Sunday, January 16, 2022

By the pricking of my thumbs

Woke to frozen pipes* in the bathroom, after not even the coldest night this week. I took Clover for a long walk in the cold to a completely deserted park. Back in our driveway, she paused and looked up at the branches of an evergreen tree — I looked, expecting to see a squirrel, but it was a small woodpecker. A female (black and white without red all over). Now I'm not sure if it was a downy or hairy woodpecker, not recalling how long its bill was or even if it was "small" or "medium" sized. I didn't hear it pecking, but Clover clearly did. It made me miss Gus, the way he would watch birds all the time: how do they do that?

In the back yard, I saw a nuthatch, a bird whose name I always grasp for, skipping over "titmouse" before I get there. I don't know, I guess it doesn't evoke nuts or hatching — it's the upside-down, gray and blue guy with the pointy bill (they always stand upside-down on the trunk of the willow tree). I tried to draw one:

It kept coming out looking like a narwhal. 

They say Wordle is is the sourdough starter of 2022 and that's fine with me!

The Tragedy of Macbeth was stark and stunning. Wow, what a bleak play. It's not my very favorite, but I still remember** Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow after being told to memorize it in ninth grade English class, and there are so many great lines. 



*It's a work in progress, but we've unfroze em before and we'll do it again!

**I will be quoting this in my dotage, no doubt, driving my caretakers crazy. Ditto The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock


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