35 Degrees South: Winter Green.

From Lofty:

Today was cold but sunny so I rode the bike down the quickest way to the City and back home another way. The pictures illustrate what I like most about this time of year. The fresh green grass thinly covers the sun blasted slopes of the season just past, without making the bones of the hills invisible. Down the hill I go into the lusher valley below. Even the urban park I ride through has a fresh green surface past the gnarly head height oak branch. Back up to 2000ft and the green is not always from grass, and not everything that grows is green.

Ebony Jewelwing

(Calopteryx maculata). So beautiful! From D. Gregory. 1500 x 996, click for full size.

The Daily Bird #23

We had the privilege of watching a pair of Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) choosing a nesting site, on our property! They danced off property a bit, because we were stalking them, but were attracted by some areas of high grass on our place. We have never seen killdeer in Almont, or even very close, before this day. The male was a bit upset with me, because the female was attracted by the shutter noise, and made right for me a time or two. Hopefully, after we left them, they’ll choose a spot on property or close, so we can watch them parent. A very exciting event for dinosaur watchers! All photos are 1500 x 996, click for full size.

Orlando.

Photo by Alberto Lammers

ORLANDO—Javie White typically dances Saturday nights at Pulse in Orlando. But this weekend, he gave up his dancing shift to bartend at another nearby club. So the young go-go dancer wasn’t on his box next to Pulse’s entrance when a gunman came in and opened fire.

“I’ve been crying home alone for seven hours,” he says.

[…]

“Orlando is the most tightly-knit gay community I’ve ever been in. We are here to support each other and we are not afraid,” he says.

He hugs a friend, Tyler Block, who is barely holding together. Block found out only an hour ago one of his closest friends was killed. She had a 2-year-old son.

“For someone to come into my home and murder my family, it’s beyond anything you will ever feel,” Block says, trembling and eyes full of tears.

[…]

“I cried all day. I’m done crying. I’m ready to be myself again,” Adonis said. “I’m trying to be my funny, catty self for the kids.”

Moving forward, she knows that safety will be a priority among those left behind.

“Everything’s up in the air. (The police) don’t want us to do things that put us all together,” she said. “But no one is going to break us. No one is going to break this community.”

Full Story.

Lin-Manuel Miranda accepts the award for best original score for “Hamilton” at the Tony Awards at the Beacon Theatre on Sunday, June 12, 2016, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

“Hate will never win,” host James Corden said at the opening of this year’s Tony Awards at the Beacon Theater in New York City. “Theater is a place where every race, creed, sexuality and gender is equal, is embraced and is loved.” Those attending the ceremony, which was dedicated to the victims of the Orlando mass shooting, wore silver ribbons in solidarity.

Upon winning for Best Original Score, Hamilton‘s Lin-Manuel Miranda performed a sonnet he wrote as tribute to his wife and victims of Orlando.

There’s a video at the link.

Will Orlando Attacks Bring Congress to its Senses on Gun Control? Don’t Count On It.

youtube.

Gay, Bisexual Blood Donations Still Restricted After Orlando Massacre.

Sky news Orlando.

A highly-regarded journalist stormed off the set of a live television segment when the host and guest refused to recognize the Orlando shooting as an attack on LGBT people.

Owen Jones, a gay Guardian columnist and the author of The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It, appeared on the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sky News on Sunday with the show’s host, Mark Longhurst, and guest Julia Hartley-Brewer. In the group’s discussion about the Orlando tragedy, Jones continually called the event a “homophobic hate crime” and “an intentional attack on LGBT people.” Longhurst and Hartley-Brewer disagreed, calling it a crime against humanity instead.

Full Story Here.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

I was angry. Hell, I was fucking pissed.

Initially, an immense sadness washed over me at the news of the Orlando mass shooting, the deadliest in American history. A sadness that I wasn’t surprised that this happened, a helpless, hopeless sadness for the dozens of people lost due to hate and ignorance. But the sadness was quickly replaced by anger.

Anger that this type of violence, to this degree, only happens in this country, and happens far too often, but still nothing is done about it. Once I realized that in America it’s okay for 20 children, ages six and seven, to die in the middle of the day at an elementary school, I knew that a couple dozen faggots dead in an Orlando nightclub would never and could never move the needle on gun control.

Full Column Here.

Adele Dedicates Antwerp Concert to Orlando Victims.

Republican Erasure of LGBTQ People.

Marco Rubio wants to share his prayers, but not his civil rights, with LGBTQ people.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Republicans have quick enough off the mark to offer up assorted prayers in the wake of the Orlando massacre, but they are being very careful not to acknowledge that these were and are LGBTQ people. The fact that a majority of them were people of colour is notably absent as well.

Marco Rubio tweeted: “Our prayers are with those injured and killed early this morning in horrifying act of terror in Orlando.”

