Guatemala, Part Twelve: The Duck of the Lake

I've already posted this on FaceBook, but I'd like to make a more permanent record of it, so here it is:

On our first evening in Pana, Tesi looked out at beautiful Lake Atitlan and said that there was supposed to be some special duck that lives there. I was not surprised to hear Asa speaking my own thoughts in reply: "You mean a special _species_ of duck, or a special _individual_ duck?" Then I heard myself slowly exclaiming, in a weird creaky old voice, "Ah, yes, my grandfather used to feed that very same duck so many years ago. Old Quaxolotl!"

Guatemala, Part Three: Up Early

Tesi and I were awake before dawn today, and I followed her to the roof to watch the sun come up. While waiting for it to climb above the hills on our left, we had plenty of time to enjoy all kinds of other things, including:

The slightly active volcano on our right, which the locals call "Fuego", starting to smoke, stopping, starting, stopping, starting -- at first just little clinging wreaths of ash but later a rising plume.

The inactive volcano in front of us, which the locals call "Agua", its upper reaches covered, the peak sometimes showing above the cloud, sometimes not. Most of the clouds were drifting along from SSE to NNW, but the one on Agua was just sitting there: sort of like the halo in a Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim logo, but fatter. (Added a few days later: I have learned that this kind of cloud around a mountain peak is called a "lenticular cap".)

A light that must have been Venus setting behind a ridge on our right. (You will gather that we were facing south.) 

The sky slowly getting brighter and bluer, with pinkness appearing in various directions at various times.

Birds singing and squawking and buzzing. I have to take it back about the parrots that I saw four mornings ago: I'm now sure that they were just the ubiquitous Great-Tailed Grackles. I was fooled by the fact that I was viewing their iridescent backs in flight from above, when they can look positively blue in the right light.

Hawks (buzzards?) soaring in the distance.

The two great cypresses on the other side of the lane. They stand in a big estate called Las Ahuehuetes, ahuehuete being the local word for that kind of tree. According to Wikipedia, a famous ahuehuete in Mexico is either the stoutest tree in the world or in second place to a certain baobab (not that the ones across the lane are of anything like that caliber).

Getting back to the volcanoes:

Agua has not erupted in historical memory, but in 1541 it deluged the nearby town of Ciudad Vieja with a horrendous mudslide, prompting the Spanish colonial authorities to move their capital over here, to Antigua Guatemala. Of course, what they called the new capital was "Guatemala", without the "Antigua", until the province got a new new capital (the modern Guatemala City) in the 1770s. That second move was not to get away from volcanoes but to get away from earthquakes.

Fuego does erupt every few years, and even when it's not positively erupting it sometimes does more than just send up ash plumes: it let out a great booming belch on one of our first nights here, and we're told that if only we had looked over that way we might have seen some glowing lava at the very top.

I forgot to say: An animal has also been climbing on our roof -- on the tiles, not the platform that we use. A noisy nocturnal animal. Sometimes it sounds like it's chewing on the house. It stops if we pound on the bedroom ceiling. We haven't seen it, but they tell us that it must be the oversized opossum called a taqasim.

Guatemala, Part One: New Years Day

January 1, 2014
Antigua, Guatemala

I awoke before the rest of the family at 6:00 and climbed the alarmingly steep and narrow stairs to the rooftop terrace. I had not been up there this early before, and I was rewarded today by birdsong and the sight of many teal-colored parrots flying in and out of a tree in the neighbor’s yard — also the usual over-sized grackles.

Looking further afield, I saw the nearest volcano, its top hidden in a cloud. Antigua sits in a bowl, circled by volcanoes. All of their peaks are in cloud right now, so I can’t tell whether the active one is puffing.

I know the shape of the horizon a little better than I did yesterday, because last night at midnight Asa and I saw many of these ridgelines beautifully lit up when we went on the roof to watch the fireworks.

I’m down on the ground floor now. I might have stayed on the roof longer except for a couple of things. I wanted to use the toilet and, ideally, to flush it, but that seemed to call for turning the household water supply back on, and that would have meant going to the meditation room next to the Moroccan lounge and flipping the correct circuit breaker, then sticking around to keep an eye on the temporary plumbing arrangements in the front garden. Asa, who received our instructions from the plumber last night and conveyed them to the rest of us, carefully explained this again at bed time last night. If you’re going to have to step outdoors every few minutes to make sure that the makeshift piece of PVC pipe is still lashed securely to the pump, then you probably don’t want to be hanging out on the roof.

