Some Pictures Of My Animals I've Taken On March 12

As the title of this post says, here are some pictures of my animals that were taken on this day in history.  Starting with one who is gone & whose absence I deeply feel.

Beatrice was almost 17 when this picture was taken.  We met when she was still a kitten in the summer of 2000, & she traveled with me to & from Texas, finally leaving me in 2018.  She wasn't the friendliest of cats but I was always happy that she liked me best of all.

This is Pauline in 2017 on this day.  Yawning in bed.

Here she is - later in the day - wanting to yarp with her little brother (who is five years older than her) Winston.

& here's Winston getting up from a little circular bed he's apparently been sharing with Bolan & Bronte.  We lost Bronte last year, & if you happened to be around her in the eleven years she spent with us, she'd very likely be cuddled up to Bolan.

Here are pictures - one with Pauline, the other with Yoko - taken on our backyard deck.  Like today, it appears that March 12, 2020, was unseasonably warm & sunny*.  So they were relaxing outdoors.

& lastly, here's a picture of Winston & Yoko sitting at the front of the house.  Yoko was probably barking out the window while Winston looked on, bemused, but when I approached, she turned to see if I might be giving out treats.  This was taken one year ago today.

Just to make it clear - I take pictures of my animals every day.  Just because they're not featured her doesn't mean that I didn't take pictures of them.  Oh I did.  But they're a bit too amateurish to share.

* Until the middle of the day this year, then it got cold & rainy.  But the first half of today was glorious!

Harbors In The Movies

(image from the IMDb)

Lollygagging in Self Help Radio harbor this week was our resident cinephile Chuck, who talked to us about films he liked which had scenes in harbors.  Did you listen?  If not, perhaps do so at the show's page on KBOO or at the Self Help Radio website.  We can wait!

These links will help you watch the films he talked about & more:

Here is the IMDb keyword search list for films tagged "harbor."

Here is his YouTube playlist of films with harbor scenes.
Here's a list of some films available for free elsewhere.

Chuck collected the films he watched with reviews on Letterboxd.

See what Chuck is watching by following him on Twitter.

What? No movies about Pearl Harbor?!? That's a different keyword list - & maybe a different show?

Self Help Radio 030822: Harbors

(original image here*)

Self Help Radio this week was a nautical excursion - well, just as far as the harbor.  But what things you can see from the harbor!  & you don't have to get scurvy or anything!

In addition to lots of songs about harbors both real & metaphorical, we talked with two Captains, a cartographer, & our resident cinephile.  Honestly, I had almost nothing to do except play the songs.  Harbors are a bit like that - they're doing all the work, you're just hanging out.

You can listen to the show at all tides at both the KBOO web site or at the Self Help Radio web page.  You know if you go to the latter, you'll need a username (SHR) & a password (selfhelp), right?  I hope so.  All the things that happen on the show are below.

As Phil Ochs has sung, "Come & take the pleasures of the harbor... radio show."

Self Help Radio 220308 Harbors

"Harbour Blues" Lillian Miller _Texas Girls: Complete Recorded Works 1926-1929_

"Harbor Lights" Frances Langford with Sam Koki & His Islanders _The White Cliffs Of Dover_

"Remember Pearl Harbor" Eddy Howard & His Orchestra _The War Years_

introduction & definitions

"Harbor Of Love" Hank Thompson _Treasures_

"I Need A Harbor" Sue Thompson _Paper Tiger_

"Love Is A Sheltering Harbor" The Limeliters _Look At Love... In Depth_

"Harbor Melon" The Young Ones _Tobacco A-Go-Go Vol. II - '60s Carolina Psychedelia_

"Pleasures Of The Harbor" Phil Ochs _Pleasures Of The Harbor_

interview with our cartographer friend Rudy Jasper

"Temma Harbour" Mary Hopkin _Those Were The Days_

"Streets Of The Harbour" Jimmie Spheeris _The Original Tap Dancing Kid_

"Harbour" Mason _Harbour_

"Make & Break Harbour" Stan Rogers _Fogarty's Cove_

"At The Harbour" Renaissance _Ashes Are Burning_

interview with harbor patrol Captain Douglas Fair

"Certain Harbours" The Bongos _Drums Along The Hudson_

"Harborcoat" R.E.M. _Reckoning_

"Black Ship In The Harbour" Felt _Ignite The Seven Cannons & Set Sail For The Sun_ 

"Last Harbor" American Music Club _California_

"Martha's Harbour" All About Eve _All About Eve_

interview with tugboat Captain Tim Hicks

"Harbour Force" The Railway Children _Native Place_

"Harbor" For Against _Shelf Life_

"Cold Harbour Nights" They Go Boom!! _Just For A Day_

"Lost In The Harbour" Tom Waits _Alice_

"Safe Harbour Song" Kirsty McGee _Frost_

our resident cinephile Chuck stops by to talk about movies with harbor scenes

"Love In The Harbour" The Bees _Octopus_

"Benton Harbor Blues" The Fiery Furnaces _Bitter Tea_

"Myriad Harbour" The New Pornographers _Challengers_

"Harbour" Perhapst _Perhapst_

"The Harbor Is Yours" Aesop Rock _None Shall Pass_

a brief digression into the etymology of "harbor"

"Hug The Harbour" Emma Pollock _The Law Of Large Numbers_

"Harbour Lights" Pocketbooks _Carousel_

"Blue Harbour" The Wave Pictures _Beer In The Breakers

"Danny Boyd (Low Tide In Harbor Town)" The Secret History _Americans Singing In The Dark_

conclusion & goodbye

"Harborview Hospital" Mark Lanegan Band _Blues Funeral_

"Quiet, The Winter Harbour" Mazzy Star _Still EP_

* "Capri Harbor" by vgm8383 is marked with CC BY-NC 2.0.

