"Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge"

 J and I are going to the game this Sunday. 

It wasn't even remotely on my radar until yesterday. I had only been concerned about when the game would be held. (I couldn't watch the wild card round because I was stuck playing a concert.)

I was relieved when the schedule came out and the Bills weren't in the Saturday night slot, but didn't think anything of the fact that I could not only watch the game, but I might actually even be able to attend. 

Pax was the one who put the idea into my head. He asked if I'd like to go with him, and that turned into a flurry of seeing how many tickets were available and affordable.

Some of you may know that we promised the boys that if we read 500 books as a family over the past year that we would take everyone to a Bills game. 

We were over that mark before the season even started, and Owen probably read 500 just on his own. But then we looked at the schedule (we could only make the Chiefs game happen with work schedules) and the prices (I used to be able to get tickets for $7 each when the Bills were bad) and had to walk back the promise. 

And we really couldn't afford five tickets for Sunday...but we could swing two.

I delivered the news as gently as I could to the boys. Owen had a good sulk in his room. It really is unfair.

In our very slight defense, it could be out to be the worst night ever if we end up staying out in the dark in single digit temperatures only to have the Bills lose. (And, as J pointed out, the Inauguration as the thing we're waking up to on the following day.)

But I think this team is different. I think this year is different. And, crucially, J and I are going to help. We're going to help incite some false starts from all the way up in the 300 section.

Go Bills.

"How is it that the clouds still hang on you?"

I've never appreciated what a cloudy place Rochester, NY is in the winter until I've had a telescope.

We just got back from Pennsylvania. I could've at least brought my small telescope down but opted not to because I didn't want to be crammed to the gills with baggage and Christmas presents. (As J later pointed out, I would've had all of the room that her suitcases were taking off since we dropped her off at Dulles before returning.)

The sky in Hanover was incredible. There was immediately less light pollution, the temperature felt positively balmy, and there were two perfectly clear nights without even any moonlight obscuring the stars. I showed Jupiter and Saturn to two of my little nephews and wished that I'd brought a telescope down with me.

Even on the drive back to Rochester I was aware of how clear the skies were as it began to get dark. It was dark and clear at the border, dark and clear in Corning, and dark and clear in Geneseo. And it was dark and cloudy in Rochester. And cold.

Last night I had a late afternoon rehearsal, and it was, as ever, cloudy. I actually fell asleep in the backseat of my carpool. I awoke just as we were pulling into the Victor park and ride. Just above some fir trees, gloriously, was Venus right next to a waxing crescent moon. All else was obscured by clouds, but just for one patch of sky there was a glorious sight. I drove home planning on getting out as soon as possible. By the time I got back it had all clouded over again.

Part of this is on me. If I really wanted to see some stars I could go out with a mug of tea and wait for cloud breaks. I'm out running at about 6 AM most mornings, and I can usually find a patch of sky somewhere with at least a little visibility.

But it's hard to want to go stand outside in the cold and to just get colder and colder. I'll do it, eventually.

But it would help if Rochester wasn't so cloudy. (And cold.)

2024 Reading

Apparently I never published my 2023 reading? (Maybe I'll try to find that list at home and put it up...)

January

Somebody's Fool (Russo)

Post Captain (O'Brian)

Strong Poison (Sayers)

Self, World, and Time (O'Donovan)

The World According to Bertie (McCall-Smith)

Powder Burn (Hiaasen)

The Five Red Herrings (Sayers)

The Name of the Wind (Rothfuss)

Nathan Coulter (Berry)

The King's Rangers (Brick)

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (McCall-Smith)

The Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde)

The Major and the Missionary (Lewis/Biggs/Pavlac)

The Place of the Lion (Williams)

Pilgrims (Keillor)

Andy Catlett: Early Travels (Berry)

Paradise Lost (Milton)

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemmingway (Hemmingway)

The Wars of the Roses (Jones)

HMS Surprise (O'Brian)

Ninety Percent Mental (Tewksbury)

Pride and Prejudice (Austen)

The Black Book (Durrell)

February

From a Far and Lovely Country (McCall-Smith)

Catch-22 (Heller)

The Book of Three (Alexander)

The Mauritius Command (O'Brian)

The Wise Man's Fear (Rothfuss)

Knots and Crosses (Rankin)

Doctor Thorne (Trollope)

