Diary

I'm all caught up on my domestic tasks and am pretty much just watching the grass grow now. Three tomato seedlings are doing well inside. The eastern phoebes returned on April 5 and have refurbished their nest above the front porch; the female will probably lay eggs within two weeks. I noticed last fall that they had deposited a small stash of nesting material next to the electric meter on the side of the house, and now that's all gone. The hiking trails in Pittsford are currently a little muddy but walkable. I'm getting somewhat tired of them, except for the Cadwell Trail. There are signs up everywhere saying to keep dogs on leashes at all times, but I think that about half of the people with dogs don't. Very few of the dogs are properly trained, though their owners generally put them on a leash if they see you coming. However, the other day a man was walking along looking at his cell phone while his dog was loose. The dog didn't attack me but was barking and growling, and the man said "She's friendly but just trying to protect me." I said "OK, I won't shoot her." Then he started looking at me to see whether I had a gun (I didn't). Generally, women are more responsible about their dogs. There haven't been any beer parties behind the Congregational Church recently. But now there is trash along all of the roads that is visible since the snow melted.

I usually don't like reading much at this time of year, but I did find another book, The Brontës, by Juliet Barker. The Brontës were definitely an interesting family. I like Emily but am not sure about the others. The Brontës can't be as boring as the Emersons, Thoreaus or Dickinsons (though they may have been mad). This is also part of my imaginary friend project, which I've come to enjoy. When you live in a philistine country, there are significant advantages to learning about people whom you may like but will never actually meet, because they're already dead. Even if they were alive now, you may never have an opportunity to meet them, thus any actual relationship that you had with them would never have a chance to go awry. This gives you the opportunity to indirectly know someone whom you actually like. The reality is that you have a finite life and may or may not meet people whom you enjoy. I often enjoy the people in the biographies I read, and I don't have a fixed model, so there can be pleasant surprises. 

In buying this book, I was surprised that Blackwell's in Oxford charged sixty percent of the Amazon price, including shipping and taxes. This may have to do with the fact that the Brontës aren't trending in the U.S., except for film versions of Wuthering Heights, but are still popular in England. I am starting to worry about the possibility of printed books becoming obsolete. As I wrote earlier, I don't like listening to recorded books, but I also dislike Kindle-style reading on a screen. To some extent, printed books are gradually being phased out, with the exception of old collectibles. While the cognitive disadvantages of Kindle are not as significant as those of voice recordings, it is thought that the absence of physical page-turning with Kindle may cause readers to have difficulty remembering exact chronologies. Generally, I am also concerned that corporations, which have steadily been redefining what counts as good quality in consumer products, are strategically tending to establish lower-cost products as comparable to higher-cost products, while downplaying or ignoring qualitative changes for the worse in their products. 

I usually feel some responsibility to comment on the Trump phenomenon, even though I dislike the topic. I would prefer to say nothing, but will continue to make some remarks. It is so obvious now that he is completely incompetent and corrupt as president that if anyone needs further proof, they should simply be rushed off to a psychiatric ward. To put it in simple terms, Trump is a reality TV/sitcom/Fox News kind of guy who doesn't know that the world is on a different script from him. It is astounding how little he comprehends about what he should be doing. But we are still in the early stages of the collapse of MAGA, and it is only a matter of time.