Night game

Yesterday had already been a good day. Jessa and I erected a pole in the back garden to hang additional hummingbird and oriole feeders, and while out there saw not just Baltimore orioles but also one or more Swainson's thrushes and a rose-breasted grosbeak. The orioles, we believe, are the pair that nested in the neighbourhood last year, and we're within the breeding range for rose-breasted grosbeaks as well, so we hope to see him again. Swainson's thrush is just a migrant here, so whether our four sightings represented multiple individuals or one bird spending the entire day here, he, she, or they were on passage and we take the visit(s) to our garden as a compliment on the habitat we've restored.

While we were working, though, Jessa mentioned that a solar storm was predicted and that the northern lights might be visible in our part of Nebraska. We had been disappointed once before; an aurora predicted last July prompted a drive well up into South Dakota, and while we enjoyed a stopover at Sioux Falls (photos from which, it now occurs to me, we never got around to posting), the lights were a no-show. We decided it was worth another attempt, especially in light of a shorter drive. Accordingly, we set ourselves an early bedtime and an alarm for half-twelve in the morning.

By one o'clock this morning, we were on the road from Lincoln north to Ceresco when it occurred to me that perhaps we should have driven west toward Aurora just for the sake of storytelling. ("I saw the aurora borealis in Aurora, Nebraska" reads the imaginary T-shirt.) As it turned out, west would have worked.

We were expecting a small patch of colour low on the northern horizon, and I was beginning to wonder if it would be discernable against the glare of oncoming headlights, when we both noticed what could have been the glow of city lights, not due north but off to the northwest in the direction of Valparaiso—if Val was a major metropolitan area and not a village of some six hundred people. We continued on to a wildlife management area up near the county line and parked to find that the glow had expanded from the northwest to fill the entire northern half of the sky. 

As we watched, the display grew further, from 180° to a full 270° of sky: lesser or greater areas of mauve confined to the northwest, wide curtains of green everywhere else, nowhere bright enough to hide the brightest stars but certainly enough to wash them out, and the whole in rippling motion as the solar wind blew across the ionosphere. We tried briefly, but couldn't get our camera to focus on the vast shimmering nothing, which is just as well. The experience was in that motion, and in the cool night air, and in the soundtrack: the constant brek-ek-ek of the chorus frogs, the occasional plaintive cry of a killdeer, and just once, the deep who's-awake call of a distant great horned owl rolling across the acres of marsh and grassland where we stood.

In Native culture, at least among the lacrosse-playing peoples, the northern lights are held to be a celestial stickball game, departed spirits continuing their ballplay for the edification of the Creator. And as I watched, I could see why, the tempo continually changing—now the steady flow of the passing game, then a brief lull as someone held the ball, occasionally the frenzy of a fast break—and given how much of the sky was in play, this was not the modern 110-yard field circumscribed by chalk endlines and sidelines, but an old, traditional ballground, miles long, with obstacles but no hard boundaries—not 10-on-10 but everyone on the field, the contestants uncountable, whole tribes in pursuit until someone with a supreme effort wins possession of the ball and with unfailing aim sends it rocketing into the post. They're all there: Thirsts-For-Stone, He Who Stands On Both Sides, Dr. W.G. Beers, the great Jim Brown, my Uncle Dave, who played for Perry Hall and who later took me to my first lacrosse game (the North-South All-Star game at UMBC). And while I'm in no hurry, I'll be glad to take the field when it's my turn to glow in the northern skies. 

* * *

UPDATE: Okay, so "it's just as well" may have been a bit of sour grapes. Below, by kind permission of my co-worker Crystal Schroer, are photos of the aurora taken northwest of Kearney. Five-second exposures on a smartphone. Now why didn't we think of that? (Answer: we may not be as smart as Crystal's phone...)

Dehontsigwa'ehs

Google celebrates stickball today! I'll let USA Lacrosse provide the details; enjoy!

Éirinn go brách

I somehow missed this at the time, but Jessa mentioned it to me this morning, just in time for Indigenous Peoples' Day tomorrow. Lacrosse is to be featured for the first time in International World Games history next year in Alabama, but the organising committee disqualified the Iroquois Nationals team from competition on the grounds that the Iroquois were "not a sovereign nation" (don't get me started) and do not have an Olympic committee. (For the record, the Iroquois Nationals compete at the international level in the World Lacrosse Championship, where both their sovereignty and their foundational role in the Creator's Game are recognised. They finished third in the most recent worlds in 2018.) Following an outcry from the lacrosse community, the IWGA then reversed course and stated that the Iroquois could compete after all—if a place could be found for them in the tournament.

