Monthly Archives: July 2007

Wood Thrush

Ferry Beach, Saco, Maine

The afternoon showers drove most everyone off the beach. I walked down to Ferry Beach State Park, and walked under Route 9 through their underpass, and into the woodlands and swamps of the park. There weren’t any cars in the parking lot, but one of the rangers was still there. He saw my binoculars, and we started talking about birds. I asked him if he had heard any Veeries, and he said no, but there were a few Wood Thrushes in the woods.

Wood Thrushes and Veeries can produce more than one note simultaneously — birds have syrinxes, not larynxes like us mammals do, and many birds can produce more than one note at a time — so they can actually sing in harmony with themselves. A Veery sings a song that sounds like it’s descending in a sort of swooping spiral. I’m not good at describing sounds, so I won’t try to describe the sound a Wood Thrush makes, but it’s a series of notes that I find hauntingly beautiful.

A few steps out of the parking lot and into the woods, I heard a Wood Thrush calling. The quality of the sound is such that it can be hard to tell exactly where the sound is coming from. I walked down the path towards the sound of the Wood Thrush, and it seemed as if the bird was slowly moving away from me, flying from tree to tree — but maybe it was two different birds, and one started singing while the other stopped singing as I got close to it.

Eventually, the Wood Thrush stopped singing. It was getting dark. I headed back to the campsite.

In the Grand Prix Café

The new Grand Prix Café on Mass Ave north of Porter Square has become one of our favorite hangouts. The free wifi was the initial attraction. The huge panini, and the pastries that are far too tasty, are good. The motorsports decor (black-and-white checked flags, helmets, car models) has a certain appeal.

But I enjoy the fact that the café become something of a neighborhood hangout for this part of North Cambridge. Everyone seems to know the pleasant owner, Sergio, by name. Sometimes you’ll see a bunch of guys hanging out watching sports on the big flatscreen TV — if it’s soccer it’ll be an international crowd, whereas if it’s kickboxing you’ll hear real Cambridge and Somerville accents. There’s always a few geeky people, like Carol and me, typing quietly away at laptops. Just now, a woman came in with a toddler in a stroller, and Sergio, the owner, brought out a small soccer ball and started playing catch with her. Soon, the little girl was making “brrrrm, brrrm” noises as Sergio zoomed a chartreuse Corvette model around her.

My only fear is that the café will become so popular, as happens with all good things in Cambridge, to the point where we won’t be able to get a place to sit. Which means that I probably shouldn’t tell you about it on this blog, because you might go and like it and help make it too popular.

Should be in the hymnal, but isn’t

Years ago, I was in a worship service conducted by Nick Page, the Unitarian Universalist choral leader. Nick included Monty Python’s “Galaxy Song” as one of the hymns. I thought then that it should be included in the next Unitarian Universalist hymnal. It’s a song that makes sound theological points about the place of humanity in the universe, and about how the insights of science can reveal an ordinarily unseen beauty in the universe.

But judge for yourself. You can listen to Eric Idle singing the song on this video (thanks, Carol, for the link). And you can find the full lyrics, along with annotations that point up a few inaccuracies in the science of the song, here.

I’m almost serious about wanting this song in the hymnal. As I recall, Nick left off the last couple of lines — they’re a little too nihilistic for most Unitarian Universalists — and the spoken intro could be left off, but aside from that why not include it in a new hymnal?

July 4th. Woo, hoo.

It’s July 4th, Independence Day. Reading the news usually depresses me. But I managed to find good news in a couple of unlikely news stories.

Today I read an article by Niko Koppel in the New York Times titled “A Country’s Past Is Unearthed, and Comes into Focus.” It’s an article about an archaeological dig at 190 High Street in Philadelphia, right next to the home of the Liberty Bell, a mansion that was the home for presidents George Washington and John Adams when the federal capitol was still in Philadelphia. I knew that George Washington had slaves, but I didn’t know that he went to such great lengths to hold on to them….

