"Spring officially started 38 minutes ago," said the radio announcer. I looked out the window and saw white flakes floating, flitting, falling. Hello, Spring! When I went out it was chilly but by the time the flakes reached street level they were spatters of rain, no longer white, just wet.
Now as I am typing the newsman is talking about a decline in the number of bird species on Earth and the decrease of numbers of birds in the world. This resonates not only with the beginning of spring but with the book I finished last night, Nadine Gordimer's Get A Life. This is a relatively short novel and especially held my attention because a character is trying to save the Okavango Delta from a plan to build ten dams. Since I was in the Okavango Delta last month I felt I knew a little of the scenery described. Apparently the dam project got squashed, or maybe is on very long term hold. Gordimer's prose is so sure, her narrator is distant and apparently dispassionate but the story is so concerned and her characters, as usual, are deeply involved in large issues so that the personal issues become reflections and extensions of the larger. I've never read a novel of hers I did not enjoy.
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