It's been a rich and complicated week hereabouts, not least in photographs. Chicken Corner has received from readers and contributors photographs of shoveler ducks, a shrine for Roberto Lopez, who was killed last week, and an inauguration-subversion event (held Jan. 20) at Stories bookstore, featuring Jason Flores-Williams.

First, the ducks:

Photo: Martin Cox, January 2009 (c)

Martin Cox, Chicken Corner's spirited waterfowl correspondent, wrote:

Foreground [in the photograph] is Mrs Mallard, background, Mr. Shoveler. Note the huge shovel-like beak. At first there was just one or two, soon there were 6 pairs, then 8, then 12. Now the numbers have begun to drop again, but they have been glamorous winter visitors to Echo Park Lake, only seen once for a half day a year ago. They keep well away form people and when the lifeguards do the tour in their skiff they take flight.

Martin added that "The Bufflehead remains a frequent visitor, about once a week." Seems the Bufflehead intends to baffle as to his whereabouts the rest of the week.

Life goes on for the ducks at Echo Park Lake. But at the same time, the loss of Roberto Lopez, whom many of us never got to know, has become part of our life. A reader named Kevin emailed me a photograph of a shrine to Roberto. It's heartbreaking, but we don't want to forget.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times ran a photo essay of Robert's funeral at the Cathedral downtown.

There are still Obama "Hope" stickers and small posters all over the neighborhood, of course, but there's also still room in Echo Park for opposition. On Tuesday night, while so many of us were happily smiling to ourselves -- or were dazed in the confusion of actually feeling good about a national election -- the novelist Jason Flores-Williams refused to sit back and be satisfied. Along with Gordy Grundy and Tulsa Kinney, Flores-Williams read his fiction in honor of "Inauguration Subversion" at our fabulous new bookstore, Stories.

That's the week in review. The week as we know it, except for the rain.