…to a nearby blog:
-o- Carved in Stone — In Colorado, stone is as cheap as dirt (maybe cheaper). Hence many signs are literally carved in stone.
-o- Boulder Murals — There aren’t any Grohes in Boulder, but the local artistes and graffites have created some nice outdoor art.
-o- Funny Business — It’s my impression that Boulder has an unusually large percentage of curiously named businesses.
–rakkity
…is the noise birds make.
I rode home from school the other day (which includes a some mile stretch along a causeway designed to be a seabird habitat) and thought of you as I missed the first picture of mating Long Necked White Birds in flight (Snowy egrets, I believe) and thought ‘if only I’d taken the camera out of my bag and put it in my back pocket like I usually do’ . I didn’t stop to take action on the thought and moments later saw a big blue bird (great blue heron I presume) taking flight as I thought ‘if only I’d taken the camera out of my bag and put it in my back pocket after the last picture I missed’. This time I put the camera in the ready position and had a quite uneventful rest of the ride home.
The other day i thought I was going to be attacked by a dingo, but then it scampered off into suburban backyards to eat baby kittens. The second one’s from the train in the eastern bay and probably needs to be cropped. The last one is a where’s waldo type game.
 
 
 Travis
Goose and I drove into Applewood today and spotted a Great Blue Heron. I’ve many standing shots of the bird, but I’ve been trying hard to get a full wing spread photo to show rakkity just how big these birds are. At my prompt, Goose jumped out of the truck and yelled really scary things at the bird so he’d take flight. As Goose yelled, I snapped the shot above, and to add context Goose spread his six foot wing span kneeling in about the same spot as the heron.
Goose and I rented a forty foot ladder today so he could safely reach the front peak of the house. There’s a bit of bounce to the thing as you climb up it, but I don’t think there’s a chance it’ll snap in half.
Robby’s new look.
Joe’s bunny.
All kinds of progress.
A friend of a friend’s granddaughter came a visiting and Matt thought what a perfect excuse for a party. All photos by Matthew.
Brian’s Photos.
Mike,
Before we came to Boulder last January, I was thinking that some aspects of the town would be much the same as when I lived here in the ’60s: political activism, marches, inflammatory posters, streaker parades, and above all, wonderfully diverse bumper stickers plastered on every car. Well, that’s only partially true. There are a diverse bunch of bumper stickers here, but I have seen bumper stickers on only about 1 car in 30. That’s much less than in Bowie, where it seemed like every other car has a Bush/Cheney or a Kerry/Edwards sticker. However, Bowie sported few really interesting/funny/scandalous ones.
So, since January, 2007, I’ve been peering at every bumper sticker that came within range. For 5 months, I looked in vain for a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker. To my happy surprise, None! Nada! Zip! So I tentatively concluded that, since Colorado is nominally a Red state (see footnote), with lots of conservative ranchers, the Bushies must avoid Boulder as a source of plague-bearing liberalism. Either that, or the city has posted automatic laser beams at every entrance to town, and the labels and/or cars with Bush/Cheney on them get vaporized as they drive in.
After viewing the rear ends of over 1000 cars, I started transcribing my scribbled notes into electronic media. Then, just before CU’s graduation day I happened to see a pickup truck near the campus, spotting a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker below its MONTANA plate. Somehow that truck managed to evade the laser beams. I don’t include on the list because I’m counting only Colorado cars.
Footnote:
Colorado has a Democratic governor, 4 of its 7 congressmen are Democrats, and the senators are split between the parties. Seems like it should be, nominally, a blue state.
–rakkity
Following the lead of others, I skipped work today and hung out in Newburyport and on Plum Island. I took a few anonymous people shots and some, if I do say so myself, worthwhile photos of snowy egrets. I again used the longest lens I have.
Saturday night, if memory serves, Richard claimed my photographs make people appear better than they look. Matt and I combined to create this collection, and while they were all vetted by three adults, it’s impossible to know how the wearer of the face is going to react – especially given the close crops I favor.
Our dinner slash party together was perfect. Most of the night felt like any other, and for the brief time I became the center of attention, well, that was fine too. During those blush-inducing toasts I felt like Tom Sawyer watching his own funeral.
I’d like to clear-up a now decades old myth. It is a better story as told by Steven, and while I did peer in at Karen through her bedroom skylight, the truth is I didn’t then fall off the roof. Or jump off in an oedipally induced spasm. Or float off after a glimpse of her naked body. I fell off my ladder days later while shingling the chimney side of their house.
Anyway, I won’t soon forget Adam’s limericks, John and Karen’s rendition of “Here Comes the Sun,†or Dan’s Clintonesque soliloquy (Hey, he was talking about me, he could have gone on forever), or Susan’s Becca-like proclamation about me not being the boss of her, or Richard’s reason for giving me a toast, “Someone took my chair.â€
The reason for the last photo? Bill Lewis walked by while Diane and I posed for the second to last photo and asked, “Where’s the pitchfork?”
So, along the way to Balastram, a seaside village reachable only by ferry, the sun is out some 20 hours a day. That means that it is bright on the peaks (which have considerable snow) and the water when you go to bed and even brighter when you wake up — which I’ve only begun to do.
It’s warm enough to be in shorts, and hiking into the mountains, which yesterday I did again. Sorta like camping in Maine only more pleasant. Perhaps we should consider Norway fjoirds as an alternative to Misery Pond.
Right now we’re on a catamaran ferry headed to Bergin, a bit like island hopping in Greece but greener and more modern. I’m with lawyer friends from Singapore, among others, and last night on the veranda we discussed how their relatively new country, really only post-war, has better mass transportation and levy protection and planning, borrowing from the Dutch, than either Boston or New Orleans, respectively.
Not that green transport or disaster anticipation are what we excel at. But you would think we could at least exploit the best practices from others, and that the Green line from Newton could be smoother and quicker, and most of New Orleans, outside the French Quarter, wouldn’t have to look like a war zone.
The Norweigens, by the way, were concerned about offending the US in their opposition to the Iraq war. I tried to tell the Norweigen mergers lawyer I sat with at a formal dinner that they would do a better service by speaking frankly.
He goes skiing at night when returning from work, simply walks out the door and down a slope – only disadvantage is it’s dark by 3 pm in winter here. Guess that’s why it’s daylight forever in summer.
Which brings me back to where this note started. What you should know is that there is a stuffed owl perched on the front mast of this boat. I will leave each of you to ponder the meaning of that.
Best from the outback,
Mark Schreiber
There’s a nearby daycare and I’ve wanted to take this picture for a long time, but I was pushed by the traffic behind me so the photo’s a bit blurry.