My calendar of Seattle Public Events, which is by no means inclusive and tends to be heavy on dance and covers a handful of events that I find interesting and less likely to show up on the Seattle Arts and Entertainment calendar. Not all of the entries have links for information as this is essentially my private calendar that I'm sharing, but Google is your friend.

If you want me to add an event, please comment.

oldmangrumpus pointed me to an article on a house burning down on Alki. In case anyone else noticed it and worried...no, that was on the other end of the strip relative to us.

Hello--I've had a bunch of folks friend me recently, and I'm starting to lose track of people and am finding myself frequently saying, "Who dat?" If you're a new correspondent who friended me before I tracked you down and friended you, I'd love it if you'd remind me of what led you to my LJ. Just so's I have some context. Thank you!

So, I've volunteered to take photos for the Middle East Peace Camp, and the agreement I gave them (which we haven't yet signed)is that I hold the copyright, they use the photos for their website and their own promotional material, and I can use the photos for my own promotion (eg, website, portfolio, contests) but not for commercial sale.

Question: Do you think it's reasonable and not money-grubbing to stipulate that if parents want full-res, full-size versions of photos, they contact me? I don't think I want the organizers giving out my photo files.

What would you charge for an 8.5x11 print? I have no clue. What would you charge for digital images rather than the print? I don't think I'd want to sell the full-size digital file--I think I'd only provide Web-size images. Does that make sense?

The parents signed photo releases for the kids. There is one photos of a little girl that I desperately want to be able to enter in contests. They signed releases; my contract says I can use photos for my promotion; but...would you still ask permission from the parents? I mean, it's one thing to say, "Yeah, yeah, you can take photos for your website" and another to potentially have your kid show up in National Geographic or the Kodak gallery in NY. (Yeah, like that's gonna happen...but it's not totally beyond possibility, just beyond probability.)

I went out to try to catch photos of the harbor seals, which means I have 300 photos of a microdot as they stick their heads out and disappear.

Ah well. We shall see.

I got some nice seagulls, at any rate.

SPOOOORRK!

I think I will be too busy and tired this week to post much. ( summary of the weekend and upcoming week, for those who care )

I got to worrying about why that young eagle was so rumpled looking when her sibling wasn't and especially about the fact that she was having trouble getting into the air and seemed to be distressed, and I contacted the WA Ornithological Society to ask whether she was *supposed* to look like that or whether she could have gotten into oil. (Large container ships refuel in Elliot Bay very close to shore, and they do leak oil.) They said they'd all pored over the photo and...they didn't know. There apparently are not a lot of photos around of eagles at this age. They suggested that I contact WA Fish and Game, and that's what I'm doing.

We'll see what they say.

I got to have a the_red_shoes and Red Shoes Spousal Unit in my very own house today!

Much food and scenery was enjoyed. I love introducing Alki to people who've lived in Seattle for years and had no clue that a Mediterranean beachside town exists a few miles from downtown Seattle.

Now IHG and I fall down go crash due to too much sugar.

Tomorrow I go meet the folks at the Middle East Peace Camp where I'll be taking photos this week.

...in about five years.

( another eaglet photo. )

I looked at my eagle photos, and with my monster zoom lens, I can get a good look at the eagles...and oh my goodness, the one crying on the beach is just a half-fledged chick...a chick literally the size of a large dog! It's HUGE! Monstrous huge! With a great sharp hooked beak! But...oh, the topknot! The ruffled molting baby feathers! The baby fuzz! Those feet, each the size of a small kitten! The distress in its posture as it gallops crying along the beach flapping its wings and trying to launch itself into the air! The happy smile on its face when it bloodily disembowels a fish and realizes it can fend for itself! And big brother or sister--I don't know whether it's a better-developed chick from the same brood or an older sibling from last year--do they do that?--fiercely guarding it while it eats its fish! And then Little Brother standing aside and letting Big Brother eat, and their cuddling together staring menacingly at the evil cameraperson! And then the triumph as Younger Eagle gets itself fully into the air and soars off with Older Brother! And Mom cheering from the pontoon, where she's probably been on tenterhooks but has been keeping a sharp eye, and joining them and the three of them playing with the air currents over Puget Sound!

While I've seen lots of much, much better pics of bald eagles standing or soaring around looking majestic...I've never had a look at a family interaction like this. These are the guys that live in my yard.

