Happy new year, readers!!
I must begin with an apology for being remiss in posting here. I have a reason, or a partial excuse - I started a new job and moved!!* So I’ve been very busy, but considering my intermittent updates I’m turning off billing for paid readers - I don’t want to charge you for an incomplete provision.
However I do plan to keep posting!
Where I’m living now, I’ve seen more airborne squirrels than I had in years - they are everywhere, and I guess with such a mild winter never quite get the message to retire to their nests. Instead I step out in the morning to have a half dozen of them scampering in front of me - or leaping from a tree to the ground, and vice-versa. They’re in a paradise for urban creatures - the city means there are no large prey animals about (the dogs around are both small and leashed, and often also wearing little pullovers), and there’s plenty of free food thanks to all the humans.
They rustle in the leaves on the ground, and sit there watching me, their little haunches twitching. As a life-long squirrel fan, I think it’s adorable.
It’s not natural, in the sense that utility poles and cement roofs are not the habitats for which squirrels were created - but then they aren’t “natural” for us, either. We’ve created a world to suit our needs, and if it suits squirrels too: good luck to them.
They’re one of the species that have found a wonderland in man-made spaces. Warmth, food, opportunities. Of course, when we think of the built landscape vs nature, we think of driving animals out, and destruction of habitat. But we should remember that we’re a plus, not a minus, to many species. If the goal is species survival, the North American grey squirrels are doing pretty well.
They are there in the morning when I leave, and there when I come back in the evening. Busy, energetic, and full of life. I look at them and I feel optimistic. I hope you do too.
Where else I’ve been: a review I wrote appeared in the WSJ last weekend.
*I now live in Atlanta. If you do too, please say hi. I don’t know many people here yet.
Rodents rock ! I'm worried that since one of my neighbours spotted one of the rats who live on my land, basically off the bird seed that scatters from the bird table feeders, he will be hell bent on me killing them. Wishing you a cracking new life too.
"I still sleep on a box-spring mattress and cook oatmeal on the stove in the same way my great-grandmother did. I don’t have a wing suit. The future must be running late." I liked the end - made me smile - but I also think the problem with now is that lots of future predictions were wrong and many were barely imagined (like a computer in your hand though Tesla had an idea about a hand-held communication device.) So the future many predicted isn't here - but we have a very wild present. I mean the there were predictions via people like Chester Gould (Dick Tracy's watch), Philip K. Dick, Orwell, Hunter S. Thompson (read his letters to see how continually prescient he was), and various science and science fiction writers who did accurately predict what was coming or, at least, trending in various arenas of life. I want to read a book about those who got things right and what was special about them about why they saw what others didn't. My favorite predictor was John Culshaw - a famous recording engineer - who basically predicted in the 60s in an addendum in the Ring Resounding what was going to happen in the media and music It was so jarring reading it after virtually all his predictions came true. I don't have the book in Hilo, but just to give a sample, he wrote in 1967 about the future of access to music: "The listener will be able to command a performance to take place by dialing some code through which a computer will channel the performance to him.” Bottomline: I am so in the future from my teenage years in 1960 - I can barely fathom it. I think the future is right on time.