Reading News

Reading funny little books: Lyanda Lynn Haupt's Crow Planet, which has led me to actually momentarily notice the crows on the wires outside my windows instead of automatically looking past them, and to sundry bad news climate change trains of thought. She points out that the current estimates are that the arctic will be ice-free by 2030, when her daughter will be 31 (and my great-niece Baby J. will be 20). Michael Pollan says (Haupt quotes this article), "Have you looked into the eyes of a climate scientist recently? They look really scared."

And William Zinsser's 1982 gem, Writing with a Word Processor, in which a dinosaur writing giant faces the future by Learning Something New, gracefully and with charm ("...this is how much of America's daily writing will be done in five years. If I'm an oddity in our office today, I'll be part of the landscape tomorrow.").

And little bits of Denise Levertov's Relearning the Alphabet, part of the poetry collection donated to the college library that I spent the last weeks of the quarter evaluating. OMG, how did I not know Levertov before it was part of my job to sort Barbara Lovell's 17 boxes of poetry??

I continue, by the way, not consuming soda in cans and bottles. Even after two months, I fritter a certain number of days down the tubes for lack of the ability to pop a can of coke and kick myself into gear. It took me all day yesterday to get to the laundromat. #730aluminnumcansperyear #notproducedonmybehalf

And yes, carbon footprint notwithstanding, I'm still going to drive to the outer coast today, do my monthly beached bird survey for the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST), and listen to the ocean. It will be gray and quiet out there (First Beach webcam), and perhaps rainy. There likely won't be any beach-cast bird carcasses to record.

I'll read; bring Fire and Hemlock, a Diana Wynne Jones paperback I bought, to read if it is threatening to be wet. Otherwise keep on with China Miéville's The City and the City.