It's raining hen

Luckily for you this is a picture of madrone berries at the Indian Lodge in Davis Mountains State Park rather than a photo of a molting hen.
But if you must know what a half-nekkid chicken looks like, be my guest--and scroll down.

Of all the times for Hombre to abscond with my camera, it would be when Wanda is molting like her life depends on it. I didn't realize when we got our first birds that a chicken molt is nothing like the iguana molts I dealt with for ten years. Iguanas get dandruffy, one section of their body at a time, but once the flakes have settled there's gorgeous new skin underneath, as if they'd done a self-induced chemical peel.

Hens, though, are deciduous. Wanda's walking around dropping drifts of feathers in her wake. This reveals large, random patches of skin that are alarmingly red and stubbled with small, white spiny pinfeathers. When she's fully feathered she's cute but right now she looks like a forensics-textbook photo.

Maybe it's the aesthetics of only having two sorry tail feathers hanging off her patchy butt or maybe molting is physically uncomfortable, but Wanda is even more crabby and grumpy than usual. Ordinarily I can pick her up with a minimum of protest, but now she wants no one touching her, preferring to sulk on a wooden table under the eaves.

The three red hens aren't molting yet. In fact, they look fabulous--brassy redheads with full plumage and chunky builds. They're cruising the yard like shiny '50s automobiles, or '50s screen goddesses, while Wanda looks like a meth-head in a burned-out Yugo. Maybe this is why Wanda roused herself from her sulk earlier, marched thirty feet over to a stand of oak trees and pecked a grazing Sparky hard on the head, just once, before dragging herself back to her grumpy corner.

I get that. The weather is finally--after months of drought and weeks of flood-producing rains--beautiful, and I've got two kids with colds and a hip injury that's landed me in physical therapy and the special hell of limited physical activity. None of it's the end of the world and it should all blow over soon, but right now, if I saw a woman running happily around my yard with two snot-free children in the cool sunshine, I'd be tempted to peck her on the head.

I drove 450 miles to see some metal boxes*

You can't see them from here.

I recently agreed to something Hombre's been after me to do for a long time: take the kids on a zillion-mile car trip through the West Texas desert to eyeball five score metal boxes. He saw this art exhibit ten or eleven years ago and has been talking about it almost nonstop every now and then since he came back. When Rocketboy was a toddler we made it to within twenty miles of the metal box thingy, but the idea of taking a highly tactile, sorta drooly toddler into a room full of untouchable modern art seemed unwise and, honestly, boring. A hundred aluminum boxes, all the same size? Thanks, but no.

But dreams can come tue. Last weekend we took the (surprisingly compliant) boys to Ft. Davis for a weekend that included hiking, stargazing, a trip to McDonald Observatory, visiting with friends, American history and, yes, a twenty-mile side trip to Marfa to tour the Chinati Foundation campus and check out the art therein.

The friendliest, tastiest diner east of the Pecos; Junction, Texas

Need I mentioned that we bribed the little guys with road food?

And thrilled them with the possibility of seeing mountain lions and black bears during our stay in Davis Mountains State Park? Both boys were amped up about the prospect of having to hold their arms up over their heads to try to intimidate a mountain lion. In the end, the warning poster was the closest encounter we had.

We stayed at the park's Indian Lodge, a socialist hospitality paradise built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. My dear old red home state was, in fact, the beneficiary of a lot of New Deal initiative: more than fifty of our state parks were built by the CCC.

100 untitled works in mill aluminum, 1982-1986

On Sunday we fulfilled Hombre's mission and laid eyes on Donald Judd's fabled hundred metal boxes, housed inside two old barracks that had been used, among other things, for housing German POWs during WWII. Our guide explained that all the boxes have the same exterior dimensions, but are all different on the inside--some hollow, some partitioned in odd ways, some designed as boxes within boxes.

