Month: May 2020

Bird feeders

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
The food chain in operation.

It seems our bird feeders are doing double duty. Not only do they feed seed to birds, they feed birds to birds.

This may be a peregrine falcon* camped out in a backyard pine, stripping the feathers and flesh from an unfortunate dove, no doubt a visitor to the feeders hanging from a maple tree by the picture window. Hal thinks so, anyway, and he’s more knowledgeable about these matters than I am.

“Whaddaya taking pictures for? You with the police?”

We’ve seen a Cooper’s hawk working the neighborhood, but this is our first glimpse of a peregrine on the job. I wanted to get closer for a better shot with the Sony RX100 III, but I didn’t want to interrupt his/her dinner. Maybe it’s time to get another DSLR, start putting this wobbly economy back on its uncertain feet.

Funny thing is, the neighbor kids had just been visiting (at a safe and sane socialist distance) and we were talking about the wildlife we’d seen recently, from bugs to bobcats to bullsnakes. We didn’t notice the feathers falling from the pine until mom had come to collect them for their own dinner.

* Or a sharp-shinned hawk. Or a Cooper’s hawk. Or a very small Hawkman looking for his own DC movie, which would puzzle me mightily, because DC movies mostly suck with malice aforethought, even more so than Marvel movies, which is a very high bar indeed where suckitude is concerned, and no self-respecting raptor would have anything to do with either of them.

Masque of the Red … Revolution?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
¡Viva la huelga!

I’ve been wondering when someone in the mainstream media would write something about the potential for increasing union membership and labor strength in the Year(s) of the Plague.

Here’s a start. It’s short, focused largely on the so-called “gig economy,” and written before a Washington Post-Ipsos poll that indicates some laid-off and furloughed workers may be overly optimistic about whether they will be able to return to their old jobs.

How does an activist pitch a union to a worker with no job? Is a patchwork of small, decentralized, tightly focused labor organizations preferable to One Big Union? Are people ready to rethink their notions of who is an “essential” worker? Will stock clerks trump stockholders?

Nick French at Jacobin gives us a look at the protests that arose shortly after the Great Depression took hold. He argues that radical groups, among them the Thirties-vintage Communist Party, forged a bond of solidarity between the jobless and those still working that helped make FDR’s New Deal possible.

The conditions are different today, he concedes. But the public-health issue may give workers more leverage this time around. Writes French:

By forcing sick people to come to work, or by unnecessarily exposing people to coworkers or customers who might be infected, employers are hastening the spread of the coronavirus and putting everyone at risk. This means that all workers, employed or unemployed, have a common interest in these workers winning their demands.

Boy howdy. Dead broke is bad enough. I hear dead is worse.

• Addendum: As white-collar types join workers from the restaurant, travel, hospitality, and retail industries on the sidelines, experts say there’s no way to calculate how many jobs might come back as states consider lifting shelter-in-place rules. according to The New York Times.

Many businesses, particularly small ones, may not survive, while others are likely to operate with reduced hours and staff. The job search site Indeed reports that postings are down nearly 40 percent from a year ago.

“We don’t know what normal is going to look like,” said Martha Gimbel, an economist and a labor market expert at Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative.

• Addendum the Second: How should unions organize? From The Nation.

• Addendum the Third: Comrades, identities, and attachments. Also from The Nation.

Pelotonnage

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
The actual outdoors. No instructors shouting at you. Free of charge.

I’m having trouble fitting into The New Weird Order.

The idea of spending $2,245 for a Peloton bike plus $39 per month for online classes*, so I can stay fit for … for. …

For what, exactly?

“Enjoying” a long and healthy life spent indoors, never more than a few steps from a screen?

I guess if the auto industry gets another bailout, as seems likely, these folks — the ones with all the money, anyway — will be able to have their “outside” and their screens at the same time.

* Incidentally, if you already own a bike, and you must do your cycling indoors, you can spend a few hundy on a stationary trainer or a set of rollers and join the free community of voices in your head.

Chalk up another walk

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
Flowers and honeybees and ladybugs, o my.

Mondays used to be running days. No más, no más, as Roberto Duran once said.

These days, I walk. It may be slow, but at least it takes a lot of time.

The view to the east.

Yesterday I marched south along the Linear Trail to Piedra Lisa Park and the Menaul trailhead, then came home via Foothills Trails 401 and 365. Three and a half miles in a little over an hour, with stops for snaps.

Before getting onto the trail proper I noticed the chalk artists had been keeping busy, shifting from sidewalks to walls. More power to their tiny arms.

Once on the trails north of Menaul, it became apparent that I was very much not alone. Happily, you can see company coming a long ways off out there, so I changed course as necessary to maintain the proper socialist distancing. Arroyos are good. Mostly I’m the only guy who seems to like walking the arroyos.

We’re still limited to outings “necessary for health, safety, and welfare,” and I consider that mine are. We’re talking an hour to 90 minutes tops. It’s a small price for society to pay to keep me off the roof and the Marlin .357 lever-action in its case.

Plus I am in The Media™. So there, pffffbbblllffffhh.

Also, if I feel a sneeze coming on while I’m out there prowling the arroyos — it is allergy season — I dig a cathole and bury it. No medals, please; you know what a selfless, modest Man of the People® I am.

The rearrangement

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
Living Room v.2.0: The Lockdown Edition.

I think the ol’ lockdown managed to crawl up everyone’s keister pretty much all simultaneous-like yesterday.

Miss Mia Sopaipilla blew a hairball on the living-room carpet, which is white, because of course it is. So we started moving the furniture off it in preparation for a thorough wash and brush-up, then abruptly decided: To hell with this giant white barf magnet.

This 14-by-12-foot beast came with the house when we bought it, as did the large brown leather sofa and green leather easy chair with ottoman that sat on it. And boom, just like that, we were sick of the lot of ’em.

We don’t get a lot of hummingbirds at our lone feeder, but we have a few regulars.

“Right, off you go!” we said.

The carpet got a good vacuuming and a spot-cleaning and a listing on Facebook Marketplace. Free to good home, etc. In no time at all a young woman whose sister was moving into a new apartment rolled by to collect it.

The large leather items got shifted to a largely unused area, across from the cat tower, facing the picture window, between the living room proper and the dining room.

The furniture that had been in that space — an American-made sofa and rocker we bought from a local outfit in Bibleburg, Hearthstone, sadly no longer with us — got moved into the living room, atop a much smaller patterned area rug pirated from the dining room.

Of course, there was much vacuuming, cleaning, dusting, critiquing, adjusting, more critiquing, readjusting, and what have you. Also, some discussion about feeding the leather bits to the insatiable maw of Facebook Marketplace as well.

Finally, there were cold beverages on the back patio, for us and for the hummingbirds.

After dinner the neighbors to the west called an ice-cream social, outdoors, in the cul-de-sac, featuring homemade chocolatey goodness. Most of the ’hood turned out for a treat, some casual gossip, and the nightly 8 p.m. howl, all with proper plague management, of course (bring your own spoon and chairs).

The ice-cream maker was hoping his amateur-league baseball might resume soon. Another neighbor was thinking about her son, a freshly minted Marine awaiting deployment. The new parents on the corner couldn’t make it, because infants could give a rat’s ass about ice-cream socials in the cul-de-sac, even if they knew what rats’ asses, ice-cream socials, and cul-de-sacs were. And a more experienced dad was dozing with his youngest in front of “PBS Kids.”

We were just happy to be there, and rid of that damn’ carpet. It’s the little things.