Journal of a Sabbatical

September 21. 1998

whatever

Copyright © 1998, Janet I. Egan

I didn't watch any of the presidential sideshow this morning. I didn't think I could stand to watch the leader of the free world squirm like a teenage boy who got caught with his girlfriend.

I wasn't in the mood for much of anything today. It was gray and humid all day but didn't rain. The gray humidity was so different from this excellent stretch of weather we've been having. I guess Tropical Storm Hermine (sp?) or Hurricane Georges or both is/are supposed to have some kind of influence over our weather for the next few days. Whether the weather or not, I have definitely been in a bad mood. I ran into Ned at Starbucks this morning and he sat down to talk with me about how depressed he is. It's gotta be the weather. I wasn't a good listener. And I forgot to ask him to sponsor me for the Strut for the Strays coming up on Saturday. I suck at asking people for money anymore. I did too much fund raising for "good causes" in my youth. Ask me about the Interfaith Effort for Biafran Relief someday. Not to mention political campaigns. Anyway, I didn't have the pledge sheet with me and I totally forgot about asking Ned.

After coffee I went to Staples to have the MRFRS newsletter copied and browsed at Barnes & Noble while I was waiting for it. I bought a pile of magazines: MacHome, MacWorld, MacAddict, Birder's World, and Birdwatcher's Digest.. No books, just magazines. I feel overwhelmed by the number of books in my pile waiting to be read. I want to read them all at once. I even found myself trying to reread Life and Death of a Salt Marsh at the same time as A Field Guide to the Familiar and The Uncommon Guide to Common Life of Narragansett Bay last night in bed. I had them all open on my bed when I finally fell asleep. So I didn't buy anymore books today.

Once the newsletter was ready and I'd had lunch, I came home to stuff envelopes. I had a lot of trouble printing the sheets of labels without the printer jamming. It just hates humidity! It must have taken me an hour to get 60 labels printed cleanly. I slapped 30 labels on 30 envelopes and folded 30 newsletters before I got so tired I had to take a break and read some of the Mac magazines and listen to the first game of the Red Sox doubleheader, which they won reducing the magic number to 3 over the Blue Jays and 4 over Texas and Anaheim.

A little more envelope stuffing and I decided to try to read the Corps of Engineers Environmental Impact Statement on the Providence River dredging project. The meaty chapters (the ones that actually talk about environmental impact) are each over 200 pages long! But the frustrating part was that for some reason the pdf files didn't contain all the figures. There were no maps - just big white space where the maps were supposed to be. I revisited the Corps of Engineers site and downloaded Chapter 6 again. Still no maps. So I went to Map Blast and got a map of that section of East Providence that contains the cove and tried to figure out from the description where the proposed dump site is.

Click on the map to browse

The proposed dumping site for the river dredging sediment is apparently at the northern end of the larger and more easterly of the two "halves". The thing that says "Railroad" is actually the East Bay Bike Path. I'll have to make my own map I guess.

Plowing through the sections of the EIS that dealt with birds, I was somewhat gratified to read that they did know about the wintering ducks. However, they apparently don't know about the heron/egret roost and specifically don't know that great blue herons and black crowned night herons use the end of the cove that is targeted for the sediment dump. This means I'll have to get my act together to document what birds use what parts of the area before the public hearings week after next.

I spent far too long on reading the EIS and never got back to stuffing envelopes so I have about 15 more to do. I'm sure when I'm fresh in the morning after a good night's sleep, I will feel motivated to do those so I can mail the whole pile of newsletters at once.

Needless to say I did not read any of Glass, Paper, Beans today. I did manage to go back to Starbucks and ask a couple of the regulars to sponsor me in the stray cat strut (as my brother calls it) and to go around to some of the local businesses to try to get some more sponsors. Well, I've got til Saturday to raise some money and it's not like I want to be eligible to win tickets to see The Lion King in New York (over $1000) - in fact I'd prefer an opportunity not to see The Lion King.

Oh yeah, I noticed on my way home from Starbucks the second time some 8 1/2 by 11 laser printed signs pasted on telephone poles reading: "Impeach the Republicans". Somebody must've watched the video this morning.