Felt strong enough to go for a boat ride this week for the first time in ages!
That felt good! Being out there beats watching the river from the porch, though the latter is a favorite activity for sure.
When it comes to health, I believe in science, not woo-woo bullshit. But I do swear by the healing power of nature.
We saw a Black-Crowned Night Heron along the way:
It was the biggest we’d ever seen by a considerable margin. The Victor Wembanyama of BCNHs!
Today we’re having some friends over and watching college football. Georgia vs. Clemson up first (Go Dawgs, I guess), then the main event: Florida vs. Miami.
Go Gators!
Open thread!
Baud
Nice, BC. Glad to hear you’re feeling better.
West of the Rockies
Hooray for days of feeling good!
We got our covid and flu shots yesterday and are feeling lethargic and weird (not in a Republican way).
Leto
How dare you!!! Go Canes! :p
Westyny
Glad to hear you’re up and aboat!
Aimai
Betsy I’m down with Covid and have been quarantining in my house as a lovely august slips by. I appreciate these pictures so much and I wish I were sailing through the swamp with you just appreciating nature and your company.
JPL
Enjoy your day and thank you for the lovely pictures and post. A few years ago, in order to reconnect with family my brother turned off Fox news. He not only tells his friends now to turn off the hate, he joined the hundrends of thousands first time donors to the Harris campaign. My neice texted me to let me know, that hell has frozen over. ha
JPL
double post
RedDirtGirl
I hope there was a telephoto lens involved in the taking of that last pic!
hitchhiker
All the boat rides to you, ma’am. Thanks for the pictures!
weasel
Love the light in the gator’s mouth. Lovely shot!
So glad you got out for some boating. I grew up on the water in St Pete and really miss my time out in the boat. Wishing you many more river rides :)
Sister Golden Bear
Glad to hear you’re feeling better. Nature may not heal the body, but it definitely heals the soul.
RedDirtGirl
@JPL: worth posting twice!
weasel
@Westyny: Thanks today’s first bad-pun-groan, bravo!
Danielx
Roseate hued alligator? Say it ain’t so!
Wonderful you’re feeling better.
japa21
Your skills with the camera have improved by leaps and bounds. The top picture is positively idyllic.
Betty Cracker
@Aimai: All the healing vibes, friend! Would love to take you on a swamp tour someday! Feel better!
Geminid
Betty, I wonder if you saw this Politico article from August 29:
It’s a long article, written by reporters Arek Sarkissian and Kterra Frazier.
Spurwing Plover
Green Herons use Bait while their Fishing and their a relative of the Black Crowned Night Heron and well as the Egrets
JPL
@Geminid: The article made me think of Harris saying when we vote we win!
CaseyL
Gorgeous photos!
Your pictures and descriptions of the natural wildness around you does Florida a lot of credit. The tourism board would be lucky to have you: you make Florida seem like a place worth visiting (admittedly, probably only to nature lovers :)
Enjoy every moment of feeling stronger!
Ramalama
Betty, I love your command of bird names. I was just thinking I need to learn more of the names of the weeds / plants that proliferate in my neck of the Laurentian woods. We’ve got birds yes but I seem to be only interested in the Loons, the springtime robins who peck at my window for food, and the crows, the latter having this incredible ability to “HAW!” so loudly and in stereo, unlike all the others.
Glad you’re feeling better. Good vibes feel good, hurrah.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I will never understand how Floridians get used to living near freely-roaming alligators.
Glad to hear you were on the water today, Betty
Josie
I enjoy all your photos, BC, but that first one is a work of art. Thanks for lifting up my spirit when I needed it. So glad you are having a good day.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Golden Bear: Well put!
@Geminid: Hadn’t seen it — thanks! I think the ballot initiative has a fighting chance. It’s a heavy lift because 60% is required, but it polls well, sometimes over the necessary margin. Its passage would not only restore women’s bodily autonomy and access to modern healthcare, it would be a swift kick in the nuts to DeSantis, who’s going all out to defeat it. Bonus!
