Category Archives: Sense of place

How to stay outdoors after dark

This afternoon, I drove out to Concord. In the fields of the old prison farm, a Greater White-Fronted Goose was supposedly hanging around with the geese that usually live there; I wanted to see this resident of the arctic.

There stood the goose, looking odd with its orange bill. I looked at it for a while, and realized I had a little time before dark, so I drove over to the national wildlife refuge a few miles away. I climbed the observation tower there. As I got up onto the observation deck, a boy’s voice said, “Are you a birder?”

I said, “Well, sort of.” The boy was about 12. He was with a man who had binoculars and never used them, but just seemed to be looking at the scenery.

He said, “You see those ducks out there? –what are they? You can see them in the telescope.”

But I already had my binoculars to my eyes, and could see them well enough to say, “Well, they’re probably Ring-necked Ducks.” Then I looked through the big telescope mounted on the observation deck, the same one that was there when I was a boy. I said why I was sure they were Ring-neck Ducks, with that white streak in front of the wings, and the distinctive shape of their heads.

The boy nodded wisely. “Yeah,” he said.

We talked about birds a little bit; the Red-winged Blackbirds were back; ducks were on the move. I asked if he had seen the Greater White-fronted Goose. Behind me, I could feel the man politely rolling his eyes, the way Carol does when she has to endure listening to people talk about birds. The boy was pretty excited to hear about the goose, though he hid it. I told the boy where to see it, but, as is often the case for someone that age, he didn’t have a strong sense of how to get from one place to another. So I told the man, who knew where I meant. The man had a faint European accent; the boy did not.

“We better tell your mother about it,” said the man, which either meant that the boy’s mother was a birder, or this was a ploy to get the boy down off the observation tower.

“Just FYI,” said the boy to the man, as they began walking down the steep stairs, “a Greater White-Fronted Goose is not something you see every day.”

“Not around here, that’s for sure,” I said in parting. The man smiled, a little tightly, but didn’t say anything. Maybe he didn’t realize that goose had probably flown down here from Greenland.

I wandered over the dike between the two main pools of the refuge, well behind the boy and the two adults. I don’t think his mother was a passionate birder, because they didn’t seem to stop and look at the Northern Shoveler. I took my time, saw a lot of birds, and wound up getting to my car just as the man was trying to get the boy back down off the observation tower and into their car. “Come on,” the man said in his faint accent, “we have to go now.”

Like the boy, I didn’t want to leave. But I had to get back to New Bedford, and with the light fading fast I no longer had the excuse of staying to look at birds. I slid into my car, started the engine and turned on the headlights. When I pulled out, the boy still wasn’t in the car. Maybe he was doing the right thing; so what if it’s too dark to look at birds any more; so what if he was annoying two adults; any excuse to stay outdoors longer.

Maybe I’m getting too responsible.

Another Friday night

I made it up to Cambridge at about 7, picked up Carol at the sub-let, and we went out to eat at Whole Foods in north Cambridge. You can get a decent meal there that’s cheaper than going to a restaurant, and with much better people-watching.

I opened up a tray of cheap sushi. Carol stole a piece of my avocado roll, then started on her chicken soup. Two young women, both blondish, apparently sisters stood at a cash register nearby: both smiled readily but both had a firm set to their mouths that I felt indicated strong wills.

Look, said Carol, that woman has mesh bags. Three youngish people shopping together, all with pale skin, milling about as their groceries got rung up; they had mostly vegetables and bulk food. I said, I used to use mesh bags all the time, but then I had two break on me and I stopped trusting them. Carol said, They have canvas bags too — look, that one has a beautiful design (drawing of a moon and plants, labeled “People’s Coop, Ann Arbor”).

Carol went to get another cup of coffee. A middle-aged man walked by, thick lenses in his glasses, medium brown skin, friendly expression, half-smiling half-bemused; I characterized him in my mind as a software engineer, though I had no good reason for doing so.

