Evening Walk



I've Grown Accustomed To His Face
(with apologies to Alan Jay Lerner)

I've grown accustomed to his face.
The way he scuttles on the walk.
I've grown accustomed to the frown that
I make when he chows down
On seedlings, on grass.
He digs with such class.
And when he rubs his little wings
It seems to me he wants to talk.
I was afraid of going buggy but my camera showed me how,
In these days of hot and muggy I can find his charm --
And now
I've grown accustomed to his smile;
Accustomed to his pose;
Accustomed to his face.

(To the tune of "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face,"
from the musical My Fair Lady.)

This is a male tawny mole cricket (Scapteriscus vicinus, Family Gryllotalpidae) -- once again spotted by Mary (a.k.a. my Mole Cricket Finder), this time on the sidewalk of our local strip mall. Both forelegs show up clearly in this shot, and the fact that the tibial dactyls (essentially the "fingers") are close together suggests vicinus. A side view of this same guy also has a good view of the dactyls. More on mole crickets is in my entry Peanuts and Coffee.

My buddy here showed up near the end of our walk, which was originally supposed to be just a brief jaunt around the block, so that Mary could show me a tower of jasmine....



When Mary went out jogging a few mornings ago she came back with news of this Star Jasmine dripping from one of our neighbor's trees. Trachelospermum jasminoides, Family Apocynaceae (dogbane family). Also called Confederate jasmine. Says Floridata.com, "This beautiful and energetic evergreen vine creates a special scene all through the year as it clambers 40 ft (12 m) up tree trunks using its holdfast roots to pull itself almost to the top. During April and May the plant goes two-tone as it flushes light green with new growth. Shortly thereafter the scene transforms again when the delicate 1 in (2.5 cm) white pinwheel flowers delicately breathe enchanting fragrances into the spring air."

This plant, however, is neither a "true" jasmine nor native to the American south (despite the name "Confederate jasmine") or to the U.S. at all. "It comes from China but has been a popular garden plant in Europe and the U.S. for centuries," says Floridata. It's called a jasmine because of its heady, jasmine-like fragrance.

Floridata adds, "Do not grow Confederate jasmine on trees that are near structures. Any vine (wisteria, Virginia creepers, English ivy, etc.) can make trees top heavy and subject to falling in high winds. If you grow this or any vine on trees, monitor growth and trim stems if it becomes too massive."



Zooming in, I got this shot of a jasmine curtain.



This individual flower doesn't come from the jasmine in our neighborhood, but from a low clump of the plants at the Crystal River Mall, one of the major shopping areas in the county. These plantings are dotted throughout the parking lot and remain low to the ground. We'd been at the mall the day before we took this walk.



In our evening jaunt, we took streets we haven't fully explored yet, and found this charming treehouse in a neighbor's yard.



Despite the fact that we hear these mourning doves all the time (Zenaida macroura, Family Columbidae) I didn't get a shot of one until now. Ranges from southeast Alaska to southern Canada to Panama, according to the Peterson Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America. I have yet to photograph one in flight with its marvelous pointed tail spead out.



The magnolias are blooming again (Southern Magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora). Our Audubon Society Field Guide to Florida says these trees grow to be 100 feet tall, and I can believe it. Last year I had taken shots of their autumn seed pods, including a fallen pod.



I'm still trying to ID this plant, which I haven't been able to find in our field guides. Mary thought it might be an osier, but not all the details seem to match.



Not far from where Mary saw the mole cricket I had spotted this Grapevine Beetle (Pelidnota punctata, Family Scarabaeidae (Scarab Beetles)). According to Bugguide.Net, this genus was named by MacLeay in 1817. Pelidnota is from the Greek pelion, livid (meaning discolored: ashen, gray, or lead-colored--or black-and-blue), plus the Greek suffix -ota, made. The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders gives its range as the eastern half of the United States. "Adult feeds on leaves and fruits of wild and cultivated grapes. Larva eats decaying wood in tree stumps....Grapevine Beetles fly rapidly, usually in curves."

This one had been sitting pretty still on the sidewalk, luckily for me. Getting my camera to focus in low light was a bit of a challenge. Mary attempted to move it to a better-lit area, but it took flight first.

