Friday, October 28, 2011

temple, ashram, and utopia

Shiva Nataraja dances in Pondicherry guesthouse hall


street leading to Chidambaram temple east gate



Shiva Nataraja and company of worshippers outside Chidambaram temple

Nandi, Shiva's bull, and worshippers. But who is the fat guy with the shell?

Brahmin priest in one of many courtyards

Tank and smaller shrines
The Matri Mandir in Auroville
(photo misplaced here)

Dancers in classical positions on east gopuram




dear blog readers: these are some photos that illustrate the portion of my essay on the Shiva Nataraja temple at Chidambaram. it is difficult for me to place them correctly throughout the text, so consider this a photo section.


Shiva’s Temple

Outside the temple entrance, I handed over my shoes in a ramshackled palm-thatched hut that keeps them safe for a small donation. The Hindu temple is the residence of the god or goddess; just as you would not be rude enough to wear shoes in a person’s home, so you would not in a temple. A steady stream of mostly middle-aged men and women were hurrying in one direction, so I followed them under the tall east gopuram, the tower that serves as an entrance gate to Sabhanayaka Shiva temple in Chidambaram. This ancient temple dates back to the 9th century Chola dynasty in South India, with mentions of it as early as the sixth century BCE. It was built on the place where Shiva won a dance competition, overcoming the goddess Kali, and the deity has been dancing his perpetual dance of creation and destruction leading to cosmic bliss ever since. A major place of pilgrimage for faithful Hindus, it is sometimes considered to be the center of the universe.
I recognized the roof of the inner sanctuary from a photo in the guidebook: it is covered with 26,000 gold tiles, symbolizing the number of breaths a human being takes each day. Gathered there was an eager chatting crowd, forty or fifty people, men and women, lined up in front of a high stone platform. Other worshippers were handing up offerings of fruit, flowers, coconuts, and small butter lamps to half-naked Brahmin priests. Fires burned in large bronze braziers and incense released clouds of strong fragrant smoke rolling through the air.
At exactly eleven, three enormous bronze bells at the side of the shrine began to boom and a brace of smaller ones chimed in and the worshippers quieted down and placed their hands in the position of worship. The ritual puja began. The several priests began to chant, one lifted up and swirled around a brass tray holding flaming small butter lamps, holding it high and low, turning it in clockwise then counterclockwise circles in front of a small dark doorway that led to the inner sanctum. Chanting by the faithful began, including the refrain “Om nama Shiva-ya” (praise the name of Shiva.) Drums and gongs sounded from additional priests on the sidelines.
I stood at the side towards the back and couldn't see much. Nearby a couple of students were explaining the ritual to a young Japanese guy. When they noticed me eavesdropping, they beckoned me to come closer.
“Hello. We’re from Delhi,” a handsome one shouted above the din.
 “He’s from Osaka. Exchange student.” said a tall guy wearing aviator sunglasses and a Bob Marley tee-shirt. “My name is Lucky.” He shook my hand.
The Japanese guy nodded slightly in my direction.
The chanting and bell ringing intensified.
“Look, look, now we see the god.”
The priests pulled back a curtain far back in the innermost chamber. This was the moment of darshan, heightened spiritual "seeing," when the worshipper comes into the presence of the god and goddess, expresses their devotion directly, personally to the deity, and the deity also sees the worshipper, offers protection and reveals to them the path to divine wisdom.
The eager crowd strained forward, some on tiptoe.
I couldn’t see anything but a dark rectangular opening.
In fact, I read later there is nothing to see in this sanctuary but a garland of fifty-one leaves of the Bilva tree sacred to Shiva, symbolizing the presence of the deity. (Aegle marmelos, Stone Apple or Bengal Quince, rich in medicinal properties.) In this sanctuary the god manifests as ether, the invisible, primal, and most sacred substance that gives rise to air, fire, water, and earth: everything in the world we know.
When the curtain was closed and the ritual came to an end, Lucky went up to the priests and returned with a mound of prasad in his hand. This was a sticky yellowish-orange colored confection. I recognized it from my previous trip to India.
“The god is here. Shiva. Please.” He offered me some first.
It seemed rude not to accept it, even though I’m not in the habit of eating things directly off the palm of strangers. It was sweet and fruity with a hint of coconut. Working on the same basic principle, it was certainly far prettier and tastier than communion wafers.
We exchanged the usual tourist game of “Where from?” None of them seemed to register the word “Detroit.” How the mighty are fallen. “Near Chicago.” That registered.
Lucky was eager to talk, telling me that he had read about Abraham Lincoln, a great man.
I agree with him, and asked him, “So, are you lucky?”
“Yes,” he said, “I am very lucky.”
“Me too,” I said, “I am very lucky too.”
“Why?”
“Because I am here, meeting you.”
Lucky grinned and gave me a high five with a slightly sticky hand, and we parted company.
I walked around the long dark stone corridors of the temple, punctuated with smaller shrines to various deities. Gods and goddesses sat on blackened altars piled with flowers, coconuts, small burning lamps. They wore multiple garlands of yellow or white flowers and white silk scarves, were smeared with red or sandy-colored pastes. There was a dank smell, the accumulation of centuries of incense, butter lamps, humanity, and warm humid air. I had a look outside at the large tank (reservoir) whose water is said to have healing properties, and tried to make sense of the endless tangle of sculptures on the four gopuram. Signs inside warned that photos were not allowed--"your camera or mobile phone will be seized,"-- but other groups of students were posing for each other here and there outside, so I risked taking a few.
Then at noon another ritual puja was about to begin, so I made my way back to the sanctuary. An elderly gentleman in thick glasses and his wife from Bombay initiated a little “first time in India?” conversation. Now there was a group of six or seven well-dressed lay people standing up on the platform with the priests close to the entrance to the sanctuary, where previously only the priests had been. I asked those privileged ones were and the woman replied, “They have paid money.” So here too a contribution gets you a front pew, closer to the deity.  
I watched the ceremony again from a closer position, with a keener eye for the details and a little more understanding. Afterwards, many people approached the priests for prasad and some received three horizontal marks (the symbol of Shiva, who carries a trident) on their foreheads made with the ashes of the offerings that had been burned in the large brazier.
The temple closes for several hours after the noon ceremony, so I didn’t have time to explore around the whole enormous complex with hundreds of smaller shrines and altars. I retrieved my shoes and easily found my driver as he had parked directly across from the entrance and was waving energetically to me.
On the drive back to Pondicherry I had plenty of time to think. The driver spoke only a few words of English. Long stretches of the East Coast Highway were in terrible condition and the forty-three miles stretched out over two hours. The usual mix of trucks of all sizes from mammoth gravel haulers to little three-wheelers, buses large and small, SUVs, cars, autorickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, motorcycles, bicycles, ox carts, cows, goats, dogs, and pedestrians were squeezed into one paved lane and the muddy dirt shoulder, which had ruts and humps deeper and higher than seemed navigable.
I’ve been to quite a few important sacred places in the world, but Chidambaram had to be one of the most impressive. It’s huge size, great antiquity, and colorful visual complexity alone would qualify. The loud bells booming and tinkling, the clouds of smoke both sweet and acrid coming from the platform, the chanting, the half-naked priests, the burning lamps swirling around, the intense looking and jockeying for position of the crowd, and the fervor of the whole occasion made me realize I’d never seen such intense devotion in a religious ritual. In a way, I envied the worshippers and admired them for their conviction, knowing full well that this was not a spiritual practice open to an American secular humanist.

