Category: birds

SO HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT LINES? – Marilyn Armstrong

Coloring – In and Out of the Lines

I know it’s all the rage. I bought coloring books for my DIL for Christmas because I know she enjoys coloring.

I don’t.

I didn’t like coloring when I was a child. I preferred drawing and painting and these days, photography with doodling along page edges. I am a chronic doodler, but I don’t like anything with lines.

Cardinal

I hate lines. I hate definitions of where each color should go. I never liked coloring in OR out of the lines, so I don’t like it now, either. Sometimes, when I wonder what Garry and I share as a couple, I realize we hate being told what to do. We resent instructions, rules, and definitions.

Downy Woodpecker

Which doesn’t mean I don’t follow directions using tools or technology. I know where (so to speak) to draw that particular line. Garry doesn’t always. He will fight with me over everything.

Squirrel on flat feeder
Squirrel on the railing

He wants to do it his way.

I don’t mind him doing it his way unless it will (a) burn down the house or set the chimney on fire; (b) destroy dinner; (c) cause injury to something or someone (including himself).

Otherwise, I let him battle it out until eventually, he asks for help. At which point, I try to explain there are things where you can do as you please, but not everything.  Some stuff, usually involving electricity or technology and associated parts, you have no choice but to do the right way or it won’t work. Not even if you burn incense or pray to the gods of technology.

It’s why he’s no kind of mechanic and for the most part, neither am I.

Red-bellied Woodpecker

But, just in case it’s your thing, I’ve included five photographs using my “coloring book” filter that you can print and then color. Birds and squirrels for people who find coloring relaxing and like nature. I’m going to have to try these filters on other types of pictures. I just am afraid they will be too confusing with trees and fields.

As for me, there is reading, taking pictures, watching movies — and ultimately, sleeping!

CHANGE IS ALWAYS ON THE WAY – Marilyn Armstrong

CHANGE IS ALWAYS

If only we could find that perfect, sweet, happy place and just sink into it. Stay there and never have to deal with change again. But of course, that’s impossible, isn’t it? Because if the world doesn’t change — and it never stops — we also change too, physically and emotionally.

We find a perfect job except we run out of work or they sell to another company. We learn everything we need to know except we turn around and it’s all different and we have to relearn it.

I don’t remember where I read it, but it was a list of the things that we find most stressful. It included things like death, job loss, and many other bad things … but it also included good things. Marriage and weddings are enormous stressors. Moving, even if you choose the move, are going somewhere you want to be is a  major stressor.

All change is stressful. Whatever our personality or feelings about change, in the end, it pushes us in ways we may not like.  Are bad changes — death, dying, sickness, poverty — worse than good changes? Sure, but don’t try to explain it to your body. All it knows is the tension and stress. It doesn’t care if it’s good or bad, only that it’s hard.

I’m not sure what induced me to take on a day of this prompt. I swore I’d never go back to prompting again, I needed a bit of change that wasn’t forced on me. Something small, but which would force me into thinking about “stuff.”

These past few years have been terrifying. Considering I’ve “grown-up” with news as a major part of my world, you wouldn’t think that it would affect me so much, but it has. It turns out we — Americans — are having a bit of a national nervous breakdown. Even people who (Dog may know why) like this administration are finding it stressful. We aren’t alone. Other countries are undergoing their own stressors. Between the climate changing and the bizarre leadership shifts? It’s messy and scary.

I’ve been dealing with my particular big bad dragon — money — so I haven’t had time to dive in and see what I need to do. I’m sure I’ll work it out, but be a patient, please. On top of everything else, we’ve been having problems with Charter, all of which seem to have started when we cut the cable cord. I don’t suppose that has anything to do with it? They wouldn’t be that petty, would they?

We’re also having a lot of glitches with WordPress. I’ll do my best and hopefully, it will all work out. If not, maybe I’ll take up bungee jumping. If I’m going to stress, I might as well go all in.

IF IT CAN FLY – Marilyn Armstrong

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Anything that Flies

Cee's Black-White

A FEW PICTURES OF BIRD USING NEW VERSIONS OF TOPAZ STUDIO 2 – Marilyn Armstrong

PREPARE!

So I prepared a few pictures of a friendly little house finch. This one lives in the maple tree in front of the house, so I see him a lot. For some reason, he tries to climb in our picture window. I have no idea why unless it’s a reflection and he thinks it’s another bird.

He’s awfully cute!

ICONIC, YET SOMEHOW TOTALLY AWESOME – Marilyn Armstrong

“We are broadcasting,” said the crew from ESPN, “from the iconic top of the Green Monster in iconic Fenway Park,” by which they were referring to the broadcast booth set on top of the tall green wall in the stadium’s left field., a.k.a, the left field wall.

Fenway might even be iconic if by that you mean the “oldest baseball stadium in the U.S.,” but I don’t think iconic means that. This was the actual moment I realized I never wanted to hear anyone say “iconic” about anything again. Ever. I’d had it with the word.

Even when it’s relevant. Even if it is spelled correctly and regardless of context. The world has become overly iconic and used to mean anything and everything which essentially means it means nothing.

Anything which means everything means nothing.
That includes “iconic.” Especially “iconic.”

Because everything can’t be iconic. It’s an oxymoron.

Word overuse started as a TV phenomenon and has continued with a lot of help from social media. It started with … I don’t know … cool?  Groovy?

It gathered energy with “awesome” and “totally awesome.” Is there a difference? If “awesome” means “striking awe into a viewer,” how is “totally awesome” more awesome than one, single “awesome”?

Meanwhile, word overuse went in hysterical overdrive when all female persons who were remotely well-known became a “Diva.”

Now, the word is iconic.

What happened to the rest of the language? Surely there are other synonyms which could be used?

Suggested alternatives include:

Those are more than enough words to give one reason to ponder word usage. I have a “thing” wherein I won’t intentionally use the same word or even two versions of the same word in one paragraph. I sometimes do it accidentally, but if I notice, I’ll go back and change a word.

There are few words in English for which there is no substitute. At least — not among adjectives. Maybe a few nouns are unique to a specific item but adjectives are slippery devils. Where there’s one, there’s another and another and another.

Arabic has more words than English. Officially, more than 12 million words, though I wonder how many of those words are obsolete or not in regular use. English is the next largest language with about 200,000 words in active use, excluding those which are currently obsolete. For the moment.

NOTE: Never count an obsolete word as completely “out.” Obsolete words have an odd way or slithering back into standard English without warning.

Meanwhile, 200,000 is a fair number of words. The next time the word “awesome” or “iconic” springs to your fingers or lips, contain yourself. As a personal favor, please find a different word. Any word.

Let’s make “emblematic” a hot new word. Even better, let’s use “seminal.”

MORE OF THE JULY BLUES – Marilyn Armstrong

BLUE OR GREEN COWBIRD?

Personally, I think he’s blue. His beak has always looked blue to me and this boy also has blue eyes, too. I know he’s a boy because the girls are all a pale taupe brown, so the boys have all the color!

Obviously, his beak has to match his eyes, right? And it would be a birdy embarrassment should his feathers fail to match the eyes and beak.

Bird colors are usually well-organized. Well, mostly, anyway.

Anyway, some people feel he is really a blackbird. Some think he is actually dark green. But in the sunshine, all my Brown-Headed Cowbirds have been strikingly blue.

I’m not sure there really is such a thing as a black anything. Even my black clothing, as it gets washed, it turns dark navy. I think all blackbirds are really a very dark shade of blue. Nothing but space is truly black because black is the absence of color. In our world, there is no such thing as an absence of color.

Cowbird in sunlight — blue or green?