All posts by laurahinnj

From the field

Our options have recently changed

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“Hello.

You’ve reached Laura in the Rental Assistance Unit. I’m not able to take your call right now.

Probably because I’m avoiding you.

Before leaving a message, please listen to the following options, as they’ve recently changed:

If you’re calling to request that I send a letter to your foodstamp/welfare worker verifying your rental share, press one (#1) to tell them to get off their lazy butt and walk upstairs to my desk to get it themself. It’s not my job to do their job, too.

If you’re calling to give me some lame excuse about why you haven’t paid your rent in six months and are about to be evicted, press two (#2) and realize that I won’t believe a single sad story you’ll tell me.

If you’re calling me for the fifth time in as many minutes, just hang up and accept that there’s a reason I’m not picking up the phone.

Like, maybe, I’m avoiding you.

If you’re calling from Georgia and want me to lie to my boss to save your ass, press three (#3) and reconcile yourself to the fact that you screwed up big this time and I won’t stick my neck out for you, ever, again.

If you’re calling to rat out your neighbor/ex-girlfriend/sister because he/she drives a nicer car than you/has more tv’s than you/pissed you off/kicked you out yesterday, please press four (#4) until you’re willing to put something in writing and sign your name to it. I love making fraud referrals with a real name attached.

If you’re calling to explain to me how you’re only “technically” married, press five (#5) and take a deep breath. I’ve heard it all before and this better be good!

If you make more money than me and still can’t manage to pay your rent each month then press six (#6) ’cause, really, I’m a social worker now and should have taken that job on Wall St. instead.

If you’re just lonely and need someone to talk to, dial x6023 to talk with Linda who’s bored and doesn’t have her fair share of nutty clients, frankly.

If you’re calling about bedbugs, dial seven (#7) and thank you for the warning before I do our next home visit.

If, however, you’re calling to thank me for my compassion and hard work on your behalf, please hold, as your call will be transferred directly to my supervisor.”

; )

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TGIF!

In the new neighborhood, Snapshots

Memento mori

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There is no need for me to keep a skull on my desk,

to stand with one foot upon the ruins of Rome,

or wear a locket with the sliver of a saint’s bone.

It is enough to realize that every common object

in this sunny little room will outlive me.*

Yet another vacant lot in Asbury Park where urban blight is being reimagined daily as art (or kitsch?) The long abandoned foundation pillars were wrapped in colorful fabric months ago by a local artist; the stone cairns and mementos left behind lately seem a futile offering to the fickle gods of real estate development.

*from Memento Mori by Billy Collins

Bunnies, PSA

Mid-week bunny fix

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Fair Bunnies!

Lionhead Bunny

Currently quite the rage among bunny breeders, but I sneeze just looking at them.

English Lop Bunny

Those floppy ears can be as much as 22 inches long… kinda silly, I think, but breeders entertain themselves this way.

(snark)

Friendly 4-H People

Imagine that! I have to commend this group, unlike those at my local county fair, for actually engaging the public and letting us pet and enjoy the bunnies there on display. Usually the bunnies are left to pant for days in the heat, poked at by passerby, for the sake of a blue show ribbon. Getting the bunnies out of their cages where interested folks could touch them lovingly makes so much more sense, don’t you think?

Birds, In the neighborhood, Snapshots

Tern, tern, tern

4 Comments
The birds shrug off
the slant air,
they plunge into the sea
and vanish
under the glassy edges
of the water,

and then come back,
as white as snow,
shaking themselves,
shaking the little silver fish,
crying out
in their own language,
voices like rough bells–

it’s wonderful
and it happens whenever
the tide starts its gushing
journey back, every morning
or afternoon.

This is a poem
about death,
about the heart blanching
in its folds of shadows
because it knows
someday it will be
the fish and the wave
and no longer itself–
it will be those white wings,
flying in and out
of the darkness
but not knowing it–
this is a poem about loving
the world and everything in it:
the self, the perpetual muscle,
the passage in and out, the bristling
swing of the sea.

–The Terns by Mary Oliver from House of Light, 1990

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All Commons, I guess. The Leasts are just too quick to photograph in the air. They’re still feeding babies on my favorite sandbar at Horseshoe Cove on Sandy Hook, but today there were far fewer loafing around. Maybe it’s just that the tide was higher this time.

I’m collecting tern poems if anyone has any to share…

Birds, In the neighborhood, Seasons

Sea swallows

5 Comments

Field guides will tell you that terns are closely related to gulls and suggest that, because of similar feeding habits and a shared gregariousness, one might find all members of the Laridae family of birds equally deserving of our admiration.

That might be true for you, but I mostly ignore gulls in favor of terns. Exceptions to that are the handsome summer presence of Laughing Gulls and the dainty Bonaparte’s in winter.

In terns I see long fast wings that dance over the sun-dappled sea as it heaves at my feet…

and

the hover-and-plunge feeding technique so suited to little waves and the little fish they pluck from the shadows…

and

the dark eyes and sharp downward-pointed bills, the rising cloud of white birds and the storm of their cries all around me…

A particular joy at this time of the season, late July, when young terns and young osprey at Sandy Hook are learning to fish and to make their way in the world is to place myself among them on the bay near to sunset: behind every shell or pebble or bit of sea-drift is the possibility of a young bird waiting for its next meal delivery; a feathered army of birds marching ahead of me until finally I settle myself amongst them, drenched and soggy in the tide, sand-covered and happy.

: )

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Photos:

#1: Common or Forster’s? I’m thinking Common, but would welcome hints!

#2: Young Least Tern, begging (and squealing, almost!)