My spunky LBJ

(Don Dale photo, 2011)

I have to hand it to the LBJ who built a nest in my front-porch light fixture a few weeks ago: she's got spunk.

After I discovered the nest and removed it last week, she apparently started all over again.

I walked out of the front door this morning to pick up my copy of the Times-Dispatch from the sidewalk, and there it was -- another nest. I went back inside to get my camera, came back out, stood on the porch chair, and photographed this latest LBJ effort.

Then I removed it.

Will she try again?

I hope not.

This is rapidly getting old.

But I do admire her determination.

My foolish LBJs

(Photo by Don Dale, 2011)

For the second time in three years, a bird who didn't think things through built a nest in my front porch light fixture. This year it happened last week.

Some random LBJ worked hard to create this place to lay her eggs.

(What's an LBJ? It's a "little brown job," a term birders use for a small brown bird they can't identify. I couldn't recognize my LBJ's species because I'm not much of a birder and because I saw it only a couple of times for a few fleeting seconds.)

My front porch light fixture is a moronic place to build a nest. It's cozy enough, but when the digital timer turns the 40-watt bulb on at sunset, it toasts the nest.

I realize I could disable the digital timer, but that would mean a few weeks of fumbling in the dark to find the front-door keyhole. That was a sacrifice I wasn't prepared to make for a random LBJ.

I learned for a fact three years ago that my front porch light fixture is not the right place for a nesting bird. When a nest appeared in the fixture, I was mildly excited. I thought I'd get a close-up view of the whole process and the birth of a few baby LBJs. I'd peak through the front window occasionally and see my LBJ sitting on her nest in the daytime, but it was the bright bulb, I imagine, that tended to make her nighttime stays short.

When she was away, I could see tiny eggs at the bottom of the nest.

Weeks passed, and I realized that the LBJ had abandoned her perch and her eggs. Eventually I removed the nest, cracked one of the eggs, and sure enough it was ... hard-boiled.

This year I removed the nest right after I photographed it. Perhaps the LBJ still has time to build another nest and lay her eggs in a more appropriate place.

I hope so.

Or maybe I should invest in a front porch birdhouse for mentally challenged LBJs.

Spend an evening with George and Martha

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starred in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," the 1966 movie directed by Mike Nichols. Taylor won an Oscar for Best Actress in her portrayal of the boozy wife of a college professor.

When I was in Air Force Basic Training in Texas in 1966, we were allowed one day to explore the city on our own. I am still somewhat leery about telling people what I did that day in San Antonio.

I went to see "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." Oh, sure, I took a look at the Alamo and had lunch in a Tex-Mex restaurant. But it was the movie with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton that I wanted to see.

While the other trainees in my flight were touring San Antonio's bars and enjoying the city's seedier entertainment -- which was totally understandable after six weeks of confinement to an air base -- I sat in the dark and watched two great actors scream, yell and snarl at each other in a tour-de-force display of what acting is all about.

I've never regretted it.

Elizabeth Taylor died today in Los Angeles. Perhaps the most ravishing actress of the 20th century, she died -- peacefully, we are told -- of congestive heart failure.

As a child, I had heard about, but never seen, "National Velvet," the 1944 movie that starred Taylor at the age of 12. My Aunt Hazel took my sister and me to see "Giant" in 1956, and two years later I was impressed with Taylor's sultry performance opposite Paul Newman in Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

When I was a teenager, I saw "Butterfield 8," the film adaptation of John O'Hara's story about a Manhattan call girl. I was too young to really understand the depths of the movie, but I did realize what a strikingly gorgeous actor the violet-eyed Taylor was.

But writer Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" blew me away on that hot August afternoon in Texas.

Gone were the good looks that had stood Taylor in such good stead. She was still a radiantly beautiful woman in 1966, but not in this film. For this role, her hair was streaked with gray, she was made up to appear much older than she was, and she was playing the frumpy, boozing wife of a college professor. For George and Martha -- Taylor played Martha opposite Burton as George -- there was only one pleasure left in life: attacking each other with words, the most vicious weapons they were equipped to use. And boy, oh boy, were they well equipped.

It was the first time that I appreciated what acting was all about. I wasn't watching Elizabeth Taylor up on the screen in that dark movie theater. Taylor was Martha. I was watching a woman who could act and yet never be caught acting. And she gave Burton as good as she got -- and then some, which was no mean feat.

There are many good Elizabeth Taylor movies available, but if you want to remember her at her finest, rent "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." You'll appreciate as never before what a transcendent actress we've lost.

(You can watch the trailer from the movie by clicking here.)

Our own March madness

Jenny Dale Miller cradles Lucy in her arms at Lucy's first birthday party today. Joining the celebration (top left) was my niece Terry Lynn Dale Cavet, who also celebrated a birthday this month. (Don Dale photo, 2011)

Our family celebrates a lot of birthdays in March.

