Cheetah

Like a lot of people around the world, I grew up with a love and appreciation for animals and nature that I never "outgrew", not that I think it's immature to feel that way in the first place. Naturally, any type of show or book that featured an animal "best friend" was at the top of my list, which also hasn't changed in adulthood. The "Nature" series on PBS recently aired a special about the wild animals of the Congo; specifically, the chimpanzees and gorillas of the jungle as told by their native son, and I urge you to see it (see link below). The landscape is as stunning as the appreciation for its beauty is heartfelt.

Besides the hokey "Mr. Ed" and poor ole Lassie always finding Timmy in a well during the surreal black-and-white 50s era of television, we waited for something to fill in for "talking" Hollywood animals with mouths full of peanut butter, and "Tarzan" was that for us. He was the king of the jungle, and he always had a little monkey best friend. In the animated series from the 70s, he had a monkey that curled his tail around his neck, while other movies showed Cheetah the chimpanzee as his "go-to" animal for news of the jungle.

We loved his battle cry of "ahhh ahhahhhh ahhh!" that signalled to the other animals trouble was afoot in their jungle. Then, he swung through the trees at lightning speed to chase away the bad guys, and they were almost always bunch of pansy-ass white dudes in stupid "explorer" gear looking to exploit the unspoiled wilderness for profit, or their museum collection(s), or their trophy wall(s). Uh uh. Not in our jungle!

It seemed kind of plausible, too. We loved stories about remote Abominable Snowmen living in some far-off frozen land that remained undiscovered, or wild "wolf boys" abandoned by their parents at the edge of a clearing to be raised by a pack of wolves in the forest. It could totally happen! Wolves are really caring, social animals! We talked about it over comic books, sitting at the kitchen table, dreaming of the day when someone would come to save the animals of the forest and their native habitats, including the wild jungles of the world. The good news? I think we're getting very close. 

See you in the woods, children of the wild.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/congo-full-episode/14635/

Jungle Book

Deep in the heart of every human being beats a primordial memory of the jungle everlasting; an ancient link to our tree-living past. Ever since I can remember, I have loved trees: drawing them, painting them, photographing them, even using an image of a tree through four seasons to decorate the top of one of my earliest resumes.

As we descended from our arboreal homes in search of food and water, the distance between the ocean and the trees of the savanna that we called home grew and grew, as did our brains fueled by the richness of the sea and the creatures we eat. We responded to the growing grasslands by stretching our legs to cover the distance, but memories of our forest home continue to pervade our collective human consciousness.

Escapist fantasies about leaving the world behind suddenly become more acute in times of great stress, like during presidential elections with transitional governments, forcing us to confront our need to flee. For me, the forest represents something more than a relaxing place to unwind from busy careers and ringing cell phones. It is the place I feel most at home, and with the beat of the boreal so dear to my heart, it's no wonder that I want to be where the wild things are. You can't chain down what's meant to be free.

It is in this hope that I look forward to a more understanding future that recognizes the human condition as it pre-dates modern borders, with boundaries drawn by outside interests not native to the land we call "home". Let us be who we are. Let's go home. And let us be dual citizens of the world as it is written in so much bureaucratic paperwork, if that's what it takes for us to move about as we're meant to. I promise you I won't be a bother. You won't be able to find me in the forest primeval without a professional guide, anyway.

The Dead Can Speak

For most European Americans, the idea that the dead can speak from beyond their actual time on Earth—in other time-frames than our own—is a story told to them solely though pop culture, in cheesy Hollywood movies about evil Ouija boards or haunted houses rife with demonic possession. But, if you delve just a little deeper into better content than the kind offered on generic prime-time t.v., you'll find a lot more varied factual accounts of our relationships with our ancestors, as told in our very blood and bones.

Forensic science, in the duel branches of forensic pathology and forensic archaeology, can uncover the brutally violent truths behind the deaths and oppression writ upon our ancestors bodies (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/), ones that that were denied life in the history books and textbooks of our mutual pasts, as white America sought to exploit their often weaker economic poverty through a cultural dominance that's extremely one-sided, because cultural assimilation often goes hand-in-hand with bloody wars for land and other precious resources, which means your kind of reminiscently Asiatic eyes are a most inconvenient feature to be dealt with evenhandedly. You are that which they wanted to destroy.

And so, with the now-modern inconvenience of genetic testing and cultural databases, it doesn't really matter what an opportunistic liar or an immoral cheat says or does, because the truth will come out in your blood work, whether you like it or not (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3122205/White-NAACP-leader-pretended-black-pictured-time-scandal-broke-responds-atatcks-saying-don-t-two-sh-ts-gusy-think.html). There's no hairstyle or skin tone that a wack-job looking to exploit white America's guilt about race can play, because science has made gaming the system obsolete. If you are just 25% Native American, you can get money from the state for college, just like a person of partial African-American descent can score pricey contacts and seed money for businesses from the NAACP, making your genuine ethnicity a very lucrative thing of the past. 

