I recognized none of the birdsong I heard walking home tonight. The daunting Birds of Michigan (Auburn, WA: Lone Pine Publishing, 2003) makes you feel like such a nitwit when you open it up and see meticulous descriptions of the calls and songs of hundreds of Michigan birds.

The Eastern kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus—what a great Linnaean name) has a call that is described as a “quick, loud, chattering kit-kit-kitter-kitter; also a buzzy dzee-dzee-dzee.” How can you tell the “kitters” from the “dzees”?

The black-throated blue warbler (Dendroica caerulescens) has a song that is a “slow, wheezy I am soo lay-zeee, rising slowly throughout; call is a short tip.”

LeConte’s sparrow (Ammodramus leconteii) has a “weak, short, raspy, insect-like buzz: t-t-zeeee zee or take-it ea-zeee.”

Here’s the American goldfinch (Carduelis tristis): “song is a long, varied series of trills, twitters, warbles and hissing notes; calls include po-ta-to-chip or per-chic-or-ee (often delivered in flight) and a whistled dear-me, see-me.”

And the (male) red-eyed vireo (Vireo olivaceus): “song is a continuous, variable, robinlike run of quick, short phrases with distinct pauses in between: Look-up, way-up, tree-top, see-me, here-I-am!”

Now how is anyone who hasn’t been a birdwatcher for years supposed to distinguish calls using those descriptions? I guess the answer is: You’re not. You learn by listening, not reading.

The only call I thought I recognized tonight was a couple of distinctive hooot hooot sounds from what may have been a mourning dove (Zenaida macroura) somewhere behind the house.

Weird how eerily quiet it was tonight ….. except for the occasional sound of what had to be firecrackers in the distance. Is today some holiday that I’m not aware of?

My first time in the Fine Arts Library in Tappan Hall today. It’s a smaller library than the behemoths next door, but it’s got its charms. There’s a nice, extensive reference room, and across a landing, there’s two floors of stacks (deserted when I visited today). I didn’t find the James Gillray books I was looking for, but I did snag a nice Caravaggio volume.

Crazy Wisdom Books on 114 South Main is worth a visit at least once.

They’re well-stocked. They have two floors, one with a fairly decent selection of metaphysical and “alternative religion” (pagan, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) books, though the inventory within each category is not as deep as the amount of categories is wide, and the second floor with a cafe-type space, a meeting room, and an assortment of yoga and meditation materials. There is the usual new-age store bric-a-brac, including every type of incense you would want (yes, Nag Champa included), candles, tarot cards, and other fine products. The music was determinedly Celtic (or faux-Celtic), with a lot of fiddles and flutes and female-voiced ululations, and the store employees were determinedly businesslike.

They had, near the front door, a shelf with a number of prominently-displayed anti-Bush books. This is par for the course in Ann Arbor, naturally, but I’m fascinated by the concept of a “spirituality” bookstore jumping on the partisan bandwagon. I suppose they’re only doing what every other bookstore in their position would do, but it still seems incongruous that customers coming in looking for a little zen or centering or whatever would also want to take home a little political red meat with their $16.00 peace-to-the-world-in-20-languages candle. Just one more example of the “divided electorate,” I guess.

For a new age store, they were about the grumpiest, sourest bunch I’ve ever encountered. I suppose they aren’t paid very much to dust the Goddess figurines and Tibetan prayer squares they’re required to attend to. Also, people weren’t lining up out the door to purchase stuff. And, on a cynical note, recent events in the world haven’t exactly encouraged belief in the supernatural.

But if you can’t find good humor and lightness of soul in a New Age bookshop, where, for crying out loud, can you find it?

Apparently everyone’s not universally thrilled with the new Seattle Public Library.

A blog called Caminothoughts opines:

Will it take half the electricity production of the Skagit River dams just to keep the greenhouse-like building at a tolerable temperature during a warm and sunny summer? This afternoon with a little sun and a large number of visitors, it was close to uncomfortable. Will the stench of the unwashed street people who will soon call the library home, several of them were walking around looking for a place to settle when I visited today, make the air all but unbreathable unless the library becomes a ventilation wind tunnel as its continuous floor plan will facilitate? Will the escalators work, and if so will they become a noise generator just like the escalators in the old central library? Will noise levels in the vast hard-surfaced spaces make the building an aurally uncomfortable place to be, let alone allow it to be a decent place to read, think, and do research?

