Easing back in after a lovely break, some of it spent sitting near the butterfly bush (Buddleja) in the garden, watching hummingbirds, contemplating practical advice from the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Muta Maathai: Do the best you can!
Recognized for her persistent struggle for democracy, human rights and environmental conservation, the Kenyan scientist who died in 2011, urged relentless involvement in protecting our planet. As a founder of the Green Belt Movement she empowered communities to improve their lives and make the world a greener place.
Here is her allegory that has become kind of a mantra for me:
“The story of the hummingbird is about this huge forest being consumed by a fire. All the animals in the forest come out and they are transfixed as they watch the forest burning and they feel very overwhelmed, very powerless, except this little hummingbird. It says, ‘I’m going to do something about the fire!’ So it flies to the nearest stream and takes a drop of water. It puts it on the fire, and goes up and down, up and down, up and down, as fast as it can.
In the meantime all the other animals, much bigger animals like the elephant with a big trunk that could bring much more water, they are standing there helpless. And they are saying to the hummingbird, ‘What do you think you can do? You are too little. This fire is too big. Your wings are too little and your beak is so small that you can only bring a small drop of water at a time.’
But as they continue to discourage it, it turns to them without wasting any time and it tells them, ‘I am doing the best I can.’
And that to me is what all of us should do. We should always be like a hummingbird. I may be insignificant, but I certainly don’t want to be like the animals watching the planet goes down the drain. I will be a hummingbird, I will do the best I can.”
***
My ongoing resolution:
SMALL DROPLET – BLOGS against the fires around us: I’ll do the best I can.
Random chain of thought on language and politics while I was watching my beloved crows and their babies.
We have a phrase in our household, disaster crow, that loosely refers to someone who attracts accidents or is otherwise stricken by bad luck. The original German was Unglücksrabe, a raven, not a crow. It is well integrated into the German vernacular and originated with a poem, Hans Huckebein, der Unglücksrabe, about a raven who was brought home from the woods by a boy, only to wreck havoc on a household with mean spirited and sinister raven intentions, ultimately hanging himself in a ball of yarn he tried to destroy. All this in a classic poem by writer and famous satirist Wilhem Busch, whose dark, dark stories, often cruel and vile with punitive death at the end, amused generations of Germans, since the lat 1800s.
Young as well as old readers reveled in the mischievous (mis)deeds of various protagonists depicted in early comic strips, almost, the most famous of them Max and Moritz, and rejoiced at their fitting ending, less of a parable than a sadistic lay-out of consequences. What went unmentioned is the in-your-face expressed anti-Semitism, both in Busch’s poetry and his letters. It was only in 1961 and only for some publishing houses that they simply removed the worst stanzas from whole poems, as if they didn’t exist. (I will not give the garbage room, but my German readers can see for themselves in a smart review in the Jüdische Allgemeine.) The public discussions around Busch’s centennial birthday tried their hardest to minimize, often by adding that he attacked others as well, the catholic church included. The desire to revel in texts that celebrate the misfortune of others seems too strong to be abandoned… Schadenfreude as a national pastime.
However, it also serves to extend latent anti-Semitic ideas in a population that was raised on these stories – and we have ample evidence that anti-Semitism is alive and well. Just this week unknown perpetrators cut down 7 trees planted in memory of the victims of Nazi euthanasia programs and forced death marches, kids among them, at the concentration camp Buchenwald in Weimar. Closer to (now) home, Jewish parents were confronted with the new logo of a Georgia school district:
Distribution is now halted, but anti-Semitic incidents in Georgia have more than doubled between 2020 and 2021, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League. (Ref.)
And just in case it is seen as isolated incidents: last week every single Republican House member voted against a Neo-Nazi probe of the military and law enforcement. )The amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act did pass with the votes of the House Democrats. All they wanted was for the FBI to report the total number of people who were discharged from the military or police because of their links to or support for far-right extremism .)
In any event, what I was really thinking about before getting side lined by politics, was how frequently phrases pick up bird characteristics or are associated with birds in one fashion or another. That’s true for English as well as German.