ΉΡΟΤΟΔΟΣ ΊΣΤΟΡΙΩΝ ΠΡΩΤΗ ΚΛΕΙΩ (Herotodus, in Greek)

Desolation Island (O'Brian)

Going Infinite (Lewis)

Whalefall (Kraus) Dumbest Book of the Year Award Winner

A Pattern Language (Alexander)

Bridge to Terabithia (Paterson)

March

The Importance of Being Seven (McCall-Smith)

Watership Down (Adams)

Bertie Plays the Blues (McCall-Smith)

Into Thin Air (Krakauer)

The Fortune of War (O'Brian)

1 ΙΛΙΑΔΟΣ (Homer, in Greek)

St. Francis of Assisi (Chesterton)

The Neverending Story (Ende)

Have His Carcase (Sayers)

Slow Horses (Herron)

Iberia (Michener)

Rebel (Cornwell)

Sunshine on Scotland Street (McCall-Smith)

The Highly Sensitive Person (Aron)

C. Plinii Epistularum (Liber 8) (Pliny, in Latin)

The Running Grave (Galbraith)

The Surgeon's Mate (O' Brian)

April

Framley Parsonage (Trollope) 

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare)

Copperhead (Cornwell)

Comet in Moominland (Jansson)

Finn Family Moomintroll (Jansson)

The Ionian Mission (O'Brian)

Agincourt (Cornwell)

The Architecture of Happiness (de Botton)

Tooth and Nail (Rankin)

Hide and Seek (Rankin) 

Dark Summit (Heil)

1356 (Cornwell)

2 ΙΛΙΑΔΟΣ (Homer, in Greek)

The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Fitzgerald)

The Archer's Tale (Cornwell)

The Cuckoo's Calling (Galbraith)

The Oldest Enigma of Humanity (David/Lefrere)

The Winter's Tale (Shakespeare)

Battle Flag (Cornwell)

Ilium (Carpenter)

Pliny Epistulae-IX (Pliny, in Latin)

Treason's Harbour (O'Brian)

The Silkworm (Galbraith)

A Shropshire Lad (Housman)

Dead Lions (Herron)

May

Vagabond (Cornwell)

The Goshawk (White)

Dead Souls (Herron)

The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare)

The List (Herron)

The Bloody Ground (Cornwell)

The Demon of Unrest (Larson)

Standing by the Wall (Herron)

The Tempest (Shakespeare)

Career of Evil (Galbraith)

No Way Down (Bowley)

The Anxious Generation (Haidt)

Lethal White (Galbraith)

Five Children and It (Nesbit)

La Ferme des Animaux (Orwell, in French)

Real Tigers (Herron)

The Wife of Bath (Turner)

June

A Room With a View (Forster)

Moominpappa's Memoirs (Jansson)

Heretic (Cornwell)

The Clan of Cave Bear (Auel)

Moominsummer Madness (Jansson)

3 ΙΛΙΑΔΟΣ (Homer, in Greek)

The Far Side of the World (O'Brian)

Moominland Midwinter (Jansson)

Tales from Moominvalley (Jansson)

Danger Goes Berserk (Barnett)

Tip of the Iceberg (Adams)

The Valley of Horses (Auel)

The Fort (Cornwell)

Spook Street (Herron)

Troubled Blood (Galbraith)

Wolf Hall (Mantel)

Caligula: A Biography (Winterling)

Moominpappa at Sea (Jansson)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (LeCarre)

July

Northeaster (Pelletier)

The Mammoth Hunters (Auel)

Sharpe's Tiger (Cornwell)

Pliny Epistulae X (Pliny, in Latin)

A Delicate Truth (LeCarre)

Moominvalley in November (Jansson)

The Ink Black Heart (Galbraith)

The Shadow of Vesuvius (Dunn)

Joe Country (Herron)

Catullus' Bedspread (Dunn)

Slough House (Herron)

Bad Actors (Herron)

All Hands on Deck (Sofrin)

Trap Line (Hiaasen)

Forsaken Country (Eskens)

Slow Horses (Herron)

Ghost Lover (Taddeo)

4 ΙΛΙΑΔΟΣ (Homer, in Greek)

The Running Grave (Galbraith)

August

Sharpe's Triumph (Cornwell)

Chernobyl (Plokhy)

The Summer Book (Jansson)

A Murder of Quality (LeCarre)

