Predator vs. Predator

Aha, Corvus! I see you, crow.

We've had a series of absolutely beautiful mornings with bright, warm sun, cooled by light breezes. Sometimes it's the perfect way to drink coffee and take a good look around, which was exactly what I did. 
I was not disappointed by my porch musings. Across the street, a dead pine among a stand of healthy trees serves as a watchtower for most of the birds that live nearby, the short list that I observed being this: cardinals, sparrows, mourning doves, blue jays, and a few powerful predators perched at the top. At first, a duo of large crows cawed and searched for food, while a few smaller birds clustered on the branches beneath them. But a feather I found a few days earlier was the harbinger of something new to the neighborhood.

New to the neighborhood.

To my surprise, the next morning when I opened the door, I was rewarded with the sight of a small red-tailed hawk at the top spot. 
I sat down to watch him engage his environment, and he was ruling well. A dove landed then quickly took off, then the crows circled nearby from atop a healthy pine, one braving the hawk's watchful gaze to land on a lower branch, only to take off quickly to report back to its' mate. 
I could tell the hawk was extremely aware of its' surroundings. 
Every time it swivelled its' head, the patch of feathers switched from white to brown, the color of the head feathers on the side. It's young and growing fast. I spotted a feather that still had some white downy chick feathers on it after I found a larger, more adult one. 

The last morning I saw it on top of the dead pine tree, I conspicuously took out my dark smart phone camera, pointed it right at the tree from a standing position and snapped a few pics, which sealed the deal that I already knew existed between us, about who was the bigger, smarter predator in the neighborhood. I haven't seen it since.

Deer in the Park! A Good Sign....

A beautiful day for a walk. Wait, what is that?!

On a recent walk, I cut through a local park with an apple orchard (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/08/gardens-dr-henry-v-borst-park.html), and as I grew closer, I saw something move. Wait a second, what is that?! Oh, snap! Deer! And not just one, but two young strong healthy males growing out a nice set of antlers, happily munching wild, native apples fallen to the ground.

Deer! Two of them, too! And they're eating apples!

It's such a great sign. Our area used to be filled with wildlife, but just like global warming, we altered the landscape to such an insane degree, animals were driven out. Not cool. We need our fellow Earth inhabitants to keep our precious ecosystem intact.

Healthy, beautiful young males growing antlers. Oh, good!

If you mess with one element too much, you drive the entire system out of whack. Seeing healthy deer feel comfortable enough to eat apples unmolested is a very good sign indeed. It means better days are ahead, ones that will bring us back into balance with nature, which is necessary for every living thing's survival on this beautiful blue planet. A healthy, thriving ecosystem. That's where it's at. That's what's up. Peace.

Contract-Free Living

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract 

Like most Americans, I suffered from the effects of economic fallout in the usual ways: creative firing strategies at the office designed to hide layoffs with phony blame-filled situations so as to avoid expensive wrongful termination suits, actual money mismanagement from poor business, and extremely bad planning. You know, the usual stuff when times get hard and people get shifty and desperate. You want to see humans at their worst? Restrict resources, then watch people go ape-shit scrambling after a few bucks. It's vile nasty stuff, but such is the part of human nature that a money town like "Gotham" attracts, not least of which are it's shark-y natives, which is nothing new to a girl like me. You should meet my family.

Suffice to say, I was thrust back into an extremely low budget lifestyle, those dreaded waters where many try to swim and just as many fail. I'm a great swimmer, though, so for those times when I drop down,  I'm never fully inept or incompetent; such are the strengths of my naturally inherited gifts. But it does take me to some funky places with some very sharp contours, and more on that later. Be careful out there, y'all!

So, what's a gifted artist and writer with expert publishing skills to do? You're reading one of my "hobbies" on my "free" time right now. But other than this, I get serious about adhering to a disciplined lifestyle, which includes keeping a running ledger of expenses deducted from a set amount I have on hand that I saved. And that's it, my big secret about how I do it: basic working class know-how, without any weirdo shit. No drug running, no guns, no thieving, no stealing, no begging, no bartering that's loosely called "dating", or any other immoral behavior of any kind, in any way, shape, or form. It's all above-the-board, totally legit living. No hooker stuff happening!

