Change

Loose Change

by taohobo

Quick trip to Florida and came back to loose change. Working at loose change, like “loose cannon” wrecking random havoc, at least that’s how keeping up with all the regulatory change in the financial sector feels. Counterproductive change, it’s going to have impacts that were never intended – certainly weren’t wanted by the people who thought they were being “ripped off” by the big banks. Change that is going to affect all those who paid their credit cards on time, never went over their credit limit, etc. – affecting them as creditors work out how to implement and comply with the new regulations.

Loose change… You better start collecting it in the car’s ashtray. You may need it soon when you’re riding on empty and your debit card gets declined.

Birding at 70

by taohobo

MPH that is. All the usual, pigeons, crows, some gulls and a turkey vulture. More Red-winged blackbirds – they’re finally arriving in force. Still no Ospreys, that I’ve seen, but haven’t checked some of the spots where I can can usually count on Ospreys nesting. I expect them on St. Paddy’s so they’re late this year, don’t blame them with the weather we’ve had. Who wants to sit on a wet, waterlogged nest.

Night musings…

by taohobo

Barred owls calling and gathering in the summer heat starts with a more constant murmuring of “who” than the standard call until others can be heard responding. Invisible in the dark canopy they assemble, talking and hooting over one another and then as a group move away. Voices fading into the night, southwest through the woods.

Being present, in time, place, and mind opens the door to the many small opportunities that nature offers us. Small opportunities only in the sense of how fleetingly the window is open that allows us to see, learn and understand our place in the life of the planet.

Picasso supposedly said that the problem is keeping the child in the artist. While he may have been speaking about creativity it applies to many aspects of living well, to being present.

Child like curiosity and the fearlessness to explore. Open acceptance. Innocence. Asking, asking, asking: why, how, when… It’s the child that allows us to live a life of creativity without the fear of failure that leaves the word unwritten, the canvas bare.

All this because the owls gathered in the night…

a million monkeys are right…

by taohobo

I’ve been reading Douglas Johnston’s blog intermittently for a while now and his most recent post “So you wanna to start a blog?” got me thinking about this short lived effort. Well, not short lived because it’s alive and well, it’s just that its pulse rate is very low — a sign of fitness in atheletes.

Maybe it’s time to take it out for a run and get the tempo up. Johnston is right that anything started, whether a blog, relationship or project, without a clearly focused goal begins doomed to a bad ending. I didn’t have that clearly focused goal in the beginning and it’s still not fully formed today. I definitely knew what I didn’t want it to be: a rant, a platform for venting, a soapbox…

Starting it was both to see how easy it would be to do and with the idea that short succint observations of life around me fit with the concept of haiku. That still encompasses the concept that I have for this blog. Just some observations and musings.

Haiti, gasoline, hate war…
Tidal ebb and flow
Cold damp spring

White Heron

by taohobo

Lone white heron loping
over winter’s blackcold water
on tai chi wings.

Might evoke many images one of which could describe today’s journey to witness, lend support to, the Base Realignment and Closing (BRAC) Committee’s hearings in Boston.

Base realignment and closing. A miscalculated consideration of dollars because people’s lives are not monetarially valuable. Disruption, displacement and dislocation are not concerns nor is the affect on those who have served and settled near these expendable bases.