Actually Asa received his instructions from J. B., the piano player who takes care of this house when the landlord is traveling. J. B. received them from the plumber Juan Jose, who made an emergency call in the late afternoon even though it was New Years Eve. Juan Jose is an uncle of one of the volunteer firemen who came to pump water into our cistern after we discovered that the municipal water supply had not been reaching this neighborhood for a few days.

To tell the truth, I still haven’t turned the water on. I could get along easily without it until Juan Jose returns this morning to make more permanent repairs, given the vast quantities of safe drinking water which the very apologetic J. B. has left us with -- I mean, I could get along without it until everybody else wakes up and starts taking showers and flushing toilets. So I just came downstairs, used a toilet whose tank was still full, went outside to satisfy my curiosity on a point which had been nagging me about the Jeep — is it really true that neither one of the front seats folds forward to make it easier to climb into the back seat ? (yes, I think so) -- and, if not, how tricky will it be for Asa, Amadi, and me to all get in the back seat if the five of us decide to visit Luvia, Wilfredo, and Daniel on Friday? (I think we can manage) — and then came in and started writing. But I think I will flip the breaker now. If anything blows up, I’ll just turn the system off again until Juan Jose arrives in an hour or two.

*****

Forty-five minutes later. No surprises when I flipped the switch. I am sitting in a rocking chair on the front stoop, with a cup of coffee and a newly charged laptop. Tesi has come downstairs and gone back up to take a bath before the water is shut off again.

I’m still hearing birds, though it’s no longer anything like dawn. I’m still hearing occasional fireworks, though it’s no longer New Years Eve. I’m also hearing a lot of church bells, though it’s not Sunday.

In front of me is the entrance gate, which I have unlocked for the plumber. I’m watching it through the jungly front garden: palm trees with their crisscrossing fronds, a potted rosemary three feet tall, some of those big-leaved hotel-lobby plants, a raspberry cane that’s climbing into a tree in the company of flowering tropical vines.

To my right, beyond the orange tree, is the other spot that I’m keeping an eye on, where the water pump is cycling on and off. I’ve just gone and looked; it’s still holding up.

*****

The plumber has arrived, on a little motorcycle, looked at the job in the morning light, and gone away to get some supplies.

Rock gardens, Part 2

A short ride on a big bus took us to the monastery, on a hillside on the northwestern outskirts of Kyoto. A guide conducted our group of forty or fifty around the grounds, which I admired, and probably through some of the rooms, though I don't recall, and I'm sure that we heard something about the history of the monastery, which I promptly forgot. The high point was to be the rock garden, and I wasn't paying a lot of attention to anything else. I wasn't feeling cynical. I felt, or wanted to feel, ready to have a powerful experience.

We viewed the garden from a low platform, a long open verandah that lay all along one side of the main building. There was plenty of room for all of us to stand there and contemplate the garden's austere beauty, its mystical what-is-it, its enigmatic presence. But I found it impossible to get in the right frame of mind while standing in a crowd. I wanted to commune with the rocks, to hear them silently speaking to me. I wanted something to fall into place--to feel a wave of oneness--something!--but I just couldn't get past the chatter of the people around me. It may have been quiet chatter, but even the idea of chatter was too much. I didn't blame them: they were interfering with my experience, and I was probably interfering with theirs. We coped as best we could, I suppose. Then a second and louder busload arrived: a crowd of camera-happy tourists from somewhere in Europe, if I recall correctly. Any chance of a special moment was over.

We were escorted back to our bus by a roundabout route. We walked slowly past a pond lined with lovely flowering shrubs. Very nice. Drooping trees reflected in still water. Lily pads. Wasted on me, though, in that moment of disappointment. We boarded the bus, and it bounced and blatted its way back down the hill to the city center and left us to go our own ways.

Rock gardens, Part 1

There is a shop in Cambridge, Mass., that specializes in clever ironic gifts for clever ironic people. You know what I mean: an Etch-a-Sketch key chain, a silver pin in the shape of Edward Gorey's Uninvited Guest, some interesting object that on second examination turns out to be a clock, a realistic imitation of a tipped-over wine-glass with a realistic imitation of a puddle of red wine attached, a wind-up toy for the connoisseur, campy stuff like a Diamond Jubilee Edition waving Solar Queen (and Corgi), a ceramic tile that proclaims "I am Woman. I am strong. I am so tired." (I shouldn't be so snide about it; I've shopped there myself, happily.)