The Reverse of the Medal (O'Brian)

Insane City (Barry)

A Long Way from Chicago (Peck)

Les Marrons du Feu (Musset, in French)

All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque)

Grand Hotel (Baum)

Sensitive (Granneman/Solo)

The Bounty Mutiny (Bligh)

The Parthenon Marbles (Hitchens)

Canal Town (Hopkins Adams)

In My Time of Dying (Junger)

Rules of Attraction (Easton Ellis)

A Fever in the Heartland (Egan)

The Beast Within (Zola)

Noel Coward Collected Plays vol. 4 (Coward)

The Stolen Hours (Eskens)

Disarmed (Curtis)

Genuine Fakes (Pyne)

Back to Blood (Wolfe)

Glamorama (Easton Ellis)

How to Know a Person (Brooks)

September

The Letter of Marque (O'Brian)

Saving Emma (Eskens)

The Fury (Michaelides)

Metamorphoses XI (Ovid, in Latin)

American Psycho (Easton Ellis)

Vacuum in the Dark (Beagin)

Howl's Moving Castle (Wynne Jones)

Seeing in the Dark (Ferris)

The Westing Game (Raskin)

The Thirteen Gun Salute (O'Brian)

Alien (Foster)

How Science Taught Leonardo to Paint (Fiorani)

Breaking Free of Childhood Anxiety and OCD (Lebowitz)

ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ (in Greek)

Music in Medieval Europe (Yudkin)

ΦΑΙΔΡΟΣ (Plato, in Greek)

La Nuit Venitienne (Musset, in French)

The Secret Hours (Eskens)

5 ΙΛΙΑΔΟΣ (Homer, in Greek)

October

Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (Bukofzer)

How Green Was My Valley (Llewellyn)

Pure Colour (Heti)

Metamporphoses XII (Ovid, in Latin)

The Nutmeg of Consolation (O'Brian)

Bertie's Guide to Life and Mothers (McCall-Smith)

ΠΡΟΣ ΡΩΜΑΙΟΥΣ (in Greek)

Pro Cluentio (Cicero, in Latin)

The Study of Fugue (Mann)

The Princess Bride (Goldman)

Down Cemetery Road (Herron)

6 ΙΛΙΑΔΟΣ (Homer, in Greek)

Assyria (Frahm)

The Truelove (O'Brian)

The Great Hippopotamus Hotel (McCall-Smith)

The Last Voice You Hear (Eskens)

Macbeth (Shakespeare)

November

Why We Drive (Crawford)

La Coupe et les Levres (Musset, in French)

Lessons from Lucy (Barry)

ΠΡΑΞΕΙΣ (in Greek)

Metamorphoses XIII (Ovid, in Latin)

The Trumpet of the Swan (White)

The Wine-Dark Sea (O'Brian)

Oliver Twist (Dickens)

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Book of Confessions

ΕΠΙΣΤΟΛΗ ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΥ (Demosthenes, in Greek)

Nobody Walks (Herron)

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming (Brown)

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Book of Order

Shop Class as Soul Craft (Crawford)

7 ΙΛΙΑΔΟΣ (Homer, in Greek)

A Craftsman's Legacy (Gorges)

Moon Observer's Guide (Grego)

Sharpe's Fortress (Cornwell)

The Commodore (O'Brian)

The Unsettling of America (Berry)

The Centaur (Updike)

2025 Mandate for Leadership

December

Brazil (Updike)

A Biological Study of Irondequoit Bay (Haynes)

In a Flight of Starlings (Parisi)

Sharpe's Trafalgar (Cornwell)

Metamorphoses XIV (Ovid, in Latin)

Tutankhamun's Trumpet (Wilkinson)

The Yellow Admiral (O'Brian)

What the Robin Knows (Young)

The Sun in the Church (Heilbron)

Sharpe's Prey (Cornwell)

What an Owl Knows (Ackerman)

In the Spell of the Barkley (Panhuysen)

8 ΙΛΙΑΔΟΣ (Homer, in Greek)

The Hundred Days (O'Brian)

As You Like It (Shakespeare)

Freya of the Seven Isles (Conrad)

The War Between the Tates (Lurie)

"Some say that e'er 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated This bird of dawning singeth all night long"

"It is in the old story that all the beasts can talk, in the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the morning, though there are very few folk that can hear them, or know what they say."

