Author: baraimondomecom

A funny thing about the Theodore Roosevelt National Park is that it straddles the line between Central Time Zone and Mountain Time Zone, so your watch keeps flipping back and forth. Is it two o’clock or three o’clock? Time for lunch, or a mid-morning snack? Too early to go to bed, or bring on the Sandman? It’s very confusing. Lucky I got my nails done before we left.

Okay, now it is time to get up close and personal with nature by taking a hike. We perused our pocket map to see what trails were around. We decided to take one that started at Peaceful Valley Ranch. Idyllic, eh?

In the beginning of a trail you cross the Little Missouri River, which at that time of the year is pretty low. You can hop from rock to rock to cross it. Soon we were climbing uphill to the Big Plateau Trail. We passed a village of prairie dogs. Those guys make all sorts of chirping noises as you pass, I think to warn others that RunningBarb is in the hood. Then they pass it on, and it’s a whole whisper down the lane kind of thing. The prairie dogs pop out of their various ground holes, then jump back down into them, then another critter jumps up and sounds the alarm, and it just goes on and on. Haha, we laugh and think they’re funny and cute, but if they decided to rise up against us it would be game over. 

We made our way up to the plateau of the name and things evened out a bit. When I am in an area that I think of as classicly Western – that is, the hills going on in perpetuity, no visible source of water, with the sun blazing – I think of the movie Treasure of the Sierra Madre, where Humphrey Bogart and a couple of other guys go searching for gold in the Sierra Madre Mountains. No roads, no trail signs, no GPS, no cell signal, no Holiday Inn, no diet Coke. How did those guys do it?

My thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a bison not far from the trail. The National Park Service advises you to leave the distance of two bus lengths between you and certain big-ass animals like bison. I looked at the trail. Then at Mr. Bison. Then at the trail. Two bus lengths? What kind of bus are we talking about? Greyhound? Ride-On? School bus? I thought about those videos on YouTube where people got gored because they wanted a closer pic. I wondered how badly I needed those Instagram likes. 

We went off the trail a bit to stay far away, then picked it up again. He didn’t seem to care.  Brush with danger averted!

We continued on the path, trudging in the heat. Saw some gigantic critter bones. We crossed a couple of little streams with wood planks over them serving as bridges. Soon we came to – outdoor surprise! – more bison, a group this time. How are we going to get around those big boys? Then we realized we had a bigger problem. It was time to cross another stream, and this time there was no bridge. We walked up and down the bank, scoping it out, thinking that surely someone, somebody had built something here that we could cross. What’s wrong with you people? After wearing out the bank with our footprints we decided to do our best at rock-hopping and managed to get over without getting too wet. On the other side the bison had had enough of us and had moved on.

We continued on the desert-like plain, sweating like, well, Humphrey Bogart, when in the distance we spotted a thin, tall object sticking up out of the ground. Hm, that doesn’t look like a prairie dog. Or a rock formation. Or an underfed hiker. As we drew closer we saw that it was a thin metal pipe. And there was water flowing out of it. Totally biblical. I marched over and dunked my head under it like, 50 times. Freezing cold! There was also a primitive bathtub next to it. Imagine coming home from a long day of treasure hunting, filling your tub, knocking back some dark whiskey from your hip flask, and taking a long soak. Dreamy.

North Dakota is home to Theodore Roosevelt National Park. In addition to popularizing pince-nez glasses, Roosevelt is known as the “conservation president.” This is for his colossal efforts to protect nature. A native New Yorker, Roosevelt travelled to the rough rider state to bask in the outdoors, take in the glimmering night sky, and enjoy the bison. That is, hunt down and shoot them. He killed these animals and many others for sport. At the same time, he wanted to protect their existence and took many steps to do so.

According to the National Park Service, 

After becoming president in 1901, Roosevelt used his authority to protect wildlife and public lands by creating the United States Forest Service (USFS) and establishing 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, 4 national game preserves, 5 national parks, and 18 national monuments by enabling the 1906 American Antiquities Act. During his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt protected approximately 230 million acres of public land.

The American Museum of Natural History has posted a timeline of his activities. 

Roosevelt’s namesake national park is divided into two sections, the South Unit and the North Unit. Yes, the names are not very imaginative, but the sights are. We entered the South Unit from a little town called Medora, just below the park. As soon as we went in we began seeing the bison so famous in the area. They are enormous, with furry shoulders and smooth hide. They look very much at ease, munching the grass and raising their head every once in a while to take a look around. That’s all they do. Eat, breath, see.

