Wildlife Sightings and Venusian Trivia

I was taking an early-morning walk yesterday when I encountered a guy standing in the road in his bathrobe, holding a cup of coffee, waiting for his dog to do its business. I saw these stately, dramatic Angel's Trumpet (Brugmansia) plants growing in a nearby yard, and stopped to take a picture of them. "If you break a piece of that off and stick it in the ground, it will grow for you," he said. Which I suppose was an offer for me to do so, because then he went into the house behind the plants, but obviously I can't very well smuggle Brugmansia into the UK so I passed.

(Besides, Dave and I tried to grow a Brugmansia in a pot many years ago and it didn't go well. We had an invasion of red spider mites, as I recall.)

I had a pretty good walk, actually, and saw several other interesting things. I made a quick FloriVideo™ to share them with you:

We begin with a flock of ibis at sunrise, followed by a nonchalant peacock, some wary deer and some very loud black-headed parrots. (I think they're Nanday Parakeets, which are apparently known to have large feral colonies in the Tampa area.) I didn't bring my big camera and zoom lens on this trip so I couldn't get a better shot of them, sadly.

Thanks for all your good wishes about my stepmother. She seems to be doing much better. We spent time with her yesterday morning and again in the evening. She has some issues that have affected her kidneys, so she got both a blood transfusion and dialysis yesterday to help correct her blood chemistry before they do a procedure today to hopefully fix the problems. "I never thought I'd be having dialysis," she said, and I must admit it was a surprise to all of us too. I don't think she'll be home for Christmas, but we'll see.

In the afternoon Dave and I went to see blogger E, who is an old college friend of mine. We both worked on the student newspaper at the University of South Florida back in the day and became friends that way. I haven't seen her in a while so it was nice to meet up and sit by the pool in her condo complex for a chat on a pleasant, sunny day.

Here's a large colony of mother-in-law's-tongue growing around a tree at her condos. Florida is the place where houseplants run wild!

Last night I went out to play in a trivia contest with my stepsister and her husband. We didn't win, but it was an interesting contest -- the host asked a question, and then played a song that is somehow associated with the answer. A word in the answer may be in the name of the song, for example, or in the artist's name. Sometimes it's a tenuous association -- "Ventura Highway" was associated with the planet Venus, for example. Speaking of which, if someone asked you to name the hottest planet, what would you say? I said Mercury, but apparently Venus is hotter, at least according to our trivia host. I guess the atmosphere must trap heat, while Mercury is mostly barren rock. Who knew?

FlorAqua in Six Minutes

Before I get going with my post today, I want to say to all my commenters that I am reading every single one of your comments, and I apologize for not responding or acknowledging them individually. It's just too busy around here and I don't have internet unless I'm at Dunkin' Donuts! (Which, as Catalyst pointed out the other day, is now called just Dunkin'.) But by all means keep them coming, because they provide a little morsel of normalcy in this bizarre holiday season. (More on that in a moment.)

Yesterday my brother wanted to take his daughters to The Florida Aquarium, a somewhat exotic outing for them since they live in Jacksonville and don't get to visit it regularly. I'm not sure Jacksonville has anything comparable. And although I've been to the aquarium it's been at least a decade, if not two, so it sounded exotic to me too. Dave and I decided to tag along.

Here's my speedy (yet hopefully peaceful) six-minute version of our visit:

It's a little like a screen saver, isn't it? I don't know the names of all the fish, or didn't make note of them, but we start with an alligator snapping turtle from beneath, followed by a tank of long-nosed Florida gar, an alligator, an otter and a couple of roseate spoonbills. (The sound effects are from Apple, by the way -- I had to put new sound over the video or you'd just hear the racket of dozens of people talking. I used jungle sounds for the first segment, which covers birds and creatures of fresh-water wetlands, and then ocean waves for the rest.)

Other notable creatures include one of the luckiest spiny Florida lobsters in the world at 1:55; a couple of scorpionfish at 2:08; a tank of red-saddled anthias at 2:27, with a spotted garden eel watching cautiously from the sand; a big hogfish at 2:49; paddlefish at 3:42; archerfish at 3:59; and lionfish casting dramatic shadows at 4:52.

So it was a fun visit, and my brother heads back to Jacksonville with his family today.

