Crow At The Bay

I took a short, therapeutic detour down by the bay on the way home tonight and spent a few minutes watching the gulls and crows jockey for bread scraps. It's getting so I never go anywhere without peanuts, bread and the camera, of course. I just recently bought a giant size camera bag to accommodate all this stuff. Now, I can barely lift the thing. I think my next one will have wheels.

I absolutely love gulls, and crows too. The gulls are such sturdy, personable birds, always willing to put on a show. The crows are a little harder to pin down as you have to get them in the right light or they just look like silhouettes.

I stopped in my favorite bookstore, also part of my therapy. I probably could have come home with half a dozen books but I was good and decided to read the ones I had at home first.

Once upon a time, many, many years ago when I was in my 20s I worked for a man who had many millions of dollars and needed a staff to manage his investments, his house and his money. He had a yacht and a plane and a beautiful home, but the things I envied him for the most were his charge accounts at practically every bookstore in Los Angeles. Periodically, he'd breeze through one of them and pick out a dozen or so books and we'd get the bill at the office. Oh, how I wished I could do that just once. What a dream it was to think of walking into a bookstore, picking out anything and everything I wanted without any thought of the cost. And, yes, I still love real books. I have absolutely nothing against electronic books but I don't think I'll ever make the switch. Even when I take a book on a plane, I make sure it's a small one so it's easy to carry. When my grandson and I went to Ireland a couple years ago I was really surprised to see that his backpack was full of books, big books. He took more reading material than I did.