THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE

What follows is a sad story for bird lovers.

A couple of months back I noticed one of those blasted mourning doves in the tree outside my window.

I chased him off but he/she returned to drink from the bird bath.

The weather was very hot and I figured he/she needed a drink as well as all the other birds so I stopped disturbing him/her.

A few days later I went out to refill the bath/fountain and the dove exploded out of the tree over my head.

When I had finished cursing him/her I glanced up into the tree and discovered a rudimentary nest.

Oh, no!

Just what I need.

A mourning dove nesting right outside my window.

I considered tearing it down but the soft-headed hearted SWMBO convinced me to leave it.

A week or so later, having watched the damnable dove return time after time, I espied a small egg in the nest.

Now I HAD to leave the nest and the dove alone.

Mother dove was there most of the time, sitting on her egg, and finally one day I saw a tiny bit of fluff where the egg had been.

Over the weeks I watched as the new baby or dovelet as I called it, grew slowly until it was nearing the size of its mother.

Both parents took turns coming to the nest, presumably feeding the dovelet, though I never witnessed that.

As I came out to fill the bath on a daily basis I would carefully peek up at the nest and soon the dovelet was staring back at me.

Unlike mother or father he showed no fear.

As I had been there for all of his life so far I guess he thought (if doves think) that I was just a friendly co-inhabitant of his space.

I put that to the test with my trusty camera but he/she still just treated me with curiousity.

And then, a couple of days ago, as SWMBO and I were sitting in our living room watching television, my wife suddenly got up and went to the door.

I heard her say "Oh, dear" and I got up to see what had alarmed her.

She pointed to the wall at the back of our yard and said "Is that a hawk?"

Just then it flew off, pursued by one of the adult doves.

She told me she had seen a large bird fly into the tree, then into the yard, up to the wall and away.

The hawk had taken the dovelet.

There were a few feathers scattered in the yard.

And that was the last we saw of my friend.

As both SWMBO and I agreed, it was sad but it is, after all, the way of life in the animal and bird kingdom.

I tore the nest down the same night and discarded it.

TIMMER'S IN RIO!

You've all heard my mentions of my friend of many decades, Timmer.

Officially, he is Tim D., a vice-president at a Denver television station.

But his wife calls him Timmer, possibly because she (Jeanne) earned the nickname Beaner from him.

At any rate, Tim has gone to the Olympics many times over the years.

This time he was setting up equipment and hotel rooms and such in Rio de Janeiro for 25 people from 11 different television markets, including my old station in Phoenix.

He went to Rio well in advance of the arrival of the athletes and everyone else.

And as such, he's had a chance to do a little touring.

Tim began his long television career as a photographer.

Now he just carries a still camera for his own pleasure.

He is sitting on the Selaron Steps in the above picture.

They are the work of the artist Jorge Selaron of Chile who decorated the steps with over 2,000 tiles from more than 60 countries around the world.

Like me, you may have never heard of them but the Google tells me they are a famous Rio landmark.

But just to prove that Tim really is in Rio, here he is in front of an even more famous landmark.

So there you have it: my longtime friend Timmer, become his own Redeemer.

Incidentally, the night before he left for Rio, Tim was inducted into the Silver Circle of the Rocky Mountain Emmy Chapter in Denver.

So I guess I can cut him a little slack.

FRIDAY FUNNIES

Some times the political scene in the United States becomes so bizarre that the only way to handle it is to drink.

So . . .

Now I have heard that there are people who don't consume alcohol.

At all.

If there are any of you lurking among my Gentle Readers, I offer an alternative method to defeat your stress.

Riot!

All right, my friends, that's it for this week.

I hope you all have an extremely pleasant weekend and that you'll all remember to keep laughing at all times.

If others think you've lost your mind, just laugh at them.

Here, kitty-kitty . . . (uh-oh)

THROWBACK THURSDAY

Back in the day a young man grew up on a homestead in the German-speaking town of Strasburg, North Dakota.

The youngster left school during the fourth grade to work on the family farm.

But he loved music and he persuaded his father to buy him a mail-order accordion for $400, with the promise that the boy would work on the farm until he was 21 to pay off the debt.

