Bird Walk Today 1:00 P. M.

   “A tufted titmouse just flew in,” says a bird watcher. “Down to the ground.”

   We are standing in the F parking lot at Blue Marsh Lake. About 19 of the 20 people in attendance use binoculars or cameras. The group is well indoctrinated.  There is an odd one out.

  According to the group leader, Joan Silagy, there is one Yellow Throated warbler flitting around among the pine warblers. She wants us to see it, because it exists and because it is rare in Berks county in December and January.

   “He should be in Jamaica,” says Silagy.

   She has been keeping watch for the bird. She report a blue jay with a deep wound in its chest has been here for a week, surviving a probable hawk attack. She has been stocking the suet and peanut butter holders at a few pine trees at F parking lot.

   I ask what makes the ting-ting bird sound we hear and the answer is: juncos. Having trained myself to watch herons, which are big birds that can be seen with the naked eye, it never occurred to me to bring looking glasses. As I look out over the icy snowy lake and landscape in the background the thought of going into the lake in two months for Marsh Madness March 19 comes to the forefront.

   “What if you put jelly with the peanut butter?” asks one of the members of the group.

May I Draw You a Map?

 Good morning!

   The Democratic Party, led by Chairman Tom Herman meet today at the Liberty #1 fire company of Sinking Spring. Ninety-seven per cent of firefighters are volunteers.

   I am sorry for your loss. I am deeply sorry for your loss.

   Before  going any further, let’s pause for one moment to thank Senator Michael A. O’Pake for his work and for setting the bar so high, so long.

   And let us be.

   Reading is hurting. Berks is healing. We are mending. Reading is changing. Berks is growing, We are waiting.

  We live within the boundaries of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the wilderness of Penn’s Woods. We live in the information age. We have everything! Anything and everything are at our fingertips. Touch a button, flick a switch, here it is! Why are we bewildered? We’re broke. Let’s fix it.

      Let us be in a state of readiness. Let us be Reading: willing and able. Let us be the Berks that works! Let us create the district that delivers! 

   Pride and prejudice, move aside. Reading and Berks can head in a direction that works.

   Little things make a big difference. Little things add up. People count.

   One person. A door. A mentor. A house, a book, a library. One look. A word. One side of the street. A flower, a forest; a deed, a misdeed. One note, a melody, a tune.

  One seed matters. So do a union, a rivet,  an idea. One block. One brick. An area, yours and mine.

   A thief, one night, a thief in the night. An hour, a minute. The thunder that comes with lightning.

   A prayer. A lick and a promise. A bird with a broken wing.

   One smile, a teacher, an apple; One day makes a difference.

   A handshake. A trembling lip.

   The absence of one parent.

   The presence of mind to take care. 

   We are west of the Delaware river and east of the center line. Center of the 13 colonies, we are the heart of the nation. If you go east enough you will come to this Mississipi; go west to reach Philadelphia, a long way off.

   Reading and Berks are heading in a direction that works!

   Pennsylvania is not the first state, the volunteer state or the show me state. What is to stop us – Berksylvania and the People’s Republic of Reading – from being the first place in the state to voluntarily show the way on the path to peace and prosperity?

   A place where the home arts and the industrial arts meet the fine arts.    Where education, health and human services enrich all our lives.

  We live in a county called the Green Diamond where farming and house framing combine and compete. Agricultural preservation helps us grow green and and the construction industry builds us up. In our gritty city, if the rubble is not removed, renovated or repaired, we will make it pay somehow. We got green and we got grunge.

   Berks is engineering, model railroading, monopolizing, capitalizing and socializing. Reading stands for readiness. Reading is situated at the pitcher’s mound. Berks is all around. Do you step up to the plate? 

   Check the map: Morgantown and Caernarvon are home. Hereford is first base.

   Who’s on first?

   Albany – at second – and Bethel, third.

   Do you want to go home? Do you want to be safe?

   Where do you want to go from here? This map is for you. Here is a map.

Carriage Monthly July 1910

   Bookmobiles are the modern version of the travelling library wagon. American farm wagons are more rare a century later. This is a quote from the text of Carriage Monthly, July 1910, Suburban Life:

   “When a public library undertakes the task of ministering to the intellectual requirements of an entire county, it soon learns the necessity of departing from the beaten paths of library methods to blaze a trail through the wilderness of untested theories and untried experiences.”

   That bookmobiles sometimes suffer the effects of budget cuts does not necessarily mean we will revert to horse-drawn library wagons, but it is an interesting idea.

Snowslider

   This crunchy, crusty snow is like walking on pizzelles.

   Along the path, squirrels make a dent in nature’s icebox. Here and there you see spots of clawed-out grass, where nuts have been burrowed and retrieved. A little warm-up in the temperature works for me.

   Mike is in the bucket truck at the park pulling off the seasonal lights, big clusters of little lamps. Keith, with a bright lime hood, stands in the crotch of the tree, perfectly at home, working the middle. Brenda with her powder blue hood, supervises from the ground up.

   A Fighter ticket stub from 12/27/10 lies upside down on the parking space strip by my driver’s side door. When I first struck out, I found a cardboard label for a child’s snow sliding vehicle. It’s snowy, it’s slippery.

    No herons. I drive to the library. A mallard drake slumps dead and frozen on the Spring Ridge Corporate Center pond, where the surface has become a solid. I’m not sure how it got there. There is also a decoy duck caught in the ice. When I drove by the other day both were there in the morning and I was hoping the real bird wasn’t dead. It is.