The Day After

I went to bed at 9:30 last night, unable to stare at the numbers on the television any longer.

When my clock radio clicked on this morning the first thing I heard was McCain saying they'd fought the good fight -- and I knew Obama had won.

I continued to listen and heard Obama say, "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."

And I cried. Because I've nearly lost faith in this country many times, and I don't want to ever feel that way again.

This is a beginning that's finally on the right track, a new beginning for all of us -- not just the rich or powerful or connected. All of us.

"And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can."

Yes. We can.

Election Night

I voted (Obama, of course) this morning around 8; waited about 10 minutes. A couple of other precincts were in the same auditorium, and they had very long lines. In some parts of the city the wait was up to three hours.

Our state is known as a solid Republican state, though we have more registered Democrats than Republicans. We have had a very serious senatorial race going on in this state, and it seems to be neck and neck. I dislike both of the candidates so I didn't vote for either one.

A woman I know is winning the vote for a seat on the city council; I'm pleased because I know her well enough to know she'll do a good job.

I hear that voter turnout has been overwhelming all over the United States. My mother is a poll worker in her small rural county, and she said they were busy all day long, which is rare for them.

It's 7 o'clock now. The polls closed at 6. Now we wait.

Update on Effigy

Two men have been arrested for the effigy of Obama. It was reported on the news that they were remorseful and said it was just a prank that got out of hand. They said they got the idea from the Palin effigy in California that made the national news earlier this week.

If it was just a prank, why choose Obama -- a black man (half black and half white, remember)? Why not McCain or Biden or Palin?

Ignorance.

As in not knowing anything of history, of what such a thing means to people of this state and this nation. Ignorance of how long and hard people have worked to overcome racism and sexism. Ignorance as in not being aware of how your behavior affects others, how a small act of hate or ignorance just sends out waves of more hate and ignorance.

I'm proud these guys were caught so quickly. It sends the message that such behavior will absolutely not be tolerated here, that we're a better people than some "prank."

Alex the Parrot; a Year Later

Last night I read Irene Pepperberg's new book, Alex & Me. An easy but emotional read for those of us who followed Pepperberg's work.

And last night Nightline did a segment on Alex.

A lot of us still miss Alex.

Shame

Someone placed an effigy of Barack Obama in a tree on our university's campus last night. With the neck in a noose.

I am ashamed and enraged that someone in this state would do such a thing.

Have we not learned anything about racism and hate in the past 50 years?

Who are these people who teach their children to hate people who are different from them?

Update: The president of the university sent out a strong letter to the university community, denouncing the act, as did the governor. Later on the afternoon news, the president, the governor, and the person who found the effigy all said that this does not represent the people of our state nor reflect badly on our state.

I did a Google on "effigy of Obama" and found this has been done on dozens of campuses across the country. So it is some small comfort that our state was not singled out.

'Extinct' Cockatoo Rediscovered in Indonesia

Oct. 23, 2008 -- A species of cockatoo feared to have become extinct has been "rediscovered" with the sighting of a handful of breeding pairs on a remote Indonesian island, researchers said Thursday.

Ten Yellow-crested Abbott's cockatoos were found on the Masalembu archipelago off Java island, the Indonesian Cockatoo Conservation group said.

"We were excited when we found them in residential areas on Masakambing island," researcher Dudi Nandika said.

The group included four breeding pairs and two juveniles.

Despite the discovery the Yellow-crested Abbott's cockatoo (Cacatua sulphurea abbotti) remains the rarest species of the bird on earth, he said.

It hasn't been seen since scientists observed a group of five in 1999, researcher Dwi Agustina said.

It was assumed that number was too low for the cockatoos to reproduce and the species had died out, Agustina said.

The local population of the cockatoo has been threatened by hunting and capture for the pet trade.

link to story here

Autumn

Rain today and cold tonight. Cold forecast for tomorrow as well.

The rain is very welcome; we're in a moderate drought here, but other counties in the state are in a severe drought.

But the first of the autumn rains means summer is over. And I'm not ready.