It's too bad my camera is just an OK camera and in quality these are just OK photos...but I am so excited to have had an opportunity to really get a look close-up at life in an eagle family.

That chick is GIGANTIC. It's like twice the size of its parent. I wonder if that's an artifact of the ruffled feathers or whether it's really a mutant eagle. Cuz man, that baby chick looked like it was the size of a condor.

I will get some photos up later.

This series is going into National Geographic's photo contest for 2008 series. I don't think I'll win because the photo quality is just OK (after all, I was standing like two blocks away taking pics of creatures that to my naked unaugmented eye were mere dots on the beach). Still, I am happy to have caught this on camera.

I went down to the beach to take photos of the eagles and saw a very mystifying scene, til I figured it out.

A large juvenile bald eagle was standing on the shore, crying piteously. Every so often it would spread its wings and hop a few steps. It proceeded over time several blocks in this manner, crying, with ruffled feathers, and shaking its wings. An adult eagle and a larger juvenile, possibly from last year's brood, sat out in the Sound on the poontoon and watched.

Just at the point where I started dialing animal control to report a possibly injured eagle, the other young eagle flew back to the one on the beach and the beached eagle flew out a bit to meet it, so I saw it wasn't injured. The young eagles cuddled and groomed each other and the second one joined the smaller one in crying.

Then the beautiful adult bald eagle flew over and landed by them. The young ones hopped towards her eagerly, crying and spreading their wings--and Mom backed off. The young ones stopped and huddled. Mom would every so often start to approach them and stretch out her head to groom them...and then she'd back off, looking somehow puzzled, while the young ones cried and begged and huddled.

Finally Mom flew off and the young ones huddled together and groomed each other, for comfort, I think. Eventually a photographer (not me; I'm brighter than that) approached them too closely and they flew away, lifting massively into the air and looking a lot more like condors than like baby birds.

I think what I was watching was the point at which instinct or maybe cognition drives a parent bird away from feeding and caring for its young, but the signals were still not quite clear and Mom was conflicted and both attracted to and repelled by her young. And the young ones are quite large enough to hunt for themselves but still want Mom and Dad to feed and comfort them, and they are young enough to still cuddle with their siblings for comfort and affection.

So I was treated to the sight of deadly avian predators the size of golden retrievers peeping, begging, crouching, and vibrating their wings exactly like baby sparrows, and conflicted emotions (or at least drives) in the parent.

It was rather heart-rending, actually. Everyone in the interaction was so obviously puzzled and conflicted.

I am so privileged to live somewhere where I can see scenes like this, even with all the trouble it turns out that we're having with the house.

Hopefully I captured some of this on camera. We'll see.

There are THREE of them on the beach in front of my house: parent and the two half-grown juveniles.

Me and my camera will be back later.

I was planning to drive to Faerieworlds with my husband and friends on Thursday night, but I want to get there Thursday afternoon to join S00j's Firebird's Child run-through at fiveish, and my folks will not be there early enough. Does anyone who is going down early have room for another body? My family will be there later that night so I don't need to bring all my Stuff with me in the car...I can also take the Amtrak to Eugene if someone can get me the rest of the way from there.

Does anyone have one? What do you think of it?

I am turning to pudding and I often have some body issue--even something as simple as deep fatigue--keeping me from going to the gym or even going for a walk. (I swear, I've lived here since April and either I'm sick or my hip has been displaced or my foot has been in a cast for the entire time we've lived here.) I have that dance program thingie but it turns out to be too hard on joints, and also we can't be jumping up and down on our downstairs neighbor's head. I'm wondering if Wii Fit would be something we'd actually use and if it's actually useful.

I am going to be the photographer for the Middle East Peace Camp, a weeklong camp in Seattle for children of Arab and Jewish ancestry.

The co-founder allows that it's generally not so much the kids that need to be integrated with each other, but that they by extension introduce their parents to each others' parents and the idea of seeing the "other side" as humans.

Squee!

Of course, there is the fact that the families who get involved in this are already self-selected to some extent for being predisposed to the idea of peace between the groups.

A grizzly at NW Trek makes some sort of comment. Or possibly she or he is yawning. After all, no one else at the park seemed to be able to stay awake.

( photo )