Scarabs range from beneficial recyclers of dung, carrion, and decaying vegetable matter, to agricultural pests, according to the Audubon. "They have distinctive, clubbed antennae composed of leaflike plates, called lamellae, that can be drawn into a compact ball or fanned out to sense odors." Here you can see one of those antennae near its left eye, with the lamellae fanned out --probably to sniff the photographer.

Surfing the Continuum


Columna Universalis. More on this image is at the end of this entry.

Notes from a droplet....

Late on Saturday night I rifled through my CD collection, knowing ahead of time that I needed my recording of Miklos Rosza's music that he'd written for the movie Ben Hur -- because I'd heard snatches of it in my brain. Like peering into the fridge and letting my body tell me what it needs -- protein, or green vegetables, or whatever nourishment will hit the spot.

This time it was brain nourishment. Soul nourishment. Muse music.

I snatched the headphones from my transcribing machine, where they'd resided for days, and brought them into the bedroom. Plugged them into my CD player there, slipped in the Rosza, set my journal notebook and glasses beside my clock radio behind the pillow. Lay down, put the headphones on, punched Play, closed my eyes, and listened.

I didn't sleep that night.

Behind my eyes a movie coalesced; all I had to do was watch and listen. Not Ben Hur but scenes from the novel I'm currently writing, #4 in a series. (I'm currently trying to find a publisher for #s 1-3.)

And then #5 in the series, a straight-line plot structure, as clear as #4 is muddy. From beginning to end. Part of it had already started coming in glimpses as I was writing the end to book #2, about a year and a half ago.

And then brief glimpses of the structure of #6 -- what will be the last in the series as currently envisioned. Like peering through binoculars at a very distant landscape. For the first time I've seen how and when this epic is actually ending -- which harkens back to a 15-line poem (Joseph Payne Brennan's "When Tigers Pass") that had inspired a short story, the first seed of this entire process, back in 1985.

Again, as currently envisioned. Sometimes things change as I work all the nuances into place. Book #4 is so convoluted that it might well split into different pieces. I don't know yet. But I console myself with the fact that part of the job of a first draft is to be sloppy.

The tricky part is remembering all the details of the visions, like remembering those of a dream, which is why I had my notebook and glasses close at hand. When the first set of visions cleared I turned on the light and scribbled. By the time I was done scribbling Mary was ready for bed; I turned out the light and lay down again.

Round 2 of the visions came pouring in.

I got up, took in hand the flashlight I'd put by the CD player in advance, and quietly gathered up the CD, headphones, notebook, glasses. Moved it all into the studio and scribbled more, now headphoned into the studio's CD player. Hours later, when I felt ready to go to bed, Mary was up after her "Sleep Part 1" (she tends to sleep in approximate 4-hour stretches).

I lay down again, this time without music.

Didn't make a difference. I lay quietly, immersed in Round 3. We had a play to go to Sunday afternoon, so when I rolled out of bed I knew I wouldn't roll back in again until last night. I continued scribbling until it was time to get dressed.

Our local theater is doing "Love, Sex, and the IRS," which was hilarious and wonderfully performed. Afterwards we had a bite to eat and headed back home, where I was finally able to get in a solid night's sleep. When I awoke I continued to get snatches, more details. More scribbling. This time the music in my head sent me scrambling for my CD of Prokofiev's Symphony #2 -- which I am headphoned into as I'm writing this.

My notes are like outlines, blocking out scenes or drawing broad-brush Big Pictures. Like the outline of a drawing, before one goes in and adds the subtleties of shadows or cross-hatching, finer lines.

One thing is clear, though. I may be the one doing the writing, the world-building, the character development and plot points and all the rest. But I'm not the one in control.

From my scribbles-after-the-scribbles (edited for presentation here):

Lying in bed, in the midst of these Visions, I felt the Continuum. The Matryoshka dolls, as it were, of creation. That as surely as I am writing these characters, I am one who myself is being written, and it is not a one-way street. It works both ways. I am surely not the first nor the only person who has felt this way -- there have been enough indications otherwise.

But I feel this as another layer in the Journey that began with my childhood fantasies, continued with those of adulthood, and that now deepens with this series of books. Going back to those childhood fantasies and the entity I called Everything -- the place where all fiction is real, with all its layers of interactions -- coupled with the Hindu Brahmanas concept of this world as Maya -- I am like one of the proverbial blind men feeling up the elephant. In addition to having their own adventures, the characters in my childhood fantasies had walked into other people's stories and interacted with their characters, and there is an entire literary form that re-casts and re-visions tales (e.g., Naslund's Ahab's Wife).