With your latest genetic test in hand, your reality changes, or, as the case with me, it becomes the history of your name (as my name) as it is written on the features of most modern Americans, now as your factually-verified claim laid to rest. It simply is so. But, it's way more than ancestral land rights or fishing claims, important as those are to indigenous people. Enter into the scene every carnival barker of yore who proclaimed their psychic ability to contact the dead, looking to take advantage of that ever-grieving parent who lost a teenager too early to a drunk driver, or a car accident of any type, or perhaps a grisly murder/suicide. So many questions to ask them...are they happy? What actually happened?

Then, the mystical arts of speaking to the dead become the fodder of anyone with an open question or hard emotional case that needs solving, especially if it involves child rape and/or murder, in our bids to relieve the extreme pain of a parent lost to grief. It's hard not to imagine what avenues we would not explore for them as a culture, in an attempt to alleviate such anguish. So what if she's a crazy housewife from "Lawguyland" (that's "Long Island" for the uninitiated) with a harsh accent and a phonily exaggerated appearance who "reads" people in an audience really well through their "tells"? We want to believe. I was no stranger to the allures of a good ghost story as a kid, buying book after book about poltergeists, only to be disappointed by a complete lack of supernaturally spooky life experiences. So, where the heck are they anyway?

And then the people I loved the most in this world died, my beloved grandparents, and with them, my tether to their pasts, as our ethnic stories and personalities that we had so lovingly clung to in each other, now together again in this new land of hope, faith, and promise. I started visiting my grandfather's grave alone, just to see what I would feel. At first, it was small but beautiful experiences, like a young stag grazing alone in the cemetery's grass with new moss on his antlers, looking up at me at the exact same time I reached my grandfather's grave stone, or hearing his distinctive old New York voice so clearly that I knew I had connected with him in my mind's eye with a searingly accurate recollection.

After that, it was game on. It was no longer a process driven internally by me and my strong memories, however great they were at alleviating my profound sense of loss. No, I could hear my grandmother laughingly explain to my maiden aunt living with her that now I was splashing around like a little girl in my bathtub, and then she would say the date and time in a future that held a middle-aged me alone in an old Hudson Valley home without her actual physical presence. It was so cheerfully normal, that I knew our sound waves were actually reaching each other in a way other people could hear, too, which is a discovery that's not without a rather extensive scientific past. 

Lots of audiophiles have sworn that they connected with their loved ones through a radio tuned to a particular frequency, like a son hearing his father (now deceased) talking to his grown son in the future using the same old device, ham radio aficionados both. Lucille Ball famously told the story of her dental work transmitting radio broadcasts through her mouth on live television back in the day (http://altereddimensions.net/2014/lucille-ball-picks-up-morse-code-radio-through-dental-work-fillings)! Hollywood made a sensationalist version of it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_%28film%29) by skirting around the real physics behind radio frequencies and audio signals that bounce around the earth's atmosphere, coming back around again and again after the earth's rotation is complete. 

What was once wacky science fiction becomes our reality with time, backed by real hard science (http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/k-4/features/F_Hearing_Voices_From_Space.html). Your grandparents and mine would no more have believed that you could hear voices from space anymore than my grandmother thought she would live to see the day we bought water from plastic bottles, free as it was for her in the city, the source of some of the best water on earth. It would have been unthinkable that such a vast resource as readily available clean water would be sold back to us through superficial hacks like "beverage companies", but such is the case as it is now. Why would anyone drink from harmful plastic bottles when the minerals of city water have amazing health benefits that come straight outta the tap? And my grandparents were right.

The same goes with our digital imaging advances and microscopic investigations. What was completely unbelievable a few short years ago is now our day-to-day reality. Computers and the Internet? When was the last time you went a full day without your smartphone or tablet? When was the last time you didn't have Internet access? Contemplate that, and you're already more than halfway there. The far-out astrophysicist who launched the best photographic lens we developed at the time weren't just looking for space dust out there. They were looking for the Eye of G-d and His Creation of the Universe we live in, beyond time and space, in this here-and-now for all times, because our real natural phenomenons come from the source of all life itself. Welcome to the space age, kids. It's a groovy place where we're one, even you there, that curmudgeonly old guy afraid of average machines like the common PC. This galloping mechanized horse engine now as wings to fly. See you out there! Now I can hear it.

http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/hubble_essentials/

Bowerbird

JJ Harrison (jjharrison89@facebook.com) - Own work

Great Bowerbird (Chlamydera nuchalis) bower, Mount Carbine, Queensland, Australia

Being a tenant of a big old house in the fertile Hudson River valley means you accept that nature and wildlife take precedence over you in this landscape. Birds nest in every nook and cranny of the house, with 4-5 types of animals living underneath the porch, resulting in wilderness showdowns that you have to be "country" enough to roll with in good humor, like the unfortunate weeknight when the large skunk of Franklin Avenue woke up from his winter nap to have a massive showdown with the bad ass groundhog at 3 a.m. The resulting stink was so bad, it permeated the entire household for days.

