Why a Duck?

We drove south along the river to meet and greet the ducks migrating north and were welcomed with open arms. Well, that’s not entirely true. The ducks were too interested in one another to pay much attention to us. In fact, they tended to drift off any time we opened a car door or pulled the spotting scope out of the trunk.

The appeal of the spring migration has several sources, prominent among them being its mystery. Why do tundra swans depart in huge numbers from Chesapeake Bay and fly 4,000 miles to the arctic wastes of northern Canada? Hilary and I were walking the upper trail along the cliffs at Frontenac State Park when we first heard their joyous shouts and honks. (You can listen to it here.) We looked up and there they were, silvery bodies no bigger than grains of rice, flying in formation, hundreds of feet above us.

Five or six flocks passed as we wandered the park. The sky was clear; the air was cold and crisp. I could feel the ardor passing back and forth as these very large birds churned their way north. The excited, clamoring voices set the mood and also told the story.

Hilary and I were also in a quietly ecstatic frame of mind simply to be out in such a beautiful morning, The bluebirds were iridescent. Field sparrows called in the distance—at a more rapid, insistent pace than they do in summer heat. Several woodpeckers were hammering away in the woods along the path to the overlook, as loud as I’ve ever heard them, but hitting notes more than an octave apart.

The previous afternoon we’d driven around Lake Pepin, and in the town of Pepin itself we came upon a huge assembly of ducks milling around near the protection of the marina. They were mostly scaup and ring-necked ducks, with a few handsome canvasbacks and redheads here and there.

On our way out to the end of the pier, we met a short, energetic, casually dressed woman returning from the breakwater. She was excited. “Oh, there are so many!” she said. “But yesterday there were even more. What are they?”

“Mostly scaup,” I told her. “Hunters call them bluebills.”

“Oh, ruddy ducks!” she exclaimed.

 “Well, no,” I corrected her. “Ruddy ducks do have blue bills, but they aren’t called ‘bluebills’. And do you see that duck with a big white ring around its beak. It’s called a ring-necked duck. But you can’t really see the ring around its neck.”

“Strange,” she said. “But I’ve got a duck with a blue bill in a plastic bag back there on shore. An eagle was eating it. It’s dead. I’m going to bury it.”

We passed the woman again on our way to the opposite end of the marina, where the ducks were now congregating, and she showed us the bird in her bag—or what was left of it. Mostly guts.

When we reached our new viewing spot, I noticed that one of the eyepieces on my binoculars had fallen off. But where? We retraced our steps around the harbor, scanning the grass and rubble along the path. No luck.

Then our new friend appeared out of nowhere and said, “Did you lose an eye ring? I found one.” She showed us where it was. How nice.

A few hours later, at the wayside rest north of Lake City, we got a much better look at another raft of ducks. To identify them is one thing. To see them well enough to thrill at their beautiful is something else again. Once again, the redheads and the canvasbacks stole the show.

Before checking into our motel on the western outskirts of Red Wing, we took a little trip away from the river and up into the hills on the urban fringe, in search of Spring Creek Scientific and Natural Area. I’d printed out some details before we left home, and we had no difficulty finding it. We parked in the single slot provided and headed down a path through the woods. Ten minutes later it opened out onto wonderful views to the west of the valley created by Spring Creek eons ago as it cut its way down through the Rochester Plateau to the Mississippi. Three ospreys drifted by overhead—or the same osprey three times? Pasque flowers were blooming inconspicuously amid the dry grasses on the rock exposures.

We spent the next day puttering south, indulging ourselves with a series of side trips and detours. We discovered a coffeeshop in Lake City we'd never seen before. I asked  the young woman behind the counter how long it had been open. She thought for a moment and said, "About eleven years, I think." 

We took Highway 84 out of Kellogg and came upon a large group of blackish ducks frolicking in a vast puddle out in a farmer’s field. They were hard to identify in the midday glare but Hilary finally noticed the flash of green on the face that convinced us they were green-winged teal. Looking up that species in the bird book she read: “Common in very shallow marshes and flooded fields.”

A few miles further south, we heard three eastern meadowlarks during a short hike through the Weaver Dunes. And our duck quest received a further boost as we wound our way though the backwaters of Goose Island County Park, a few miles south of La Crosse: Gadwalls, shovelers, blue-winged teal, and a single widgeon, his white forehead glistening in the early morning sun. “The hunters call that one a ‘bald pate,’ “I would have told our new-found friend from Pepin. “But the forehead isn’t really bald.”