Ashram

The next morning in Pondicherry I walked over to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in the old part of the city without having any idea of what to expect. Again, shoes off; this time you had to leave them across the dusty street from the entrance and I had brought no socks. Large signs proclaimed the rules: silence at all times, no chanting, no smoking, no photographs, turn off your mobile phone, children under three not permitted.
             You enter through a carefully tended garden lined with flowering shrubs and palms; the stone paths swept clean. In the center of a shady outdoor courtyard was a large tomb, the samadhi of the guru Sri Aurobindo and his collaborator known as The Mother. He died in 1950 and she in 1973 at the age of 97. The finely streaked white and gray marble was covered with fresh flowers and flower petals arranged in elaborate symbolic patterns, including a yin-yang and a six-pointed star.  Signs warned that the flowers must not be disturbed or removed and no additional flowers may be placed there. Long sticks of delicate incense burned at the foot of the tomb. A constant slowly moving line of men and women reverently passed the tomb, bowed, knelt and kissed it, many placing their fore heads on it and lingering with eyes closed.


(Photos of the samadhi can be seen by googling Sri Aurobindo ashram)

A contemporary devotee explains the experience:
“Out of his Samadhi, a thousand flames seem to be mounting up and, lodged in our soul, burning in an ever rejuvenating fire, while His Presence enveloping and merging with and radiating from the Mother’s being and body is pervading the whole atmosphere. One can see His Presence, hear his footfalls, his rhythmic voice, ever vigilant, devoid of the encumbrance of the physical body.”

