Journal of a Sabbatical

July 28, 2000

in love with massachusetts

Today's Reading: Cape Cod by Henry D. Thoreau, Lhasa and its Mysteries by L. Austine Waddell

Today's Starting Pitcher: Pedro Martinez

I'm sitting here trying to come up with a journal entry with The Beserkley Years in the CD player on shuffle. The gray skies are supposed to clear this afternoon but they've shown no signs of it yet. It's not raining. Just gray. Hmm, should put on The Horseflies CD instead so I can hear I Live Where It's Gray. But I'm in love with Massachusetts and want to drive 1000 miles an hour past the Stop & Shop. Or something very like that.

A visit to Ned's basement earlier this afternoon yielded a couple of good books about Tibet. Tom and Ned both think I should do some reading about it before I go. Life is not all botanical specimens and digital photos, now is it? So on loan from Ned I am attempting to read Lhasa and its Mysteries by L. Austine Waddell and To Lhasa in Disguise by William McGovern. Well, actually I haven't started the McGovern yet. It's on the desk next to the Waddell, which is so thick I had to go out and buy a new bookstand to hold it for me. My old plastic BookButler TM broke under the weight of a Vikram Seth novel and I don't know where to get another one. I may need to start using adaptations like that again since my hand is going numb and my thumbs and shoulder are hurting. Drat. I thought substituting the touch pad for the mouse and having the keyboard at the right height would prevent a recurrence of the dreaded hand/arm/neck thing. Should've hung onto all those "adaptability" catalogs. Of course, you can get Good Grips utensils in just about any kitchen supply store now and bookstores have bookstands, though none as good as the BookButler TM, and I'm rambling now aren't I?

Where was I? Oh yeah, the Waddell book. Needless to say I turned right to the appendix on flora and fauna of Tibet for the bird list.

Forgot to include the definition of fugacious in yesterday's entry. It basically means fleeting, evanescent, or ephemeral. Thus the perfect word for the piping plover's call. Also I searched through my stack of books to find The Outermost House, which has lots of references to piping plovers, but it appears to have migrated to underneath something unrelated and it's too humid for me to reorganize the books tonight.

Finally got to talk to Joan-west for longer than 30 seconds. She in her sister's garage sorting her earthly possessions and I in my office staring at unfinished projects discussing the Harry Potter books. I have not read a single on. Joan-west has read the first three and is in the midst of the new one. Apparently the Harry Potter books were all the rage amongst the dharma students in exile in Italy this past semester. She suggests I read Harry Potter on the flight to Beijing instead of either boning up on Chinese flora or reading The Dream of the Red Chamber - the great Chinese novel. How come other cultures all have a representative "great" novel and the idea of the Great American Novel is such a joke? Somehow, what to read on the plane hasn't reached the top of my travel issues yet.

Around 6:30 the clouds do indeed lift. I get a brief interlude of blue sky before dark. The clouds are supposed to return during the night, but who cares if it's cloudy at night? It won't make it appreciably darker.

The soundtrack of my life switches to the Red Sox on the radio. Pedro is striking out batters all over the place out there on the left coast. I might be tired enough to go to sleep by the time the game is over. With the clearing skies, the humidity dropped so it's good weather for sleeping and for drifting off with the radio on. And somehow, I'm reconciled to Massachusetts.