Yeah, but, how exactly do I do it? Well, it takes thought and a lot of experience. When I couldn't afford a pricey "smart" phone anymore, I converted the device into a smaller version of an iPad that I still use today as a music player, calendar, camera, to-do list, and public Wi-Fi enabled Internet surfer, which can also serve as a desktop publishing device in a pinch (with very tiny type: good thing I have excellent vision). That's savvy companies pay big $$ for. I'm also not some gadget addict who "has to" have the latest electronics in order to feel relevant or hip, simply because I do not use tools for purely ego-driven satisfaction. In other words, I'm  woman about it, and not some big whiny baby. I couldn't survive thinking that way.

Next, I got a cheap no-contract phone that I load with minutes as I need them, which pretty much guarantees that I never go over budget, and that I have a built-in mechanism to control the length of my conversations. Since I pay for each and every minute, I am quite aware of time passing by. Try it sometime; it works. It's "Pay-as-you-go" for the 21st century, without getting locked into a loaded contract that gives a company undue power over me, my life, and my finances, by building in hard-to-find features that allow lawyers to operate hand-in-glove with banks, making your accounts vulnerable to anyone who has the time and resources to drain it, at their say-so. Uh uh. I don't think so. Why should you be penalized by a phone company for dropping a pricey plan because you lost your job?! Makes no sense.

Next up, that all-powerful feelgood medium, The Holy TV Set, of such prominence to society that's it's placed in the center of our biggest rooms. I had an ex who was so addicted to t.v., he "had to" have one with cable, (and my old, pre-flat screen era t.v. with basic free t.v. would not do) so he forced one on me by saying it was my "Christmas" present, like an avid bowler who buys a bowling ball for his wife as an "anniversary" gift. When he turned violent on me, crashing uninvited in a drunken stupor on my couch that I came home to after a very long, hard, backstabbing day at work, he asked me to decide quickly which of his purchased items in my home he preferred I trash, in response to my break-up with him and subsequent ousting from my life and my apartment. I chose the big air conditioner he also couldn't "live" without, over his Almighty T.V., and that's what he kicked in.

But he is not like me, and he never will be. When I can't afford cable, I just go without, like I did in college, or when I'm in a tight spot financially. Feeling strapped because of the latest HD t.v.? Get a digital antenna with a digital signal converter, and now you're watching basic t.v. channels for free, just like me. No bills, no contracts, and no expensively lawyered-up financial devices to get what's left of your money that you need to buy food. You can do the same thing with Internet usage. Buy a low cost Wi-Fi enabled device, put bandwidth on it as you need or can afford, and voila: you're surfing the net without Big Brother watching you. You're welcome :)

Want to see the latest DVD movie release? Check it out for free from your local library, just like I do. My library is also a community center with timed Internet access from a bank of public computers, free yoga and Tai Chi lessons, free blood pressure readings every month, periodic blood drives, story time for kids, arts and crafts for them, too, art openings....you name it. They're always adding on stuff. There's no need for all this static over things and objects. These things do not own you; they are not more important to you than your fellow humans, so break free from these chains that bind you unnecessarily, because I want you to live in peace, my brothers and sisters. Amen to you.

Cloud Blanket

Well-defined, easily discernible foreground, middle ground, background.

Rows of clouds full of condensation, tendrils of rain.

Sometimes the skies thicken with a bank of clouds so thick, you can feel the air pressing down on you. A week or so ago just such a phenomenon occurred, and it was spectacular: row upon row, and layer upon layer of differently colored clouds, creating the perfect photographic composition of an easily seen, well-defined foreground, middle ground, and background. It's the kind of set up you have to wait for, and then snap it when you see it. You just can't force Mother Nature. She rolls in on her own time, homies!

Banks upon banks of thick clouds.

Beautiful Mushrooms and a Gorgeous Feather

I love collecting beautiful samples during my daily walks around town, sometimes shooting a bunch of images that go together well. So, instead of an individual Instagram and/or Twitter post (which you should totally check out for different content I publish on there, too), here's a bevy of natural beauties that are out there on G-d's green earth, just like you. Enjoy the last warm breath of summer this week!

Everyday magic, in a Fairy Bonnet mushroom.(Coprinellus disseminatus)

The mark of a fearsome predator, the Red-Tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis).

My man, St. Francis! What's up?!

A spot I hadn't noticed that before.