Rubio is a staunch opponent of same-sex marriage and would like to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling affirming gay people’s constitutional right to wed. Worse, when Rubio served as Florida’s House majority leader, the state’s foster care system was in a crisis: Due to a severe lack of foster parents, children were essentially being imprisoned in inhumane conditions. One possible solution would be to lift Florida’s ban on allowing gay people to foster children. Rubio rejected the idea. “Some of these kids are the most disadvantaged in the state,” he explained. “They shouldn’t be forced to be part of a social experiment.”

Then there’s Mike Huckabee, who tweeted: “Please join Janet and me in praying for the victims of the Orlando attack and their families.”

But if it were up to Huckabee, gay people would not be legally permitted to start their own families. Huckabee staunchly opposes same-sex marriage, civil unions, and gay adoption. […] At various points in his career, Huckabee has also said that AIDS patients should be quarantined; that homosexuality is a “lifestyle” similar to drinking alcohol; and that legalizing same-sex marriage is analogous to legalizing incest and drug use. When the Supreme Court invalidated a federal same-sex marriage ban, Huckabee tweeted: “Jesus wept.”

There are many more examples of aggressively anti-gay politicians tweeting about the Pulse shooting, but one common thread ties them together: None of them mention that the shooting targeted, or even involved, the LGBTQ community. Indeed, not a single congressional Republican who tweeted about the shooting mentioned LGBTQ people. That stands in stark contrast to President Barack Obama’s clear assertion that “shooter targeted a nightclub” where “lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people … came together to be with friends, to dance, sing, and live,” and “to raise awareness and speak their minds and advocate for their civil rights.”

Republicans’ silence is actually quite apt. As a party, after all, the GOP has spent decades attempting to degrade sexual minorities and even drive them out of public life. It is altogether fitting, then, that conservative politicians are erasing LGBTQ people from their own tragedy. The gesture of support, I suppose, is basically benevolent. But let’s be clear about this: The 50 victims of Orlando’s LGBTQ nightclub massacre died as full and equal citizens under the law in spite of the Republican party’s best efforts to relegate them to second-class citizenship.

Full Article at Slate.

And the hate flows on…

Vigil in Santiago, Chile.

In the midst of an outpouring of solidarity, love, and shared grief around the world over the loss of so many lives in Orlando, Florida, there runs a river of poisonous hate through the United States. Images and hate-filled tweets will be behind the fold, because no one should have to see those unless they choose to do so. First up, and I know this will surprise no one at all, the Westboro clan had to jump right in, with an attempt to be as crass and disgusting as possible. I’d say they succeeded, but what makes me sick is the sense of glee they give off. Second is the story of a Florida Imam who offered condolences and praise for emergency workers was met with a great deal of bigotry and hate.

Trigger Warning: extreme hate, bigotry, and sheer ugliness behind the fold.

[Read more…]

James Bullough.

The Falling.

James Bullough is an American born artist living and working in Berlin, Germany. His paintings, and huge monumentally scaled site-specific murals, are phenomenal combinations of realist painting technique and graphic punctuation. Inspired by gritty urban graffiti as a young artist growing up in Washington, DC, Bullough harnessed its energy in his work, and perfected a realistic oil painting technique from his study of the Old Masters. Combining the momentum of the one and the technical precision of the other, his work is about staging compelling contrasts and juxtapositions. Working in everything from oil, spray paint and ink on canvas, Bullough’s paintings strike a balance between realistic figurations and stylized interruption. Disjointing the realistic elements with graphic areas and fractured or striated planes, Bullough intends to challenge the viewer’s perception.

His work is stunning, and highly emotive. For his Breaking Point series:

In this new series of works, Bullough captures moments of existential fracture, disruption, and personal breach through the expressive movement of the body, asking his models to channel personal memory and to recall experiences of “breaking” at the moment of their capture. Working with dancers from Berlin, Bullough begins with the body in motion, arrested in an expense of negative space, then dissembles it further, splicing, striating, and fragmenting its surfaces and planes. The models remain anonymous and faceless throughout, an omission intended to reaffirm the symbolic universality of the emotive physical gesture.

Enough.

Burst.

Oil painting on old, found book.

Click images for full size. Have a wander around James’s gallery, it’s full of amazing works. James Bullough.com.

Clouded Sulphur on Clover.

Gorgeous! From D. Gregory, a Clouded Sulpur (Colias philodice) on clover blossom. 1500 x 996, click for full size.

Random Monday

Shrooms. Click for full size.

The Daily Bird #22

Lady Grosbeak. Female Black-headed Grosbeaks are one of my most favourite birds. I know the males have wonderfully dramatic colouring, but it’s the ladies that look beautifully exotic to me. Pheucticus melanocephalus. Photos are 1500 x 996, click for full size.

Babes

The front deck pines are full of baby Sparrows, trying to figure this how to be a bird business. They are all busy looking at all the food on the deck, but aren’t terribly sure about how to get down there, let alone what to do once they make it. Photos are 1300 x 863, click for full size.

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35 Degrees South: Winter Green.

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Ebony Jewelwing

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The Daily Bird #23

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James Bullough.

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Clouded Sulphur on Clover.

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Random Monday

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The Daily Bird #22

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Babes

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