Ideas and More Fox Footage

Here's another view of Leon U's "Ideas" sculpture, on its pedestal on the housing estate I pass on my walk to work. I've blogged this sculpture several times, but this is a new perspective, showing it from beneath as a silhouette against the sky.

I think it captures the fleeting nature of ideas quite well. I can't tell you how often I have an idea for a blog post and then by the time I sit down to write, it's gone. Those figures seem to be leaping and stretching to grasp something ephemeral.

Yesterday turned out to be very low-key. Both the head librarian and the Middle School librarian were away, and many of the kids were gone too -- I think there are some school trips happening, as well as lots of people getting a jump on October break. We aren't officially off until next Wednesday, but Monday and Tuesday are parent-teacher conference days when the kids don't have to be in school, so I think some families may be using the week for extended traveling.

I found another cat sticker!

When I got home yesterday evening, I downloaded the garden cam. At two minutes, this week's video is pretty short. I'm sparing you almost all the cat, squirrel and pigeon footage and giving you mostly foxes.

-- At 0:35 there's a good view of one of them stretching. There are definitely two different foxes (at least), distinguishable because one of them has a white tip on its tail.
-- At 1:06, Pale Cat shows up with a blingy new collar!
-- At 1:48, I moved the camera onto the patio, and you can see that the foxes have no qualms about coming right up close to the house. Also you hear the owl (or whatever it was) that I mentioned in yesterday's post very clearly in this clip. My Merlin bird app still can't identify it.

Last night Dave and I watched "The Lost Bus" on Apple TV, the Matthew McConaughey movie about a school bus driver and teacher who work to rescue a busload of kids from the wildfires in Paradise, California, a couple of years ago. It's a very good movie, well-made and with all the nail-biting tension of the best disaster films. Well worth watching!

Silly Sausage, and Maybe an Owl

Walking near the Barbican Centre not too long ago, I found this graffiti on an advertisement for tourism to India. I thought the commentary was funny, but it also cracks me up that someone would bother to write that on the ad -- even if they thought it. People are much sillier sausages than this camel.

Not much of note happened yesterday. It was only last night, as I was preparing for bed, that something blog-worthy occurred. I heard a weird bird sound coming from the patio:

Steve Reed · Owls?

By the time I got out my phone and activated my Merlin bird-identifying app, the bird had moved away from the house. The calls were widely spaced, and I only captured two of them, one faint and one slightly louder. I edited them together and repeated them three times for the clip above, which you'll hear more clearly if you have headphones or earbuds. My Merlin app still can't make an identification, but if I had to guess, I'd say it's a tawny owl.

I've heard tawny owls before on our patio, but usually more loudly and less warbly than the one last night. So who knows.

Cats and Childhood Ghosts

Remember that cat sticker I posted a little more than a week ago? Well, since then I've found several more pieces of cat art along Finchley Road, all obviously by the same person.

I always had dogs growing up, but when I went to college and became an apartment dweller I switched to cats. They're just easier and less demanding as indoor pets. I had three of them in succession for many years -- Angeles, Howard and Armenia. Armenia died in 2009, right around the time I met Dave, and he brought dogs back into my life. But now it seems that cats are reasserting their presence, both via art on the street and with neighborhood felines wandering through our garden!

(Incidentally, I do not believe in the cat/dog dichotomy. I think it's possible to love both, and I do.)

I was about to get into bed last night when some yowling started up on the patio right outside the bedroom window. I ran for a flashlight and found Blackie and Bell the Bengal face-to-face out there, having a standoff. They're getting quite brazen, coming right up to the house. Even when Olga was here cats would occasionally wander across the yard, but now they're much more confident in their exploring.  Dave occasionally spots one right outside the back door. (By the time I turn around it's inevitably gone.)