It's part of sharing the human condition -- all the visions and re-visions -- in whatever creative medium. We all create universes and our own personal myths. But it's the interactions, the sharing of those visions -- the ways in which they transform us and are then themselves transformed and interpreted and re-interpreted. We become greater than a single creator or group of creators, greater than the sum of our parts. We are swept up in that Continuum, which flows both (or more) ways. And I can get my brain around only a tiny part of that -- but on occasion I see a glimpse of a deeper layer of landscape.

It brings me back to 2 quotes: Julia Cameron's "We are here to nourish God" (which she writes can stand for "good, orderly direction") in The Artist's Way. And the quote on a book jacket I'd seen at the Israel Book Shop in Brookline, Massachusetts, years ago -- that Judaism is "God in search of man."

It's a partnership, a collaboration, all our visions feeding into a vast stream and influencing content and flow. And then we drink from that stream, whose components are also the building blocks of our souls. Individually, we are droplets, microcosms. Right now, as my brain tries to stretch into my current mode of thinking and tears of awe fall down my cheeks, I am listening to/drinking from the flow of a man who died 5 years before I was born. His music, unheard, lives on in the words I am writing here. This same music drove visions I'd had as a child -- different visions, seeds of the ones that come to me now, seeds of this current level/layer of reasoning.

The epic I'm writing is not something I am pushing out into the world. It is something the world -- the flow, the Continuum -- is pulling in.

Notes on the image up top

"Columna Universalis" was inspired by light reflections on one of my data CDs (see below). I'd first read about the "columna universalis" (the "Cosmic Pillar") in Mircea Eliade's 3-volume A History of Religious Ideas. In my own meditations the "columna universalis" sometimes takes the form of a bright, sparkling fountain of light.

Eliade, vol. 1 (From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries, pp. 41-42): "The agrarian cultures develop what may be called a cosmic religion, since religious activity is concentrated around the central mystery: the periodical renewal of the world.....The Cosmic Tree is held to be at the center of the world, and it unites the three cosmic regions, for it sends its roots down into the underworld, and its top touches the sky."

Volume 2 (From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity, pg. 157): "The tree Yggdrasill, situated at the Center, symbolizes, and at the same time constitutes, the universe. Its top touches the sky and its branches spread over the world. Of its three roots, one plunges into the land of the dead (Hel), the second into the realm of the giants, and the third into the realm of men....Obviously, we have here the well-known image of the Universal Tree, situated at the "center of the world" and connecting the three planes: Heaven, Earth, and Hades."

Volume 3 (From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms, pg. 6): "In Asia, as in many other parts of the world, the structure of the universe is understood on the whole as having three tiers -- Heaven, Earth, Hell -- interconnected by a central axis. This axis passes through an "opening," a "hole," by which the gods descend to the Earth and the dead into subterranean regions. It is through this opening that the soul of the shaman is able to fly away or descend during his celestial or infernal journeys.... In the middle of Heaven shines the pole-star, which supports the celestial tent like a post. It is called "The Golden Pillar" (by the Mongols, Buryats, etc.), "the Iron Pillar" (by the Siberian Tatars, etc.), "the Solar Pillar" (by the Teleuts, etc.)....On the microcosmic plane, it is signified by the central pillar of the dwelling-place or the highest opening of the tent."


Original for "Columna Universalis": CD Shot #4

I was swapping out CDs from my computer when I noticed how the light from my desk lamp threw rainbow colors on the disc's readable surface. I started with this blurred macro shot. The center part of the CD is near upper left. The inside of my lampshade is reflected on the disc, over to the right.

First I cropped the image, darkened the colors a bit, and very slightly increased the contrast. I set the white to be transparent, then set the cropped image against a black background, which also extended the top of the image and created the frame.

I returned to my original photograph, selected the long rib inside the reflected lamp, and performed a rough trim, leaving various color reflections. After applying repeated watercolor effects, I rotated the rib and flipped it, to have the green and purple reflections at the top, before I incorporated it into the final image.

Peanuts and Coffee


Taken outside a nearby supermarket. I haven't yet identified these flowers, but several pink, yellow, and white varieties had been planted in the parking lot.