I took up the practice of Roman Catholicism again several years ago, after leaving the faith of my youth for many years. After my parents divorced (a huge "no-no" for strict Catholics), my mother asked me to continue with my religious studies until Confirmation, the rite of passage that marks our early teens, after which I would decide for myself whether or not I wanted to continue with church and religious practice. I didn't continue, for a bunch of reasons. I was a teen, I needed a parent to drive me, and during that time, both of my parents were uneven, sporadic churchgoers at best.

What is that? A statue?

But it had always been my intention to fold it back into my life later on: after school, work, and travel, I would return home and settle down, at which time I would become reacquainted with my faith, in order to practice it alongside my future husband and children. Despite a brief marriage that was not my choice by design, I've held on to that life plan. I hadn't really considered getting married until 40, long after I'd seen the world as an artist, and so it has come to pass.

Yep, it is. Lemme guess, who could it be?

I wanted to reintroduce myself to Catholicism, so I could discuss and lead the conversation with my family, building a common base of values, ethics, culture, traditions, and practices that would continue long after I was gone, and so that will be, too. We are in the year two thousand and fourteen, in reflection of that very same practice amongst our followers. Because our faith is among the strictest branches of religious practice, it was something I deferred picking up until later, which I did at a parish in Brooklyn, named after a saint in the tradition of my man Francis.

Yep, it's my main man St. Francis as a birdbath, ever tending to animals.

It is more than a series of "rules", though to an uneducated outsider I could see why it seems so restrictive. It is an intellectual tradition. We attend school during the day through the state, and after hours, we attend parochial schooling: that's double than the American average, something I forget until I start conversing with someone who lacks the discipline and foundation that comes with a rigid and difficult educational background. Now that I practice it again, it's no surprise to me that these deeply held values have re-emerged in my life to manifest my commitment anew: I've been abstinent and celibate for years, a sort of baptism back into my faith, where once the doors were closed to my college partying and city lifestyle. Some coincidence.

Compassion, beauty, nature, gardens, a love for the outdoors. Yep, that's me.

Since then, I've had more of these supposed "coincidences" come into my life, like finding an almost hidden devotional garden tucked into a development near me that I hadn't seen for many months, even though I walk past the apartment complex almost every day. Usually I cross the street at a certain point, but one day I didn't, and then I saw it: a garden with a statue, tucked under some pine trees in a courtyard with table and chairs.

Hey! I bet whoever made this is like me!

So here he is, the leader of our Franciscan tradition, a movement so powerful, we continue to uphold his principles today: serving to love and protect the animals that reside within this garden that is our planet Earth, refashioned for us to reflect on as a birdbath. It's something me and my main man, the patron saint of animals, would do anyway; we'd provide a welcoming environment for all G-d's creatures to dwell in. It has affected every aspect of my life, even when I don't actively look for it. That's the power of mythology, the pull of a story so strong, it endures until it becomes an almost human type of forever.

You ain't gonna top that, honey, so don't even try it with me. Someone's got my back, big time: http://franciscantradition.org/about.

Weird Cloud Shapes: Vagina Cloud and Fishbone

Speaks for itself.

Huh. Looks like a fish bone with a tail.

Rockland County Redneck

Tits, guns, cows, and lots of red meat. Fuck you, city folk!

Believe it or not, we have serious hicks in New York. It's hard for outsiders to acknowledge that, because they see these crime dramas on t.v. about city people, but truth is, we have an enormous amount of wilderness here; a state so vast up north, driving in that direction will take you to Canada.

I need fake books, hot wings, and beer to be American!

And so, we have certain pockets that stand out in stark contrast to the neurotic, uptight, therapy-case Manhattanite who's originally from "Lawnguyland", or "Long Island", as it's referred to in English. Upstaters chafe at "The City", citing Albany as the state capital and all them types that frequent urban areas as being different and threatening to them and their culture, and they aren't exactly wrong about that.

Spelling and punctuation sucks! If you do it right, you're a pinko liberal.

Truth be told, an upstate accent sounds much more like a Wisconsin "donchaknow" type of folksy backwoods talk than a "Nuyorican" (a New Yorker of Puerto Rican ancestry) who's lived on one city block for his entire life. Provincialism exists everywhere on the globe, and we are no exception in that regard, either.

Mah huntin' dog gets me through deer season. Fuck you! Go hump a tree.

But ideally, genuine native New York culture is actually one that incorporates town and country, like the magazine of the same name. Urbane, sophisticated people typically have a home at the beach or in the woods, and an apartment in the city, switching up locales on the weekends and holidays. It's a harder lifestyle because it necessitates a certain level of income, but also a flexible and adaptable mentality to go along with the life, too.

