By David Fortier
Come Sunday morning, another rainy day is forecast. Rainy days aren’t so bad, even chilly ones like Saturday. Rainy days are days to get things done around the house, or even to get some stuff out of the house. We’ve been waiting for another electronic collection day since the last one in Bristol, which was months ago. So we have been accumulating stuff.
On Saturday, another rainy day, that day came. The Science National Honor Society at Bristol Eastern held an electronic drop-off. I loaded up the car with a bunch of stuff—an old microwave oven, two air conditioners and two cardboard boxes of this and that. I arrived around 9:05 a.m.–the event started at 9 a.m.–waited for three SUVs to get unloaded, pulled up and the students did the rest.
It was raining so they didn’t look all that enthused, but they were there, and they were getting the job done, and doing an important job, too. One of the students, sorry, I didn’t get his name, told me NHS plans to do at least one a year. Thank you, BEHS!
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On Saturday’s I have a little fun. When I get up, typically, I am up first, I like to putter around a bit, put on the tea kettle—we are tea drinkers here—and listen. That’s right. Early mornings, when the house is quiet, I listen to the birds. There is no rush. I can even pick out a few—cardinals, mourning doves, robins. My listening, as most things these days, is assisted by an app on my iPhone.
The Merlin app, from Cornell Lab (Cornell as in the university), is free, and it can identify up to 10,000 and more species. The settings allow me to download species information for the Northeast, so that is my focus. This Saturday morning two new birds showed up—the wild turkey and the red-eyed vireo.
There was no visual sighting, I was on my back porch, so the app might be pushing things with these, but I will give it the benefit of the doubt. We do get some interesting creatures around here. Last year, a bear rumbled through the neighborhood—and this is a densely populated area with small yards, although there are stretches of wooded area beginning at Page Park.
A year or two before, just across the street a turkey vulture descended from the mighty oaks, many of which have since come down, in just a short time, to finish off a squirrel carcass—compliments of a hawk that made things interesting.
When the birdfeeders are up—they have all been taken down for spring—we get downy woodpeckers, cardinals, sparrows, nuthatches blue jays and grackles. The woodpeckers are spectacular and regulars. The blue jays less regular visitors.
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Reading/listening: I started Octavia Butler’s sequel to “The Parable of the Sower,” which is “The Parable of the Talents.” Butler who died relatively young is revered by sci-fi fans but also by others for her prescient social critique and ability to identify tendencies prevalent in United States as well as trends across the globe, which I will not get into. Click here for more on a recent appreciation by the BBC.
I have referred to her in the past. She is the first Black sci-fi writer to win major sci-fi awards, including a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award, and she was the first sci-fi author to receive a MacArthur “genius” fellowship. What I especially appreciate about her writing is that strong voice of her characters. It’s easy to get caught up with such powerful storytellers, in troubling situations, even for someone like me, who is not a big sci-fi fan.
As for listening, the latest from Stanford where he presides over the “Entitled Opinions” podcast, Robert Harrison holds a conversation about AI and the humanities with Ana Ilievska, a Mellon Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center and a lecturer of French and Italian at Stanford.
I have listened to the episode twice and will listen a couple more times, not only to get the gist of it but also to make notes about who they reference so I can look deeper into these thinkers—and thinking and thought is key. What is thought? What is mind? What separates the human being’s capacity for thought from what we associate with that of AI (artificial intelligence)?
Harrison is especially impassioned, I would say, painfully so, because this means so much to him and his profession—the humanities, discussion, teaching, culture, thought, writing and reading. It means a lot to me, too. I have spent most of my life pursuing each of these in one way or another (including journalism and its significance, which is why TBE exists).
The basic thoughts are that AI has a role if it is directed to answering important questions, either way it must be incorporated into the educational/cultural eco-system here in the States as well as beyond, there are already benefits when it comes to composition of writing, there needs to be spaces in society where people gather to hold conversations, regularly, and thoughtful sustained solitary reading and thinking must be encouraged.
Click here for their conversation.
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We are in the beginning of a municipal election year, no better time to start some thoughtful inquiry about our system, how it functions, how it was set up to function, how it might function better so that as citizens we bring our best to the polls and get results that are consistent with our best selves.
Enjoy!
“Come Sunday morning” is intended to be a weekly review, a recounting of the past week and an anticipation of week to come. Among its features will be reviews of old and new books, sharing of favorite podcasts, some family news, Bristol events and happenings and issues surrounding education, work and community journalism. He can be reached at dfortier@bristoledition.org.
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