On his 21st birthday, he left the farm to pursue a career in music.

That was in  1924.

Forty years later, Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Music, shown every Saturday night on television, were as familiar on the American landscape as apple pie and just as wholesome.

In 1964 or 1965, Welk made a triumphant return to his home state for a visit and was greeted at the airport in Bismarck like a conquering hero.

I was working for a television station there at that time and went to the airport to film the arrival.

I took along my wife and two small children and they were standing along a ropeline as Welk came through and shook everyone's hand.

But my youngest son was only two or three years old then and, as he was just a little tyke, Welk passed right over him without seeing him.

I noticed Scott crying and my wife told me what had happened.

So I picked Scott up and took him over to the maestro.

The next moment was captured by a still photographer.

Lawrence Welk was a millionaire many times over, thanks to his savvy investments in Southern California real estate, but he remained just a nice guy from North Dakota.

(Cue the bubble machine)

AN ORIENTAL TRIM

SWMBO had grown tired of the small Red Tip Photinia bushes in our back yard.

She said they just look like blobs.

But she said they have a good bone structure and with her artistic ways something could be made of them.

So she got busy with her clippers and attacked.

The first result looked pretty good though some lower branches needed to be sawed off.

You can see the difference by comparing with the two smaller bushes behind it.

Another evening and they were also given their first trim.

The three now look pretty darned good, I think.

It's amazing what one can find under all that overgrown shrubbery if one knows how to look.

Meantime, the Rocketman Russian Sage continues it's explosive blooming nearby, much to the joy of the bees and the finches.

And the Gato azul (blue cat) entertains an occasional guest.

Just one big happy family.

TUESDAY TRAVELS

Guadalajara is the second most populous metropolitan area in Mexico with a population of nearly 4 and a half million people.

One of the municipalities surrounding the city proper is Tlaquepaque, a name which may strike a note of familiarity to those of you Gentle Readers who may have visited Sedona, Arizona.

A shopping area there is modeled after the architecture of the Mexican city.

When we lived in Guadalajara in the 1980's and 1990's, one of the favorite places to take visitors was Tlaquepaque, which was a center of pottery and the arts.

There are the usual street vendors in abundance, especially around El Parián and El Jardín Hidalgo, two plazas that are the heart of the city.

But there are also tony shops with high art, like the gallery of the sculptor and artist Sergio Bustamante.

(That one is for the ladies.)

I believe these were some of the works in Bustamante's gallery.

SWMBO posed with this lovely sculpture.

And I posed with this brass chacmool, a replica of a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican sculpture that first appeared around the 9th Century.

I'd have loved to have taken him home but my appreciation far outstripped my income.

Then there was this svelte young miss.

After a morning spent browsing the shops with our visitors, we would usually repair to the indoor patio of El Fuerte restaurant for beer, food and a visit from the resident macaw, who would gladly perch on your arm for a photograph.

We always enjoyed Tlaquepaque as much as our visitors did.

And, unlike them, we could return again the next week.

ROCK ON!

Monday morning Catalyst . . .

. . . with attitude!

PETER COTTONTAIL

With the onset of rain the bunnies are back.

I know they've just been lurking down in the Savannah but the rain really brings them out of hiding.

A couple of weeks ago, I stepped out onto my front porch just before 8 in the evening and saw a couple of white puffy tails bounding through the yards and into the Savannah.

Then to my amazement I also spotted a mangy coyote standing in the middle of the street watching them go, and then me.

He just stood there, fearless, staring at me until I clapped my hands and shouted a "hey!" at him.

Then he turned and casually loped after the bunnies, perhaps planning his evening meal.

Several cats have disappeared in our development in the past few months and one of my neighbors and I have agreed that they probably became "coyote candy".

This bunny in my backyard has been slightly color-enhanced by my computer but you can see how they can stand without the slighest move and be virtually invisible to the human eye.

But perhaps not to the eye of the wily coyote.

BAKING DAY

Yesterday I decided to try a recipe I had read recently for a Russian Black Bread, a sort of pumpernickel with caraway seeds, fennel, cider vinegar, espresso powder, chocolate, molasses and butter, as well as three different kinds of flour and wheat germ.