Enter Ireland Lacrosse—or, rather, exit Ireland Lacrosse, as the Irish team sacrificed their spot in the tournament so that the Iroquois team could be represented. "There was so much more to be gained for the sport as a whole than for Ireland to gain from that one tournament," said Michael Kennedy of Ireland Lacrosse. "It was the right decision to pull out to enable the Iroquois to take part."

Read the whole feel-good story in Michael Glennon's piece at RTÉ.

Stickball, 1828

Just a quick link to a CNN story on cave writing, in Cherokee syllabary, by the son of its developer, Sequoyah. The topic? Stickball.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/11/us/cherokee-cave-writings-alabama-trnd/index.html 

Enjoy.

Oconee Forest Park

More trees of historic significance—purely personal significance, in this case. After our visit to TTTOI, we made an early-evening stop at Oconee Forest Park, on the banks of Lake Herrick.

The intramural fields on the opposite side of Lake Herrick are where I first saw and later played toli, but Oconee Forest Park is where I became a falconer. This was my hawking grounds for the two years of my apprenticeship and the one year that followed, before moving out to Nebraska. And I will forever be grateful to the forest manager, who, in recognition of falconry's minimal impact, made this outstanding wood available to me.

The Georgia piedmont doesn't hold many rabbits, and they tend to be found in thick, often impenetrable briars ("cheek cutters" is the local vernacular for the taller stands), so grey squirrels were our quarry. The tiercel redtail I flew during my apprenticeship, Watauga, was a truly brilliant squirrel hawk; his successor (after a couple of false starts with female redtails), Pocomoke, was less gifted but still effective, and transitioned to fox squirrels upon our move west. The grey squirrels Jessa photographed foraging in the treetops in the waning light of evening are the 20x-great-grandchildren of the squirrels we chased back in the day.

It was good to see the population is still thriving. At one point during our walk, I demonstrated a hawking technique Jessa hadn't seen before, "ringing the doorbell": I grasped a stout grapevine that climbed high up a tree to a squirrel drey, gave it a few abrupt pulls, and three squirrels obligingly popped out of the drey. Talley ho, had we a hawk with us. As it was, we saw only a Cooper's hawk nest. (The day before, I actually witnessed a pair of Cooper's mating from the backyard of our rental, but no birds were in evidence here.)

Of course the nest was in a pine—there are lone pines here and there, and even a few stands of pine, but the glory of Oconee Forest Park is in its hardwoods. I remember red oaks, tulip poplars, and sweetgum as the dominant species, but there is a fair bit of diversity here, and since this particular forest hasn't been logged for over a hundred years, some good-sized specimens as well. (Plus a few oddities and a nicely developed understory.)

I feel doubly fortunate to have begun my hawking career in this forest: not only was it beautiful and well-supplied with exciting quarry, but I know that I will always be able to come back and visit. Too many falconers' first fields have been paved over. Long live OFP.

Culturally appropriate

One sees billboards promoting exercise almost everywhere, but on a recent brief visit to Oklahoma (Fort Gibson/Muskogee area), I was enthused to see this one by Cherokee Nation Public Health.

Longtime readers may be aware of my interest in double-stick or "Southeastern" lacrosse, and it's nice to see a public-health organisation using imagery specifically relevant to the population it serves. Stickball FTW!

Much

A sampling, in no particular order and by no means all-inclusive:

Happy Thanksgiving to all...

Lacrosse miscellany

From Baby Blues by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott:

"Where were their mothers?" Iroquois moms could be found on the sidelines, cheering on their sons (always sons back in the day), and most likely betting on the game. Taboos against wagering on sports, to the extent that such taboos exist, are a purely Western convention.

On the rampage at last

Back in the autumn, I took a sabbatical from coaching the Lincoln Rampage lacrosse team in order to concentrate on my falconry. (Which worked out, more or less.) At the same time, my coaching partner, Greg McManus, decided to step down as head coach and assume a more administrative role with the club. The team hired former Nebraska Cornhuskers coach Nate Hoeckelmann to fill our shoes, and things have worked out well.

Nate has coached at the high school and college level for over ten years, and brings not just Xs and Os but also more discipline: he really knows how to run a practice and make the best use of the available time. And, as Greg and I had foreseen, the kids have now come into their own: led by a couple of seniors and a large crop of juniors (and backed by a brilliant freshman goalie in Will Ehrman), they now have the confidence that they belong on the lacrosse field. As of right now, they are 11-2 and ranked #1 in the state by West Side Lacrosse, with one more regular-season game to go before the playoffs start next weekend.