Right now, I can't even count the number of sparrows and starlings roosting in the eaves. They are very successful here, give or take a baby bird or two. I found a dead one this past weekend that barely made it out of its egg (see it here on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarieDoucette/status/732274778774589441), but such is life. You can't escape the sights and sounds of nature in this more rural suburb of the greater tri-state area, which is just the way we like it. For more typical suburban experiences, we have Westchester County, New Jersey, Long Island, and parts of Connecticut, with much more accessible mass transit options available for commuting into the city.

Here, we have a state park that forms the third side of our county's triangular shape (http://bit.ly/253lsVk), the smallest in all of New York, which is also just the way we like it: easy to patrol and traverse, to the civilized housing developments and their developed shopping districts right up to the beginning of mountain after mountain, easing on up to the bigger peaks. I can disappear into the back country very quickly, and the wild side of me likes that, too. See ya! I'm already gone.

I can't imagine not having an infinity for nature and life in its astonishing diversity. It's strange to me when I meet urban people who are challenged by that. What could be better than hearing call of the wild? No more bumping elbows with a bunch of gross strangers crammed into tightly packed subway cars, in a fetid heat that reeks of urine and sweat. Personal space, anyone? They just don't get it, or worse, they get it and they like it. Creepy...to be that desperate for touch, like a common criminal. Ugh! Makes me want to look at trees instead.

And so I do, as you can see from my photographic feeds on social media. My favorite type of programming is public television, and "Nature" is my favorite show. I love it! Gorgeous photography and wildlife: what could be better for a nature lover to watch than that, outside of the real thing? Not much. So, with great interest, I watched one dedicated researcher create a makeshift roost of her own, with which to observe the male bower bird during its ritual mating season. You'd think they'd perform on cue (like an actor), but you'd be wrong.

Science requires a patience and discipline that belies the instant fix most t.v. junkies have come to expect from their level of programming, which looks to me like an ADHD ten year-old just consumed a pound of highly-sugared cereal (but skipped the morning Ritalin), and is now running around madly because his babysitter is a rather dead 21 year-old more interested in shoe shopping and gossiping with her bitchy, bipolar (and occasionally bisexual), pill-popping, pink drink-consuming "tanorexic"* girlfriends, similarly rabid on a toxic cocktail of awful t.v. and addictive caffeinated drinks from the nearest strip mall. Your t.v. shows hurt to watch, suckas, and that is a very bad sign.

So, watching my type of programming would necessitate a lot of adjusting for someone like you, living out there in "T.V. Land", as a barren place replete of vomit-colored attitudes with overly saturated clothing made for cameras instead of life itself, which means you might die quickly, and I don't like that. Go away! But for me, the courtship of the bower bird is just the sort of thing I don't have time time to do in real life, but I would totally do with a guide. It's like camping to me, with the added bonuses of bird watching and photography (which I do anyway), minus the leg cramps and a bit of stretching, intermittent with trips to town over the course of a month-long shoot.

I'd love it! Without further ado, I present to you one of the most beautiful courtship rituals in nature, helpfully provided by one very special male bird of the wild, patient and kind in his adjustments made in anticipation of his potential mate, as normal in this springtime of our lives as any other facet of life. Life can be short and sweet.



* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanning_dependence
 

Otter Baby

People tend to have an overly romantic view of animal life, like they are perfect little beings eating, grooming, and mating out in the wild without interference from man, which is about as plausible as this: I came out of my mother's womb wreathed in a cloud of fluffy pink cotton candy. No? It's some of the worst ignorance, and naivety at its crassest, often greatly acerbated by the idiocy of those who are most public with their views, the dreaded high school drop-out that is the bipolar bisexual former cheerleader, and now "Hollywood's Newest Sweetheart"!

I saw a film with a well-known, spray-painted, bobblehead blond floating on a surfboard in a Japanese sea (she was there illegally) to protest dolphin deaths from fishermen while the documentary was being filmed, of course, which is kind of like applauding a hooker walking by you on the street dressed in a furry dolphin suit, just for handing out XXX flyers to the tourists milling around Times Square. Something doesn't fit, and who cares about you, anyway? No one wants you here! It's a pointless protest designed to highlight an illicit business through the pointing out of another more immoral practice, which is like washing your muddy hands in filthy sewer water. Who has the higher ground here, anyway: the hooker, er, actress, or the dolphin-killer? Dirty business, indeed.

