Hmm.
Fact #1: One of the three young squirrels running riot through the backyard is darker than the others.
Fact #2: In early November, after Hurricane Sandy, a black squirrel briefly appeared in the yard.
Fact #3: Research shows that female squirrels can bear young by different fathers in the same litter.
Squeeze, what have you been up to?
New York City is getting a bike share program, and that means bike racks. Many neighborhoods, including mine, are up in arms. I say: Get over yourselves! You don’t want to walk out the door and see that row of racks because it’s ugly? Really, cars are better? Because that’s what’s there now. How will ambulances and fire trucks stop in front of buildings? They’ll double-park the way they do now, because there are cars there now. All those bikes being unlocked in the morning will be noisy? Really, noisier than the cars pulling in and out now?
I comfort myself with the knowledge that almost no one in Paris welcomed the Eiffel Tower, either.
Probably many reasons, but Lucy Liu talks here about one of them. No, she doesn’t mention Lydia directly, don’t get carried away. But this is definitely worth reading.
I check my word count every morning so I can obsessively keep track of how I’m doing while I work. Today when I signed on I found I’m up to 12,345. Made me laugh. Now, of course, I’ve made myself a note to make sure to stop and notice when I hit 23,456… and 34,567… and 45,678… Oh, the games writers play.
Play the keyboard with the right hand, squeeze the bellows with the left. Anyone know what this is called? (I couldn’t ask the musician, he was part of a Hari Krishna chanting group.)
Cormorant stands still,
Silhouette on black piling
Against iron sky.
Tiny raindrops plink,
Pinpricks in racing river.
One falls in my tea.
Trees glow morning green.
Wind blows rain; dogs, people flee.
South of here, white fog.
And 211 more of same, for haiku lovers.
Today, for the first time, warm breeze in the morning. Brant geese are still around. I’m always surprised, every year, by how late they go back north. Buffleheads, mergansers, and loons have left. Some migrating birds, I don’t know who — I’m so bad with birdsongs — are calling like mad from the trees. Mallards and Gadwalls swimming singly and in pairs; rumors of a Gadwall nest south of my bench. Three Canada goose nests, and the early one has produced.
gosling 1 breakfasts under watchful eyes
gosling 2 assumes the position farther afield
gosling 3 — launched!
Wolf, two men, icy cold January night in New York. Who wins?
You think I’m telling, after all that work?
Sam Cabot’s second book will reveal the answer. Meanwhile, his first, BLOOD OF THE LAMB, is available for pre-order wherever fine books are sold.
That was a rhetorical question.
Right now I’m in the middle of a fight in Central Park in January involving two men and a wolf.
I think I finally understand what draws writers to the delicately-observed navel-gazing novel of suburban angst.