I've attended several of the Rampage's games, and it's wonderful to see them playing so well and winning games, an accomplishment that eluded us for so long. But if I'm honest, it's difficult as well: why couldn't they play like this when Greg and I were coaching? I suppose we will have to content ourselves with the knowledge that ours was a younger, less-experienced team, and with Nate's assurances that the present team's success is laid on the foundation that we built. We started the program from scratch, taught the fundamentals, and (I hope) instilled a love of the game that will last.

Meanwhile, I've not given up coaching altogether. The next frontier: girls' lacrosse in Lincoln. I've been asked by the club to coach a girls' team at the high-school level; we didn't have enough players to field a team this spring (which is probably just as well, considering how busy I've been), but we'll try again next year. And I'll be somewhat involved in youth lacrosse as well...

The pipeline

The quality of high-school lacrosse in the area depends largely on youth programs to teach the sport to younger kids. We hope to resurrect youth lacrosse in Lincoln this fall; meanwhile, Ellie and her friend Amelia are playing up in Omaha again. A few photos from last season follow.

[Ellie: game face]


[Going for the ground ball...]


[...and winning it]


[On the wing, awaiting faceoff]


[Sportsmanship]


[Postgame: Ellie and Amelia]


You heard it here first

Last May, writing about my favorite Major League Lacrosse team, I referred to them as "the Baltimore-then-Washington-but-now-playing-in-Annapolis-so-let's-just-call-them-Maryland-or-maybe-Chesapeake-Bayhawks". I don't know if someone with the organization was reading Flyover Country or not, but they are now officially...the Chesapeake Bayhawks.

The itinerant Hawks have struggled to draw crowds in a lacrosse-saturated market. Their first home venue was Homewood Field at Johns Hopkins University (I attended their first game, which was also the league's opening game); subsequent home fields have included M&T Bank Stadium (home of the NFL's Ravens) in Baltimore as well as on-campus venues at Towson University, George Mason University, and Georgetown University. They are now in the second year of a three-year contract with Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. According to Lacrosse Magazine, the team's new management deliberately adopted a regional approach: "If you don't include any of those cities, you alienate somebody immediately, " says Bayhawks president Brendan Kelly. "We wanted to encompass the whole market. The Chesapeake Bayhawks. It was really a no-brainer, kind of a play off the New England Patriots."

Mr. Kelly, I hope the new strategy (which includes youth clinics and alumni games between local college rivals) pays dividends. I'll do my best to make it to at least one game this summer. And if you did get the idea for the new name here, there's no charge. I'm just happy to be part of the team...

Wrapping up

Yes, the Salt Creek Tiger Beetles will be back this summer. More to follow (eventually), so check back.

photoblogging: lacrosse

Susan took some snapshots at my lacrosse game yesterday. Cropped and reduced to 256-color format, I think they look pretty artistic. (Click for bigger.)







These are from our game against Omaha. I won't share the score; let's just say we took a severe beating, and leave it at that. We fared somewhat better against Boulevard, but we're now 0-4 in the GPLL. I'm happy to to report that we're still undefeated in our appreciation of the game.

Toli videos

From The Red and Black, the UGA student newspaper, a short video about the Flying Rats' recent visit to Conehatta on the Choctaw reservation in Mississippi. I wasn't around long enough to make the trip west, but I sure do miss the game—played here for fun and comradery.



Here's what it looks like played "for keeps":

Meet the Beetles, and other lacrosse miscellany

The season just ended

The Lincoln Rampage were knocked out of the Nebraska High School Lacrosse Association championships with a first-round loss, 14-3, to Millard West last weekend. The outcome was not altogether unexpected—our varsity team was winless through the regular season—but we did think that West displayed a certain arrogance and lack of sportsmanship by posting a Facebook invitation to their semi-finals game before their game against us was even played.

West went on to win the championship; meanwhile, we're looking forward to next season and beyond. We graduated just one senior, with two juniors moving up. The rest of our players are rapidly-improving freshmen and sophomores, so in two years we may be the team to beat. Thanks to a generous equipment grant from US Lacrosse, Brine, and Warrior, as well as a positive working relationship with the Abbott Sports Foundation, the club's existence is secure and success will come eventually.

* * *

My cousin Laura, a freshman midfielder for the Catonsville Cardinals, had a much better year. She had several multiple-goal games (although my search for video highlights has been unsuccessful) and Catonsville, the defending national junior-college champions, lost only one regular-season game. The Cardinals fell to that same team, the Onondaga Lazers, last weekend in the NJCAA semi-finals; Onondaga went on to win the national championship. I congratulate Laura and her teammates on a successful season—and if you have to lose, you may as well lose to the best.

