Category Archives: Meditations

Spring watch

Standing on Pope’s Island this afternoon, I saw both a few last winter residents and one of the first summer residents. A pair of Buffleheads, perhaps the last of the ducks who wintered on the harbor, swam and dove in the water around the city marina, not far from the first of the recreational boats that appeared in the slips this week. Further out in the middle of the harbor, a Cormorant, one of the first summer residents to arrive in the harbor, flapped heavily and rose from the water where it had been holding its wings up to dry.

Late last week, the harbor was still full of wintering waterfowl. On Thursday, when the temperatures went up into the seventies, I walked over to the boat landing in Fairhaven. There I stood and counted more than thirty Brant, two dozen Buffleheads, and perhaps a dozen Red-Breasted Mergansers; and all the while, a Mockingbird sang lustily from a nearby tree. The waterfowl must have taken that warm day as a warning call for spring migration, because since then I haven’t seen more than a dozen waterfowl on any one day; and today I only saw those two Bufflehead.

The creeping crud

They’re calling it “the creeping crud” — the upper respiratory ailment that has afflicted so many people around here this winter. Yesterday I was talking with someone who has the creeping crud, and he said his doctor told him to expect it to last ten to twelve weeks; that is, if you take care of yourself, because if you don’t take care of yourself, the creeping crud creeps right back into your system.

Take me as an example of what the creeping crud can do to someone who doesn’t take care of himself. I came down with a vague upper respiratory ailment at the end of October, which lingered for twelve weeks or so. I finally got rid of it in mid-January — or so I thought — I felt great, got lots of outdoors exercise, cleaned the apartment, and — started overworking again. The creeping crud crept back into my lungs in early February, I developed bronchitis, and eleven weeks later I’m just starting to feel somewhat better.

At First Unitarian, we actually saw a significant dip in attendance in the worship service and in the Sunday school throughout February — that’s how prevalent the creeping crud has been in this part of the world. One of the television news shows claimed in February that half the population of Massachusetts had upper respiratory ailments. Supposedly health care providers are saying this is the worst they’ve ever seen it.

More eventful than usual

Carol and I went for a walk late this afternoon. It was a dreary gray day. We were on Pope’s Island heading across the bridge towards Fairhaven when we noticed a police car parked in the middle of the bridge. A police officer was standing in the sidewalk gesturing for us to cross to the sidewalk on the other side of the bridge; he was standing behind some of that yellow tape the police use to block off crime scenes.

As we stood there waiting for a break in the four lanes of traffic so we could cross to the other sidewalk, Carol told me that what she had read on the Web site of the New Bedford Standard-Times: that yesterday evening someone had seen someone walking along the bridge carrying a rope; that later police had found an empty noose tied to the railing of the bridge; that police divers were searching the water under the bridge.

As we passed the place where the police car was parked, another New Bedford police car pulled up. And a uniformed police officer sat on a dock over on our side of the bridge. “They must still have divers in the water,” said Carol.

When we got to Fairhaven, we turned down Middle Street. In the parking lot of the Fairhaven VFW, we saw four black-and-white Fairhaven police cars, one unmarked car with its blue lights flashing, a state police car, and several other cars. There were two tripods with video cameras standing on the sidewalk, and there was a man with a video camera on his shoulder further in the parking lot. There were perhaps thirty or forty bystanders spread out around the VFW parking lot: a couple standing on the porch of one of the apartments on the left, several people standing on the sidewalk in front, several more standing around the liquor store to the right of the VFW, and even more people standing on Bridge Street on the other side of the liquor store.

We had no idea what had happened, but it was pretty obvious that nothing was really going on any more. When we got back home, the Standard-Times Web site had a brief story: at 10:40 p.m. yesterday evening, police responded to a large fight somewhere around Bridge, Main, and Middle Streets (the Standard-Times reported that the fight took place at “the intersection of Middle and Main Streets,” but Middle and Main parallel each other). Three men received serious knife wounds; one of those died this morning after being flown to Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.

But we didn’t know all this until we returned home. We walked past the VFW and down to the harbor so I could look at some ducks. “They’re Buffleheads,” said Carol, while I was still trying to figure out what kind of ducks they were. “You’re right,” I said, “but I thought you didn’t like birding.” She smirked and said, “Yup, but I can see better than you.”

Then we walked home, past the people standing around the Fairhaven VFW, past the two police cars on the bridge to Pope’s Island, and then around the little park on the south side of Pope’s Island. “What’s that!” said Carol. A hawk flew clumsily away from us, keeping low to the ground. It reappeared on the other side of a big clump of rose bushes. Carol pointed to a big pile of feathers. “It caught a pigeon,” I said. “Let’s see if we can sneak up behind it and figure out what kind of hawk it is.”

