1 in 18.1 million October 23, 2005
Yesterday when I went to pick up my laundry the laundry guy asked "Where's the hurricane?" to which I answered "Why are you so impatient? It's not like we haven't had enough rain! It'll be here Tuesday." Readers outside the Greater Big Dig Area (which for purposes of our discussion encompasses most of New England) may not be aware of the fact that we had 9 straight days of rain, flooding in various places -- though not in my house this time -- and really high rivers all over the place. Then we got a break. Now it's raining again. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. During the break in the weather, in fact the day that Governor I've-got-great-hair-and-live-in-Utah declared that the state of emergency was over and things were back to normal (yes, he actually described things as normal -- in Massachusetts, the least normative state, abnormal even among blue states), I drove into Boston to meet "Miriam for dinner. While waiting for her to check in at the hotel I watched the pregame show for game 5 of the NLCS on the tv just off the lobby. I mention the pregame show because it brought up an interesting statistic: one of those "that's interesting but is it meaningful?" ones. According to their statistician, the odds of two teams that last won back to back World Series in 1917 and 1918 winning back to back World Series in 2004 and 2005 is 1 in 18.1 million. That of course does not actually predict the odds of the White Sox winning the 2005 World Series any more than it predicts the odds of the Merrimack River having a 100 year flood. But it gives the sports talk shows something to yak about. So after learning this valuable statistic, we had dinner at P.F. Chang's, a convenient and decent Chinese restaurant despite being a chain. Conversation rekindled my somewhat dormant desire to visit the barely accessible islands of the South Atlantic -- and all the -stans of course. Also in the course of that evening I rediscovered a piece of paper I've been carrying in my pocket for the last three weeks or so listing topics I ought to write about . So here they are: Pawtucket Arts Festival dragon boat races -- Who knew dragon boat racing on the Blackstone was such a major event? In addition to the dragon boat races they had an outstanding, nay astounding, performance by a percussion group from Taiwan called Ten Drum Art Percussion Group. Raptor weekend at ASRI in Bristol -- Live birds, informational booths, games, and we got to dissect an owl pellet. That was a lot like assembling a vole jigsaw puzzle. Actually, using the handy chart of what the bones of various rodents and other types of owl prey look like when they are not supporting the flesh of the prey in question, we were able to determine that our owl had dined well on two rodents, one with a fairly large jawbone and one with a tiny jawbone (that was probably the vole). Family gathering my cousin's 30th wedding anniversary yes, the one who just turned 50 -- Being married 30 years in this day and age is an achievement worthy of a big celebration. And so there was one. This was the weekend after our exciting adventures with dragon boats and percussion in Pawtucket and raptors and rodent bones in Bristol. My cousin's husband is one of those people who is a social nexus connecting varying social networks. A close college buddy of the Groton brother, is also a close college buddy of my cousin's husband. There's one connection. I sat down at the table with him and his wife and met another one of his connections -- a couple of guys who live down the beach (or up the beach) from the Beach Boys and got married around the same time (2004 was of course a major marriage year here in Massachusetts). I hit them up to sponsor me in the Strut for the Strays 'cause of the Salisbury connection. Then of course I hit up practically everybody at the party. McIntyre and Moore, Chinese hermits -- The bus schedule precluded Nancy from making it to the anniverary party so I took off to pick her up at the bus station late in the afternoon. We made an evening of it with dinner at House of Tibet Kitchen and a long long long browse at McIntyre and Moore in Davis Square. I had some vague notion of browsing but not buying, which didn't stick because I noticed a book on Chinese hermits on the shelf in the travel section. Not just any book but a book by Bill Porter, who is actually Red Pine (or Red Pine is actually Bill Porter) one of my favorite translators of Chinese poetry. Nancy picked up a pile of stuff including a reprint of a huge 18th century treatise on fishing. I read aloud to her many surprising observations about bait before retiring with my Chinese hermit book. (See the booklist for slightly more of a review.) Strut for the Strays complete with Franklin Pierce reference -- Between the folks at work and