The geography, stark and brown, has been carved by millions of years of wind and water. The striated hillsides show evidence of the minerals that have been deposited over time. Viewing these rocks gives you a palpable feeling of time. A long time.

We found our way to the campground and picked out a site. There were very few travelers there, and conditions were spare. The water in the campground and been turned off, and there were two pit toilets. We were nearly self-contained, so the conditions suited us just fine.

When night fell we walked out to the field and began identifying stars. And we looked for the comet of the moment, C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. Seeing it would be an experience of a lifetime. It is not expected to be visible again for 80,000 years, if ever. Who knows where we’ll be then? And the closest it would be to Earth was 44 million miles, a long tape measure away.

We got out the binocs and scanned the area where Mr. Big Shot was supposed to be hanging out.

What is a comet, exactly? Well, believe it or not, comets are small icy dirtballs that orbit the Sun. Dirtballs, yes. Stars, on the other hand, are giant balls of hot gas. 

Dirt balls and gas balls. Both elegant twinkles of light patterning the velvet sky.  

It took a while, but eventually we saw the tell-tale tail of the dirty iceball. Our once in a lifetime experience in the wildness of North Dakota. 

North Dakota, that is. And South. Mr. K. and I left late one morning in October. Oh sure, everyone says to get an early start, but that’s a little judgy, isn’t it? What with going to the gym, watering the plants, taking the trash out, and eating a hearty breakfast, let’s see you get an early start. Luckily, we had a long way to go.

We drove through Pennsylvania, into Ohio, into the evening, and spent the night outside of Toledo. We travelled late into the night (we did not get an early start) and booked a hotel just off the highway. The next day we made it into Wisconsin and camped at a beautiful state park. It was freezing cold, and the only place there was running water was in the bathroom sinks. Okay, now we are starting to get into the swing of things! We took a walk as it got dark, viewing the stars as they emerged, hoping the trail we were on actually did loop back as we expected. That would be pretty funny – getting lost on an unknown hiking trail somewhere in Wisconsin the second night of the trip. Hahaha! Eventually we made it back to the van, added a few layers of clothing, and hunkered down under the down quilt and into a deep, dark sleep.

The next day we were anxious to get on our way, early start and everything, and as we were on the road we stumbled across a funky diner that we knew we had to check out. It had a big arrow pointing toward it, so we knew we were in the right place. We were greeted by the alligator host and sat down to a huge meal of fried eggs. All that driving makes you hungry!

More driving, and the next day we finished passing through Wisconsin. Next thing you know we were in Minnesota. Boy, they sure have a lot of lakes there! Right, left, forward, and back. North, south, east, and west. And a Lake Wobegon Trail, if you are into that kind of thing. Minnesota has St. Cloud, which is named for a city in France which was named after a monk. You never know what you are going to find once you start investigating things.  

Head northwest across Minnesota, and before you can say Paul Bunyan you are in Fargo, North Dakota, site of one of my favorite movies! No, not that one. Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter tells the story of a woman in Japan who watches the American movie Fargo, and becomes determined to unearth the suitcase full of cash buried during said movie. Without any knowledge of the United States, Fargo, or how to stay warm in Minnesota in the dead of winter, she takes a flight and follows a hand-made map to the site that she believes will make her rich. I’ll leave you to watch it and see what happens next. But it’s not giving anything away when I say it is a movie made with heart and imagination. 

Fargo is North Dakota’s largest city, with around 133,000 which means it holds around 17 percent of the state’s population. Look around most of North Dakota, whaddya see? Farms. You drive down a main road, and notice a gravel road meeting it, with a mailbox at the end of the road. You look down the road as far as you can see, and there is no house. Where is the house? Who comes in to feed the dog while the owner is away? How long does it take for Dad to bring his kiddo by for a play date? I’ll tell you, these places are way out there. They are set in an area of natural geographic beauty under a majestic sky. And you have to really like being out there on your own.

North Dakota is the 50^th state RunningBarb has visited. Go North Dakota!

Whew, that was close!

How many times have you said this, after narrowly avoiding a car crash, a slipped knife, or a bad fall? Just when you think something bad is going to happen, something else pops up to prevent it. The driver swerves, the knife goes the other way, you catch your balance. We approach death or injury because of a series of events, each of which depends upon the one that came before. Then we avert such death or injury because of yet another event. A fluke.

