We just bought a new washing machine. It comes with a "Pet Pro" option, which, not having any pets, we don't need. However, for those who do have pets, the company's lawyers insisted that this note be appended to the directions:
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| Bald Eagle atop cell tower "disguised" as pine tree, Bay Head |
I remember once down at the Bridge to Nowhere, about a year after the lapwing sighting so it was January, we ran into each other and were chatting--down the road I saw a small falcon--"There's a Merlin," I said.
"I need Merlin for the year," D said, jumped in his car and raced down the road.
I caught up to him a few minutes later and said to him, "D, you're gonna see a Merlin this year."
"You know, at my age, maybe not," he replied.
Having had a significant birthday this month (remember it is impolite to discuss age), I was thinking that I was at least D's age now as he was then. So I asked myself, "Now that I'm grown up, am I like D?"
Well, in terms of doggedness, in that I bird every day that I won't get soaked, yes, but only in that regard. It's an amusing habit. I can't get so excited about a common bird that I'm going to race down a bumpy road to see it. My chasing circle gets smaller each year. I want the birds to be where I feel like being. Meanwhile, D is still leading the league in sightings. My wonder knows no bounds.
For the month, which started off windy and snow-covered and ended in the 70's, I tallied 103 species, 14 of them year birds. That's a pretty low number for March, for me, according to my records, but I didn't get north of Manasquan Inlet nor south of Tuckerton this month--I stuck to Ocean and Burlington. I still haven't come across a catbird, a waxwing, a gnatcatcher, a thrasher--and you know, at my age...
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| Common Goldeneye hen with drake Ring-necked Duck, Cranberry Bogs |
Two hours later I was disheartened, disgusted, to see the barrier already pushed aside, the warning sign ripped off, and fresh tire tracks going up the hill. The rules don't apply in the Age of Trump. I know it's a stretch and it has been ever thus, but to me, this is the objective correlative of the state we're in and I don't mean New Jersey.
"Dinosaurs," he said, "that was before Christ, wasn't it?"
"Quite a while before," I affirmed, while thinking to myself:
And yet, you're allowed to vote.
I was walking the snow-covered trails at Colliers Mills yesterday when I saw a Jackson Police car coming up the road toward me. The officer rolled down his window, greeted me as "sir" and then asked if, since I'd obviously been walking around, I had happened to come across an ambulance. Ambulance? "Yessir."
I told him I'd noticed tire tracks on the berm along Turnmill Pond, where supposedly no vehicles are allowed, and I thought that was strange. "Yes," he said, "it would be strange riding around in a snowstorm." While he wasn't very forthcoming, I gathered that Jackson Township was missing one ambulance and had reason to believe it was somewhere in the vastness of Colliers Mills. Since I was no help, after asking me to call them should I stumble upon the wayward ambulance, he continued on up to the turnaround, and I saw him later driving up Hawkin Road toward the Joint Base MDL. Soon, another patrol car was going the same way.
That question beats the one I was asked on Success Road (a dirt road) a few years ago about whether it was the way to the Borgata in Atlantic City--but not by much. Definitely the strangest question this year, but the year is young.
Sometimes I just hit the "Surprise Me" button on the species pages of eBird to get a random bird. I might find all the funny names of cisticolas (bubbling, chattering, chirping, churring, croaking, etc. all the way to zitting) or species like the Inaccessible Island Finch or the Inaccessible Island Rail which leads one to wonder how anyone ever found them if they're so inaccessible.
Perplexing Scrubwren was a recent favorite of mine but the two best, so far, have to be:
When I lived in New York, I spent most of my time on the fringes of the poetry "scene." I co-edited a literary magazine and press. I published the proverbial "slim volumes" of poetry with small literary presses. I had work in the "Paris Review," the "Village Voice," and lots of obscure and ephemeral magazines. I went to readings and gave readings. Most of my friends were poets and writers. I learned printing because it was the easiest way to get stuff "out there." Sometimes I see the name of a rare book dealer in The Times and think, "Oh yeah, that's the guy who brokered our archives to a couple of universities."
It was in those days I first learned the adage, which also applies to birding, that "the competition is so fierce because the rewards are so small."
