Wild Things

Things That Go Bump in the Dark

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

I've written before about the hazards of hiking up our driveway on dark, cold mornings to get the newspaper. The worst of these is the emotionally real if physically imaginary (I hope!) mountain lions that lurk behind every shadowy tree and bush.

It's completely unreasonable as well as embarrassing for a mature adult, who can do public speaking in perfect comfort and is eight and a half times a grandmother, to be scared of the dark. Over the past couple of weeks I've been attempting to confront this fear.

It started one morning when I headed outside at 5:45. The front walk and the driveway were such a brilliant white that I thought it must have snowed. When I stepped out onto the porch, though, I realized the brightness came from the nearly full moon, backed up by a blaze of stars. The front yard was silver in the still predawn air, and the sky was breathtaking.

As I walked up to get the paper, delighting in the beauty of the morning, I kept hearing quotes in my head from Alfred Noyes ("The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor.") and Clement Moore ("The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave a luster of midday to objects below.") This kept my mind so busy it almost forgot about the imaginary mountain lions.

Ever since, I've been concentrating on the beauty of the early morning sky in an attempt to trick my brain into becoming more comfortable in the dark. It's been working, too—sort of.

At least until a couple mornings ago, when the moon had shrunk to a narrow fingernail clipping above the trees and the shadows were especially deep and black. I crept warily through the shadow of the my spouse's parked SUV and headed up the driveway, walking as quietly as one can on gravel.

I made it to the top of the hill, grabbed the paper out of the box, and started back down, doing just fine until I heard the noise. A throat-clearing or coughing sort of noise, just the kind of sound my brain imagines a mountain lion might make before it springs. Or (it occurred to me later) just the kind of sound a neighbor's garage door might make.

I walked faster. Quite a bit faster. A biased observer might have even said I broke into a trot—not so easy to do in one's bathrobe and slippers. Nervous but still under control, I crossed the last strip of driveway and reached the shadow of the SUV.

Where an ominous figure loomed. It was so silent and still that I nearly crashed into it before, with a heart-thumping jolt of adrenaline, I realized it was there.

My dear partner, not knowing I had already ventured into the darkness, had started out after the paper. He was standing near the car, wondering whether that creature he heard blundering about in the driveway was a mule deer or a mountain lion.

It's a good thing neither of us was armed. Shooting each other in our own driveway would have made for embarrassing headlines in the next morning's paper. Though no doubt the nearest lurking mountain lion would have appreciated it.

Categories: Wild Things | Tags: , , | 3 Comments

A Halloween Whooodunit

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

"The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat . . .
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon."

There seems to be a cat-lover in Newell, South Dakota, who isn't familiar with Edward Lear. Or maybe the place is simply fresh out of quince.

It seems that the town has had a problem with an over-abundance of feral cats. For small-town law enforcement, dealing with stray animals comes with the territory. This is not necessarily a trivial task in western South Dakota, where every now and then a wandering feline turns out to be a mountain lion. Still, complaints about stray cats probably aren't a top priority for the sheriff's office.

The priority may have moved a little higher in recent weeks though, when apparently an unusually high number of Newell's feral cats were disappearing. The authorities tend to get nervous about the idea of citizens randomly dispatching strays with .22's or BB guns within the city limits. Perhaps the sheriff's officers were even concerned about the slight possibility that somebody might be killing cats for twisted and gruesome reasons.

Somebody was killing cats, all right. Very dark and early one recent morning, the sheriff caught the perp red-handed.

Er—make that red-clawed. A great horned owl swooped down from a tree, grabbed a Siamese cat, and proceeded to have it for breakfast. There was no word on whether it used a runcible spoon.

"Runcible," by the way, is a nonsense word invented by Edward Lear. A couple of sources describe it as a spoon with short tines on the end, what we now call a "spork." A couple of other sources maintain, from the way he used the word in a couple of other stories and from one of his own drawings, that Lear simply used it to mean "gigantic." The latter meaning seems more logical, and also makes a runcible spoon an appropriate utensil for any bird big enough to routinely capture and munch on full-grown cats.

But the plot thickens. For one thing, the owl caught with its Siamese take-out wasn't working alone. Two of the birds have been seen in town. Second, catching them in the act doesn't mean the sheriff's office can do anything to protect the innocent cats of Newell. Great horned owls are a federally protected species, and it's illegal to harm them.