Pelicans are a common sight on the river this time of year, sometimes soaring together in graceful arcs, at other times bobbing far off shore in large, brilliantly white clusters. One evening a few years ago we watched four hundred of them—I counted—come gliding in at dusk in a long line to a back bay south of Goose Island to spend the night.

Our pelican sightings on this trip were more sporadic, but we did come upon a huge congregation on our last day, just north of Winona, at McNally Landing. The wind overhead was fierce, but they all seemed to be having a good time together!

 

Mercurial Season, with Books

The first day of spring arrives at this time every year—usually more than once. I mean, one day it’s warm and sunny, the next two it’s chilly and drab. 

A few days ago the temperature topped 70 degrees for the first time. This means that everyone gets out of work at 3 p.m. At any rate, that was the rule at Bookmen, and I try to remain faithful to it, which isn’t difficult these days; I hardly have any work to do.

One gray day recently, we made an effort to cook up something special. Hilary spent the morning and a good part of the afternoon at the potting studio in Minnetonka. But we’d marked out an itinerary, and when she got home we set off.

Our first stop was Pioneer Park on the east bank of the Mississippi in Northeast. We took a stroll across the railroad bridge and made our way around Nicollet Island, on the lookout for stray buffleheads and early arriving kinglets. My thoughts turned to the history of the island I’d helped Chris and Rushica Hage put together a decade ago. Nowadays few are aware, perhaps, that most of the attractive clapboard houses we were admiring during our stroll were moved there from South Minneapolis during the 1960s as part of an urban renewal project. It remains one of the few neighborhoods in the vicinity that has been neither neglected nor overbuilt.

Our next stop was Kramarczuk’s deli, where we picked up a few tasty-looking dessert items. Then it was on to Eat My Words used bookstore, which has recently relocated to the western fringe of Southeast, right around the corner from Brasa and only a block or two from the apartment where Hilary and I lived in 1975. (Egad!) 

Hilary was looking for a copy of Wuthering Heights for her book club. No luck. "That type of thing goes pretty quick," the young man behind the counter told us. But before we left she did buy a slim paperback copy of James Thurber’s My Life and Hard Times. It was an inspired choice.

On the way home we stopped briefly at Gorka Palace to pick up an order of chicken biryani and beef korma we’d ordered before leaving the house. Everything fell into place like clockwork.

After dinner we sat around in the living room reading  goofy narratives with titles like “The Night the Bed Fell on Father” and “The Car We Had to Push.” To add to the fun, I fetched copies of S. J. Perelman’s Last Laugh and Robert Benchley’s My Ten Years in a Quandary: and How They Grew from the other room.

_____________________

The next morning was as bright as the previous afternoon has been overcast, but a sharp wind made it as chilly as ever—possibly more so. In the midst of scanning the news—terrible as ever—Hilary noticed an article reporting the opening of a new bookstore in St. Anthony Park in the building where Micawber’s used to be. We decided to get out into the day and take a look.

It’s a small shop, utilizing only two of the tree rooms Micawber’s stocked. Stepping in from the bright morning, the lighting struck me as poor. And to my eyes, the shelves seemed to contain a large number of paperbacks with unpleasantly colorful pastel bindings. I don’t know why. The few used books I spotted had been stocked on rotating wooden spindles that looked cute, but tottered, creaked, and groaned when you tried to spin them.

Then again, I have so many books at home that few retail bookstores hold my interest for long.

A few minutes later, perusing the sale items in the public library a block away, I came upon a thick, good-as-new, hardcover biography of Adam Smith, priced at fifty cents. I was thumbing through it when it occurred to me that I already owned a biography of Adam Smith back home, half the size, waiting on the shelf, unread.

Later that afternoon we took one final jaunt in search of Wuthering Heights. The website of Magers and Quinn, in Uptown, reported several copies and editions in stock.

It was a pleasant drive down the parkway, though the skies had turned gray again and the ice on Cedar Lake was even grayer. Having parked the car on a side street near the store, we walked past a block of shuttered restaurants, several of which we’d had it in mind to try, but never did.

Magers and Quinn is the best bookstore around, in my opinion. And I was happy to see there were plenty of people inside, browsing. Hilary hunted down the edition of Wuthering Heights she was looking for, while I drifted through the archway to the chaotic remainder shelves on the back wall. I thumbed briefly through an astonishingly thick volume of Elizabeth Bishop’s collected letters, then hit on a less massive Oxford edition of the complete poems of Robert Herrick, priced at two dollars. Bingo!

