Meditation from the Yizkor Service

I think continually of those who were truly great,
Who from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through endless corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song,
And who hoarded from the spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth;
Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light,
Nor its grave evening demand for love;
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
see how these names are feted by the waving grass,
And by the streamers of white cloud,
And whispers of wind in the listening sky;
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun they travelled a short while toward the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.


(By Stephen Spender. Reprinted in Gates of Repentance, the standard High Holidays prayerbook for Reform Judaism)

Hypermiling

Here's a movement whose moment has arrived--at precisely the speed limit.

It's called hypermiling, and it uses techniques that tend to maintain constant speeds and eliminate braking. Hypermiling maximizes your mileage with potentially dramatic fuel and cost savings. There is some evidence (a little quirky) that it could actually break up traffic logjams, too.

And all you have to do is drive like me.

For years I have driven passengers crazy with my tendency to let my foot drift off the accelerator, my slow-rolling stops, and my overall lack of speed. I haven't done it precisely on purpose; I daydream a bit, you might say.

But today I consciously drove the hypermiling path, and I am here to say that it takes some getting used to, but is a very pleasant way to game the road. Since I drive in stop-and-go city conditions, it's more than a little hard to break the habit of scooting back and forth between the accelerator and brake, but maybe by the end of the week I'll have the hang of it.

And I might be driving more safely, I think. What with all that looking around to see who's speeding, who's stopping, and who is in between.

I've been getting about 18 in the city, and at $50 a fill-up, I'd sure like to gain seven miles or so per gallon. Fingers crossed.

DC Birding

A funny thing happened while I was walking the dog last week. I became an urban birder. After all, why be mediocre at only a few things when I can add another activity for which my enthusiasm will always out-distance my abilities?

It happened this way, on a Thursday: we spotted two small boys enthusiastically following a little bird that seemed trapped, unharmed but dazed, on the ground. I got that sinking feeling: something would have to be done, and likely as not whatever human intervention we provided would either do further or harm or no good at all (at best). And all in front of children.

But this story has a happy turn--no endings here.

The bird, a fully fledged sparrow of uncertain age, but definitely young, didn't seem lost or hurt, but was hanging out on the sidewalk near our house, very much in harm's way. I shooed the bird and it hopped only a foot away, then hung around tentatively on the edge of the sidewalk near the dog-beshitted and trash strewn median strip of our humble urban street. It wasn't even near the closest sapling, recently replanted thanks to the ongoing work of Casey Trees and its ReTree DC initiative.

Me, I know nothing about the lives of young sparrows. Though, actually, now that I have fostered one for a few days, I can confidently say that I know next to nothing.

(disclaimer: the web site on starling and sparrow care that I just linked to in my previous paragraph is a marvelous one. It's just that I am a flawed vessel).

I had luck on my side: this was an adolescent bird, not far from its nest even when I transplanted it to my safer garden (mode of transportation a Converse Red shoebox). He stayed in the box all night (we have rats...yeah, it's that kind of neighborhood) and in the morning I felt I could open the lid. By midmorning when I came home from the pet shop with mealworms he was out and about. Today I saw his parents feeding him.

He's decided to stay. He is particularly fond of my lavender bushes. So I managed to do an okay thing after all, maintaining my over-a-lifetime average of, well, being slightly abopve average at most things.

The important part of all this for you, gentle reader, is my discovery of the wonderful A DC Birding Blog and the many, many varieties of sparrow, finch, and other songbirds available to me in my own little 20th-acre of paradise.

And you thought all the preening in DC was on Capitol Hill.