I saw Bell the Bengal -- at least, I'm pretty sure it was her, though she wasn't wearing her distinctive collar -- on the sidewalk a couple of blocks away as I walked home the other day. I wonder how widely these cats roam? (According to this web site, which is selling a nifty GPS tracker that lets owners monitor their cats' whereabouts, "an average male outdoor cat may have a territory of a few acres, while a female’s may be much smaller." If I had an outdoor cat I would love a device like this! How fascinating, to know your cats' location at any given time!)

After I posted my last garden cam video, showing the cats and foxes scaling the back wall to get in and out of the garden, my brother sent me a text: "Are you going to become the weird old retired man that irritates the neighbors by cultivating 20 stray cats?" I told him I was hardly cultivating them, and besides I don't think they're strays -- they're too well-fed. I think they're all pets that are allowed to roam.

I got somber news last night from the sister of a childhood friend in Florida. Apparently my friend, who is my age, is in Hospice care dying from cancer. I haven't been in close contact with this woman for many years -- I last saw her in person shortly before I moved to New York in 2000, and hadn't seen her for a long time before that. But I'm still shocked by this news. She lived down the street from me with her sisters when we were in elementary school and we played together all the time.

I posted this photo from the mid 1970's once before, when I learned my childhood friend Becky (behind me above) had died. Theresa, the friend who is now dying, is at left. A few months ago I learned that another childhood friend from my neighborhood, Tony, had also died.

It's a very strange feeling to realize that your world is passing away, to be inherited by younger people. I've been getting that sense for a while now, with younger people asserting themselves more and more in the culture and at the ballot box, and my Generation X aging. Of course it's inevitable, and X is a relatively small generation anyway -- our cultural influence (Nirvana) always lived in the shadow of the Boomers. Now we're being swamped by Millennials and Gen Z!

On a brighter note -- but also related to my childhood, so not totally off-topic -- I lamented in my post about the wildlife stickers that I didn't know more about them or the artists whose paintings were featured. Reader Ellen D. found an excellent article about the stickers by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Museum. "In 2000, the National Wildlife Federation donated the artwork used to produce their conservation stamps to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The collection comprises over 3,000 small-scale watercolors by 146 artists and represents over 1,000 species from all regions of the country," it said.

It also named some of the artists, and in my post I now see the work of Walter Ferguson (the badger), Chuck Ripper (the tree snail, polar bears and red oak), and Maynard Reece (the sunfish). I also see the signatures of Donald L. Malick (the piñon jay) and M. Saito (the railroad vine). I still can't identify who painted the others, but if you have any interest at all in the stickers and the history please check out the article!

The S-Word

I got up a bit late this morning. I usually rely on Dave's alarm to wake me up -- he sets it for 5:45 a.m. and that's a good time for both of us. But today he's not going to work because he has a doctor's appointment, and I neglected to consider that fact when I went to bed. Next thing I knew, it was 6:30 a.m.! Oops.

That's our olive tree, above. It's producing little olives, which are darkening as the season advances. Dave suggested harvesting them, but I have this vague idea that processing olives for eating is somewhat involved and takes a long time. Don't they have to be cured or pickled or something, for months or years? I've never heard of anyone making homemade olives, but maybe it can be done. (Indeed, here's an article on how to do it. It seems relatively simple but involves daily water changes for a couple of weeks and then a long period of salt-brining. I think I'd rather just buy a jar of olives.)

Dave's sister gave me that tree when my dad died back in 2016, and it sits on the sunny side of the house in a big pot and seems perfectly happy. It may need a new pot, actually, especially because our passionflower vine took root in the same container from a seed, so they share it. Tight quarters for two fairly large plants.

Anyone want a filthy pink chair? It looks like something Frank N. Furter would have used in his boudoir.

Soon after he left for work yesterday, Dave called me on the phone. "I forgot to take my medicine," he said. "Would you bring me one of my pills?" After ascertaining which pill he was talking about, I told him I would -- and then I got caught up in trying to get out of the house by 8 a.m. and promptly forgot.

He came to me in mid-morning when I was working with a group of second-graders in the Lower School Library.

"Why are you here?" I asked him.

"For my medicine," he said.