The animal kingdom is rife with crime. We learned about the other side of nature with our guide Mike, during our Yellowstone adventures off the beaten path (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2010/07/american-bison-of-yellowstones-lamar.html). By the way, you should always travel with a certified guide before embarking off-trail, and those Indian students still living in New Jersey, this definitely means you, because bears hunt in the woods, even wealthy students from their richer dads who are sent here from overseas for school (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/nyregion/black-bear-kills-rutgers-student-during-a-hike-in-new-jersey.html?_r=0). We have our towns to live in, and they have the world. Get it? Anyway, Mike told us the story of an evil bear he saw killing without any need for hunting, just to do it. Yep, a psychopathic killer bear roams Yellowstone National Park. Have a safe trip there this summer, by the way!

And so, it was with little surprise that the cute and gentle otters of my youth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmet_Otter%27s_Jug-Band_Christmas) turned out to be criminal masterminds of their own kind. Otters are extremely successful in the wild, except when their parents are dead, which has launched a rescue effort of its own, too, because pups left marooned on their own in the water will die. I'm not saying you shouldn't assist in rescue efforts if you live near the water, nor should you club them to death, either. It's just that otters live larger lives than you thought, though cuddly stuffed animals at Christmas are just adorable, with some of the proceeds going towards rescue work.

It's just that some single male otters grab pups from out of the arms of their smaller mothers, to hold them hostage by threatening drowning, if she doesn't feed the bigger male first. Oh? Don't know that one? Okay, well here it is: male otters sometimes grab a pup and push its head underwater until the mother hunts for shellfish to satisfy its hunger, upon which the pup (hopefully) will be released back to its waiting mother, who now has to fish for the both of them. It would be weird to me, except for this: how many single mothers do you know who are underfed, underpaid, and extremely overworked? Not ringing any bells?

Okay. How's this: when was the last time you met an overwrought rich white Rep...er, male, in business? In fact, every time a single woman is "let go" from her job, she now has no health insurance for her dependent children, because women are overwhelmingly given custody of their children in divorces. And why is that? I think we all know why that is, but I'll spell it out for you here: because we don't murder our own children as often as men do, or the children of other people. It's counter-intuitive to our nature; to labor so long to produce a child that someone else can quickly take away from you. Uh uh. I don't think so.

Mothers fight harder for the children they love, and by extension, the children of the world, animals and human alike, though if the choice was down to my own kind and the otter pup, I'd like to think I'd choose a human baby first! That's what my mom did. What would you do? Think about it, especially during your next "cruelty-free" vegan sandwich, packaged by...well, you don't really care about the "who, how, or why" of it, do you? As long as none of those cute furry lil animals were hurt, right? That way, if they do get hurt, you can swoop in as their champion to save the day, while the cameras are still rolling!

Oh, well. Shooting starts at 6:00 a.m. for the newest "save the animals" commercial, and you need to hire your own driver for going to the set and back, and, well...this is uncomfortable, but...we've been having a resurgence of "homelessness" in New York City recently. Maybe you should hire a bodyguard? Just for the ride into town and back, though. Or, I don't know, you could just step over the bodies you see on the street every time you come into town, like you normally do when you're horrified to find yourself walking on the same city streets as those other people much lowlier than you. I bet they'd even eat real meat because they're so hungry, those filthy animals! Where's my cute little otter doll for the ride into the city? "Save the otters for me!"

WaterWorld

By GeorgeLouis at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org

Like a lot of urban myths, the idea that New York (once "New Amsterdam") is a horrible cesspool of evil people takes a lot of work, through popular t.v. shows that are eager to sell this gritty vision of our fair Gotham as a grim reality to viewers too scared to see the truth for themselves. Of course, we also rank #14 in the U.S. for churches per capita, but that doesn't sell as many tickets to the show, does it? Not that our lives are dull, it's just that (like other areas around the globe), popular culture about us can be intentionally misleading.

I lived in one of the most prosperous neighborhoods in the world, and I felt lucky to be there when I did. Prospect Park is Frederick Law Olmsted's vision for a less manicured space outside of Manhattan that would give the grounds an air of discovery upon certain vistas, lending it an experience more similar to hiking in nature, rather than being in the middle of one of the world's largest cities (Brooklyn), now a borough of New York City, which was once a city of its own.

The same can be said about any of the outdoor spaces we have in the surrounding area. Brooklyn and Queens (boroughs both) are part of the land mass that becomes Long Island. The ocean is so important to us, that our SUNY Maritime College (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_University_of_New_York_Maritime_College) is in the Bronx, another borough. Water is everywhere around us, strange as that picture may seem to someone whose best ideas about us are formed through fictionalized t.v. shows, so much so, that Long Islanders define towns as either being on the North Shore or the South Shore.

