The sound and feel of a deer tongue licking my ear for the salt at five AM sleeping on the beach at the Asilomar in Pacific Grove with the breakers on the rocks close by. (I used to sleep there instead of the barracks and will never forget that morning.) The loud purr of my 20 yo cat Liz on my shoulder while I sit in front of the computer and Max on my lap meowing to be brushed. The lonely cry of a red tail hawk flying over head. The raucous conversations of the wild flock of parrots that fly over the neighbor hood every evening. The buzz of a hummers wings as it dives when I get too close to the nest up in a tree. Our doves in the morning and bourkes in the evening in the aviary. The sound of a fire with some cedar or juniper in the mix popping and whistling. The trains that rumble by two blocks away twice a day and their whistle at the crossing. Icicles dripping and sometimes falling from the roof ledge when I lived in Iowa. The crunch of snow under foot when delivering the Des Moines Register at 4:30 AM and my breath as it froze in the scarf around my face 1962, 3 and 4. The echo of the slightest sound when hiking in the painted rock canyon in the desert. The wind across Pinyon Flats east of Idle wild as it rushes through the 5 needle pines and the water in the stream half way up the mountain from Hemet where alders grow in the middle of the stream. Disney Land and Knots Berry Farm shooting off their fire works every night at 9:30 in the summer. Haven't been there since I quit in '87.

Was just watching the Lucy the Owl cam (side by side with the eagles), and one of the babies backed right up to the camera and pooped into it (toward it)! Funny because it was so unexpected! The owl babies don't do much! Only 20-some viewers! The eagles have been great! Very active much of the time! When I tuned in, one of the babies was "out" and there were almost 150,000 viewers. The wind picked up and the baby crawled "inside," and a couple thousand viewers dropped off very quickly. Just a couple minutes ago ago the mother was up and doing stuff (butt to camera, couldn't see the babies), and then the father arrived with dinner. Couldn't see the feeding--butt to camera again! The mother left right after the father got there---he looked, as if to say, where are YOU going! Now Daddy Dearest is sitting on the Peeps, and the bloody dinner leftovers are laying in front of him! Chicks are taking a warm nap! Viewers going down again! Papa's pulling feathers from around him in against his body to insulate them more! I love it when the adult birds are sitting on the chicks and they suddenly look down as if to say: What the H___ are you doing down there??? Have stuff to do outside! Time to x out for a while! If anybody hasn't found it yet, watch the video of what the area around the nest looks like! I had visions of them being out in The Wild somewhere, but there are actually houses right under them! Skybird

I have fond memories of my dad taking me to see them when I was a kid. We'd go every year (probably drove him nuts after a while!lol) Thinking of Sweet Georgia Brown! Have fun!

I'm offering an old favorite here, but first must thank everyone for some new favorites. Jankin, who has not felt the emotion so poignantly expressed in the poem by Rainer Maria Rilke? Thanks for posting it; I've never read it before. And I loved the portrait of a happy marriage by Amy Lowell, so beautifully and succinctly distilled. THE ANNIVERSARY. by John Donne ALL kings, and all their favourites, All glory of honours, beauties, wits, The sun it self, which makes time, as they pass, Is elder by a year now than it was When thou and I first one another saw. All other things to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay ; This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday ; Running it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day. Two graves must hide thine and my corse ; If one might, death were no divorce. Alas ! as well as other princes, we �"Who prince enough in one another be�" Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears, Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears ; But souls where nothing dwells but love �"All other thoughts being inmates�"then shall prove This or a love increasèd there above, When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove. And then we shall be throughly blest ; But now no more than all the rest. Here upon earth we're kings, and none but we Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be. Who is so safe as we? where none can do Treason to us, except one of us two. True and false fears let us refrain, Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Years and years unto years, till we attain To write threescore ; this is the second of our reign.