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Plan A was to go on a naturalist walk at Beavertail Light in Jamestown. Would've been fun but Nancy woke up not feeling well so we decided to stay in Providence. Brown University Bookstore was having some kind of celebration that included door prizes, free popcorn, and author readings as well as a 20% off sale. So we implemented Plan B and headed to the Brown bookstore after omelets at Andrea's (the Providence restaurant, not my niece's house). |
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We were browsing at local author Paul Di Filippo's just released new novel Fractal Paisleys when we heard over the PA system that the next author reading would be starting in 10 minutes: Paul Di Filippo! We scrunched into the crowded room downstairs to hear him read from his previous novel Ciphers , Fractal Paisleys, and the as yet unpublished Joe's Liver. |
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I never thought I particularly cared for cyberpunk, but I really liked what this guy read. It was intelligent and very funny - two things that matter a lot to me. I didn't end up buying his book 'cause I had already blown my book budget on Peter Grant's book about gulls. I am determined to learn how to tell the age of an immature gull. Then I can impress my friends with lines like "3rd winter juvenile herring gull". I also bought Natalie Goldberg's new book about painting for Joan-west who once studied "process painting" and who would recognize some of the New Mexico scenes Natalie painted. |
After the reading we browsed briefly at the new Anime Crash store on Thayer Street. I admit to liking some, but not most, Japanese animation. I told the manager of the new store I felt like I was too old to even enter the store. Everybody else was 20 or even younger. When I told the guy my favorite movie is Totoro we really connected. I guess us old middle aged women can have some tastes that overlap with 20 year olds. Geez, between going to a cyberpunk reading and shopping at Anime Crash, I sound like I'm bordering on being hip and kewl and whatever the word for that is nowadays. How odd.
And then on to Watchemocket Cove where the swans were unusually fierce today. The parents of the 4 cygnets chased all the other swans away, far away every time breaders arrived. One poor swan managed to find its way around the vicious parents up onto the shore, only to be trapped there when the next round of breaders came. The mother swan chased it further up on land. It was coming right toward me with a panicked look in its eye. It finally managed to get back in the water and paddle out to the middle of the cove with the mother swan chasing it the whole way. The nuclear swan family steamed in like the Spanish Armada or the British Fleet or something, raising massive V-shaped wakes.
Besides swans, Igor the one winged Canada goose, the usual contingent of ring-billed gulls, a few herring gulls, and a few cormorants, I spotted a raft of 18 American widgeons. This is the earliest I've seen the widgeons there. Usually we spot them in late October or early November.
It ended up being a fun day despite the change in plans.
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