I don’t think I ever men­tioned that the April issue of Friends Jour­nal is out. There’s a fun arti­cle com­par­ing bird­watch­ing to Quak­er min­istry. That’s the kind of claim that might nor­mal­ly make my eyes roll but the author, Rebec­ca Hei­der, makes it work! Also, a great episode of Quak­er­S­peak this week pro­files the Ramal­lah Friends School and the com­mu­ni­ty’s longterm Quak­er wit­ness under suc­ces­sive occu­pa­tion by Ottoman, British, Lebanese, and now Israeli forces.

I thor­ough­ly enjoyed Gary Shteyn­gart’s Cry­ing Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever. It’s a joy of self-depreciation, snark, care­ful obser­va­tion, wrapped in won­der­ful writing.

For the sec­ond time in ten years I did­n’t feel the New Jer­sey earth­quake. No one in my house felt this one, even though peo­ple fur­ther out from the epi­cen­ter did. I was on a rat­tling train dur­ing the 2011 earth­quake and walked about ten miles toward home after the sys­tem was shut down (but don’t wor­ry, it was a love­ly day and I stopped at mul­ti­ple hip­ster cof­fee­house and even got a hair­cut in). Clouds held out for this week’s eclipse and the fam­i­ly got a good view.

My meet­ing host­ed a fas­ci­nat­ing talk last Sun­day on efforts to sup­port restored habi­tats for clams and oys­ters in New Jer­sey estu­ar­ies. These mol­lusks sta­bi­lize the shore­line, clean the waters, and make our shores more resilient to both cli­mate change and the nat­u­ral­ly sink­ing South Jer­sey landmass.