We've got (had?) an owl!

This is a picture of Howland, our latest visitor to our Avery.

Howland is a gray Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio) and he has taken up residence in our Owl House (or maybe not; more about that later).

I knew the housing market was bad, but we've had a "For Rent" sign on that house for more than a year and a half. We had pretty much given up hope that we would ever have a resident in our little house - then the other day I looked out and there was an owl!

I say he - Howland may be a Howletta. It's hard to tell unless you can see one of each side by side (lady owls are larger). He or she sleeps all day down in the cozy confines of the house and comes out of an evening and perches in the opening to survey his kingdom until it gets dark, and then it's off to rid the world of rodents and other critters (like unsuspecting Finches, we suspect).

He's very camera shy (more support for the lady owl theory?) and won't let us get terribly close to take a picture, though he was OK with Luke and Grace standing at the base of the tree, looking up at him. Once we step off the patio, however, he ducks down in his nest.

The good news is that we don't have to buy feed for the owl - unlike the Finches, who can devour a sock of seed in 2 days. The bad news is that we haven't seen Howland in a few days. Did he find a nicer apartment? Was he just passing through? Has he already moved to a cool branch now that the cold days are past and it is unseasonably warm here in Austin?

I guess only time will tell. Oh, and extra points if you can tell me who the original Howland was - without Googling it.

Deep thoughts about the Dixie Chicks. Really.

I'm doing my daily grind on the treadmill, working through the play lists on the iPod, and I get to some Dixie Chicks - specifically "Evening with the Dixie Chicks" recorded at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles. Nice venue, great crowd, really exceptional recording - especially for a live show. The Chicks (is that politically correct?) do a show of new material based on the "Home" album, and then for the encore come back and do the standards - and invite the audience to sing along.

And they do. The audience knows every word to every song they sing!

What must it feel like to hear your music echo back to you? To know that something you created and recorded has been taken to heart by so many that they can sing it as well as you can? The Kodak Theater seats just over 3,000 people, and in the video it looks like all 3,000 are singing along (and that's just a tiny fraction of the potential - even I can sing along!).

Yes, I agree that "Cowboy Take me Away" will not become an enduring classic for all ages; but I wonder if Beethoven or Brahms or any other classical composer ever had 3,000 people stand up and sing or hum their composition back to them? I'm not sure I can even name three of Beethoven's greatest hits!

It makes one think about what one's own legacy will be? What song will I sing in my lifetime that someone would even remember, let alone sing it along with me? What song will you or I plant in the hearts of people we come in contact with, and will they be able to recall it later?

I think I have some composing to do.

Who needs $100?

Someone recently handed me a crisp, new $100 bill. It was "payment" for my part in a recent wedding.

The truth of the matter is, you can't pay me enough to do the sound for a wedding. If it was on a commercial basis I would do the wedding for free but charge $100 a minute for the rehearsal. So since no one I know can afford to pay me on that basis, I just do them for nothing. It's my gift to the happy couple.

So here I am with $100 of "found" money. There's a lot I could do with $100 - night out with the wife at a fancy restaurant and a movie (but we're Chuy's kind of people, and we would never agree on a movie); buy a fancy new gadget (I splurged recently and paid $19 for a wireless mouse); down payment on an iPhone (but I'm getting off the grid, remember?).

So I figure the best use of this bill is to give it to someone who needs it and can put it to far better use. But who? There is no end of deserving charities and organizations. We currently contribute to several on a regular basis. We spent a week in Peru at our expense working in a medical clinic for one. Everyone of them needs substantial, on-going support. But who needs $100?

I know there are organizations that buy cows or goats or such on your behalf. There are groups that loan money to men and women in third world countries to get a small business started. I know $100 would furnish a number of meals for impoverished people. Where do I send this crisp, new bill?

Help me out here. Give me some specifics and a plug for where you think the $100 should go. I'll use some semi-scientific method for evaluating them (like drawing one out of a hat) and if it is your recommendation, I'll send them the money in the name of your choice.

And we'll all be the better for it.

A few follow ups...

I mentioned here how delighted we were to have Finches at our feeder. Who knew the little buggers ate multiple times their weight daily? We've refilled the sock twice and swept a big pile of thistle seed hulls off the patio. If they keep inviting their friends (I've seen as many as six clinging to the feeder) we may have to raise the price of lunch!

And in the same Finch article I mentioned the Albert the Adequate church. Noticed a blurb in the paper that Sunday they "staged a medieval Boar's Head Pageant, which is a traditional English performance marking the end of the Christmas season and the Epiphany." They even had a dude dressed up like the knight guarding the chalice in "Indiana Jones and the Quest for the Holy Grail" who "guided people into the church."

And we thought a Christmas Eve candlelight service was edgy.

Oh, the teen-aged director that kept texting instead of keeping up with me? Won't be back. It seems that after he completed his 4oth hour of volunteer service he whipped out his letter from the judge and asked the studio director to sign off on his volunteer hours. The director says that happens fairly often; they used to have people assigned from the courts but the School for the Blind (on whose property the RFB&D studio sits) put a stop to that. Now they just get "stealth" volunteers.

And here I talked about the "community" of children in Peru. This past week two of our Shepherds were in Peru visiting with Miguel and touring the community compound, seeking ways to establish regular and on-going support from Westover! Now that's good news!

Two services

With the New Year, we began two services each Sunday morning at Westover. That's nothing new for many congregations - and it's not new at Westover, either. When we first began attending there they actually had 3 services - 2 in the morning and another in the afternoon. Then in 2000, we moved into the new Worship Center and with attendance divided in two groups we sort of rattled around in that big room, so we soon dropped back to one service.

We've grown, and of late finding a seat has been difficult for latecomers. People who purport to be experts in this sort of thing say that if people can't find a seat the congregation will stop growing. I don't know if that's really true, but for that and other reasons, we are now counted among the two service churches. All we had to do was figure out which service we wanted to attend. Early? Uh, everyone wants early; would you mind switching to late? And no one seemed happy with the schedule: 9:00AM and 11:15AM with class in-between. If it had been me, I would have the times as [insert favorite times here]. But of course, if you operate the sound system, or work upstairs in video, or sing, or preach or shepherd, you attend both services, so the time doesn't really matter.

And of course, to encourage togetherness (and help the communion servers) they roped off the wings and Tinsel Town, our affectionate name for the elevated sections. Now, there was grumbling about the times, but there was REVOLT when people found they couldn't sit in their regular seats. Trapped behind the sound console, I was the target of a lot of the dissent. I told them I had nothing to do with it, but if they really wanted their seat back they should do what they could to get the numbers up so their section was reopened. That didn't seem to appease anyone.

All in all, the first Sunday worked out okay; 770 for the first service and 450 for the second. And everone found a seat. It just wasn't their seat.