Return of the Storks

The change of seasons brings a number of different birds to Florida. My favorite of these seasonal

visitors is the Mycteria americana, the still-endangered Wood Stork. They live year-round in South America, and come to central Florida to breed. Winter is our dry season, and its prey (fish and frogs and crabs and such) become concentrated in the shrinking pools.

It catches them in a unique way: by feel. They wade patiently through muddy water with its beak submerged and partially open, and when they feel a fish touch their bill, they instantly snap it shut and the poor creature is history. The closing of a Wood Stork’s beak is supposedly one of the swiftest moves in the animal world.

The stork is one seriously Big Bird. Three or four feet tall, with up to a six-foot wingspan. Blackish-gray legs, pink feet, with a decidedly ugly head: dark brown with a bald, black face like some vultures (which gave rise to a couple of its nicknames, ironhead or flinthead), and a long, thick, dusky yellow, downcurved bill like an ibis (hence another nickname, wood ibis). Brilliant white bodies that reveal black edges and tips when they fly.

And oh, how they fly! They soar with amazing grace, neck and legs extended, wings powerful and elegant and confident. When they walk, they are slow and stately, with shoulders hunched, wings folded like hands clasped behind theirs backs, like scholars deep in thought. One startling habit is for one stork to stand opposite its companions—up to a dozen of them—and face them with wings outstretched, looking for all the world like a preacher in clerical robes giving a sermon. This is where it got its most famous nickname: preacher bird.

Mom loved Wood Storks. The Northern Mockingbird was her clear favorite, but I’d say the Northern Cardinal and the Wood Stork probably tied for second. I remember the day she called me to our back yard, where one preacher bird was giving quite a long homily to his congregation, gesturing with his wings as if he were calling down fire and brimstone upon them. The other storks were, for lack of a better word, sitting down and listening patiently. They crouched close to the ground in a group, and all faced the preacher, beaks upturned, except for a juvenile who looked restless and kept finding insects to eat, which would cause his mother to nudge him periodically, as if to say, “Pay attention, young man!” Mom told that story countless times over the years, it so delighted her.

Today I started doing errands in preparation for my trip to Virginia, my first Christmas without her. It was such a comfort to see six or seven Wood Storks by a small pond, and a little further down the road, another three wading in a brook under the trees. “Don’t mourn me after I die,” Mom would tell me, rather frequently. “Just think of those things we loved together, and hold me in your heart. That will be enough.”

And it is.

Strange Days

Jim Morrison wrote “Strange Days,” the song, for The Doors’ album of the same name, in 1967. The album was considered an artistic triumph but a commercial failure. The cover depicts circus performers (acrobats, a juggling mime, a strongman, a trumpet player, and two dwarves) in a quiet NYC residential mews.

Most carnivals were out on summer tours so it was a struggle for the album’s cover photographer, Joel Brodsky, to find professional circus performers. The acrobats were the only ones he could find; the dwarf, Lester Janus, and his younger brother Stanley were hired from an acting firm; the juggler was Brodsky’s own assistant; the trumpet player was a taxi driver; and the strongman was a doorman at a nightclub.

Strange days have found us Strange days have tracked us down . . . Strange days have found us And through their strange hours We linger alone Bodies confused Memories misused As we run from the day To a strange night of stone

My sleep these days isn’t terribly comfortable. I dream constantly, but the dreams are confusing, jumbled, elusive. I wake early—I’ve always awakened many times during the night—but now for some reason, by 6 a.m. or so, I no longer go back to sleep. I’m finished. It’s not like I’m driven from my bed with lots of happy energy, ready to tackle the day. It’s just that I’m done. I’m finished. This is something I have never done in fifty-three years, at least not with any regularity.

I get up, turn the TV for some companionship, and fire up the Internet. The news is decidedly odd.

The TV folks (local and national) can’t stop talking about Caylee Anthony, the young Orlando child who disappeared last June, presumably killed by her mother Casey. To call it a media circus is to make a mockery of circuses. Yesterday, more bones were found near the child’s home, so every news report pounces on each minute action of every individual involved in the case and analyzes it to death. (Pun regrettable, but intended.)

The ’Net is buzzing with the news that a New Jersey couple, who have decorated their bodies, their home, and their car with swastikas, have named their three children Adolf Hitler Campbell, Joycelynn Aryan Nation Campbell, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell. (They actually meant to name the last one “Heinrich Himmler,” but they misremembered the name as “Hans Hinler.” Thank goodness for illiteracy.) These parents are incensed because their local Shop Rite wouldn’t write “Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler” on the boy’s birthday cake.

The story doesn’t end there. They finally got the cake inscribed the way they wanted. At their local Wal-Mart bakery. (I wonder if there were swastikas in the frosting?)

