barge viewing

June 20, 2004

OK, so Western Civilization is truly ending after all. College Hill Bookstore in Providence is closing. Prepare for the dark ages. Hie thee to Lindisfarne and get some Irish scribe monks to start saving the western canon -- preferably as defined by the Radcliffe list rather than the Modern Library Western Literature as Selected by Old White Men Canon or the Harold Bloom Personal Preferences Western Canon. Not that any of those would include the collected adventures of Peter Leroy, which I remember hearing on Reading Aloud on WGBH back in the early 1980s (before power ties or during power ties -- my memories of the 80s are sketchy except for the ball going thru Bill Buckner's legs), and which I had to buy when I found a signed copy at College Hill today. Just doing my bit to save the truly marginal parts of civilization as we know it.

Meanwhile, with brunch and book shopping completed, the rest of the afternoon was devoted to watching the common terns on the barge off of Bold Point in the hopes that we would see evidence that they still nest there. Historically, they have nested there. I remember seeing slides of the nests at an Audubon Society of Rhode Island conference several years ago. However, I am informed by the breeding bird survey folks that the terns have not nested there for the past three years. They just hang around hunting and harrassing black-crowned night herons, gulls, kingfishers, and crows. For some reason they never harrass the pigeons.

Today's Reading
Walden Pond by W. Barksdale Maynard, Three Japanese Plays from the Traditional Theatre by Earle Ernst, The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy by Eric Kraft

This Year's Reading
2004 Booklist

Today's Starting Pitcher
Bronson Arroyo