You used to be able to go into this place and buy a miniature Japanese rock garden in a box. Maybe you still can.

I don't know about you, but when I see the words "rock garden" the first thing I think of is a place where decorative plants grow among rock outcroppings. There was a sunny little rock-studded embankment like that near my parents' house, covered (except for the rocks) with mosses and flowering this and that.

But that's not what I'm talking about. I mean the kind of rock garden with no plants at all, such as you might find at a Zen monastery in Japan. It consists of a bed of sand in a rectangular border or frame, in which rocks of various shapes and sizes have been arranged just so. The sand is raked regularly, to smooth it out and to remove any leaves and other debris that have come along. I imagine that from time to time the gardener or the abbot or some other very wise person might even rearrange the rocks, after careful deliberation.

The box in the gift shop contained everything you would need to set up a scale model of such a thing: a rectangular frame, enough sand, a handful of little dark rocks, and a teeny-tiny rake. The only thing that was missing was a wise person to arrange the rocks. The scale of the thing was maybe 1:50, so--I don't know--maybe you would only need some fraction of the full wisdom of a Zen rock-garden master. Would it be 1/50? 1/2500?

Well, I never had one of these, but I was aware of them, and I believe that for the most part I took their existence in the ironic or campy spirit in which it was meant. I also wondered whether there were any people who took these things seriously, people who actually thought that they could get some of the esthetic or philosophical or spiritual benefit of a Zen rock garden by acquiring the home version. Silly people: without the heft of the rocks, without the landscape, without the history, without the years of spiritual discipline, all you have is a box of toys from a toy store.

At least I'm pretty sure I wondered about that. And although this was a long ago I'm pretty sure that those speculations extended to questions/thoughts/confusions such as:

What in fact are the benefits of a Zen rock garden?

Is "benefit" even the right word, or am I falsely imposing some American utilitarianism here? What is a garden for?

Should I be less cynical about miniature Zen rock gardens? Who am I to say that someone with a toy rake and a box of sand and a few little rocks can't find a good Zen moment in their own way? What do I know about it?

Or, turning it around, should I be more cynical about full-size Zen rock gardens? Those carefully chosen but natural-looking arrangements of the stones: do I really believe that an observer with the right training, the right sort of highly refined sensibility, sees something that I don't see there? Is this like The Emperor's New Clothes? Zen can have a joking quality; is the joke on me for even trying to comprehend this practice of arranging rocks on a bed of sand?

In August of 1990 the big quadrennial event known as the International Congress of Mathematicians was held in Kyoto, and I had the honor of being one of the many invited speakers. At any math conference there is likely to be half a day set aside to take a break from lectures. At a small meeting there might be an organized outing for those who want it, but basically you are on your own. At the ICM the free afternoon was meticulously planned. In a packet that came to me before I left home there were descriptions of a dozen or more excursions, and a form for reserving a place in one of them. I don't think I was ever in doubt: as second and third choices I may have put down the boat trip on a river and the boat trip on a lake, but my first choice had to be the tour of the Zen monastery with its world-famous rock garden.

Waterways, Watersheds, and Penguins: Part 1

There's something I want to write about, but I haven't been able to decide where to start. It has to do with rivers, roads that cross rivers, watersheds in several senses, obsessive fact-collecting (and therefore penguins in the family sense), fatherhood, and an excellent Father's Day present. I might start with Cheesecake Brook.

Nemo

We're having a snowstorm, the first big one of the year, much bigger than anything we had last year. I'm glad. It's exciting. It's beautiful. I feel festive. (Also just a little anxious, maybe.)

 Of course there have been warnings for days. The storm has a name, Nemo. We have learned that it is the offspring of two storm systems, one coming up the Atlantic coast and one coming from the Great Lakes and beyond. These two parent storms were nameless, as far as I know. Nemo is a "superstorm". The word "thundersnow" is in the air, too, or so I have been hearing on Facebook. Maybe if I watched more TV I would know what that word is supposed to mean. I haven't heard any thunder.

By Thursday, if not before, it was clear that things would be starting in the middle of the day Friday, with the heaviest snowfall occurring overnight. Estimates of the total amount have varied. Maybe about two feet? By Thursday night many school closures, or at least early closings, had been announced, and eventually the governor of Massachusetts declared that all towns should cancel school for the day.