A slight woman wearing a Muslim head scarf and an employee apron kept walking past us, apparently a manager overseeing the cash registers. She was short but there was no sense of her being small.

Carol got up to ask one woman where she had bought her boots. The answer: Filene’s, five or six years ago. Carol sat down and said, I should have asked her what brand they were.

The food was long gone. Carol downed the last of her coffee. We got up and left. Another cheap date for Friday night.

Sunrise

Winter is when the memories seem to rise up unbidden, and winter is coming to an end. Even though I tend to stay up late, I keep getting awakened by the light of sunrise, now about 5:30 a.m. Springtime is overtaking memory.

But somehow, a memory of a sunrise slipped into consciousness just now….

One June, when we were living over by White Pond in Concord. Carol was away on one of her trips to Mexico; I was sleeping alone; I came wide awake before dawn. Say four o’clock. Couldn’t get to sleep, didn’t want to. Put the canoe on the car and drove down to the river.

Untied the canoe as the sky was just starting to turn light, paddled down river to Fairhaven Bay. I drifted into the bay as the sky started to turn from black to blue. Mist rising over the bay. I tried a few casts in the shallow, upstream end of the bay; nothing. In the downstream end of the bay, there’s a deeper hole, and there I hooked a big bass on light tackle and with barbless hooks; after maybe quarter of an hour I brought him to the boat, wet my hand, and held him while I released the hook then let him swim away to keep breeding. I turned around to see that the sun had just hit the top of the rising mist, about twenty feet above the river; an Osprey circled overhead in the sun, a far more efficient catcher of fish than a single human could ever be; a Great Blue Heron stalked smaller fish along the shore. I drifted in silence for a while. The sun crept up over the horizon: gold light in the mist; but as I paddled into the mist, it only appeared white.

The mist was gone by the time I reached the boat landing.

…a memory that doesn’t translate into words very well. A memory that dissipated as I tried to write it down. Something about a gut-level, direct knowledge of my place in the ecosystem, in the universe — but that’s putting it badly. It’s gone now.

Spring watch

Close to 70 degrees again today, with beautiful sun. Carol has been subletting one of the units in Cambridge Cohousing, and as we ate breakfast we could watch one of the residents disassembling the small ice skating rink in the yard below us: pulling up the stakes, knocking the side boards apart, rolling up the plastic sheet that held the water in. No more skating this season.

We walked over to the supermarket and I heard two Common Grackles, the first I have heard this year. Their harsh cries sounded musical to my ears: spring is coming, spring is here.

And I feel a faint tickle in the back of my throat, a little shortness of breath after I’d been walking for two hours to Central Square and back: tree pollen is out, and hay fever season has fairly begun.

Ice out

Carol and I walked around Fresh Pond in Cambridge this afternoon. It must have been 70 degrees; sunny, too.

The ice is off about half of Fresh Pond. A stiff breeze was blowing across the pond, and on the windward side, you could hear the ice crunching along the edge of the pond. We watched it for a while: the wind pushed the ice sheet against the shore, pushing it up onto land, little pieces of ice breaking off.

Already I’ve noticed there are many fewer ducks and loons on New Bedford harbor than a month ago, for the waterfowl are beginning to move back inland. No waterfowl yet on Fresh Pond, but soon they will move off their wintering grounds along the coast and stop here on their way to their breeding grounds.

Gulls

Last week, I was walking up William Street towards the church when I saw two Herring gulls standing together in the bright morning sun, right in the middle of Achusnet Avenue. The one was an adult gull, and the other a brownish first year gull. The first year gull had hunched itself down and was trying to peck at the red gonys spot on the bottom of the adult’s bill, all the while making a high-pitched call note. The adult, its bright gray and white plumage looking quite dapper in comparison with the dirty brown of the younger bird, had its head pulled back, dodging and keeping its bill out of reach of the young gull.

