Move over, Frank Sinatra and Vanessa Williams!  This Dance With Me, written by Ron Hirschi and featuring beautiful photography by Thomas D. Mangelsen, is a celebration of the movement of wild animals.

From prairie chickens to orcas, animals dance for a variety of reasons: for courtship, in search of food, or simply for the joy of moving through the air or sea.  This book captures the beauty of animal movement in words and photography.

Ages 4-8.  Best read with a CD queued up for a little human dancing after.

It all started with a parade of cows (Chicago).  Then moose (Toronto).  And, in Vancouver—orcas, bears, and now eagles. 

If you spend any time in Vancouver, you’ll no doubt cross paths with these sculptures.  They were commissioned to help raise much needed funds to provide Easter Seal services to children with disabilities.  Many of the sculptures are quite creative.  Who can forget the Elvis Orca?  

To learn more about the fundraiser and next spring’s auction, have a look at the Eagles In The City website. 

If you found one of today’s Guerrilla Gifts, may your day be as bright and colourful as these artful friends!

BONUS GIFT — When I parked Elk (my bicycle) next to an old 10 speed adorned with flowers and a sticker reading “Bikes Not Bombs!” I simply couldn’t resist.  Thanks for bringing a smile to my face.  Tailwinds and safe travels .

Whale watching in Victoria is unquestionably one of the highlights for many when visiting the capital of British Columbia. Along with a visit to the Butchart Gardens whale-watching should be considered very seriously when planning one’s travel itinerary.

Victoria BC whale-watching

Fortunately the ”season” to see orcas in the waters around Vancouver Island coincide with the summer tourist season. Even in the late summer and early autumn there are excellent sightings not only of killer whales but also of migrating sea lions and humpback whales.  You will also see many other species of marine life on the water. The three local pods, ie families, of orcas total nearly 90 whales with transient pods passing by.

Consequently there is a good likelihood of success on your trip. Eagle Wing Tours, for example, have a 95% success rate. Their boats are fast and deep-hulled for an exhilerating and surprisingly smooth trip, able to reach orcas where slower vessels fail. However do not book before you arrive since the whales may be distant or sea conditions inclement – we will check this when you arrive and help set a time most likely to result in a wonderful trip whale watching in Victoria.

I felt like a five year old in her big sister’s clothes. The leggings were too long. They came up to my collarbone, and dragged on the ground. The coat, a combination of raingear and personal flotation device (lifejacket for those of us who don’t like techhie terms) hung way past my fingertips and felt lined with lead. But it was bright red, which I liked, and before the afternoon was over, I was really glad I had them. We climbed aboard the boat, and it cruised out of the harbour. I tried to pinpoint the landmarks I knew so well from the landward side of the city. As we cleared the last of the harbour and moved out into the open water, my attention was taken by the sky. It was a cloudy day promising rain, and the cover was layered and multifaceted. To the west, heavy black clouds blotted out most of coastal Washington, and dimmed the light of the day. To the north east the sky lightened and brilliant sun shone in a clear blue sky, its light winking and shattering on the sea. Between them, almost over us, in a thick grey spear, a lower cloud layer pointed straight at the Port Angeles coastline, slanting down to sea level at its apex, just on the coast.

We skimmed over the water for an endless time – a time of simply being – seeing the sky and the dull grey water, the land misty and distant, smelling salt and engine oil, hearing the roar of the engine and the occasional voices of the others on the boat, feeling the wind on my face – not a gentle breeze, not at 30 kph or so, this was a hard stream of air buffeting my cheeks and forehead. The salt spray tasted like cold tears when I licked my lips. It was as if I were back in my childhood, sitting in the boat on the way to the cottage. I had forgotten the peace of those trips, how serene it was to be on the water, away from everything but the senses.