Since Thursday evening I have taken several phone calls that were recorded messages from the municipal authorities. Things like "This is officer Callahan of the Watertown police department ... Please exercise common sense and avoid driving after the storm begins unless it is absolutely necessary ... Check on your neighbors ... It is illegal to move snow into the road or onto the sidewalk .. You are required to clear a passage at least 36 inches wide on any sidewalk on your property within 24 hours ..." and later "This is Officer Callahan of the Watertown police department, with a message from the Public Works Department. A snow emergency has been declared. Starting at 12:00 noon Friday on-street parking is prohibited ... Our snowplow drivers will be working very hard for many hours. Please do not try to stop a snowplow [Do people stop them? Why? To tell them how to do do their jobs? To complain about plowed snow blocking driveways?] ... We remind you to check on your neighbors, and to shovel out fire hydrants that are covered with snow ..."

At some point on Friday the governor declared that he had signed an executive order making it illegal to drive after 4pm (with a few obvious exceptions). He then went on to point out that there could be some very deep drifts, and to urge people to be cautious about playfully leaping into them because there might be something hard underneath.

Some time late Friday afternoon, when it had been snowing for about seven hours and several inches had accumulated and darkness was falling, the phone rang. This time Tesi answered, and she listened to another long recorded message. This one was from our electric company. The gist of it was "A major snowstorm is expected on Friday. You should plan ahead and make sure you have everything you might need if the power goes out. If you have a particular need of electrical power, such as for a medical device, you should consider leaving the area before the storm comes."

So I think we award high scores to the town and to the governor, and a very low score to the power company.

Then there are the TV weather news people. As I say, I don't watch that much TV, or at least I don't watch that much TV news. The cliche is that these people live for moments like this, and that when the moment arrives they milk it for all the drama it's worth, and more. Sometimes they hype a storm and it doesn't live up to the hype, and we roll our eyes. Sometimes they hype a storm and it turns out to be a whopper, and it still seems like the hype was a little bit on the nutty side, even if the forecast was factually accurate. For the most part I believe that their line is "this is going to be really bad". At the same time it's clear that for them bad is good: telling us about this bad thing that's about to happen is their favorite part of their profession. Not that I mind so much, since my main feeling about a storm like this is "Oh, boy, this is going to be fun/beautiful/something to remember".

Last night I heard one guy on TV explaining about the two storm systems coming together to create this situation. He was pointing at a map and saying "it looks like one of the systems is lagging behind the other, but that's all right". What did he mean? It sounded like he meant "I know it looks like this won't be quite the superstorm that we have been predicting, but don't worry: this is going be a hell of a bad storm".

One thing about this snow: it's the good sticky kind, perfect for making snowballs and snowmen, or other snow sculptures. I don't have anybody to have a snowball fight with these days, really (and I'm not sure I ever really enjoyed that sort of thing as a kid), but I'd love to make a snowman. Before it got dark tonight, when there were still two or three inches on the ground, I was in the yard with Amadi, and I had the pleasure of rolling a snowball around in the back yard until it was a respectable size, suitable for stage one of a classic snowman. I lifted it onto an outdoor table (it was not quite too heavy for that), ostensibly to prevent it from disappearing overnight when the rest of the snow has fallen. In the morning, after laboriously shoveling out all that snow from the driveway, or maybe during a break from that, I will finish the job. Asa has reminded me of the snow kangaroo that we made a few years ago. I also remember the snow caterpillar that we made many years ago. That one was easy, in a way--just keep making more big balls of snow, and line them all up--but, as I've just been reminded, each ball is a nontrivial amount of work. I think I'll stick with one three-ball snowman this year, and shoveling one driveway, our sidewalk, maybe a neighbor's sidewalk, clearing one fire hydrant ...