The center of the courtyard was shaded by an enormous Service Tree (Sorbus domestica), its gnarled trunk circled by a garland of flowers. Some of the faithful touched it reverently as they left the tomb.
Around the edge of the courtyard was a low wooden platform where people sat, many in the posture of meditation. Almost all were Indian; I noted only one or two Western visitors, tourists like me. I skipped entering the queue for the samadhi but sat down and watched the quiet scene. South Indian women passed by in gorgeous silk saris: bright blue and pink, with metallic gold trim; beige, maroon, and green, with gold; gray, dark green, with brown; mango and olive green with magenta spangles; orange and dark chocolate brown; pale apricot, olive, and pink, with gold…and many more. It struck me that these worshippers were probably wealthier, more up market, than most of those at the Shiva temple. The only noises came from the ubiquitous hooded crows and small twittering birds. The sun filtered down through the branches of the big tree on tidy gardens with careful arrangements of flowering plants between marble walkways. All was light, airy, open, clean, quiet, slow paced, and orderly. How different the ashram was from Chidambaram, and how it was much more familiar to contemporary Western eyes, including mine.
I went into a small, carefully organized bookshop, selling exclusively the teachings on of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother in many languages.  “It is in life that we wish to find the Divine,” said The Mother. That sounds okay to me, but she should have stopped there. Glancing through some of her writings, I found them rather muddled. English was not her first language. There were a few postcards, including one of The Mother’s feet as she stood, with the hem of a pink sari showing above her light pink polished toenails. I looked briefly through a few of the books and pamphlets, and finally bought a small Introduction to Integral Yoga written by the guru himself.
I retreated to the courtyard and found a spot in the quiet sitting crowd. The silent, meditating men and women seemed familiar after my experiences in various Buddhist establishments. I liked the fact that there was no dark sanctuary presided over by a garlanded, red-smeared or golden god or goddess, no chanting in forgotten ancient languages. Peace, quiet, sunlight, trees, birds, flowers, and air. A welcome, restful escape from the chaos that can be overwhelming in India. I left after an hour or so, feeling calm and rested in body and mind.
Back at the guest house after lunch, I started to read the small booklet I’d bought on Sri Aurobindo’s teachings. Here’s a sample sentence from the first page of his introduction:

To know, possess and be the divine being in an animal and egoistic consciousness, to convert our twilit or obscure physical mentality into the plenary supramental illumination, to build peace and a self-existent bliss where there is only a stress of transitory satisfactions besieged by physical pain and emotional suffering, to establish an infinite freedom in a world which presents itself as a group of mechanical necessities, to discover and realise the immortal life in a body subjected to death and constant mutation, — this is offered to us as the manifestation of God in Matter and the goal of Nature in her terrestrial evolution.

            My afternoon nap commenced almost immediately.


Utopia
The next day I was off to Auroville, ten kilometers north of Pondicherry on a  small side road that alternated between dirt and asphalt. A few small shops displaying tie-dyed bedspreads, tee-shirts, and salwar, the popular baggy pants, appeared out of the scruffy jungle. Established by The Mother in 1968, the aim of this utopian community is for all sorts of people to live in harmony, working together in agriculture, handicrafts, and alternative technology—all is run on wind and solar power. Anyone wanting to get a big dose of New Age ‘60s culture with a garnish of Green Living could hardly do better than visiting Auroville, or even its extensive well-organized website.

The Mother decreed: Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville, one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.