We noticed a flotilla of zodiacs in the distance to the west of us, travelling at speed, and our captain, Chris, slowed down to let them pass in front of us, then swung round so our course followed theirs. Al and I speculated about what they were – they were far enough that we couldn’t see any markings, just stick figures in them – black and white and grey at that distance. Then we noticed the helicopters circling an anchored, unmarked ship – the zodiacs were headed for them. We’d stumbled upon some kind of military boarding exercise, and watched in fascination as the zodiacs circled and the helis dropped down close to the deck of the ship. The heli’s underside dropped strands with swarming, sliding figures and within seconds, the men were down and moving around on the ship, the heli lifting away and the second chopper moved in to drop its load.

We kept moving until they were dots in the far distance and according to the map, we were just a little past Oak Bay – our naturalist pointed out San Juan Island ahead of us. We slowed down, then stopped and the engines cut out. We drifted, waiting, and I counted four other whale watching boats in the area. I could see nothing – no dorsal fins cut the surface, no massive breaching or sprays. But I didn’t care. Just being out here and enjoying the day was enough – whales would be icing on the cake. Then the woman next to me nudged her partner and said she’d seen an Orca swim under the boat. The naturalist confirmed it, and sure enough, a few yards out, a dorsal fin and part of a black and white back broke the surface. After that, we saw a number of them – two or three popped out to take a look around and a few breached – leaped out of the water and smashed back down, sending spray everywhere.

As the weather caught up with us, we turned and headed back the way we came. The wind came first, adding to that caused by our speed, and colder than it had been since we left the harbour. The sea roughened up and we bounced hard over the swells, up and down, to and fro, our bodies swaying and lifting as the boat traveled over the water. I was glad when the naturalist handed out the wool caps. Even with that, and the heavy rain gear, with my own layers underneath, the cold seeped through and my fingers were red and stiff. The rain felt like hail on my face as we traveled west and south, past the entrance to the harbour, and kept on toward, on land, Metchosin and Sooke. After another endless colder time we slowed again. Looking for humpbacks this time. I was sure I wouldn’t catch sight of them when they broke the surface, they are a dull brown, almost the same colour as the water, and their dorsal fins are small and close to their backs. And it seemed so, since all the others were catching glimpses and seeing the fins, but I still didn’t care – I’d seen the Orcas, how much more joy could you fit into one afternoon? Yet, I did see two or three, and caught the tail of one as it dove deep – the flutes flipping up and then slipping into the water as it dove deep.

There was one more gift – one the crew didn’t expect. On the last leg toward Race Rocks, we could hear seagulls screaming in the distance, and a boil of them on the surface of the water. It was a herring run, and thousands of seabirds had gathered to feast on them. So Chris slowly and carefully piloted the boat into the mass of birds – birds overhead, on the water, lifting off and settling down. Never staying still for a moment – it was a literal boil of birds. At the epicentre, in a tiny circle no more than three or four birds across, we could see the silver fish flipping and darting below the surface – all this for two feet of fish? I wondered how deep the school went, or if these were the final survivors after hours of feeding frenzy. Still, we pulled away and within minutes we were literally covered by gulls. They flew only three or four feet above our heads, and were so thick we couldn’t see the sky for them.

Race Rocks was another joy – California sea lions and Arctic? Sea Lions on their migrations – this is one of two areas in the world where the migration routes overlap. They lolled on the islands, huge fur covered mound of blubber looking awkward and clumsy and regal. But swimming, they were dancers, darting, gliding twisting or just cutting through the fast currents as if they owned the sea.

After that it was back to the harbour, and a cup of hot chocolate waiting for us. Tired, wind burned and full of serene joy at the glory of the day.

We ventured into Santa Cruz on Sunday to do some research for a feature we’re planning for an exciting new Tenerife online magazine coming your way soon.

This kind of concrete is easy on the eye

The city, as always was looking fabulous, the colonial old buildings bathed in the sunshine which seems almost always present in the city. As we wandered around deserted streets (note to self – Sundays are not a good day to visit Santa Cruz for research when part of the research involves lots of other people), we commented a number of times about what an attractive and accessible city it was. I always find it a joy to wander around taking photographs here, there and everywhere. Not everybody feels like this though.

