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March 29, 1999 |
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musings |
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March 29, 1999
Copyright © 1999, Janet I. Egan |
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Today is a bright spring day and I am having a hard time convincing myself to sit at the computer/telephone and try to raise funds to pay me for my work. I would rather be birding. In fact, I may just decide to go out when I finish this message. Yesterday was cold and bitter and dark with a northeast wind - you'd never guess yesterday and today were in the same month! The starlings are angry they can't get into my air conditioner to nest this year. They were trilling loudly and banging against it this morning. Wilbur is on full alert. I still haven't made plans for Hungary yet. I just e-mailed Istvan in Budapest this morning. I am great at procrastinating. The war in Serbia/Kosovo is putting a damper on my plans to go to Bosnia. I can't get the images of Albanians fleeing Kosovo out of my head. Nancy gave me a book of poetry for my birthday (she believes in giving the present as soon as she buys it, not waiting for the actual day) called The Art of Blessing the Day by Marge Piercy. The poems are all on Jewish themes but there is a definite interbeing subtext. The poems are beautiful. I sat up last night reading and rereading them. I forgot to mention in last Tuesday's entry that I picked up my Girl Scout cookies from the nieces. I haven't eaten them all yet. I delivered Nancy her two boxes of Five World Cinnamons on Saturday - and we ate one whole box while watching the ice skating on tv Saturday night. Plover warden duty starts for me this Friday (beach closure starts Thursday). I have the 8:00 AM to noon shift. Not my favorite but it'll be nice to be out there. Piping plovers have been reported at the Cape Cod beaches in the last couple of days, but none here yet. I'll have my eye out for them on Friday. I ran into Randy, one of the gatehouse attendants, at the beach today. He said he was going to look for piping plovers today before the beach closes. Randy has a good birding eye, so he'll probably find them easily. I told him about the northern shrike I'd seen about 10 minutes before I met him and gestured in the general direction. He whipped out the binoculars and locked onto the shrike immediately. He didn't even have to scan the tree tops. I was impressed. The northern shrike is a very pretty bird - all nice shades of gray and white - you'd never know it's as vicious as Vlad the Impaler. Thoreau's entries about it in his journals are very judgmental about its choice of prey - he saw it kill a bluebird. I like to look up each new bird of the season in Thoreau on Birds. It gives me a sense of continuity with some kind of tradition. Besides e-mailing Istvan this morning, I also sent long e-mail to Joan-west, and shorter personal e-mails (e's-mail?) to lots of friends and family. I've been feeling extraordinarily cut off from everybody lately. It's weird. Ever since Paul Marion & Mark Schorr's talk I've been thinking about the great promise people seem to see for e-mail and the web and wondering why it's not working that way for me. Mark Schorr talked about how his daughter e-mails him every day from college. I think that says more about the relationship than about e-mail. I don't think I could find enough to say to my mother every day. And yet, I started wondering should I be e-mailing my mother every day? BiB every day? Kevin? Donald? My friends? Etcetera Etcetera Etcetera as the King of Siam was wont to say. Joan-west deals with e-mail like paper correspondance -setting aside a time for it once a week or so... I'm starting to do something like that - treating it like letters... I'm sure there's some profound insight floating around here, which I'd find if I spent more time writing this over several days ... revising, rethinking... all the things e-mail is supposed to save you from wasting your time on... |
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