Random Thoughts

I seem to be fated to take cute animal photos these days.



This handsome gentleman is Socrates, a resident of Historic New England's Spencer-Pierce-Little Farm. He was kind enough to attend the Jackson Hill Cider Days, one of my favorite Historic New England events - I like it well enough that I've signed up to work it the last 4 or 5 years. I would have been far more flattered by his display if he hadn't done the same to pretty much every female (and most of the males). He really is lovely, though apparently stupid enough that he would keep displaying and forgetting to drink until he passed out. So the farm staff would periodically scoop him up and pour water over his head to cool him down. He'd squawk, and his feathers would deflate - making him about half the size he had been - and then he'd forget what had happened and run over to show off to someone else.

In a completely unrelated note, Friday's paper had an article on overcrowding in college dorms. (Yes, that annual article, though to be fair the situation seems a tad worse this year.) Brown apparently was so strapped for space that it had to put some freshman in with older students, including one poor boy who was assigned to the dorm occupied by a co-ed literary fraternity. His (for-publication!) quote on the matter:

"I was kind of weirded out. I didn't know what kind of person you'd have to be to join a society designed for people who read a lot."

The boy went on to say that he didn't intend to become one of those people.

Huh. Maybe these aren't unrelated stories after all.