This could be a real problem. The owls, which can grow up to two feet tall with a wing span of 60 inches, are powerful predators. They eat practically anything, from rodents to skunks and even porcupines. A small town with plenty of cats gives them a handy all-you-can-eat buffet, and they probably can't taste the difference between a stray cat and someone's much-loved pet.

This raises an interesting question. What exactly would the federal authorities consider "harm"? Would someone be prosecuted for sending a pair of great horned owls down the mighty Missouri in a pea-green boat? Surely not, as long as they were supplied with plenty of quince and a couple of runcible spoons.

Categories: Just For Fun, Wild Things, Words for Nerds | Tags: , , , , | 3 Comments

Fall and Flying Objects

Posted on October 22, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

Why do so many more jet trails show up in the sky this time of year? I'm sure there's a good scientific explanation based on such factors as air temperatures and winds aloft, the refraction of the light based on the angle of the sun, and other things about which I don't have a clue.

I could look it up, I suppose, or ask someone who took more science classes than I did and probably paid more attention during them. Or I could just enjoy the patterns of the white streaks against the blue autumn skies, and let it go at that.

It's been a beautiful fall in the Black Hills this year, and we've appreciated it all the more because last year we didn't really get one. October started out with snow and bitter cold, which caught many of us unprepared in matters of snow tires, storing garden hoses, and getting out flannel sheets. Even worse, it caught the trees while the leaves were still green, so the fall colors consisted of brown, brown, and brown. This year, though, the trees got to dress up in their best yellows, reds, and golds. Mild days and crisp nights allowed the leaves to stay on display for a long time before they let go and flew to the ground.

Autumn also brings some less appealing flying objects. Our house has been full of flies and wasps. As far as I can tell, they hatch out somewhere inside the window sills, where they become trapped between the window and the screen. Sometimes they crawl around in there, buzzing and bumping up against the glass, until some kind soul can't stand their noise any more and opens the window to let them out.

Sometimes they slip under the edge of the screen into the house, where they buzz back and forth until they collapse on the dining room table. There they lie on their backs, legs kicking faintly, buzzing intermittently like a toy whose battery is giving out, until they expire.

I am not unsympathetic. I don't kill these innocent creatures wantonly or maliciously. At the same time, I don't really feel it's my responsibility to rescue them when they crawl across the kitchen faucet, ignoring my efforts to shoo them away, until they slip and fall into the dishwater and drown.

Compassion and understanding, however, were not my first reactions the other day when a wasp got caught in my hair. I could feel it crawling around in there, buzzing frantically much too close to my ear, and after trying to shake it out and brush it out with my fingers I made a dash for the bathroom to grab my hairbrush and brush it out before it stung me.

The other night at bedtime was the last straw. I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth, and there on the floor was the biggest spider I had ever seen. (Well, except for the tarantulas at Reptile Gardens, which don't count as they are safely behind glass instead of in the middle of my bathroom.) This one was huge and thick and black.

For an instant I stood frozen, trying to decide whether to step on the spider, run for the flyswatter, or just screech. That instant gave me a chance to take a closer look at the terrifying critter.

It was a plastic hair clip. Never mind.

Categories: Just For Fun, Wild Things | Tags: , , , , , | 3 Comments

Desperate House Finches

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

When we got a bird feeder last winter, I thought we were setting ourselves up for something refined, relaxing, and educational. Watching and identifying the pretty little birds that came to the feeder while we sat at the dining-room table over our own meals would be rather like reading National Geographic as one enjoyed one's tea and cucumber sandwiches.

The reality has been educational, all right, but not quite in the way I was expecting. I wasn't ready for all the drama. The preening and showing off. The bitter sibling rivalries. The violence. The raiding. The multi-generational sense of entitlement. It's like watching professional wrestling or Desperate Housewives.

When you get to know them, birds are like people at a crowded cafe who are loud, pushy, and have terrible table manners. They fight over spots at the feeder, chasing one another off and using appalling language. Finches tolerate other finches but go after the chickadees. None of the smaller birds come near when the blue jays are eating. Wrens do their best to slip in and out under the other birds' radar. All this brawling surely must use up more energy than they get from the few sunflower seeds they manage to snatch in between scuffles.