The widely spread out community covers over 50 square kilometers and houses some 2,000 people, who live in groups with names like Sincerity, Revelation, and Transformation. One third of the residents are Indian, with French and Germans making up another third; the rest come from as many as forty other nations. Religious individuals are not welcome in Auroville, as the Mother pointed out that religions divide us, and this community is all about unity. “To live in Auroville, one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.” The Aurovillians are busy with their work and lives and don’t welcome visitors, unless you are willing to stay in one of their guest houses for at least ten days and donate your labor. While founded by The Mother, Auroville is not part of the ashram in Pondy but exists as an entity on its own with a charter from the government of India.
All the tourist can easily access is the tidy, modern Visitor Center, where you are required to watch a 15-minute video (available in many languages) on the teachings of The Mother and about the important building that is the spiritual center of Auroville, the Matri Mandir. Then you are given a pass to walk along a mostly shaded path through a thin tropical forest for a kilometer to see this strange building. Working with a French architect, The Mother planned it, and it is dedicated to the Universal Mother, the force behind all life.
The Matri Mandir is a slightly flattened sphere, about 120 feet in diameter, covered with 1,400 larger and smaller golden disks. Only Aurovillians and their paying guests are allowed inside; the rest of us can only observe it from a distance on a little rise under a large spreading neem tree. It is a place for sitting in silent meditation by the devotees, with sunlight hitting the sphere and thus focusing all energy and attention on the divine spirit in the universe. “It may evoke the image of the New Consciousness breaking forth from Matter,” again words of The Mother. The futuristic building is surrounded by twelve symbolic gardens, each designed by her. Nearby is a large open ampitheater and an enormous banyan tree, which is considered the soul of the community.
A young woman who spoke English with a German accent was giving a talk to a group of older Australians, so I listened to her answers to their questions.
What’s inside?
The walls inside of the sphere are white marble, the carpet pure white wool, there is a large glass crystal sphere in the center. No words or symbols. 
Only members of the community can even approach it on Sundays or during festivals. 
Yes, it is air-conditioned.
No chanting; only for silent meditation.
The Matri Mandir, like the Shiva temple, has a golden roof over its shrine; the former is created with gold leaf on metal disks, where the latter has overlapping tiles of solid gold, or so they say. (With the price of gold soaring, is Chidambaram the only place in the world where substantial quantities of gold are not hidden away in secure vaults?) At the center of each place of worship is, essentially, nothing: an optically perfect clear glass sphere (made in Germany by Zeiss) in one and a spray of gilded leaves symbolizing the presence of the god in the other. Fire ceremonies are held at dawn outside the Matri Mandir to commemorate important spiritual events, like the birthdays of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. And fire is essential to worship in the hourly darshan at Chidambaram.
While the ashram and its practice of Integral Yoga seems more accessible to me than the mysteries of the panoply of Hindu gods and goddesses, nonetheless, reading some of the obtuse and obscure writings of both Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and thinking about the weird Matri Mandir and what it cost to build, and the lofty, almost impossible ideals of Auroville, admirable though they may be, it too all looks like a cult or a religion, which of course is forbidden there.
Sometimes I feel like I am on a personal study of comparative religions, visiting the sites of worship in different parts of the world. I’ve been called a spiritual seeker, but I am driven by intellectual curiosity rather than a desire to settle on the right religion for me. My thoughts were formed by the secular philosophers, writers, and scientists of the Enlightenment, Montaigne, Voltaire, and Jefferson, who lead me back to Lucretius and Epicurus. Those ancient Stoics and Epicureans weren’t aetheists; they considered that gods and goddesses simply had no concern for us mortals: we’re on our own to make our lives and our worlds by ourselves. To accept the world as it is, to enjoy it, and to question everything.
None of the sacred places or works of art have moved me as much as watching the last of the yellow maple leaves falling outside my window.




Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Up and Down the ECR


As so often happens, i regretted not taking some photos of the daily drive we took up the East Coast Road into Chennai. Our host has graciously taken some at my request and here they are, all photo credits and thanks to Clay.

The peaceful East Coast Road in the country, south of the city of Chennai

elections are coming

more electioneering in a village on the ECR



"Do you eat goats?" I asked. "Yes, madame, we call it mutton."

Note the "madras plaid" on the motorcycle guy's wrap.



Closer to the city, more congestion. It takes a long time to go a short way.
In the city, a fancy new sidewalk and more cows. 
So glad we don't have to see Mitt Romney's face on every corner.
Thanks again, Clay.

Friday, September 30, 2011

india again: words and photos

jm was invited to give a paper at an international information design conference in chennai sponsored by the m.s. swaminathan foundation. her paper was about the ap she is developing for use by doulas and their patients, working with her colleagues in nursing.

entrance to m.s. swaminathan research foundation, with ramesh #2, jm's driver





the courtyard of the research foundation




kolam at entrance to reseatch foundation

these are drawn fresh each morning on the thresholds of homes and shops to invite good fortune in and keep bad luck out. they are created by hand with rice powder, which can be eaten by birds and insects. this is a specially large and elaborate one.




a necessary plea, ill-heeded


and now for some animalalia
pom-pom the dumas guest house parrot, pondicherry
coconut the fortune telling parrot chooses a card for clay, chennai
goats are welcome in the temple, chitambaram. the red and white stripes signify sacred space.

