Cracking the Corn

Actually, the corn is already cracked; I buy it that way! Since it snowed on Christmas Eve and the following two nights we have some snow cover. But today it is melting fast. You can see the greedy and overpopulated mallards in the foreground, and wood ducks toward the back, with a of American Wigeon in the upper left and one below them cut off by the edge. This picture was taken on Christmas Day. jjhymasfoto

And here we are in the Neglected Blog Zone, working on the fifth post of this year, with one more day to reach my year-end goal of doubling the three posts made earlier. I have missed doing these short essays, and thinking about poetry and the feedback. But it has been quite a nutty year, with a lot of changes. Here comes 2018!

Boise is getting ready for the Big Potato Drop again at midnight tomorrow. But this year, I might not stay up for it. . .

I am now reading the new biography of Henry David Thoreau in paper by Laura Dassow Walls. It is from the University of Chicago and thus a mighty tome to hold. 500 pages of actual text and all the usual notes and equipage besides. It has been a long time since I have worked on such a heavy book. I read many things on Kindle and this year again have been reading much poetry, in lighter volumes.

I came back to Thoreau because of one of the most unexpectadly delightful books I have encountered this year, John McPhee's Survival of the Bark Canoe, which came out in 1982 and has finally answered my question: Which side of the bark is out on a birchbark canoe. I'll write about this book tomorrow, but it led me back to Thoreau and The Maine Woods.