Blog o’ Gnosis

This is the worst week of the year: the week when every radio announcer and third-rate journalist announces the arrival next week of “the first day of summer.” June 21 is the Summer Solstice, also known as Midsummer. As in mid-summer, or the mid-point of summer. In other words, the middle of summer. Not the first day, the middle day. How difficult is this?

I love watching birds, and I want to know more about them. What I want to avoid is having to learn about them, specifically studying birds from books. I tried that last Fall, when I bought about the smallest birding primer you’ve ever seen, about 3″ x 3″ square, called Birdwatching For Dummies. It’s got a large font size, generous line spacing, and only 120 pages. I am still only halfway through it, and I can accurately report that I haven’t retained any information from my read of the first half. This is probably some sort of undiagnosed handicap of mine, but fortunately I have developed a couple workarounds.