nandi the bull, shiva's vehicle, one of many, chitambaram
and for a view of just a small pile of trash

path to the beach, jubu beach posh residential estates

Thursday, September 29, 2011

india experiences, september 2011

as many of my faithful readers know, jm and i were guests of our friends and neighbors clay and jennifer at their home in chennai (formerly madras). they took very good care of us and we had a wonderful time. south india is very tropical and colorful with something interesting to see everywhere.

always pleasant to have a pool at home



selling gods and godesses, chennai

evening on the bay of bengal, pondicherry

lakshimi the temple elephant in pondicherry blessing

evening on the beach, chennai
stuck in chennai's horrific traffic, we made some new friends



annalakshimi, the goddess of food, in the eponymous restaurant, chennai

lunch at kipling, a thai restaurant, chennai


a cow and her calf, 9th century relief, mammalapuram

for the new dean, the chef recommends...

the matrimattir, auroville

gopuram in the temple at chitamburam, where shiva danced

that's all the photos for now. it should be kept in mind that these represent the most attractive sights. i don't have shots of piles of garbage and plastic trash with the cows, goats, and feral dogs rooting through them, nor of the painfully thin women balancing piles of bricks on their heads at construction sites, nor the (relatively) few beggars and people sleeping on the street. chennai is booming, with lots of construction, big sleek steel and glass skyscrapers next to huts of woven palm thatch, and fancy modern villas going up down rutted muddy roads.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Maybe It Isn't Motown Anymore




What style of music best describes Detroit? WDET is having a summer-time fun program, asking listeners to call in and say what genre best characterizes the city. I’m driving along I-96 in my Subaru Outback, listening to the lively responses. The answers vary, and provoke passionate arguments: soul (Aretha), rock (Bob Seger, Iggy Pop, Kid Rock), jazz (Ed Love taught us everything about jazz), rap (Eminem), and of course Motown. It must be Motown, several callers insist. We always listened to it in the machine shop. That’s too old, others protest. We love it, its classic, but electronic/techno is what’s big now. Didn’t 40,000 people attend the Hart plaza festival in May?

Stopping at a light on Grand Boulevard, I watch a slim older black man as he crosses the street. His bright Hawaiian shirt and plaid bermuda shorts make me smile. He flashes a peace sign and I flash one back. “Yeah, sister,” he says. I pass the two houses of the Motown Museum and a similar building all burned out, with weedy trees growing up through the front porch. There are very few cars on the street.  I arrive at the Fisher Building before the call-in show is over, but I imagine there’s no consensus on one style of music. The last caller I heard suggested The Blues.

I’m early for my appointment, so I walk over to the bank (formerly NBD, then BankOne, now Chase) across the street. In the lobby of the old General Motors Building, a beautifully preserved dark green 1915 Cadillac Touring car is on display. I look at it closely, interested because I have a photo of my grandfather Henshaw driving a similar car, probably not a Cadillac. Judging from the age of my father sitting on the running board, it could be around 1915. Both are handsome vehicles, no doubt. I wonder what speed they could attain on the freeway. My father always said that his father owned the third automobile in Charlottesville.

In the Medical Tower of the Fisher Building, the long shiny bleak corridor leading to my dentist’s office makes me think of Guy Noir, Garrison Keillor’s fictional private eye with his office on the twelth floor of the Acme Building. If someone ever wants to make the movie, this is the location. There are big white globe lights reflected in polished travertine walls and a black and white diamond-patterned marble floor. Even though brightly lit, it’s somehow lugubrious. The heavy wooden doors have frosted glass windows with the doctor’s names lettered in gold capitals, outlined in black. Who does that kind of work anymore?

The dentist is an automobile afficianado, so he likes to talk cars. His dad worked for American Motors; mine sold Buicks. He is surely the only other person alive who remembers that I owned a 1950 Buick Woody station wagon and a ‘53 Roadmaster convertible, with power roof and windows, the coolest car by far that was ever mine.  I mention the 1915 Cadillac. He dismisses it, much preferring cars of the ‘20s, when the style moved away from the carriage looks and spoked wheels.  The dentist collects vintage Mercedes and drives a BMW. He also remembers that I bought a VW bug in 1965, much to my father’s chagrin.