I know next to nothing about Herrick, which is why I bought the book. I’m finding his religious poems less uncanny than those of George Herbert, and his amorous secular poems less brilliant than Donne’s. 

I’m not giving up on him yet. After all, he did write these famous lines:

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,

Old time is still a flying;

And this same flower that smiles today,

Tomorrow will be dying.

But let's get real: he’s no match for Thurber.

  

  

The Academy Awards 2026

The Academy Awards ceremony has come and gone. We watch it very year, not slavishly, but with mild anticipation and curiosity, hoping the clips will be long and the production numbers short.

This year was a good one, right from the beginning, on the red carpet, where the breathy interviewers asked intelligent questions, mostly ignoring who made the gowns, and the stars mostly responded in kind.

Conan O’Brien handled his responsibilities well as MC, in the best Johnny Carson tradition, reaching neither the highs of Bob Hope and Billy Crystal nor descending to the lows of David Letterman and Kid Rock.

The tributes to Rob Reiner and Robert Redford were sincere and touching. The comedy skit about repetitive dialogue aimed at distracted viewers was hilarious. And to top it all off, the run of nominated films was good. Well, I only saw half of them, but I liked what I saw.

If someone asked me to rank them, I’d put them like this:

One Battle After Another. An adventure comedy with numerous twists and turns and an exquisite visual flow, marred only by the absurd overacting of Sean Penn as a deranged military man.

Marty Supreme. A good old-fashioned bildungsroman with lots of energy and color and an annoying protagonist. (Well, Citizen Kane was also annoying and abrasive. And when was Jack Nicholson not annoying?)  

Sentimental Value. A wandering family drama with four acting nominees including an Oscar-worthy performance by Stellan Skarsgård. (The question in my mind remains: by the end of the film, had Dad really changed?)

Hamnet. A “small” film with a single theme, but emotionally affecting.

Sinners. Many parts of it looked like a filmed theatrical performance, which isn’t good. It reminded me of the Saturday matinees I used to go to at the Avalon Theater in White Bear Lake when I was twelve. In short, hokey and over-the-top, yet fun.

After decades of movie-going, one thing I’m convinced of is this: However you imagine a film, based on reviews, clips, or word-of-mouth, it’s likely to be different … and richer, than you expected. Even if it’s bad, it’s likely to be bad in ways you never imagined.

What’s next on the list? It Was Just an Accident? or The Secret Agent?

 

Before the Blizzard

Waiting in front of the fire for the storm to hit,

drinking wine and nibbling a dish of nuts.

I’ve thrown a thick log on the blaze,

Unsplit. Now I’m wondering

which tree it came from. And when.

I saw the first flake two hours ago,

while we were walking down by the creek.

A loner. A scout. The avant garde.

Hooded mergansers were drifting in pairs;

(I’d forgotten how beautiful they are.)

 We met a couple on the trail

who’d seen a brown creeper!

(Did I hear crane croaking in the distance,

Moving north above the clouds?)

 I’m reading a biography of Li Po. It fits the mood.

Now Hilary’s in the kitchen mixing dough.

The pasta machine’s clamped firmly in place.

The pesto thaws as the world turns white again.

  

My Zen Retreat

Hilary is down in Costa Rica hunting up some rare birds with a few friends, and I’m making use of the free time to participate in my own private retreat.

As luck would have it, my old friend Dave came to town for a family wedding during my week of solitude, and I took him out to lunch at a restaurant in a strip-mall on Highway 55. 

We reminisced about old times a little—high school and college days. We ranted for a few minutes about our current Bloviator in Chief, chatted with our young waitress about her aspirations to become a dental hygienist, and made a stop at the Goodwill out in Minnetonka.

Due to the snow in the ground, I was denied the pleasure of weeding the moss garden in the back yard—the traditional monastery task--so I chose an equally tedious and fulfilling one: spackling over an unsightly stain on the kitchen ceiling that I have been ignoring for quite some time.

The first morning I applied some spackle from a half-empty container I found in the basement. The next morning I sanded it down and applied some more. I could see I wasn’t making much progress, and on the third day I stopped at the hardware store to get some coarser sandpaper. 

