Our yard has been an official wildlife habitat long enough for our sign to fade to the point of being unreadable, so we just got a new one.
And right now we have the wildlife to prove it. Squirrels, opossums, rabbits, and raccoons. The skunks are around as well, but not seen this week.
One of the highlights of my attending the Thoreau Society Annual Gatherings was meeting D. B. Johnson, author and illustrator of the Henry books for children, Henry Builds a Cabin, Henry Hikes to Fitchburg, Henry Climbs a Mountain, and others. I was actually walking a short while on a guided saunter from Fairhaven Bay to Walden Pond with him and other attendees when another asked him what he did and when he replied he was a writer asked him, “What do you write?” He responded and I went into full fan mode for the rest of the walk. I mustn’t have been too over the top though because after the walk we accidentally met at a coffee shop in Concord (no, I wasn’t stalking him, really) and from there went together to hear the keynote speaker Terry Tempest Williams. Unfortunately the books seem to mostly be difficult to find now.
For some time, however, he has been treating us all to a comic strip with his bear, Henry, taking us all on new adventures in nature in true Thoreauvian style. They are free to read and I guess kids might like them too. I find myself looking forward to each Wednesday when they are posted to my email, and yours too if you subscribe. You can also read them on his site, Lost Woods, the title of the strip.
By the way, I was exited to hear he was presented wuth the Walter Harding Distinguished Service Award at the Annual Gathering of The Thoreau Society this past summer. (I was attending virtually and missed it.)
You can explore his works and other fun things at https://www.dbjohnsonart.com/index.html.
A collection of links and information from recent journeys through life and the internet. Irregular describes the schedule and the path.
A Century of Dining Out – So if you miss eating out as much as you did pre-pandemic here’s a treat. Peruse menus from 1841 – 1941. You can admire them for the art or for the dinner faire. There are menus for restaurants and banquets. Be sure to check out the Broiled Squirrels a la Maitre d’Hotel at the Fifth Annual Reunion of the Railroad Conductors’ Life Insurance Company. For a deeper dive check out the other Grolier Club Online Exhibitions. Thanks to Paul for sharing a link to the Magazines and the American Experience Exhibition which I originally intended to highlight here.
All Aboard! – get these free sample train coloring pages from the Dover Coloring Book series. I used to sell lots of the nature related ones and the best thing about them was they usually included a permission statement on the first page for copying for personal or classroom use. You can sign up to regularly get these samples somewhere, but you’ll have to explore the Dover site for that. I have saved far too many of these files by right clicking on the coloring page and saving it to my computer. You can just print the .jpg file out or paste it into a Word page so you can easily manipulate the size. You can get more at http://www.coloringbookday.com/ .
Audubon’s Birds of America at Bowdoin College – One of the silver linings to the COVID disaster is that fascinating on-line opportunities have proliferated from colleges, non-profits, and individuals. Bowdoin college has these and some pre-covid recordings to watch in it’s page-turning events. It’s probably enough to say I was attracted by the idea that each event shows a page of Audubon’s double Elephant folio (that’s a BIG book), but what got us there on March 5 was an opportunity to hear our friend, Scott Weidensaul share the story of the book, Birds of Maine. His presentation will appear there if it hasn’t already.
Emerson and his Friends – The story went something like this when a customer noticed the Emerson pins available at the Walden Pond gift shop where a friend of mine works. He asked, “How about pins for Lake and Palmer?” With all my study of Emerson lately I completely forgot about them. Seriously, the link takes you to a Royal Albert Hall performance. I missed one of their performances at the Rock Festival at the Pocono Raceway in 1972 (I do have a limited double album vinyl press their performance released in 2019). My girlfriend at the time took me as a graduation present but storms and technical problems extended the concert to well past when we could stay with ELP playing at dawn the next day. I finally got to see Palmer a couple years ago after both Emerson and Lake left us. He played a short set before Todd Rundgren and Yes and I would have rather he kept playing rather than Todd for sure and even Yes. You can get an inkling of his performance starting at 1:01:48 in the Albert Hall Performance. Funny, my favorite was always Emerson, but I have a new appreciation for Palmer as well as Lake through his performance in several concerts available on youtube and his solo of one of my favorite ELP songs, You Turn Me On.