As I've written before, we also have an old, active, thriving beach culture that's as separate from California Dreamin' as their beaches are to their t.v. shows, too. In the midst of all this natural beauty, it makes alternate versions a hard sell, but careers are built on such quibbling points, and lost on them, too. Because we are an island nation in New York, our lives are almost totally defined by water. There are 2,000 bridges and tunnels in the city of New York (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridges_and_tunnels_in_New_York_City), which is utterly incomprehensible to feel through the flat screen of a t.v set. You have to smell the ocean breeze as it blows inland, watching the water rise to a gushing flood that flushes out the sewers within a half an hour, to realize the power that is this great driving force of nature.

It's made us respect the water we need everyday, because we come from it. We're made of it, after all (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_water). It's essential to who we are, because it is the stuff of life itself. We cannot live without. It is in this spirit (inclusive to all life on Planet Earth), that I'm asking you today to participate in its preservation through your careful consumption, and the designation of our precious waterways to national parkland status or designated UNESCO heritage sites, because you have to ask yourself this: when was the last time you beat a tidal wave? I already know the answer, and so do you. Honor water as you honor life itself.

https://events.attend.com/f/1383773128\
http://en.unesco.org/ 
http://water.org/ 

I Come From the Water

Toadies

I come from the water
I crawled upon the shore
I left my brothers there
I got what I came for

I sucked that hot air in
And rolled upon the sand
Emerged beneath the sun
To be a man.

I come from the water
I come from the water
That weren't no easy thing
It's more than nature
It's like my destiny

I stood upon these legs
And held my head up high
Emerged beneath the sun
To start a new life

I Come From the water

Life in the desert
Just to be together
The sand forever
The same forever
It moves beneath me
It pulls my body
My pulse beats hotter
So far from the water

I love to see the sun
In spite of all it's done
I pray for shade and rain
I pray to live again
I come from the water

Google Play

Barracuda

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracuda

Me and my "Irish Twin" couldn't wait for our big Mexican vacation in Cozumel, because we love the ocean. We'd spend every summer swimming in as many pools, ponds, lakes, rivers and oceans as we could possibly convince adults to do with us. We love the sea; the pounding surf, the oceans' salt spray, the sandy beaches, so much so that my bro is a Jersey resident. Me and my bro spent hours in the water growing up, and it didn't go unnoticed by the adults around us. We swam expertly like fish; first as toddlers, and then as kids earning Scouting swim badges. We loved it, even when it was rainy and cold during summer trips to Maine and Nova Scotia.

Like any Acadian, our father dared us to go into the cold oceans of his youth. No problem! We couldn't wait to cool off from the summer sun, wading into the frigid waters like we were born to it, and we are. We giggled and shivered as we splashed each other into goosebumps, egging each other on to go all the way in, which we did. It was a contest that proved our sea-worthiness to ourselves; a necessary rite of passage that any self-respecting Acadian should be able to do, like fishing and canoeing. We'd learned swamping out a canoe to breath the air trapped beneath well enough to earn colorful Scout badges that we sewed on ourselves to earn that badge, too.

Bernie and I avidly checked out snorkeling gear from the hotel our first day at the beach, running back and forth quickly, keen in our desire to hit the waves. So blue! Cozumel's water is some of the most gorgeous we have here on Earth: a crystal clear, bright turquoise blue that took our breath away. With those first tentative mask views done treading water near the shore, we were instantly hooked. We dove for angelfish and coral and anything else our pre-teen brains could soak up with the clarity of our deep abiding passion for life and the sea. We "pruned" our fingers every single day, just like our baby bath-times together, taking gradually deeper and deeper dives, like we did with all those public pool trips that astonished our parents with our steadfastly devout longevity in the water. So much fun!

We pool-hopped occasionally, but it was filled with ugly pale American tourists sitting on pool stools under a giant beach cabana. Blech! They're just the people we wanted to ditch! So boring, sitting around doing nothing but drink stupid fruity drinks and babbling on and on and on, just like they did at home. Yuck! Who cares? There's so much else to do! The last day we hit the beach hard was indeed memorable to us. We'd be going further and further into the ocean, and that day was no different. We wet our masks like we'd been taught, to create a seal around our eyes that was airtight. So far so good. 

Then, Bernie made his first mask check under the water to beat me to it (of course: boys!), with disastrously different results. He came up gasping and panicked: "I just saw something!" I took my mask to look, and one quick peek at two rows of razor sharp teeth inches from me was more than enough to send me packing, running for the sand quickly. Ahh! What the...?! What was that? We'd just seen our very first barracuda, and it is one scary looking fish. There'd been a whole school of them, too. We ran to our parents sitting on beach chairs under the palm trees, scared and shaken up. For the rest of the trip, we stuck to the pool. That ocean isn't just for us. It's for the predators who live there with every other life form in the sea. Understood, and very clearly so. We have our home, and they have theirs. It's nature.

