercise her own decisions over the integrity of her body.

For more and more Americans, that shit just don’t play anymore.

Last night Maine and Maryland voted to expand marriage rights to same-sex couples, and it seems likely the State of Washington is about to do the same. Minnesota rejected a proposal to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. That’s NOT the action of an electorate longing for more conservative social principles. Last night two states expanded the use of medical marijuana, and two others voted to legalize and tax the use of marijuana. That’s NOT the action of an electorate longing for more conservative social principles. Last night two states supported ballot measures to restrict the power of corporations to donate monies to campaigns. That’s NOT the action of an electorate longing for more conservative social principles.

And yet despite all the evidence, a lot of conservatives continue to believe that the reason Mitt Romney lost was because he wasn’t conservative enough. Of course, a lot of them also believe the earth is only a few thousand years old, that climate change is a hoax, and the President of the United States is a not-so-secret Muslim Socialist who is deliberately trying to ruin the American economy in order to…in order to…shut up, that’s why. Right now the Republican party is more concerned with making the nation ungovernable than in pressing forward any agenda at all. That’s the approach of a spoiled, angry child.

President Obama teary-eyed in final campaign speech in Des Moines

Four years ago the last day of October was unseasonably warm. I was part of a large crowd that watched as then-Senator Barack Obama gave one of his last campaign speeches before the 2008 election. A couple nights ago it was much colder and I watched on television as President Obama gave an emotional speech — the last of his political career. He’s gotten older. So have we all. His appeal now is a more mature appeal. We know — and he knows — he’ll never be able to do all the things he wants to do. But we also know he’s going to try to do as many of them as he can. You can sense the president has an adult’s thin-stretched irritation with the behavior of Republicans in Congress, but you can also see an adult’s patience. It’s as if he believes and hopes that someday they’ll grow out of it.

Senator Obama in Des Moines, 2008

And here’s the crazy thing: I believe they will. I really do. As more Republicans come to recognize the change in the demographics of the electorate, they’ll begin to realize they can’t just rely on angry white men anymore — not if they want to actually shape policy instead of just oppose it. At some point they begin to understand that if they want to govern and not just obstruct governance, they’ll have to appeal to a broader range of voters.

When that happens, we’ll see the resurrection of moderate Republicans. And the nation will be the better for it.

Oh Canada

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Dear Canada,

It’s okay. We understand. You’re too polite to say anything, but we can tell you’re worried. You think there’s a pretty good chance we’re going to elect Mitt Romney as President of the United States.

Your anxiety is perfectly understandable, Canada. You’re concerned because Gov. Romney is what us folks south of the border like to call ‘a lying sack of shit.’ You’re nervous because you believe he’d be mind-bogglingly horrific as president. But most of all you’re also worried that if he gets elected, hordes of disgruntled Americans will flood across your border — that we’ll build tent cities in every Tim Hortons parking lot and we’ll turn the warmer less chilly parts of your great nation into an American ghetto.

Canada, you don’t need to fret. Think about it for a moment. When Barack Obama was seeking the nomination, he had to beat Hilary Clinton. Do you know how hard it is to beat Hilary Clinton at anything? Really really hard, is how hard. And Mitt Romney, who’d he have to beat? Rick Perry? Herman Cain? Michele Bachmann? That’s like beating the Three Stooges. Obama had to beat Hilary; Mitt Romney only had to beat Donald Fucking Trump.

Here’s the thing, Canada. You have to learn to ignore our news media. They have a vested interest in pretending the election is close. Americans are a great people, but we’re only capable of paying attention to stuff if there’s some drama involved. We’re like magpies in that regard; we make a lot of noise and we’re easily distracted by shiny objects. And yeah, sometimes we’ll shit all over everything. But here’s the truth: the popular vote is close, but President Obama has always maintained a significant lead in the Electoral College and he has something like a 70% chance to win.

Gov. Romney displaying his policy positions

So you can relax, Canada. Everything is going to be okay. Oh sure, we’ll still be sending out aerial robots to kill foreign folks we don’t like, and we’ll continue to elect people who think the world is 9000 years old to lower offices, but you won’t have to face a Romney presidency.

Probably. Just in case, I have my eye on a spot near the door in the parking lot of a Tim’s on Spadina Avenue in Toronto.