While I was downstairs fetching the spackle that first day, it occurred to me that I ought to tidy up the basement and dispose of some useless junk. Such a task takes time; every item needs to be evaluated. But I had time. In the end, I kept all the memorabilia I’d saved from high school; it wasn’t much. I tossed all the term papers I wrote in college but kept the pay stub from the first article I wrote for City Pages—an unsolicited review of a Pat Metheny concert. I threw out several boxes of travel brochures from Europe, Nebraska, New Mexico, and other places, most of them dating to the 1980s and 90s. I also threw out most of the maps we’d collected of various parts of the BWCAW, some of which were old enough to be printed on that old-fashioned crinkly waterproof paper. Jigsaw puzzles? Out. An old Jeopardy game? Out. Anything smelling of mildew? Out.

During my retreat I kept to simple meals. To maintain the Asian vibe I made my way through a big bag of yellow curry Thai potato chips from Trader Joe’s, accompanied by kale coleslaw from a bag. Pickled herring and Jarlsberg cheese on Wasabröt added a Scandinavian touch.

As mid-afternoon rolled around, I was usually ready for a stroll along one of our favorite routes. We call it “the pines,” because it takes us past a grove of pines halfway along the parkway—very Zen-like.

You might imagine that in the midst of this toil I would take a break to read a few lines from a classic like The Seven Pillars of Zen or Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, but I’m beyond all that. You know what they say: “Those who teach don’t know, and those who know don’t teach.”

(I don’t know precisely who said that, but you’ve got to admit, it’s more than a little redundant.)

Yet I didn’t entirely ignore that interior stuff. In fact, I came up with a small library of thought-provoking material that I was confident would drive me to new depths of enlightenment.

A few examples:

1) Julien Marias: Philosophy as Dramatic Theory:      

“Since philosophy is something that ‘has to be done,’ this means that it is not made or finished, but is something “to be made,” a chore or a task, which is to say that we have to make ‘another’ philosophy, different from those that have preceded us.”

2) Withold Gombowitz: Diary

“Knowledge, what ever it is worth, from the most precise mathematics to the darkest suggestions of art, is not to calm the soul but to create a state of vibration and tension in it.”

3) Antonio Machado: Juan de Mairena

“To think is to meander from highway to byway, and from byway into alleyway, till we come to a dead end. Stopped dead in our alley, we think what a feat it would be to get out. That is when we look for the gate to the meadows beyond.”

4) Fernando Pessoa: The Book of Disquiet

“Morning, spring, hope—they are all connected in music by the same melodic intention; they are connected in our souls by the same memory with the same intention. No: if I observe myself as I observe the city, I recognize that what I have to hope is for this day to end, as all days do. Reason can also see the dawn.”

What? Come again?

After a day or two, such ruminations were beginning to get me down, and one evening I turned on the TV to watch a documentary about Gobekli Tepe, an archeological site in Turkey that’s upending our understanding of the development of agriculture, and cities. As usual with such shows, an hour of footage was devoted to about ten minutes of information, but the scenes of stone walls and rubble, vast rolling hills, and youthful archeologists with heavy German accents scratching at chunks of rock with tiny brushes, somehow held my interest. I also enjoyed those electronically generated SHOCK chords that resounded as each new tidbit of speculation was unveiled.

Eager to learn more, I hunted down my copy of The Dawn of Everything, picking up the argument where I’d dropped it months or even years ago. Among other nuggets of information I came upon, the iconoclastic authors politely report that the so-called “agricultural revolution” took place over a span of about three thousand years, which is roughly equivalent to the interval separating us from the Trojan War.

That “revolution” was carried out almost exclusively by women, and it took place largely on mudflats in the section of the Fertile Crescent south of the Tarsus Mountains, the precise locations changing as rainfall and water levels shifted from year to year. The authors suggest it would be more accurate to refer to these pursuits as “gardening” rather than “agriculture.” It was just one activity among many contributing to the complex Neolithic economy.

I thought about that golden era the next day as I concocted my black bean/canned corn/avocado salad, laced with olive oil, salt, and cayenne.

Another means of escape from ponderous thinking lay in games. The morning Wordle was a must, of course, but I also spent a little too much time playing backgammon, using a program I uploaded years ago from a $10 CD I bought at Office Max. Backgammon comes from India, as you probably know. So does Buddhism. I think.

The weekend arrived with cold, leaden skies, and it was with great pleasure that I broke my schedule of meditations to host a game of dominoes with two old friends. (Dominoes can be traced back to twelfth-century China, by the way.) For the special occasion we made short work of a Papa Murphy’s pizza and a bottle of Gigondas, followed by the better part of a tasty Oregon Pinot Noir.