In the past few weeks, we've had an increase in activity at the feeder. This surprised me at first, given that there are insects, ripe berries, and ripening seeds all over the neighborhood. Then I came to realize that most of the visitors, though full sized, are obviously adolescents. Some of their adult features, like the blue jays' distinctive topknots, aren't quite developed yet. They still have a fuzzy look, as if their feathers aren't fully grown out—or as if they just got out of bed in their dormitories and didn't bother with grooming.

What do you do when Mom and Dad shove you out of the nest? Go to the nearest all-you-can-eat buffet, of course. Why go search for seeds, bugs, and berries if you don't have to? "Chokecherries? That's sooo last year! Bugs? Eeeuuew! You go to all that work to catch one, and it still tastes like slug on a stick."

That's when the awful truth hit me. We have created an avian welfare state. A whole generation of birds in our back yard is learning to count on a handout. This year's adults have taught their children to come to the feeder. And next year, when these young ones have children of their own, it will be a multi-generational welfare system. That's assuming any of them survive, given their inadequate food-gathering skills.

We could just stop feeding the birds during the summer. But somehow, once we've started, it's hard to quit. It would feel terribly mean to cut off the food supply they've grown used to. Besides, we'd miss the birds. They may count on us for food, but we count on them for entertainment. Even now, as I'm in my office, my background music has been the chirps, whistles, and squawks from the deck outside the open window.

So I guess we'll just have to buy a bigger bag of bird seed. We may have created a welfare system here, but it's a cycle of dependency that goes both ways.

Categories: Wild Things | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“It Was a Dark and Stormy Night . . .”

Posted on July 2, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

All the classic elements were present: The group of people thrown together in a primitive environment. Attacks by wild beasts. A less-than-successful search for food in the wild. Fire. Floods. Ominous weather. Gunfights. Mysterious, threatening strangers. Even a pregnant woman ready to go into labor at any moment.

It could have been a great low-budget scary movie. But, actually, it was just another typical family camping trip.

Just in case a little hyperbole may have crept into the first paragraph, perhaps I should clarify. Maybe a campground along the Missouri River in eastern South Dakota doesn't exactly qualify as a primitive environment. But hey, the cell phone coverage was spotty at best—and the closest wireless Internet access was at least three miles away.

The wild beasts? Okay, they weren't bears or mountain lions, but mosquitoes. There were hordes of them, though, and they were vicious. The search for food in the wild? Well, those who went fishing didn't quite catch enough for everyone for supper.

The fire, of course, was necessary for the roasted marshmallows and S'mores. The flooding and the ominous weather were real enough. Just ask the two people who went swimming under what in drier years is a picnic shelter. The thunderstorms, thankfully, passed north of us and all we got was a few drops of rain.

The gunfights were real, too, with countless shots exchanged from loaded weapons. One of the main participants was a retired law enforcement officer. The other was a toddler with less training but at least as much determination and a pretty good eye. The innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire didn't seem to mind. It's not a bad thing to be shot with a water gun on a 90-degree day.

The nine-months-pregnant mom missed her great opportunity by not going into labor. Her husband swore he could have the camper hooked up and on the road in seven minutes if necessary, but he never got the chance to prove it. Oh, well. Some people just don't have a full appreciation of the finer points of dramatic tension.

The mysterious, threatening strangers? Unfortunately, they were all too real. The fright factor is a little too genuine when you're awakened at 2:00 a.m. by a couple of drunks shouting and beating on one of the tents in your campsite. Even if the tent isn't yours, you're uncomfortably reminded that tents don't come equipped with deadbolt locks.

When the staggering pair came back at dawn, they decided for some incoherent reason of their own to pull a marker post out of the ground. This was in front of the family tent where four little kids were sleeping. Their mother's reaction was, "Get the baseball bat out of the van!"

The drunks were hustled off down the road by a pair of brothers-in-law who were more than big enough—and mad enough—to handle them even without the bat. The loaded water guns, though, might have come in handy. Meanwhile, back at the tent, someone else was calling 911. It was quite satisfying a bit later to see a burly cop, looking like a stereotype straight out of Hollywood, holding one of the drunks upright by a pair of handcuffs as he marched him past our campsites. One of them was arrested, and their hearty-partying group was evicted from the campground.

