A Curious Statistical Anomaly

March came in like a lion. There’s an old saying I knew as a child:

March comes in like a lion,
and goes out like a lamb.

Hopefully, that means that the end of March will quietly meld into April. But, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, I got a new coffee cup. This one was a Christmas gift from friends. It’s got those simple lines that I love. Again, it’s reminiscent of a type of diner coffee cup and has a nice blue line. It also says “Vote for Women” celebrating women’s right to vote. That’s a right that’s very dear to my heart making this an especially great cup.

Well, while March was coming in like that lion it roared with wind and dumped about five inches of snow on us here in Brandywine, Maryland. Not at lot of snow by the standards of some northern parts of the country but here people don’t do well with snow so five inches is a lot. In our part of the state, we usually don’t get much snow for some reason, most of the snowfall is north and northwest of DC and we’re southeast — we usually get rain when other parts of the state get snow. But not this time.

We got a bird feeder a while back because of our concern about a demented cardinal that was continually attacking our sliding glass door on the deck. The birds have been spreading the word and we’ve got quite a lot of birds eating from our feeder and we’re learning to recognize some of them. However, evidently birds go a bit wacky with snow. Maybe they think they’d better fill up on all the food they can because the feeder might go away because today we were inundated with birds.

While it’s not that unusual to see more than one bird at the feeder, today saw a lot more birds than usual. We usually fill the feeder once a day and very occasionally twice. Today, we filled it three times.

We haven’t seen much of our looney cardinal or any cardinals for that matter since we got the bird feeder. Today in the snow we saw several of them. Some down stairs on the lower patio and some on the feeder, waiting their turn or just looking like they just drifted in to make a splash of color on an otherwise  grey day. I got this fellow sitting on the railing on the upper deck.

I was trying to get a better shot of a cardinal sitting on the railing. When I clicked the shutter, I saw that another bird had come into the shot and was just off the cardinal and it looks like it’s attacking the sitting cardinal. But in truth, it just appears that way. But it was a neat shot and the wings are in motion so I thought I’d post it.

I’ve got two more picture I took today, the first is of the birds in and about our hydrangea bush down on the patio deck on the ground level of the house. I suppose I should explain that all the pictures were taken from within the house. While the glass on the doors is fairly clean it does effect the light and the clarity of the photos. In this one I also got a cardinal and a mourning dove.

To give you an idea of how patient the birds were here’s a shot of several birds waiting for their turn at the feeder.

So, even though it snowed and was cold and completely blew away my belief that the worst of winter was over. It was an absolutely wonderful, beautiful day.

Orange, a young high school student, is obsessed with an artist that lives in her apartment building. He’s always drunk. He ignores her, but she looks out for him and hopes one day he’ll pay attention. Then he comes up on the roof while she’s there. He looks at her and shows her a letter. Then he jumps from the building to land on a car below.

Orange is devastated. We then flashback five months.

Orange felt alienated and alone believing that she’s the only one to feel this way and that no one can understand her frustration, anger, and pain. She writes a note, goes up to the roof, and stands on the edge. She nearly worked herself up to jump when unexpectedly, a young man who lives in the same building is up there, drunk and the smashing of his bottle has her off the edge. It’s the same young man who we previously saw jump from the roof.

We now go forward again to that opening moment to see what happened and how these two lives intersected.

The artwork is vivid and filled with movement. There’s flashes for scenes that suggest mood, setting, movement, along with the narrative. Graphical stories are carried as much by the art as the words and when one person does both there tends to be a melding of the two.

Benjamin has produced a story that touches the pain of teens who are unsure of where they are going, what will happen as they transition from older child to an adult. As adult as they may be in their teens, they have no markers to tell them if what they’re feeling is normal or not. There’s no roadmap to adulthood, we all travel it alone. Orange, our main character, is desperately trying to make sense of a life that seems to be empty and lacking in the emotional richness she believes that others have. And then her world is shattered further by her observation of her neighbor’s suicide. It’s a difficult subject and this story gives no answers just the message you’re not alone in how you feel.

Following the story the author has several short pieces explaining some of his other work and his observations on life — mostly his life and art. After reading the additional material the raw energy of the artwork of Orange seemed more intense.