The title refers to my overnight fuel. I'm taking a break from transcribing before I continue on. A fresh pot of coffee (by "pot" I mean the massive, 32-cup variety) sits on the counter. Been juggling the work between meetings and our Hurricane Shutter Quest, since that is this year's main home improvement project. At least, that's the plan.

Meanwhile, the denizens of spring are out in full force....

Hello, Young Lubber (with apologies to Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein)



Romalea guttata (sometimes called Romalea microptera), Family Romaleidae. The Eastern Lubber Grasshopper was my introduction to Florida wildlife when we moved here 3 years ago. I'd exclaimed to Mary, "We've got black grasshoppers with racing stripes in the yard!" I think the ones I'd seen had yellow stripes at the time, but juvenile lubbers can have yellow or red stripes.

Says the University of Florida, "The lubber is surely the most distinctive grasshopper species within the southeastern United States. It is well known both for its size and its unique coloration. The wings offer little help with mobility for they are rarely more than half the length of the abdomen. This species is incapable of flight and can jump only short distances. Mostly the lubber is quite clumsy and slow in movement and travels by walking and crawling feebly over the substrate....The immature eastern lubber grasshopper differs dramatically in appearance from the adults. Nymphs (immature grasshoppers) typically are completely black with one or more distinctive yellow stripes. The front legs and sides of the head are often red."

Indeed, as commented on Bugguide.Net following Hannah Nendick-Mason's photo, juvenile lubbers are usually referred to by their yellow stripe. But, says Bugguide's info page, "Juvenile (nymph) is black with yellow (or red) stripes, also distinctive."

The little one shown here is, I estimate, about a half-inch long; the adults are considerably larger. When I first saw those I couldn't get over how psychedelic their carapace is. I hope to catch one on pixel later on, but Patrick Coin has a good shot of an adult on Bugguide. (The ones I've seen also have green and purple coloration in spots.)



I was very happy to see this earthworm (Genus Lumbricus, Family Lumbricidae), and happier still to move it from the road to a neighbor's lawn before it got flattened by either a tire or a shoe. These guys (well, guys/gals; they're hermaphrodites) are decomposers par excellence and are wonderful for keeping the soil fertile. I learned to truly appreciate them when I tended my first community garden plot in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Small brain. Five hearts. (Source: EdHelper.com)

I love how the University of California, Davis rhapsodizes about these critters: "The humble earthworm: memento mori extraordinaire: 'Remember that thou shalt die.' The Conqueror Worm, devourer of prince and peasant. Metaphor for the frailty of the flesh, subverter of monuments, leveler of empires. Emblem of the vanity, the evanescence, and the end of all human endeavour. And yet, paradoxically, this earthworm, this great destroyer, is also a great builder- a builder of fertile topsoil, itself the sustainer of all civilization."

Write Matthew Werner, UC Santa Cruz Agroecology Program along with Robert L. Bugg, Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, in their article, Earthworms: Renewers of Agroecosystems: "More recent studies show that earthworms can help reduce soil compaction, improving permeability and aeration. Earthworms do this through burrowing activities, ingestion of soil along with plant debris, and subsequent excretion of casts. Upon drying, these casts form water-stable soil aggregates. These aggregates are clumps of soil particles bound together by organic compounds, and their presence helps improve soil structure, retain nutrients that might otherwise be leached, and reduce the threat of erosion. "

According to EdHelper, the reddish band on an earthworm is called the clitellum, which occurs closer to the head -- and in fact the head is the more tapered end of the worm. "When two earthworms huddle together with their heads pointing to different directions, they fertilize each other's eggs. While the mating takes place, earthworms use their clitellum to secrete a cocoon to protect their fertilized eggs. Later on, they deposit the egg case in the soil and leave it unattended. Baby earthworms hatch after several weeks."



Mary had left a roll of toilet paper in the garage for mopping up oil and any other automotive fluids that found their way onto the concrete floor. Most likely silverfish or pill bugs have chowed down on this outer layer. When Mary discovered the holes, she brought a strip of the paper into the studio for me to photograph.