Here are some: Crazy as a loon (haunting cry), happy as a lark (melodious songs), skinny as a rail (they hide among the reeds in camouflage), like water off a duck’s back (their uropygial glands coat their feathers,) take someone under your wing (fledglings), ugly duckling (before you develop plumage…), night owl, eat like a bird (small quantities,)eagle eye (superior vision, ability to detect prey), birds of a feather flock together, scarce as a hen’s teeth, proud as a peacock, graceful as a swan, dead as a dodo, free as a bird, as a duck to water and, of course, straight as the crow flies. (I found these here; more complicated bits about words associated with birds can be found in Merriam-Webster.)
For an endless list of the equivalent German expressions you can go here. Notable that bad parenting is called having raven parents, funny or unlucky people are called Spassvogel and Pechvogel, respectively. Instead of picking a bone you pluck a chicken, Hühnchen rupfen, and considering someone stupid or mistaken is expressed as “you have a chickadee,” du hast ‘ne Meise, or “you’re obviously chirping”, bei dir piept’s wohl.
Yes, I know, I’m chirping a lot…
Spatzenhirn (sparrow brain), Gänsehaut (goose bumps,) Hühneraugen (corn on the feet/ chicken eyes, literally), Krähenfüsse (crows’ feet in the face) are also known attributes of this writer. A komischer Kauz (weird screech owl) or odd character, after all.
Oh, I revel in applied language. One of my favorites in this context is the German invention of the phrase Nachtijall, ick hör Dir trapsen, a Berlin idiom that is grammatically false. Literally translated it says, nightingale, I hear your heavy footsteps, (an absurd assertion) but the meaning implies something along the lines of being able to tell which way the wind is blowing. Living language blended two lines from a famous song from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, about hearing and seeing a nightingale, creating a whole new meaning with a joke.
Then again, maybe we should stick to the short vocabulary of this crow: woo or wow? Click on this link!
Here is the song about the nightingale from Des Knaben Wunderhorn set to music by Mendelsohn.
Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Alte deutsche Lieder (German; “The boy’s magic horn: old German songs”) is a collection of German folk poems and songs edited by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, and published in Heidelberg, Baden. The book was published in three editions: the first in 1805 followed by two more volumes in 1808.
The collection of love, soldiers, wandering, and children’s songs was an important source of idealized folklore in the Romantic nationalism of the 19th century. Des Knaben Wunderhorn became widely popular across the German-speaking world; Goethe, one of the most influential writers of the time, declared that Des Knaben Wunderhorn “has its place in every household”.
And why stop with avian attribution? Here is your poetry fix for the weekend.
A perceptive friend remarked that I have been offering much contemplation on nature when not writing about the larger art projects across the last months. It is true, I have been using nature to distract myself from politics, the relentless onslaught of bad news, piling up like yesterday’s clouds, pictured below.
So it was yesterday when I hung out with a number of ospreys. Or so it was supposed to be. Alas, the politics refused to leave my head. While the birds circled, hunted, tended to their brood, I thought about how the accumulation of shootings not only numbs us, but makes the average citizen more eager for strongman or authoritarian protection. The repeated shocks drive the last ones away from our attention, to be replaced by the newest massacre.
Remember the supermarket shooting in Buffalo, mid-May? The school shooting in Uvalde, some weeks back, now Highland Park during the 4th of July parade? So far, in the U.S. this year, we have had 322 mass shootings, (defined as 4 or more dead, excluding the wounded.)
And then this:
” the shootings were “designed” to get Republicans to support gun restrictions. Here’s what I have to say. I mean. Two shootings on July 4: one in a rich white neighborhood and the other at a fireworks display. It almost sounds like it’s designed to persuade Republicans to go along with more gun control. I mean, after all, we didn’t see that happen at all the pride parades in the month of June,” Greene said.
“But as soon as we hit the MAGA month,” she continued, “as soon as we hit the month that we’re all celebrating, loving our country, we have shootings on July 4. I mean, that’s … oh, you know, that would sound like a conspiracy theory, right?”
So spouts Congress woman Marjorie Taylor Greene, conveniently forgetting that just a few years back 49 people were killed at an Orlando gay bar. This month police in Idaho foiled an attack by affiliates of a white supremacist group on a Pride celebration in a park. A scooting scare at the SF Pride Parade sent the crowd running (evidence was not found.)
And then there was the Las Vegas shooting in 2017, that killed 60 people and wounded over 400. At a music festival, not during “MAGA” month….
Kathy Fish wrote her most widely anthologized piece to date in response to that murderous act.
