At my most wandery,

I have 38 books piled on the floor in my office. I am researching and am at my most wandery. The 38 books keep me ranging and unfocused. I read little bits of them when I think of them. I know they are there and I know what purpose I have for them currently. They are mostly library books and mostly books I will never read from cover to cover. I am wandering in them.

Some sample chapters:

"Washed away by Hurricane Katrina: Rebuilding a "New" New Orleans"

Robert Bullard is one of my heroes. I love his work. I have been very fascinated by the Katrina aftermath especially since I heard Bullard and John Biguenet speak publicly. I also just heard recently that there's new US animal rights legislation that requires that pets be evacuated with their owners in a disaster. People wouldn't leave their homes because they wouldn't leave their pets behind...obviously.

"A Natural History of Animal Souls"

Hmmm. I was just talking about Christian mice at a talk I gave two weeks ago. Everybody laughed but really...once the mice start praying, then we have to acknowledge that they have souls and that changes everything...

"A Jungian perspective on House Building and Place Making"

I'm looking for a good place to build a fort right now. A spring fort, I think. Like a big hat.

Three Poems: "The Purse-Seine" by Robinson Jeffers (a man who lived in a fort of sorts), "A Coney Island of the Mind #15" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and "Song for the Deer and Myself to Return On" by Joy Harjo (which was tainted last year when I heard a South Carolina bureaucrat read it publicly and he totally didn't understand the poem in the same way as I do but felt it was important enough to read to a large crowd...but I'm back to it again...you can't put a good poem down)

"14 May to 22 December 1800" Dorothy Wordsworth. I could be more like her - "Wm and John set off into Yorkshire after dinner at half past 2 o'clock -- cold pork in their pockets..."