Bamboo Tunnel in the Centre of the City

A recent review on Tripadvisor described Santa Cruz as a “Horrible concrete city that has very little to offer tourist. It should be full of history and is not.”
At first I thought that the reviewer had hit the city without doing any prior research and had missed the centre and ended up in some seedy barrio somewhere. But no, they had a copy of the Rough Guide to Tenerife, so in theory they were well armed.

A Cool Spot in the City

The reviewer obviously just didn’t see any beauty in Santa Cruz which I found difficult to take in.
However, I admit to being guilty of wearing rose tinted specs; I tend to see beauty everywhere, even in old apartment blocks with peeling plaster.
But as we wandered along some of the shady palm lined newer streets, I just wasn’t convinced that the person who wrote the review had actually seen the best of the centre of Santa Cruz (not a great advert for the Rough Guide if that was the case), which is why visitors need a guidebook which does show them the best bits – forgive the shameless plug but, hey, we’ve all got a living to make.

We do all have different opinions and different likes and dislikes, but when people offer their opinions as fact, there needs to be a balance. So here’s my rose-tinted one using some photographs of Santa Cruz so that you can make up your own mind.

See more photos of this ‘horrible concrete city’ here.

After last week’s crappy news, I’m happy to note that things have been cleaned up, and today the Skokomish shellfish beds are reopened. Of course, one way to keep things clean (and quiet) is to keep people out. NOAA is proposing a No-Go-Zone on the west side of San Juan Island, but who does that exclude?

Orcas

There has been a lot of orca news this week. Transients have been sighted in the South Sound. I found a blog in the San Juans which is full of pictures of our resident orcas, with all the individuals helpfully labeled. A great way to get to know our neighbors! OrcaNation has also posted a video of J-pod. This week also brought us a report of a dead or stranded orca calf. An estimated 40% of calves don’t make it past their first six months, but K-pod has a survivor this year, and he should soon have a name. If you’re wondering how you and your boat can interact with the whales, check out these tips.

Go Outside!

That’s all for this week — we’re heading into a holiday weekend, and September has just been designated as National Wilderness Month by presidential proclamation. So get away from that screen, and go outside before our summer is over! (And yes, taking your laptop to the porch or the outdoor patio of that coffee shop is cheating.)

Originally written for People For Puget Sound, and posted Sept 4, 2009.

Acabei de ver essas tirinhas e adorei, achei muito bem feitas e muito criativas, e agora compartinho com vocês. Espero que gostem.

E se Oscar Niemeyer tivesse ajudado Deus quando ele criou a Terra?

(Clique nas miniaturas para ampliar)

Vi no Um Sábado Qualquer…

Some time ago I had this idea to support Windows Forms in javascript. Recently I have started on implementing a new feature for the jsc solution in form of a metacompiler. What does this mean? You will be able to create a Windows Forms Application without referencing any of the ScriptCoreLib libraries which in turn also means you will not be required to explicitly mark your classes with the ScriptAttribute. With future releases the support for Windows forms could be extended to flash and java which in turn enables rapid application development .

Contact me if you are interested in this technology and would like to buy it for your company.

TwentyTenSimpleWindowsFormsApplication

TwentyTen is the codename for Visual Studio 2010. This is a project template for the beta version of TwentyTen.

Open this example in your browser.

Browse the source code for this example.

OrcasSimpleWindowsFormsApplication

Orcas is the codename for Visual Studio 2008.

Open this example in your browser.

Browse the source code for this example.

Project templates

The two examples shown above are actually project templates for visual studio. The zip files should be copied to your template folder.

Example:

C:\Users\arvo\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ProjectTemplates

In the future releases this could be automated by an installer.

What does the jsc.meta – the meta compiler for jsc do?

