Before Simmons
"Have Laptop, Will Travel"
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Before Simmons |
Spring migration is the highlight of the birding year. It is nothing short of astounding that such tiny creatures, some weighing only a fraction of an ounce, can brave the winds, rains, and open water between their winter feeding grounds in the tropics and their breeding grounds far to the north. I have spent many weeks at Point Pelee Provincial Park and on the Lake Erie marshes. An organization called Lake Erie Wing Watch sponsors field trips and The Ohio Ornithological Society keeps tabs on hotspots and rare sightings.
Since I moved to Massachusetts, I have joined the Massachusetts Audubon Society, which maintains several natural areas and offers local and worldwide programs.
The greatest news in the birding world lately is the rediscovery of the ivory billed woodpecker, more commonly known in its haunts in the bayous as the Lord God bird. Cornell's Ornithology Lab is a great place to track the story, and provides lots of other services.
Some of my earliest memories are of Story Hour with Miss Rhode at the Bellevue Public Library. Bellevue is a sleepy little town of about 8,000 people. I can't believe the library now has a web site. I fell in love with Boston (and wore out a couple of library copies of the book!) at a distance because of Make Way For Ducklings, and I still love the sculpture in Boston Public Garden.
I was introduced to the Middle Earth and J.R.R. Tolkien (though I'm still not sure how to pronounce it!) in junior high. I have read the trilogy at least once a year since then. I still prefer the books to the movies, but I'll take Viggo any day!
And I expect I'm a hopeless Muggle, but I hope one day to catch a glimpse of the Knight Bus. If you're a fan, J. K. Rowling's home page is great fun.
Before starting at Simmons I spent eight years at a company that provides software solutions for publishers of newspapers and magazines. It went through several incarnations in the time that I worked there, the most recent being Atex. I left some good friends behind, but we stay in touch.
My first assignment was at the The Village Voice in the Big Apple. Talk about culture shock! One of my favorite spots was Colorado Springs where I worked at The Gazette. I was fortunate enough to be sent to Malaysia, but I was unfortunate enough to arrive there on Spetember 10, 2001.
One of my favorite assignments was Newsday, which is essentially a very large collection of small town papers. The systems group was wonderful to work with, and it is one of the very few places I encountered where I would willingly have gone to work.
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Dixie Blake Foster Simmons College dixie.foster@simmons.edu |
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