We learned later that the drunks were part of a large family reunion whose members had reserved about 20 campsites. I'd love to have heard the story from that family's perspective. Were the rest of them angry at us for turning in their sons/grandsons/nephews? Or did the drunks belong to "that" family—the one that the rest of relatives only invite to reunions because they have to? Maybe it was a relief to have them gone.

I just hope the reunion organizers had taken all their group photos the day before.

Categories: Just For Fun, Travel, Wild Things | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments

Who Has More Feet–Gene Kelly or a Giant Earthworm?

Posted on April 30, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is Gene Kelly dancing through the puddles in "Singin' in the Rain." That doesn't mean I'm one of those people who think it's romantic to walk in the rain. I find it decidedly unromantic to squish along in wet shoes with cold water dripping down the back of my neck.

Nor do I find it romantic to hop, skip, and tiptoe over all the earthworms who are driven out of the ground by the rain. I don't have any particular aversion to worms; I just don't like stepping on them. (They didn't seem to bother Gene Kelly, but then he was filming inside a studio.) What I really hate, though, is all the pathetic little mummified worm bodies left stranded on the dry sidewalks after the sun comes out.

When I was growing up, after a rain the hard-packed dirt of the farm yard would be crisscrossed with countless meandering worm tracks. It always looked as if they had enjoyed quite a party—or maybe they were just trying to escape all the early birds showing up for their own party.

Sometimes after a rain we would dig up a coffee can full of those worms and go fishing. I remember one time when the worms were so big that their weight was enough to pull our bobbers under. This made it a little hard to tell whether the fish were biting. It did give us kids an excuse to pull our lines in every few minutes to check them, which was more interesting than just sitting there waiting for a fish.

Those fat worms, though, were merely average compared to the "fabled giant Palouse earthworm." For the first time in 20 years, scientists have captured two specimens of these critters, who inhabit the Palouse region along the Washington-Idaho border. Stories had claimed they could spit, they smelled like lilies, and they could grow to a length of three feet. Most of the people I know have never even caught a fish that long.

As so often is the case, the reality fell short of the legends. The two worms being studied at the University of Idaho haven't done any spitting, and they don't smell like lilies. Even worse, the adult worm whose photograph appeared in our local newspaper on April 28 was only about a foot long when "fully extended," while the juvenile one was only six or seven inches long. Soil scientist Jodi Johnson-Maynard said one of her colleagues "suggested we rename it the 'larger-than-average Palouse earthworm.'"

It's nice to see a scientist with a sense of humor (which is probably a useful attribute to develop if one studies earthworms), but the conclusions may be a bit premature. For one thing, how do you tell whether an earthworm is an adult? Did it have an ID card or a birth certificate? Or even a fishing license? It's possible the 12-inch specimen is only an adolescent, and in time it might grow a couple more feet. Well, not exactly grow feet—just grow longer by a couple of feet. You know what I mean.

Maybe we'll get updates from the scientists in Idaho, who presumably are still studying their two giant—er, larger-than-average worms. Or maybe not. Maybe the temptation was too much, and they've all gone fishing.

Categories: Just For Fun, Wild Things | 6 Comments

At Least It Wasn’t a Chicken

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

I never realized I was so prejudiced. I'd prefer to think of myself as an open-minded, accepting, spiritually evolved kind of person who doesn't judge others by superficial appearance.

That was before the crow showed up at the bird feeder.

Yes, I realize that bird feeders are supposed to attract birds. In the few weeks we've had it out on the deck, ours has done exactly that.

The stylish chickadees and quick-moving finches drop in every day for lunch and sometimes for breakfast. A couple of pretty red-headed birds—purple finches, according to one observer; red crossbills, according to another—are regulars as well. A cardinal stopped by one day, but hasn't been back. We choose to assume its failure to return means it was just passing through and is no reflection on the quality of food we offer.

We enjoy watching all these welcome visitors. True, they're messy, they don't take turns very well, and their table manners are on the sloppy side. Still, they're entertaining. They're little. They're cute.

The other day, however, I looked out the window to see a crow stalking along the railing of the deck. It swaggered toward the bird feeder like a black-hatted gunslinger pushing through the batwing doors into the saloon. All it needed was some menacing theme music and a pair of spurs.

It gave the bird feeder a once-over, then took itself off to the nearest tree with a scornful squawk, clearly not impressed. Maybe the food wasn't up to its usual standard. That's what we get for not having road kill on the menu.