I gasped and confessed that I had totally forgotten it, and Dave said, "Oh shit." I offered to go home at lunch and get it but Dave said he thought he'd be fine without it, and in the end he was.

When he left I turned back to the students and a little boy said, "Did he say the S-Word?!"

"No, he did not," I replied. "He said 'shoot.'"

This is my life -- gaslighting second-graders.

Critter Sticker Mania

If you were ever a member of the National Wildlife Federation in the USA, this sticker may look familiar to you. When I was a kid I got Ranger Rick's nature magazine, which was (and apparently still is) published by the NWF, and my parents subscribed to National Wildlife magazine. These stickers used to show up at our house a couple of times a year, mailed to us in perforated sheets. I think they were a bit like Easter Seals, meant to colorfully seal envelopes, probably with the hope that the recipient would make a donation.

When I was a kid I didn't write a whole lot of letters, but I did keep a journal. So I commandeered the stickers and from 1979 to 1983 or so, I'd put in one per journal entry as long as they lasted -- or rarely a whole collection of them, as above. (In that case I probably got sick of having them hang around and wanted to use them up!)

I recently thought I'd make a post out of them, so I got out my scanner and my journals and scanned these examples. In my memory I used them almost every day that I wrote, but I now see that I only used them for a couple of months per year, I suppose until they ran out.

I wish I knew more about them and their origins. Apparently the NWF used to sell albums so that the stamps could be mounted as a collection, with supplemental information about each species -- you can still find these annual albums, as well as loose sheets of wildlife stamps, on eBay and Etsy. They go back many decades, to the 1940s and 1930s.

I tried to occasionally lend some humor to the situation -- like providing a "distant view" of this red oak, with my not-to-scale pet turtle Stunky standing beneath it exclaiming "yowza!" Stunky was a constant presence as a character in my childhood journals.

I wonder who the artists were who created these paintings, and how works were chosen to appear on stickers. Was there a public contest? Or did the NWF contract with a regular group of wildlife artists to produce them? Did some paintings get rejected? I wonder what they looked like?

I subscribed to "Ranger Rick" for six or seven years, I think, and I kept them all in a huge stack in my closet. I remember my oldest issues were from 1974. I'm sure that magazine was hugely responsible for helping me develop some sense of appreciation for nature, but of course I eventually outgrew it and as a teenager I threw them all out.

But thanks to journaling, I still have the stickers! I'm sure I especially liked the ones with a Florida theme, but they could feature almost any critter, plant or fungus from any corner of the country. Mushrooms, plants, trees, fish, invertebrates, mammals from land or sea -- pretty much anything could appear on them.

Even teasels -- which as you all know we now have in our garden here in London. Who knew, when I stuck that sticker in my journal in February 1981, that 44 years later I'd be gardening with teasels in the United Kingdom?! Life takes us down some strange paths.

Reading about TB

I took almost no pictures yesterday, so these are from earlier in the week. First, the garden of my neighbor down the street. I think that's a peony? I didn't know they turned such bright colors, but there you have it.

Not a lot of activity around here yesterday. I finished John Green's book about tuberculosis, always an uplifting subject (ha!) but honestly quite interesting. It's not something I've ever given much thought to, but that is exactly Green's point -- we wealthier people in wealthier countries tend to dismiss tuberculosis as an infection that can be easily cured, but in much of the world where resources are more limited, it can still be a death sentence. He wrote about how vital aid agencies and various government programs have been in helping fight this scourge, and I couldn't help wondering where all that assistance is now, given Trump's evisceration of overseas aid from the USA. How many people in Africa or Asia who used to reliably get their medication now must go without? You gotta wonder.

Here's a random factoid from Green's book that I found interesting. Writing about the year 1804, when inventor and industrialist James Watt's son Gregory died of tuberculosis, Green said: "I understand if this all feels like ancient history, but it's really not. As of 2025, around 117 billion modern humans have lived. Over 100 billion were born before 1804. Almost everything that ever happened to us, and almost everyone who ever happened, happened before 1804."

That gives some context to our modern lives, doesn't it?

