Journal of a Sabbatical

April 10, 2000

off day

Today's Reading: Early Spring in Massachusetts: from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H. G. O. Blake

Today's Starting Pitcher:
Sox are off today - open at home tomorrow!!! Spring!!!! Unless it snows, which is forecast.

Shanti goes to her new home, barn that is, tomorrow morning. Go Shanti! After the Purrfect Companions meeting, I spent some time crouched on the floor next to her cage saying good-bye to her. She came toward me and sniffed my hand, but still wouldn't let me pet her. Her new gig as a barn cat should suit her really well. I'll miss her a little bit, but I'm thrilled that she has a place of her own where she can sit in the sun and chase the mice and all the things she likes to do. I really hope this works out and she doesn't get returned again.

Meeting in the office is weird, but the conference room is still a sick room full of cats with upper respiratory infections. Stockton and Zorro were hanging out in the office during our meeting. Stockton sniffed us, walked around, scratched at things - even though he's declawed :-( - and jumped on things. Zorro huddled in a narrow space between the computer and box of our new Purrfect Companions brochures.

Spring peepers were almost deafeningly loud outside in the marsh behind the shelter. This is the first time I've heard them this year. Martha says they've been calling for weeks now and that I probably don't have them in North Andover. That's for sure. All there seems to be in North Andover these days is more and more executive homes.

Earlier in the afternoon I had a long conversation with Tom about Thoreau's journals. Tom is somewhat of an Emerson scholar, so we chatted about the whole transcendentalist Concord scene and what it must have been like to have minds like Emerson and Thoreau in the same town. I guess it's not only the physical landscape that's changed since then, but the cultural landscape too.