“It was first published in Jellyfish Review. It was then chosen by Sheila Heti for Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018 and by Aimee Bender forBest Small Fictions 2018. Variously described as a poem, flash fiction, prose poem, or flash essay/creative nonfiction, this hybrid piece has also been selected for Literature: A Portable Anthology (Macmillan), Stone Gathering: A Reader (French Press Editions), Humans in the Wild: Reactions to a Gun Loving Country (Swallow Publishing), Advanced Creative Nonfiction: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, (Bloomsbury), and the newly released 15th edition of The Norton Reader (W. W. Norton).“
Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild
A group of grandmothers is a tapestry. A group of toddlers, a jubilance (see also: abewailing). A group of librarians is an enlightenment. A group of visual artists is a bioluminescence. A group of short story writers is a Flannery. A group of musicians is — a band.
A resplendence of poets.
A beacon of scientists.
A raft of social workers.
A group of first responders is a valiance. A group of peaceful protestors is a dream. A group of special education teachers is a transcendence. A group of neonatal ICU nurses is a divinity. A group of hospice workers, a grace.
Humans in the wild, gathered and feeling good, previously an exhilaration, now: a target.
A target of concert-goers.
A target of movie-goers.
A target of dancers.
A group of schoolchildren is a target.
by Kathy Fish
I have no use for conspiracy theories, from any faction. The facts speak for themselves. The number of available guns needs to be reduced. Gun laws need to be reformed, waiting periods initiated, background checks performed. Large capacity magazines need to be prohibited. Politicians need to be prevented from benefiting from lobbyists’ largesse. As long as we do not acknowledge these facts, children remain targets. Or their parents. Or anyone else in the fabric of things.
Come on ospreys, do your thing. Distract me.
Here is a beautiful album that might do the trick.
The sun was out. The sky was blue. Puffy white clouds. Miracle of miracles, after these endless rains, the cold, a May more like February. Yesterday was a promise of better times.
And everyone, I mean everyone, was out drying their plumage, preening, soaking up some warmth.
The herons opened their wings to the sun rays, or flying low in a bit of a breeze.
The Bullock’s Oriole (says my bird book) competed with the golden light around it, more interested in getting the gnats out of its feathers than watching the busy swallows right above it.
Bullock’s Oriole
And the turtles?
Lined up in a row, late comers trying to score a place as well, not too successfully.
Mothers and offspring sharing a log.
Heads stretched up high, opening wet folds, drying out.
Before we get too excited with all those harbingers of better times ahead, let’s be pragmatic. The rains will reappear in the not too distant future, says the weatherman. Good for our parched state, bad for our mood. Lets not be like the theoretic turtle – let’s follow canine advice: work around it and all other nuisances…
The Theoretic Turtle
The theoretic turtle started out to see the toad; He came to a stop at a liberty-pole in the middle of the road. “Now how, in the name of the spouting whale,” the indignant turtle cried, “Can I climb this perpendicular cliff and get on the other side? If I only could make a big balloon I’d lightly over it fly; Or a very long ladder might reach the top though it does look fearfully high. If a beaver were in my place, he’d gnaw a passage through with his teeth; I can’t do that but I can dig a tunnel and pass beneath.” He was digging his tunnel with might and main, when a dog looked down at the hole. “The easiest way, my friend,” said he, “is to walk around the pole.”
Want to come for a walk? Amble through wet meadows and woods where even the air takes on a green sheen?
Hawthorne, elderberry and ash trees
Where the sun has halos in those 5 minutes it agrees to come out of the clouds, before the showers return?
I walked along the Columbia river on Sauvie Island, so high with all the precipitation that the trees on the shores were submerged.
I approached the Willamette slough, where the pelicans rested until a fledging eagle chased them, descending from the perch where s/he had hung out with the parents.
I spotted yellow – the gold finches,
the yellow warblers,
and the Western Tanagers, not shy at all and in remarkable numbers.
It made me think of numbers, and how they have to be seen in context.
In this week you likely saw the announcement of the horrific milestone that the US had now suffered, one million deaths. Perhaps you didn’t see the reports, that by some estimates 300.000 of this people would likely have survived if they had been vaccinated. The anti-vaxx movement, of course, is fueled by many influences, but one influence seems to be underemphasized.
Rufus Towhee
There is a classic statement by CP Snow, still relevant now.