We are told that young Herring gulls on the nest will peck at the red gonys spot, stimulating the adult to regurgitate food for them. At this point in the year, the young gulls should be able to forage for themselves, but here was this gull engaging in what seems to be immature behavior. The two gulls were oblivious to the car rumbling along the paving stones towards them, the young gull still trying to hit that red spot, the older gull moving its beak out of the way but not flying away either. The car came to a complete stop a foot from the young gull. The adult immediately flew away, and the young gull hesitated for just a moment, and then fled.

Gulls live their own lives in this city, and seem to pay little attention to human beings. The roof tops of the tall downtown buildings are their domains. You can hear them calling ten stories up, you can see them wheeling around, settling in, gathering in little groups at the edges of the building roofs. The Elm Street parking garage is never full, and the fifth and top level, open to the sky, is littered with shell fragments where gulls have dropped shellfish to crack them open. The gulls swoop down into the streets to rifle through garbage cans, or to pull open particularly fragrant garbage bags on trash collection days. From a gull’s point of view, human beings must seem to be little more than annoyances who sometimes come along to drive them away from garbage cans, or from pecking at the red spot on an adult’s bill. If all the humans went away, the gulls would miss the garbage we produce, but aside from that I doubt they’d notice we were gone.

Why church is important

Here in New Bedford, the anti-gay attack at Puzzles bar in the North End sent shock waves through our community. How could an 18 year old man walk into a gay bar to attack the patrons with a handgun and a hatchet just because those men happened to be gay? Right now, many of us in New Bedford are trying to figure out what to do.

Scott Lang, our mayor, has called on churches and other religious communities to provide better support to youth. I’m all in favor of supporting teenagers, but I don’t think it works quite that way.

First of all, research shows that teenagers who go to church are far less likely to engage in risky behaviors of all kinds. The issue is not providing additional support to the teens who are already coming to church, the issue is the large numbers of teens who have no religious affiliation to speak of.

Secondly, I’m increasingly of the opinion that the way we get teens into our churches is to support their families. In a recent article about ministries that support whole families (instead of just supporting, say, youth), Rev. Phil Lund asks a rhetorical question:

…Why are so many of our current youth strategies and programs focused on trying to put the pieces back together after kids are already in crisis rather than on providing the early and continuing nurture that will keep them healthy and whole?

Phil’s answer is that congregations should be what he calls “authoritative communities,” and before you get your back up about that word “authoritative,” let’s find out what Phil really means. Citing a new book titled Hardwired To Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities, Phil writes:

Authoritative communities are [multigenerational] groups of people who are committed to one another over time and who model and pass on at least part of what it means to be a good person and live a good life.

Authoritative communities have 10 key characteristics. Based on careful analysis of both the new science of nurture and the existing child development literature, the Commission on Children at Risk [authors of Hardwired To Connect] identified the following 10 principal characteristics of an ideal authoritative community:

  • “Authoritative communities include children and youth.
  • They treat children as ends in themselves.
  • They are warm and nurturing.
  • They establish clear limits and expectations.
  • The core of their work is performed largely by nonspecialists.
  • They are multigenerational.
  • They have a long-term focus.
  • They encourage spiritual and religious development.
  • They reflect and transmit a shared understanding of what it means to be a good person.
  • They are philosophically oriented to the equal dignity of all people and to the principle of love of neighbor.” —[Hardwired To Connect]

This might provide a useful model to us here in New Bedford: make sure our churches and religious communities function as this kind of authoritative community.

More to the point for my own church, this should serve to remind us why we’re doing what we’re doing. You don’t come to church when you feel like it so you can hear some good music and maybe an inspiring sermon. You come to church to be a part of a multi-generational community that is shaping the life of the surrounding community, by transmitting what it means to be a good person, and by promoting equal dignity all all persons as set forth in the Golden Rule.