It will create the final glue to bind two object spaces together by automatically referencing the Base Class Library implementations within the set of ScriptCoreLib assemblies. The meta compiler could be used in the future to provide proxy services and alike to talk seamlessly over the network to the server or to a client side persistence service like SQLLite.

There are a few caveats:

1. Long filename paths which include a space must be put inside quotes.
2. You need to turn off the ‘optimize‘ feature in the release build in the project properties.
3. You cannot use types which have no implementation in the ScriptCoreLib assembly. You should notify us if you want us to add specific support for you.
4. Satellite assemblies referenced by your Simple Windows Forms Application project must at this time mark themselves with [assembly: Obfuscate(Feature = "script")].
5. You must use a post build event to instruct javascript translation. The first release build will take longer than the later incremental builds.
6. The post build event is configured to not to run in debug build which enables you to run and debug your application within Visual Studio instead.
7. In .net 4 you cannot define events at this time, due to the changes introduced in the generated IL. This will be resolved after .net 4 is released.
8. In .net 4 you cannot use the lock keyword at this time, due to the changes introduced in the generated IL. This will be resolved after .net 4 is released. Supported when targeting  java in current version of .net.

PS2. The jsc compiler should be installed at c:\util\jsc\bin. If any of the examples have a relative reference to one of its assemblies and cannot find them you might want to edit their respective project files to reference by the absolute path instead.

Download jsc here. (Others already have!)

Although she has flown two other times before (Arizona and Philadelphia) it was like flying for the first time to Evie. She was pretty excited about it, but Sara and I were a little dubious since she is a little more active (rambunctious) these days and this was a loooong flight. We had a layover in San Jose, so I think the whole thing was about 6 1/2 hours, not to mention getting to the airport before our flight, etc. We had some free drink coupons from the airline and Sara had the idea that we could pass them out to the people unlucky enough to sit in front of our kicking, screaming monster child. As it (always) turns out, she was the perfect little angel and here we sit with free drink coupons, unredeemed.

Evie was practically giddy with excitement as we prepared to take off, however, as soon as the airplane left the ground her eyes got as big as saucers and she gripped the side of the seat screaming, “Go down! Go down!” When the pilot refused to heed her cries, she moaned in dismay, “It just keeps going higher and higher!” By the time we got home, she was an old pro and enjoyed in particular the take-offs and landings.

The first part of our Seattle vacation was sort of the rugged, outdoorsy, adventure part of the trip. After arriving late and spending the night by the airport, we took a car ferry over to the San Juan islands. As I expected, this was probably my favorite part of the trip. Friday Harbor was sort of Mackinac-ish, with shopping and restaurants and an awesome port to watch boats. The rest of the island is a little more sedate, and we took some awesome hikes. We saw wild deer, 2 foxes, quail, a 6 inch slug (we have a picture to prove it), jelly fish, seals, and, of course, orcas. Unfortunately, we did not see any bald eagles, which are apparently abundant.

Not actually one of our pictures, not even the boat we were on

Of course the highlight of the trip was the whale watching tour to see the orcas (“killer whales”) which live around the islands. Unfortunately, the whales were waaay up in Vancouver, but fortunately the boat was willing to drive all the way up there. They said it was the farthest north they’ve ever gone in that boat. It was well worth the journey, because all 3 of the local pods were together in one “super pod”. There were around 85 whales in the water when we got there. You could see them in almost any direction and I saw several “breaches” (when they jump right out of the water). We got some pictures, but it was hard to capture the coolness. Unfortunately, since we had to spend so much time getting up there and getting back, we didn’t get to see much of the other native wildlife. We did see some seals on the way back though. We were on the boat for like 4 hours and Evie did a marvelous job, never getting cranky.

When we got back, we bought Evie a stuffed orca, Echo, and she became our constant companion for the rest of the trip. We helped Evie choose a name from the orcas that were born the same year she was. Evie was stuck to her like glue. Since Evie’s car seat was on the side of the car instead of the middle, we were worried about closing the door. We would say, “Fingers!” and Evie would say, “Fingers Echo!” I’m happy to report, neither Evie nor Echo lost any fingers in the door.