“A good many times I have been present at gathering of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold, it was also negative. Yet I was asking something that is the scientific equivalent of: have you read a work of Shakespeare’s? I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question – such as, what do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, can you read? – not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language.”
Snow’s concern was not specifically with scientific illiteracy. Instead, the concern was that people find it genuinely acceptable, and in some circles a point of pride, to have no understanding of science or math. Many times, I have heard people say with defiance: I don’t do math.”
The problem here is not ignorance about differential equations. The problem is revealed when we look at examples in which extraordinarily simple mathematical concepts change enormously how you think about central issues.
Pink Hawthorne
As an example, why are people not taking Covid seriously? Let us imagine, that the one million who died had a social circle of 30 people each. That means 30 million Americans have had direct contact with a Covid death. But now consider that approximately 85 million people have been infected in the US. If each of those has a circle of 30, then the vast majority of the country does know someone (or many) directly who did ok, but does not know anyone directly who died. Is it any wonder then, that vast numbers of Americans buy crazy claims like this is just a strong version of the flu — because that is the pattern of their lived experience, which outweighs dry numbers any old time.
Two Daddy Longlegs making more Daddy Longlegs
Totally different example: In the Pacific NW the Northern spotted owl may well go extinct. The most recent threat is from competition with a different species of owl, the barred owl. In a desperate response, the government has been killing barred owls in specified regions to open territory for the Northern spotted. So far, it looks like killing 2400 barred owls across ten years allowed the Northern spotted owls in those territories to survive. In places where the barred owls were left alone, the Northern spotted experienced serious decline, increasing the danger of complete extinction. You may still find this preservation strategy unacceptable, but, when you ask about costs and benefits, you might take into account that the barred owl is extremely common and thriving. The Northern spotted owl could be wiped out. So would you be willing to sacrifice, let’s say, 2% of one species in order to gain, let’s say, a 20 or 30% increase in another? These are not the real numbers, and the research is not clear yet on what the absolute numbers are. But surely the question takes on a different coloration if you look at the number of owls in the denominator.
Vultures were out en masse
One more example with a very simple character: many jurisdictions have just gone through elections, and a prominent argument from the right is that we need to do more to combat the crime wave that is ongoing in our country. The evidence for this crime wave is visible to anyone who even glances at the headlines. The problem, however, is that this is a ridiculous way to gauge crime rates. Recent data confirm that crime rates in Oregon have actually gone down (however minimally), rather than up for the last interval tested (2020.)
If we are trying to persuade people to take Covid seriously, we need to be aware of their lived experience, and that understanding has to be shaped by simple calculations I have sketched here. We may disagree about owl protection policies, but in thinking it through we have to be alert to proportions, rather than raw numbers, and in thinking about crime rates, our votes and our tax $$ should be guided by real numbers, not scare stories. Since people proudly say “I don’t care about numbers,” they rely instead on short cuts that routinely give them answers miles off of what they’d get if they spent 2 minutes thinking about the numbers. It won’t end well.
My walk ended with the resident scrub jay, who always hangs out around the parking lot. So did a ranger from the park service or whatever official administrative body. Talk about numbers in context: they had found a single gypsy moth threat in 2020 on the island, none last year. Here she was spending a full day hanging dozens of traps for these pests on the trees, and that was just the beginning. If you can’t control the moths when you still have a chance with small populations, the trees are doomed. Wish the CDC acted the same…
Expect to see small green bags dotting the island. Likely too many to count.
I am taking next week off to have some down time. See you soon after that. You can count the days!
Music is by Bartok today – he included math, in particular expressions of the Fibonacci numbers, in many of his sonatas.
They are sitting in front of my window, courting, day after day. Sometimes they come as a small flock, sometimes just the two of them, she more cautious, reserved, but eventually joining him at the bird bath. We used to put seeds out, but that attracted too many squirrels onto the balcony.
These birds have been struggling, over-hunted, numbers slowly picking up for a while, now declining again. They eat berries, love to hang out in the Hawthorne and munch, sitting upright. I wave to them, they blink at me, unperturbed. Leaving as suddenly as they appeared.
Originally, I meant to write about my Trouble with Change. I decided to get a grip instead – let me explain.