The sunny skies returned the next morning. In fact, the air was so sharp and clear that by 8:15 I was out of the house and on my way up the hill along the “oak” route, which veers north at the parkway and rises to the road following a narrow stretch of deciduous woods. At that point you cross the road and return south along the tree-lined bike path toward the “pines,” with a row of handsome prewar two-story houses lined up in the distance, just across a second sward of parkway grass. It’s a two-mile route, and it occurred to me that it had never looked better. I was reminded that before it became the name of a deity, the word Zeus referred simply to a quality—brilliance.  

Another remarkable aspect of my retreat was the nightlife. A few days in, I was awakened by the hoot of a barred owl, loud and close. It was dark—just before dawn—but as I looked out the bedroom window, I could see her on a branch maybe 25 feet away. Then the male flew in and landed on the same branch. I know it was a male because a clumsy, fluttering, airborne mating event ensued almost immediately. Five seconds later, the male was gone.

A few nights later the couple was back, this time delivering raucous shouts and trills and monkey laughs. It was 2:32 in the morning, and they seemed to be having a blast.

As my immersive meditative journey grew more intense, I finally came up for air, finding a few hours of relief in a not-entirely-relaxing film called One Battle After Another.

By this time the remains of the black bean salad in the fridge were getting soggy—especially the avocado. I didn’t want to eat them, but I didn’t have the heart to toss them. So with a continuing emphasis on frugality, I took a small Tupperware container of old rice from the fridge and a half-empty bag of frozen “roasting vegetables” from the freezer. I spread the vegies out on a roasting pan and slid the mélange into the oven. When they were done roasting, I mixed them with the rice, added one tablespoon of fish sauce, one tablespoon or hoisin sauce, and a few splashes of siracha, and heated the concoction in the microwave.

It didn’t taste quite like anything I’d ever eaten before. I’m not saying it was bad ...

Hilary and I talked on the phone every night. She told me tales of fording mountain streams to reach jungle resorts, wonderful lunches in toney botanical gardens, hot ocean beaches and cool swimming pools, rare birds perched on almost every branch, and, more important than anything else, simply having fun with her friends.

She’ll be flying home tonight.

This morning I took another walk up to "the oaks." Most of the snow has melted along the parkway, and the air now smells earthier. We're on the cusp of a lustrous new season.

In my lackadaisical perusal of The Dawn of Everything, I’ve gotten only as far as the rise of Uruk, which flourished from roughly 4000 to 3100 BCE. But that will have to wait. I’ve got some tidying up to do. And a trip to Trader Joe’s is definitely in the cards. For flowers, of course. The flight doesn't arrive until 8:45. I'm wondering what kind of late-evening snacks would be appropriate?  

February Light

It’s the same every year: mid-February, late afternoon, and the sun is beaming into the kitchen, strong and low, rendering translucent whatever it is you’re busy chopping at the counter—onions, red bell peppers, butternut squash. This is something you need, no matter how hard you’ve been trying to appreciate the months of “cozy” winter darkness. Not the radiant energy itself, but the sensation, the effect on the eye, an effect that shoots directly to the heart. Suddenly you’re reminded of garden plants, of grilling on the deck, of listening to the barred owls hoot while lying in the woods in the dark in a tent. This is what the future holds.  

An exhilaration comes upon you in the midst of that sparkling brilliance. Everyone feels it. Couples are passing by, walking the dog, pushing the baby carriage. It isn’t just a promise of the future, it’s a visceral feeling, now.

And this year the effect has been compounded by the fact that snow is melting, streets are glistening, water is running along the gutters. It gives the city an enchanted quality due to the reflections, the urban sounds, and the balmy air, that would have been impossible to appreciate during the holiday season, not to mention the recent murderous federal “surge.”

The other afternoon I spent some time cutting back the forsythias and the grey-twigged dogwood. Years of experience have taught me that you can’t really kill these things--I've tried--so you might as well be bold. 

A few nights ago, we met some friends at a Venezuelan restaurant at 35^th and Nicollet in south Minneapolis. I’d made a reservation for 5 p.m., though to judge from the website, no one else had made a reservation at all. I was hoping the place wouldn’t be deserted. We were seated at a corner table. It was perfect, except for the loud-speaker affixed to the ceiling directly above our heads.

When the server came by, I said, “You know, we all have hearing aids. Do you think we could move to that table down at the other end?” Not exactly true, but she understood and got the okay from on high.

The food was good and the low table-lighting added to the ambiance. But what impressed me most was how animated the clientele was. And how young. These were people from the neighborhood. Well, what did I expect? I had to remind myself that forty years ago we lived five or six blocks away ourselves, and this was our neighborhood.

