"Bye Bye Blackbird (And More Relevant Species, Not On Old-Time Musical Playlists"

I read a while back that twenty-nine percent of birds have progressively disappeared.  (If this is not true, blame what I read.  And me, somewhat, for passing it along.)

Unlike rapidly melting ice flows – which I have not personally experienced – this avial absence has substantially hit home.  On our last trip to Michiana, unlike in years past, we saw no cardinals, no scrubs jays, and heard no woodpeckers, tapping on nearby trees, or, less idyllically, the vulnerable exterior of our log cabin.

I don’t know.  Maybe, like us, they were just on vacation.  But stacked-up newspapers by abandoned nests suggest otherwise.

It appears those indigenous species have all permanently left town.

Why do birds “go”?  (He surmised, lacking authorizing credentials.)

Because the stuff they eat is no more.

It’s like they go to a restaurant and the menu says,

“Nothing for birds.”

And that’s it.

No sustenance. 

No survival.

Analogizing from something that truly matters to something mattering only to me – that’s how I feel about the places where I once derived ideas for blog posts but now find discouraging “dry holes.”

It appears that my blogatorial “menu” is dangerously depleting, leaving me relegated, like today, to writing about how there is less and less for me to write about.  Which I can do only so often – I believe the “Lifetime Allotment” on the subject is three.  (Note:  I may well have exceeded my quota.) 

Some of this problem involves age.  Not as in, “I am so old, I have written about everything.”  It is more that, since the main source of my material is entertainment, today’s attention to younger audiences means, “Nothing for you.”

Some of it’s that.

And some of it’s personal. 

I leave you to sort out the distinction.

Chronicling my “Natural Sources of Nourishment”…

After you’ve said you don’t watch them, there is nothing to say about shows you don’t watch.

Also “Ditto” for movies you don’t see.

Politics?  (Although like mis-guessing the recent World Series winner, I’d be delighted to be wrong.)

If the final outcome feels essentially ordained – See:  Sold-out Republican Senate, low-watt Democratic opponents – what remains on my (erstwhile) political “programming of preference” is endless speculation, tone-deaf predictions, followed by sad-faced discussions about where they went wrong. 

Having foreseen the ending, why not skip the whole thing?

So another item, stricken from the menu.

Okay, sports?  (Especially, more and more, football, which, when it comes down to it, is an exercise in variations of falling, damaging your knees, your shoulders and your brain.  The happiest guy on the field?  The man who runs out of bounds, ending the play without having to fall down.  He’s like, “I gained nine yards and ran back to the right huddle!”)

I have lost enthusiasm even for “Home Teams”, turned off because players make thirty million a year, which should not matter, but does. 

Sports today’s about billionaire owners, vying for high-priced “free agents.”  We’re not rooting for “Our Guys.”  We are rooting for wallets. 

I have cut back on reruns of westerns, seen so many times, I know if the marshal was shot in the leg or shot in the shoulder.

And there you have it.

My “Traditional Grazing Land”, shorn to haircuts, given warrior recruits.

Remember the actor “Slim Pickens”?

It’s like that’s how it feels.

Existentially precarious.

I ponder the lost cardinal, the scarce scrub jay, the absent woodpecker?

And I start wondering,

Who’s next?