Erased

Via wood s lot comes the sad news that the French avant garde writer Alain Robbe-Grillet has passed away. Robbe-Grillet, as far as I can remember, was one of the first novelists that I discovered completely by myself. I was browsing in my college bookstore and I saw a copy of his Instantanés (Snapshots), pieces shorter than his nouveaux romans. I picked it up and thought, “well, this looks interesting.”

Sugarloaf circuit

Pleasant weather and I’m off for a hike in Shenandoah National Park. New weather was coming in, so I had clouds and breezy conditions, warmth only when the sun broke through, and even a few sprinkles of rain.

I walked an easy-rated 5-mile loop starting with the Sugarloaf Trail (hike #3, short circuit, in PATC’s Circuit Hikes in Shenandoah National Park). The footing was definitely soft in spots, due to overnight rain. The Sugarloaf Trail descends 700 feet through an impressive tract of mountain laurel (not in bloom at this time of the year, alas).

braided streamThe trail crosses a braided stream (Piney River, which feeds into the Thornton) that seemed determined to follow the trail bed for a stretch. The circuit then ascends gradually on the Keyser Run Fire Road. Crossing Skyline Drive, you pick up the Appalachian Trail for a climb of Little Hogback. After a dip, a series of short, stiff switchbacks climbs 400 feet to the ridgeline of Hogback Mountain.

sun and shadowSome fine prospects along this stretch.

the valleyOff-season so I had the trail completely to myself, with the company of an occasional raven, woodpecker, or flick of juncos (that’s something smaller than a flock). Otherwise, very quiet, with sometimes nothing but the creaking of bare trees in the wind.

Short bits of string: 6

Via robot wisdom: find the elevation and lat-long of any Google-mapped location with EarthTools. The UI is not 100% intuitive: you have to drag the map so that the location you want information about lies in the crosshairs; you can’t drag the crosshairs, but you can double-click to move them. But that’s a quibble. I could use this tool to describe new nest box locations for The Birdhouse Network.

Once around the block

Napier Shelton walks an eight-mile nature loop around Northwest D.C. for the current issue of Audubon Naturalist News. (Alas, Audubon Naturalist Society has moved its web site into a new URL- and page title-mangling content management system.)

Since the days of my childhood, some tropical migrant birds have been lost, but barred owls and red-shouldered hawks still live in Glover-Archbold; black-crowned night herons still roost by day along Rock Creek; and deer, beavers, and coyotes have moved in. A big difference from the past, however, is the lack of kids (and adults) exploring the woods by themselves like I did.

Action at a distance

Spookiest thing that’s happened to me since I saw the flying saucer on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (but that’s another story):

I was just getting settled in to the recording booth to read Ben Bernanke’s macroeconomics textbook for undergraduates (which promises to be the best such that I’ve recorded) and Kathryn was there to check my recording level. She likes to play back the previous reader to make sure that there’s not a big jump in levels between readers. The previous reader had a nice rumbly, confident baritone; he sounded to be a bit older than me. So his track ran out and I said, “Well, that’s a very reassuring voice.” And then, in a snap, his voice returned on the headphones to say, “Thank you, sir.”

Of course, what it was was his version of “Okay, monitor, we’re finished recording for today.” But Kathryn and I played it back again to make sure that the booth hadn’t acquired a haunt.

Good on ya: 4

Good customer service karma, ultimately, for Audio-Technica’s U.S. operations parts department. I had just started using some new ANC-7 headphones at work (why do I need noise-cancelling headphones at work? good question) when one day my IT guy arrived to do a memory upgrade on my workstation. In the process of pulling the case open, he managed to break the plug at the computer end of the headphones’ cable. (Well, actually it worked just fine, if you’re deaf in the left ear.)

I scampered off to Radio Shack for a replacement cable. Seven bucks, no big deal. Except that the shell of the replacement cable was too fat to fit into the headphones. So after some online browsing turned up nothing different in the way of 1/8 stereo mini-plug cabling, I went back to the source at Audio-Technica. No info on the web site about replacement parts, no e-mail address, but there is a phone number. I called, phone-treed into the parts department, and talked to a real person. I explained the situation and asked what I could do about ordering a replacement cable. He said, “what’s your address? I’ll put one in the mail today.” And at the end of the week, a free replacement arrived, no questions asked.

I am not making this up

It just gets weirder and weirder. The former CFO of my homeowners association’s previous management company, Jeffrey Koger, who is generally believed to be responsible for embezzlement of funds between 2004 and ’06, has been charged in connection with a shootout involving police this past weekend.

In October, a lawsuit alleged that a large portion of the missing homeowners association money might have been invested in a sushi and steak restaurant that opened on Capitol Hill last summer.

Leta’s acting moment

HANNAH: It’s wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we’re going out the way we came in. That’s why you can’t believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.

—Tom Stoppard, Arcadia, sc. 7