Meanwhile, Dave agreed to cook last night for my stepsister, her husband and my stepmother. We stopped at Publix ("where shopping is a pleasure" -- really!) and picked up some ingredients for beef bourguignon, which he put together last night. It was delicious.

Unfortunately -- and this is where things get bizarre -- my 81-year-old stepmother has been showing signs of some health issues for the past several days. Last night it became apparent that she needed to see a doctor, and sooner rather than later. So right after dinner we popped her in the car and took her to the emergency room. She has been admitted to the hospital for some tests and treatments, so that has cast a bit of a pall over our remaining family togetherness. I got about four hours of sleep, I think -- partly owing to continuing jet-lag -- and my poor stepsister and her husband probably got even less.

I also heard that my New York photography pal Allan Ludwig has died, which I'm sorry about. He and I were part of a Flickr group that used to photograph graffiti and street art in New York City. My Flickr account is still full of pictures from that time, if you go back to its earliest years. Here's a photo from 2007 of some of our Flickr group, with Allan and me in the front row. I didn't know until I read his obituary that he'd written a Pulitzer-nominated book! Hidden talents are all around us.

A Day in Pictures

Dave and I got moving early yesterday before the rest of my family was up and about (since we're five hours ahead of everyone in terms of internal biology). We went to the Three Coins Diner, a favorite breakfast spot of mine that I've mentioned on the blog before.

Here's Dave about to go inside, those three fluffy pancakes calling his name. One good thing about the Three Coins is we never have to wonder whether or not it's open -- because it always is.

This guy sits beside the cash register. Very old Tampa, with its cigar-industry references. Cuesta-Rey cigars used to be made in Tampa.

After his pancakes and my broccoli-cheese omelette, we headed back to Lutz, passing this ridiculously colorful building on the way. How could I not stop for pictures?

Talk about positive energy! I think it's a screen-printing company.

Back at my stepmother's, we were met by my brother and his family, who drove down from Jacksonville and are staying at a hotel downtown. All of us spent the day together, chatting and exploring the docks and lakefront. We got lunch from the Publix deli and ordered pizzas for dinner. There's not a whole lot of cooking going on this Christmas. I'm not even sure my family is having a Christmas meal -- my stepsister and her husband are planning a party instead. I think Dave and I are on the fence about whether we want to stay for that or head down to see his parents in Bradenton.

Elvis, my brother-in-law and stepsister's cat, is indifferent...

...as is his companion, Ozzy. They are the softest, plushest cats I've ever encountered in my life!

Sunshine State

Well, here I am, safe and sound on the other side of the Atlantic. Above you see the view out my window as we flew over the Florida coast at Cape Canaveral. That's the Kennedy Space Center directly below, where the Apollo moon missions used to blaze upward and hold the country spellbound, where Challenger met its sad fate but many other shuttle missions launched successfully. Back when we did those sorts of things, you know?

It was a loooooong flight -- more than ten hours, I think. Are planes flying more slowly these days? When we checked in, Dave and I upgraded to premium economy seats, which cost us more but gave us more cabin space and little perks like a meal on real china and a glass of champagne upon boarding. It was the smartest thing we could have done. We were much, much more comfortable as a result. I stood up only once during the whole flight, and didn't feel too awfully confined. I did have a rather rambunctious little boy sitting directly behind me, leading to occasional unexpected squeals, bumps and thumps, but you can't have everything.

Of course there was a kid from the school where we work on our flight, with his family. This seems to be de rigueur when we travel.

On the plane I finished "All the Colours of the Dark," which I enjoyed, and watched a very interesting movie called "Nightbitch," starring Amy Adams, about the trials of being a young mother. I was attracted to it because I like her, and I figured she wouldn't make a crappy movie, and indeed it turned out to be smart and surprisingly surreal. I also managed to leave my glasses case on the plane (but fortunately not the glasses themselves). Oh well.

My stepsister and her husband picked us up at the airport, where Phoebe the Flamingo still presides over the terminal:

We drove up to Lutz, north of Tampa, where we're staying in my stepmother's guesthouse. We've seen her and my nephew and we all went to dinner last night. I slept surprisingly well. Today my brother shows up with his family.

