PAUL MICHEL

I spent much of the morning at a lake quite near my house, in the rain, watching and photographing a baby flicker being coaxed from its nest--unsuccessfully so far--by its patient (again, so far) parents. I'd seen it yesterday, still being fed, the classic gaping, desperate pink mouth; More! More!, the parental back-and-forth. But today was strictly business, it seemed. I waited perhaps fifteen minutes for Junior to make his first tentative appearance, nudging his head out of the hole, scanning the skies for Mom and Dad. Eventually they appeared, but not with food. Their strategy seemed to be to perch just behind the nest snag and call out some Flicker equivalent (I presume) of " You eat when you fly up here on your own!" By the time the rain drove me back indoors Junior had managed to get almost his whole body out of the hole, twisting every which-way to try to see where they were. But whether it was nerves, the rain, my presence (I hope not) or that of a large menacing crow in a nearby maple who was watching the entire drama as carefully as I, he was still home-bound when I left. I'll go back later. Yes, I'm easily amused. Very easily. (more…)

I'm wrapping up week one of a mysterious ear infection--in my good ear of course--that has rendered me nearly deaf. (As well as being damned painful and messing up my balance.) The doctors are baffled--I seem to do that to doctors--and the prognosis is uncertain. Meet the new drugs, same as the old drugs.

(more…)

Nothing says summer in Seattle like a hearty bowl of stew. I read comments and posts of friends and acquaintances from around the country and globe--the summer sun streaming in California windows, pea-soup humidity swaddling the Midwest, sandy beach frolics on the east coast, and so on, and I try to feel smug about our upper-left-hand "otherness." "We don't need no stinking sunshine." It doesn't work. It's mid-June, for crying out loud, and the same coats and hats hang from the backs of chairs in my house as they did in February and March. Oh, there have been a few teaser days of blue and relative warmth--perhaps four?--but nothing to, you know, bloom about. And it doesn't take much in these parts to get the shorts and sunscreen out. (more…)