Journal of a Sabbatical

November 24, 2000

brrrr

Today's Bird Sightings:
Plum Island
common eider
white-winged scoter
black scoter
Canada goose
herring gull
great black back gull

Today's Reading: The Story of the Stone (a.k.a. Dream of the Red Chamber): Volume 3 by Cao Xueqin, Autumn from the Journal of Henry David Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake

Ignoring National Shopping Day as I always do, I rise early, fill the vehicle's gas tank and head for New Hampshire to fetch Nancy who spent Thanksgiving with her family at her sister's house. Doing my bit to fuel the economy, I get a medium coffee at McDonald's drive-thru. It's cold by the time I get to the intersection of I495 and I93 so I don't finish it.

Nancy's parents show me photographs of their election night party. Their house was decorated with campaign memorabilia dating back to FDR or maybe earlier. They have quite a collection. This year's addition was rubber masks of Bush and Gore given to them by a neighbor. When I admire them in the picture, they inform me they have the masks in the trunk of the car so we put our coats back on and all troop outside to view the Bush and Gore masks. Scary. This style of mask would be kind of difficult to use in change faces spit fire.

We take our leave of Nancy's parents and return to my house because I need coffee, cash, and my laundry (which I got home too late to redeem on Wednesday). I brew a huge pot of Fowle's French roast and make a little party of it with leftover pumpkin pie from yesterday's feast. Nancy distracted me when I was measuring the coffee so it came out extra strong. We decided it tasted good so she should distract me again.

Another reason I wanted to sit home and have coffee instead of plunging in to either birding or driving Nancy home to Providence by way of La Madre's is that I wanted to hear David Sibley on The Connection. Some people plan their schedules around their favorite TV shows, I plan around the chance to hear famous birders on the radio. It's not often you get good bird chat on the radio around here. Sibley was a bit disappointing and was upstaged by Vernon Laux who has a much more engaging radio persona. It was neat to hear people calling in about birds though. And when host Chris Lydon kept insisting that Sibley tell him what he'd see if he went to Mt. Auburn tomorrow, Laux cut in and told him in no uncertain terms that he should go to Newburyport instead! That's where the winter birds are in these parts for sure.

So taking Vernon Laux's advice Nancy and I headed for Newburyport to see if we could find a snowy owl or some purple sandpipers or at least some winter ducks. Our pie and coffee snack had worn off so we stopped for lunch at the Tannery Cafe. Since the cafe is next door to Jabberwocky, Nancy insisted we had to have a long poetry browse at Jabberwocky. One cool thing about independent bookstores is the quirky selection, and Jabberwocky has a great poetry section. Whoever buys for it has similar tastes to mine and Nancy's. We emerged with a book of Japanese death poems (not as weird as it sounds) and a collection of a modern day Taoist hermit (or at least that's the persona in which he writes his poems), Judevine Mountain.

It's bitterly cold out and I have neglected to bring a hat. Plum Island is even colder as a very cold wind is blowing steadily without a lull. Off Emerson rocks there's loads of eiders bouncing around in the waves but no sign of the snowy owl, the gyrfalcon, or the purples. We attempt to walk from the platform at Lot 7 to Sandy Point but give up because we are frozen. I estimate the temperature at 17 degrees F. Turns out I was not too far off - it was 19 without accounting for the wind. I can usually take a heck of a lot of cold in pursuit of birds, but for some reason I couldn't take it today. The wind seeped through my gloves. My cheeks started to get windburn. We gave up.

I had told La Madre I would come by to pick up my camera, which readers will recall got left at her place on Sunday and did not get returned yesterday at Kevin's. Pulling into the driveway I spot Kevin bundled up in winter garb working on the garage door. La Madre is not home and we have no clue where the camera is. Nancy and I look around for it without success then decide we'll come back after dinner at New Mother India, by which time she'll be home from work and can just tell us where the camera is. She's not home when we return for another pass looking for the camera so we search again but don't find it. Somehow in all of this looking for the camera, Nancy's scarf has become lost.

We finally drive to Providence without waiting any longer because we are both tired and cold. We read Japanese Death Poems, then I read aloud an article in The New Yorker about fibromyalgia, only later do I become convinced I have it.

I knew I should've spent the day cooking ma po tofu and getting my hair dyed green to terrify the children.