At the moment I am, of course, at Dunkin' Donuts, which you will remember is my blogging redoubt while I'm in Lutz. The guesthouse doesn't have WiFi and, more critically, it doesn't have a coffee machine. Fortunately, Dunkin' Donuts opens at 5 a.m. -- which of course is 10 a.m. by my own body clock, well past the time I would normally require coffee!

I do have one more thing to post from London, which I meant to include in yesterday's post but forgot:

This one-minute snippet of garden-cam footage shows both how miserable the weather was last Thursday, and what happened when I put a hard-boiled egg out for the foxes. You see the egg in the first shot, sitting back by the flowerpots and center-left of the screen. It vanishes in the next clip as a fox trots by -- we don't actually see the fox eat it, but I'm sure that's what happened! And then, at 0:35, we see proof that the foxes are making that weird call I've been hearing in the garden -- one trots by and makes the noise as it goes.

I thought about bringing the garden cam to Florida to see what's wandering around my stepmother's yard, but in the end, I just didn't have the energy for that!

Burlington Arcade

Yesterday I went into Westminster to pick up a couple of last-minute things for Christmas. I know I said I wasn't doing gifts, but I decided it would be in poor taste to show up in Florida utterly empty-handed. So I got some swanky chocolates from Fortnum & Mason that everyone can share. I bought a box for my family and a box for Dave's, along with a tiny Christmas pudding for wherever we happen to be on that day -- I think at my stepmother's. The bill was something like £112. Insanity!

Oh well. I'm sure Christmas is what keeps Fortnum & Mason afloat the rest of the year.

Across Piccadilly from the shop was this brightly lit shopping arcade, Burlington Arcade, that runs to Burlington Gardens and thus to Bond Street. I took a look inside.

There's a "Twelve Days of Christmas" decorating motif going on -- I believe those are the "twelve drummers drumming" above. I barely looked at the shops because I wasn't really in the market for any of the finery that's on sale there.

At the other end I wound up on Bond Street and saw...

...a very trendily-dressed woman and her cotton-ball of a dog, who was sporting a special Santa hat and collar. This is the kind of thing you see on Bond Street.

From there I headed to the Tate Britain, because I wanted to see the Lee Miller exhibit currently on show. Miller was a model and surrealist photographer associated with Man Ray in the 1920s, who then became a fashion and war photographer in her own right. The Tate show covers her early surrealism, her fashion work for Vogue, and her years as a war correspondent, including some heart-wrenching images of post-Holocaust concentration camps and the destruction in Europe.

And there, among the wartime pictures, was this one:

Yes, that's the Burlington Arcade, taken during or after the Blitz. I was mesmerized by many of Miller's photos, like the one of four rats sitting on a piece of wood in Paris, their tails hanging down in parallel lines, looking composed and almost elegant as one would expect of Parisian rats. Or the one of René Magritte and his dog LouLou, which reminded me of Paul Simon's song, "René and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War." I thought, "That's it! That's the dog!"

Anyway it was an interesting exhibit and I'm glad I fit it into my schedule before we depart for Florida today.

I came home and gave Dave his gift, which I bought on my errand to Covent Garden a few days ago. I got him an Apple watch, largely because I want him to be able to track his heart rate. But it does a lot of other cool things too, like measure the quality of one's sleep and, of course, provide all the communication you could ever want with the world at large. It's right out of Dick Tracy, for sure.

Last night we watched "Being Charlie," the movie Rob Reiner made with his son about addiction. It was modeled on their family experiences and was quite powerful, but as you'd expect, also quite sad. The lead character, Charlie, seemed so angry and nihilistic -- a perception perhaps heightened by recent events. I was struck by a scene when Charlie said to his father, "I don't hate you." Which makes what ultimately happened all the more mystifying.

Ernesto and Peter Arnett

Ernesto, the ceramic skull I bought in Cozumel years ago, is slowly being overtaken by the jungle in the living room. He probably doesn't mind. He's from a pretty jungly place.

It rained all day yesterday, so I didn't leave the house except to go out in the back garden a couple of times. I downloaded the footage from the garden cam and it was boring, so I deleted it all. Once again I didn't have the camera in a good position.