I needs guns to express myself, asshole. Get a job!

It's something me and my group of friends have always had that marks us as not quite fitting into rigid categories of "city", "country", or "beachcomber", which some people trade on and off like a set of clothes. We do it all because we love it all: the beach, the mountains, the woods, the waterfalls, the wild untamed forests, the parks, the culture, the food, the weather, the changing landscapes with their exceptionally beautiful vistas, and most importantly, our fair Gotham.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Yorker

To know us well is to know and appreciate those things, too, with all their individual facets, and if you can't do that, then we don't have much to talk to you about, so bounce, muthafucka, because that's how we roll. Keep up, will ya?

Brood Cicadia: Back Again in 2014

No way! What an incredible specimen.

Last year, a certain type of cicadia that only breeds every 17 years or so (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/06/nature-brood-ii.html), emerged from their dormant state to spectacular profusion, and they are enormous. This lovely specimen (pictured above), was so completely fresh and intact, some of its' front legs still moved from the fluid flowing within. Yes! That's fresh, yo.

Bug specimen next to piece of wood for size comparison.

So, I did what any self-respecting, wanna-be, 21st century da Vinci would: I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and took a picture of it, then wrapped that bitch up in a couple of pieces of paper torn out of a notebook I always carry, so I could look at it more closely at home later on in the day.

Last years' specimen, labeled and protected for future preservation.

It was even more beautiful up close, a phenomenally unique specimen. Keen observation out in the field is so essential to our type of scholarship, that an art student cannot enter the hallowed halls of RISD (The Rhode Island School of Design) without it. 

The Nature Lab, at the Rhode Island School of Design

We have a nature lab on campus that speaks to the core of who we are as a people out in the world: artists, designers, scientists, engineers, educators, leaders, and mentors. We are the builders, makers, doers, thinkers, and hardcore scholars that make the world go forward in such beautifully perfect harmony. Well, most of the time. 

One cannot be an intellectual without a foundation like this at their core, and I wouldn't want to even try it. I've been bringing home samples since I was a kid. It's more than some pretty picture, this is who I am. Happy hunting, collectors.

The Perfect Summer: August in New York

Beautiful fluffy clouds, after a recent, brief summer rain. So normal!

We've had a cooler than average summer this year, which has made me extremely happy. First of all, there's no power outages, outrageously high utility bills, or constantly running air conditioning that's smells moldy from old filters; a huge break indeed. 

A symphony of beautiful weather set in the skies.

But more importantly, this crucial respite from insanely high temperatures gives the Earth a chance to cool down after many years of escalating global warming, temperatures so high from human waste, that we have melted polar ice caps and destroyed entire coral reefs from artificially warm waters, as well as displacing human populations from their sea level homes.

Ah! Another gorgeous sunset behind a stand of large trees.

It comes as no surprise to me that it's been one of the best summers I've had in a long, long time. I sleep comfortably every night with a fan blowing and open windows. I wake up happy and refreshed from actual cooled air that I can comfortably breathe in when I open the curtains to let in the beautiful morning daylight. 

The  glow of an orange sunset; a New York summer's day.

This is the kind of summer I remember from my youth: warm, sunny days with cool, breezy nights. It's also no coincidence that these are optimal growing conditions for this area, as one recent broadcast on local news suggested. A berry farmer in New Jersey said this was by far the best bumper crop they've ever seen, with the longer season extending the harvest to December.

The daylight's music fades, as the night chimes in.

Still, true to a human's ridiculously selfish nature, many an idiot talking head has loudly grumbled on-air, like some grade-school fuck-up on summer break, that all this "horrible" cool air is wrecking their friggin' beach time, to which I say this: go fuck yourself. I mean it!

A cloud adds punctuation, a single note at the end of the day.

If your spoiled bitch ass is bothered by the planet cooling itself back into good health, then go buy yourself a stupid fucking tanning bed and burn yourself into a compulsively fried oblivion, because we've had enough of your stupid fucking bullshit.

The perfect light.

Or, go buy a cheapo ticket to Boca in Florida, where you can bake your brains out (what's left of them, anyway) in some generically bland condo, you short-sighted, evil, corporate-owned cunt. I hate you! 
This is war >:o(

The music winds down, and the light grows softer.