Sacred Earth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_America_Beautiful

Ever since I can remember, I've had values, ethics, and morality attached to conservation, with a genuine love for nature. It's like breathing to me. So, when I encounter ignorance (whether real or fake) about what it takes to keep our environment clean and safe for future generations, I know it's total fucking bullshit. Toddlers know not to litter, because fouling one's own nest is contrary to every living species on this planet, except for those sick humans who want to die from their own filth, which is about as contrary to any life-force as you can get, but that's the walking dead for you. Hard to talk to about, like, stuff.

One of the most successful anti-littering campaigns was widely aired during my prime t.v. viewing years as a kid, and as an adult GenX'er, I knew someday I would grow up to help my crying native friend, because I felt his disgust at this Hollywood version of Anglo hatred toward our planet as keenly as he did (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Eyes_Cody). Luckily in this century, we have genetic testing and a DNA database to protect our tribal affiliations. It was so powerful an experience for me as a little girl that I've never forgotten its impactful imagery. A lone "native" man stands looking at all the waste European colonists have wrought upon the landscape with a deep sadness, along with many other genetic diseases that we don't really need in this "new" world of yours discovered by humans more spiritual than you, motherfucker, but I digress.

Last spring, when I had a long wisdom tooth pulled, I sat watching a new flat-screen t.v. in a fancy dentist's office here in town as a welcome distraction, with the channel set to a Hudson Valley news channel. My procedure was over quickly, as I knew it would be, because the old tooth had descended fully and was weak from invading cavities. As I sat prone with instruments and humans poking around my mouth like they were interested cave explorers discovering an underground species of blind bats (I have some very unique and totally identifiable dental features), I was heartened to see a wonderfully inclusive ceremony involving a cute gaggle of kids, a rabbi, a priest, and a medicine man. Sounds like a fun joke, right? No joke!

A group gathered to bless our Hudson River in a honoring ritual that speaks of its importance to us as a giver of life. Uh uh! I grunted my recognition of such a great experience being filmed live and right near our shores. Yeah, fuckers! That's it!! You finally fucking did it! You got one thing right, and it's not a small one. Well done. It only took you a few centuries to catch onto our ancient relationship with this blessed Mother Earth, on this shining gem of a precious vessel that is your flying biosphere spaceship. Kudos. You're moving past children's entertainment to the real. Welcome to our happy valley, but be careful. We protect what we love here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_generation_sustainability

http://westchester.news12.com/news/blessing-of-the-hudson-river-held-1.10314127

Moose Dog

Me, my Mal, and my ex, in one tiny plane: Ted looked out the window for a few minutes (those are the Coloradan foothills receding into the distance in the photo above Ted's head-shot) and then he fell asleep for the whole trip.

My Alaskan Malamute was epic. He looked like a cross between a polar bear and a werewolf, and he could hunt. He burned through life like you should: at full throttle, and not injury-free. He was hit by a car running across a street towards a playground full of kids before he was fully grown, flung onto a sidewalk where he almost died, and then he made a complete recovery. His first trip away from home was on a little airplane, from the family farm in Oklahoma where he was born back to Colorado with my ex-boyfriend because, at the time, my boyfriend was logging hours towards a private pilot's license. I took Ted's second plane ride with him (with the same boyfriend), from Colorado to West Texas to see my dad and his family. Ted was supposed to be my "huggy bear" during the trip because I hate flying, but once we reached cruising altitude, he immediately fell asleep for the entire trip.

That's not all. Once we landed in the middle of nowhere, we took Ted around to see the sights. First, to my dad's house in the middle of "Nowhere", then to his ranch that's in the middle of "Absolute Nowhere". That night in the small cabin down on the ranch, we made a plan for the next day: we'd follow the wild boar tracks we found down by the stream by tracking the hoof prints in the mud, hopefully finding the big beast after many years of trying, because it was a notorious no-show on the ranch. So, the next day, I found myself with my dad, my youngest bro, my boyfriend, and my big Mal Ted on a trail during sunrise; them with guns in hand, and me with my dog.

Ted did not disappoint. He'd been a naturally gifted tracker since his early days, all on instinct. We took him hiking in the Colorado backwoods one afternoon, coming across a lone Moose in front of us. Ted was brilliant. At just seven months old and not fully grown, he immediately cut ahead of us by a few paces to block the large animal, then he walked slowly up to it, breaking away suddenly into the brush when it disappeared into the woods. We spent a few tense moments between us, wondering if he'd come back at all, or if we had to do a "search and rescue", but just as we said it, there he was crashing back through the bushes, smiling happily up at us. Yeah! You did it!!

