Weblog 229
June 27, 2010~ 12:00 am
Amidst many hours of uploading and restoring images this week, I still found plenty of time to birdwatch, and those guys are both clowns and acrobats. The one thing I noticed was how the recently hatched (though 'flying just fine') little hatchlings follow adult birds around, squawking their heads off, beaks wide and begging and doing a strange and constant wing flap that almost looks like trembling.
The first time I saw it, it was a little guy on the feeding stump who was going from adult to adult, pitifully flapping and trembling all over. I thought he was sick! But since then I've observed it in all the young ones who are still looking for a free lunch-- still wanting to be fed by mouth instead of getting their own grub, the lazy little pikers. LOL!!!
It reminded me of this great shot sent to me via email this week. They're pesty as the dickens, and from the looks of dismissal and the hurry to get away from them, I can tell the adults think so too.
I've been buying two different types of Audubon suet cakes, and I noticed that the one- the 'high energy suet', hangs there several days, being pecked at with lack of enthusiasm, but when I put out the 'Orange Delight Suet' cake, they go wild for it!
They crowd around on the banister, sitting and looking up from the steps, then piling on and spinning on the cage, sometimes 4 at a time!
This guy is studying the great chunk of lovely treats....and all to himself for once!
He'll even hang upside down.
It's just delightful to watch. All that excitement over a greasy cake stuffed with seeds, but they love it. My chipmunk Chippy has been busy running around the perimeter of the yard and charging the birds like he's a bowling ball and they're the pins. I've watched him take out 4 or so birds in a row as they line the carport wood while Chippy dashes right to left --bird wings fluttering in every direction-- and then he'll charge the feeding stump, thereby scaring them off. LOL!! He's a devil, and he thinks he OWNS the yard, but he makes me laugh.
This weekend the kids were still in Hilton Head, so it was a movie weekend. I watched a film I cannot recommend because, for my money... it's the grimmest thing I've ever watched. It was Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road', and a darker film you will not find.
I knew what I was getting into because I'd read the book- a apocalyptic tale of a man and his son after some climatic, terrible world event, who make their way along the road- the destroyed highways and byways of a world reduced to burnt trees and rubble to get to the sea. There are no animals, no food, and what people there are left- are resorting to cannibalism. The landscape and the miscellaneous characters are like something out of a Mad Max movie: bleak, savage and terrifying.
But what is shining at at the heart of this tale is the man's devotion to his son, and the boy's inherent goodness and innocence...it's the very thing that allows the reader NOT to be completely despairing: the book has a moral. The book offers hope. And it is mystical, perhaps McCarthy's most mystical novel.
By the same token, a book can be closed and put on the nightstand-- the reader absorbing bleakness slowly, able to balance things with the light that comes from the child and the child's love.
Therein is the problem... what can be uplifting and transcendent in a book, largely due to pace controlled by the reader, does not translate well onto the screen because we enter films. Our eyes take us into the story and place us there in a way that books cannot achieve viscerally, and for this film, it's an inescapable nightmare
The mystical qualities of the child are difficult to translate, whereas on the page -and therefore in the reader's head, it's easy for him to become the symbol of 'promise'-- of hope.
We hear the father's thoughts'... the book has relatively little dialogue, so it's through the father's vision of his son that the child becomes redeemer, even a Christ figure to the reader, and we are comforted knowing that somehow he would be means to rebirth. We see the child as the future, the one bird able to fly against a dead sky.
That subtext is attempted in the movie, but it doesn't succeed. It cannot be heard over the ugliness. Watching 'The Road', I felt a great weight pressing down on me. I think it's true that some books should not be made into films-- and 'The Road' is one of them.
It was like being in a claustrophobic room with despair.. like this Frank Holl painting from the late 19th century -and it got worse as the movie went on. I was trapped in that place with them, and there was only horror. I do not recommend the movie, but I recommend the book whole-heartedly. I think it's McCarthy's finest.
June 29, 2010~ 7:30 am
Believe it or not I'm getting another cold....(or it's a sinus/allergy thing)... but it's danged exhausting, let me tell ya'. I love coming across sites that pick my spirits right up no matter how I'm feeling, so I wanted to share a MAGNIFICENT, loony, creative place that is just a delight to visit......I give you
click on that wonderful picture, and it will take to to CAKE WRECKS. LOL!!! Superb!
June 29, 2010~ 1:00 pm
Holy COW! Talk about dizzying heights....
Is that fella about to swim right off the edge of the earth?? Nope. He's living in high, luxurious style right in Singapore - a brand new skyscraper resort hotel! (It' gives me a nosebleed!. Yes, and cold feet. LOL!!)
