Author: pseudoisaac

Near the Minnehaha Falls a couple of weeks ago my companion and I saw a northern shrike, perched as expected in a high tree in an open area. This bird has a black stripe over its eyes to reduce glare for hunting in the wintertime. It has a hooked beak and hunts like a small hawk. It stores its dead prey in a “larder” by impaling the corpse on twigs. It has the fierce-sounding name Lanius excubitor.

I’ve only seen this bird two or three times, always in winter and always on special days. To me it’s a beautiful bird and its mask makes it look mischievous and cute, like a raccoon.

But to a small bird or mammal the shrike represents gray-and-black terror from the skies! The hooked bill severs its poor victim’s spine. Then the corpse is further brutalized when it’s impaled on a twig to be eaten later!

Included: A photo from the eastern Lake Superior ice caves, accessible due to the especially cold winter.

I saw a coyote slinking about looking for whatever it eats. The thing and its friends seem to poop a lot in the middle of the trail for visitors to look at. If a hairy black turd like that came out of my butt I would go see a doctor immediately, or at least Google it.

I noticed a lump on a tree that had cat ears and knew to check it out. Sure enough, a great horned owl was sitting there, looking right at me. My book says they avoid competition with hawks by hunting at night, dawn and dusk. They are closely related to nighthawks and nightjars but not to hawks and eagles. And this one is probably a year-round resident, with its monogamous mate somewhere nearby. They’ll have eggs as early as next month.

I stopped and had trail mix and coffee. My fingers were cold so what better than to pour warm liquid right down the core? A few skiers were in the preserve. Tonight a full moon is out and Orion is back.

On Monday rod-shaped snowflakes accumulated:

I flew here by Spirit Air. This airline is notorious for their hidden fees. But I read several online reviews and realized those fees are completely avoidable with planning. So the round-trip flight was $70 and all I’ve had to deal with was some crumbs on the seat and a lack of free pretzels and Fresca. Big deal. For the same price I can ride the Megabus and have to tolerate much worse.

I helped my parents pack for their move. My dad will not part with things like his library of Bonhoeffer and New Testament exegesis texts, even with the prodding and gentle ridicule I give him. I recognize myself there. After all, I failed to throw out my Campbell biology text for years even though it was out of date the moment it was printed.

We walked along a protected stretch of sand dunes on Lake Michigan, which was beautiful. I walked to North Park Nature Preserve and enjoyed the warm weather. And we saw "Dallas Buyers Club." The many sex scenes weren’t awkward at all even though I was with my parents. It’s one of those idiosyncratic markers of adulthood, I suppose – not feeling awkward next to your parents despite lengthy onscreen fucking. We also got stuck in a traffic jam because of a huge fire in a mini-mall. We saw the plume of sick black smoke grow bigger and bigger and we even saw flames. Five news helicopters were overhead and the smell was strong.

I find that I really like Chicago but I would only want to live here if I could be downtown and walk where I need to go, because the traffic congestion is unreal. People can get used to anything, of course. But you have to carefully compare the benefits and costs of a new city. I love the lake and downtown and the culture you can get here. But I hate the political scandals and the racial segregation and the traffic. Here there is the feeling of belonging to a metropolis. I love my city of Minneapolis but you don’t quite get that feeling there. You don’t quite get that feeling of being part of something big, of being elevated and heady.

Now for pizza with my parents ! Funny how even at 27 my mom wants me to eat more. Are parts of motherhood programmed ? And are mothers’ constant exhortations to eat present across all cultures ?

Included: a rodent that I believe was a Franklin’s ground squirrel. A greedy little guy.

At Roberts Bird Sanctuary on Halloween day the plants and wildlife enjoyed one of those final warm humid days before the initial frost. I stepped off the trail to look at an old pump-house where my friends and I used to smoke cigarettes because we were naughty. I definitely could have fit through the small gap to get inside again but didn’t. As an adult I’m less and less willing to get cobwebs in my face, even to feed my nostalgia.

