Sorry if you Hate pretty

Well, some do. And I don't think they're wrong in it. Perhaps they practice the visual equivalent of the plea of Our Lady of Fatima when she asked the shepherd children to tie a cord tightly around themselves to remind them of the suffering of others. I think some people actually do remember all the time. Even without cords as a reminder, and without a religion per se, they find their spirits unable to abandon the miserable and malnourished.

This is the view across the lake from the Boathouse in Prospect Park Sunday at 8 in the morning. Sigh. I can't hate pretty, but I sure don't trust it to stick around.

I don't think I'd ever been in the park so early. I felt safe on my walk to the Boathouse because of all the people out with their dogs. But not all the people with dogs felt so safe. A man whose dog must have been menaced when a woman let her two swarthy pit bulls off their leashes was screaming like a maniac, tailing the woman whose dogs were now on their leashes, lashing her with a torrent of rage no one in earshot could avoid. She asked to be left alone. I bet he wished his dog had been left alone. But so many of the dogs in the park were off leash, tearing around the Nethermead and elsewhere just about bursting with joy.

The birders who I joined at the boathouse that morning got to have a good long look at two flickers I would have taken for starlings before they were flushed out of the grass by a hapless and friendly dog. I got the feeling the dog's owner was a little embarrassed that she couldn't keep him from disturbing the subject of at least a dozen people's binoculars. She looked a little crest fallen.

I'm glad I braved the morning chill because the bird walk really cheered me up. Thanks to the Brooklyn Bachelor for mentioning it on his blog. Even though I shivered too much to make much use of the binoculars someone kindly loaned me, the cold that I've had for a month finally broke later that day. It was about time. I was starting to develop the morbid outlook of a consumptive.