Palamedes Swallowtail -- Papilio palamedes, Family Papilionidae. Renamed Pterourus palamedes as of 2005 (Marc C. Minno, Jerry F. Butler, and Donald W. Hall, Florida Butterfly Caterpillars And Their Host Plants, University Press Florida, 2005). "Flutters wings constantly," says Bugguide. Through 52 shots this one was having Nervous Wing Syndrome, even when stopping to sip at a lantana blossom. But it hung around the lantana patch for several minutes in all its gigantic glory. It didn't seem to mind that I was following it around, squeezing off shots and mentally grumbling at it to settle down and chill out.

This butterfly is one of the largest I've seen, with a wingspan of around 5 inches (11-13 cm). It ranges through the southeastern United States, extending into central Mexico. Its season spans from March through December in the northern part of that range (2 flights), with a third flight in the southern part of its US range.

Says Bugguide, "Adults take nectar from a variety of sources. Favorites include thistles, native Azaleas, such as Rhododendron atlanticum, and Sweet Pepperbush, Clethra alnifolia." Watching it, I could swear it also guzzles double espresso.



Ichneumon Wasp, Family Ichneumonidae. I'd say this was a Red-tailed Ichneumon (Scambus hispae), except that our Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders gives its range as California to Alaska and says adults are active in August. (Then again, I've been informed that this particular field guide has a variety of flaws.) This photo joins several others on Bugguide's page devoted to Ichneumon Wasps, "black with red abdomen" and otherwise unidentified according to species.

This is a beneficial, generally non-stinging family of wasps. Says our field guide, "The larvae are parasites of a wide variety of other insects and spiders and are important in controlling insect populations."



Honey bee (Apis mellifera, Family Apidae). This is a female worker with a pretty full pollen basket on her hind tibia. When she gets home to the hive, she'll secrete a white paste called royal jelly. She'll feed that to the queen, along with collecting, producing, and distributing honey and maintaining the hive along with her 60,000 to 80,000 equally-sterile sisters.

"Complex social behavior centers on maintaining queen for full lifespan, usually 2 or 3 years, sometimes up to 5," says our field guide. "Workers feed royal jelly to queen continuously and to all larvae for first 3 days; then only queen larvae continue eating royal jelly while other larvae are fed bee bread, a mixture of honey and pollen. By passing food mixed with saliva to one another, members of hive have chemical bond. New queens are produced in late spring and early summer; old queen then departs with a swarm of workers to found new colony. About a day later the first new queen emerges, kills other new queens, and sets out for a few days of orientation flights. In 3-16 days queen again leaves hive to mate, sometimes mating with several drones before returning to hive. Drones die after mating; unmated drones are denied food and die."

This worker was gathering pollen from the same lantana patch where I'd seen the prior two critters. Brought by settlers, the honey bee has been in North America since the 17th century.



I think this is a carpenter ant (which would likely make it Camponotus floridanus or Camponotus tortuganus, Family Formicidae), but am not sure. This one and its buddies were hanging out on the roof of my car last night, and this area is in the middle of a swarm. Given the more tapered abdomen and the smaller head, I believe this is either a different species or a different sex (or both) than the ants I photographed the day before, closer to home. Based on the University of Florida description, my guess is that this is a male reproductive. UF says the ants swarm April through June, so this one is right on time. "The peak foraging hours are just before sunset until two hours after sunset, then again around dawn."

"Fondness for sweets" is additional evidence -- I estimate well over 100 covered the window of our local bakery.

According to UF, "During the flight season, carpenter ants can often be found in alarming numbers. Sometimes homeowners are concerned about damage to the structural integrity of their homes, which they sometimes incorrectly learn, is caused by Florida carpenter ants. However, unlike the wood-damaging black carpenter ant, Camponotus pennsylvanicus, found in Florida's panhandle and a few other western U.S. species, Florida carpenter ants seek either existing voids in which to nest or excavate only soft materials such as rotten or pithy wood and Styrofoam. Other concerns are that these ants sting (they do not) and bite (they do)."



"What is she doing?"

I didn't see who shouted the question at around 9 PM from the safety of the strip mall's sidewalk. I raised my head and called back, "Photographing a mole cricket!"

Mary and I had just come from a meeting and had stopped to get a late dinner. It was dark. Mary had seen the mole cricket first, hanging out in the middle of the parking lot. It scuttled away when she tried to coax it into her hand to move to a safer location. I whipped out my camera, popped up the flash, and got down on the asphalt, my butt pointed skyward. Mary stood guard to make sure neither the cricket nor I became roadkill.