Love,

greg

noodling away a sunday morning

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Last Sunday my brother Roger Lee and I went out for breakfast. For no real reason, we chose to leave the city and go find a diner or local cafe in a small town. Iowa is teeming with small towns. We found ourselves at CayAnne’s in Woodward (population 1024), and breakfasted on biscuits and a tasty but rather odd-looking spicy sausage gravy.

just outside of CayAnne’s restaurant

After breakfast we sort of noodled around the county, sliding in and out of various small towns. Like the town of Moingona (population unknown, but it’s really small), where we saw the original town school. It’s not in use (at least I don’t think it’s in use), but it was nice that the town cared enough about the old building to preserve it. The school probably constitutes about 5% of all the town’s structures (excluding sheds). Like I said, the town is really small.

moingona schoolhouse

Moingona is named for the native American tribe that inhabited the area before white folks arrived and casually took their land and kept their name. The town was home to Kate Shelley — the first woman in the U.S. to have a bridge named after her. On a stormy night (okay, it was a dark and stormy night) in July of 1881 a railroad bridge was partially washed out by a flash flood. A pusher locomotive that had been sent out to inspect the track conditions failed to notice the mostly-missing bridge. Our Kate, hearing the crash, rescued two of the engine’s crew (the other two died). Knowing that a passenger train was scheduled to pass over the bridge soon, Kate (relying on the illumination of the storm’s lightning) crawled across the remaining span of the damaged bridge, then ran a mile or so to alert the nearest depot manager of the problem. The passenger train, with 200 aboard, was stopped in time. A grateful Chicago & NorthWestern Railroad rewarded her with US$100, a half barrel of flour, half a load of coal and a life-time pass. Later they named a nearby bridge after her.

railroad track and dusty road

After we left Moingona, we discovered the railroad tracks were still in use. We began to sort of leisurely follow them. I can’t say it was an intentional decision at first, but the tracks seemed to parallel the general direction we were heading. After a while, we began to feel some sort of connection with them.

union pacific – building america

I believe it was outside of Ogden (population 2041) we came across some sort of slag heap, or possibly the tailings of a mining operation (both coal and iron were mined locally in the late 19th century). The truth is, I don’t know what the hell it is. It’s a massive pile of something. It looks vaguely like a smallish, Midwestern version of Ayers Rock in Australia. You can get a sense of the scale of the pile by noting the house and large garage on the right side of the frame. Aside from the dwarf alpaca, this pile of something may have been the oddest thing we saw all day.

a very large pile of something

We eventually found ourselves in the town of Boone (population 12,661). Boone was originally a coal-mining town. A pair of thick coal veins were discovered near the banks of Honey Creek, which attracted local blacksmiths (who needed the coal for their forges). It became incorporated as a town in 1866, the year the C&NW Railroad laid track through the area. The Lincoln Highway passes through Boone. That’s the first transcontinental road built for the automobile. The Lincoln Highway begins at the intersection of 42nd and Broadway in Manhattan and ends at 100 34th Avenue in San Francisco; that’s the address of Lincoln Park and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. When I win the Lotto, I think I’ll spend a few months idling along the length of the Lincoln Highway.

boone scenic valley railroad

Boone, to my surprise, also turns out to be the home of the Pufferbilly Days Festival. I’d never heard of Pufferbilly Days. In fact, I’d never heard of a Pufferbilly, It turns out that Pufferbilly is another term for a railroad steam engine, and the festival appears to be a celebration of All Things Railroadish. The Boone Scenic Valley Railroad operates a number of old railroad engines, and periodically takes passengers on short jaunts around the area (including, apparently, the Kate Shelley Memorial High Bridge, which I’m assured is the longest, highest, double-track railroad bridge in the country — who knew, right?).

engineers

While we were nosing around the depot area, a couple engineers and assorted other folk were warming up Engine 6540. Unfortunately, by that time Roger Lee and I had already pissed away the entire morning and were running late, so we couldn’t stay to see if they were planning to take the train anywhere.

All in all, it was a strangely entertaining morning. Unfortunately, I failed to photograph the herd of dwarf alpaca (which, upon closer examination, turned out to be a single adult alpaca standing in a herd of goats) or the peculiar reddish-orange sausage gravy we had for breakfast (the gravy was similar in color to parts of the large Pile of Something which, now that I consider it, is a wee bit alarming). Still, I still managed to shoot just under fifty frames during the morning. For me, that’s a lot of photos.

Roger Lee and I plan (well, as much as we plan anything) to do this periodically over the next few months. We’ll take off on a Sunday morning, find a small town for breakfast, and then wander around pointlessly until we’re late, after which we’ll hurry back to the city. It may not be a very tight plan, but it’ll do.

ain’t nothing moderate about it

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So today I had a brief discussion with a friend who tried to convince me that Gov. Romney is a ‘moderate’ in regard to a woman’s right to choose to have a legal abortion. “He supports abortion in cases of rape and incest,” my friend said, “and if the mother’s life is in danger.”