For the rest of the decent Americans and other people like me, I raise my glass of freshly squeezed organic lemonade in your direction, as I put my feet up on the wood railing of an old house somewhere in the Hudson River Valley region, watching another spectacular light show that's delivered free of charge by Mother Nature herself. 

Perfect pink and orange lighting.

It's some of the best light I've ever seen in our skies, which is also not a surprise to me, a long-time watcher of weather and clouds. I'm rooting for Planet Earth all the way, (which we are just a small part of, despite the blown up arrogance and tiny penis insecurity of some fucking on-air tool), every single day, with every seemingly "small" choice I make, many of them at the grocery store, when I choose local and fresh organic foods, higher priced as they may be than the high fructose shit on sale for a rip-off $.79, now that word has spread about food and beverage company's poison profits, the shit that also seeps into our groundwater and land with every acid rainfall we have, with yet another weirdo tropical storm that we endure. Who do you want to see win? I know my choice (and my conscience) is clear. Asshat.

Wow...

...pink and purple clouds say "goodnight"...

...to another perfect day in the Hudson Valley.

A Tale of Two Kitties

The bird hunter at his afternoon post.

I noticed early on that a certain tomcat living on the second floor of a particular old house in a small Hudson River town likes to watch small sparrows cavorting among two large bushes planted in the front yard. 
I loved his hunters' intensity, watching his little head spin around to catch the birds' quick-flighted movements. Does he see me? 
I catcalled out to him from the lawn, waving my hands around. Yes, there's his head moving my way. He definitely sees me. Nice as the cat is, he didn't interest me much. I'm the type who prefers a furry snow dog by my side, but C'est la vie. I love animals, especially cute lil' house pets.

Tomcat on his windowsill. Wait, is that another cat?!

Then, one day....there she was! A second shyer kitty, hiding behind the smaller boy cat at his hunting post on the windowsill. She was harder to attract with my calls for attention, but I finally got her to look at me before she left for the quiet corners of the apartment she shares with her Tomcat. My neighbor told me their story one dark night while I watched the sun set, under the decorative eaves on the lit porch. 
They are indeed brother and sister like I thought, two rescue kitties that were part of an abandoned litter his friend found in a cardboard box by the side of the road. At first he collected one, then he went back for the sibling, and I'm glad he did. They form a perfect match set: he, the smaller wiry hunter; she, the quiet but bigger, gentler girl.

 

Oh! I see a second kitty! Looks like the girl sister!

We talked about a lot of things that night, touching on subjects lightly and quickly, like people born to the same clan. And just like my innate sense about animals, so are my gut instincts about humans: his people also come from Maritime Canada, off an island called Newfoundland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland_%28island%29), 
like my Acadie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_Scotia). How did I know? 
By their names, Cassidy and Evangeline. 


Read it here: http://www.bartleby.com/42/791.html.

An Illuminator's Bible

My first "real" Bible.

My parents gave me a New American Bible (St. Joseph's Edition) by the Catholic Book Publishing Company of New York, printed in 1972, as a gift for receiving my first Holy Communion. My mom hand wrote my personal information on the presentation page in her perfect Catholic schoolgirl script, a relic from both of our youths: I was just a little girl, and she was a very young and relatively inexperienced mother by today's standards, way before my history presented itself to me in the form of a vocation, and her Multiple Sclerosis set in to give her hand bad tremors. Years later, my Malamute puppy would pick out a few of my books off the lowest bookshelves to mouth on while I was away at work, cutting his puppy teeth on them by soothing himself with my oldest and strongest scents. 

I'd come home for lunch in the middle of the day on my little purple motor scooter, to walk him so he could go to the bathroom while he was potty training, changing his wee wee pads, steam vacuuming up doggie doo doo, and picking up books strewn about the living room floor, or piled up in his doggie bed rat's nest, along with chew toys and my oldest clothing items, like a sweatshirt from college days he got out of the bedroom closet's laundry basket: "Doing a little bit of light reading, eh, Ted?" He had pulled out the oldest books I had in my collection by the corners that stuck out from the shelf, like my high school yearbook and this red bound bible, dogeared time capsules of my life up until now. Life; it goes by so quickly.  

Enjoy it as much as you can.

Nature: Red Berries and a Hornet's Nest

Nightshade berries and a small paper wasp's nest.

My Week in Gaming: Fighting Since Day One

I feel so alone!

Yes! Teeny Phoenix helps me smite my Mega Foes.