Michelle D. Brodie’s

We arrived in Beijing on April 1st and after eating some really bad food at the Shanghai Restaurant in the Food Court, we went for a walk up Chang An Da Jie just to try to stay awake and get on China time. April 2nd: We had lunch at a fancy old Beijing restaurant known for its Beijing Caw Ya (Roasted Duck).  It is one of the few restaurants I encountered in China that served organic vegetables.  Afterwards we went to the Summer Palace, where we spent the rest of the day exploring. The air quality had become very bad and was at 254 (over 60 is bad for your health) and as everywhere in China, it was extremely crowded. We had an enjoyable time though walking around the lake which the emperor had made for his own enjoyment, and admiring the 17th century architecture. When it got late we […]

President Obama designated two national monuments on December 28, 2016, protecting 1.35 million acres of federal land surrounding the Bears Ears, a prominent peak important and sacred to Native Americans,  in southeastern Utah and about 300,000 acres around Gold Butte in Nevada, northeast of Las Vegas. The monuments were Mr. Obama’s last effort to protect public lands and waters from development and to nail down as much of his environmental legacy as possible before President Trump, the most anti-environmental president in the history of the US, took over.  Trump wasted no time, first appointing a spineless and soulless sycophant as Secretary of Interior, Ryan Zinke, whose first official act was to visit the national monuments designated by Obama and recommend their dismantling to open them to oil and gas drilling and coal mining. The family of a Nevada rancher, Cliven Bundy, whose property is adjacent to Gold Butte, helped take […]

With republicans firmly in control of the senate, the house, and the white house, we must remain vigilant in preserving wild areas in the U.S.  Some have asked why mountain bikes cannot be allowed to ride in Congressionally-designated Wildernesses.  Allowing bicycles in these areas would defeat the very purpose of setting aside and protecting these areas as Wilderness.   Congress passed the Wilderness Act to protect the wilderness character of these places, not to establish recreation areas. Wilderness preserves the great silences of lands removed from the influences of modern civilization. Wilderness is free from human domination or manipulation, where ecological and evolutionary processes may continue unhindered by humankind. Wilderness provides places where wildlife can thrive without being startled by zooming human machines.   In order to protect wilderness character, Congress and the framers of the 1964 Wilderness Act prohibited bikes (and other intrusions of modern civilization) from Wilderness while […]

Mrs. Willis Mrs. Willis is a hardened little reprobate She is dissolute, indolent and void of character She is a bettle-browed impudent little shrew She is a poisonous viper and an unprincipled person She is a virago, and a pettifogging slatternly scoundrel She is a swindler and a villian She is an insignificant little chit and a beast She is a simpering wax doll face, artless, abominable wooly-headed insipid milksop She is a shabby, peevish, harpy Whose soul is irretrievably lost

September ushers in the fall And a time for gathering acorns Competing with the Black-tailed Deer, Western Gray Squirrel, and many creatures great and small Here where the Paiute, Miwok, and Volvon once stood It was acorns they collected But time passed them by and their ways are no longer respected Vast herds of bison once roamed the endless prairies Now just wheat and corn fields and dairies Deer, Squirrel, Miwok, Volvon hold vast reservoirs of knowledge Protein and Omega 6 fatty acids of the acorn make it vastly superior to wheat and this they knew without going to college September is a time for an Oak Woodland Ramble Searching for the acorn of the California Black Oak is where we aim to amble The Western Gray Squirrel has become my nemesis Wait too late in fall and you’ll only find ones he has missed Scampering away while being strafed […]

I have decided to rename my blog. It used to be called Birding with Michelle Brodie but since I have not been on any organized birding trips in over a year, I have decided to rename it to incorporate some other interests, to Birds, Trails and Tales with Michelle Brodie. I first started birding in 1994 and like everything in my life I attacked it with vigor. I put all my resources into learning all the bird names, their habitats, their songs, identifying them, and compiling lists of all the birds I had seen. I had a life list and a North American list as well as a pair of hugely expensive top of the line Leica binoculars. In 2005, I signed up for a San Francisco County Big Year. This is a contest in which the participants attempt to see as many species of birds as possible within the […]