Old Dan and Little Ann
I was in my front yard yesterday and was fortunate to catch my first ever sky writer in action. The plane little plane made a huge circle, then flew away to come back and make 1 long line, then another another to make eyes. Then it flew out of the circle and came back to form the smiley face. It was outstanding. Then it went further along in the sky to make a heart. I felt like a 5 year old watching it happen.
trollhattan
Happy to hear you’re out enjoying your neighborhood, which I also totally endorse WRT adopting the “Stay in the boat” policy.
trollhattan
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
Very cool. Must be a declining profession as I’ve not seen one in…can’t recall the last time.
And speaking of airborne advertising, when’s the last time anybody saw a Goodyear blimp?
eclare
Y’all play Miami today, so ok, Go Gators! For me, Go Vols!
So glad you took a boat ride today. Thanks for the photos.
FastEdD
An enormous mouthful of teeth, an alimentary canal, and not much else. Like some people I know.
Anonymous At Work
Stress reduction is a powerful and legitimate aid in healing. Stress causes inflammation which both harms the body and inhibits healing. It’s why all the woo-woo bullshit can generate strong testimonials but utterly fail double-blind or single-blind testing. A pediatric Chief of Medicine once remarked that the most cost-effective treatment for patients was the placebo effect; the only issue was how ethically to use it.
WaterGirl
Oh, Betty, so happy to hear about your good day!
Even if tomorrow isn’t all that good, let’s hope that this is like the first spring day every year. Yes, you know in your head that Spring will come again, but there’s something about experiencing that first spring day – even if the weather goes back to being cold and shitty, you KNOW in your heart that Spring is coming.
Baud
@JPL:
How wonderful.
DFH
Good to know you’re out and about, Betty.
p.a.
@Old Dan and Little Ann: I remember sky writing years ago (I’m 65) but haven’t seen it in ages. Even planes towing advert banners are rare. Goodyear blimp? Maybe at college football games, but otherwise…
I like the scene in Eight Men Out where the plane flies over the game and everything stops. Players emerge from dougouts to watch, fans quiet down and look- it was 1918 or ’19 and it was a new phenomenon.
Ditto-ing trollhattan
eclare
@JPL:
That is wonderful to hear!
Joy in FL
I love your photos. That gator photo is awesome with the light at the throat.
I’m so glad you got to take that boat ride. I hope you have more days where you feel like that.
Kelly
A quiet walk in the woods has always settled me down. A walk in the woods is so simple.
West of the Rockies
Has anyone seen Blonde Kamala on Instagram? Her impression is pretty good and–I don’t think–done maliciously.
Trivia Man
Growing up out West i heavily favor mountains and deserts for nature. I always scoffed at “lake people” because my experience with lakes and lake people was the sterile, pontoon party boat centric people.
Then I happened to buy a house with a small river as my back lot line. Not a lot of wildlife in my section but i was very pleasantly surprised by how much i enjoyed watching it year round. It wasn’t close, about the distance of the short porch at yankee stadium. But close enough to watch it flow, high and low.
Then another happy accident, a house with a view of the surfers on lake michigan. On big wave days id open the window to hear the waves crash. Good times
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@JPL: I hope he’s in a swing state – but everyone & every vote counts
TBone
@Aimai: awwww
hugs
from someone who knows how you feel
KatKapCC
Same, and I view it — as well as other things that may fall under woo-woo — not as replacements for science-based medicine, but rather as complements to science-based medicine. Nature, prayer, meditation, yoga, and so on can help you find an equilibrium mentally and emotionally while medications and treatments try to find it physically. And especially if there is anxiety and fear tied to one’s diagnosis or the treatments, things that can provide a balm to the soul can help ease those feelings, making getting through the treatments and the side effects and the pain a little bit easier.
TBone
@JPL: miracles! Thanks for sharing
Trivia Man
@Old Dan and Little Ann: Ive seen pictures if the new style – dot matrix printing so you can get long and wordy messages up
Aimai
@Betty Cracker: I am staring at your pictures and pretending really hard that I am right there with you. Healing vibes coming from me to you, too!
TBone
@Old Dan and Little Ann: my mom was a T.W.A. stewardess in the early 60s. Her dearest wish was to own and fly a Piper Cub. Every time I see a small plane (or skywriting) I think of her.