Mary has been my Mole Cricket Finder. She'd spotted one on Wednesday at the "post office pond," at around 7:30 PM. That one had moved so fast that the best I could get was a blur. Also, I wasn't using flash.

I believe this is a Tawny Mole Cricket (Scapteriscus vicinus, Family Gryllotalpidae). It's a close call between this and the Southern Mole Cricket (Scapteriscus borellii), but UF does a great job of distinguishing between the two. What decided me were the markings on this one's pronotum -- the helmet-like top of the cricket's head. UF's pronotum guide was a great help here.

Another reason I believe this is a tawny rather than a southern mole cricket is because the southern species plays dead during attempted capture, which this one did not.

Says UF in its description, "The tawny mole cricket is originally from southern South America and arrived in Florida and Georgia about 1900 spreading north and west. It occurs in all the southeastern states, but not, so far, in Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands. It is currently found in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas."

Right now females are laying eggs in underground chambers, which they will do through June. Each egg clutch contains 24 to 60 eggs, and if a female lives long enough she can lay several clutches. In May and June most of the parental crickets die off. The nymphs are at first cannibalistic; the survivors then feed on plant roots. They begin to reach adulthood in September and breed the following spring.

"The presence of adult tawny mole crickets is most obvious during their springtime flights," says UF. "In Florida, these flights are in February-April and they begin and end several weeks earlier in the south than in the north." Their flights begin soon after sunset and end after little more than an hour. "The tawny mole cricket is a major pest of vegetable seedlings, turf and pasture grasses. Tawny mole crickets feed largely on plant material, and only to a slight extent on insects and other animals."

Based on the info on UF's biology page, I'm assuming this one is a male because of its wing markings. Each mole cricket species uses its wings to "sing" as well as to fly, and only the males sing. Their hearing organs are located on the stubby forelegs they use for digging. This one's left foreleg is positioned alongside its head.

Tomorrow is a work day, though I intend to take some walking breaks. Sunday we've got a matinee at the local community theater, where I have 4 photos on display (that makes 6 photos up altogether). Meanwhile, we're getting the precursors of our summer heat, highs flirting with 90. Today was a "shop towel day," which means that my fingertips were sweaty enough to need the traction of a shop towel in order to pull up my car door button. Eventually I'll get the A/C revived, but so far I've had no problem using open windows and my air vents. And the towel.

Sunday Break


A fern in morning light, outside the doctor's office. I have now passed the 3,000-photo mark since getting this camera (which brings my average to about 15 per day). This shot is #3001. (The distinction of #3000 goes to a rather mundane picture of settling cracks in the garage, as part of our keeping track of an aging house.)

Whole buncha miscellany....

Some of the highlights since last entry:



On March 31 I visited the Ted Williams Museum in its now-former location, about 4 miles from where I live. Tomorrow it reopens at its new location at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. With rare exception I generally don't follow baseball, but I wanted to capture this place before it pulled up stakes. More information about Ted Williams can be found at his official web site.

The text below is from the museum's website:

Located in Hernando, Florida in Citrus County, a few blocks from where Ted Williams himself lived during his later years, the Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame is the first Museum ever dedicated, at the time, to a living athlete. While ranked as the number one tourist attraction in Citrus County, the Museum's goal is to preserve and build on the rich tradition and heritage of our national pastime -- baseball. The Museum's mission is one of outreach and education. The Museum could never operate but for the enormous assistance of a dedicated corps of volunteers who make all the difference. It is a true "labor of love" for the many who have helped the Museum since it first opened in February of 1994.

What this Museum is all about is best described in Ted's own words; "Through the Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame, we hope to build a lasting monument, an architectural tribute to what I think is the single most difficult thing in all of sports: hitting a baseball. We hope the Museum will become a place millions of baseball fans will visit and enjoy for generations to come. I hope you'll join us as we transform our dreams into reality."
My photoset of the museum is posted here. I also gave a CD of shots to the volunteers -- dedicated, passionate folks who allowed me to take the pictures -- in case the museum can use them.

I've also got two framed photos up at the Art League's main gallery. (At the time of this writing the website still has the March exhibit up, but when April is up my shots should be visible here.) I'll be putting more up at its theater gallery on Wednesday. In the meantime I've made my first photo sale, and have picked up a mat cutter so that I can do at least some of the presentation prep myself.

