Category: Wonderful Things

The Week that Was

“Monday, Monday, So Good To Me

 

Back in school! Sonoma Regional Junior College is taking a run at OAP (Older Adult Program) curriculum. The library up the road and around the corner from me is providing classroom space for Information Literacy in the Twenty-First Century. Now I have to read something other than who-done-its.

It is not a course about using computers and modern media applications i.e Facebook, and Instagram. It is a “discussion about  the notion of truth specifically in the postmodern society.” It’s an attempt to provide we senior citizens with the tools of basic reasoning so we can sift the real news from the fake news.

When I went to school, I was so smart my teacher was in my class five years.  (Gracie Allen)

Tuesday Afternoon

One of THOSE DAYS when it’s all piddle, piddle, piddle.  The bed stays rumpled with the sheets knotted around two sleeping cats.  Pick something up and put it down again.  Start something and wander off leaving it undone.  Where am I?  Who am I?  What am I doing here? Just like James Morrison’s mother, I was last seen wondering vaguely, quite on [my] own accord.

I was going to do something today, but I didn’t finish doing nothing from yesterday. (Anonymous)

Any Wednesday

The high point of today was a carpet buying trip to Kohl’s. Well, not really a carpet, but a carpet runner. It will save the living room carpet from the wear and tear of leaving the kitchen and crossing the living room to the front door.

Kohl’s was having a sale, and six-foot runners were reduced by 50% percent: too good a bargain to pass up.  It’s not only pretty, but it’s also machine washable: you know how it goes with cats and hairballs.

What if everything is an illusion, and nothing exists? In that case I definitely paid too much for the carpet. (Woody Allen)

Sweet Thursday

The vineyards that fill Sonoma Valley are stirring into life.  The rows between the vines are filled with mustard that has grown waist high.  Somebody, somewhere (probably one of the professors of viticulture at the University of California, Davis) has determined that growing mustard in the vineyards after harvest is a good thing.

Last year, small tractors trundled between the vines mowing down the mustard.  This year it is sheep.  Thursday, I watched a flock of sheep, at least 400 strong flow into the Baringer vineyard across the road.  The next morning the sheep had vanished, and about forty acres had been “mowed” as smooth as a baby’s bottom.

You can’t have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for dinner. – (Larry Flynt)

Hallelujah It’s Friday

Shopped for groceries.  It’s fun wandering through the aisles looking at all the stuff on the shelves.  There are all the old stand-byes, and then the new stuff reflecting the newest diet craze.  It’s getting hard to find milk among all the nut milk on the shelf: coconut, almond, cashew, and soy.  Then there are all the strange flours for the gluten intolerant.  The latest products all support varieties of the keto diet: ghee, avocados, grass-fed beef burgers, and organic eggs.  By the way, I read the ingredients on a bag of cat-food that has been created for the overweight cat.  It was about fifty percent cellulose which is a nice sounding name for pulverized wood chips.  Go figure: you pay a premium price for old ground up wood.

“The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.” (Erma Brombeck)

 

 

 

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Bird on a Rail

Breeders’ Challenge

As Summer morphs into Autumn, the Sonoma County calendar fills with events; most of which revolve around the wine industry. However, October 27th. belongs to the Breeders’ Challenge when after months of training, the racing pigeons come home to roost.

Pigeon Training

Somewhere in the rolling hills of Sonoma County is a long, low building known as “the loft” where pigeons are training to compete in the year’s longest race.

Since mid-July, breeders have mailed their birds to “the loft” for training. Like marathon runners,  racing pigeons must gain the strength and endurance to fly 350 miles without stopping. While gaining strength, the bird brains build  the latitude and longitude their built in  GPS will use for navigating back to the loft.

The Challenge Race

The evening of October 26, the birds, each in their special crate, will be loaded on a truck then driven across the California border to a location 350 miles from home. They will chow down on a carb-loaded dinner and wait for dawn.  As the sun rises on October 27, the birds will be released.

Immediately, they will head for home. The digital bar code on their leg band records each bird’s time of departure. The pigeons rise high to clear mountain passes then drop following the valleys. For approximately ten hours they will be in the air, battling wind and weather.  Some will fall prey to hawks patrolling the air currents above them. A few will lose their bearing, wandering of course.  As each bird arrives home, the bar code records the minute and second of its arrival. A computer program calculates each bird’s flight speed.  The fasted bird wins the challenge, and a $150,000 prize.

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Bird on a Rail

Bird on a Rail

I learned about this because I opened the back door to find a beautiful pigeon sitting on the porch railing. Instead of flying away, she merely cocked her head and sidled off a step. Its feet were banded: a green band on the right, a pink one on the left. She was obviously used to being around people.

After spending time with google, I found a contact for the Sonoma County Racing Pigeon Club. Mike (the contact) told me that pigeons don’t fly at night. If the bird was still perched on my porch railing when it grew dark, I could catch it simply by shining a flashlight in its eye. The bright light would paralyze the flight response long enough for me to catch the bird and zip it safely into a cat carrier.

Mike arrived early the following morning with a bird box and his laptop. From the green band on the right foot, he identified the owner, and was able to return the bird to it’s home in Sebastapol.  A bird story that ended well