Social scientist – or as he calls himself, “disillusioned” social scientist – Brian Klass is fascinated by the idea of flukes, so much so that he wrote a book about them. Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters details many instances where something that looked like it was going one way ended up going another. Think of the 1998 movie Sliding Doors, which Klaas mentions. In that flick, Helen, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, runs down to the Tube to catch a train. (This is London, not DC!) The doors slide closed as she approaches (hence the name of the story), and she boards the next one. The rest of the movie shows how her life would spool out if she had missed the train, and how very differently it would go if she had caught it. It is a great demonstration of the premise of Fluke, which is “[B]ut for a few small changes, our lives and our societies could be profoundly different.”  

This book is full of jaw-dropping assertions and stories, and one of them that hit me hard was his description of how unlikely it is that any of us are here at all. Our being born was the result of millions of events, one of which, if different, could have resulted in a different trajectory.

[Y]ou wouldn’t exist if your parents hadn’t met in just the same, exact way. Even if the timing had been slightly different, a different person would have been born.

But that’s also true for your grandparent, and your great-grandparents, and your great-great-grandparents, stretching back millennia.

We sit here today as the result of countless events over thousands (millions? gazillions?) of years. At every step of the way things could have gone otherwise.  

It’s startling to think about how much impact random and unrelated events have over our lives. Klass says that we ignore the randomness because it’s much more comforting to think about our existence being governed by some big, clear forces that have a point, not quirky little mundane stuff. That makes sense, doesn’t it? We’d rather be guided by the Power of the Universe than the power of the train schedule. 

This book helps me to see that missing out on something doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ve really missed out. Something else will come my way. Good or bad? When life is governed by flukes, it’s impossible to say. 

I have just read the book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Yes, I know it was published in 1997. Sometimes it takes a while. Actually, according to the author, it is based on Toltec wisdom, from around the eighth to tenth century. So I guess I’m not the only one late to the party. It’s all right.

I like this book a lot. The Four Agreements are easy to understand. They are probably things your mother taught you. During another generation they would have been considered common sense. However, it’s not a bad idea to get an update and reminder.  

The Four Agreements are:

• Be Impeccable With Your Word.
• Don’t Take Anything Personally.
• Don’t Make Assumptions.
• Always Do Your Best.

That’s it!

Be Impeccable With Your Word. 

Ruiz writes:

“Speak* with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”

He explains:

“The word* is a force; it is the power you have to express and communicate, to think and thereby to create the events of your life.”

I especially like the warning about speaking against yourself. How often do we bring ourselves down because we don’t feel we’re “good enough” or we don’t do something “right?” Don’t reject yourself. If you love yourself you will express that through your encounters with others. Your actions will evoke similar actions in them. And I agree with his assessment that words create events. Of course they don’t literally do that, but you start to believe the language you use to remember and define what is happening. So we need to be careful with it. 

Naturally, with all these rules of what you cannot say, a lot of unnecessary/unhelpful/insulting conversation is shut down. We have to accept being quiet for a while. Isn’t that okay?

Don’t Take Anything Personally.

Ruiz writes:

“Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”

He explains:

“You create an entire picture or movie in your mind, and in that picture you are the director, you are the producer, you are the main actor or actress. Everyone else is a secondary actor or actress. It is your movie. The way you see that movie is according to the agreements you have made with life.”  

This is so interesting. In other words, there is not one “true” version of reality, there is the version you experience through your own decisions of how to experience that reality. There is also the version others experience through their own decisions of how to experience that reality. As humans, we often perceive things in a negative manner, mostly because of our own self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy. What if we could decide to sweep those feelings away and try to observe without judgement? 

Don’t Make Assumptions.

Ruiz writes:

“Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.”

He explains:

“The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth . . . We make assumptions about what others are doing or thinking – we take it personally – then we blame them and react by sending emotional poison with our word.”

The fact is we don’t know what others are thinking or what motivates them. So we try to fill in the gaps. If we like someone we assume the best. If we don’t like someone – well, that’s another story. But why assume anything? We humans don’t like not knowing, but it is better to dig a little to find the facts rather than sit back and stew about the tale we are telling ourselves. We might feel satisfied by labeling someone the “bad guy,” but where does that get us?

Always Do Your Best.

Ruiz writes:

“Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.”

He explains:

“Doing your best, you are going to live your life intensely. You are going to be productive, you are going to be good to yourself, because you will be giving yourself to your family, to your community, to everything. But it is the action that is going to make you feel intensely happy.” 

