6.12.2026 - Weekly Digest

I recognize these have been infrequent; focused on some mostly good life and business stuff, as well as indulging in one last frantic rewrite of my book. More news on all of that in coming weeks and months. Thanks for being part of the loyalty program.
-JA

M 6.08
Two human-sized corvids alight in the Panhandle. One ought not approach for fear of being mocked or otherwise distressed. We're here for your morsels, they say in that language of theirs, part ours part dinosaurs', and your shiny gadgets, and your cellular telephones and your jewelry and whatever other valuables you have, you might as well hand them over, we are relentless, we are eternal, we have society and we go surfing and we know more about your neighborhoods than you do, you fools, and we'll be damned if we're going to let you go on thinking you run things, look how big we've gotten sifting through your waste, we could subsist on leftover tacos and ghee alone around here. Our eggs grow fat like an ostrich's but we're neither ostriches nor emus nor cassowaries nor Big Bird nor any other kind of big bird, we are improbably large mutated raven-crows or cravens if you please, and we will not take no for an answer and by the way we know your language and we know your faces so don't think you can ignore us without consequence.

T 6.09
In Portland I had this housemate who left out water for the crows. He feared and respected them and he wanted them to know he was a friend, he had visions of them descending on him as he stepped outside for a cigarette, of them flocking and haranguing him on his way to work at the shoe distribution warehouse, he needed allies, he was forming an alliance and he needed all the help he could get for the cause, the workers' cause, the cause of the shoe warehouse distribution center workers who were overworked and underappreciated and generally sick of looking at shoes all day and answering to forepersons who couldn't give a shit less about the conditions they were sorting shoes in; in his mind the crows would gather around him like he was Brandon Lee and he would approach the shoe warehouse distribution building at the center of a moving and undulating and murmurating cloud of black feathers and beaks cawing and taunting senior management who when they saw this would crap themselves and concede to the workers' demands before divesting themselves of their own possessions and taking up binding oaths against capitalism and for the greater good. He also used to leave me hybridized models of Star Trek ships on my desk sometimes. Hey look I put Romulan nacelles on a Miranda class. He had a lot of good ideas is what I'm saying.

W 6.10
At the Grand Canyon there were ravens who spoke English and could hotwire cars. They knew the short tenancy cycles of the campers and when we would start talking about walking down to look at the Rim or whatever they would gather or flock, keeping a considered distance but not at all shy about their intentions, and as soon as we headed down the trail they were all up in our stuff, puncturing water bottles with their beaks and flipping the latches on the coolers to pop a tab on a cold one and they even knew how to get a fire going in the grill and they'd make themselves a nice steak with the chilies I brought from Hatch and they'd sit around talking about how it was in the old days and how hard it was generations ago before the campers showed up and ain't this the life, Carl, and Carl is a pretty common raven's name by the way, and they were friendly with the herds of elk who grazed their way through the campsites like ancient rock formations drifting through the pines in cycles that had nothing to do with the cycles of camping for a few days and drinking whiskey around the fire at night and packing all your shit up back into the Fiat and rolling back down the mountain to whatever less interesting place you came from.

Th 6.11
I'd intended a riff on words for groups of birds but then remembered I'm forbidden to look anything up when I write these so we're stuck with: parliament of owls; building of sparrows; cardboard of titmice; highway of nuthatches; Michigan of cardinals; telephone of coots; billfold of robins; plenipotentiary of loons; cumberbatch of kestrels.