the folks at my cousin's anniversary party, I managed to raise over $300 for the Strut. Cool. The route starts at the Bartlett Mall (not a shopping mall -- a mall in the British sense and pronunciation) and goes down High Street through some of the most historic parts of Newburyport. We took it at a slower pace so I could read the historic house markers to Nancy. Most notable were two houses associated with Caleb Cushing who was Attorney General in the Franklin Pierce administration: his house and the house of some associate of his who hosted Cushing, Pierce, and various other members of Pierce's cabinet. Uh oh, I now cannot remember whether Secretary of War Jefferson Davis was one of those visitors. Better go back and look at that marker again. Oh, I was the top individual fundraiser too. I amazed even myself. Fundraising for the cats and Franklin Pierce all in one afternoon. Working Waterfront Festival in New Bedford -- We spent the weekend after the one described above at the Working Waterfront Festival in New Bedford. We had a blast listening to music, attending readings and panel discussions, visiting the booths with various high-tech fishing technology or food or books or art or other fishing-related stuff, and watching demonstrations of Coast Guard assets. I should write a whole entry just on this at some point because it was fabulous. Besides hearing Ana Vinagre sing fado, and learning about the Norwegian immigrant community in New Bedford, and hearing fisher-poet Geno Leech, and talking to the guy who wrote and illustrated a really wonderful children's book about a Coast Guard rescue, and being the closest I've ever been to a Jayhawk helicopter oh there was so much more. Like NOAA guys discussing the weather and fish processing plant workers discussing fish processing now vs. 30 years ago and Gordon Bok and Norwegian hardanger fiddle music and silversides jumping out of the water all over the harbor attracting gulls galore and ice cream and a great breakfast place and... The End of Civilization: Not --There are two, count them, two bookstores on Moody Street in Waltham. When was the last time there was any bookstore on Moody Street? Not only that, I had no idea that Franz Wright lives in Waltham. Nancy and I discovered these astounding facts merely by going to New Mother India for dinner of a Saturday night. After an exquisite dinner featuring my favorite appetizer, Kashmiri mushrooms (a New Mother India exclusive) we were walking back to the car when we noticed Back Pages. Powerless over bookstores, we went in. We came out with books -- many of them, much poetry especially Phillip Whelan as well as a copy of Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings for $4.98 and a cheap paperback DH Lawrence The Plumed Serpent. Back Pages features both used and new books and hosts poetry readings including the aforementioned Franz Wright who read at their opening. Nancy was talking poetry with Alex, one of the owners, and discovered from him that Franz Wright lives in Waltham. Also that Robert Pinsky is coming to Back Pages. I signed up for their e-mailing list -- more excuses to make the trip to New Mother India. I was talking with Alex's brother who filled me in on the relative book choosing strengths of Alex and Ezra (the other owner). Turns out Alex is the poetry maven. We guessed that. He seemed impossibly young. Turns out both Alex and Ezra are 2004 graduates of Brandeis and decided to open a bookstore in Waltham. This despite the end of civilization having doomed all bookstores to oblivion. But wait, there's more. As we continued down Moody Street in the direction of my car, we passed More than Words, another bookstore. Being tired and kind of book-saturated, we didn't stop in. Later on I googled them and discovered I really really should have gone in and now must most definitely make a return trip to Waltham for this. It turns out that More than Words is a bookstore with a difference: it's employees are all in the custody of the Department of Social Services. They're turning their lives around by learning bookselling. Civilization is not ended, merely changed. For the better.		Today's Bird Sightings Bold Point double crested cormorant 2 great blue heron 1 mallard 4 Watchemoket Cove Canada goose 2 domestic goose 1 mute swan 7 double crested cormorant 5 Bonaparte's gull 4 ring billed gull 4 herring gull 10 Today's Reading Neal Cassady Collected Letters: 1944-1967 by Neal Cassady, The Silent Traveller in Dublin by Chiang Yee, Theatre of Fish by John Gimlette This Year's Reading 2005 Booklist Today's Starting Pitchers White Sox: Mark Buerhle Astros: Andy Pettite Never liked Andy Petitte but hey, he's in the World Series and his former team, the pinstripes of evil, is not so ya gotta love it.
		Before Journal Index After   Home Copyright © 2005, Janet I. Egan