* * *

The season just beginning

After playing for the Omaha Rhinos (West) last summer, some friends and I have started a new team, the Salt Creek Tiger Beetles. (The team is named for Lancaster County's endangered endemic—three guesses who came up with the moniker.) Despite being older and slower, we dealt the Rampage another loss, 8-6, this morning to claim the first annual (and very unofficial) Lincoln City Lacrosse Championship. Yours truly scored the first goal as well as the game-winner. Here's hoping that's not the high-water mark of my season... Regular-season play in the Great Plains Lacrosse League begins June 6th.

* * *

I've written before about my favorite professional team, the Baltimore-then-Washington-but-now-playing-in-Annapolis-so-let's-just-call-them-Maryland-or-maybe-Chesapeake Bayhawks. Last night they faced off against the MLL's newest franchise, the Toronto Nationals, in the first game of the season. Final score: Toronto 17, Bayhawks 16. Not the result I had hoped for, but here are three things to like about the Nationals:

• Their logo, which incorporates both the Canadian maple leaf and the Hiawatha Belt of the Iroquois Confederacy.
• The MLL may have contracted from ten teams to six, but the Nationals extend the league's geographic reach north of the border.
• Gary Gait, a near-contemporary of mine (with a birthday in April, he's a slightly younger 42) and arguably the greatest player in the game's long history, came out of retirement to play for them.

With all teams now playing in one division, perhaps it will come down to the Bayhawks vs. the Nationals in the finals. Something to hope for, anyway...

Of spring, robins, and...other birds

The front page of the local section of the morning paper featured a lovely photograph of an American robin against a background of snow-covered crabapples, marred by the caption: "Being the first robin of spring was no picnic Sunday in David City. A weekend blizzard dropped 8 inches of snow in the region."

News flash, people: we have robins winterlong. Granted, you might have to go looking for them, since they're not hopping around in pairs on people's front lawns. (They form flocks and tend to winter in dense vegetation offering both food and shelter from the elements—I often encounter them in groves of red cedar while out hawking.) But Turdus migratorius is not completely migratory even at our latitude.

Common but erratic regular wintor visitor statewide....CBC data demonstrate the erratic winter occurrence of this species. In CBCs from 1983-84 through 1992-93, the total count of robins has varied from a high of 10,410 in 1987-88 to a low of 213 in 1986-87. The highest individual count total was 9500 at Calamus-Loup in 1987-88.

An amazing count was an estimated 20,000 flying over in Brown Co[unty] 11 Jan 1988; 4800 were estimated in 6 minutes, and the flight lasted for 30 minutes.

—Sharpe, Silcock & Jorgensen, Birds of Nebraska: Their Distribution and Temporal Occurrence (2001)

At least Nebraskans stand a fair chance of missing robins in a low winter like '86-'87. I used to hear this "first robin of spring" nonsense even when I lived in Georgia. Robin numbers in Georgia actually drop in the spring as northern migrants return to their breeding grounds, so maybe I'm a bit oversensitized on this score.

In my opinion, for an avian harbinger of spring in Nebraska, the place to look is up.

Spring arrivals appear in early and mid-Mar, but most arrive in very late Mar and early Apr, a little later in the west. Numbers observed rarely exceed a dozen, and thus no clear migratory peak can be established.

—Sharpe, Silcock & Jorgensen, Birds of Nebraska

What bird is this that brings the promise of warmer weather to the northern Great Plains? Cathartes aura, the turkey vulture. This unlovely (to most people) bird depends, of course, on carrion for its food. It locates carcasses through both visual and olfactory cues—it is one of a very few birds with a well-developed sense of smell—and since death is a constant presence in the natural world, it can count on a steady supply of food wherever sufficient "prey" exists. Assuming, that is, that said "prey" is accessible. The extended sub-freezing temperatures of a typical Nebraska winter create plenty of carrion but quickly render it inaccessible to the TVs by freezing it solid; a dead deersicle is more or less useless to a turkey vulture.

I coached three lacrosse games up in Omaha this past Saturday. When we started, the weather was fine, and I enjoyed watching a small kettle of TVs soaring over the Missouri River bluffs. (I pointed them out to some of the Lincoln midfielders, telling them that they'd better show some signs of life. We did get more hustle out of the kids this weekend, but I don't know if that was attributable to the vultures.) Later on, the weather turned cold and windy, and the second game of the day was interrupted by a storm that included heavy sleet. I shivered along with everyone else, but I knew for sure that spring was really here. We're not necessarily done with cold weather—in fact we cancelled this evening's practice due to temps in the low 30s and 20+ mph winds—but it will be short-lived. By their return, the vultures told me so.