Never mind that it was one of the hottest days of the summer.

In the kitchen, my ambition is sometimes frequently exceeded by my foolhardiness.

SWMBO could and would tell you.

And so it began.

I had two jars of instant bread yeast in the fridge, one nearly empty, one new.

I combined all of the old with some of the new to get the amount I needed.

It didn't bloom well and I showed it to Judy and said I didn't think it was right.

It wasn't foamy, it was lumpy, but she said it smelled all right and to go ahead.

"Our" mistake.

Once all of the 20 or so ingredients had been combined and the bread rested for a couple of hours, it had risen barely at all. 

So we gave it another couple of hours.

Then a call to the West Coast, hoping to find some help from some regular bread makers there.

It pretty much sounded like a loss.

But eventually it was divided into two loaf pans and allowed to rise for another hour or so and it seemed to have come up some so I baked it.

An hour later and about 7 hours after starting, I had bread.

It seemed pretty heavy but "the knock" sounded right and so we set them on a rack to cool.

A little while later we tried a loaf and you know what?

It was pretty darned good with a decided caraway aroma.

Rich and flavorful, I thought.

SWMBO grudgingly agreed but told me to never use old yeast again and to never combine it with new yeast.

The real test comes today when a slice gets toasted.

FRIDAY FUNNIES

Since all most of the United States is going to be baking this weekend, I thought I'd call this edition of the Friday Funnies: Hot Enough For Ya?

Enjoy.

Okay, Gentle Readers, have a balmy weekend, keep laughing and remember, as kitty tells us, this too shall pass.

Here, kitty-kitty . . .

THROWBACK THURSDAY

Back in the middle 1960's I was employed by a radio and television company in Bismarck, North Dakota.

The parent station of a combine that included several other radio and t.v. stations in other markets was KFYR.

I had worked my way up in the news department to where in 1967, I was an anchorman, the news director, a reporter, photographer and film editor.

News departments in the Dakotas were a lot smaller in those days.

At some point we decided to incorporate a nightly poll in our news coverage.

It became known as TVQ, Tonight's Viewer Question.

As I recall, we announced the question on the 6 p.m. news and the results of the call-in poll on the 10 p.m. news.

It wasn't real scientific but the above results proved that North Dakota voters apparently knew what they were talking about.

It was posed sometime in 1967.

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson was nearly defeated in the New Hampshire primary by Senator Eugene McCarthy.

A few days later Senator Robert Kennedy entered the race.

There was also the segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace, in the mix.

Faced with massive voter discontent over the Vietnam War, Johnson saw no way that he could win.

Coupled with his concerns about his failing health, he shocked the nation when announced at the end of a televised speech on March 31st of 1968 that "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."

After the assassination of Kennedy, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey won the nomination and was defeated by Richard Nixon in the general election.

Whenever I look back at some of those days I realize that I have lived through some historic times.

WHY I MOVED TO MEXICO

This story is mostly true with some lies mixed in. That's called literary discretion.

The story was prompted, over the years, by people saying to me "You're moving where? Why? Aren't you afraid of the bandits? Are you going to learn to speak Spanish?"

(The less intelligent would ask if I was going to learn to speak Mexican.)

It goes way back, to 1972, when my wife and family and two cats headed out from Indianapolis to Arizona.

That was to be a first stop before leaving the land of Nixon.

(As it turned out he left long before we did.)

The year or two to get a writing career started so we could support ourselves as free-lancers actually lasted 14 years and we left to leave the land of Reagan.

To you Republicans reading this . . . sorry.

Judy (SWMBO) had begun making candles back in Indiana and we figured that would work just as well in Arizona.

We hadn't counted on triple digit heat that melted all the candles.

I finally found a job at a t.v. station that I held onto for 13 years until I couldn't take it any more.

After a pretty much failed career as video producers we realized we had enough money to live in Mexico.

We had a Volkswagen Quantum station wagon.

Judy had the bright idea to carefully measure the inside of it with the rear seats folded flat and make a pattern on the floor and wall of one room of the house we were renting.

Whatever would go into that space would go with us to Mexico.