I've started back with my piano lessons, which means learning chords and trying to get my fingers to stretch and move independently of each other. But during today's practice I actually played two songs in mostly correct time and with chords. Yea!

A friend had to put down her German Shepherd yesterday. Looking over this blog I realize how many deaths that have touched me in some way there have been this year. I'm in my mid-50s now, and I guess I should get used to it. But I don't think you ever get used to it.

My mom had her 79th birthday Tuesday. For several months now she's been saying, "In a year I'll be eighty years old!" in an alarmed voice. I told her she'd better be enjoying her 79th year rather than worrying about something a year away. An old boyfriend called her, but said he didn't realize it was her birthday. Their breakup was bad; they're both stubborn and contrary and they both need to lighten up a little. But it's her business, not mine. She and I are kinda taking bets to see if he calls again and asks her out.

As for the neighbors . . . this past weekend a white Cadillac was in the driveway. Last Friday I finally got an Obama/Biden yard sign and I stuck in the yard. A few days later I saw the neighbors (who live on the corner) had put one in their yard, right at the corner.

Then maybe Monday when I parked and opened the car door, two of the puppies (now a lot bigger) came running over. I knocked on their door and said their dogs were out; the young black woman who I never see outside anymore said they had let the dogs out, they hadn't "escaped" from the fenced-in yard. She apologized, and I said it was fine -- I just didn't know if they were supposed to be out or not. While we were talking the puppies were all over my feet, playing.

Charli is still picking at her leg feathers. I think/guess what's happened is that I give all my babies Nutriberries as a nighttime treat, plus Charli eats her veggies and so on plus my dinner, which means she isn't eating as much of her Harrison's high-potency. When she doesn't eat Harrison's high-potency, she plucks. So I'm cutting back on the Nutriberries and putting more Harrison's high-potency pellets in her Special Treat Dish. She ate them last night, so I've got my fingers crossed that's why she's plucking her little leg feathers.

Well, I need to go. Sugar Franklin is on my shoulder, demanding scritches.

Charli

I uncovered Charli this morning and was dismayed to see about 40-50 down feathers on the bottom grate. Charli was in her Hide 'n Sleep, acting afraid.

I got her out and she seemed to be coming out of that poicephalus freeze I imagine she had been in. It scared me to death.

She's had night frights and been afraid before but she's never pulled out feathers. She just finished a big molt so the feathers weren't coming from molting.

She just has a well-bird exam last week and passed with flying colors -- as usual. About a year ago Dr. Z and I noticed Charli was chewing on her little legs. We don't know why; Dr. Z said it could be habit or anxiety and recommended lots of foraging for her. Many of the feathers on the floor of the cage this morning were those small leg feathers.

Last night I found some old treats she loves -- little balls made of strips of white stuff wrapped around a seed ball. It takes a lot of effort to get the strips off and get to the seed inside, but Charli is always up for the challenge. I thought maybe she was having a reaction to it, and that was causing the feather loss. So they went in the trash.

She soon came around to her normal self -- trying to chew up the table, climb everywhere, eat my important papers, and so on. She's fine now, or seems to be.

I baked a big batch of Harrison's Birdy Bread, which is always a hit. And every birdy in the house seemed to enjoy it.

Autumn seems to be here already. I'm not ready. But things are beautiful here in teh fall.

At chorus rehearsal tonight, O and I made arrangements to get back to my piano lessons. I'm meeting her at 5:30 on Tuesday -- I haven't practiced in so long I'm not even sure where middle C is!

Waiting

Things have been relatively quiet lately. All is quiet with the neighbors. A never-ending stream of those awful political ads for senator of our state. Got a haircut today, too short, like a man's haircut -- but it'll grow out soon enough (I hope). Got a pedicure and manicure today. Got a full tank of gas and enough food and supplies to keep me for a month if necessary, and enough bird foods for a month or so.

Not that I'm paranoid, you understand. If this sort of thing interests you, just Google for October 7, 2008 and/or for web bot project. Two other sites are urbansurvival.com and halfpasthuman.com.

