Eden Revisited

“There is a story so pervasive, so deeply sublimated, therefore so powerful, that it is disabling our grace and ease in this world, the grace and ease with which we mostly conduct our lives and create our art. The story is Genesis, the Ur-story at the center of all our stories. It is in Genesis that we learn the reason for our current state of exile from Nature. Uniquely created and endowed (thus unnatural), in a world that is neither our original home nor our ultimate home, we have been cast as aliens into an opaque, often dangerous world, a corrupted form of something earlier, something higher. These observations on human nature, and on Nature itself, shape our forms of upbringing, the dynamic and moral structures of our entire civilization, our schooling — and in particular our art education.

To create a new, more deeply satisfactory story, one that will enable a healing of the schism between humans and the rest of creation, constitutes the great task of this generation. Because this story is as primary as it is, invasive as it is, the task of creating a new story, Genesis II, requires an effort that our minds, bodies, and spirits find satisfactory. The artistic enterprise, when full and sincere, is just such an engagement that calls upon these powers, making the arts well-bade instruments for this daunting and necessary creative act.”

— Peter London, Drawing Closer to Nature: Making Art in Dialogue with the Natural World.

Goldfinch Convention

We got some bad news on the bird front. Our bird guru, Mark McKellar, who operates Backyard Bird Center, told me my New Year's day "merlin" is actually a sharp-shinned hawk. Drats! Now I'm determined to get out and observe some merlins this year. We did have a consolation, though, Elly and I saw a brown creeper on one of our hackberry trees a few mornings ago. We've never seen one in the backyard before. This is the best picture I got of the littler bugger. He came early, so I had to shoot at a higher ISO setting (200, I think) which is pretty noisy on the Canon S2 IS. Still can't bring myself to spring for a full-blown digital-SLR though.

We're also having large groups of goldfinches at our niger feeder. All 8 perches are frequently occupied with more birds waiting their chance. One day I counted fourteen. Mark said the harsh winter up north is driving birds down to our area, including common red polls and pine siskins. Even a white-winged crossbill has been spotted. They like to flock in with gold finches, so we have decided to add more niger feeders to encourage them.

Here are several pictures showing how we have mounted the niger feeders so they can be raised and lowered easily for refilling.





I looked through my many image folders and discovered I don't have a picture of the niger feeder with 8 goldfinches at once, so that will be an image goal of mine. Here is the closest I have gotten so far -- five. This quality is more representative of what the camera can manage in good lighting.



Here is another of my favorite birds, a Carolina Wren, which obligingly posed in full sun for me this week. These visit our yard regularly, but we're trying to figure out how to encourage them to be daily visitors.

2009 New Year's Resolutions

After a fast start on my 2008 New Year's Resolutions, I fell off quickly I'm sorry to say. I did achieve some of my goals, but it was not a winning season. :-) Oh well, hope springs eternal and all that, so I'm reloading my list. Here goes.

1. Curb impulse book buying and buy fewer books in 2009.


2. Concentrate on reading books we already own.


3. Read more fiction. (About 98% of my 2008 reading was nonfiction.)


4. Reserve Tuesday and Thursday evenings for reading. (We did pretty well on this in 2008.)


5. Go for a walk or ride exercise bike every day.


6. Write in my journal every day.


7. Make at least one blog post per week.


8. Make progress on sketching and water color painting in 2009. (I really fell down on this one in 2008.)


9. Make major progress on home improvement projects. (I'm taking 3 months off from work to accomplish this goal.)


10. Get workshop organized.


11. Plant vegetable garden.


12. Make a stained-glass project.


13. Do more dark sky site astronomy. (Only 1 DS trip in 2008!!)


14. Take at last one trip to visit some place like the Smithsonian, or the Library of Congress, or the Huntington Library.


15. Find a new job with a commute time less than 20 minutes.


16. Avoid eating factory-farm produce or meat.

The last item is something I have been thinking about more and more. Elly is an ovo-lacto vegetarian, and I eat vegetarian 75% of the time or more. Typically, when I eat meat it is at lunch restaurant visits (once a week on average) or something I have gotten from Costco (usually salmon or shrimp). We often eat out-of-season produce, though, and I am not careful to find out where the produce comes from. In 2009 I plan to limit meat dishes to what I prepare myself, ensuring that the food comes from farms where animals are treated humanely. Also, I want to increase the amount of produce we eat that is locally grown. In practical terms, this means buying more food from farmers markets and Whole Foods, and talking more with the grocers about where their produce comes from.