WoodyPecker – A Photo Post

Until recently I lived at the crest of a wooded hill that is suitably named, “Woodycrest Avenue”. Why I lived there is the subject for another post very soon, but just before my recent “Exodus” from that beloved, peaceful location, I had a friendly encounter with a woodpecker. I write “friendly” because it let me get surprisingly close as I snapped pictures of it without flying away as most of the birds in my former yard would when they noticed me. This guy was a “cool pecker”, going about his business on my tall front-yard pine tree. When he noticed me, he sort of glanced over in my direction for a second, and then went back to studying that tree bark! lol Here he is, sequentially as I crept closer for a “three-gap on a tree-sap”…

closer…

and right after he noticed me, feathers unruffled…

I likely could have crept closer, still after this shot…

This close encounter caused me to research kinds of Woodpeckers for the first time in my life. I’ve always noticed where woodpeckers had been on the barks of trees; their circled carvings are unmistakable artwork themselves!
My best guess, according to my research, is that this was a “Hairy” or “Downy” Woodpecker. It would have been coolest if it was like my favorite cartoon Woodpecker of my TV-watching youth, “Woody Woodpecker” who I glean was actually a hybrid of the “Pileated” and “Red-Headed” Peckers! I love read-headed ladies, by the way! Ok, I digress – the subject-matter can cause laughably acute silliness.

I often described my former abode by saying, “Its like living in a park, and I am the ‘parkeep/!” I had Robins, noisy Raven-like Crows, Cardinals, Bluebirds and Northern Mocking birds, but last month, just before I left, was the first time I’d ever spied a Woodpecker. OK, Audubon enthusiasts, peck away at this piece!

Reminiscing: Not Trying To Get Stuck Back “Around The Way”

As I walk to the bus stop,
Wait a minute, “walk” to the bus stop??
Oh, yes, I’m back around the old neighborhood;
‘Sold my old car to get here and create money momentum!
So as not to go “under”;
I feel I am a failure.

So…As I walk to the bus stop, each house on every block
Has a story or evokes a stored memory;
Which I can’t quite remember as I pass,
Nor will I when I return.
Spookily haunting is the past like that,
In a way I am amused by.

A girl I liked in that one,
Some tough bully kid in the next;
A friendly, now older gent still working his garage I see.
A crazy memory here,
Whip Appeal crush there.
It all a blur now.

Then I pass the park where I played
So much punch and stick-ball.
Where I diligently trained to become the next Oscar Robertson!
The former Haggerty, then “Jamaica” Park
Who knows what they’ve named it nowadays;
I did not notice a NYC Parks Department sign.
Only that they reconfigured all of the hoops courts where the softball outfield
Used to be, OMG! Weird!
Now Mexican-looking guys play cards where the Home Plate was,
When I pitched an underhand softball No-hitter,
While the girls-to-impress of the day,
Eye us from the now-gone metal-chained swings area.

Now I’ve caught the Q110.
Riding, bumping, rolling down the Avenue;
Old movie theatre marquee where I saw “Bonnie and Clyde” first-run is gone!
It is now another church?
That old sandstone brick bank building is now a DENTAL Center??
Where is Eddie’s original old “African-American” barber shop?
Is this “progress”?
I notice their absence and ask myself,
“What happened to the Caucasian Europeans and Black Americans?”
I maybe know the common answer to that but,
We were supposed to have integrated our great city and society.
This looks/sounds like I “returned” to a Third World country!

Now thicker into the ole “Valencia” shopping district,
I think the islanders took “Jamaica Avenue” too literally!
I know that this is historically the number-ONE immigrant town,
Now though, it is troubling to see here it is mostly brown!
Why, against my vision of the cross-pollination,
I said to Mum who was smiling as I walked up to the front porch;
Do humans behave contrary to the way
Our Creator and Heavenly Father planned,
Can’t we be more like the bee
Which takes pollen from flowers of any color,
Producing honey for all indiscriminately?

Did we again in this area and probably many others,
Choose American-style re-segregation?
It seems that the whole Caribbean and middle east,
Relocated to New York City over the past 20 years!
And they aren’t following the “rules” we used have to.
Driving on the road like “koo-koo”!

Unfortunately, it seems to me that the stable European descendants have lost New York City (with the exception of Staten Island – which is another whole story for a different post) to the Haitian and Caribbean coconuts and their violent youth gangs.

The only music around the way that is the same,
Is that of the Mister Softee ice cream truck.

“Stop Requested”…

“HotellHer” (to the tune of Beatles’ “I Feel Fine”)

THIS little ditty came to me during the first overnight hotel stop of my recent “Exodus” from Nashville, in Bristol, Virginia…after the power outage!

Nina is my friend you know,
She loves me til the end ya know;
She once said SO!
(“We can remain the friends, if you want.”)
“Babychka!”
We were already friends and that is so!

Nina was my friend you know,
She don’t like me to talk about it,
Unless I DO it!
Unless I soon come there to her in Ukraine…
Nor proudly post her photos on my website;
(She sent me over one-hundred!)
That IS so!
I’m in love with her and I feel fine!

Nina is my pink panther playmate ya know,
She Calls me a Cheetah too you know,
Yep, she “said So!”
Nina is my scherzando Honey,
In love I call her “silly bunny”
I’ll fun love her forever!
I shout it!
She’ll come back to me and we’ll be fine.

Nina is magnanimous, and I am so glad!
I dig her until the end of time,
Never say “never”, she said it so (true)!
I keep in touch with her and I’m so glad!
“When you Naphtali will begin to travel, you will not stop any more. Believe me, I know!
Kiss you Cheetah“

Ooooh!
She SAID SO!
I’m in love with her and I feel fine!