Wednesday Whimsy

OCTOBER 6, 2010
The week: It's been rainy so far, but I have seen some interesting things in the drizzle. One of which I will describe below, and having witnessed it, am resolved to now carry my cellphone at all times. To use the camera.
Heading back from the PPG Food Court on Monday, one-ish, I came down the steps from the PPG building and stopped a step above a tiny woodpecker, obviously so lost. It tried to cross the street, hopping, and I trotted along behind to hurry it along before it got run over. He trotted across and then unfortunately flew back across the street and smack into a Wintergarden window. Stunned him but he perched on the ledge, although I can't imagine it was good for his little brain.
He was interesting looking, not a downy though. So henceforth, I will carry my camera. It's the second time I've found an interesting bird in the vicinity of PPG Place, which really is a death tower, with all that glass, for birds. A couple years ago I found a dead cedar waxwing on the sidewalk next to the Wintergarden.

Readings: Very interesting article in the New Yorker from last week by Malcom Gladwell about the value of social networks. The link is here: The revolution will not be tweeted.

This week's picture: I love this sign design, from an actual non-chain drugstore in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Lawrenceville.

Mind images

I take great pleasure -- and sometimes grief -- in revisiting events that I have seen over my life. They may be insignificant or of great meaning, but they have been captured equally by the camera and the audio recorder in my brain.

As in: Sunday the dogs and I were in the park for our long morning walk. There is a play area; it has a slide, monkey bars and one of those short plank bridges for kids to balance on. There was a young dad there with two kids. A baby and a toddler, a little girl.

 The dogs had paused to read a page in that day's doggie newspaper, so we were stopped on the slope just above the play area. I gazed around and my glance fell on them. I saw Dad scoop up the baby and trot off, with the toddler in bouncing pursuit. It's so funny to watch the movements of kids who have only just learned to walk. They seem to progress forward in a bouncy side to side motion that has very little control of itself. At any moment, they could go tumbling forward. Little one chased Dad and baby, bouncing along with Dad slowing down, then finally stopping. I couldn't hear, but the happiness of an unencumbered moment in a sunny park on a Sunday morning was unmistakable.

Dad and kids moved on, and so did we.

I've also noticed how often I've heard the red-bellied woodpecker this spring; usually he is much more noisy in the fall. I've also missed hearing a wood thrush that I have heard consistently each spring for at least the past four or five years. Perhaps I am missing that because we have been walking in to the park a different way. The thrush, which has the song of an angel, always has been in the same place.

The red-bellied, though, he is another story. In the fall, the air seems clearer, lonelier. Many birds are gone, but this big woodpecker sings on, in a high-pitched, sharp warble that echoes in the quiet park. I keep hearing him now, though, confusing me into thinking it is fall.

It isn't. As lovely as the season is, now, especially, with petal snow covering deep green spring grass, it is changing and moving on. The red-bellied woodpecker's stage season will be here soon enough.