Steve and Judy's Travels!

 

My friend Mike Lane, who was supposed to leave Viet Nam at the same time as I did, and was supposed to be best man at my wedding, got held up in-transit and missed our ceremony.  John Duncan another returning veteran stood in for him.

 

We did connect with Mike eventually at Fort Campbell, but he got out of the Army shortly after his return and disappeared into the mist.  (We drove him out the gate on his last day.  He started taking off his Army clothes in the back seat of our ’59 Plymouth station wagon while we were still on Post, but the MP stopped us at the gate because Mike was out of uniform.  We waited for Mike to put his clothes back on so the MP would release us.)  When he next turned up in our lives was a few years later in the Pacific Northwest.  He came to dinner at our house in Issaquah, but by then he was head-over-heels for Guru Maharaj Ji, and the Divine Light Mission.  We couldn’t have a conversation with him about anything else; he was so excited about his new-found devotion.  That’s all he could talk about the for the entire excruciating evening.

 

That was it.  We never heard from him again.  We called his parents in Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island, but they had lost touch with him too.  We’ve googled him a few times since and searched Facebook in recent years, but to no avail.  What happens to a person after they’ve fallen in love with a fifteen-year-old perfect master?  How does a person’s entire being suddenly get that devoted to a person or cause, and what happens when it’s over?  What happens when the fifteen-year-old perfect master turns sixteen?  Does that change anything?  What happens to the devotion when the perfect master moves on?  The Divine Light Mission is long gone now, so surely Mike’s devotion has had to move on as well.

 

I’d love to have dinner with him again and hear about his life since last we met; hoping he had a life after Guru Maharaj Ji.

 

 

 

It kind of looks like an underwater sponge.

 

But in reality, it’s a petrel chick in a burrow in Bermuda.  You can make out a little seabird face in the lower right-hand corner with his bill pointed down; a webcam shot of a baby Bermuda Petrel.

 

He should grow up to be this good looking.

 

 

 

We’re bending the curve!

 

This is what our effort to bend the curve looks like.

 

We bent the curve to a straight line, but that straight line hasn’t wavered in weeks.  Our total cases are increasing by the same amount every day.  So far, any progress in the hard-hit areas that are getting the most attention is offset by hotspots popping up in other places all over the country. 

 

Do we ever get to bend the straight line?  Could it be that this is the new normal; the same number of new cases every day indefinitely?

 

 

Just for the record, in one or two more days, as many people will have died in the U.S. from the coronavirus over a period of nine weeks; as U.S. soldiers were killed in Viet Nam in twelve years.

 

 

Or not.

 

My world birding alter ego has recently been to:

 

Spain for the Eurasian Spoonbill

Czech Republic, Hawfinch

Germany, Eurasian Blackbird

Canada, Pine Siskin

Montana, Great Gray Owl

Panama, Crimson-backed Tanager

Japan, Eurasian Nuthatch

Caribbean Netherlands, Venezuelan Troupial

United Kingdom, Eurasian Magpie

Finland, Eurasian Blue Tit

Netherlands, Great Tit

Australia, Rainbow Lorikeet

Israel, House Sparrow

Latvia, White-tailed Eagle

Brazil, Saffron Finch

..and South Africa for the Hadada Ibis

 

Altogether 57 species in 16 countries.

 

The world map of countries for our digital birding looks like this:

 

I get around.

 

And I’ve changed technique for capturing images.  I started out taking photographs of the screen when I saw a bird I wanted a picture of.  They looked like I was photographing through a window screen, so they weren’t very clear:

 

 

Now I capture moments digitally with screen grabs:

 

Eurasian Nuthatch, Japan.

 

Oriental Tit, Varied Tit, Japan.

 

European Robin and Green Finches, Czech Republic.

 

Green Finch, Czech Republic.

 

Hawfinch, Austria.

 

They come out a little clearer.

 

 

Remember the cactus and succulent garden Judy planted a few years ago; succulents trailing all over it?

 

Well, Jesse left the cactus alone but thought the succulents were salad.  She managed to munch them down to just a few remaining plants for Judy to save.  Here they are, repurposed into a different pot, outside the fence, where the mad muncher can’t get to them.