It was fucking sublime. The boys were captivated by all the variations and I was struck by the contrast between the desert outside and the installation within. Hombre got the validation that was his reward for persistence. Judd's pieces weren't the only ones on display, and I'll share more of what we saw as time allows, but the hundred metal boxes were my hands-down favorite. You just don't know until you try.

*That's not entirely true. Hombre drove. I knitted.

El Niño says to blog

Another rainy afternoon and an instructional treat requested by Jill in Quebec: How to Open a Door with a Balloon. Enjoy!

Rocketboy has a bright future in balloon engineering.

Mother Nature to Texas: Here's yer damn rain

It rained Friday, and despite my rainy-day blogging promise I put off posting until yesterday. Maybe I shouldn't have done that, as the message was a little stronger on Saturday.

My backyard around 1 p.m. Saturday.

I haven't bothered with a rain gauge since late last year because there hasn't been any rainfall to measure. The weather folks said four inches fell here yesterday. The high-water mark on my back fence after the flood receded stood between 7.5 and 9.5 inches depending on the spot.

Fortunately no water got into the house, and no pets were drowned in the making of this floodplain, but I know where to get sandbags now--something I would have never thought to look into just last week when we were still in the grip of a devastating, months-long drought. And we had it better than folks in Jarrell and Salado, where Interstate 35 was shut down Friday due to flooding from the thirteen-inch rainfall they had.

That's Texas for you. Even the weather is polarized and extreme.

What have we learned today, kids?

We learned that another of the red hens is laying. Is it Sparky or it is Batman? Only they know for sure.

We learned that Rocketboy can, true to his word, open a completely closed interior door using an inflated balloon. Can you?

We also learned that interrupting people and yelling insults are habits best broken in childhood because they get expensive later on. Hollerin' Joe Wilson, Republican Rep from South Carolina, is learning just how costly after his unprecedented "You Lie" outburst during President Obama's healthcare speech. Since the speech ended last night, Americans across the country have registered their disapproval by donating about $650,000 to his Democratic challenger for 2010, Iraq war veteran Rob Miller.

Meanwhile, over on Slatecard, the right-wing answer to ActBlue, Hollerin' Joe has a total of $285 (scroll down) in his tin cup. At least ten bucks of that came in today. And that's with Slatecard's main page taking viewers directly to Wilson's fundraising page.

We also learned that it's sometimes best to acknowledge things and move on. What did you all think of the actual speech?

It rained again, and something is in full bloom

The seasons are turning, Congress is almost back in session and there's something in the air here besides seasonal mold spores--and there's no reasoning with it.

My week in politics started at the salon. What should've been (for the price and the time involved) a relaxing time turned ugly toward the end. After an hour of amiable chat, the stylist started in on my eyebrows and on the topic of health-care reform. She asked if I'd read any of the legislation and told me she was a third of the way through one of the House proposals. I asked her what she thought of it, since she was obviously more familiar with the details than me. I didn't know whether she would be for or against it, but she's well-spoken and opinionated and I wanted to hear what she had to say--or so I thought.

It's upsetting under any circumstances to find that you're chatting with a racist, but try having a stylist drop the n-bomb while she's applying hot wax very near your closed eyes. You can't just up and leave at that point. It turns out that the version of the health-care reform package she read will take away her health care and "give it to the goddamned n------ and Mexicans." (I'm sure if I looked it up on thomas.gov that's exactly what it would say.) She also had strong feelings about the government "snitch line," "FEMA camps" and the Bilderberg group.

By the end of her conspiracy-theory rant I looked great and felt horrible. I could not get away from her fast enough. You would think that a professional who deals with the public would understand the value of not alienating and offending customers with racial hatred, but what do I know?

I won't even get into the details of a relative's recent hostile attempt to turn me on to Glenn Beck. She did succeed in alienating me, but I remain stubbornly unconvinced that President ACORN and his army of unconstitutional czars are going to start a communist civil war any day now in order to rob her of her health insurance and wipe out every job in the nation.