Bats - Part 2

(continued from Part 1)

Maybe they were mates and one had called to the other. Anyway, I stepped back inside, closed the doors, and stood for some time observing their behavior and wondering what to do about it. When they left the room and headed upstairs I raced after them. After securing the doors of the rooms where Tesi and Amadi were sleeping, I went into Asa's room and found him and his friend watching just one bat flying in circles. The three of us sat there for a while, admiring the bat, trading animal stories, and discussing possible strategies. At one point the bat did come to rest on the woodwork of a window frame. (It's quite striking how small they get when the wings are folded up--suddenly more like a mouse than a bird.) I made one attempt at capture it as it hung there, using a modification of the box method (#1), but the attempt failed because the thing was not sound asleep and saw me coming. Eventually Asa's friend's mother showed up and asked us why we didn't just open a window. I had a ready answer for that, of course, but in the end we gave it a try; and in fact it wasn't long before the bat found its way out. We never did know what happened to the other one, but it stands to reason that whatever secret route they have for getting into the house would also serve for getting out.

Asa's Bat: Sometimes Method #4 works just fine: you open a door and it has the desired effect of making the inside and outside bat population densities as nearly equal as possible. Asa once found a ground-floor lap-flying bat when the rest of the family had retired for the night, and when he opened a sliding door (staying low to the ground and looking anxiously over his shoulder, he says) it worked like a charm.

To return to the other night: When I had finished reminding Tesi and myself that I was not so very much afraid of bats, I stuck my head into the room and verified that indeed there was a bat flying in circles. I stepped inside, crouching a bit, and closed the door behind me. My plan was to open that other door leading to the balcony, already mentioned in the Broomstick episode. Nika was in the room, and I was surprised that she wasn't paying more attention to the bat. My first step was to simplify my life by getting her out of there; not only did I not relish playing Josh to her Magick, but I didn't want to have to think about her sneaking out on the balcony or getting underfoot. I caught her without difficulty and put her out in the hall, then opened the outside door and sat down in a corner to watch. The bat continued circling. My inner monologue went something like this:

"It keeps almost finding the way out. One of these times ... Hey, watch where you're going, buddy! ... Of course, I know it would never blunder into me--it has echolocation, right? ... Wow, that time it almost it found the door ... People always think a bat's gonna get tangled in your hair; that's a myth ... You can hear their wings, can't you? Not like owls, with those special stealth feathers ... Hey, you're nowhere near the Jesus, watch where you're going! ... Just remember, Tom, that little thing is much more afraid of you than you are of it ... Bats aren't even blind, either; that's another myth ... No way would it bump into me ... "

I got cautiously to my feet and opened the other half of the double doors, then returned to my corner.
"Oh, man, you were halfway out the door that time, what's the matter with you?! ... All right, I can wait. Just have to wait. Just a matter of time ... Not here, you fool, the door's over there! ... Oh, unbelievable, here comes another one."

Yes, now there were two bats circling. There didn't seem to be much to do except watch and wait. I was losing patience, talking out loud, whining, pleading. The most excruciating moment was when one of them went out and then came right back in. But eventually, one at a time, they found their way out.

The end.

Bats - Part 1

The other night Tesi called to me from the top of the stairs, quietly so as not to wake Amadi. "There's a bat in our room." I went to the stairs. "Did you say a bat?" "Yes, a bat." "OK, I'm coming." "I don't do well with bats," she said a little plaintively.* I remarked that I do well with them in the sense of being brave but not always in the sense of being effective. "Is it flying or sleeping?" "It's flying." "Well then I guess I'll just have to open some doors or windows and hope it goes better than that other time."

In fact there have been several other times. Here are some of the visiting bats that I remember best:
The Show and Tell Bat: This was about fifteen years ago, in a different house. I found it one morning asleep on the wall of a ground-floor room, clinging somehow to an apparently sheer vertical surface. Method #1: I got an open cardboard box, pressed it against the wall to enclose the bat, slid the box gently down to nudge the poor thing off the wall, and quickly popped a cover on before it could gather its wits and fly away. It was a cover that you could see through--a square of window screen material. Moved by an urge to share it with more than the immediate family, I decided to carry it down the street to Asa's preschool and show it to all the kids there. The teacher did not seem pleased with this highly educational idea of mine, but I assured her that I would keep the lid on. One interesting surprise: on the way to school the bat began loudly yelling at me. This was not echolocation; the sounds were well within the range of human hearing. I suppose it was expressing annoyance about the confinement or the bumpy ride, or both.