Beatrix Potter, "The Tailor of Gloucester"

Catullus the sparrow-cock peered out from his nest in the eaves. It had been an unusually warm day after two brutal weeks of frost and wind. Although there was yet another layer of new snow on the ground, this stuff was wet and heavy, unlike the glittering powder that had blown into his nest hour after hour on Midwinter-day several days ago. 

Lesbia spoke, and Catullus popped around in amazement. The enchantment of the old magic had taken hold again as the sun was setting, and he twitched his head in that darting, instantaneous manner of listening sparrows as he tried to process what his wife was saying.

"The little men-children have made an idol! A great idol in the snow!"

Catullus peered out again and saw a grotesque image of a bull-human with sticks for arms and stones for eyes piled up in muddy snow of the backyard. He flitted down to the wire, circled the snow-image twice, and then flew back up to Lesbia.

"An image! An image! It has an old flowerpot for a hat, and driveway gravel for eyes!"

Catullus saw some of his neighbors emerging from the other corners of the yard and flew down to consult with the cardinals.

Dr. Mr. Cardinal had already seen the snow-image and assured Catullus that he had overheard the men-children talking of it while they piled it up in the morning.

"It is what they call a 'gune' in their language. I intend to write a paper on 'snow-gunes' and to read it at my college once I've studied it further."

"It isn't a snow-gune, it isn't a snow-gune!" called his excited wife, Dr. Mrs. Cardinal. "It is the image of one of their athletes, I'm sure of it! Every day these men-children pretended to be football athletes in the backyard, and now they made an image of one!"

Catullus left the cardinals to their argument and lit down beside one of the rabbits which was nosing around in some of the grass that the men-children had exposed, and nibbling at some still-green clover that poked up. A boar-squirrel was also poking through the muddy snow, looking for food.

"Do you know what's odd?" asked the rabbit, a third-year named Rosemallow. "The bull-human has been home all day today. He left for a bit in his suit, but then he was back just over an hour later. He's never home on the enchanted night. He's always out playing that metal noisemaker all around the city until well after the moon is up, and even then some."

The boar-squirrel nodded in agreement. "Aye, there've been nights in years past when he's been gone for more of the darkness than he was home for. What do you suppose it is that he does with that noisemaker?"

Catullus and Lesbia had wondered that same thing.

"We think," said Catullus, "that it's his employment, just as the employment of owls is to catch the mice, and the employment of crows is to squawk and argue, and the employment of robins is to eat slimy, wriggling worms."

"But how could that awful racket that he makes be of any use to anyone?"

"I know how," said Caelius, a house sparrow from behind the hedge "I saw one of his performances once. I think that he plays on his noisemaker in front of a large crowd of other humans, sometimes with lots of other noisemakers as well. And then the audience humans are trapped, and they pay our bull-human money so that he'll stop making such an awful racket."

"Hmm," said Rosemallow, "can't they just run away?"

"I don't think so," said Caelius. "I think the doors are locked. And that must be why everyone stands up and claps their hands once the noise is over--they're all relieved to finally be free!"

Catullus wondered aloud, "He isn't sick, is he? I've heard that he's nearly forty winters old!"

Rosemallow nodded. "I think that's true, but you must keep in mind that men age differently. A human being, even at forty winters, is still of some use, at least. He probably still has some of his teeth, and it seems like he can see well enough--for a human, that is, although of course he can't smell or listen anything like we can. I don't think he's dying. His mate seems glad to have him home this year, at any rate."

The little circle of animals chatted some more, but the temperature was dropping rapidly and there was always the danger of the fox passing through. Catullus returned to Lesbia and the safety of their nest in the eaves.

She nestled down next to him and asked, "Shall we remember the story together again this year?"

"Once upon a time, many generations ago, there were some sparrows who lived in a stable..."

"I will be brief. Your noble son is mad."

 I finished my choir rehearsal, dismissed everyone to go find their robes, and started making my way into the sanctuary last Sunday morning. I saw the church treasurer on the way.

"I really like my ornament!" 

Seeing that I was expected to understand whatever this meant, I gave her a nod and a smile. Yes, I was very happy for her. Then one of the other Junior Choir parents caught my eye.

"I'm all set with my ornament now!"

"Oh?" I asked, "you're good now?"

"Yes," she grinned "I'm all set!"