Everything else would be given to the by-this-time scattered kids or sold.

When we scheduled our sale we found a thrift store company . . . let's call it Hard Wishes to avoid any lawsuits . . . to conduct it for us.

The agreement was that anything that didn't sell would be donated to their store.

And they would go through the house and price everything.

It was interesting to me to see how many items were sold at bargain basement prices to the people who came to run the sale for us.

And how much stuff went to the store after being unsold at their "fair" prices.

My advice if you're inclined to have such a sale?

As they might say in New York City, fuhgeddaboudit!

But the goods accumulated in 15 years of marriage was mostly all done away with and hauled away.

We had loaded the VW.

Twice, in fact, after we discovered that a friend who lived south of the border had a storage unit we could use for a few weeks.

But to get back to the subject of this post . . why we moved to Mexico.

Judy made a careful accounting of every peso, dollar and cent we spent in the month of March 1990, after we had been there for several years.

I'm only going to point out a few items to give you an idea of our living standard, with the Mexican price in pesos and the U.S. dollar equivalent.

Two beers: 1700  pesos, 63 cents
2 restaurant meals (with drinks): 31,000 pesos, $11.44
2 cartons cigarettes: 20,980 pesos, $7.74
Liquor: 168,400 pesos, $62.14
    (1 case of brandy, 3 liters vodka, 3-1/2 liters of tequila, 4 bottles of wine)
2 restaurant meals at each beach restaurant
   Charlies in La Manzanilla, 55,000 pesos, $20.30
   Charlies in La Manzanilla, 42,000 pesos, $15.50
   Corales in Barra de Navidad, 50,000 pesos, $18.45
Full tank of gasoline: 20,000 pesos, $7.38
Car wash: 5,000 pesos, $1.85
Doctor/stitches in leg/medicine: 235,550 pesos, $86.92
Groceries: 182,725 pesos, $66.83
2 months electricity: 266.713 pesos, $98.42
2 dinners at El Asador restaurant: 56,000 pesos, $20.66

As you can see by the above items, the dollar went a long way in Mexico back then.

In that one month in which we made trips to the beach from our home in Guadalajara, dined out in fine restaurants frequently and enjoyed our expatriate (pirate) life to the fullest, we spent a little over $1,500.

And if you examine the prices for beer and liquor and cigarettes you can see that Mexico was subsidizing our vices.

The doctor visit, which occurred on the busiest day of the year during the festival of San Patricio (St. Patrick), took place in the rear of a drugstore, where he had an operating table set up.

He spoke perfect English, my wife said he was very handsome and he took care of my wounds quickly and professionally.

I was carrying a 5 gallon glass water bottle when I lost grip, dropped it to a tile floor where it smashed and then fell into it, providing me eventually with a couple of nice scars on my leg.

If anyone asks about them I have two responses prepared: the first that I was gored during a bullfight; the second, that I got into a knife fight with a midget.

Our experiences with the medical profession in Mexico were unique to Americans used to quick in-and-out appointments.

When my wife broke her arm and spent a couple of days in the hospital, her handsome (older) doctor visited her in her hospital room, massaged her feet while talking to her about her injury and later invited us to his home for dinner.

The vast majority of our time in Mexico was wonderful.

We found that the places we chose to live had many Americans and Canadians that we socialized with along with a few Mexican professionals who spoke perfect English.

So we never learned more than a modicum of Spanish.

(Though I did master a few Mexican curse words and phrases!)

With the increase in narco-crime, I'm not sure I'd go back now though I know there is still a huge norteamericano presence in places like Ajijic and Guadalajara, where we lived and in other cities like San Miguel de Allende and Puerto Vallarta.

By the way, the candle business never took off and, with the exception of what I write in my Oddball Observations, never did my intended career as a writer.

But our years in Mexico in the 1980's and 1990's were one of the highlights of our life.

Incidentally, Lori from Seattle, who faithfully reads this blog and supplies me with many of the items I feature on Friday Funnies was one of the lifelong friends we first met when we lived in Mexico.

I feel that living, or even just visiting, in a different country for awhile gives one a different view of one's native land as well as those places we call "foreign".