For the past year I've not written on this web site because (as anyone who googles me knows) I've maintained a web site, for my neighbors, on the great blue herons who nest in my neighborhood. The nesting area is threatened by development, not that they're an endangered species, yet I would still be sad to see them gone.

The heron site ended up under my name, when I'd intended to use a pseudonym, so that my public writing life would not be "soiled" by this purely local endeavor. And why do I regard the mixing of the two as soilage? Why don't I want it known that I spend/waste/utillize time not just in the supposedly high-minded task of writing poems but also in trying to make real change on a purely local level? Beats me. But I do not underestimate my capacity for shame.

The irony is: the heron web site may have hurt the herons. It alerted everyone to their presence, everyone including the developer, who promptly laid out his roadbed through the rookery (though the impact of the road waits to be seen).