birds and birds' food

The heron in the video spent about an hour flying away from me this morning.  Fly away, land 40 feet off, over and over again.  I was disturbing the fishing, apparently.  After a while I started to feel like a nuisance.  I was quiet, but I wasn't a bird.  The morning was mild and soft, but now it looks like winter.  Happy Halloween. 

seaweed and sassafrass

The best thing that happened this morning was walking through a crowd of gulls and they ignored me.  They didn't flap or fly away or do that cranky gull yelling -- they just stood there, looking out to sea and I walked past them quietly.

Halloween test-drive

Rockland Breakwater

 

When you walk the breakwater you have to pay attention to how the big pieces of granite fit together ... or don't fit together so well.  In some places you need to jump a little to get to the next section.  All of the granite is uneven and filled with puddles.  The gulls are out there yelling.  Two people were fishing from the edge of the breakwater and one man was working a skiff around the bay side looking for lobster.  

There are three wind turbines out there on Vinalhaven.  At night you can see their red lights shining.

chalk

I'm keeping all of my pictures here at home.  Phoebe told me she just burned some paintings and it was very satisfying.  I plan to do the same thing -- plus remove a bunch of drawings from frames, burn the drawings, then donate the frames.  I've got a few chalkboards around; I'll get some of the good and vibrant chalk and that should satisfy my need to draw.  Erasing and starting over is good.
And for now, I will keep my sketchbooks and dip pens.  Can't give them up -- yet.  Maybe never, who knows?  I'd like to get dropped off somewhere desolate when Charlie goes up to hunting camp next month.  I could stay by myself and draw for days.  But no more shows.
I had a dream about bare walls last night.  And a woman was writing notes about me; I was trying to speak to her but she left and never came back. 

the dump

 

This isn't all there is to the dump.  There's a place for ashes, a place for scrap metal, a place for old printers, a swap shop (but they don't take toilets) and a big yellow container to put used clothes in whose contents will then get sorted and redistributed to those who need them.  

I always try to use less stuff -- less plastic, especially, but I could do a lot better.

I got this plant stand at the swap shop a few years ago:

pomegranate

I made a haiku board to play with.  It's a piece of sheet metal from Rankin's with two holes drilled in the top so it can hang on the wall.  There are 5 syllable lines and 7 syllable lines.  (A haiku often follows the 5-7-5 pattern.)  I will have kids start to add in their own lines.  Grown-ups too.
I used old refrigerator word magnets and glued pieces of stiff water color paper on top with the new lines written with Micron pens. 

movie night, books, school

We had game night with my parents last night.  It's fun ... and it's also a way to keep Fiona from disappearing off into the world of texting.  Now it's time to plan for movie night.
I think it will be Amarcord by Fellini.  I miss the theater downtown.  Maybe I'll organize a winter film series right here.  Just films, no potluck.  Eat an early dinner at home, people, then we'll eat cookies, drink tea and watch movies this winter.

Book update:  Just finished Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and am starting Light in August by Faulkner;  these books are for a junior.
Am trying out drawing and writing with a 7th grade boy who struggles to form clear sentences.  He draws an object, or small still life, then writes a physical description of just what he drew.  It grounds him.  Then we move on to fiction.  It seems to be helping.
I also, just for fun, started reading a book about island schools: Island Schoolhouse: One Room For All, by Eva Murray.
I am drawn to school experiences far from the institution, --the bells, big, crowded hallways and segregated age groups.

Megunticook Lake

When the girls were younger we used to sit up here and plan out our fantasy house on the island down below. 

Not far from where this picture was taken there is a huge metal cross painted white on Maiden's Cliff.  As the story goes,  a church group was picnicking up on the mountain and the wind caught a young girl's hat.  She chased it right off the edge of the cliff and died.
I picture that it was a pale straw hat with a blue ribbon.

The story has always given me a shiver up my spine every time I stand up there looking down, and an especially big shiver when I'm up there with kids.

Charlie and Brenda

We went to a big burn party on Friday night to celebrate an 83rd birthday.  I spent most of my time playing apple soccer with the kids under the light of the full moon.  Then we started throwing rotten apples at an old stump.  We called that game "apple sauce."  Our host got the fire going at the food grill by pouring paint thinner over the flames.  I didn't eat any dinner Friday night, but stuck to kicking apples and climbing trees.  A friend of mine described a scene in Truro where she came upon a cranberry bog and thousands of swallows rising up into the air all at once and then    Thump    plunking back down again.
Here is a drawing I did this morning of Charlie and Brenda as children.
 

kids

geese

                             I write and I delete.  Sometimes it's best to say nothing at all.

thinking and drawing (badly)

I like to sit and draw with a bottle of ink and a dip pen, a sketchbook, some plants and pencils.  This is a lousy drawing but it was nice to slow down and be quiet; I was thinking about my little trip to Wellfleet with Brenda and Charlie and about the light in Provincetown and on the beach in Eastham.  I was also thinking about marshes.  And birds. 
Something about the photography made this drawing look 45% worse than it does on the page there in my notebook, seen with the naked eye.  Naked eye without glasses.
I could put together a whole show called: Bad Drawings I've Done While Happily Thinking About Plants and Light.

more of the cape

                        There are two seals visible out there.  Great Whites in the water too.

This is exactly where Thoreau went walking.

Rock Harbor

 I walked where Thoreau walked, although not all the way to Provincetown.  I saw many large gray seals fishing and riding the waves close to shore.  Great White Sharks feed in those waters.  I saw a dorsal fin rise above the surface of the water a couple of times, but it may have been a minke whale.
I love the water and the sand ... and the sky.
I finished Cape Cod by Thoreau and bought Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown by Michael Cunningham when I was in a little book shop in P-town.  I also sat by the water and drew pictures of people eating and of debris on the beach while Charlie drank pints of beer.
At night you can hear coyotes; they sound like children screaming.  I saw a fox late one night, red like the leaves.  Brenda took me to a shop that sold antique dip pens but they were very expensive (and broken), but the shop was beautiful, with all kinds of papers, pens and sketchbooks.  Most of the time we went walking with groups of people or else visited with family.  It was busy, as usual, but with all the things I love best: water, woods, birds, drawing, reading, family, laughing and stories.

the cape