The Crow II: City of Angels

Two or three summers ago basically every single crow around here was wiped out by the West Nile Virus. It was sad that so many birds died but it was nice to never have to hear ten thousand crows yelling at you when you walked out the door, all angry that you even looked at them and messing with your garbage cans. 

Anyway I've taken up bird-watching a bit in the backyard (I feel like an old man, puttering around in the garden and sitting in an easy chair with a pair of binoculars and the Birds of Chicagoland book, getting all excited to see a goldfinch), and have never once seen a crow since the virus hit. The grackles have sort of filled the niche, but I began to wonder whether they would ever come back.

Today I heard a cawing noise, and ran outside found a single crow perched triumphantly at the very peak of our roof, just cawing and cawing and looking at me. 

After it knew that I saw it, the crow flew away into the distance and it left me feeling really uneasy.

Fukasawa

I really had to restrain myself from buying this book... it runs near $70. Check it out if you can, absolutely amazing. Maybe I'll just ask for it as a birthday present - or maybe I'll just head back out there and pick it up when my first paycheck comes in....

p.r.b.f.

The weather held up for the most part (really hot though) and I was definitely overwhelmed by the number of books on sale - I bought a few things but I don't think I saw a quarter of what was there.Panel on comics with cartoonists Chris Ware, Ivan Brunetti, and Chris Oliveros, publisher of Drawn and Quarterly. Was mostly about editing comic anthologies but it drifted in a few interesting directions.

Chris Ware mentioned Achewood and his tribute or shout-out or whatever from Chris Onstad - but apparently he didn't really understand it, so that was sort of disappointing. The three of them definitely made it clear that they were paper and ink guys and it was too late for them to really 'get' comics on the internet.

In general it was a nice day downtown and I managed to miss most of the Bluesfest crowds - I'd like to go again next year a little bit better prepared.

Stern-Gerlach

Congrats Grads

Saturday

Robbie Rowlands - Depot Installation

Found this artist's work from another good post at WebUrbanist. For this project he was able to work with an abandoned building, peeling away layers of floors, walls, and ceilings to reveal the structure and form normally unseen in a typical room.

More of his work is here.