And because chances are good you will NOT have time to read it, here's one more favorite excerpt:

In the last hours of 2019, a dear friend told me to pay attention to the first bird I would see in the New Year, because it would have special significance.

I love birds. Few things are simultaneously so ubiquitous and so incredible, make me feel so constantly as if I’m in the presence of a miracle. Birds, stars, and the several shapes of water; music, singing. These things and a few others I love with the helplessness that comes of trying always to get the people I care about to notice them, to wonder at them, when they are so common and so constant as to be thought of as annoyances: spike ledges against pigeons, curse the snow, make fun of people who sing earnest and full-throated without the sanction of a stage.