Been spending some late nights writing and doing marketing research. My last writing jag included what I call an "oh, shit!" scene: one in which something terrible happens to a character I care about. I have scenes where I know something bad has to happen because the drama demands it and I've got the sequence plotted out. I can write those pretty much as I write other scenes. But sometimes -- once in each of the 3 books of my trilogy and now in the fourth book -- a vision hits that takes me completely by surprise. At first it seems almost gratuitous and I flinch away from the writing, must take time to prepare myself emotionally to engage it. But then, as I honor the vision, I learn more and more how it fits in, and it opens realms of possibility about which I'd been previously unaware. It ends up being truly transformative for the characters themselves and for the story line.

(Then there are those scenes that I originally envision as being "heavy" and serious, until one of the characters says something off-the-cuff and makes me laugh, lightening the whole mood of the writing. Or there is a calm epiphany rather than trauma. And the scene I thought would be wrenching ends up being what I call a "pastorale" -- which is just as transformative but in a much different way. These surprising changes in the mood of the piece provide an emotional balance once I relinquish control to the process. I am extremely thankful for that guidance.)



After taking various shots of turkey vultures (Cathartes aura, Family Cathartidae) in flight, I finally caught one on the ground, close up. This one was snacking on a squirrel in a neighbor's yard. I had no idea how much their eyes look like human eyes (shown particularly well in the large view; click on the magnifying glass). This vulture stayed put during some light traffic and was unfazed by my steadily closer approach. While I was shooting it flew off once (seen in the flight series), disturbed by the noise of an approaching motorcycle. It swooped in a low circle, joined by a companion, and then returned to its prize.

Around here these are called Florida buzzards, because of how numerous they are around here outside of summer heat. "Nearly eagle-sized (spread 6 ft.)," says the Peterson Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America. These vultures range from southern Canada to Cape Horn and are migratory in the north.



I discovered that we have a fully functional nest in our porch light, which we turn on very infrequently. When I came home some days ago, two fledglings burst from the light, flapping somewhat aimlessly around the front porch until they dove for the safety of our hedge. One vanished inside it, but this one perched on top of the holly. The beak suggests the Fringillidae family, which includes grosbeaks, finches, sparrows, and buntings.



Heart-wing Sorrel, also called Hastate-Leaved Dock (Rumex hastatulus, Buckwheat Family). That's my guess, based on our National Audubon Society Field Guide to Florida. At the very least it's some kind of dock. Blooms March through June in disturbed areas, ranges from northern to south-central Florida. We've been seeing a lot of these on median strips bordering the roads. The ones I photographed here as the sun began to set border the retention pond around the corner from us.



Morning fog. Taken at around 7 AM, Eastern Daylight Time on April 3. What a difference a tripod makes, when one compares this with a pre-tripod, predawn fog shot I took back in September.

I am standing on the driveway, looking down my street. The tree just to the left of the road (next to the leftmost yard light) was considerably taller before Hurricane Frances hit in 2004. Frances had knocked a huge limb -- tree-sized in its own right -- across the road, fortunately away from homes. Shortly thereafter, Hurricane Jeanne took out another chunk of the tree. Both hurricanes had been reduced to tropical storm status by the time they reached my area.

The tree was still taller than seen here, until work crews arrived to give it a buzz cut. It's grown back a bit since, but it still has that truncated look.

I was up early that morning to try to catch a hummingbird on pixel, but I've got to be faster. Mary had spotted one in our honeysuckle three times, and it was always gone by the time she called me. They hang around our place for only a short time, stopping by intermittently on their morning rounds.



My friend Barbara, who identified the shrimp plant I'd seen at Rainbow Springs, gifted me with several blooms that now sit on our southeast-facing window sill. I took 8 shots, liked 2, and played with this one. It's my most recent entry in a new group called Art Recipes -- I posted a bit of my process in the comment box below the original photo post.

My large transcription job continues, with a couple of smaller jobs popping in. Sometimes I laugh out loud as I type -- the interviews themselves are all-day affairs, and sometimes the folks involved get a little punchy. It's marvelous work.

On tap for today: attention to a different freelance job, and preparation of some pitch packages for the trilogy.
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