On the way back to the trail I looked through my binoculars at the little birds flitting among the red osier dogwood and yellowing tamarack. They were drab brown but they weren’t the goldfinches I saw everywhere this time of year. Of all the birds I know, goldfinches are the only ones that I’ve seen nesting in September. But it wasn’t them.

Finally one of the little brown jobs revealed a flash of yellow from the top of its head. It was a golden-crowned kinglet, alternately raising and lowering its yellow crest for whatever reason. Excitement, territoriality? I’m not sure. This little bird of only six grams carries its tiny yellow flag into the world boldly. It sets itself apart from all the other drab brown birds that are impossible to distinguish at this time of year.

So how do you distinguish yourself? What is your tiny bright flag that you raise so audaciously? The kinglet carries its flag around Minnesota all through the cold winter. It shows its crest whether or not anyone is around to see it. You can do that too. Against all mental perils of cold and dark, against drudgery at the workplace and debt and estrangement, bear your flag! Bear the flag that is staked firmly within, the flag that was planted there on the day you were named!

o Mayor

1. Hodges (anti-stadium, zero-waste initiatives and pro-density development)

2. Cherryhomes

3. Fine

o Board of estimate and taxation

1. Wheeler

2. Becker

3. Pascoe

o Park and rec commissioner

§ Annie Young (Green Party endorsement)

o The two charter questions:

§ Yes to amending the city charter for plain language

I decided based on the two mayoral forums I attended (one on energy and one on urban agriculture) and on the endorsements in the Star Tribune and from the Green Party of Minnesota. I could still change my mind though. But I think a media black-out for the two days before the election is good policy to avoid being swayed by last-minute attack ads.

Six or seven candidates for Minneapolis mayor tried their best (bless their hearts) to answer questions on urban farming at Sabathani community center a few blocks from me.

A few of them were dedicated chicken owners and vegetable growers and one was an actual farmer. But all of them were forced to express support for farmers while admitting that the best thing the mayor can do is to reduce rules and regulations and to ensure that the rules that remain are the ones that emphasize health and safety. Hodges brought up the difficulty in putting a beehive on a city-owned roof because of a regulation saying they could not be more than six feet off the ground.

Everyone agreed that more local sourcing and procurement was desirable.

Winton made a good point immediately when he said, "The pot is dry. All the money was spent on financing the Vikings stadium." I get angry thinking about it. I feel simmering outrage over the stadium deal. Funny how the governor, city councilmembers and the press seem to criticize it only in retrospect.

At one point an uninvited marginal candidate (there are 35 total) walked up to the front and tried to join the debate. I cringed and he was escorted out without causing a scene.

Woodruff lives only half a block from my old apartment in those awesome lofts on Franklin Ave and 1st St. The first thing she said was that she was a lesbian. I like her emphasis on riverfront development. At some point this city turned its back on the river but the parts that have been developed are absolutely beautiful. I’m thinking of that loop between the Plymouth Ave bridge and Stone Arch bridge. If you want a three-mile jog, that loop is even better than doing a lake.

A sandwich sign man stood in the lobby with an "Anyone but Andrew" sign and posed for photos.

Even an hour and a half is just too little time at a forum like this to get much information on platforms. I need a side-by-side comparison before I vote on November 5th. The Southwest Journal and Southside Pride voters guides have been helpful. I would be fine with Hodges, Fine, Woodruff, Cohen, Cherryhomes, Samuels. Even Winton would not represent a huge rift with the current mayor.

I am glad that ranked-choice voting prevented the frontrunners from being selected early on by activists. But it is nice only to have to choose between two or three instead of six or seven. I just started reading "The Metropolitan Revolution" about how metro areas are where true political leadership and good governance is developing (as opposed to Washington). I think all the candidates I saw share that kind of regional vision.

My sister’s girlfriend’s sister’s college friends were heading out here for the weekend, along with my sister and sister’s girlfriend, and I joined them, not knowing what to expect. It’s in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, a small area where the glaciers did not scour away the earth, leaving limestone hills and ledges.

We set out late enough to only see flashes of lightning illuminating the hills that towered over us, giving us ideas of what we would see in the morning when the sun rose.