The other morning we headed down to the Cedar Avenue Bridge to catch the morning light. And that same afternoon we went on a drive down around the lakes. The light was low to the west, but there were fishermen standing around on the ice in the middle of Lake Harriet. The ice itself looked gray and scuffed and lustrous, with pools of water reflecting the blue sky here and there. The potholes in the road were also filled with water--a constant challenge. 

 February light doesn't merely hold the promise of spring. It's an intrinsic good. It's free, and it's all the more pleasant and surprising for the fact that, unlike the speck of a comet or the fleeting dance of the Northern Lights, it spreads itself everywhere, morning and evening, day after day.

Ice Shanty Village 2026

The official name is “Art Shanty Projects” but I prefer to call it the “Ice Shanty Village.” It’s been a yearly gathering since 2004, though the location has changed a few times: Medicine Lake, then White Bear Lake, and now Lake Harriet. I’m wondering if it might even have been held in Stillwater at some time in the distant past. A few years ago, when the weather wasn’t cooperating, they set up the shanties on land.   

Wherever it pops up, the village consists of whimsical and sometimes elaborate structures—ice houses, basically—that have been created to advance a civic value, a scientific concept, or a mode of personal expression, and spread out across the ice with no apparent order or logic. Some function as performance venues. One shanty invariably serves as a Digger store, offering second-hand hats, scarfs, sweaters, and gloves to anyone who’s ventured out on the lake without the proper wraps.

Though the themes of specific shanties are often serious, the entire operation is conceived in the childlike spirit of “let’s build a fort.” Bike races are held from time to time—they provide the bikes--and there’s a kite day, too. In previous years we’ve come upon aerobic exercise classes, lip-synching contests, flamenco mini-juergas, and scenes from La Boheme. Years later, I’m still ruing the day we arrived too late to see a performance of “Waiting for Godot” on skates.

It was cold yesterday—we’d decided not to go—but patches of blue were appearing in the sky here and there, and next week is forecast to be colder. We were reading in front of the fire when it suddenly seemed like the perfect time to take a break before the afternoon got too dark.

“Let’s drive down the parkway to the ice shanties,” I said. “Maybe we’ll snag a good parking lot near shore. And if we don’t, we can just call it an afternoon drive and come home.”

By the time we got to Lake Harriet the clouds had returned, but we got lucky with the parking. (In previous years we’ve chosen to park in the neighborhood nearby, usually too far away.) And it wasn’t really that cold. The bad news was that the ice on the lake had only a thin veneer of loose snow on top, and it was slippery. But there were plenty of people wandering around, reading the signs, entering the shanties to warm up, or chatting with the creators about their shacks.

The shanties drawing the largest crowds seemed to be highly interactive. One was a witch’s candy house, inside of which they were concocting some sort of potion. Outside, a second group had formed to recite a curse together—perhaps to rid the city of demonic ICE agents. (Good idea!)

A few shanties away, a three-piece rock band was pounding away aimlessly on some bass guitars, as if they were just learning how to play. But perhaps they were just expressing their frustration that their shanty was located in the far corner of the village, a little off the beaten path.

Inside the Yellow Submarine shanty, you could get a look at images taken at the bottom of Lake Harriet through fake portholes. Not far away, a large group of heavily clothed visitors was square-dancing to a three-piece string band enclosed in a plastic bubble.

promenade left with your left hand ...

The caller was standing on a small stage outside with a mic. “Second-hand left, dosey-doe, and round the corner.” She was good.

A biologist was giving a lecture in the beaver dam house, constructed mostly of thin reed window-blinds. it was too crowded to enter, but we spent some time admiring the colorful papier-mache fish dangling from strings outside, designed to evoke the beaver’s largely underwater habitat.

One shanty focused on the notion of inescapable trade-offs. In order to feed the fire, you had to pull a slab of firewood off the wall outside, thus increasing the draft inside. Another option would be to spend some time outside in the cold, sawing new planks for the walls … or the fire.   

Near the entrance to the village, we passed a booth consisting of a large array of small chalkboards, upon which passers-by had taken the time to complete somewhat personal statements. Most of the statements were phrased as double-negatives, and I had a hard time determining precisely what was being said. For example: “I don’t try to not need ….” One of the answers was “drugs.” A second, scrawled on the same slate, was “financial planning.” Another statement began: “I know I want to not try ….” One of the answers was “gourmet mac and cheese.” A second was “insomnia.”

From first to last, it was a cheery and heartening scene. And the fun continues next weekend. Details here.