I have no doubt we're on the verge of an economic collapse. We can't keep living on credit the way we have been (businesses, government, individuals) without paying the price -- so to speak.

If there's any doubt among my two or three readers -- I'm voting Obama. I cannot abide the thought of another four years of Bush in the guise of McCain. Several of my friends and I have been having a wonderful time exchanging links about Palin and the October 7 "event" and the economy. Things can look so bad you have to laugh or lose your mind.

My little birds are perfect, as always. Nicholas makes kissy noises after bedtime -- I think he's fussing at me for staying up past his bedtime. I've been keeping Sugar Franklin out longer than usual and giving her more scritches -- she's been short-tempered with me lately and I think maybe she's been shortchanged (or believes she's been shortchanged) on attention from me. She's responded well to this extra attention, though she still bites my ear once in awhile just because.

Neighbors, Neighbors, Neighbors

Saturday I happened to glance out the window at my backyard -- there were three or four of the neighbors' puppies playing and rolling around in the yard.

I walked over and the young black woman (whom I haven't seen for several weeks) came to the door and came out on the porch. About the same time the puppies came running across my front yard to the neighbors' front yard. I leaned down and petted one of them (they really are cute), while the young black woman apologized several times. The man who lives there watched all this from inside the living room.

Haven't seen the Asian looking woman for several days, though the red car she drives is parked in the street (presumably so the man can get his big copper-colored truck in and out of the driveway).

More news as it happens!

The picture of two baby cockatiels is from morguefile.com. I figured a picture of baby cockatiels would nicely complement a small story about puppies.

Paul Newman

If there was ever an actor with class, it was Paul Newman. A magnificent actor, a man married to the same woman for 50 years, a creator of a successful charity, a fast race car driver . . . .

And he never had to appear on Entertainment Tonight to show himself off. Very few actors have the kind of natural presence he had.

As handsome at 83 as he was at 25, I've loved every movie of his I've seen -- I'm sure I haven't seen them all and I guess there'll be a run on his movies at the video stores for awhile.

Neighbors & Bailing Out Wall St

I had what I thought was a friendly moment with the Asian looking woman this afternoon. She had come out of the house to put some mail in their mailbox just as I was coming in from work. Five of the puppies followed her out the door. They wandered over to my yard and she frantically tried to shoo them back to her yard. I complimented the puppies several times; they really were cute little things, and I asked what breed they were. She said they were "blue pits," and she was going to sell them for a friend.

I am extremely unhappy about this bailout of Wall Street. Thanks to Reagan's deregulation and "trickle down" theory and the Republicans gorging at the public trough, we've all been getting screwed for decades now. And now these guys want the government to bail them out; they want a blank check and they want it right now. Just ask Paulson; he'll tell you the economy will tank if Congress doesn't bail them out within a week.

And what, exactly, are we, the lowly taxpayer, getting out of this? (Pass the vaseline, please.) I've watched my 401(k) drop by nearly half this year, most of the losses from the past four months. I'll never be able to retire with what I and my employer contribute to my 401(k) as long as this crap keeps happening. Yes, I know eventually the economy will turn around, but how many years will it take?

Ken Globus

Ken Globus' methods were decried by numerous parrot behavior consultants because those methods depended on the technique of flooding, but there are several parrot owners out there who found his techniques effective through all the years he practiced.
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Ken Globus: March 7, 1946 - Sept. 10, 2008
The Bird Whisperer

Dear Friends:
This will come as a surprise to many people who didn't know he was ill, but Ken Globus passed away on September 10th. Ken, who hadn't been a smoker for about 25 years, was diagnosed with lung cancer that had spread to his esophagus. What's truly shocking is that, between his original diagnosis and his death, only 10 weeks had elapsed.

Most of you are receiving this email because you're on his mailing list. So most of you know him as The Bird Whisperer.

