in which it rains

April 28, 2002

Today's Reading
Red Poppies by Alai, Landscape with Figures by Kent C. Ryden, Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes by Peter Matthiessen, This Fine Piece of Water : An Environmental History of Long Island Sound by Tom Andersen

This Year's Reading
2002 Book List

It rains. This is a good thing because we've had a drought all winter, but still... at least the frogs are happy.

We linger at Cafe Zog (indoors - not in the bamboo grove) longer than usual, drinking more coffee than usual. The rain continues to fall.

The Brown Bookstore beckons. It's dry there. I look for Jill Lepore's new book about spelling and nationalism or something(A Is for American : Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States), but don't find it. Must be sold out already. Nancy finds a book about the history of Chess Records. I find a book about the natural and environmental history of Long Island Sound -This Fine Piece of Water : An Environmental History of Long Island Sound Tom Andersen - and start browsing it. Before I know it I've read the major chunk of it that I was interested in, the one on sewage treatment. I was fascinated by this woman in Connecticut who introduced a new way of removing more of the nitrogen from the effluent.

I leaf through Imagining New England: Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Mid-Twentieth Century by Joseph Conforti, who it turns out Nancy knew in her American Civilization days, but it didn't grab me. Then I pick up Landscape with Figures by Kent Ryden and end up sitting reading over half of it right there in the bookstore. Apparently I'm on to something with the quaint New England theme park thing 'cause academics write about it. The part about the "invention" of the classic New England fall foliage season and his analysis of John Casey's Spartina, one of the best novels I've read in some time and very relevant to nature and culture in New England, just totally grab me. I always wondered what people with Ph.D. in American Civilization do. Hmm, maybe I missed my calling after all. A history of sewage treatment in Narragansett Bay would be the perfect Am. Civ. dissertation topic. I'd be lionized up and down the northeast corridor. Anyway, I decide to buy the book,

It continues to rain. We drive around looking at rusty things and birds at the cove in the rain - no list - and go out to dinner at Gourmet House.

Back home I finish Red Poppies and all but about 30 pages of Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes. I update my book list. It continues to rain.