Last week, in a waiting room, I made the acquaintance of one of those children who love facts. He was asking Amadi "Do you know how many insects a bat can catch in an hour?" She made no effort to hold up her end of the conversation, so I cheerfully took up the slack. "I don't know. It must be a lot." "It's between 100 and 1000." "Wow, that is a lot!" I said. "Guess how many!" he pressed. "Oh, I thought we were done. It's a specific number?" "It's 6oo." He then moved on to "Do you know what animal can jump the highest?" Several of us started guessing: a kangaroo? some kind of bug? We were getting nowhere. He clarified that he meant jumping straight up in the air, and then he gave us a big hint: it's a kind of cat. More wrong guesses: leopard? snow leopard? We gave up. He said it was a tie between two African cats: the cerval and the caracol. I forget how high he said--something like fifteen feet, maybe. I asked why they jump in the air. He said it was to catch birds--guinea fowl. I told him that I'm sure our cat Nika would love to be able to jump that high, especially when a bat gets in the house.

The Wastebasket Bat: This was in our current house, maybe five years ago. I was alone on the ground floor of the house, working. Out of the corner of my eye I was getting glimpses of something moving in a darker room nearby, but it didn't really get my attention until I noticed that it had Nika's attention. We watched it travel the length of the house a number of times, Nika making the occasional spring at it as it went by, but neither of us had any really constructive ideas. After a while the bat flew upstairs and started doing more laps up there. Method #2: I managed to close a key door at the right moment, thus isolating the problem, and went to bed. In the morning I cautiously entered the room, closed the door behind me, and searched until I found the sleeping bat. It was in a wastebasket rather than on a wall, so I just moved it to the back garden, telling it that I was in no hurry for the wastebasket and it could sleep as long as it liked.

A cat that I used to know caught a bat once. Her name was Magick, and she had a haughty and regal bearing, and she belonged (although she would never have put it that way) to my ex-wife, before I did. The incident occurred before the beginning of our acquaintance, so I have the story second- or third-hand. When a bat showed up one day in the big house where Magick was living with several humans, she caught it (Method: Unknown). No doubt she would have loved to show it to Karen, but she couldn't find Karen, so she took it to Josh. Josh was not someone who did well with cats, let alone bats. Finding him sitting on the floor of his room surrounded by household papers, she proudly laid her prize, bleeding and still flapping feebly, right on top of his Accounts Payable. I believe that he screamed--again well within the audible frequency range.

The Broomstick Bat: This one was found sleeping directly above our bed one morning, holding on to a sort of high rafter. So the bat was not pre-packed for transport this time, nor would it be easy to adapt the box trick without a big flat surface behind the bat. Also it was going to be too high for me to reach unless I did something crazy like putting a stepladder on the bed. Method #3: I decided to prod it with a stick and see if it might be persuaded to hold on to the other end. The bare end of a broomstick only caused it to shuffle sideways in its sleep, so I tried the other end. When poked with broomstraws the bat became seriously annoyed. It turned its beady eyes on me. Horrible chittering imprecations issued from a tiny open mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. After a brief retreat to calm my nerves, I returned to the task. The bat was still angry, but this time it grasped the straws and let go of the rafter. Moving slowly, I opened the door to the balcony and stepped out, holding the bat before me on the broom like a pizza on a wooden paddle. I gave it a little shake, thinking it would fly away; it fell like a stone to the paved surface below, never even unfolding its wings. Sick with the thought of tiny broken bones, I hurried through the house and out to the driveway. Apparently it was uninjured: it took hold of a twig that I offered it and then consented to transfer itself to a nearby sapling in a quiet out-of-the way spot, where it hung itself up and went back to sleep.

That Other Time: This was a couple of years ago, I think. It began, like the Wastebasket story, with a bat flying laps on the ground floor. Remembering a previous success, I tried closing doors to reduce the range of flight, but there was no way to seal off the area. The bat flew great loops in the big front room while I watched. It occurred to me that if I were to (Method #4) open the French doors it would be bound to find its way out sooner or later. Of course, a few bugs might fly in in the meantime, but that's a small price to pay, right? Or--here's a funny thought--more bats might fly in. Yeah, that would be funny. I crossed the room, ducking and flinching as appropriate. I think I may have even crawled on elbows and knees, like a soldier moving from trench to trench in an old war movie. I opened the doors. I stepped outside under the wistaria/wisteria arbor and stood waiting and watching. A minute later, sure enough, a second bat flew right past me and started circling the room with the first one.

(to be continued)

* I would like to point out that this is the same brave woman who once wrapped an osprey in a towel to help it get out of a screen porch, a thing I could not have imagined doing myself.

