Too Much of a Good Thing

Last Wednesday at Ocean Shores was one of those magical moments when I become totally absorbed in nature. Although I left the sunshine behind somewhere around Elma, it was relatively warm and, diffused by a layer of fog, the light was adequate, if not ideal. Everything else about the day seemed ideal. I started birding between 8:30 and 9:00 AM and realized at 4:00 PM that I was beginning to get hungry.

There were 1000’s of birds surrounding me, sometimes impossible to see without a scope or telephoto lens. There were sandpipers as far as the eye could see, blending in with the shallow water:

wetland full of peeps

Amazingly, as long as you tread lightly, the birds stood their ground, refusing to waste energy needed for the long flight South. If you didn’t approach too close, all they did was glance your way to make sure you were just another birder.

sandpipers resting

Further out, small islands came alive as you approached:

peeps on a small island

All it took to realize just how alive these fields were was for one of the two

Peregrine Falcon in Flight

peregrines to take off, and the air was filled with streams of flashing light.

Shore Birds Flashing their wings

The company of a small group of birders made the day even better, as they pointed out birds I didn’t see or species I didn’t even know existed.

It wasn’t until I got home that I realized how many shots I had taken during those hours — well over 400 shots, many of them good enough that I felt bad deleting them, at the same time feeling overwhelmed by so many images. Nearly a week later and I still haven’t come to terms with the days’s shoot, perhaps because I’ve spent so little time working with them.

Leslie’s brother and sister-in-law came Thursday, and we made a beautiful trip to Mt. Rainier. Needless to say I took advantage of the sun to capture more images, images I haven’t even had time to download to the computer yet.

And after they left Saturday afternoon, Leslie and I spent Sunday at Belfair, refusing to miss the opportunity to take advantage of the the sunshine on what’s been a extremely wet summer. The weather is supposed to turn here in a couple of days, but tomorrow I’ll be in Vancouver, so it’ll be awhile before I can make sense of all these raw, unsorted, unedited pictures.

Sometimes you can just have too much of a good thing.

Dion Tends to Wander

I’ve long ranted against advertising’s influence on society. In fact, one of my favorite sections in a Mass Media class I taught in high school many years ago was a section on advertising that was inspired by Neil Postman’s The Art of Crap Detection as advocated in his book Teaching as a Subversive Activity. We took commercials and looked at them critically, and once you did so their fallacy immediately became obvious, even to students who had absolutely no interest in being inspired by literature.

Though advertising is relatively easy to see through, I suspect that forms of media that reinforce societal stereotypes are harder to see through. As part of my nostalgia kick inspired by my 50 year high school reunion I bought some of my favorite songs from that era.

Dion was a favorite, particularly,

perhaps because it was my senior year in high school and I was in the process of breaking up with my girlfriend, though not because she was running around with someone else, as far as I knew, at least. The widespread use of this theme in the Blues and Country Western Music suggests that broken hearts are not that uncommon among menfolk. And obviously women must be to blame for that.

Strangely, though, I also bought Dion’s followup hit:

and it wasn’t until recently that I realized the irony in that. Strange that someone who’s so upset with a girl who “runs around with other guys” should take such pride in being the “wanderer.” Not sure how the Wanderer who spouts, “I kiss’em and I love’em ’cause to me they’re all the same” is any different than Runaround Sue.

Even less sure of why I didn’t see this in 1961.

WTF

I use to think of myself as a pretty liberal-kinda-guy, though I’ve always been square enough to think that cheating on your wife/husband was immoral. In other words, I’m sure some people thought I was square while others thought I was immoral.

Though I find the idea of a women being forced to wear a burqa totally repugnant, I don’t find it much more repugnant that this ad for Sears that appeared in my local Sunday Paper.

Objectionable Sears Ad

While I might not object to finding it online at some of the sites I visit, like Sports Illustrated, this piece of crap is directed to “juniors” for a “back-to-school event!”

I’m not sure what Patridge is doing in the shot, but hopefully it doesn’t have anything to do with school. Luckily Patridge isn’t really a “junior,” or I’d be tempted to call this kiddy porn.

I wonder why someone whose online search for images turns up shots like this is being pushed as a model for teenage girls.

If I still had kids, I’d be boycotting Sears right now. There’s certainly no way I’d want my teenager acting like this anywhere, much less school.