Released from his ergonomically designed chair, I note the goldfish designs on the brass elevator doors, and take a little time to wander around the huge, three-storey barrel-vaulted lobby. It’s a 1920s cathedral to the auto industry (Body by Fisher) with its brightly painted turquoise, red, and orange Art Deco murals, enormous tiered glass chandeliers, mosaics, and multi-colored marble floors. I look in the quiet Detroit Contemporary Crafts shop, filled with tasteful objets suitable for gifts, then the busy City Knits yarn store, run by friendly black ladies. They always seem to be patiently soothing some customer who’s made a mistake a few rows back in the midst of a difficult pattern. The Pure Detroit shop, with its 313 tee-shirts, Sanders fudge toppings, Faygo pop, and Pewabic pottery, is curiously empty: no customers, no salesperson, but “Baby, I Need Your Loving” is playing softly.  Maybe someone is working in a back office. I prefer the tougher Made in Detroit line of merchandise anyhow. I slip out.

Back to the country. All along Six Mile Road rows and rows of bright orange daylilies are blooming. If they weren't so beautiful, we'd be ripping them out as the alien invasives that they are. I come to our field, I am happy to see an old-fashioned rural sight: Mr. Briggs, wearing a big straw hat, is driving his blue Ford tractor and his teenage grandson is standing on the wagon. They’re baling the first cutting of hay.





     

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

birth and death

Magruder family gathering at "Edgemont" June 2010
The Riggory 2010


Things were different early in the 20th century. My grandfather Frank Magruder wrote a journal entry at the end of every day and so did his cousin Sallie Minor. They were the same age and lived less than a mile apart, Frank at "Edgemont" and Sallie at "The Riggory" on the Stony Point Road outside of Charlottesville, Virginia.

The cousins shared a similar approach to writing: just the facts, the weather, the events of the day. They each wrote every evening, without fail and without reflection, with little emotion, no comment on the past or hopes for the future. Here, for example, is Frank’s entire entry for the day that my mother, was born:

July 25  1908  Richmond off—Richard not out. Bill & Simon hoed vineyard. Baby born half past seven in the evening. Dr. did not get here in time—named her Elizabeth Dunbar. Lucy & I helped. Henry & I had been to baseball game at Earlysville—no game as it rained. Uncle Rashe came over.

If hoeing the vineyards took precedence over the birth of a baby at Edgemont, consider this day as recorded by Sallie at The Riggory:

November 9 1910  We killed 8 hogs. Papa rode over to see Cousin Albert. Mr. Thurman came down to take him to Mr. Lynn Goss’s funeral. They got home about dinner. Peter went too & Mr. Lang with him. After dinner Papa walked around some in the yard and not long after he left the house we found him lying in the road dead near the straw stack. Peter came almost as soon as we found him & got Mr. Lang & Dabney Morris who had come in at the gate to help bring him into the house. It was a great shock to us all, as he seemed quite well all day.
            Papa was seventy-one.

more to come on the world of the stony point road, 1907-1912...

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

spring fauna at frog bog


on march first, i pulled into our garage and was startled to see what looked like a small owl perched inside the window. a stuffed toy? a joke?  these were my first reactions. next i thought 'a visit from athena'? the little screech owl was patient enough to let me go in the house and find my camera.



she or he seemed not at all afraid but when tired of posing, flew up into the rafters and disappeared.

then as ellie and i walked through the crusty snow in the field, we heard loud, insistent calls from several sandhill cranes back in our swamp. this is usually about the time they come back and we're always happy to know they've arrived.
but were they agitated because the gas pipeline people had come through in december and cleared out a large swathe of the wetland, exposing their favorite nesting spot?a natural gas pipeline runs under our hayfield from se to nw, and the roots of trees growing near it may rupture it (is it really so weak?) so they must be cleared, but about 50 feet by a couple of hundred yards of cattail swamp was cleared also.

coming back to the house, ellie spotted a young possum working through the detritus under the bird feeders. we've seen this critter before, and seen its act before, so i didn't try to call her off.


the possum closes its eyes, rolls on its side and plays possum. ellie takes a good sniff or two and walks away. here is the possum about fifteen minutes later.


the male redwing blackbirds have returned and visit the bird feeder and a male tufted titmouse is in a frenzy flying at the kitchen windows over and over again. he sees his reflection in the window, and thinks it's another bird in his territory. his mate stays demurely in the craapple tree, waiting for her hero to drive away the intruder. a bluebird was behaving the same way last spring.



thick snow still covers the ground but the signs of spring are clear.
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too far north, United States
you all know plenty about me