...upon seeing a bird on a car in a parking lot...

This afternoon, I saw a great-tailed grackle on the hood of a car in the Trader Joe's parking lot...

Whenever I see one, I am instantly transported back to living in Nicaragua, where, like clockwork at 5:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., the trees across the street would roar to life with the birds, waking and returning...

Quiscali mexicani are called zanates (sah-NAH-tehs) in Central America...

And so, it is a bird that has inspired me to post my first video-clip to a blog--taken when I was still learning to use my digital camera in Central America--zanates at sunset, León, Nicaragua, a year-and-a-half ago:

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Earlier in the afternoon, since we both had the day off work, my wife and I decided to go for a short hike--we drove to the eastern edge of the city--strip-malls peter out into ranches tucked into mesquite woods and finally you hit the boundary of national park wilderness-land...A perfect winter-in-the-desert-day: 69 degrees in the sun, after a frosty morning...The view below is taken from the Rincon foothills, looking to the NW, towards the Santa Catalinas and the Tucson mountains...

(Which version shows the textures of the 'teddy-bear' cholla cactus better--the black-and-white or the sepia? S. prefers the b&w...I like the 'old-west'-feel of the sepia...)

Further up the trail, you climb up a ridge that lets you see the snowy forested summit, 8000 feet up...

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...and today's word-of-the-day, gleaned from this morning's local paper:

Guatemexicoestadounidenses

Huh? Here's the link to the article, if you're curious...

Angles of light...birdie woes...

Winter solstice in the northern hemisphere:

On December 21st,
Tucson's sunrise to sunset is 7:21 a.m. to 5:23 p.m.--
10 hours 2 minutes and 14 seconds of daytime,
with the sun at 34.4 degrees above the horizon.

Compare that to Seattle's 7:55 sunrise to 4:20 sunset--
just 8 hours 25 minutes of daytime(!),
with the sun at a measly 19.9 degrees above the horizon.

My childhood winters in northern Germany--8:33 sunrise and sunset at 4:22,
just 7 hrs 49 minutes of day,
with the sun barely peaking at 15 degrees above the southern horizon.

Angles of light are important--
artists speak of 'the special light in Provence'...
or 'the quality of light in Santa Fe'...
'the way the sun rains down in Tuscany' etc, etc...
it's all about geometry--
how many degrees up in the sky, how long are the shadows...

The numbers will make you crazy; they'll send you packing...
No wonder Van Gogh left the Low Countries for the South of France...

More statistics, for six months from now:
Summer solstice:
Tucson-5:18 sunrise to 7:34 sunset (standard time; AZ doesn't switch to daylight savings),
81.2 degrees in the sky, almost overhead; positively tropical.
Seattle-5:12 sunrise to 9:11 (daylight savings time), solar noon at 65.8 degrees above the horizon.

(Incidentally, here's a link to world night/day map:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html)

Nicaragua in December--the sun is at 54.5 degrees above the horizon...
maybe that's why León's colonial streets and its volcanic countryside looked more Tuscan in December...

Here in Tucson now--lovely morning shadows on the mountains; they really are purple on the horizons...
And just in time for winter, last week, and then again today, there has been snow on the Catalinas:

Yes, that's my work-window-view of the Catalinas, in mid-town Tucson...

...and from the entrance to Sabino Canyon, the Rincons on the east are snow-dusted as well:

This past weekend, my wife's parents were in town...so we drove up the Catalina highway; at about 7000 feet up, the icicles were impressive--there IS winter in southern Arizona; all is not cactus: ...and this is the view south, toward the Santa Rita mountains...there was snow all the way down to about 4500 feet, on the northern slopes...

...and we got down to the base of the mountains just in time for sunset: ========================

And now, for birdie woes.

Tango has been sick. Liver problems, evidently...leading to neurological issues, meaning falls and lack of equilibrium--birdie vertigo! Some trips to the vet ($$$), and now with medication and temporary cage-modifications, our Senegal parrot is improving.

I would never have guessed I would one day spend MONEY on a little birdie...(blood test? cholesterol levels?) but hey, when the little companion has a life-span of THIRTY years, you can't NOT help him out, right? (Truly, he is a feathered-friend.) A hamster or a gecko, I might just let go, you know, but a parrot?...well...It's been a dodgy few days for avian health in our household, but he's pulling through...and we can sleep more soundly...

Ay ay ay...

Winter in Tucson, then...freezing nights and snow-capped sunny afternoons, yards full of ripe citrus, an ailing parrot, and now, time off...

Lettuce on ice...cultural collision...

