A terrible thing happened on Thursday evening while I was doing Night Prayer: my chair broke! The back came off, and this has happened before but Travalon just popped it back on. This time every time he popped it back on, it popped back off again. He was overexerting himself so much that I was afraid he would drop dead of a heart attack, and I'd rather do without the chair than without the husband, so I said don't bother, we can afford a new chair. At the moment the chair is just sitting there with the back lying behind it like it's asleep or something. More chair news soon...
Last night I talked to Tiffy early because Travalon and I were going on a moth walk at night. I told her how I'm the Worst Catholic Ever and got some chakra crystals. These are tiny little pyramids.
I also showed her the picture I colored in my astrology coloring book. I said would you like me to do one for you with the neon pens or the sparkly ones, and she said sparkly since she doesn't have a blacklight. So here is her picture.
I didn't have anything resembling flesh color of any race among my pens, so I guess she's Irish...?
Then Travalon and I went on the moth walk with about a dozen other people. Someone I worked with at the Press was there, so we talked to her. The guy leading the walk had painted some trees with this potent-smelling mixture of beer, bananas, and molasses to attract moths, and he had also set up two UV lights with nets over them. Here is a picture of one.
You can see how the moths hang out on the outside of the net.
Check it out! My shirt and hoodie glow under the UV light!
And so does the leader's T-shirt! Can you see the luna moth on it? It continued to glow in the dark.
Here are some more photos of moths.
This is actually a cicada hatching out of its larval skin. It's hard to see, but the leaf is pointing right at it.
This big ugly bug is a fish fly.
I love this golden moth - so pretty!
This morning I had a two-hour training session, but I survived, and then Travalon and I went to the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo. He brought his good camera and took lots of photos of the modern-day dinosaurs. This is a sarus crane.
These are demoiselle cranes.
Apparently they are the same astrological sign as Tiffy!
My favorite - the black crowned crane from Africa!
These are wattled cranes.
This hooded crane was talking to us, but I'm not sure what it was trying to tell us.
The red-crowned crane was so beautiful. It kept dancing, but then it went in its house.
I think some of the cranes were hiding in their houses today, because we never saw the Eurasian cranes or the brolgas. These black-necked cranes are considered sacred in some Asian cultures, and they had a chant you could listen to about them. I believe it's the same one I posted on this blog last year in the video the Foundation sent about the prayer wheels being made in Nepal.
I love how he fluffed up his tail!
And here are the prayer wheels! They have cranes on them.
This is the white-naped crane.
Then we crossed over a stream with some large tadpoles in it.
This is the whooping crane, just like the ones we have seen at Horicon and Theresa Marshes.
The Siberian cranes were Travalon's favorites.
There were lots of flowers at the Crane Foundation too. Here is a calla lily, looking better than mine in my garden plot. (One white one bloomed, the orange one seems to have died, and the black one has leaves but no flowers.)
And there were so many wildflowers! Here is a cardinal flower with something purple that I feel like I should know what it is, but I can't tell you offhand.
My plant app says this is an evening primrose. I'm not sure about that...
It says this is spotted bee balm.
It says this is rough blazing star.
And it says this is prairie blazing star.
We came back on the Merrimac ferry. Here are some photos of our short boat ride.
Then we took a hike on Governor's Island, and we saw lots of sailboats.
We were hoping to see the loon that is allegedly hanging out in Warner Bay (we did see it on our pontoon boat cruise), but we had no luck. We did see sandhill cranes a bunch of times on our way back from Baraboo, and then tonight at Night Prayer, Richard Bonomo said he was out biking when some big birds were in his way on the bike path. He said they looked like turkeys but not exactly, and I asked him if he could be more specific. I thought they might have been cranes, and then when I showed him photos from the Crane Foundation, he said, "Yes! That's what they were!" I'm not surprised, because cranes are second only to Canada geese for being all, "Oh, were you about to go down this path? In that case, I'm going to cross it. You'll just have to wait." I don't know why. Who can understand bird psychology? Maybe they are still mad that they used to rule the world, but now we mammals have taken over, so the only way they can get back at us is to purposely get in our way.
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