Columbia River, looking East
Two of my regular haunts, the Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Preserve in WA, and parts of the Tualatin River National Wildlife Preserve south of Portland closed a while ago for considerable amounts of time, 3 and 1.5 years respectively, to restructure the landscape, reconnecting the rivers with floodplains. Altogether important environmental improvements, with me (and others) moping about years of lost access even while acknowledging the need, and now celebrating the re-opening.
Restored flood plain and lake, respectively
When I first learned about the closures in 2019, I was upset that everything changes, even landscapes, usually reliable points of constancy. In fact, hiking through both preserves this week, I was again sad about some paths no longer accessible, while others were rerouted and still bore signs of human construction and interference, which will soon disappear, I guess.
Harrier Hawk
I consider myself a person pretty open to change, even if it is not always chosen by myself. I have lived through and adapted to major changes, the types of environments I lived in, from small rural German village-life to years in metropoles like New York City, the languages I have spoken, careers that came and went, constellations within my household, rise and decline of friendships and last, but not least, changing capacities of an ailing body. All taken, with the exception of short interims of sadness or agitation, in stride. So why is the change in the faces of familiar landscapes such an issue? You tell me.
Herded goslings and flock of lesser yellowlegs, I think
Plain old ducks
It makes me embarrassed. Almost ashamed, given the intense demands for adaptation to change required by the many refugees in this war- and misery-torn world of 2022. Think about the psychological burdens for any given refugee, with Ukraine of course holding a special place in my consciousness right now. The trauma load often consists of the pre-flight part, where violent events, threat to life or loss of loved ones and destruction of home are experienced. Then the flight itself whether under a carpet of bombing, or across ocean with unstable boats, drowning in the Mediterranean, burning to death in dry Greek island camps or freezing to death at closed Polish borders, you name it. Then the arrival in the host country, which reacts to despondency with varying degrees of helpfulness, often dependent on the color of your skin, the (dis)similarity of religious and cultural practices, your ability to speak or learn the language and degree of prior education.
Northern flicker, joined by swallows
Add to this forms of survivor guilt, that you escape a dreaded fate that others didn’t (think of the large number of Afghans who were left behind by those who were allowed to flee,) the separation of family units (men not allowed to leave their country of origin, for example, to be recruited) and the complete loss of trust when your very own friends and neighbors became the enemy who killed you and yours (think Bosnia, for example,) or refused to believe the reality of your plight (your Russian family not accepting that war occurs in Ukraine.) It is no surprise, then, that studies indicate that depression and anxiety are at least as common as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)and suggest that one or a combination of these conditions affects at least one in three refugees. (Ref.) One in three…
Turtles
Of course there are exceptions – here is a well-told story of a Syrian refugee in Germany whose intelligence, achievement orientation and a good portion of luck enabled successful adaption despite cultural and bureaucratic obstacles. Here is a thoughtful document for professionals how to help children through the acculturation process that speaks to a larger, more general need and seems to have been successful. (Source is Canadian, the only thing I could find in English.)
Blue herons roosting
In any case: the burden of required change while under psychological duress, or even traumatized, is immense.
My own reaction to changes in nature should be nothing but endless gratitude for what I have and what I’m spared. Duly noted. Grip gotten.
Common yellow throat
Yellow-rumped warbler (Butter butt!)
Music today is a favorite cello concerto. War horse, I know, doesn’t make it less beautiful.
And here is someone waiting for the mosquitoes to enter his beak:
Today I want to draw your attention to a superb essay, in ever so many ways. It describes both, the exploration of some churches in a particular neighborhood of Portland, Ladd’s Addition, and also a secular pilgrimage in search of something larger, deeper than ourselves by a man who has left traditional churchgoing long behind. The author, David Oates, lives here in Portland. His latest book, The Mountains of Paris – How Awe and Wonder Rewrote my Life won the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award and was also a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. I have not yet read it, another item in the growing pile of nature-related writing on my nightstand.
The linked essay is longish (hey, weekend is coming up!), and made me grateful, once again, that healing exists from psychological wounds inflicted in childhood.
Grateful, too, that people don’t allow themselves to be cut off from things or themes associated with the hurt, when these offer independent source pf learning or grace.
Grateful, last but not least, that there are writers who can write about topics of spiritual meaning without being didactic, proselytizing, or worse, saccharine, in my ears, pairing wit with humility. As I said, a superb piece.
