Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Where Do I Put Magazine Notes?

Among the things I like about Shelfari is the ability to note quotations that speak to me. But what of the good bits of The New Yorker? I guess I have moved beyond filling blank books with tidbits, so here I am circling back to the neglected blog.

The February 11 and 18 issue includes the beginning of a memoir Joseph Mitchell began. He jumps right into reflections on parts of the city he's haunted, experienced. A long paragraph lists things (old hotels, old markets) that draw him to them, including,

I am also strongly drawn to a dozen or so old buildings, most of them on lower Broadway or on Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the Twenties and Thirties, that once were department-store buildings and then became loft buildings or warehouses when the stores, some famous and greatly respected and even loved in their time and now almost completely forgotten, either went out of business or moved into new buildings farther uptown.

Yes. Before we went to the Eastern Shore, I reviewed Lost Communities of Virginia (a book I just adore), and then I watched Capeville (the featured community) and similar places come and go up route 13. I keep describing it as a rhythm: isolation, railroad brings connection, cars rise, isolation settles as the main road skips the town, or simply makes a stopover unnecessary. Every town had a tiny, beloved (perhaps) store, car dealer, factory, bank -- and now they are completely forgotten in favor of the Dollar General, Food Lion, and Suntrust. When I poke around Richmond history, I wonder what made Miller & Rhoades, say, special. Perhaps the answer is nothing -- it's just the one that I saw fade in its downtown location, shiny in the suburbs, then go out of business. Someone two generations older than me knew other places that did this (even if she knew M&R, too).

Monday, February 25, 2013

Excursion

We took a trip with some friends to the Eastern Shore. Part of the fun, of course, is crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel -- 17.6 miles of cool views, awesome engineering. Only, we had some fog for the trip out. Still, in addition to gulls, I spotted ganet and a pelican.



We stayed in a very nice lodge at Kiptopeke State Park.




sunset at Kiptopeke
I snuck in some birdwatching. Here's a list (of what I could identify):

common loon
double crested cormorant
mallard
lesser scaup
bufflehead
red-breasted merganser
brown pelican
northern gannet
herring gull
great black-backed gull
great blue heron
black-bellied plover
killdeer
red-tailed hawk
osprey
vulture
downy woodpecker
crow
blue jay
carolina chickafee
tufted titmouse
carolina wren
catbird
mockingbird
eastern bluebird
robin
yellow-rumped warbler
red-winged blackbird
grackle
cardinal
white-throated sparrow

I always misremember that the full quotation from Cosmos that includes the phrase "the ocean calls" as actually describing being drawn to the shore, rather than the metaphor it is. Still, I explain to myself in Carl Sagan's voice that it's weird, supernatural how the water draws me. This weekend, it cheered and refreshed me, too.