Activity on the website has slowed a bit because of some technical problems that surfaced a couple weeks ago and that took some time for me to fix.  Hopefully that is all ironed out now but let me know if you notice any problems.  I’ve added some new photos to Everett’s webpage and made some changes to the home page to make it a bit more informative.  The downside of this is that I need to catch up a bit.

Every once in a while you meet someone who makes you aware of something that is all around you but that you didn’t notice before, and it changes your perception of the world.  For example, many years ago I read An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton, and ever since then I have realized how common collective nouns are, yet how easily they are overlooked (e.g. a flock of seagulls, a school of fish, a catastrophe of debt, etc.).  So it has been also with Everett and ducks: he is an expert at identifying them.  In the photo he is pointing out a couple of them at the petting zoo that came to Hart Park on July 4th.  Nothing too surprising about that, but what’s interesting is that the real ones bear little resemblance to the iconic yellow duckies, yet he readily identifies those in books and toys.  Many times during the day he exclaims “duck!”, and he is usually right even if it takes us a while to find what he is referring to.  He has been finding them in wallpaper borders, lawn ornaments and company logos on books.  Of course he won’t do this on demand, only when he feels like, so it’s difficult to catch on film.  But we managed to catch it once recently as you can see below.