Big Owl Just Landed

My wife has pointed out I have an even shorter temper than usual when I fast.  I’m not so sure.  But she’s probably right.  I presume I’m always being reasonable.   But it doesn’t take much, to make me want to swat away perceived annoyances, when I’m hungry, when I’m keeping my mind off food. 

Snapping turtles must be attracted to long stretches of trail.  There must be something about this landscape that suits a snapping turtle when it’s choosing a place to bury eggs.  I think of snapping turtles topping the food chain in any given pond and lurking in the bottom, eating up whatever it so pleased to consume.  But this is the second such turtle I’ve seen quite a ways, from any obvious pond.  If the last one I saw was ten pounds this one must have been fifteen.  She tolerated me as I walked around, well out of snapping range, photographing her remarkable neck and shell. 

A big owl just landed in the back yard.  He’s about fifty yards down sitting on the lawn like an impassive sphinx, turning his head this way and then that.  If you didn’t know any better he looks, from this distance like an enormous cat, maybe a lynx.  There are at least a few birds up in the trees that are not happy to have him there.  They are squawking what I assume to be the “be careful yo’, there’s an owl!” squawk.  And then, with wings that seem more like a great shawl, he makes his way up into a tree and out of the sun. 

Reading through a book my older one was going to return to her school, as a used book to get a refund on.  Not so fast.  “The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader”?  There is a remarkable trove of material, little to none of which was I familiar with.  “Louise Thompson Patterson’s article “With Langston Hughes in the USSR,” written in 1932 is a remarkable window into that tumultuous year when the U.S. was in the depths of The Great Depression and famine brought on, part by collectivization was sweeping the Soviet Union, and the cream of the Talented Tenth were invited to come to the USSR to make a movie about racial injustice in the U.S.A.  They are feted with banquets and Champaign and introduced to a nonsense script which Langston Hughes suggests is not redeemable.  Some want to stay and learn about socialism, while others have no interest.  It certainly helps to explain poems like “Goodbye, Christ” which he wrote that year.  The trip certainly made an impact on him. 

Friday, 6/26/20