For you, "Moose": http://cpw.state.co.us/learn/Pages/LivingwithWildlifeMoose.aspx

After that, we dubbed him "Moose Man" or "Moose Dog": two more names of affection for an incredibly uncommon dog of many names, with many gifts. Back at the ranch, we waited in the pink sunlight, hidden among the thick sage brush for something to happen, and then it did. We heard some noises and some shuffling, without knowing what was moving around out there. Snow dogs take off like a shot if you don't rein them in, so I had my guy on a short leash, but once we got up from our spots to take a look around, I paid out the leash with plenty of slack for Ted to do his thing, which he did. 

He took us to a little hole in the ground where he paced around sniffing furiously, with some more movement. I put my disposable camera to the ground, taking a couple of blind shots of whatever was lying there underground. There was another dash of movement, and then we followed Ted to a small leafless tree in the desert brush. We finally figured out what Ted had so masterfully scented out in the clear, thin morning air. Sitting there between the highest tree limbs was a very large and totally freaked out porcupine, the largest spiny porcupine any of us had ever seen, and my dad had no idea they lived in the area, let alone his on his ranch-land. That was the awesome power of my "moose" dog; a fiercely bad-ass hunter, tracker, and scout. Where would we be without them? Nowhere.

http://bit.ly/1QHxEpa

  

This one's for you today, Betty. 
You burned through it brightly, girl!

http://www.koko.org/node/2172

Balls Out

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_sage-grouse

Last week I was lucky enough to catch a "Nature" special, and you know how I feel about PBS-type programming: LOVE IT! When you channel-surf using "free t.v." technology like I do (a digital antenna with an adapter made for a flat screen t.v.), you get what you get. Just like those old "rabbit ears" of old, reception becomes a challenge, and just like then, you can tune into different stations by moving the digital antenna around. When I saw the infamous "Nature" graphic come onto the screen, I got excited as I always do, knowing that beautiful photography is their standard, and I wasn't disappointed. Sleepy, yes, but also very interested.

This special focused on the amazing adaptability of the American West, a place often referred to as 'The Great Empty", which the host argued differently. Vast and human-free, but very much alive. These motherfuckin' birds are the jam, so good are the males at mating. 
I know crazy dudes who can't even tie their own shoelaces, let alone approach a decent woman, but that's how it goes for the disordered of our kind. In the wild, there's no such deception: you either got it, or you don't. The male who fights and wins against each and every opponent steppin' up to him gains entry to any female grouse he wants, with the stats to go along with his champion status, too: a record 31 lays was recorded by a group with one male. He managed to mate every 1/2 an hour with a different female grouse. That's impressive!

And not problem-free. A lot of the males are crippled, maimed, or dead at the end of mating season, and that's part of the point, too. The females want the best genes for their offspring, and these are not animals with complex sexual responses like humans. It's something to be fought for, won, and moved on from very quickly, as is suitable to their much shorter life span and lower brain capacity. But, I loved the strutting bravado of their ornate mating rituals and showy displays. 
If you got it, flaunt it! Very simple, isn't it? And so it was: the bird with the best ballsy performance got all the girls. Makes your dating life seem like a breeze in comparison, doesn't it?

At the end of every day, each individual is responsible for mating successfully, to the advantage of their species. If some jerk-off can't figure out how to speak to you properly, what good is he to you, girl? Not much. Even a birdbrain could tell you that, if only it would speak, right? Wrong. What messages are you not getting with his chest all puffed out? That bird's got his balls way out there, man, so why don't you grow a set? Grow up! Life is short, much shorter than you and your rinky dink, so get over it. It ain't all about you, bro. There's plenty of other males out there in the world. Respect your woman like you respect yourself, and you may just get the woman you deserve, instead of the woman you pay for. Mother Nature always wins.
 

For Takoda: I'm always on display, kiddo!

The Lemurs of Madagascar

http://www.patriciawright.org/

Just like the movie, I had to wait an irrational amount of time for something this cool to be freely available on DVD. "Tighty whitey" parents of the 'burbs often cop this arrogant attitude about life, partly to cover their fears about getting discovered as a project person from the Bronx. Of course, the accent (and the raging 'tude) is a dead giveaway to me, but sometimes they pull off the magic trick of affluence with the right amount of condescension to cover up their crippling insecurities; like believing you are all-powerful by keeping a well-known children's movie (that's right: for kids!) for an inordinately long time after checking it out of our lending libraries, totally disproportionate to your actual sphere of influence.

It's weird, but that's the point of view of people schooled to think they can say, do, and act any way they want, because their rich daddy is a lawyer (or chiropractor), so often did me and my friends get threatened by their whiny asses in the open halls of public school. They were in over their heads, and we knew it. Once they grew up somewhat, and figured out that we were more adept at secret beatings than getting nabbed by the POPO, they just shut the fuck up and went away.