But after a long time, I drifted away from the scene. Lots of reasons, none of them interesting, even to me. So, what the hell was this book?
Happily, my name was in English, along with the page number my poem was on and (again, happily) while the poem was in Japanese, at least the title had been left in English (along with, I presume, its translation under it), so I could see which poem of mine had been put into the book. I was very amused to see it was one titled "People at Pay Phones." Pay phones! It's practically an historical document. I wrote the poem in 1997, when cell phones were a still something of a novelty.
The poem was published 25 years or so ago in one of the longest running literary journals in the country, "Hanging Loose." One of the editors, Bob Hershon, was my greatest friend. Sadly, he passed away last year. (I would highly recommend you looking up his work.) Scanning the list of the poets in the anthology, I saw that all of them were associated one way or the other with HL, so I assumed there was some connection with the magazine. I emailed yesterday a couple of editors and found out today that yes, they had supplied the work to one of the anthologists, another HL contributor who lives in Japan and his associate had translated the poems. The anthology had been in the works for something like a decade, had funding, lost funding, found funding and finally came out in August.
I've no idea how many books were printed. When we published books, we usually did 1000 copies and that was optimistic, but it didn't cost much more than doing less. So, let's say they printed between 500 & 1000 books. Here's what tickles me. Somewhere in Japan, someone, or some two or three, have read (or perhaps, even now is reading), what I set down 25 years ago in Brooklyn, after seeing a guy on a pay phone on the corner of Court and Schermerhorn slam down the handset. I had the whole poem in my head by the time I'd walked the mile to my apartment in Carroll Gardens and simply transcribed it and sent it off to get published. Never imagining, for even a nanosecond, that it would someday end up translated into Japanese. I wonder how faithful the translation is. I can tell that there are explanatory footnotes in the book (there is one for "Mickey Mantle"); I don't see one for "pay phone" so I guess the editors assume most readers will have a memory of that ancient street furniture.
Here is what the first part of the poem looks like in Japanese:
And here is the full text itself.
This sign is from Whitesbog, but I saw one with the same sentiment in Beach Lake, Pennsylvania, so I suppose it is fairly common wherever outdoor weddings are held. I first noticed the sign this summer leaning up again one of the buildings in Whitesbog Village and whenever I'd see it the last few months, I'd notice that something about it nagged at me. Today I realized what it was: The meter is off.
This little piece of doggerel is written in, harkening back to my English major days, dactylic trimeter, which is one stressed beat followed by two unstressed beats:
Dover is home to Dover Air Force Base. This weekend, the Blue Angels (which are actually part of the Navy) were doing an air show there. While we were at Cape Henlopen on Friday, we saw one of the jets doing a practice run over the bay. It flew low enough so that as it headed away, we could see two orange circles, flames burning in the rear of the jet engines. All I could think of was how much gas cost. Saturday was the day of the show. Even from Bombay Hook we could see them flying in tight formation. It was especially impressive when the Blue Angels formed a pattern that read:
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK.
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| First Tundra Swans of the season, on Union Pond, Whitesbog |
Brilliant bro, a well thought out cogent statement that tells us everything we need to know about you and well worth risking your skull to do.
You know something is wrong with your universe when the highlight of your day comes at 5:55 AM, still dark: Four woodcocks in the Triangle Field at Whitesbog.
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| Indigo Bunting |
Eating detergent brings new meaning to the phrase "cleanse the gene pool".
Ever since Tuesday, when I had cataract extraction performed on my right (dominant) eye, I have felt more disoriented than usual. I have fine distance sight without glasses out of my eye for the first time since the second grade and, with "cheaters" I can read, and write well enough. Theoretically, removing the lens from the right side of my glasses should provide me with good sight until the next eye is done, but my brain doesn't agree with the theory and can't make the adjustment of seeing out of lenses that are different distances from the retina--one on the eye, the other a half inch away. Consequently, I can walk around, watch television, read the clocks pretty well if I ignore the slight fuzziness on my left side, if I can ignore the urge to put on glasses. But the habits of a lifetime are difficult to break. Every time I awake in the middle of night to go to the bathroom, I reach for glasses I don't need.
