Wednesday, August 25, 2010

cormorants et alia

wednesday 25 August 2010 turners loons


Well, yesterday I noticed that the cable strung across the river, held on either side by two utility poles, is suddenly gone. It was still there Saturday. For more years than I know of (at least since 2000), the cormorants have been using that cable to perch on, as it gives them a wide vista of sky and river and aids in their fishing. Well yesterday it was gone, and the cormorants were all perched much lower down on the string of ugly buoys that keeps the drunken boat operators from sailing over the dam. Really a terrible fishing position for them. So I wonder if the flaming, empty-headed yuppies have decided that they not only don't like Canadian geese getting on the land and walking about, but they don't like cormorants sitting on cables, either. And there must be a hell of lot more flaming yuppies working for the electric company than there used to be, because they didn't USED to do the kinds of things they're doing to animals THIS year... Don't know whether we have any varieties of AVIAN loons in this burg, but we certainly have a huge selection of the human type.




(this ain't a cormorant, it's a crow. but cormorants are black here, and this is what was handy. in slightly different tones, it was done by susan dorf. you can see it at www.gaelsong.com)

And today? Today is the 25th anniversary of the very first time I moved to this town called Turners Falls. I thought a lot about that day last night, when I was trying to fall asleep. It seemed so innocent. Moving into an apartment in a town I'd never heard of, living there for a few years to do grad school, then going back east where I came from. How bad could it be? How much damage could a few years do? What were these people like? I thought they'd be more or less like the people I grew up around, people who were also citizens of a small town in Massachusetts. Innocent idiot, I was totally ignorant that day of the huge chasm between the western mass small-town psyche and that of the east. Night and day. A descent into palpable ignorance, jovially practiced meanness, and generationally entrenched pride in their backwardness.

How can you know on a certain day that seems to have minimal, manageable consequences embedded within it, that that day is actually the day that will lead to the destruction of your life and of everyone you love? That that day will sink you into an ever-thickening miasma of human meanness and aggression and stupidity? I've said elsewhere on this blog: I despise these twisted people.
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all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved.

2 comments:

Babs said...

My thoughts are with you on this dark 25th anniversary. They will probably never comprehend the pain that they have caused you but as the wheel of fortune turns perhaps they will someday find themselves on the downside and suffer a similar lack of compassion.

nemo said...

Thanks, Babs, for your moral support. I certainly long for great suffering for ALL of them, every single day.