Whither Harbors?

That picture up there?  I took it at the Sydney Harbor when I visited Australia in late 2010/early 2011.  We were actually taking a boat across the harbor to the Taronga Zoo.  Yes, that's the famous Sydney Harbor Bridge in the background, but I was impressed by the size of the luxury liner there.  Holy shit it was huge.  I don't think I'd ever been so close to something so huge that was literally floating next to me.  I must've taken a dozen pictures of it.  But only this one also included the harbor.

This begs the question why I didn't do a show about harbors in 2011 when I got back.  I don't think I've really been near a harbor any time recently.  So why do a show about harbors now?  I wish I could tell you.  A decision was made some time ago & the reasons are lost in the mists of the recent past.  Which as I get older becomes more misty even as it gets more recent.

Please enjoy however a nautical Self Help Radio tonight (Tuesday morning) on 90.7 fm KBOO Portland & online everywhere at kboo dot fm from midnight to 3am.  Guests & good tunes.  It'll be just like coming into a harbor from a long sea journey.  Or - let's be honest here - probably not.

Preface To Harbors: Wishing One Lived Nearer To Water

(image from here)

Once, in conversation with my brother-in-law, I commented (I was living in Kentucky at the time) on the number of rivers I had to pass/cross/drive over (whatever) to get to places - the biggest one being the Ohio River, should I be going to Ohio or Indiana.  He was (is? we haven't talked in years) a long-haul trucker, & he thought about the rivers he regularly passed/crossed/drove over, & he said, "We really need more rivers in Texas."

*

The closest I've ever lived near water was probably where I lived in my first two years in Austin.  I was within walking distance of what was then called "Town Lake" but which is now called "Ladybird Lake" (so-renamed after the death of the former first lady) & which is really a part of the Colorado River.  Not that I walked down there much.  I was a busy student & the lake was kind of smelly & there were some terrifically large rats (nutria?) that lived there.  They did not strike me as being shy but I did not want to find out if that were true.

*

In my last visit to Austin, we went to find a food cart which just so happened to be in that very area where I lived from 1986 to 1988.  & so, after thirty years, with many of the old apartments that were there demolished & replaced with condos & snazzier apartments, I walked with my wife & my dogs down to that lake.  It felt like there were far more people around though it was a moderately cold December day.  & perhaps it was natural that there were - according to the internets, when I moved to Austin, there were barely half a million people living there (485,000 is the number I got); thirty years later, the city had almost doubled in size (907,000 it said to me).  This is just the city, not the metropolitan area, which I believe now contains over two million souls.  In any event, I didn't remember much about the area, but it was nice to be close to Town Lake again, even if she had changed her name.

*

The picture above is of some place called "The Harbor Rockwall."  I have never been there.  It's a harbor on a lake - called Lake Ray Hubbard - which forms some of the eastern boundary of my home town of Garland, Texas.  (Rockwall is the town it's in, in case you were looking for a wall of rock.)  It's possibly the closest harbor to when I was born, although it wasn't there when I was born; it was built in 2003.  I hadn't lived in that area for sixteen years when it was built.  But I made a half-assed effort to find a harbor near my birthplace & this is all I got.

*

According to this Wikipedia article, Lake Ray Hubbard (some folks these days call it Ray Hubbard Lake) was named after a fellow "who presided over the Dallas Parks & Recreation System board from 1943 to 1972."  It's human-made, says the article, "created by the construction of the Rockwall-Forney Dam, which impounded the East Fork Trinity River."  The article mentions that the lake "contains a large population of hybrid striped bass, white bass, largemouth bass, channel catfish, blue catfish, white crappie, black crappie, & alligator gar."  When I was a kid, we went swimming in the lake, probably not a lot, but a few times, & I remember one particularly lovely afternoon ruined when someone saw a water moccasin.  We were made to get out of the water forthwith.

*

The article also mentions, "Several areas of the lake have been infested with hydrilla."  Because of the use of the passive tense, the sentence suggests someone is responsible, & I guess someone is, whoever brought the non-native plant to the area in the first place, but I don't think it was intentional.  One of the problems with having a lake, I suppose.

*

Just thinking about harbors tonight made me think about every time I'm near water, I kind of want to live near water.  We walked around the Willamette River a couple of weeks ago & there's a dreamy quality to watching a river slowly pass you by.  I wonder if I'll ever get the chance to fall asleep in a home near the sea or a lake - to see if that dreamy quality truly has a soporific effect.