Sounds good to me! He gives permission to not be hard on yourself: Your best is whatever your best is at that moment. You don’t have to set goals that can’t be met. Doing your best doesn’t feel like work, it comes naturally as you reap the result of it with those around you. It is a way to find meaning in the things you do. 

Wrapping Up.

There is a lot of simple wisdom in the book, and there is also calming and lovely art. When I was reading it I felt like I was walking through an artist’s canvas. There are also a few more chapters that enhance the Four Agreements. And the book is written in a conversational way that made me feel like I was talking with the author.

I will try to keep in mind these Four Agreements, particularly in difficult and stressful situations. They are a good roadmap to a fulfilling life rich with inner peace. 

*Although Ruiz does not explicitly say this, I believe he includes signs and sign languages in the terms “speak” and “word.”

My little town has a beautiful lake where I can swim. Now, before you say anything, I already know that a lot of people don’t like lake swimming. Compare it to a pool. You know a pool is clean – it has that chlorine antiseptic smell which tells you that all germs, bacteria, and other unseen critters are dead, dead, dead. You can see to the bottom. After you swim in a pool your hair and body waft the bleachy aroma for the rest of the day. If you wear the wrong kind of swim suit, its color fades over time and it gets all stretched out. If you are a lap swimmer you need to get to the pool when it is not too busy so you can stake out your lane. There is a real structure to it.

Lake swimming is different. You know there are all kinds of critters there, and they are live, live, live. Take the frogs. They are hanging out in the grasses at the far edge, croaking and hopping, and metamorphosizing. They stick to themselves. 

Then there are the fishies. They come in different sizes and tend to stay near the bottom. They cruise together, first straight, then they hang a sharp right, then they go straight again for a while, then a left, all in unison as though they are following the same GPS. They are very clever.

And what would a lake be without turtles? There are a lot of them this year, floating at the top of the water, paddling on down, and climbing back out to sun on logs from time to time when conditions are just right.

And then there is the snapping turtle. Now, I was raised during a time when our parents bought us tiny turtles as pets, and we kept them in a little clear container with a plastic palm tree. Turtles were small and harmless. And cute! Sure, I’ve seen other types since then, but I always thought the big boys were in the Galapagos Islands or in some other place far, far away. Boy was I wrong.

Our lake has at least one snapping turtle that I have seen on several occasions. Or maybe there are two that I have seen once or twice each. Or three that I have only seen once each. Hard to say. Anyway, this/these guy(s) are more than a foot (that is, more than twelve inches) wide with a head the size of my fist and giant claws the size of seriousness. They mean business. And guess what, a while ago, one of them bit a human person. Yikes!

So here I am in the lake, where the water is dark, and as I swim I notice plunks and splashes made by unidentified organisms plopping into the lake from the shore. I imagine that Mr. Snapper Man has eyed me and is moving in for the prey. I tell myself that I am bigger. I tell myself that and that my moving and splashing will discourage him from coming closer. I tell myself that if he is hungry, there are a lot of other far more tasty options for him to munch on. I can’t help it, but the theme song from Jaws pounds in my head. 

Soon my swimming is finished, and my unbroken flesh and I go back to the beach to dry off. 

Just another Brush With Danger in my little town. 

There are a lot of art museums in the world, places where the masterpieces of the planet attract thousands, millions of viewers a year to touch with their eyes the unique expressions of their well-recognized brilliant and innovative creators. There are the Smithsonian art museums, Guggenheim, the Victoria and Albert, the Louvre, the Uffizi, and many others. They house pieces made by originators who are household names and have influenced the trajectory of culture over the centuries. You tour those galleries in quiet, marveling at how many ways there are to represent the human experience, how many genres, how many messages. These walls are hallowed.

But when I am thinking about how to scratch my art-lover itch, I head right up the road to Baltimore, or, more accurately, Bawlmer. There, located several blocks from the west channel of the Patapsco River, stands the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM). You know you’re in the neighborhood when you spy a sculpture of a tree made out of shards of mirror. Then you noticed a giant-sized egg, also covered in mirrors. When you look up you see a giant whirligig spinning in the sky. 

AVAM showcases artists whom you have never heard of: people who quietly create in their home or on their property, who don’t submit their work to sell in galleries. There is the age old question “What makes art art?” and while I don’t claim to have the answer, it seems to me that what makes art art is the pouring of yourself into what you are doing. It is the love and caring you bring to your project, the divining and nurturing of it, kind of like you are raising a child. The artists in AVAM typically do not have access to traditional art education, like art school, or the typical tools of artists such as paint or special drawing pencils.