The first snows have arrived on the mountains around Tucson...
...down to around 6000 feet...
A thunderstorm hit yesterday afternoon down in the valley,
leaving a half-inch of ice pellets on the ground...and it was PINK!
Seriously...some wind updrafts must have picked up some desert sand somewhere, and it came down as pink hail in our little front yard...
Our little lettuce-garden got beat-up by the skyborn refrigeration;
the perils of winter gardening...


In today's International Herald Tribune, there's a very interesting opinion piece dealing with Arizona;
local issues on in an international stage...
Here's the link to the column:
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Where Mariachis and Minutemen collide
by Lawrence Downes
PHOENIX, Arizona

Want to see America unraveling? Come here, to Thomas Road and 35th Street, to M. D. Pruitt's furniture store. Come on Saturday morning and stand near the eight delivery trucks barricading the parking lot, like the wall of an urban Alamo.

For the last seven weeks, a sidewalk protest here by Latino immigrants has blossomed into a feverish reality show, attracting Minutemen, mariachis, children dancing in Mexican folk costume, white racists, United Nations observers, Phoenix police officers and Maricopa County sheriff's deputies.

The weekly confrontation - strident and stalemated - perfectly mimics the national debate. But it's a sideshow to something uglier: What happens when immigration's complexities are handed to local law enforcers sympathetic to the fury of one side.
Thomas Road has lots of Latino day laborers, or jornaleros, who hustle for work near Home Depot. A few months ago, the Phoenix police shooed them away. They dispersed to streets nearby, angering local businesses. One of the biggest, Pruitt's, hired off-duty city police officers to keep jornaleros at bay. The city put a stop to that, so Pruitt's turned to the county sheriff, Joe Arpaio.

Sheriff Joe, as he is known, needed no prodding: Hunting undocumented immigrants is his specialty. He has arrested hundreds under a state antismuggling law (for smuggling themselves) and has had 160 officers deputized as federal immigration agents. They have made more than 50 arrests near Pruitt's since the protests began.

They'll pull a car over for a traffic infraction, then check everyone's papers. They say they act on reasonable suspicion only - if they see a shirt or shoes like those worn south of the border or hear Spanish. They say it isn't profiling.

There is no doubt whose side Sheriff Joe is on. He has officers on Pruitt's payroll, guarding the lot on protest days. Last week, he issued a news release demanding that the demonstrators stop hurting Pruitt's and vowing to crank up the pressure until they went away. It was a naked attempt to stifle dissent and help a business ally.

People here are used to that from Sheriff Joe. He describes himself as "America's meanest sheriff" and has recently been basking in the love of nativists like the Minuteman Chris Simcox and radio host Terry Anderson, who gushed over him at a roast in Sun City West this month.

If Arizona begins punishing companies that hire illegal workers under a law that takes effect Jan. 1 - a lawsuit to block it was thrown out Friday - it will fall to counties to do the purge. In Maricopa, that means Sheriff Joe.

The protesters at Pruitt's are the only real opposition he has faced. Their leader is Salvador Reza, a stocky American of Mexican and Apache ancestry, an Air Force veteran who has spent years organizing jornaleros and small-business owners here.

Reza says he can't understand why America accepts global flows of companies, money and jobs but not workers. Why faith in market forces seems to have been eclipsed by fear of immigrants. Or why the country cannot set up legal channels to let jornaleros come and go and not be hassled.

"They actually are people with a work ethic that would make the Puritans proud," he said.

Pruitt's owner, Roger Sensing, says he needs armed officers to protect customers from jornaleros. Reza calls that ridiculous, and one informed noncombatant, the Reverend Craig Geiger, pastor of a Lutheran church across the street, agrees. He told me he had never seen a laborer enter Pruitt's lot. He also said his Latino congregation did not drive to church anymore. Documented or not, they fear Sheriff Joe. They walk.

Pastor Geiger leaves the neighborhood on Saturdays, because it gets deafening. When I was there, a trio singing Mexican ballads strolled through the crush. A Minuteman with a bullhorn followed them. "Monkeys coming through!" he shouted. His side rushed up to drown the music out: "Born in the U.S.A.! Born in the U.S.A.! KKK! Viva la Migra! January First!"

The restrictionists see Jan. 1 as the dawn of a new era, when the Mexicans disappear and everything gets pure and legal again. It is uncertain whether Arizona's economy will survive the exodus. "Unfortunately, they'll probably wake up when they bankrupt the state," Reza told me.

Lawrence Downes is a member of the New York Times editorial board.