Some highlights:

– Hiking in the persistent but warm rain which was between a mist and a drizzle. It felt like we were in a Pacific Northwest rainforest.

– Clambering about on those limestone (sandstone?) formations with other people who also feel inexplicably compelled to climb things

– Meeting a US Marshal, furloughed due to the government shutdown, who was really very drunk

– Re-learning gin rummy with my companions and renewing my commitment to learning basic card games so I can entertain myself and a group without the help of some flashing screen such as a smartphone.

– Sleeping in total warmth and comfort under a copse of immature maples as a violent lightning storm passed overhead

– Hiking through the park with a group of 11 outdoorsy people. All of them were totally game and engaged, finding cool nuts and caves and mushrooms.

I headed up there on a Friday morning and had a good day of birding. The place is really special. Where else would I see a northern harrier up close? The northern harrier’s former name (in my old Peterson guide) of "marsh hawk" seems more appropriate.

When this pictured one was displayed to visitors after being banded and before being adopted and released a "plant" in the crowd shouted, "Does it have a facial disc?" Yes, sir, it does. The naturalist explained that the bird courses low over marshes and hunts by sound as well as sight.

In a related note I was astonished when I looked up close at an owl skull and was told how its striking asymmetry allows it to better locate prey because of the different sound reaching each ear and the minute calculations its brain performs to interpret that differential.

I’m not sure whether the northern harrier has an asymmetrical skull but it is certainly an adept hunter.

The next day was foggy and few birds were migrating. But I did see some majestic-looking sandhill cranes flying overhead and explored the trails owned by the organization.

Residents of Duluth are very lucky to live in such a beautiful city, even if it does have some faded glory about it.

Again I had a great time in Minnesota’s only national park (Isle Royale is part of Michigan apparently even though it is right off our shore).

This time there was a lot more wildlife around: pelicans, loons, eagles, green frogs, wood frogs, leopard frogs, crayfish, northern pikes, bass, sculpin, and chickadees. Going there in an especially dry August last year made the place seem a little barren. But this time around everything was still wet and alive before turning in the for the winter of the place (already Crane Lake has temperatures in the 40’s at night).

My friends and I saw a double rainbow and I had an unexpected blueberry harvest and ate some prickly gooseberries. We saw a couple of meteors and watched a dry lightning storm march across the sky nearby (but not over us).

There is something about the smell of the north woods that you don’t get in the leafy southern parts of Minnesota. It is a really dry smell of pine mingled with mineral smells and the smell of slow decomposition. Even up there, though, there are a lot of aspens and birches among the evergreens. They say there will be even more as the climate warms.

I had a lot of time to reflect while on the water and I realized that a vacation is not an escape, but something that improves you and that you keep with you for the rest of the year. It is something I will carry within me even when I feel harassed and insulted by other circumstances. This winter, when scraping frost off my windshield or trying to spit out the taste of vehicle exhaust while cycling in the city, deep down I will remain up there, sprawled on an ancient rock in the mild sunshine overlooking the water where the lichen-covered birches are.

I wasn’t going to write about this. That night a friend sighed, “There’s going to be a lot of pictures of trees on Facebook tomorrow,” and he was correct.

But this was really an exceptional storm. I am so glad my car was not crushed as those of some of my nearby neighbors were. I lost a lot of groceries in the fridge and the security alarm went off for days, but I was unharmed.

During the outage I felt utter torpor. I didn’t want to do anything but lay on the couch. Was I unplugged and off-line like my lights and computer were? Is that what it’s like to live in some unlit village in the tropics, where the shack-dwellers’ heartbeats sink and slow with the setting sun?

The best part about the storm was the calm that followed. Being with friends with flashlights and having nothing to do but explore brings out those boyish instincts to hike and climb and pry. There was even a cemetery with the side gate half-open, just asking us to enter and look around. We were attracted to the biggest, highest statue in the graveyard and the saddest-looking ones.

This one looked sadder still because of the soaking wet and the almost-full moon that night: