As a geometric playground hiding inside randomness.
Although I thought about publishing it like this:
How I see the world, lesson #3
Category: photography
How I see the world, Lesson #2
As a moody, brooding entity. (“I’m gonna have to clean out these pesky humans some day.”)
How I see the world, lesson #1
As a more vibrant place than it would seem to be at times. (Unfortunately the opposite can also be true: seeing gray when the world technicolors.)
I encounter birds of Hawaii
I’m conflicted. I enjoy casual birding, and when I visit Hawai’i and can suddenly see many new birds, I should be thrilled. I did thrill to bright, different birds. Then I learned that virtually every bird I saw had been introduced to the islands in the past 150 years or so. It seemed none of the common ones (the birds hopping around parks and following the tourists around) could claim they were indigenous to any island in Hawaii. Still…they are quite different to commonly spotted birds where I live.
The Common Myna appeared everywhere on Hawaii and Maui. It’s native to Asia, but has spread so much it qualifies as “one of the world’s most invasive species,” according to the IUCN Species Survival Commission which listed it on its 100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Species (one of only three birds on it). When we first landed on the Big Island, and I heard this incessant chattering, I thought Starlings had made it to Hawai’i. It’s a noisy bird, and it looks a little bit like a Starling until you get close enough to see the yellow eye patch, the more brown body, and that it moves rapidly on the ground when it wants to.
The Saffron Finch comes from South America. It’s been on the Big Island (Hawaii) only since 1960. We only saw these in the Lili’uokalani Gardens and around our hotel, both of which are on a very small peninsula on the east edge of Hilo, Mokuako.
There are three common cardinals in Hawai’i, and none of them are native. One of them isn’t even a cardinal! We saw two: I photographed only the Yellow-billed but we also saw the Red-crested. They both originate in Brazil, but the former has a wider range into Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay, and northern Argentina. Thankfully we didn’t see any Northern Cardinals. I see plenty of those at home, and it would have been very depressing. Because I have no photos of the Red-crested, I’m including one from Wikimedia Commons.
Photo By lwolfartist – https://www.flickr.com/photos/151817352@N04/53873018807/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150656259
My biggest consternation regarding birds wasn’t the Northern Cardinal. It was the onslaught of House Sparrows which assail one in every open restaurant, marketplace, park, and you name it. The fearless critters even hopped into our room in Hilo on several occasions….
Though we saw plenty of spotted and zebra doves (both introduced from SE Asia), I failed to take a good photo of one. It remained until we traveled to Maui before I saw a bird endemic to the Hawaiian Islands…
Sifting my photos for birds proved beneficial when I tripped over one, and only one, photo of a different group of birds. The Chestnut Munia isn’t native to Hawai’i (of course), but it’s a pretty cool-looking bird nonetheless. In the photo below, the bird on the left is a classic, I’m-sure-it’s-a-Munia example. Moving left to right, birds #2 and #4 appear to be Munias but they’re not supposed to have breasts like that. (Males and females are supposed to look about the same.) Photos of immature birds don’t look like those two. Bird #3? I’ve no idea what that is, but I find it difficult to believe it would just hang out in this group without being one of them.
And in Maui I finally got a photo of one of these long-legged things which had bedeviled me on the Big Island. (Blurry photos? Sure, I’ve got ’em.) I don’t try to identify long-legged birds like this because they are so diverse and so similar. I don’t even know if this one is the same species as the ones which ran around on the rocky coasts of Hilo Bay.
I would be remiss not to include a photo like the one below. Chickens. Yes, chickens. They’re not exactly everywhere but they’re darn common running around many areas where you wouldn’t expect to see them. They apparently are “wild” in the sense they don’t go to a coop and get fed by humans. They hang around the cities and towns, though, so…what is “wild” anyway?
Playlist 241012 & 241013
- Moondial by Pat Metheny
- I Trust You To Kill Me by Rocco DeLuca and The Burden
- Carney by Leon Russell
- “Für Elise” by Jon Batiste (apparently from an upcoming album?)
- “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” by Lucinda Williams (almost surely from a forthcoming album entitled Lucinda Williams Sings the Songs of The Beatles from Abbey Road)
- Oh Brother by Dawes
- You Should Be So Lucky by Benmont Tench
- Mudcrutch by Mudcrutch
One of the great things about music streaming services (mine is Tidal), at least for old folks, rests on the opportunities for music discovery. I appreciate that Tidal doesn’t just pop the usual “because-you-listened-to…” stuff, but also just flat suggests stuff from across many genres. (Although it might be because I listen so eclectically. Hadn’t thought of that.) Today’s playlist reflects that. Saturday I listened to Moondial because it showed up on a recommended albums list. Today, a couple tracks on the 5-track “Recommended new tracks” list caught my eye: the Jon Batiste and Lucinda Williams tracks listed above.