Life expectancies in that year were not much different than they had been thousands of years earlier. Now, of course, our life expectancies have grown, even in developing countries -- but tuberculosis remains a stubborn problem because of pharmaceutical capitalism, government inaction, conflict and persistent poverty and lack of opportunity. "We know how to live in a world without tuberculosis," Green wrote. "But we choose not to live in that world." 

I was out in the garden a little bit, but not much. About the only thing I did yesterday of any benefit to our household was water the indoor plants. It looks like our Thanksgiving/Christmas cacti are poised to have a good year -- I see buds on every plant. Hopefully they'll last. (Now that I've mentioned them, I've cursed them.)

Here's another look at some of our orchids, which got a shower yesterday. That seems to give them a boost and help battle any insect pests. They sure are blooming up a storm!

And here's an unusual sight I came across on my walk to work on Friday -- a glass of milk (I assume) sitting out on the street. Someone must have been trying to feed a stray cat. Looks like the cat did not partake, or hadn't yet, anyway. Hopefully it was pasteurized. Otherwise -- tuberculosis!

Over the Wall

The weather is quiet as I write this -- quite a change from the past few days. We had a full day of rain on Friday, followed by terrific gusty winds yesterday, all from Storm Amy. London was under wind warnings, and all of the Royal Parks -- like Hyde Park, Regents Park and others -- were closed. I looked out occasionally to see the poor avocado tree almost bent double, even though it's in a protected spot on the patio. I'd swear the pot was tipping a bit, as heavy as it is. As far as I can tell we had no damage, but I heard a lot of sirens so I imagine others did.

Despite the wind I did some gardening in the morning. I trimmed the lavender and the buddleia outside the back door, so we can actually see the garden from the living room. I reduced the buddleia's height by about half, which will give us more sunlight indoors. We cut them back every year anyway, usually in February.

The balletic squirrels -- which have already figured out how to join the pigeons in emptying our seed feeder -- have also discovered our suet balls. Argh!

I did laundry, changed the sheets, washed the bathroom rugs. I read about half of John Green's book "Everything is Tuberculosis," a nonfiction history of the disease. It's an unusual topic for John Green -- he's better known for YA fiction books like "The Fault in Our Stars" -- but it's interesting and I'm liking it. I could recommend it to students who are interested in medicine.

Here's the latest from our garden cam. Last week I positioned it to capture the back corner of the garden where all the animals come and go. There's a big plastic compost bin back there that we don't use, and I've always assumed that the animals jump on it to get over the wall. But as you'll see in the video, they don't need to! They mostly just jump right up on the wall itself.

High points:
1. The video starts with Blackie, who goes from our garden over the fence into Mrs. Kravitz's. Pale Cat -- who is actually white and orange, as you'll see -- is tempted to follow a few hours later, but jumps back down into our garden. (Those first few shots, I had the camera positioned too close to the bin, but then I moved it back to get a better view.)
2. At 0:46, we see Bell the Bengal on the ground. Watch closely the top of the wall at upper right, and you'll see another animal checking her out. I can't tell if it's a fox or Pale Cat.
3. At 1:24, a squirrel runs up the tree, across the fence and around the corner. The squirrels use the back wall as a highway, as well as the larger animals. (I deleted 95 percent of squirrel videos, as well as many of the cats, believe it or not. There's only so much of that you need to see, and I probably still gave you too much cat.)
4. At 1:38 the fox shows up, and proves itself just as agile as the cats.
5. At 3:13 the fox returns for several shots, including one in the rain. (It does not look happy.)
6. At 4:49, the fox is in the rain again, giving its fur a shake.
7. At 5:02 we end with Blackie, once again crossing the fence to Mrs. Kravitz's.

You might be interested to see where the animals are going once they jump up on that wall.

As you can see, there's a corrugated roof on the other side (covering some garage or storage sheds for the flats behind us), as well as the brick wall, which I believe continues past several properties well down the block. A land of adventure for the critters, even though it's pretty brushy in places!