movin on up

life is happening to me now, almost too quickly to record here. So instead i will report that i saw several AMERICAN CROWS, a few WHITE THROATED SPARROWS and what I believe was an EASTERN PHOEBE on the campus of Northwestern U. this week.

Evanston turns out to be ok, though it's a little like the rich stepson Chicago acquired by marrying above its station. The whole city seems...entitled. Exaggeratedly so. This can be a good thing--for example, i witnessed a scene on Wednesday morning that would have been unthinkable anywhere else , except maybe Canada or Singapore: an entire city block of parked cars being towed, all at once, by a fleet of tow trucks, to make way for the street sweepers, which, if the parking sign fine print is to be believed, only pass through there four days a year. We're talking about at least 15 cars being towed simultaneously from a single block, in a city of 55,000 people. My point is, they have that many tow trucks! Anyway, there is a fair amount of the snootery one might expect from such a place. But hey, all the public restrooms are really nice, and the Dunkin Donuts has WiFi internet. So who's complaining?