Here are some things you may not know about how Ken got started working with aggressive and phobic birds. Our parents used to own a tropical fish store in Inglewood, California. One day, our mother cleared out some space in the store and asked Ken what he thought would be a good idea to put there. Ken thought about it, then suggested that they might start carrying a few birds. Since our parents knew nothing about birds, they put Ken in charge, and he got to work reading books and researching bird behavior before he bought his first bird for the store. Keep in mind that, in those days, almost all birds sold in stores were wild caught, not bred in captivity - so they were usually pretty terrified and unruly. What Ken discovered - to his great surprise - was that very little of the advice in the bird books was appropriate for dealing with aggressive birds. So, through trial and error, he learned how to work with them.

One of the many qualities that made Ken so successful with birds was his patience - he could simply persist until a bird decided that being aggressive wasn't working to drive Ken away. Another quality that served him so well was his flexibility - if one thing didn't work to calm a bird, he'd try something else until he made progress. (Parenthetically, it's a quality that also made him a great father.)

When my parents reached an age when they were no longer able to run a demanding business, Ken went out on his own, doing private training sessions for bird owners. It was at one of those sessions where an immensely grateful client said, "Ken, you really are a bird whisperer."

Ken called me and mentioned the incident, and I suggested he use the name The Bird Whisperer because I thought it would quickly convey what he was capable of doing. But he was reluctant to use the name because he thought some people might think it was a bit pretentious. As a marketer, I reasoned that, at the very least, it was very easy for people to remember, where Ken Globus was not. He finally agreed.

Over the years, a lot has been written and said about Ken's techniques. You are certainly free to dismiss what I'm about to say as the biased rantings of a grieving brother, but I was simply blown away by what Ken was able to do with birds. I traveled with him both to private sessions and public workshops, and I watched him calm birds that couldn't even be touched by their owners. I saw people sobbing at the the sight of Ken stroking a bird's neck, a bird who wouldn't allow even its owner to come near it for over a decade. And I saw this happen many times.

His bird-training sessions really picked up when he set up his web site. For the first time, people outside of the Los Angeles area where he lived could get a sense of what his techniques were all about. He began to be interviewed by news organizations, magazines and newspapers, all of them interested in how he was able to tame birds so quickly. He was hired by zoos, bird stores, and rescue organizations to deal with birds they'd given up on. And somewhere along the line, Ken got a phone call from a woman who identified herself as Kate Capshaw. Thinking it was a joke perpetrated by one of his friends, Ken hung up on her. She called back and informed him that she and her husband, Steven Spielberg, would like Ken to come to their house for a private session. He gulped, and agreed. And as Ken showed Kate how to handle the bird, Steven walked all around him with a video camera, recording the entire hour-long session. Talk about pressure!

Through his many interviews and public appearances, Ken got to be pretty adept at dealing with one kind of pressure or another. The type that gave him the biggest problem came from his detractors who often wrote vicious and totally untrue things about him, and he would sometimes forward to me the more outrageous items. Usually we would giggle like schoolgirls, but I found some of these things to be appallingly mean-spirited, and I would want him to post an angry rebuttal. But, for the most part, he wouldn't. He simply felt that these people were uninformed. I always thought that was a most charitable way of looking at it, especially considering that many of the most shamelessly idiotic things were perpetrated by some of the more authoritative people in the bird world, people who felt more comfortable sniping at him from a distance rather than bothering to actually attend one of his events. But I digress.

What Ken was able to do with birds wasn't magic. Ken was just an incredibly sensitive and intuitive person who, in a very short span of time, could figure out the best way to get a bird over its fears. At this I'm fairly certain there were few like him.

I can also tell you that as a brother, there were none like him. He was kind, funny, incredibly bright, supportive, generous, and courageous - qualities he displayed up to his dying breath.

Last week there was an occasion I'll never forget. It was only a few days after his passing, and my wife wanted to put together a "remembrance", where a few friends could gather to talk about what Ken meant to them. Even though this was thrown together at the last minute, over 60 of his friends showed up, and I'm certain that, given enough time, a few hundred might have been there. Ken was loved and appreciated by so many people. There were folks there from various stages of his life, all relating stories about Ken that helped to paint a complete picture of him. And what a picture it was!

He was a great guy. A talented man who could do so many things well. And he was my best friend for 57 years.

- Dennis Globus