Visionary art as defined for the purposes of the American Visionary Art Museum refers to art produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself.

In short, visionary art begins by listening to the inner voices of the soul, and often may not even be thought of as ‘art’ by its creator. 

Examples include the work of:

Wayne Kusey, who built a replica of the famous 1906 ocean liner, the Lusitania.  Out of toothpicks.

Esther Krinitz, who hand-embroidered vivid scenes from her childhood in Poland, depicting her experience when the Nazis showed up. The tableaus are luscious and detailed, and heartbreaking. 

Ray Materson, who learned how to embroider while in prison, creating tiny portraits using threads from socks.

These works speak to the imagination of unique souls who sense the world in a deep and powerful way. They portray an indescribable feeling of connection with something – well – indescribable. They left me with a recognition that there is so much more around us than what we know with our physical being. 

And this is why I go back. Sure, all the big names and galleries are great. Don’t want to miss those. They are part of our history and society. But the visionaries leave me with something more. They leave me looking for the unseen.

You know how everybody talks about the “negativity bias?” That is the idea where if someone says something nice to you, you forget about it, but if someone says something mean you remember it forever. What that translates into in real life is, if you get a thousand likes and 421 smiley comments of the picture you posted on Facebook of a werewolf drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic’s, but one that says “that doesn’t look like a real piña colada,” which is the statement that is going to keep you up at night? Which thought is the one that is going to burrow itself deep into the primitive structures of your brain, drilling into your darkest zones, egging on your primordial emotions, and urging you to plan your most nefarious revenge? Why it most certainly is the throw away “that doesn’t look like,” etc. Humans tend to be drawn toward the bleak and angry, not the cheerful and bright.

Not so sunflowers. They gaze toward the sun, and as that golden star moves through the sky, the sunflowers slowly turn throughout the day in unison to keep their faces toward it. Quietly and diligently.

There is a luscious sunflower meadow near where I live, at the McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area. This week it is in full bloom. I have been visiting the meadow for many years. In the old days I would be out biking in the area and stop on by to see it. Hardly anyone was ever there. You could weave in and around the flowers through the field, getting up close and personal. Since then it has become quite popular, and now there is a fence around that the purports to be electric. Its stated reason is to keep the deer out, but I suspect it is really to keep the “Dear!” out. 

In any case, you can closely observe the flowers in various stages of growth and decay, examine the bees and birds, and revel in how this cool stuff just keeps going and going. Like a miracle. Which it is, I guess. 

The field is located near the C&O Canal Towpath next to the Potomac River, and after taking in the flowers I had an amble along the trail. It was full of cyclists riding its entire length, from Cumberland, Maryland, to Georgetown in DC, 184.5 miles. I did that ride one year. It was a great experience. No cars, just people on foot or bike, surrounded by the greenery around the path, which opened at some points to provide glimpses of the water.  This morning I saw lots of happy faces coming in my direction. I smiled and said hello to a bunch of them. One of them called me “friend,” which made me feel warm and fuzzy. It was great to see so many people taking that trip. 

As I was finishing my walk I came upon a picnic site that was strewn with fast food containers, empty beer cans, plastic water bottles, and other types of trash. Wow, people are slobs. Idiots. Morons. Holes of various types. Disgusting. Horrible. Worst of the worst. 

Then up popped a different thought: What about the guy who sees a mess like this, and all she does is complain about it? So I grumbled for a few minutes more, then pulled down one of the free trash bags the National Park Service sets out so that no one has any excuse to leave a lot of crap lying around. I filled two bags, brought them back with me, and deposited them in my rubbish container at home.

Be a sunflower.

Last week, Representative Victoria Spartz (R-IN) was charged with a weapons violation for carrying a .380-caliber firearm in her suitcase through security at Dulles International Airport, just outside Washington. When asked why she brought it, her answer was (in so many words) “I forgot.” Hahahaha, I can relate! I’m always forgetting about my artillery in one random place or another. There was the time when my Beretta Nano fell out of my shorts pocket when I was playing tennis, and I tripped over it. Lost the point, darn!

There also was the incident where I left my Uzi in a grocery cart in the herbs section of Giant. I had gotten distracted looking for a fresh bunch of parsley. They could really use a new produce manager, you know what I mean? Last but not least, there was the episode when I dropped my rosy pink Ruger LCP Max while digging through my purse looking for a nail file. It went flying. The Max, that is. I’m sure I’ll find it someday.