I smiled back and continued into the sanctuary. I grabbed a bulletin, returned the smiles of several other church members, and looked around to see where the boys might be.

They are completely unsupervised for an hour before church. I'm running a choir rehearsal and childcare hasn't started yet, so they know to play foosball in the youth room or to look through books in the library. James and Owen ambled in, but there was no sign of Felix, although several people held up ribbons to me by way of greeting as I scanned the sanctuary.

My stomach sank.

I found him out by the front door of the church. He'd taken his shoes off for some reason and was busy with a crowd of "customers." He'd (apparently) packed a wooden cigar box full of ornaments and was offering them for sale to everyone coming into the church.

"10 cents each, but you can just give me a dollar!" was his pricing model.

He had a pile of cash in the cigar box. (Next to his Guide to New York State Birds and a toy flashlight, of course.)

We made a brief round of his previous customers to see if anyone wanted a refund once they discovered that this charitable endeavor was only to benefit "The Felix Fund," but it seems that everyone who had already made purchases was happy to support my 7-year old entrepeneur.

"Your leave and favor to return to France"

 When Notre Dame burned in 2019, J and I were struck with particular horror. We had been in the building the previous summer on our first trip to France. We'd toured the crypt, we'd attended a vespers service, and we'd both been deeply moved by both the weight of history before our eyes and the very real, very live reading of the psalm about "nations gathering in the temple" as tourists made their way around the sanctuary. 

Cathedral architecture is one of those subjects like sailing or astronomy that seems to consume those who get a taste of it and can lead them to laying out enormous sums of money for obscure pleasures that other people would probably regard as punishments, like standing in line to climb a narrow staircase just to look at some dusty rafters somewhere in the north of England in winter.

I'm aware that I'm curious.

But I'm genuinely curious, informed about the architecture or not, to see the inside of Notre Dame again. And I also want to hear a grand cathedral service again. 

I found a great free app (after several failed attempts to load a massive pdf document on my kindle) that is basically an index of the Liber Usualis. It's a calendar-referenced library of the entire chant tradition of Western Christianity, and it's become an every day part of my morning. 

I am (mostly) reading chant notation fluently now, and am even working on a service at church where we'll have all plainsong instead of congregational singing by rewriting the service music in a way that the choir can guide a Presbyterian congregation through the day's chants in modern notation. (It helps that we can project Latin translations on our big screen.)

It's evident from the re-opening photos that Notre Dame will be different the next time we see it. But, like so many other aspects of life in France, the modern update is still enchanted with magic of the past. And we can't wait to see it and hear it again.

“But where was this?” “My Lord, upon the platform where we watch.”

Last weekend I took Owen and Felix to the bay. It was late afternoon and already almost dark, but Felix has gone full throttle into birding over the past month and I wanted to show him some of the waterfowl before the bay freezes over. 

We hiked up one our regular Lucien Morin park routes but then turned back north to climb to the top of a hill that overlooks Empire Boulevard and the bay where we would usually go down into the wetlands and the park. We were skirting the top of the ridge between K2 Brewing and BarBill, and even as the sun continued to sink we could see hundreds of gulls sitting out on the mud flats where the water had gone down and left the winter ooze behind.

It was cold and windy up as high as we were, but Felix dutifully searched with his binoculars and his Junior Birder book while Owen poked around in the scrubby brush with his metal detector. 

I helped Felix find some ducks, identify a couple of gull species, and then pulled out my telescope. The boys were climbing up and down the dirt escarpments now, and Owen was whooping with excitement about having found a cross carved into an old stump. (I think he was enjoying the echo that his voice made in the hollow space before the tree line started.)

“Hey boys, come look at this!”

I had looked right past them the first time I looked over the area, but smack in my telescope now were two bald eagles perched on some grounded driftwood. 

Owen shrieked so loud that I was afraid he’d scare them off. Felix immediately looked for the bald eagles in his Birder book. 

“Dad, guess what! There’s something for you to know! I think that one of those bald eagles…is a genitive bald eagle!” 

“A genitive bald eagle?”

“Yeah, you can see its head isn’t all the way white yet, but it isn’t a baby anymore either. Yup, it’s a genitive.” 

“Oh, you mean a juvenile—“

“You’re right, Felix! It is a genitive bald eagle. I LOVE HAVING ADVENTURES!!!”