Thank you for sharing that – I had a dream one morning that mom was skywriting a message to me, her wings glinting in the sun. It said:
5:30 AM Byte Me
I woke up and it was 5:30 A.M. (I don’t have an alarm clock)
Trivia Man
@Anonymous At Work: There is a study done that found placebo effect works – even when you say “this pill is a placebo, it has no medical effects.”
Trivia Man
@p.a.: Ive heard the banners are common at some high traffic beaches. Easy to see, concentrated audience
Leto
Richard Attenborough style narration of a Wank Panzer in nature.
CaseyL
@Anonymous At Work:
The placebo effect just fascinates me. I think there are finally some studies being conducted around it, which is an improvement over the “it’s a weird thing that happens that we don’t understand and therefore we just discount it” attitude that prevailed not long ago.
To my mind one of the drawbacks of the placebo effect is that, SFAIK, it’s not permanent. It doesn’t last, which means it’s not much help in dealing with a chronic condition.
Another thing I think about is whether a kind of Heisenberg Principle applies to the placebo effect: that is, the very act of studying it could render it useless. What if the placebo effect only works if you don’t examine it too closely or try to quantify it?
Betsy
I’m so glad you were able to get on the river, Betty.
TBone
B.C. I hope for you to have more and more feeling strong days that buoy you along on your healing journey. Memory makers that wash over your body with the strong light of healing.
Leto
@Old Dan and Little Ann: so military aviators over the years have been know to sky write certain male… appendages, with included dangly bits, in the sky. They’ve done this over the decades, but it started to gain more public exposure (ha) due to cell phone videos, and flight tracking websites. Basically military aviators have been told to “knock it off” with that.
MagdaInBlack
I’m glad you’re having a good day, Betty. Thank you for the pictures. I dream of living on the shore of something, somewhere, someday. Even just a pond would do fine. 🌻
stinger
@Trivia Man: Yes — you don’t have to be lied to by your doctor for placebo to help — it’s the taking action on your own behalf that gives you some sense of control. And that can help produce actual improvement. It’s a lot like writing postcards or knocking on doors or donating or data entry or phone banking to alleviate anxiety about the election.
Adam Lang
Wow he is huge! We have some around the Bay Area but I have never seen one that big.
Did get to see a pretty goofy one up close though. https://dogsofsf.com/archives/11504
TBone
@Leto: laughter is such good medicine! Thank you for sharing!
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: another thing we have in common!
raven
@Leto: I knew an A6 driver who flew UNDER the Golden Gate Bridge!
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: Scared yet? 😉
I grew up on the Fox River in northern Illinois, and spent my summers camping on Canadian lakes. I think water rocks and trees are programmed in.
strange visitor (from another planet)
glad you’re feeling better, betty.
for the record, i survived the colonoscopy. gonna be getting one a year in the future, thanks to my crohn’s. according to ms visitor, my first words upon opening my eyes were, “am i dead? is this valhalla?”
so yeah. i’ma gonna be fine, at least in that regard ( i think). got home, ate a house, slept for thirteen hours.
hope everyone’s having a groovy saturday. still all sorts of wobbly (and famished). dunno if i’m gonna have the legs to make it to the meet up.
BretH
Happy Saturday News, thanks BC!
Old Dan and Little Ann
This includes a few pictures of the smiley face I saw in the sky. : )
https://www.rochesterfirst.com/news/top-stories/skywriter-display-over-rochester-friday/
trollhattan
@Aimai:
Very sorry to hear that. Get well soon and fully!
Had my so-far lone bout of the ‘rona one year ago and good lord, did it kick my ass. Was up and back out within a week but the effects lingered a long time.
[need to schedule that booster]
JoyceH
@raven: And he was heard to say “just like Beggars Canyon back home”.
Geminid
@Old Dan and Little Ann: The apps that track aircraft on radar have made a new kind of skywriting possible. After a Turkish drone located the Iranian President’s crashed helicopter this Spring, it traced a perfect crescent and star over Lake Van.