Well, that’s just fucking great. To whom would a woman have to prove she’d been raped in order to end her pregnancy? A doctor? A court? An elected representative? What evidence would she have to present to prove she’d been raped? How long would it take for that person to decide whether or not the woman would be allowed to terminate her pregnancy? What if the accused rapist denies it was rape — would there have to be some sort of due process hearing before the woman would be given permission to end the pregnancy?

The very notion that a woman should have to request permission from a third party in order to terminate a pregnancy is insulting. For that woman to have to ask permission after having been sexually assaulted compounds the offense. To suggest that women have to be allowed to make a decision about their own bodies is to treat women as if they were children, incapable of making a rational decision about the state of their own bodies. Permission and allow aren’t words that should even enter into the discussion.

You want a moderate position on abortion? I’ll give you one: abortion should be rare, but legal and safe — a decision to be made by a woman in consultation with her doctor. There you go, that’s moderate. Anything that takes the decision away from the woman affected is NOT moderate. Anybody who tries to convince you that it IS moderate doesn’t understand the situation. And this guy? This guy doesn’t have the vaguest hint of a clue about the situation. Moderate, my ass.

in which i pass through farmland and become confused

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Yesterday was probably the last day of ‘good’ weather I’ll see until Spring. I’m using the term ‘good’ deliberately and after some consideration, because in the Midwest near the end of October a day in the mid-70s is a treat — even if it’s windy and cloudy and looks like it might could decide to storm at any moment.

And what’s a guy to do on the last day of ‘good’ weather? Get on the bike, of course, and take off — preferably someplace new. Which is exactly what I did. I rode north on a bike trail out of Ankeny, Iowa into farmland. Open fields, corn, soybeans, barns, cows, and a whole lot of wind.

Long before this was a bike trail, it was part of the the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad line. Before that, the tracks belonged to the Des Moines & Minneapolis Railroad Company. And before that I believe dinosaurs roamed the earth. Now it’s part of the 20,000 miles of rail-to-trail conversions in the United States.

One reason these converted rail lines are popular with cyclists is because they tend to be relatively flat, smoothly paved, with gradual shifts in elevation. That makes for easy riding, of course. And this trail was no exception. Riding north was an absolute breeze. Literally. There was a 17 mph wind at our backs. Riding south was a lesson in wind resistance. Iowa has a lot of wind.

It also has a lot of sky, and fields that used to hold crops, and farm structures, and black dirt, and giant Tootsie Rolls made entirely of hay. I assume that’s hay. Or straw. Do people grow straw? What the hell IS straw? I’ve always assumed that whatever it is the farmers roll up into those massive pellets was something to feed cows. Or horses, maybe. Or, I don’t know, goats. Farm animals. Livestock. Although now I think of it, in the movies barns are always full of hay. Or straw. And some kid is constantly using a pitchfork to move it around from one part of the barn to another, though it’s never quite clear why. Maybe hay it’s like cat litter for horses. I don’t know.

Whatever those massive pellet rolls are for, I rather doubt they’re scattered around the fields for aesthetic purposes. But it would be very cool if they were.

Equally intriguing (to me, at any rate) is the old farm equipment that gets shunted into small paddocks or stashed away behind sheds and barns. I find myself wondering if the farmers think this equipment might somehow come in handy in the future. As spare parts, maybe, or material that can be scavenged and cobbled together with other odd bits of this and that to create…well, something like that blue pick-up bed/trailer-looking unit that’s been attached to what appears to be the framework for some sort of enhanced interrogation device. Clearly that thing, whatever it is, was constructed with a purpose. Unless the wind just picked it up and deposited there, like Auntie Em’s house.

Maybe this is the farmer’s equivalent of the urban dweller’s problem: what to do with that twenty-two pound, twelve-year-old computer monitor that nobody wants, and has been taking up space in the storage room since two computers ago?

It’s the same with old farm vehicles. What do you do with an old 1955 Ford pick-up? You park it out back near the even older 1950 International Harvester pick-up. I was really drawn to that old Ford. It must have been at least partially restored at some point in the last couple of decades, then put back out to pasture. It’s actually a very cool looking machine, and whoever chose that color to restore the truck had some taste.

Back when those two trucks were new, the D&M Railroad was already a hundred years old. A hundred and fifty years ago incredibly powerful locomotives pulled boxcars loaded with coal and grain across those same fields I was bicycling through. I find that oddly comforting. I like to think that in another hundred and fifty years that same band of now-public land will still be used by ordinary folks in some way.

Unless Mitt Romney gets elected. Then we’re just fucked. Go vote.