Whatever the reason, it would be fine with me if it didn't come back. We don't need a big-beaked bully hanging out on our deck to terrorize songbirds one-fifth its size.

It isn't that I have any objection to crows. Really. As a matter of fact, I rather admire the utter self-confidence with which they speak their minds for the whole neighborhood to hear. It's hard not to have some grudging respect for birds who can balance on slender topmost tree branches while they have heated discussions worthy of indignant politicians or talk radio at its most extreme.

No wonder one of my friends says a flock of crows should be called a "caw-cus."

Categories: Wild Things | 4 Comments

No Tree-Hugging Needed Here

Posted on December 11, 2009 by Kathleen Fox

These are not trees to be hugged.

Not even if you ignored the stern signs about staying on the path. Not even if you had arms long enough to embrace their enormous trunks. Not only would hugging a Sequoia sempervirens be impossible; it would be disrespectful. Ancient redwoods are too dignified for hugging.

On a visit to California's Bay Area last week, we had a chance to walk through Muir Woods. This stand of old-growth coast redwoods was preserved a hundred years ago by a local couple, William and Elizabeth Kent, who bought the land and later donated much of it to the federal government. It was set aside as a national monument by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908.

Since nearly a million visitors show up every year, we were fortunate to be there in December instead of July. There were still plenty of people on the main pathway, but on the less-visited secondary trails we were able to walk with the silent attention this place deserves.

Muir Woods has neither the oldest nor the biggest of the giant redwoods. Its trees are the taller but more slender cousins of the Sequoia-dendron giganteum. The tallest one here is only about 250 feet high and the widest a mere 14 feet in diameter. Give them time, though. Most of these trees are still young adults of only 500 to 800 years old. They haven't seen half their expected life spans yet.

Redwood trees were around some 150 million years ago—in fact, they covered a great deal of the continent until climate change limited them to the Pacific Northwest. One of the reasons for their endurance may be their unique methods of reproduction.

Seedlings sprout from the tiny seeds carried in the trees' cones, of course. New growth can also come from burls, which are woody growths on the bases or sides of the trees that contain dormant buds. If a tree is injured, new trunks can sprout from these burls.

It's common in Muir Woods to see a ring of trees forming a family circle. Sometimes they surround the fire-scarred hollow trunk of a long-dead giant. Sometimes all that remains of the mother tree is the space where it grew centuries ago. I don't know whether these burl-sprouted trees are genetically identical to their parent trees. If they are, that makes such trees almost immortal.

Maybe that is why such a sense of ancient life and wisdom pervades these woods. Walking here, it's easy to believe in wise gnomes and ageless tree spirits. This isn't a malevolent place like the dark, frightening forests of old fairy tales. Instead, it seems to regard human visitors with benign detachment. We may be a little larger than the squirrels and birds, more numerous than the deer, but our comings and goings are still of little import in the long lives of the redwoods.

One section of Muir Woods is called Cathedral Grove, for obvious reasons. I assume the great cathedrals were a feeble attempt to recreate the awe-inspiring grandeur of old forests like these. But the whole place, with its towering elders, feels like sacred ground. It's a place to walk softly and with respect.

These trees don't need any hugs from the likes of us. But if you happened to see one of the gnomes, and if you asked nicely, maybe it would shake your hand.

Categories: Living Consciously, Travel, Wild Things | 2 Comments

Keeping the Wolf From the Door

Posted on September 18, 2009 by Kathleen Fox

It was late for dinner—which was beside the point, since it hadn't been invited in the first place.

We spent a beautiful late-summer evening sitting out on the deck with several guests, enjoying good food and better conversation. It was well after dark before anyone got up to leave.

As we were standing in the doorway under the porch light, saying goodbye to the last two guests, I happened to glance down at the doorsill. There, just coming in past the open screen door, was the largest spider I have ever seen. Well, actually, I have seen a couple of larger ones in the tarantula exhibit at Reptile Gardens, but they were safely behind thick glass. This one was a good three inches long and at least two inches wide, counting all eight of its long, thick legs—and it was crawling into my house.

I'm not particularly afraid of spiders. I don't consider myself a screamer. There are times, however, when extraordinary measures are called for. I screeched and pointed.

Alarmed but determined, the spider scuttled past our feet and into the entryway. The departing couple came back in to see what the commotion was about. Despite, or maybe because of, our efforts to stop it, the spider slipped under the door into the coat closet.