Seriously. In both cases, the political argument put forth by these white ladies boiled down to, "brown people want to steal my stuff." But even if you believed that, wouldn't common decency and/or common sense keep you from saying it?

Hombre thinks, and I agree, that the crapmongers on FOX and talk radio have whipped a certain segment of the population into such a fearful state that they will lash out at anyone--even people they care about, even if they hurt themselves in the process. Murdoch and Co. have also legitimized the kind of racial animus that, if it must exist at all, should be a source of shame rather than revenue. It's obviously profitable for Rupert Murdoch, Glenn Beck and their ilk to make people feel like cornered animals so they'll tune in more often to get poked with the bullshit stick, but it sure ain't helping the Republic.*

You know what else ain't helping? The Democrats in Washington--up to and including President Obama--dillying around with healthcare reform all summer while trying to reason with, appease and otherwise negotiate with what remains of the Republican leadership--the same folks who rely on the "brown people want to steal my stuff" voters because the rest of their base has fled. Mr. President, those folks are not acting in good faith. They're having a big, irrational tantrum, throwing out threats and accusations the way a three-year old does when he realizes he's not going to get his way.

When a toddler's having a meltdown, there's just no reasoning with her. In fact, attempting to enlighten a tantruming child usually results in a bigger, louder tantrum. The best you can do is forge ahead and wait for them to come around, to see that they will survive not eating an entire box of Dots right before dinner. So go head, Dems. Pass a plan already with a public option available from day one, and ignore the right on this one. There'll be plenty of other opportunities to attempt bipartisanship, but this is too important to mess around with anymore. I guarantee you they'll either come around or find something else to freak out about. But until then, we adults have business to do.

And confidential to the worried white ladies: I'm so sure that Beck is wrong that if the president really does launch a Communist takeover and sends the unemployment rate to 100%, I'll buy you a jumbo box of Dots. I'll even let you have it before supper.

*Colorofchange.org is petitioning and putting pressure on Beck's advertisers. So far 57 companies have pulled their spots from his show, including Mercedes and CapitalOne.

Brain food

Rained last night so I owe you a post. Still not ready to talk about politics because I'm almost equally disgusted by Washington's left and America's right at the moment. Maybe it'll rain again today and I'll go hog wild, but rain is never guaranteed around here and I'm trying to stay in my happy place at the moment.

School started last week for those who partake, and life kept following the seasons here at Rancho Barton. One morning found me and my kids across the street from the neighborhood p.s. A big group of schoolkids enjoyed its brief daily recess behind the chain-link fence while my boys and I gathered fallen and unripe pears from a generous neighbor's yard. Rocketboy came and went at his leisure; Hurricanehead carefully loaded the bags and carried them home for our critters. Then the experiments began.

I'd assumed the hens would love the mushier pears. I was wrong, although they did enjoy the earwig-and-maggot garnish.

Turns out Big Hank is a serious pear lover.

The real surprise was Perrito. Dogzilla couldn't be bothered, but the boxador gathered as many pears as he could into his mouth and trotted, drooling and hacking, around the yard looking for a safe place to hunker down and eat. (There's a metaphor in there about extreme conservatism and fears of scarcity, but again, I'm staying in the happy place.)

Hurricanehead has been gathering leaves from wild mustang grapevines for the rabbits, and the children are becoming keen observers of the critters' behavior and habits. They keep their eyes open for things the animals might like to eat and they're good about asking me what's safe and what's not. There's practical botany for you, plus resourceful foraging. The animals are more locavore than we are.

As for practical chemistry this fall, we're using Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food (a gift from my foodie brother), reading it aloud for his explanations of the why of cooking rather than just the how, and relating his ideas to chemical and physical principles like thermodynamics. We're also going to work Julie & Julia-style through Brown's recipes as part of our lessons, although the jury's still out on hooking up a hair dryer to our Weber grill.

What are have you learned lately?