Am down in FL at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (and if someone could send me the code for making links, I'd appreciate it, since it's at home and I'm not) and was driving around today for the first time off-campus. Looked beachward and saw what seemed to be three black kites -- their spacing and formation were so perfect, and they were so huge, I thought they must be some odd-shaped things being controlled from strings on the ground. Not so! They were low-flying black-and-white pelicans! For a newly-converted bird nerd, this was such a thrill I almost crashed the car.

So what is this place? It's terrific, I gotta tell you. I'm one of three "Master Artists," the others being Lee Hyla, a composer, and Guillermo Kuitca, a visual artist. We each have 7 or 8 Associate Artists to work with. The ACA has a painting/sculpture studio, video facilities, a dance studio, library, writer's workshop, computer center, plus a bunch of other spaces to hang, hide, work in. I'm running a workshop with my Associates, and we're looking for ways to interact (besides socially at meals, etc.) with folks in other disciplines, too. Maybe a short opera... Everyone's excited about their work, and the staff seems really dedicated to making sure our projects go well. There's plenty of time to work on my own stuff, and there's the beach, and of course all kinds of new birds.

I got here Sunday night and found my own little cottage waiting, complete with milk in the fridge, a comfortable napping couch, and a banana spider hanging outside the bedroom window. You guys know this monster arachnid? It's the size of the Rock of Gibraltar! I pulled up the blind and there it was an inch from my nose. Luckily, a quarter of that inch is glass. I'm calling her Chiquita.