Owl Be Back

Thursday night/Friday morning, Sean and I did a shift of night security at the stadium, from Midnight to 3:00am.

Normally, no one in their right mind would really want to do such an assignment, not if they were planning to attend the District Convention that very Friday morning.

However, as we roved the darkened stadium with our flashlights, I was reminded of what a privilege such an assignment truly is.

The sky was lighted by the full moon which made the fluffy night clouds glow brightly as they slid past as if on an invisible overhead glass table.

Still and quiet ruled. The nearby freeway was mostly vacant. The trolleys were all sleeping afar off in their yard by the ballpark. The only other people in the stadium were those brothers watching the equipment in both sound tents, the ones assigned to stay in the two administration offices, the two trucking rovers, and of course perhaps two or three stadium security people who watched camera monitors in their office near Gate A.

We roamed from the pitch black tunnel circling the field seating to the main walkway of the uppermost section, the View level.

Standing on that high walkway, under the massive 45-degree overhang of the highest seating level, Sean and I watched the moon as it shone down through a gap between two fast-moving clouds. Waiting for it to disappear behind a cloud, it was a strange sight to see the cloud seemingly pass by behind the moon. I'm not sure how or why the moon continued to look so crisp and clear as it shone through the cloud, providing such an illusion.

Then we noticed a black shape flapping up from the darkened trolley station, flying up underneath the stair-stepped seating structure. It seemed to disappear into a crack or opening just out of our vision. There was no sound of flight, and so we both came to the same conclusion at once:

"Owl!"

Then immediately we heard the sound of what must have been owl chicks excitedly welcoming mom back to the nest.

I had never heard baby owls before. It seemed a mixture of both high squeaks and low chirps, mixed together much as delicious ketchup blends the tastes of sweet and salty.

After a moment, the silent dark shape swooped back down from the concrete structure and glided back down to the vicinity of the trolley station.

Sean and I and walked quietly over to where the sounds of the chicks were coming from so that we might get a better glimpse of Mommy Owl when she returned.

Looking up we could now see some pretty big openings where the View Level sat upon its reinforced stair-stepped support. Probably expansion joints to allow the concrete to acknowledge the difference between the heat of the day and the cool of the night.

Was it five minutes we waited? Then suddenly she came back, flying up from the train station. This time, however, she must have seen us, for instead of a direct route to the nest, she flow a wide figure-eight across the edge of the stadium. How beautiful! Though she was still to us just a dark silhouette against the bright white clouds, it was obvious that she carried in her talons a pretty good-sized rodent. (Poor innocent rat!)

She flew up into one of the expansion joints, and the chicks started up again with their squeaky chirping. She flew out after just a few seconds, and into a nearly adjacent opening. Then a second later she came out and occupied an opening several steps up and away from that of her nest.

This time she came out to the edge and just stared down at us, watching us intently as she rocked slightly from side to side.

After we stared back awestruck for a couple of minutes, knowing that the magic had to end eventually, Sean risked shining a strong beam of light from his Mag-Lite torch upon her face.

She looked like a monkey! A vertically oval face, white framed by brown, intent dark eyes watching us-- I had to remind myself that she'd flown up there, and that her silent flight had quite early on betrayed her owl-ness to us.

Realizing her concern over who the heck we were, we spoke softly to her, admiring her beauty and wishing her a pleasant night, and then quietly walked away.

Glancing at my watch I noted the time, 2:15am.

Book Review: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

This morning I finally finished reading The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.

It's not a long book, in fact it only took me two days to read it.

Yeah, it's good, but my question is this:

Why did the publishers choose the particular photograph of the author that appears on the back of the dust jacket?



He looks like an angry, crazed mass murderer.

Cracker

Early this morning on the bus from Rancho San Diego into El Cajon, there were three passengers, a man and two women, all sitting up near the front by the driver, engaged in a spirited conversation.

From my seat at the very back, I couldn't make out what they were saying, however based upon what happened later I surmised they were discussing convicted sex offender Leonard Earl Scroggins, who was recently captured in National City.

It bears mentioning that all three of the passengers would easily qualify as "Caucasian", and the bus driver herself was a white woman.

After several minutes of the conversation, which I wasn't paying attention too, suddenly the loud voice of the driver was clearly heard, as she interjected her own strong opinion.

"It's how they're raised," she said, waving her finger back and forth in admonishment, "it has nothing to do with the color of their skin."

The male passenger continued talking, and I think I heard him say "Yeah, it's how they're raised, and..."

The bus driver lady cut him off and waved her finger more emphatically at him in her mirror.

"It has nothing to with the color of their skin," she repeated.  "Look at John Gardner.  He's white!"

