5 May 2025

Today was for the birds. No, really. We went to look for birds. Sylvia's place is near a city park that attracts birds and frogs. The frogs aren't all that interesting and the water isn't all that clear, so birds it is. We saw a bunch of red wing blackbirds (pretty, but flighty) a cormorant (interesting, but it spent a lot of time underwater), and a heron (showed up late and annoyed the heck out of the red wing blackbirds; the cormorant didn't seem to care).

We then drove to a farm to look at more birds. More herons, another cormorant, and and some canadian geese with their kids.

 

But for some reason, what really struck me was an old gate, put up sometime in the 50s, I would guess. 

Yeah, weird. For some reason it hit some melancholy chord in me. I remember these gates from my youth, but I didn't think that this one would resonate with me like it did. I suppose I should have frolicked through it a few times to relive my childhood, but I just took this picture instead. 

We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant, reminisced with Sylvia about our time in Italy, had nachos at the church, and finished by matching movie quotes to unfortunate photos. It was a pretty good day.

Okay, about Sylvia. When I was in the mission office in Catania, Sylvia Martindale came to the mission. I forwarded a few letters to her in Syracusa that came to the office. Years later I found out that Judy had been writing to her at that time and I remember some wheat stems next to someone's return address for some reason. Just a strange coincidence that brings us together.