Email to a friend has been bouncing intermittently. Apparently ice storms play havoc with mail servers, though I get miffed when the messages from her ISP keep accusing me of being a spammer. Just now I find that my Facebook account is unavailable due to site maintenance. “It should be available again within a few hours,” they write. “We apologize for the inconvenience.” A few hours?? Really, Facebook? And my laptop spacebar isn’t cooperating. I’m having to keep pounding it with my thumb to keepallmywordsfromrunningtogether. What’s next, a full computer crash? (Before you ask, yes, everything is backed up.)

All in all, this feels like a very Twin Peakish morning. I’m going to go make myself a damn fine cup of coffee while you all watch this:

Remember: The owls are not what they seem.

Ghost in the Machine

I blame Adam. First he told me about Woot! and then he told me about the Wootalyzer. So it’s all his fault. And if it’s not his fault, then it’s Mom’s. Or Alton Brown’s. It’s definitely not mine.

Those of us who are not into Internet jargon may not be aware that “w00t!” (with zeros instead of Os) is an expression of joy, an Internet hurrah. A few days ago Adam told me about a website, Woot.com, that sells overstocked items at amazingly low prices, usually one new item per day, posted at midnight Central time. When it sells out, that’s it, nothing more until the next midnight rolls around. But once every month or so they have something called a Woot-Off, in which they have smaller numbers of each item in stock, so they run them back to back. Some items, either because they have very few of them or because they’re very hot items or both, sell out in seconds. Others hang around for several minutes or, for big-ticket items, for an hour or more until they sell out.

The Wootalizer is a small program that connects to the Woot! website and sounds an alarm each time a new item is posted. This is particularly helpful during Woot-Offs when you might have something precious disappear in the time it takes the web page to reload.

The Woot-Off that started yesterday is still running today. My Wootalizer has been sounding its alarm at distressingly frequent intervals, and I’m about to silence it when up pops this set of knives by the masters of Japanese knife-making, Shun (marketed in the U.S. by Kershaw). Six knives and a bamboo knife block for $249 plus $5 shipping.

Now, I’ve been lusting after these particular knives ever since I saw Alton Brown (of Good Eats fame) extol their virtues; they were for years the only knives he would use, and he met with Shun and asked them to make a series with the blades angled for easier cutting. They made them, and he put his name (and face) on them. Together these knives regularly sell for $527 (not counting the knife block or shipping), so Woot’s price was way less than half.

Now for the weird part.

When the Wootalizer popped up with this offer, I panicked. A couple of years ago Mom got me a lovely set of Wüsthoff knives for Christmas; they too had been objects of great desire, and since their purchase they have been my pride and joy. When the Shun-lust started, I told myself that I already had the best, or very close to the best, and I needed nothing more. I had to tell myself that repeatedly, because of the drooling.

So when this pop-up popped up, I thought: Ack! (Well, that’s really not much of a thought, honestly. But it was the best I could do at the moment.) “What do I do? Say no, say no!” And I did. I took my hands off the keyboard entirely, and took a deep breath. I started reading:

1. Clad Construction. The wavy pattern on our blades is called a Damascus look; what gives it that pattern are 16 layers of SUS410 High Carbon Stainless Steel pounded to 3/1000th of an inch and then “clad” on each side of the VG10 core. This combination of materials gives the blade strength, stain resistance, and incredible cutting performance.

2. The Cutting Edge. Shun’s cutting edge is ground to an angle of 16 degrees making them extremely sharp; compare this to the best German knives which are only ground to only 22 degrees. The exotic Japanese steels used in the cutting core of our knives allow them to hold these razor-sharp edges without the need for excessive resharpening.

3. VG10 “Super Steel.” VG10 is a new type of stainless steel that has a higher density. This allows the steel to be tempered to a Rockwell hardness of 61, and still have the flexibility and strength to take and keep a perfect edge. VG10’s natural tendency is to remain straight and true, so when it is used, the edge of the blade naturally straightens out and stays sharper longer

4. SG-2 Powdered Steel. Shun uses SG-2 as the cutting steel. The SG-2 is an exotic powdered steel with incredible edge retention capability and hardness, resulting in an exceedingly sharp and smooth edge. It has a much higher density and grain structure with no imperfections or weak points.

5. D-shaped ebony-black Pakkawood handles, with stainless-steel bolsters and end caps.

But before I had finished reading, the screen changed to the “purchase” page. I hadn’t done a thing. My hands were still at my sides. Because I had bought items previously, the page was all filled out for me. All I had to do was click the “this info is correct” button to seal the deal.

I didn’t. My hands were still at my sides.

The button clicked of its own accord. I swear to God.

As I shrieked, I swear I could hear Mom’s gentle chuckle, and could see her smiling at me out of the corner of my eye. It felt like her gift to me, the knife “upgrade” that I would never get myself, out of respect for her.

Kinda puts a different spin on the old “finality of death” idea, doesn’t it?