The guy responded with something that I just couldn't make out, but the driver was not satisfied.  As she pulled up to the next stop, she continued:

"It has NOTHING to do with the color of their skin.  It's how they're raised!  I have three mixed boys and they'd never do anything like that, I'll guarantee you.  It has nothing to do with the color of their skin!"

A black passenger got on, a man, and walked through the ongoing conversation seemingly oblivious to the subject.  He sat in the middle of the bus.  The next passenger to board was Hispanic, and he sat down in the front.  He was listening, and evidently got the gist of what was going on.

The white male responded to the bus driver by saying, "It's how their raised, yes, it's how their raised," in sort of an acquiescent acknowledgement of the driver's strong words.  As he spoke, the Hispanic man was looking at him.

"You're a racist?", he said, with sort of a chuckle as if it was hard to believe that racists still existed in Southern California.

The white man simply repeated the words of surrender, "It's how they're raised", and looked out the window, hoping the conversation would end.

Which it did.

Kurtosis

Today, just moments ago, I learned that Excel 2007 has an Analysis ToolPak that can be activated.

This allows you to analyze a table in a spreadsheet and determine several things, including something called "Kurtosis".

This really aroused my interest for two reasons:  (1) I have a good friend named Kurt.  He let me ride his off-road Segway.  The word reminds me of Kurt because it has the letters "kurt" in it, and (2) I've never heard of such a thing as "Kurtosis".  What is it?  I am really curious.

Here's the definition I found on wikipedia: 

In probability theory and statistics, kurtosis (from the Greek word κυρτός, kyrtos or kurtos, meaning bulging) is a measure of the "peakedness" of the probability distribution of a real-valued random variable. Higher kurtosis means more of the variance is the result of infrequent extreme deviations, as opposed to frequent modestly sized deviations.

What?????   My curiosity is slowly evaporating in the heat of this "over my head" feeling that's coming over me.

I'm going back to my Excel 2007 lesson now.

All the Souls

What do animals really think and feel?

Much has been written on the subject.

I don't have anything to add.

Yet I do wonder.

Roots of a Weed

"I would like to be a model in a science textbook."

Thus said the weed, just after I'd pulled it out of a planter pot, where it had been growing right against the inside surface of the earthenware container.

"Well, I don't really have access to any science textbooks," I replied.  "However, I can post your picture in my blog."

Though the weed didn't reply audibly, through body language, specifically its flat, diagrammatic appearance, it seemed to agree that this would be better than nothing.

In an attempt to do justice to this weed's aspirations to be the star of a science textbook, I did look up the following information:

** TWO HOURS LATER **     ahhhrrkgghk!   I can't find anything online that positively identifies the above weed.  So frustrating.  Ah well, I must give up for now, but I'll dream that perhaps this is a new weed and I'll receive the Nobel Peace Prize for discovering a new plant.

Hey! Where are you going?

It was their logo that first caught my eye and lured me into the Blind Lady Ale House on February 14, 2009, just two weeks after they'd opened.

The man was riding his bicycle into the ale house, and I simply followed him inside.

Later, however, I began to notice that the ads they were placing in CityBeat were irking me for some reason.

Where are you going, turn-of-the-century bicycle man?  You're riding away from the AleSmith Weekend!

Why did I feel so strongly about this?  Not sure.  I cannot recall exactly where I heard of this concept.  Certainly I didn't make it up.  Vaguely I remember reading somewhere that newspaper photographs are sometimes reversed, or "mirrored", to make the subject appear to be looking toward the center of the page rather than away.

So on June 28, 2009, I wrote a letter to the Blind Lady Ale House, specifically to co-owner Jeff Motch, the award-winning professional graphic designer who had created the logo.  Citing enclosed examples similar to the images above, I suggested that he design a new, complimentary logo, with the cyclist riding to the right, or toward the subject of any future advertisements.

There was no reply.  Which was kind of disappointing, though not unexpected.  Perhaps successful designer Motch thought "who the heck do you think you are?  Who is the professional graphic artist around here, anyway?"  Or then again, people good with art are often not so comfortable with words, so writing a letter in response might be quite a task.  Additionally, how many times do I respond to stuff I see online, much less by written word?  How often do I think "I'm gonna send them a ThankYou card", but then never do?  Often.

The main reason that I had no response, I figured, was that my idea was lacking in merit.  Does it really matter which way the guy is facing in the logo?  Evidently not.

Flash forward nine months to March 24, 2010.  Sitting in my PowerPoint 2007 class, the lesson asked me to include the following graphic on the left edge of my presentation:

"Next, to keep the viewer’s eye from traveling off the slide to the left, click the Rotate button and choose Flip Horizontal. "

Maybe my idea is not so crazy after all!

So right away, out of curiousity, I went to the Blind Lady Ale House BLAHG to look at one of their recent CityBeat ads.

 Cool!