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Nutshell Kingdom: Some Thoughts for the End of April
2007
I am having a hard time thinking of things to write about lately. I've read a couple of very good books (Slaves of Solitude, by Patrick Hamilton - set in a suburban London boarding house during the bombings of WWII; and True Grit, by Charles Portis - detailing a 14-year old girl's quest to avenge the murder of her father with the aid of a cantankerous U.S. Marshal). Both are great books and I highly recommend them, but neither inspired me to write anything special.
There's the season. Tomorrow is May Day and it is inspiring to go out and exult in the fine weather. The trees are mostly in leaf, the wildflowers are blooming, the blossoms are bee-happy (no sign of hive collapse from my limited perspective), and the birds are singing. As regards the birds, the Central and South American migrant populations have arrived full-force in the past week and I am stunned at my thirty-some year ignorance of their existence. It is a remarkable change that occurs this time of year.
For instance, Sunday morning I was wide awake at 6:00 AM due to a particularly haunting nightmare. I dreamed that I had run over and killed an old man about a year prior. The memory of this horrible accident had been blocked out and forgotten for a year until I suddenly remembered it in my dream - a memory which flooded me with the worst of possible guilty feelings. I woke up unable to determine if the killing had actually happened or not. It was a terrible feeling.
Anyway, it was not quite light outside and the birds were singing up a storm. I decided to drive down to my local county park for the sunrise. This time of year, you can look up into the treetops (if you know the right place) and see loads of tiny little birds scampering around, flying from one branch to another, eating all the insects they can find. These are the warblers, passing through on their way from the Latin climes to the Boreal forests of Canada, where they will breed in the summer. These warblers frolic in the highest branches and if the sun hits them, you can see flashes of brilliant color from their fancy spring plumage: yellows, blues, and greens - mostly. I also saw Orchard Orioles, Brown Thrashers, Catbirds, a House Wren - all arrived in the last week. Migration truly is amazing; it happens every year and yet is barely noticed by people who don't pay attention to it.
On a more accessible note, I found a great neighborhood dive bar called Jay's Saloon. This is not one those awful hipster dive bars, designed after someone's Platonic Idea of a Dive Bar. The presence of PBR does not a dive bar make. In fact, my new dive bar doesn't even sell PBR, as far as I can tell. It does sell cheap beer, however; $1.50 American drafts for happy hour. There is also a pool table and an outdoor patio. Saturday night, we showed up and watched the Nationals play on TV. There was a white R&B band of middle-aged guys called The Crimestoppers playing decent covers. We had one Beef BBQ sandwich, one broiled Catfish platter (w/ baked potato), an order of Onion Rings, a pitcher of Yuengling and an extra bottle of Bud Light for dessert. All in all, it cost $33 bucks. That, my friends, is a dive bar.