Me and my friends here at the Pearl River library had to keep checking my online queue for months, making adjustments around some rich asshole who thinks $400+ change for a missing DVD is justified because their little Maury has "difficulties" at school, or because they are so busy, they just couldn't be bothered to drop one DVD into the mail or a box, just like the President of the U.S! It's such delusional thinking that I've stopped trying to communicate with the insular and insane of Rockland, just like I did with their scaredy cat kids who scream when they are squeezed slightly, and that's exactly why this post isn't kid-friendly either, parents of Hollywood: I want more of this type of movie, and less of you. Much less of you.

Special shout-out today goes to the lady from New York who had the guts and ingenuity to stick to her guns, by following her chosen fields of study to wherever they called her: all the way to the lovely people and beautiful animals of Madagascar. She's from SUNY Stony Brook, yo! Way to represent your peeps! Thanks, Dr. Wright: you do us right here at home. We proud of you, girl! Keep going!!

http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/centre-valbio/people/patwright.html

http://www.patwrightlab.net/

http://www.rhinebeckcsd.org/newsdisplay.php?ID=36

A Bug's Life

Getting "buggy" in the country.

Living in the country is different from the city for many reasons, but the biggest change for me are all the animals. Groundhogs, feral cats, and bugs...oh, my! I've had fun with a few Brooklyn boys over their squeamish ways when it comes to bugs. My big, loudmouth cousin from Sheepshead Bay had to call me to remove a silverfish before his shower, for instance. Or, my boyfriend from college who couldn't sleep to the sound of cicadas chirping at night in the basement bedroom of my mothers' New City house, preferring instead the buzz and hum of cars whizzing by on his native Bay Ridge streets to sleep to.

There's more: my Bronx-born mother chafing against the pretty little birds that woke her up on summer mornings, for singing from their nested perch on "her" window air conditioning unit. A well-to-do Park Slope couple from outside the country (of the United States) never really adjusted to communal apartment living, even after I sprung for a few area rugs and a sound machine to cover up the horror of my early morning dog runs. He was a big oaf of a man who loomed behind his tiny and plainly bug-eyed wife, a duo of dysfunctional who belong in some suburban Aussie condo, but not in the city that never sleeps.

Ditto with the wacky lady next door, who was so unnerved by my bedroom air conditioner unit's sporadic summer use (usually at nighttime and after work, too) in my 4th floor walk-up, she banged on it for weeks until she finally left me a weirdly fretful note of frustration. Instead of listening to my reasoning from across the narrow alleyway through our window exchange, she condescendingly offered to buy me some freestanding floor model that's all the rage from wherever the fuck she's from, because I detected an accent not of New York. 

She'd rather "die from the heat" than live with the banal white noise of my bedroom AC, even though the top floor apartment reached in excess of 100°F, and I had to buy it for my snow dog (who would have actually died from the daytime heat), instead of accommodating a rather inane background noise; such was the insane wisdom of the deranged, frazzled-haired Euro lady next door. It was clearly my fault, all of it, everything in the universe, because I'm too poor for her tastes and she's mentally ill.

My mom has gone so far as to request a mausoleum, so that her neurotic remains will never come in contact with bugs. Same turn of the mind as my former building maintenance guy, who freaked out over oven mitts that had fallen between the cracks of his poorly fitted kitchen cabinetry, blaming me instead for these microbiotic horrors left in the wake of my economic eviction from the building; a prolonged process that was supposedly devoted to my non-payment, but was, in reality, yet another city scam about inherited rent stabilization and legally binding leases that are immoral as well as nonsensical, none of which benefited me at any of the times I write about.

And so I've developed to full effect my natural savoir faire about life, inherited through my maternal Norman Abruzzi lines; a shrug of the shoulders delivered much like my grandmother's laidback saying of "Que sera, sera." Whatever will be, will be. Just like this summer's bug migration that I accept as part of my good life here in the valley: first came the big black ants that I tried to deposit on scraps of paper outdoors, one by one, in Buddhist solidarity about the sanctity of all life, and then gave up on from the sheer volume of it. 

Next came the spider who hunted them by setting up residence under the sink in a corner of the kitchen cabinet by the floor and near the old radiator that let them in, then the fruit flies, followed by very small (and tenacious) red ants clustered in the butter drawer of the fridge, feeding on the sweet remnants of fresh salted cream butter that remains there today (before I eat it with a sandwich for my lunch today). I accept it all, as part of this beautiful life. See you soon.

Cloud Factory

 Welcome to the dog days of summer*, without air conditioning.

(Pearl River, New York - July 2015)

 

 

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_days