Irene

I am sitting here looking out the window at hurricane Irene. We are on vacation in Westport, Massachusetts. Depending which weather website you look at, we are due for either "tropical storm conditions" or "hurricane conditions" here today. I would guess that we have now is called the former. One site says that the wind speed is predicted to get up to 70 mph about 5 hours from now, and that is predicted to be about 25 mph now. I can't believe it isn't a lot more than 25 now, but what do I know? Incidentally, the sites all give 0 mph as the current local wind speed, but it's clear that that's because an instrument is broken somewhere, probably at the local airport in New Bedford.

Was it silly to stay here? The questions most on my mind are

(1) How high will the water rise today? We are protected from ocean waves, but the muddy little cove of the beloved tidal river that charmingly comes right up to our yard/lawn/garden is expected to rise, with the rest of the river, several feet higher than usual at tonight's high tide. It is extremely unlikely that it will rise as far as the ground floor of the house, but in the morning we will surely be picking up mounds of seaweed from the grass.

(2) Will these windows hold up? It seems very unlikely that any large objects will come flying at the house, but is there a chance that the wind itself will smash the two large windows? I kind of wish we had done what many people do and cover them with plywood. We told ourselves that the dense stand of juniper woods just south of us would screen the house from the worst of the wind, but it turns out that the wind is coming from the SE and is likely to continue that way.

(3) Will the power go out?

Blizzard

Yesterday morning we awoke to a blizzard. Wet snow had been falling for hours and was still coming. In addition to piling up on the ground (about 9 inches so far), it had been sticking to the trees in a big way. I went out to make a start on shoveling the driveway and sidewalk, but I soon became more interested in all the fallen branches. As I wandered around dragging big pine boughs to more suitable locations, from time to time a sharp crack high up in the trees would get my attention, and I'd look up anxiously to make sure that the next big one was not actually going to land on my head.

Then I saw the dangling wires. They were still attached to the pole across the street, and they were still attached to our house, but they had gone slack: they were hanging so low that any person passing by on the sidewalk would have to duck, and any large vehicle on the street would have to keep to the other side. In fact, as a single swerving lane of cleared roadway showed, the last snowplow to go by had had to make its way past multiple obstacles: besides our wire situation, there was a big fragment of pine tree lying on the far half of the street diagonally across from us. It was clear that the wire had been dragged down by something (probably a big branch, but I couldn't identify one as the culprit), and that the added weight had caused a three-foot-long piece of trim to break off the house. The broken board was hanging from the wires, within my reach. I didn't want to risk electrocution, but I could see that the higher-up wire that brings power to the house was unaffected. Summoning up some courage, I tugged at the piece of wood, but to no effect.

I knew that the house had power -- or at least that it had had it a while ago. I went indoors to see if we also had phone and internet. Somewhat amazingly, we did. I called the electric company. They were very polite, but when I admitted that we still had power they of course put our address on a low-priority list for repairs. Tesi then called the company that provides phone and internet service, not to mention cable TV. They said they could probably come in three days. She also called the local police, just to let them know about the wires. Meanwhile I laboriously maneuvered the giant piece of tree out of the street, and then went back to shoveling.

Pretty soon three jovial firefighters pulled up in a big red truck. They looked around and asked me a question or two, and then their leader admitted, with some show of sympathy, that they were going to have to cut the wires. I registered incredulity and disappointment, but kept it light. These guys are just doing their job, right? Out came the big shears and the big rubber gloves, and bang: no telephone, no internet, no TV. When the guy asked for our house address for the third time, for their records -- he kept forgetting the number -- I said "Maybe I should phone it in. No, wait, my phone doesn't work!" in my best mock-angry manner. He replied that we'd be all right with no phone as long as we had a supply of booze. In hindsight we almost wished that we had somehow temporarily propped up the wires to get them out of the way for the time being.

The rest of the day was mostly tame. I shoveled, I rested, I shoveled, I rested, and eventually Asa woke up and helped me finish the job. The only really exciting moment was when Tesi and Amadi, headed to a neighbors house, just missed being clobbered by one of the larger fallen pine chunks. It could have been really bad.

(Here the story gets a bit anticlimactic. We have cell phones, of course, and electricity to charge them with. We even have internet; Tesi discovered a neighbor who has a home wireless network that we can tap in to from here, and who is willing to share her password in the emergency. We just have to go to a certain corner of the house to do it. Total snow on the ground was only about 14 inches.)