The Turks waited until the drone was back in their airspace to trace their national symbol because they didn’t want to rub their success in Iran’s face too hard. They left it to Turkish citizens to do the dunking on social media.
Turks: “Now that we found your lost President, is there anything else we can do for you overrated Persians?”
Iranians: “Actually, that was a bum steer you jumped-up nomads gave us. Our brave soldiers located the helicopter.”
Turks: “Did not!”
Iranians: “Did so!”… Turks: “Did not!!”…and so forth.
pthomas745
Night Herons during the day are a real treat. That faraway look in their eyes! I take a lot of bird photos, and the Night Herons “in flight” are my faves. Even more than the dramatic birds of prey, etc.
Steve in the ATL
@Leto: wife and I saw one yesterday—our first sighting in the wild. She, being a normie, had never heard of them and was suitably shocked by how ugly and stupid looking it was. “Looks like someone built a car that a six-year drew”.
Ok, enough halftime banter. Got to stay focused on the game. [virtually fist bump to raven]
lowtechcyclist
Glad you’re feeling up to going out on the water, Betty!
I’m sitting on my back deck, watching dueling hummingbirds. We’ve got a feeder hanging from the corner of our deck, maybe two feet away from my two feet, and one hummer keeps on trying to drink there, and every time it does, another one zooms in from the nearby trees to try to chase him away. And then the high-speed aerial maneuvering is something to watch.
I keep on thinking, “dudes, there’s enough juice there for both of you,” but they’re intensely territorial so that’s not going anywhere.
dww44
@Dorothy A. Winsor: While I grew up near a river with “free roaming” alligators, I was never afraid of them so much as I was of snakes, particularly of the poisonous variety. A few years ago spouse and I pulled of I-75 at a Florida rest stop somewhere between Gainesville and Orlando. When we exited the car to use the facilities I was a bit shaken by the bright yellow signs with a black snake on them telling one to be aware of venomous reptiles. Although we saw none, we asked a rest stop worker “Why the signs?”. He replied that cottonmouth moccasins would make their way up the hill from the nearby “prairies” and curl up outside the restrooms. Don’t know if they ever bit any humans, but it was nevertheless a wake-up call that even on a well traveled interstate one can have some unexpected encounters with nature and her critters.
MagdaInBlack
@Leto: I LOVE it. My shop full of car guys will too. They enjoy ridiculing that weird pos vehicle.
Eta: Blessedly, we are not Tesla certified. They have their own “special” shops to work on their vehicles.
cmorenc
Speaking of wildlife sightings: I am at our house at the southern NC barrier island, Sunset Beach, NC.
(1) Last night, I saw what at first appeared to be a German Sherpherd size dog walking down the toward me about 100 ft away, assuming it was on a walk with its owner. At that moment I was driving along the street parallelling the intercoastal waterway marsh. But I realized after a few seconds that I couldn’t pick out the profile of its human owner – and as it walked out where a streetlight better-illuminated it, realized it was a large coyote! Just as I was turning off onto our street, it turned to walk under one of the houses along the marsh and disappeared. It probably subsists on the many wild rabbits that live on our island, and maybe occasionally takes down a deer fawn.
(2) While SUPing (stand-up paddlebarding) in the ocean a couple of days ago, moving along parallel to the beach about 500 ft from the shoreline, a BIG fish about 4 ft long passed immediately in front of my board, not more than a couple of feet in front of the nose of the board and just under the surface. I only got a fleeting look at it before it quickly turned diagonally away from me and disappeared, but from the slate-grey topside and the flash of a white underside, combined with its fin and body shape , it was likely a sharpnose shark who was attracted by the vibrations in water of my paddling and then as soon as it saw the 10 ft long, nearly 3 ft wide board, probably reckoned he might be dealing with a much larger predator than himself and lost no time getting out of Dodge, so to speak. I was securely in-balance at the moment atop a relatively calm ocean with only small swells, but it did pass my mind that this would not be such a great moment to lose my balance and fall in.
VFX Lurker
Oof. I got COVID for the first time ever on August 11. No fun whatsoever.