Of course, when I’m at home there are plenty places to store my piece. According to a threat-adjacent web site which Running Barb is afraid to name because it is handled by Big Guys with Big You-Know-Whats, I could stuff it into an empty cereal box in the pantry, place it behind a blanket or tapestry hung on a wall, or even park it inside a bag of dirty clothes! Or – bury it under a rack of bathroom towels, plunk it into in a bag in the freezer, or swaddle it in an old shoebox under the bed. Why, there is just no end to the places where you can hide your heat. 

Of course guns are not the only things people forget. Our fine citizens bring all kinds of weird stuff to the airport, and sometimes they leave it there. Houston’s Hobby Airport’s Assistant Security Director, Jason Smith, has named a few trinkets: “Skeleton remains . . . gold bars . . . bags of diamonds, a prosthetic limb . . . And how they left a prosthetic limb, I don’t understand.”  

And it’s not only airports. Uber also reports picking up some odd scraps, including:

• hair toupees
• live turtles
• trays of meat pie
• tubs of surgical implants
• containers with spiders in them
• a jar of oysters
• a burrito steamer
• a framed autograph from Taylor Swift
• WWE championship belt.

Honestly, how do you leave your oysters behind?

And it doesn’t end there. While moving from Point A to Point B, passengers have left:

• A human skull
• A wedding dress (with matching shoes!)
• Pieces of the World Trade Center
• A missile guidance system
• A 5.8-carat diamond ring
• 50 vacuum-packed frogs
• A headstone … already engraved
• Another(!) prosthetic leg
• A live lobster.

C’mon, people!

Now that I have TSA pre-check I stuff everything I need for travel into fat case, zip it up, and away we go! No chance of misplacing anything. Oh, and that precheck is something else. It even inspired me to write a poem:

In the past I stood in line with all the riff raff

Checking my watch and sighing, standing still

But now my life has changed, in oh so many ways

It’s like I’ve made it to the top of a great big hill . . .

Cuz’ I’ve got the TSA pre-check

I am standing in the shorter line

I get to keep my shoes on

And it keeps getting better all the time. 

Sing it if you can. You can sense how the experience really touched my heart. 

So that’s it folks! Moral of the story is pay attention! And leave the meat pie at home!

Well, knock me over with a raptor feather.

You know how the bald eagle is the national bird of the United States? Well guess what? According to The Washington Post, it isn’t. The Post explains:

The confusion stems from the Great Seal of the United States. In 1782, with victory over Great Britain imminent, Congress approved a seal for our new nation with a handsome bald eagle emblazoned at the center. . . Ever since, we’ve conflated the bird’s public perch with an appointed position. Some say its presence on the seal makes it our national bird. But if we follow that reasoning, we could say that the pyramid, which also appears on the seal, is our national edifice.

So, if the position of “national bird” is open, who should be applying? 

Of course, the obvious choice for our country at this moment would be the cuckoo. Its call actually sounds like the word “cuckoo,” so it’s like killing two birds with one – oh, never mind. Its color is greyish-brown – not particularly flashy. It’s a bit of a trickster: females lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, leaving said other birds to raise the young ‘uns. Crafty and sinister. Like a lot of stuff happening ‘round these parts these days. 

Or maybe the parakeet. Running Barb once found a parakeet hopping around in the grass near her house. Yes, she did. A message to the Town listserv did not turn up any rightful owners, so she kept it. Then she learned that parakeets like to have a buddy, so she got him one. They mostly lived in a cage, but when the weather was warm she let them fly around on the screened-in porch. If you have to be a caged bird, a cage the size of a big room can’t feel all that cagey, right?

After a while the Birdy One died. So she had to replace him so Birdie Two would not be lonely. Then Birdy Two died. Then Running Barb could see where all this was going, and she gave everything away to a neighbor. 

Parakeets are pretty, and they sing a happy, chirpy song. We sure could use something like that. 

But my choice would be the American crow. With its shiny black feathers and distinctive “caw caw caw,” it makes itself known far and wide. It chases off anyone (anybird?) who bothers it and it doesn’t take any crap. It knows how to make and use tools. And you don’t have to go searching high and low using an expensive pair of binocs in order to see one. They’re everywhere! You can laze in your backyard drinking a beer, and they will be up in the trees cackling to each other, flying hither and yon, doing important bird stuff, and otherwise enjoying the day. They just seem to get things done.

So, please join me nominating the crow as our nation’s representative. We could do a lot worse!