Dac Crossley's Western Blog

Early Summer?

I'mm beginning to wonder about that. Is summer creeping up too early on the calendar? I’m not talking heat – we’ve just had a cold snap – but the biology of the season.

The House Finches have started bringing youngsters to the bird feeder. You know, the little birds that sit there and flutter their wings for mama to feed them. A House Wren baby has been following its mama around. And yesterday morning, May 8, I heard the gronk-cronk-gronk of a Cuckoo. That’s a “Rain Crow” to all you South Texans.

Seems to me that these events are happening two-three weeks early, or maybe even more. Or – unlikely as it seems – my memory just might be faulty…

I wonder – Down in South Texas, have the Scissortail Flycatchers returned from their winter grounds in Mexico? Mom always said I could go barefoot when the scissortails came back.

Are the Green Jays still expanding their range? About two decades ago I recall they dominated a feeder at Robert G.’s rancho near Alice, Texas. When I was little, the Green Jay never made it out of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

What’s happening in your neighborhood. Is biology moving too fast for us?

Dac Crossley
May 9, 2016

“Just because you don’t take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” – Pericles.

The Five Year Diary

It was a Christmas present when I was about ten years old. Little spaces for daily entries for five full years. I’ll bet you got one, too. I still have mine. Oh, the things I wrote!

Do kids still have diaries? Get them as Christmas presents? With computers it’s different, isn’t it? I can speak diary entries into my iPhone; voice recognition works quite well. Do the youngsters put their diary entries up on Facebook? On Twitter for all their friends to see?

Keeping a diary or a journal is valuable for those of us of a certain age, who can’t remember what they did yesterday, or even recall this morning. I put mine on my computer – my handwriting isn’t legible, even to me. I have the past fifteen years or so printed in binders on a bookshelf. Those records are so handy for settling arguments!

Dad didn’t keep a journal, or if he did I never found it. My mother did – a record of her dieting and her African violets. With an occasional comment – “Dad says if he is still working for the railroad a year from now he will kill himself.”

Dad quit the railroad instead.

Dac Crossley
May 2, 2016

“I kept a very full diary of my relationship with Nixon, for some strange reason, until he became president.” -- Billy Graham.