Hope you feel better soon, and I hope Paxlovid is an option for faster recovery.
trollhattan
@dww44:
Was full-growed before my first sighting of a snake happily(?) slithering across the water’s surface. “Hey, that’s against the rules!”
Not Indiana-Jones scared of them (just garter snakes where I grew up) but not especially fond of them, either. Major exception for the king snake, those are cool.
KenK
@Old Dan and Little Ann: Interesting. Some ‘smiley faces’ were being skywritten in Buffalo yesterday. A nice lunchtime view!
WaterGirl
@dww44:
shudder!
KenK
@trollhattan: saw the goodyear blimp about a month ago hovering over Fawcett Stadium in Canton, OH.
Tazj
I’m glad you’re feeling well enough to enjoy a boat ride again.
I’ve seen a Blue Heron once in my neighborhood and it was more than ten years ago. It was in a small pond during the summer and I was taking a walk. I was thrilled to see it and haven’t seen one since.
raven
@Steve in the ATL: little breathing room
MomSense
Glad you were feeling well enough to take a boat ride. I do love swamps. My favorite place to go when I’m with my dad in Florida is the Audubon Society’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. Such an amazing place.
Uncle Cosmo
@raven: Then again, Skyhawks are pretty small for a jet that can haul ass at Mach 0.9 – so small they don’t need to fold their wings for storage below decks. Maybe that guy figured he had a few feet more clearance to work with, so what the hell, YOLO. ;^D
raven
@Uncle Cosmo: He was a fucking wild man! Great Tailhook stories!
kindness
Sure is a good pic of that gator. Looks young adult and healthy.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I just got back from two weeks in Michigan and am cautiously optimistic based on what I saw, yard-sign-wise. The first week we spend in Manistee, a town of roughly 6,300 on the shores of Lake Michigan. Second week was at my parents’ house in Grand Rapids.
I was NOT surprised that on the drive up to Manistee, which is surrounded by rural hinterlands, the vast majority of yard signs were for Trump. When we got to Manistee though, I was surpised that it was more like 50/50 Harris-Trump, which given the size of the town and the fact that there isn’t a large metropolitan area within like a hundred miles or more, and is in West Michigan, should be thoroughly Trumpy. Granted the lakeshore towns are slightly different/more tolerant than elsewhere, but still.
We walked down the main drag and first came to the local Republican party office and then a couple block from that there was a Democratic Party office, with the door open and a young women there. We clapped from the street and went in to tell her we were on her side and she offered us yard signs etc. but we didn’t want to haul yard signs all the way back to the DC area from Michigan. Even in the rural hinterlands outside Manistee there were some Harris/Walz signs.
Then in GR I saw lots of Harris/Walz, Slotkin, and Hillary Scholten signs and not a single Trump sign or any sign for any Republican candidate. My parents live not far from East Grand Rapids which is a prosperous sort of independent municipality or inner ring suburb of Grand Rapids. It’s almost entirely surrounded by the city of Grand Rapids but has its own municipal government. It’s where Gerald Ford lived. I spent lots of time there because that’s where Reeds Lake is and that’s one of GR’s most attractive natural features. I saw NO Republican yard signs there, or in Grand Rapids proper.
I mean, we’re talking West Michigan here. GR has always been more liberal than the surrounding areas but to not see a single Republican yard sign in Jerry Ford’s town, or anywhere in the GR area, is still pretty shocking. And seeing yard signs for the Democratic ticket in small town/rural West Michigan is pretty unheard of. I know yard signs don’t really mean much but I felt a little bit better about Harris’s likelihood of winning Michigan after the visit.
Quiltingfool
@Trivia Man: I am not a lake person, either (and I live a hop, skip and a jump from Lake of the Ozarks). I do love rivers and streams. I visited a home/cabin that was built above the Little Niangua, before there was a lake, and people built fishing cabins along rivers. I loved it. No flooding problems, and the view was so beautiful and calming.
Not a place you want to live if you have to “go to town” every day, though. Which would suit me, I prefer to avoid town, lol!
HumboldtBlue
@West of the Rockies:
Here ya go.