Later, I boiled an egg that had come to us in the carton with part of the shell missing. The only thing between the innards of the egg and the outside world was a sort of thin membrane, which I decided made it risky to eat. So I took it out to the foxes and reset the camera. Maybe we'll get some footage of them having a feast, though the last time I gave them a boiled egg a magpie ate it. (The egg looked fine, once cooked and peeled, and I have no doubt a fox could digest it just fine!)

I hope to take a walk some time today, but maybe not down Billy Fury Way. Remember how Olga and I walked there occasionally, even though it's a fairly grimy footpath? Well, the paper has an awkwardly headlined story -- "Seven-Week Lights Blackout in Drug-Hit Path" -- about how none of the streetlights there are working at the moment. I might go there in daylight, but I think I'd want a dog with me, not that Olga was ever a very fierce protector.

The orchid in the kitchen is blooming like crazy, underneath the yellowish overhead light. You can see the rain on the window. It was that kind of day.

I also saw in the news that Peter Arnett died. I actually have a Peter Arnett story, from my own reporting career in Florida. In the late '80s and early '90s, I worked at the newspaper in Lakeland, east of Tampa. A magazine called the Washingtonian reported that Arnett, who was representing CNN in Baghdad during the first Iraq war, was going to marry his more youthful girlfriend, a fellow journalist who had attended college in Lakeland and whose parents still lived there. So I got sent out to interview the parents.

It was a rather awkward story to write, because 1) It was basically just gossip column fodder, and 2) It's always risky to write about what someone is "going to do," rather than wait until they've done it, and 3) Arnett and his alleged bride-to-be were both in the Middle East, so I couldn't talk to either person directly involved in the relationship. I had to rely on the parents for information. I churned something out and it ran in the paper and that was that...

...except that Arnett never did marry the woman. He wound up going back to his wife, from whom he had been separated. By that time I was gone from Lakeland and the world had moved on. C'est la vie.

Anyway, it wasn't the brightest spot in my journalism career and apparently I didn't even save a clipping of the story. About fifteen years later, when I was working for The New York Times Co. in Manhattan, we paired with Google to have the archives of all of our smaller newspapers, including the Lakeland paper, digitized and made available online. It used to be that stories like this one I wrote would come up with a Google search. But then the Times sold the papers and I believe the new owners took their archives offline, because I can't find any of that stuff out there now. Again, c'est la vie.

Green Man Lover

I just awoke from the most glorious night's sleep. I must have really needed it, because I woke up about 5 a.m. and thought, "Oh, it's break, I don't need to get up now!" And then I fell back asleep and slept soundly another two hours -- and let me tell you, that two hours made a huge difference.

So yes, it's break. Woo hoo! Yesterday was busier than I expected it to be, with several visiting classes and lots of last-minute checkouts. I got a bottle of wine from the head librarian, which I thought was very kind considering I kvetch about her regularly. I really need to just grow up and not be such a whiny baby. I also chatted with a couple of co-workers who are leaving either now or in mid-January, having taken the buyout as I did. One woman asked me if I'd had any second thoughts and I told her none at all. "Me either!" she said. "People keep asking me what I'm going to do, and I tell them, I'm going to museums!" Pretty much my plan too.

I compiled the database stats for November and worked a short shift in the Lower School library, and then left work about 2 p.m. I walked home and spent the afternoon reading. Dave was at a doctor's appointment so it was a good time to catch up on blogs and continue working my way through "All the Colours of the Dark," which I'm enjoying but which is HUGE (576 pages hardback). I'd like to have it done by Saturday so I don't have to take it to Florida.

I found this funny graffiti on Finchley Road. According to Wikipedia, the Green Man is "a motif in architecture and art, of a face made of, or completely surrounded by, foliage, which normally spreads out from the centre of the face. Apart from a purely decorative function, the Green Man is primarily interpreted as a symbol of rebirth, representing the cycle of new growth that occurs every spring."

There is also a folkloric Green Man: "By at least the 16th century the term 'green man' was used in England for a man who was covered in leaves [and] foliage including moss as part of a pageant, parade or ritual." This evolved into a sort of pagan figure, though the roots and significance of the Green Man in that context are debated. There are lots of pubs called "The Green Man."

I'm not sure which type of Green Man we're loving, here. Could be any or all of them, I guess.

(Top photo: Our white hellebores, blooming away!)