The Dawes album appeared on a different list, “Suggested new albums for you”. I cannot believe I’ve gone 15 years without hearing of this group, since they fit comfortably into one of my favorite musical areas where intelligent lyrics and innovative musical lines collide with folk, rock, and jazz. This newest of albums from the group is like Paul Simon meets Jackson Browne meets the Eagles with just a dash of musical thoughts of Iggy Pop. (Yeah, I heard a line in there that I swear is a near rip-off of one from Brick By Brick.) Maybe they listened just a little to They Might Be Giants? Barenaked Ladies? This latest album is the only one I’ve listened to but I’m cueing up more in my near future.
While reading about Dawes on Wikipedia, I ran across the name Benmont Tench and finally separated him mentally from Bobby Tench, a vocalist on a couple of old Jeff Beck Group albums, Rough and Ready and Jeff Beck Group. The band Simon Dawes broke up and out of it came the new group Dawes. They played a bunch of jam sessions which included one with Tench, who’s a pianist/organist and vocalist. Because Tench joined Tom Petty in the group Mudcrutch which later evolved into Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, this led in turn to learning about Mudcrutch which reformed in 2009 (the same year that Dawes formed–huh). Which completes the musical journey that underlies the playlist above.
Not my everyday sign
Sunrise, sunset, new habits
I have a close friend who’s attuned much more than I to weather and the physical world. As friendships go (at least the good, genuine ones), we mentor each other in an informal way. He recently did so without his knowledge. He habitually witnesses the rising and setting of the sun when he can. We both live where trees and ridges obscure those times of day. Therefore this mostly occurs when he relaxes oceanside at a family retreat, and he can walk out on the dock where an unobstructed view affords him an opportunity to watch and photograph the sun’s coming and going.
In retirement I’ve developed a habit of waking at pre-dawn when skies lighten. Nevertheless, I surprised myself when I still woke at that time our first morning in Hilo, despite having flown west for three time zones the previous day. “I’m going to watch and photograph the sunrise, just like my bud,” I thought. Perhaps there was a bit of snark in that, but by the time we left a week later, the snark had fled while the compulsion remained. The day I woke precisely at dawn, I thought, “Yikes! I’ve got to get out there!” I carried the habit throughout the trip, even to the last morning of it when we rose in Phoenix.
Anyway, here’s our first sunrise in Hilo.
I Love You, Hilo B. Airport
I’ve but three Hawaiian airports under my belt, so take this statement with several grains of salt: a first-timer’s arrival to Hawai’i could scarcely be better than passing through the Hilo International Airport. Smaller airports does not always mean better: a truly uninspired one exists in my hometown of Spokane. Most exist as tiny copies of the Big Boys. That’s what makes Hilo’s such a refreshing surprise.
Unlike any other airport I’ve been in, Hilo’s opens to the air…everywhere. Call it The Lanai Effect. On the concourse level most walls rise to railing height only. The arrival/departure level echoes the effect. Large doorways punctuate the building so frequently, one becomes hard put not to claim the walls punctuate the openness. Green steel roofs the low-slung building and covers the walkways. It reminded me of photos I’ve seen of other tropical buildings, particularly those serving some kind of transportation need: freight depots in the Amazon; a train station in the Congo; tropical open-air markets in a cruise ship’s port of call.
Hilo’s airport boasts the most comfortable waiting area seats this road warrior has ever seen, similar to someone’s living room (note coffee and end tables):
I know, I know: not all airports could work this way. I’m just happy this one does.
100 Days of Hawaii?
As recounted here a few days ago, I balanced a 33-year-old slight this past month by traveling for nearly two weeks to Hawaii. Despite not being able to use my primary camera for most of our time on Maui, my smartphone took up the slack and I arrived home with over 750 photos. Now gather around while Grandpa adjusts the slide carousels just so and we’ll have a nice travelogue for the next couple hours.
No, just kidding. That’s what MY grandfather would’ve done. We would’ve been semi-bored because 30% of the photos were too dark to make out details, but mostly because Grandpa would feel the need to tell histories of many of the things we were trying to make out on the silver-encrusted screen–said histories sometimes being personal tales of the trip which really weren’t very interesting. “Now this is where we stayed in a really nice hotel. I don’t have a photo of that, but this bush caught our eye every morning when we left the hotel. It’s a rose-scented yackenberry–what, dear? It’s not? Well, then what is it?”
Occasionally we could have some fun by asking about weird things in the photos which he’d never noticed, or hooting when–despite all of his pre-show attention to detail–an occasional slide would be sideways and he would bravely carry on with the narrative despite his audience all having their heads at a 90º angle. The laughter would be uncontrollable if his photo also seemed near-unintelligibly dark while he droned on about what we couldn’t see.
Yet, a 10-to-14-day narrative a la our trip to Michigan and Ohio last year (starting here) seems too short–and as I reacquaint myself with last year’s travelogue–too much like Grandpa’s endless dronings in the guise of an interesting travel lecture. Instead, I’ll piecemeal it. Okay?
“Now after we overnighted in Las Vegas due to the inconvenient schedule of Southwest Airlines for Hawaii-bound East Coasters, we changed planes in Honolulu and caught our first glimpse of the Big Island when we flew by about four in the afternoon…oh, me…how did that happen?”
My new wallpaper
all the voices in my head 