Under attack?

Feeling disoriented?  Maybe you stayed up too late Sunday night to watch the Patriot’s stunning, history-making, jaw-dropping overtime win against the, um, the….the team that wore red…. (Eagles?  Falcons?  Bengal Tigers?  Sorry….)  I didn’t watch because I’m too cheap to pay for cable and was to sick to accept an invite from friends, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t check the score a few times on my phone.

Maybe you follow Donald’s Twitter feed and your eyes and brain are on fire.

Or perhaps you can barely keep up with your day job and your night job (anything more than sitting in your pajamas doing exactly what you want with nobody bugging you counts as a job, as far as I’m currently concerned) – so the rest of it be damned.

I get it.  Truly, I do.

But I also feel an obligation to pay attention to events that will harm the plants, people and animals that I know and care about, as well as the ones I’ll never meet, never name, never know.  Most days I feel like there isn’t much I can do to fix what is broken, or breaking, but I can at least try not to make things worse with my own actions.

This barred owl frequents the fields near by house.   I delight in her (his?) mere existence.

She has begun to weary of my photo shoots, and politely made that clear recently by giving me a “really, you again?” kind of looking before flying off to the far edge of the field.  I try to be mindful of the fact that she is looking for food, while I am only looking for fun.

What sorts of things do you pay attention to in your spare moments?  What are you trying to ignore?

Right now I’m spending more time in my car than I can stand, but I pass the time by listening to Maine Public Radio and National Public Radio, both of which offer a wide array of interesting and educational programming.  When I am especially late coming home from work I take pleasure in knowing that being so late means listening to NPR’s Kay Ryssdal on Marketplace.  I especially enjoy news pieces from Marketplaces’s Sustainability Desk (www.marketplace.org).  Give it a listen.

Now, lunch break is almost over….