Love seeing you on the water, Betty, love hearing you’re feeling a bit better. Noodles sends his love, me too.
Mai Naem mobile
Betty, I am so glad you’re feeling better. I think the Dems are going to do better than expected in Florida. I’m not expecting it but would be an awesome surprise if Rick Scott was kicked out of the Senate. Between the abortion proposition and the retail politics of having a Dem for every race maybe we’ll have a new Florida senator.
trollhattan
Sometimes I really don’t like people.
frosty
BC, it’s good to hear you’re out and about and getting a swamp ride. Your pictures are beautiful.
I’ve loved camping in FL State Parks on our Snowbird trips. Their slogan is perfect: The Real Florida. Your swamp house looks just as real.
Juju.
@cmorenc: It’s intracoastal. Also don’t swim or paddle at shark feeding times, which are dawn, dusk and nighttime. Shark feeding time can also be if they haven’t eaten in a while.
I have access to a family beach house on Hatteras island, and I enjoy being out there, listening to the ocean and watching birds and being content that the lighthouse is working, but I haven’t set foot an the beach in ten years or more, and that was only because my niece wanted me to go with her. We didn’t stay very long because we are both likely to burst into flames if we stay out in the sun too long, but it was pretty, I saw no sharks and I got my beach time in for at least 15-20 years or more.
prostratedragon
“Shepherd’s Song,” Beethoven
Cowgirl in the Sandi
What a lovely picture Betty. It made me feel so calm and relaxed. I can imagine the impact it had being there in real life.
Denali5
What lovely photos! And so great that you were out in the boat! Thanks for sharing!
Ruckus
@JPL:
My TV and computer refuse to get anything from fox. Makes life a lot better.
cmorenc
@Juju.:
The sighting was around 10:30am. I’m not gung-ho enought to get up and out to paddlebaord at dawn, and by early afternoon, even light winds will usually have caused wave swells to become chaotically choppy and PBing becomes more work than play with decreasing probability of keeping balance for long, and so that’s enough reason to avoid PBing in the ocean later than then. Later in the afternoon, provided the high half of the tide cycle cooperates, I prefer to PB in the intracoastal waterway and tidal creeks on the back side of the island, where my main hazard is the potential to encounter inattentive boaters or jet-skiers.
Lyrebird
Hooray for boat rides and clear* skies!
*as in some blue is clearly visible
Lily
“Out on the water” my mother calls it, she treats it like a spiritually separate world. It’s also a moving view.
I’ve been missing it this summer. Thanks for vicarious experience.
JPL
@Ruckus: Over a decade ago my brother came to visit but didn’t stay because I live in a Fox free zone. It took his daughter saying I’m done with the hate dad and if you want to see me, stop watching Fox. That was almost five years ago and although it wan’t instant, it got him to open his eyes. Sometimes it does take drastic measures.
zhena gogolia
I read this post in the supermarket parking lot — dropping in to say I’m so glad you were able to have a boat outing, and thanks for the scary baby alligator picture! I love to see it again.
Kayla Rudbek
@Trivia Man: I’ve seen banners on small aircraft at Ocean City so that’s one data point for high traffic beaches
Kayla Rudbek
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: so far I have only seen one Trump yard sign along the rail trail (it runs closer to houses than the C&O towpath), one cyclist with an anti-Biden sign on his front basket, and the Democratic Party office in Cumberland MD. I still have at least 124 miles to ride before I get home on Monday so it will be interesting.
Ironcity
@Kayla Rudbek: tow banners advertising near (not over, that’s against the rules) large open air assemblies of people is a pretty classic thing…starting after WW I. Not sure when sky writing started….good research question. Airships like classic Goodyear blimps are based on the WW 2 Navy airships. So much so that their desugn approval was derived from all the Navy experience until like the 1990s.
wombat probability cloud
Very late to the thread, so I expect others have expressed this already. So very glad you are out on the river. There’s nothing woo-woo about absorbing the beauty and wonder of the natural world to heal your mind and body. I’m a semi-retired scientist; just seeing the sky, framed by the river, over the bow of the jon boat, enriched my life today. Thank you for being so wonderful.