Celebration and resistance
ISO sweet spots
I just took a walk through some of the suburbs of Phoenix, checking out the local yard birds — Curve-billed Thrasher, Gila Woodpecker, Verdin, etc — who are novel to those who don’t live in the Southwest. I flew to Arizona yesterday to meet the S.O. who's been working here a couple weeks. There’s a sweet spot to time spent apart — especially when you’re two creative sorts who can spend long stretches consumed by their latest project(s) and like the space to do so — but too much time apart is not the best for relationship maintenance either. Hence I’m in Phoenix for a few days.
I was last here a year ago while on our way to Kerrclipse, in Texas. It's familiar, but everything sits differently now. Suffice to say, I was glad just now (and winced) to see a few of the locals had left their Harris/Walz signs up in their yards. Quiet resistance is equally important, or at least I’ve been telling myself that these past few weeks, when I’ve put more of my emphasis on art and community.
Thus far in 2025, a pattern is starting to form of me putting my head-down and working nearly non-stop for a stretch, and then going out of town. Which is another reason I’m here at the moment: I finally had a few days to come up for air after a month of spinning plates between my musical endeavors and two, worthy extra-curricular activities which called my attention.
One was helping develop a ‘Nature Walk through the Gallery’ at the Asian Art Museum with a fellow hawkwatcher who works there. I wasn’t 100% sure what this would entail when I said yes, right after February’s ‘Flight Lessons’ show. I just saw “art” and “birds” and “museum,” and said, “cool, sign me up!” ‘Cool,’ in a word, is pretty much how the experience has played out. Museums, like libraries, are just a good, enriching place to go, if you can swing it. And IDing, learning and helping others understand birds via art pieces that weren’t necessarily meant to be illustrative has been expansive in unforeseen ways. I’ve learned how the DMZ is an important place for crane migration and about the work of Qi Baishi, and been amazed anew at just how much can be conveyed via a brushstroke. Plus when I wasn’t acquainting myself with the Japanese Cormorants, Geese and Goshawks in the Japanese Rotation, I could go upstairs and visit the beautiful Buddhas and Ganesha’s from ancient India.
The other activity that helped crowd my calendar was helping organize a celebration of the four-decade project Golden Gate Raptor Observatory with and for Friends of the GGRO, which was another wonderful convergence of science, nature, community and creativity. Over my dozen or so years volunteering for GGRO, I've been inspired to write several Hawk-Hill-related tunes, while many others have channeled their own inspiration into photos, haiku, films, paintings, quilts, more songs and even cakes (after posting the below photo on IG, a friend asked me if it was from the Cake Picnic, which I’d completely missed but heartily applaud). And that’s on top of all the scientific data and research that’s been generated! The celebration was a lovely acknowledgement of all this raptorific dedication, and more proof of both the wonder of nature and goodness of people … and why the best of humanity is worth fighting for.
So. Once I’m home this weekend, amid playing a couple of Bay Station gigs, I’ll also be showing up at my local Hands Off! National Day of Action event to help stay the course for peace, democracy, social justice and the so much more that makes life possible and worth living.