***
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Amidst many hours of uploading and restoring images this week, I still found plenty of time to birdwatch, and those guys are both clowns and acrobats. The one thing I noticed was how the recently hatched (though 'flying just fine') little hatchlings follow adult birds around, squawking their heads off, beaks wide and begging and doing a strange and constant wing flap that almost looks like trembling.
The first time I saw it, it was a little guy on the feeding stump who was going from adult to adult, pitifully flapping and trembling all over. I thought he was sick! But since then I've observed it in all the young ones who are still looking for a free lunch-- still wanting to be fed by mouth instead of getting their own grub, the lazy little pikers. LOL!!!
It reminded me of this great shot sent to me via email this week. They're pesty as the dickens, and from the looks of dismissal and the hurry to get away from them, I can tell the adults think so too.
I've been buying two different types of Audubon suet cakes, and I noticed that the one- the 'high energy suet', hangs there several days, being pecked at with lack of enthusiasm, but when I put out the 'Orange Delight Suet' cake, they go wild for it!
They crowd around on the banister, sitting and looking up from the steps, then piling on and spinning on the cage, sometimes 4 at a time!
This guy is studying the great chunk of lovely treats....and all to himself for once!
He'll even hang upside down.
It's just delightful to watch. All that excitement over a greasy cake stuffed with seeds, but they love it. My chipmunk Chippy has been busy running around the perimeter of the yard and charging the birds like he's a bowling ball and they're the pins. I've watched him take out 4 or so birds in a row as they line the carport wood while Chippy dashes right to left --bird wings fluttering in every direction-- and then he'll charge the feeding stump, thereby scaring them off. LOL!! He's a devil, and he thinks he OWNS the yard, but he makes me laugh.
This weekend the kids were still in Hilton Head, so it was a movie weekend. I watched a film I cannot recommend because, for my money... it's the grimmest thing I've ever watched. It was Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road', and a darker film you will not find.
I knew what I was getting into because I'd read the book- a apocalyptic tale of a man and his son after some climatic, terrible world event, who make their way along the road- the destroyed highways and byways of a world reduced to burnt trees and rubble to get to the sea. There are no animals, no food, and what people there are left- are resorting to cannibalism. The landscape and the miscellaneous characters are like something out of a Mad Max movie: bleak, savage and terrifying.
But what is shining at at the heart of this tale is the man's devotion to his son, and the boy's inherent goodness and innocence...it's the very thing that allows the reader NOT to be completely despairing: the book has a moral. The book offers hope. And it is mystical, perhaps McCarthy's most mystical novel.
By the same token, a book can be closed and put on the nightstand-- the reader absorbing bleakness slowly, able to balance things with the light that comes from the child and the child's love.
Therein is the problem... what can be uplifting and transcendent in a book, largely due to pace controlled by the reader, does not translate well onto the screen because we enter films. Our eyes take us into the story and place us there in a way that books cannot achieve viscerally, and for this film, it's an inescapable nightmare
The mystical qualities of the child are difficult to translate, whereas on the page -and therefore in the reader's head, it's easy for him to become the symbol of 'promise'-- of hope.
We hear the father's thoughts'... the book has relatively little dialogue, so it's through the father's vision of his son that the child becomes redeemer, even a Christ figure to the reader, and we are comforted knowing that somehow he would be means to rebirth. We see the child as the future, the one bird able to fly against a dead sky.
That subtext is attempted in the movie, but it doesn't succeed. It cannot be heard over the ugliness. Watching 'The Road', I felt a great weight pressing down on me. I think it's true that some books should not be made into films-- and 'The Road' is one of them.
It was like being in a claustrophobic room with despair.. like this Frank Holl painting from the late 19th century -and it got worse as the movie went on. I was trapped in that place with them, and there was only horror. I do not recommend the movie, but I recommend the book whole-heartedly. I think it's McCarthy's finest.
June 29, 2010~ 7:30 am
Believe it or not I'm getting another cold....(or it's a sinus/allergy thing)... but it's danged exhausting, let me tell ya'. I love coming across sites that pick my spirits right up no matter how I'm feeling, so I wanted to share a MAGNIFICENT, loony, creative place that is just a delight to visit......I give you
click on that wonderful picture, and it will take to to CAKE WRECKS. LOL!!! Superb!
June 29, 2010~ 1:00 pm
Holy COW! Talk about dizzying heights....
Is that fella about to swim right off the edge of the earth?? Nope. He's living in high, luxurious style right in Singapore - a brand new skyscraper resort hotel! (It' gives me a nosebleed!. Yes, and cold feet. LOL!!)
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