Not that that is easy. But the more of you who show up at church, the easier it will be, and the less likely it will be that we’ll have another incident like the one at Puzzles bar. And no, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, I’m trying to give you a good reason why you should get out of your comfy jammies on Sunday morning, leave behind the crossword puzzle in the Sunday paper, and go out into the cold to come to church. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, I’m telling you that you really do make a difference when you show up.

Link to Phil Lund’s complete post

Blizzard conditions

Ten people showed up at church this morning. One of them was a reporter from the New Bedford Standard-Times, reporting on Mayor Scott Lang’s call to religious organizations for a day of reflection and prayer this weekend, following the hate crime at Puzzles Lounge last week, and its aftermath; the reporter visited us because apparently First Unitarian was just about the only downtown church that held worship services this morning. The wind-blown snow made driving very difficult. I’d say we’ve had close to blizzard conditions all day: high winds and heavy snow.

Carol and I went home after church, had lunch, and sat around updating our respective Web sites. By four o’clock, I was getting a little stir crazy. “Let’s go for a walk,” I said. We could see blowing snow outside our windows, so we bundled up.

We walked down to the end of State Pier. Blowing snow kept visibility very low.Looking across the harbor, we could see some lights on the Fairhaven side, and I just barely made out the ghostly profile of the Unitarian Universalist church’s spire.

We didn’t walk around much; the wind was too fierce, driving the snow right into our faces, blowing cold air into our heavy coats. We mostly looked at all the fishing boats tied up, an unusually large number of them in port, riding out the storm.

I noticed something out in the water. “Look!” I said, “a seal.” Carol spotted two more, and then we saw another two right up next to the pier, and another two; maybe eight all told. The two up close to the pier poked their heads up, looking around, looking at each other nose to nose (it almost looked like they were kissing). Another one rolled in the water close by, and when I took a step forward to get a better look, it slapped its tail on the water and dove down out of sight. I’ve never seen so many seals in one small area in New Bedford harbor; perhpas they, too, are riding out the storm in a safe port.

Rainbow connection?

With the anti-gay assaults at Puzzles Lounge, it seemed like a good time for First Unitarian in New Bedford to fly a rainbow flag, as a sign of solidarity with the gay and lesbian community in New Bedford. So today, Carol and I walked down to Brewer’s Flag on 77 Forest Street.

We rounded the corner from County St. onto Forest St. “I wonder which building it is?” I said. I’m always worried we’re going to miss whatever building we’re looking for.

“I’ll bet it’s the one with all the flags,” said Carol, and sure enough, I could see a number of brightly colored flags just down the street. We got closer, and Carol added, “What a cute little building!”

Brewer’s Flag is in a lovely, friendly little brick industrial building tucked into a residential neighborhood. The building is right on the sidewalk, and you walk up five steep granite steps to get to the door. Once inside, we found ourselves in a high, bright little anteroom, from which you could see the back room where they sew the custom flags.

The owner, Penny Brewer, said she had three sizes of rainbow flags in stock: 2 x 3 ft., 3 x 5 ft., and 4 x 6 ft. I asked if she didn’t have anything larger. She might have a 6 x 10 ft. one in stock, but she doubted it. While she looked in her stock, Carol and I looked at all the flag paraphanelia — flagpoles, flagpole brackets, flagpole ornaments — and the flag decals, flag posters, sample flags of every sort, wind socks (Carol has been looking for a nice fish wind sock), holiday flags, Azorean flags, everything to do with flags.

The biggest rainbow flag in stock was 4 x 6 ft. Penny Brewer unfolded it for us to look at. Carol thought it looked big enough. “It looks bigger in the store,” Penny Brewer warned. The flag will probably be dwarfed by our huge granite church building, but we’ll figure something out. At the moment, the most important thing is to just get the rainbow flag flying.

On our way out, Carol looked back up at the building housing Brewer Flag. “What other city could you find a neat little flag store in a great little brick industrial building within walking distance of where we live?” she said. “I like New Bedford.”

So do I.