A Live Journal user chimes in:

On a rainy day like yesterday—and Seattle has plenty of rainy days—the lighting was inadequate, the space gloomy, the area under the slab dim. Yet because it’s the floor that looks up on the vaulted enclosure it somehow manages to be uncomfortable to agoraphobics and claustrophobics alike. All that exposed glass, already covered with sticky children’s pawprints, must be a maintenence nightmare. And the escalators manage to combine the worst of airport sensibilities with creepy Disney-gone-horribly-wrong permanent multimedia “exhibits”. The floor is stainless steel plate held down with machine screws.

I can remember similar critiques of the new San Francisco Main building when it opened in 1996: sterile, cluastrophobic, cold, menacing, unpleasant, a magnet for the homeless. None of which is an invalid criticism.

But it’s a public building. A public library. What design features would have made the library building less enticing to the homeless? Are public libraries supposed to have homeless detectors or security guards at the front door to throw the bums out on their rear ends? Would it be better to have a sign on the front of the building saying “Seattle Public (NON–HOMELESS) Library”?

Oh, and we can’t have “exposed glass” because it will attract “sticky children’s pawprints.” I guess we should just toss the kids out of the library while we’re at it. Libraries are supposed to be antiseptic, germ-free, humanity-free caverns of research and learning, after all.

Maybe the best library model would be one based on the Thatcher Memorial Library in “Citizen Kane.” Thompson, the reporter, has to get an appointment to use the library, in which no books are visible except the single one that Thompson has had to place a request to view. The stern, bun-wearing librarian, Bertha, informs Thompson that he is to read only pages 83 to 142 of the selected volume and tartly tells him, “You will be required to leave this room at 4:30 promptly.”

[First quote courtesy Librarian.net; second courtesy LISNews.]

It just started pouring rain. Forget what I said.

We went to Tios the other night. Very good Mexican restaurant (odd location, though, across the street from the Ann Arbor News building and nothing else around it). The atmosphere was pretty laid-back, the rows and rows of chili bottles lining the walls was a nice touch, and the food, though a little too rich for my increasingly cranky stomach lining, was excellent (and the portions huge).

We went to Seva (a vegetarian restaurant at 314 E. Liberty) last night. Also very good. Actually, excellent. Steve had a bowl of some of the best tomato soup I’ve ever tasted and a breakfast-type plate, I had quesadillas. And a piece of carrot cake. On a related note, a Canadian on some vegetarian discussion list snootily called this restaurant “an oasis in the midst of ‘Nugentland,’” as though the rest of Ann Arbor were nothing but gun racks and road kill. I love Canada, and good ol’ AA may be overrated, but come on.

The New York Times has an amusing article today about blogging. It’s essentially the same idea as most articles or mainstream media treatments these days. Blogging is an addiction (therefore morally suspect), people sit on the toilet and blog into their laptops for hours (even on their anniversaries!!!) and ruin their relationships, people who blog have no lives outside of blogging (so why do they have jobs and relationships, then?), bloggers are only read by immediate family and a few weird lurkers and strangers, people who blog are so obsessed with their activity that they’ll opt to blog instead of doing paying work, etc., etc., etc.

Yes, bloggers are truly a scourge. In this paragraph, the Times encourages the identification of blogging with other unidentified nasty, pernicious, antisocial habits:

Blogging is a pastime for many, even a livelihood for a few. For some, it becomes an obsession. Such bloggers often feel compelled to write several times daily and feel anxious if they don’t keep up. As they spend more time hunkered over their computers, they neglect family, friends and jobs. They blog at home, at work and on the road. They blog openly or sometimes, like Mr. Wiggins, quietly so as not to call attention to their habit.

As Steve points out, if blogs are so unsavory, why did the Times article link to six of them?

The sun seems to be making a reappearance the past two days. It’s in and out, but it’s definitely there. I would say I guess the worst of the rainy weather is over, but I know better anymore than to hazard any guesses about Michigan weather.