To be even more precise, we celebrate a lot of birthdays on St. Patrick's Day, March 17.

My niece, Terry Lynn Dale Cavet, was a St. Patrick's Day baby. And as the luck of the Irish would have it, she married James Cavet, who was also a St. Patrick's Day baby. (In fact, he was born on the same day Terry was born, and to be perfectly clear, I mean in the same year.)

My nephew Mike's daughter, Jenny, was also born on St. Patrick's Day. And Jenny (my great-niece), gave birth to my newest great-great-niece, Lucy, a year ago yesterday, March 19.

Mike and Terry and her family and I went out to dinner to celebrate Terry's and James's birthday on St. Patrick's Day this year. To avoid the crowds and the amateur drunks, we went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant.

Today, we celebrated Lucy's first birthday with a fine lunch, astonishingly good homemade cupcakes (Mike was particularly vocal in his praise), and some time watching Lucy and the kids opening her birthday presents in the sun in the back yard of Jenny's husband's parents -- Lucy's grandparents.

Lucy is thriving, thanks to her parents' loving care. (I think her genes help, too.) She's just beginning to walk and took three full steps into her mother's arms as we adults laughed and applauded.

It was a good day to be celebrating for two reasons: Lucy achieved a milestone, and the family saga continues.

What time is it?

Cassie, half asleep in her box by the radiator, is adapting slowly to DST.

I can almost persuade myself that it's high noon when it's really only 11 a.m.

No worries. I'll get into the new routine soon enough.

But I can't explain Daylight Saving Time to the cat. Cassie listens to my explanation politely, then switches her tail and walks away.

It's not that she can't tell time. She can. Or at least she has some rudimentary grasp of when things are supposed to happen -- if those things have some bearing on her.

She's usually waiting at the bedroom door when I get up. She knows that an hour or so later she'll get a teaspoon of canned food. She knows that she gets another teaspoon of canned food at lunchtime, and another at dinner time. In the late afternoon, she wants to sit in the front window. In the evening, she sits in my lap while I read or watch TV. And at about 11:30 p.m., she heads for the cardboard box next to the radiator in the living room to sleep.

(What is it with cats and boxes? No box comes into the house without her wanting to sleep in it. But that's a subject for a future discussion.)

This morning, when I got up, Cassie didn't meet me at the door. She was still asleep in her box. An hour later, I put a teaspoon of cat food in her dish. It wasn't food time on her cat clock, so the "poultry paté" sat there, untouched, for an hour. She'll be off by an hour for at least a few days, and she doesn't understand one bit about why things are happening an hour before she expects them to.

I understand why she doesn't understand. But she doesn't understand why she doesn't understand.

It's not so bad in March, when we "spring forward" for DST. But this fall, when we revert to standard time, the problem will be worse. Things will happen an hour later than she expects.

From a cat's perspective, things happening an hour early is not a major catastrophe. But when things happen an hour later than they're supposed to, well, that's a profound violation of her basic feline rights.

And she won't take it quietly.


(For those of you who have been following Cassie's URI saga, there's good news: We seem to have hit on a winning formula. Since mid-February, she's been taking one dose of antibiotics per day. She's not sneezing. Her eyes are bright. She plays with her little red felt mouse and with crumpled sticky notes. And she often races around the house as though she's being chased by the demons of hell. Life is good.)

(Cough, cough)

A friend of mine summed it up succinctly in an e-mail yesterday: "Neither one of us is really good at not feeling good."

So true.

My friend, who was e-mailing me from Hong Kong on the way to a vacation in Thailand, is recovering from a case of Bell's palsy. I know how he feels: I had the same thing about 30 years ago.

This time, though, my problem is acute bronchitis. That's why it's been so long since I've updated the blog. I'm feeling lousy, and I'm not very good at feeling lousy. I tend to blow my symptoms out of proportion -- in my own mind, at least -- and I tend to imagine the worst. Probably that's a result of having been a medic at the 36th Tactical Hospital in the Air Force. By the time I saw a patient, the situation was ipso facto worse than if he or she hadn't needed to be hospitalized.

Instead, I should be following the old medical-school warning: When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. I am not hospitalized, and my bronchitis is just that and nothing more. It's a horse, plain and without stripes of any sort.

I am taking an antibiotic that my doctor prescribed. That and the cough syrup he gave me seem to be getting things under control. (The antibiotic makes me feel queasy sometimes, but life is not without its trade-offs.)

I'm looking forward to tomorrow and the days to come optimistically: I will feel better. I will stop coughing.

In the meantime, my friend hit the nail on the head. I'm not good at not feeling good. But I know that, so I'm enjoying the unexpected chance to catch up on a backlog of good books. And I really am enjoying the chicken soup.