Early efforts to end slavery in Pennsylvania resulted in the passage of the Gradual Abolition Act of 1780, which allowed Washington, as a citizen of Virginia, to keep his slaves here for six months, at which point they were entitled to freedom. But Washington circumvented the Pennsylvania law, Mr. Lawler [a historian with the Independence Hall Association] said, by rotating the slaves across state lines…. Link.

Yuck. I already know that many of our presidents have feet of clay, so I suppose it’s good for me to remember that the trend began with George Washington. On the positive side, it’s good to know that Pennsylvania passed abolition legislation as early as 1780.

Even better, the news story reveals that two of Washington’s slaves were able to escape from that presidential mansion in Philadelphia. Let freedom ring!

Then I turned to the arts section of the paper, where I read an appreciation of Beverly Sills, the opera star who died on Monday. It’s sad that Sills died, but I loved reading about how she appeared on TV in the 1970’s with comedian Carol Burnett and popular singers Eydie Gormie and Dinah Shore — and how the four of them argued about who was who’s best friend. Beverly Sills not only had a gorgeous voice, but she helped the TV-viewing public realize that “high culture” was a whole lot of fun….

Watching Ms. Sills schmoozing with her friends on television, hearing her sing comic duets with Ms. Burnett one moment and lyrical Donizetti arias the next, had a major impact on American culture. Millions of viewers who had assumed that opera was an elitist art form for bloated divas pretending to be lovesick adolescents experienced little epiphanies before their television sets…. Link.

What a great moment for America, as American-born and American-trained Beverly Sills showed both the intellectuals and the average TV-viewer that Art Is Fun. Makes me proud to be an American.

Plover patrol

My friend Elizabeth is up from Washington, DC, for a visit. As long as she was in New England, she wanted to go to the beach. We got over to Horseneck Beach in Westport by 8 a.m., and walked all the way up to the Westport River. On the way, I saw a young man looking intently through binoculars at the base of the dune.

“Looking for plovers?” I said.

He turned around, and I saw that his cap said “NWA Staff.” He was indeed looking for piping plovers, and he is one of the field biologists who keeps an eye on the plovers. He recently graduated from University of Indianapolis with a degree in wildlife biology, and is here in Massachusetts counting piping plover chicks until the grant money runs out.

He was a native Hoosier, and we got to talking about the differences between Indiana and New England. “People are a little more uptight here,” I said. He nodded, and said he had noticed that. He said, “I’m a little more laid back” than native New Englanders.

Then the three baby piping plovers, along with two adults, came out onto the beach, and we stopped talking for a while to watch them. Two other adult piping plovers came along, and started harassing the baby plovers. “I wish they wouldn’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. Apparently, these two other adults were not breeding, they were just harassing the babies of the other pair. I said, “Yeah, birds sometimes just aren’t very nice animals.”

He said that these babies were 20 days old, and all three had survived. “This pair did really well,” he said. The babies should be able to fly within a week or so. After that point, they will be able to escape from marauding predators and humans, and their odds of survival will go up. Here’s hoping they make it for another week.

Farther down the beach, I saw another three baby piping plovers.

Video postcard: Horseneck Beach

My older sister lives in Richmond, Indiana. She doesn’t get to see the ocean very often. I live in New Bedford, and see the ocean just about every day (OK, so mostly what I see is PCB-laden New Bedford Harbor, but it’s still salt water). So when I went to the beach today, I made Jean a video postcard showing sun, sand, flotsam, and jetsam.


Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

Summer is here

No doubt about it, summer is here.

We drove down from Cambridge to New Bedford today during peak rush hour, and traffic on the highway was so light (comparatively speaking) that we made the trip in an hour and a quarter. In fall, winter, or spring, that same rush hour trip would take between and hour and a half and two and a half hours.

Then at 7:30 this evening, we went to Margaret’s restaurant in Fairhaven for dinner. They said the wait would be “at least an hour.” Clearly, the summer people are back.