See???

For those of you who hate birds, or at at least tired of them, here is one of my other neighbors.  Remember it from a few days ago?  No furtive sneaking around now!  It made several trips the buffet line of mixed nuts, each time stuffing its mouth and then running off to hide another helping of a future dinner.

A few thoughts.  First, if you ever want an almost impossible exposure problem try shooting a back-lit coal-black squirrel against a bright white background.  Secondly, I did not know Mr. (or Ms.) Squirrel had such long and sharp claws. That reminds me of when I was a 4H camp counselor and we told our 5-6 year old campers that they couldn't go our at night because of Bushy the Squirrel.  Bushy, who by the way was huge and roamed the woods around the Beaver Creek Reserve, would catch  them and, of course, steal their "nuts."  Hey, it kept a cabin full of little brats in their bed at night!  It was almost as scary as Lips, the Killer Carp.  You know, the one that kept them out of the ponds and stream...

Now that I think of it, I am going to make sure my door is locked tonight, too.

Again

Don't worry, I will get tired of posting bird photos soon.  It is still kind of interesting, though, and a different bird showed up today.  Sound the trumpets!  It actually ate from the Golden Chateau as well as  from the suet suite.  Afternoon  requires shooting almost directly into the sun which is far from ideal.  Still, when the photo is sharp enough to show the little birdy eyelashes,  the photo is probably sharp enough.  As always, click on the photo for a larger view.

Same bird, different day..

I am home today because of a snow day, our fifth of the year.  That is a lot even for where I am in Michigan.  I worry about losing five days of instruction this soon because we almost always have a snow day in March--how else are we supposed to watch the NCAA tournament if we have to work all the time?

Same bird, different day.  She looks cold.  And she has to bring her friends--eating alone can get tiresome.

Bird #2

Wow, they are just flocking to this place.  Not really, but this one is different.  I need to get a bird guide or they at least need to sign and tell me where what they are and where they are from.  Come on, this is a high class place!

Beasts of my forest

Sometimes it is said that the first real photos taken through a new lens (or at least a new lens to you) is called "first light."  The lens referenced in a previous blog was probably made almost 50 years ago, but it is new to me and I am having fun stalking beasts that come into my yard.  I have noticed these very fat black squirrels--not my first choice of subjects but they are kind of cute.  I had to bribe them to be socialble with a platter of nuts and blueberries.  All I had for nuts was a jar of stale honey roasted peanuts but they seemed to be tasty for the animals.  They can worry about their own good and bad cholesterol.  A bird even visited--none have visited the feeder, but at least I know that they are in the neighborhood and that they probably aren't boycotting the place.  But what kind is it?

Birds, or for them...

So I have been doing some major equipment horse trading of late and at this moment my house looks more like a camera shop than a house.  That statement is never too far from the truth, but right now it really is a camera shop.  I blame my friend John who gave my phone number to one of his friends who just happened to have several boxes of Leica cameras and lenses for sale.  Though I am saving money (I really am) in case of prolonged homelessness, I had to buy all that I could possibly afford.  Certainly, I told myself, "it's an investment!"  That may be the case but I also have to keep remembering that a lens or two won't keep me warm under that overpass...

But boy is all this fun!  I have stuff that I have never seen before and that doesn't happen much anymore.  Some of the equipment is just weird esoteric stuff--more than once I have said out loud (it is just me and all these cameras!) "who knew?  Why would you make or buy that?"  I have found wine helps with these conversations...

One such oddity is a very long telephoto lens, officially a Leitz 560mm F5.6 Telyt with a quick focus mount but you probably already knew that from looking at the picture.  It is a BIG lens, almost a yard long with the lens shade, and longer than that with the rifle shoulder stock.  Talk about scaring small children!  I also don't think that it would a good lens to hang around airports with it as it bears an uncanny resemblance to a rocket launcher.  I think that I had best not be by any apartment windows either...

Since those two pursuits are out of the picture  I have been thinking of what to do with it and I have settled on bird photography.  You know me, always looking at birds and this is the perfect lens.  I first had to try and attract the shy creatures within range, something that I have never been very good at.  I figured I would buy them dinner at a diner, and I didn't skimp--you are looking at the $9.99 Golden Chateau bird feeder, first imported from China and then to Roscommon from the metropolitan and chick  (sorry) town of Graying.  I was not cheep (sorry again) in my selection of gourmet bird chow either.  Nothing but the best, that is for sure.

And you know what?  Not one bird has visited.  Someone suggested a sign announcing the grand opening.  Maybe a "Hooters" sign and advertise their wings.  I don't know but I am very  disappointed.  I guess it would be like you opened up a business and then no one came on opening weekend.  Someone did point out that I was expecting too much.  After all, they said, you have neglected them all winter and didn't even feed them a scrap of bread so they don't know of your generous nature and good cooking.  Give them a few days.

So I will.  It will pass the time as I work on applications and ponder my future.  And I might even get a picture of a real bird!

The state of things...

We had our fourth snow day today of the semester as Snomaggedenpocolypse swept through the state.  Well, it wasn't that bad but there were 10 heavy wet inches of snow at my house this morning.  Of course when I was a kid back in Wisconsin in the olden days we would have never closed  the school or even had a snow delay.  We were of tougher stock, no doubt.  It was only when we were walking back home the last two miles (of course against the wind and uphill!) that we might have noticed that it was -90 and that we had received four feet of snow in the past hour.  Tougher stock indeed!

Yesterday we had our executive retreat to plan for the next year.  As you might imagine, my heart wasn't fully in the meeting, but I did listen and contribute as I could.  One bit of information pretty much explained my plight.  Michigan as a whole is a demographic nightmare for community colleges with its falling population and that is even more evident in the rural area that Kirtland serves.  It is the size of Connecticut yet only has about 60,000 people and that number is is getting smaller.  And it is getting older--the average age is well above 35 which stretches the definition of college-age.  Added to that is the strange inverse of the economy and enrollment that affects every community college.  As the economy improves and people can find work (even at the $11 that is the average wage in this area)  they don't go to college but take those jobs.  When there are no jobs, people flock to the colleges for help.  This  truly must be one of the more ugly Faustian equations in enrollment planning.  If only we had a huge awful recession when thousands would be out of work and suffering, our enrollment would be better!  I hardly wish that--we did that and it wasn't that much fun.

As I said, it has affected all the state's community colleges but it hurts Michigan schools a bit more than other states.  The state has no state-wide system to coordinate anything and I really struggle with that.  Want a nursing program (or a composites or an automotive or or or...) that competes with your neighboring school?  No problem--we wouldn't want to coordinate scarce resources or anything like that.  Want to build a building?  Let's have all 27 community colleges lobby the legislature independently.  Want to coordinate classes so that we could promise the transfer of classes between two and four year colleges?  You have to be kidding.

Look at the chart to see the result of all that.  Declines of 30 percent or more are common, declines of only 15% are celebrated.  It does explain why a college would want to shed a position as superfluous as an arts and science dean.  And frankly, it isn't a good sign for the school or the "system" when that seems like a good thing.  The loss of my position is but a very troubling symptom of much greater problems that many community colleges in Michigan face.

The photos are of winter--I took the same photos with my phone and they have been floating around.  The quality of the iPhone photos are very good, but these are better.  They should be, I hope, if the maxim of "you get what you pay for" is true.  The gap, however, is narrowing.  I am guessing that 95% of the viewing population can't tell the difference.  That is a good thing, I think.  One is from my iPhone--can you tell which one?  Click on the photos to see the pictures larger.

Happy winter!