We walked quietly around the clump of rose bushes, and there was the hawk sitting on the ground staring back at us: brown back, about the size of a crow, probably an immature Cooper’s Hawk. I thought it would immediately fly away when it saw us, but it didn’t. Then I saw the bright red in between its feet: it was clutching the carcass of the dead pigeon. No wonder the hawk had flown so clumsily away from us; no wonder it didn’t fly away while we were staring at it; it was holding on to its dinner. We watched the hawk for a minute or two, but it obviously wasn’t going to start eating again until we went away.

We walked on home. The sun came out as we walked across the swing span bridge onto Fish Island. We stopped to talk to someone we know; we waved to Russell at the Fish Island gas station. It was a more eventful walk than usual.

Spring watch

Red buds on gray twigs —
maples come into bloom and
pollen fills the air.

Pollen fills the air,
it makes me stupid, I don’t
feel that cold north wind.

Feel that cold north wind!
Daylight is lengthening but
earth is not yet warm.

Earth is not yet warm
enough to turn green. But trees —
red buds on gray twigs.

Spring watch

At 6:30, I finally made the last phone call of the day and headed out for a walk. I figured I had half an hour before it got dark. I walked briskly, not paying too much attention to anything except walking.

Looking down from the pedestrian bridge over Route 18, the man running past the Wharfinger Building on Fisherman’s Wharf looked like John. He wasn’t wearing John’s usual bright yellow Cheerios hat, though, so it couldn’t be John. Only a handful of people run regularly down along the waterfront, and briefly I wondered if another runner had moved into our neighborhood.

As i walked down the spiral ramp that leads from the pedestrian bridge to the wharf, I met John running up. “John!” I said. “You’re not wearing your Cheerios hat!”

“I know,” he said. “I thought it was much warmer than it really is.”

Yesterday was warm and sunny, but today the clouds moved in and it got chilly. I was wearing my big winter coat; John was wearing a long-sleeved jersey and shorts. He looked cold. “Yeah,” I said, “it’s cold today.”

He didn’t linger, but headed on home.

Spring watch

It didn’t feel that cold when I went out to take a walk this evening, but the wind was chilly. It was a raw damp spring wind that reminds you that we could still get snow. I had had a busy day at work, with more than the usual ups and downs. It was six o’clock when I finally left the office. I was going to take just a short walk before making dinner. But I kept thinking about the work day, the thoughts tumbling all around inside me. Carol was going to be at a meeting this evening. Dinner could wait. I kept walking.

When I finally got home at 7:30, all those tumbling thoughts had come to rest. And I had walked hard enough and long enough and fast enough that it felt warm and almost springlike outside.

The junkyard cometh

Tomorrow morning, the junkman will come and pick up my old ’93 Toyota Corolla, which I have owned since July, 1997. When I bought the car, we were still living in the center of Concord, Massachusetts, and I was still working in my first church job, as the Director of Religious Education at First Parish in Watertown. The car has driven me to work at every church I have served, and it has driven me home to apartments in Newton, Concord, Oakland, Geneva, Illinois, and now New Bedford. We drove from Massachusetts to Oakland in that car, stopping at Havusupai Canyon and Mono Lake on the way. And after a year there we drove the car back, stopping along the way to spend a year in Geneva, Illinois. I bought it with 45,000 miles on it, and now it has 177,000 miles one it. That car has been one of the most constant things in my life over the past decade. But now the brake lines are so corroded the mechanic said I can’t trust them ($1,500 to repair), and the timing belt is due to be replaced ($650), and the power steering pump sounds like it’s going (at least $500), and the rear struts are shot. And Carol’s mom wants to get rid of her ’93 Toyota Camry, for well below market value, and with less than half the mileage of my old car. The poet Robert Graves wrote that “technology produces millions of identical and spiritually dead objects which as a rule take far longer to humanize than their expected length of service; whereas unmechanized craft exercised by individuals or closely knit groups produce objects with elements of life in them.” Unfortunately, I can’t afford to spend $3,000 on repairs in the hopes that my old car will become more humanized in a few more years; I can’t afford sentiment; the junkie will come tomorrow maybe leaving behind a few rusty memories.

Update: This morning (March 20), we got a call from someone we met through an environmental group, and he wanted the car so he could fix it up for one of his teenaged kids. He and his daughter just came and picked it up, and I called off the junkman.

Spring watch

A few notes of bird song drifted across Route 18 during a momentary lull in the traffic. “A Song Sparrow,” I said to Carol, “now where would a Song Sparrow be?…”; there aren’t many places in a marine industrial zone where a Song Sparrow would want to sit and sing. We came up to the top of the pedestrian bridge over the highway, in the March sunshine. “It’s so warm,” said Carol. “It feels like spring.” It felt like spring all the way over to Pope’s Island, where we bought a newspaper and a couple of magazines. But on the way back, the clouds started to cover the sky, and it felt damp and chilly down by the water of the harbor, and it stopped feeling like spring. Even though the sun peeked out now and then, it felt gray and dim, it felt as though real spring wouldn’t come for months.