My partner slid open the closet door and started tossing out winter boots, backpacks, and stray coat hangars. Our guests joined the pursuit. The spider took a defensive position on the back wall of the closet.

The husband said, "That looks like a wolf spider. Get the Raid! Get the Raid!" (This man, a paleontologist, once told us a memorable story of waking up in the Brazilian rain forest to find that he couldn't open one eye. He had to peel off a tarantula that had planted itself on his face. Perhaps he had arachnid issues.)

Issues or not, I thought his suggestion about the Raid was a great idea. But as I headed downstairs to get it, his wife, a biologist, asked me for a container with a lid. By the time I came back, armed and ready to do battle, she was maneuvering the spider into a plastic bowl that had once held macaroni salad.

She popped the lid onto the container and headed outside. Okay, if she wanted to take this lethal-looking critter off to show to her students, that was fine by me. Instead, she carried the spider halfway across our yard and let it loose. Ordinarily I find compassion to be a virtue. In this case, I would have been willing to make an exception.

A couple of weeks later, we again had guests for dinner. Again, we were saying goodbye at the door under the porch light. Again, I glanced down—and there was the spider, or its identical twin, reaching its first long gray leg over the doorsill.

I didn't scream this time, just pointed and made inarticulate noises. My partner was fast enough on his feet to deflect the critter before it got inside. He herded it away from the door, down the steps, and off into the grass.

That's it. Two instances of misplaced compassion are enough. Any time now that we have evening guests, we're saying our goodbyes in the living room and hustling them out without turning on the porch light. In case that doesn't work, the Raid is close at hand beside the front door. If that critter sets so much as one arachnid toe across the sill again, it's toast.

Categories: Wild Things | 1 Comment

Food For the Soul

Posted on October 12, 2007 by Kathleen Fox

“We don’t have any grocery stores downtown any more,” our Santa Fe hostess told us. “They’ve all been turned into art galleries.”

Strictly speaking, this isn’t precisely the case. We saw three supermarkets within a few minutes’ drive of the old downtown historic district, plus a small grocery store only a few blocks from the plaza. True, this last seemed to cater more to visitors from the nearby hotels than to local householders doing the week’s shopping. It ran to expensive imported chocolates, gourmet cookies, and exotic meats, rather than ordinary produce and canned goods. It’s the only grocery store I’ve ever been in that listed “caviar” on one of its overhead aisle signs.

So food for the soul has not completely displaced food for the body in Santa Fe. Still, there are more art galleries in the downtown area than it would seem one small city could possibly support. Surely the tourists can’t buy that much fine art.

Just walking casually through the downtown area, we passed at least 50 galleries. Contemporary art. Traditional Native American art. Textile art—some of it formerly known as weaving. Imported Mexican art. The art of Russia. Western art. Folk art—complete, in one case, with a sign out front proclaiming, “Jesus says buy folk art.”

A few obviously thriving galleries were housed in grand buildings with attractive courtyards and carefully designed sculpture gardens. Some of the artworks were by familiar names; all of them were priced in the range of “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”

A second tier consisted of galleries that were less grand, but still appeared to be well-established and presumably successful.

The third tier included the many small galleries—tucked into elderly adobe buildings crowded next to their neighbors, with small signs out front and perhaps a few pieces of sculpture crowded into a tiny front yard. Many of them featured the work of only one or two artists, who from the mixed residential/business appearance of the neighborhoods may well have lived upstairs. For all I know, some of them may reap more financial benefit from the tax deductions related to having businesses in their homes than they do from sales of their art.

Seeing this much art crowded into one small downtown inevitably leads to ponderings about what is art and what is not. My conclusion? I don’t know. My favorites tended to be the elegant, realistic sculptures and the paintings of recognizable subjects, rather than the blobs-of-muddy-color abstracts. This may mean I have classic good taste, or it may mean my eye is untrained and my esthetic sense is hopelessly provincial.

I must confess, though, that on one occasion I visited a gallery solely in search of sustenance for my stomach rather than my soul. The sign said there was a coffee and snack shop in the back. (In defense of this lapse into barbarism, my choices were limited. It was Sunday, and the downtown grocery store was closed.) I wasn’t impressed with the art, but the tuna salad and the chocolate chip cookies were excellent.

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