A week for the birds?

This week included National Napping Day on Monday and, in Minnesota, Township Day yesterday. It would have worked out better for us if Napping Day came after Township Day. Today is when we actually celebrated Napping Day. Our township's Annual Meeting was last night. It ran later than we expected, and then we had a family conversation about it when we got home. There had been a lengthy presentation and discussion at the Meeting about a Road Committee proposal to pave all the 39 miles or so of gravel roads with either chip seal or hot mix asphalt, mostly the former. We have some continuing reservations about the advisability of the proposal, particularly from an economic perspective. If any of you have experience with the conversion of local roads from gravel to chip seal, please use the comments to let us know how it went.

blue jay under the front feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

This coming Saturday is not only St. Patrick's Day, it's also the day for the Senate District 32 DFL convention. Obviously, Senate District 32 is inhabited by many more Scandihooligans than Irish, unlike Boston where we were raised. We continue to be concerned about the degree of opposition many Democrats are exhibiting to their more progressive brethren, so we'll see if our participation in the convention turns out to be part of the problem or part of the solution.

oak under which blue jay feathers were scattered

Photo by J. Harrington

These are strange times, and not only in politics. For better than a week we haven't seen any birds at the feeder out front. It used to attract blue jays, cardinals, chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers and squirrels. Not a one have we seen recently. While walking the dogs yesterday we may have come upon a hint of what's going one. We discovered a number of blue jay feathers scattered in a circle under a roadside oak tree. Perhaps a hawk has moved into the neighborhood? We haven't seen one but that hypothesis is the leading candidate for why there are no longer birds seen where they used to abound. On the other hand, in the past we've seen hawks soaring above the feeder behind the house. Everything and everyone goes very, very quiet for a bit, and then returns to normal. Maybe the birds have just taken a hint from the tRump administration and left in great numbers for better opportunities. Would that help support a hypothesis that the current administration is for the birds?

a scattering of blue jay blue-gray feathers

Photo by J. Harrington

Blur

Andrew Hudgins

Storms of perfume lift from honeysuckle,
lilac, clover—and drift across the threshold,
outside reclaiming inside as its home.
Warm days whirl in a bright unnumberable blur,
a cup—a grail brimmed with delirium
and humbling boredom both.  I was a boy,
I thought I’d always be a boy, pell—mell,
mean, and gaily murderous one moment
as I decapitated daises with a stick,
then overcome with summer’s opium,
numb—slumberous.  I thought I’d always be a boy,
each day its own millennium, each
one thousand years of daylight ending in
the night watch, summer’s pervigilium,
which I could never keep because by sunset
I was an old man.  I was Methuselah,
the oldest man in the holy book.  I drowsed.
I nodded, slept—and without my watching, the world,
whose permanence I doubted, returned again,
bluebell and blue jay, speedwell and cardinal
still there when the light swept back,
and so was I, which I had also doubted.
I understood with horror then with joy,
dubious and luminous joy: it simply spins.
It doesn’t need my feet to make it turn.
It doesn’t even need my eyes to watch it,
and I, though a latecomer to its surface, I’d
be leaving early.  It was my duty to stay awake
and sing if I could keep my mind on singing,
not extinction, as blurred green summer, lifted
to its apex, succumbed to gravity and fell
to autumn, Ilium, and ashes.  In joy
we are our own uncomprehending mourners,
and more than joy I longed for understanding
and more than understanding I longed for joy.

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