I was reading it while sitting in my chair at the window across the pear tree. This year’s addition to the garden has been a raised bed where we planted – oblivious to the snow and hail to come – the first rounds of peas, leeks and lettuce.
So far the squirrels are eating the lettuce, long yellow and flat from the cold snap. The finches and chickadees, on the other hand, have found the perfect source for nesting material – they are relentlessly pecking away at the twine that holds the bamboo stakes together, harvested from our hedge and rigged in a makeshift attempt to provide a structure for the climbing peas.
There they were, birds searching – and finding – essential necessities, their and their offsprings’ continued existence dependent on it. No meaning required. Just biologically ingrained task performance. Something, I suppose, somewhat similar for humans under existential threat – no time to waste in pursuit of higher-order concepts when survival is at stake. But if we have the luxury to pursue them, if we have the chance to find meaning, what a gift for cognitive creatures who cannot help themselves but asking about the nature of and reason for their existence since time immemorial.
We obviously long for some evidence that there is something out there beyond the mere facts of burdensome existence, something that could, perhaps, prove guidance or protection or allow us to bask in its reflected glory (made in the image of whatever deity…).
I always wonder what characterizes those who seem to be able to find it.
For my part, I believe that our existence has no more – and no less – meaning than that of the finches and chickadees. We are a coincidental by-product of an evolutionary process in a random universe. I strongly believe, though, that we can make meaning, live a meaningful live, by focusing on others rather than self, refuse to be bystanders, force ourselves to be witnesses and adopt an ethic that favors solidarity with those in need and contribute with whatever talents we possess.
Today’s music is about dancing unhatched chicks – I envision those bird eggs snug and warm in a bed of twine in their nest….
We started the week with Native American art and we will close with it too. LeAnne Howe (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is the Eidson Distinguished Professor in American literature at the University of Georgia, who “connects literature, Indigenous knowledge, Native histories, and expressive cultures in her work.”
You can learn more about this brilliant poet here. Photographs are of fowl in action, busy in March.
Ya kut unta pishno ma* Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma
So I moved to this place, Iowa City, Ioway Where green-headed mallards walk the streets day and night, and defecate on sidewalks. Greasy meat bags in wetsuits, disguise themselves as pets and are free as birds. Maybe Indians should have thought of that?
Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma
Maybe you would have left us alone, if we put on rubber bills, and rubber feet, Quacked instead of complained, Swam instead of danced waddled away when you did what you did…
Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma
So I moved to the Place The “Jewel of the Midwest” Where ghosts of ourselves Dance the sulphur trails.
Fumes emerge continuous from the mouths of Three-faced Deities who preach, “We absolve joy through suffering.”
Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma
So I moved to this place where in 1992, up washed Columbus again like a pointy-chinned Son of Cannibals. His spin doctors rewrite his successes “After 500 years and 25 million dead, One out of 100 American Indians commit suicide One out of 10 American Indians are alcoholics 49 years is the average lifespan of American Indians.”
Each minute burns the useful and useless alike Sing Hallelujah Praise the Lord
Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma
And when you foreigners build your off-world colonies and relocate in outer space This is what we will do We will dance, We will dance, We will dance to a duck’s tune.
Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma
Time for a walk, along the edges of the ponds. Intensely blue sky yesterday, hints of greenery emerging, some swans still hesitating to fly further North.
The reeds caught my eye, swaying in the water.
Raptors hanging out, enjoying a bit of spring in the air.
Just birdsong today, not much text. I’m tired from so much writing last week.
The sounds are from an album by the Bowerbird Collective that topped the Australian charts after its release last December.
I have never been to Australia, don’t know the birds.
Just thought it is such a clever idea to raise our consciousness about needs for preservation by recording all this beautiful sound.
Which reminds me, here is some sound with human instruments, but speaking to the same goal.
If there’s still time. The book that explains it all can be found here.
And here is “Verse 2” of Bulu Line, Aboriginal George Dyuŋgayan’s rhyming tercet — “guwararrirarri yinanydina / dyidi yarrabanydyina / nanbalinblai yinanydina” —translated by Stuart Cooke into twenty lines describing the courtship flight of snipes, whose feather vibrations in the slipstream produce a throbbing sound known as “drumming,” as in this sample:
No snipes to be seen here. All I heard yesterday was the buzzing of the geese wings. The song of red-winged blackbirds. Some quacking ducks. It was enough.
