Notes From All Over -- The Cape May Edition -- November 28, 2020

Link here: quotation of the day on the "privilege of prosperity" and "American privilege.

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Prime Time Saturday Night
College Football

On network television:

• an 0 - 2 team playing a 1 - 2 team
• an 0 - 1 team playing a 2 - 0 team

Fox cable:

• a 2 - 6 team playing a 2 - 5 team. Are you kidding me?

And it's almost December.

It's gonna be a long weekend.

Coach on sideline wearing a completely ineffective face shield. 

All that talk about safety for the players. 

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Humor From Power Line

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Cape May

Everyone, I suppose, knows of Cape May, New Jersey. Except me. I spent a year in New Jersey one summer, in a bedroom community across the river from New York City, Westfield, Union County, New Jersey. I don't think I had was even aware, at the time, that "the Jersey Shore" was a "thing."

The Jersey Shore

is the coastal region of the U.S. state of New Jersey. Geographically, the term encompasses about 141 miles (227 km) of oceanfront bordering the Atlantic Ocean, from Perth Amboy in the north to Cape May Point in the south.

I first came across Cape May while reading Sarah Weinman's The Real Lolita. Spoiler alert: the real Lolita, Sally Horner, was killed in a car accident riding back to Camden from Cape May with a "new" boyfriend. He survived. She didn't. She died, almost to the day, one year before I was born. She was fifteen years old. 

I read that a couple of days ago.

Yesterday, The Mississippi Kite by Eric G. Bolen and Dan Flores, c. 1993, arrived. After spotting and identifying a squadron of Mississippi Kites earlier this month, I ordered the book through Amazon. 

Wow, what a great book. So, I'm reading along, and there it was, pages 10 - 12:

Numerous other records of Mississippi Kites dot the geography of the United States, enough to indicate a more-or-less wandering coterie of individuals or perhaps an annual probe into as yet uncolonized regions. 

Among these we mention sightings of kites along the northeastern seaboard in New Jersey where, although the observations are of growing regularity, they are so far unaccompanied by confirmed records of nesting activities. 

One authority on the birds of Cape May suggests that these occurrences result when long-distance migrants "overshoot" their traditional breeding grounds. 

Wow, had I not read Sarah Weinman's book on a crime story, I would have passed over the reference to Cape May and would have never given it another thought. 

Along that same line, Bolen and Flores mention riparian habitats a number of times when describing the nesting areas of Mississippi Kites. Had I not blogged about the Bakken, it's very, very likely I never would have paid much attention to "riparian." 

Funny how things work out. And why I tell the granddaughters to never stop reading. Read anything and everything. As long as it's good writing, one will enjoy it and one will definitely learn something.

Another example: I'm listening to Todd Snider's "celebration of a life" after Jerry Jeff Walker passed away. He mentions in passing, busking, a term I had never heard before listening to the Spoon Lady on YouTube this past year.

Geography and language are so incredibly fascinating.