That was pretty much it for the first part of the trip, but I just wanted to mention (since we were talking about it) that we  had an amazingly weird but amazingly tasty sandwich on the trip. The restaurant was Market Chef and the sandwich was “sister’s favorite sandwich”. It consisted of apple slices, cheddar cheese, sunflower seeds, sprouts and dijon mustard, all melted into a gooey deliciousness that is hard to describe. I know it sounds weird, but it was mouth watering!

Waking up here at Camp Casey means visiting with the deer, the birds and possibly the whales. The cabin I’m staying in faces a wide, sloping field that deer (most with their babies) like to forage in, mostly early in day, but sometimes at odd hours too. I know some people deer have an on-again, off-again relationship with deer, and liken them to pests, but here it feels as if we’re the interlopers.

Of course, with so much rapid development of rural areas everywhere, deer are losing their natural habitats, so it’s no surprise now how close they live to our homes and towns. Here’s what I’ve learned about deer from the island natives.

Spring and summer are the time of year deer give birth to their young. A deer may have between 1 and 3 babies. Fawns are born from April though June, so the ones we’re seeing here at Camp Casey are still pretty young. Fawns are born with their eyes open and fully furred. They can stand up on their legs in 10 minutes and can walk in 7 hours!

But here’s the thing to know: healthy baby fawns are daily left alone by their mothers while the mothers forage for food. Here, we often see a lone fawn resting in the grass on the side of the road. If you don’t know that this is normal, you’d mistakenly think the fawn had been abandoned. Important to know, since fawns are mistakenly “rescued” run into trouble if they’re taken away from their mothers for too long.

In addition to deer, and all kinds of birds flitting and diving amongst the blackberry brambles, one of the joys of Camp Casey is the very real possibility of sighting whales. The camp sits right on Admiralty Inset and if you have time and patience, there’s a good chance you’ll spot a pod frolicking out in the strait. Last night, I spotted a grouping of three orcas, most from likely one of the local pods that reside here in the summer months, J, K, or L pod. This in spite of the fact that the Whidbey air base at Oak Harbor had their pilots out practicing landing and take-off manuevers.

But here they were. It was magical. And of particular interest to me, since whales figure as an important theme in my YA novel Chasing at the Surface. More about that later.

Well, watching and photographing really. I’ve wanted to see the Southern Resident Orca pods since I was a kid and if you can believe it, I passed up the opportunity to try five times in high school (mostly because I never thought I was in good enough shape to handle the extra 25 mile bike ride out to the cliffs on the southwestern side of the island). I did have the notion to charter a sail boat and spend a whole weekend out on the water hoping for the best, but when a coworker offered me the chance to join him out on his kayaks I couldn’t pass that up!

Not 20 minutes out on the water, just after getting past the edge of the cove he asked me how I felt our chances were on seeing whales that day and I looked up and replied “well, there’s a fin right there!” We quickly got my camera out of the dry bag and I began trying to figure out the best way to capture these beautiful, powerful and graceful mammals. They were still several hundred meters away out in the straits and passing by us toward the north end of the island, so by the time you could hear them they were half-way back under the water. No time to wait for auto-focus, vibration control and metering. I just had to set the focus manually and keep the VR floating all the time. The metering alone really wasn’t a problem, so after getting fins and rear dorsals from several whales and watching them fade into the distance, I was starting to catch them early in their breach as this pair above.

I am far from sad to say that I did not quite get what I considered the holy grail of shots; the full breach. I think the reward of seeing these wild  mammals feeding all morning and afternoon was quite enough for one visit. To think I have lived in the northwest nearly all my life and only now taken the chance to see what all the fuss was about–what a shame!

“I’m up, he see’s me, I’m down.” Something about the routine of these creatures reminded me of that. That’s about how much time you get to grab a shot too!

… wait for me

A child stays close to its mother on the hunt.