French Revolution meet my Pear Tree

I spend a lot of hours these days in an easy chair facing a budding pear tree nestled in a tall bamboo hedge. Its branches provide perches for all kinds of small birds, sparrows and chickadees, juncos and bush tits who disappear into the shelter of the bamboo the second they sense some change.

They certainly scatter when the Rufus Towhee, depicted below, appears to lord it over them all, choosing the highest branch and admiring his own colorful feathers, turning slow circles, spreading his wings and generally pretending he owns the place. Except for one pesky little brown sparrow who won’t have it, starting low on the tree and hopping with fierce determination ever higher until he is in Rufus’ face who is stunned enough at the chutzpah that he flies off.

And since we are on a roll with the anthropomorphizing, let’s hear it for the story that came to mind as an analogy – having just picked it up a couple of days ago in my insatiable appetite for narratives about unusual individuals who defy constraints and expectations.

Meet Zamor, a Bangladeshi boy who, at age 11, was captured by British slave traders who trafficked him to France via Madagascar and sold him to Louis XVI. He gave the boy as a gift to his mistress, Madame du Barry. The countess, by her on words, used him as a plaything and invited courtiers to tease and ridicule her “little African.”

At first I looked upon him as a puppet or plaything, but… I became passionately fond of my little page, nor was the young urchin slow in perceiving the ascendancy he had gained over me, and, in the end… attained an incredible degree of insolence and effrontery.”

The boy craved and received education, devouring Rousseau and studying the classics. At the start of the French revolution he joined the Jacobins and became an office-bearer in the Committee of Public Safety. Using his influential position he got the police to arrest the Countess in 1792, who was released from jail on this round eventually. Further charges by Zamor who was done with a slave’s existence, led to her second arrest, trial and execution by guillotine. It is sort of tragic, given that the Countess was born out of wedlock to a working class mother, made her way out of poverty and up the social ladder as a hired prostitute in ever more aristocratic circles due to her uncommon beauty, and eventually ended up as the King’s courtesan, an association that doomed her during the revolution.

Not exactly a happy ending in the wings for Zamor either. He was arrested by the Girondins on suspicion of being an accomplice of the Countess and a Jacobin. Friends secured his release from prison and helped him to flee France, only for him to return to a life of poverty and premature death after the 1815 fall of Napoleon.

The lavish pretender at the top of the social ladder was brought down by a small Jacobin hooked on big ideas about inequality, social contracts and other tenets of enlightenment. Let’s hope the colorful Towhee and the assertive small rebel sparrow do not exactly reenact the ultimate fate of their counter-parts. Just getting things shaken at the top is joy enough.

Then again, the Heritage Foundation might not agree….

Here is Pola Negri as Madame du Barry in a 1919 silent movie directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Spectacular mass scenes. Alas, explanatory text in French and German only. Zamor is played by a Victor Janson, hmmmmm.

For a more short lived musical amusement – La Piaf in It’ll be fine…..

Trekvogels

The poem about migratory birds below was written at the end of World War II by one of the more prolific Flemish poets, Hubert van Herreweghen. Tricky translation – in the original the very last sentence really conveys that you should learn to love life or what is left of it. There was, with winter approaching, probably longing to follow the birds, away from the fields of Flanders, to a a warmer South, leaving the violence, the losses and serious hunger of those years behind.

MIGRATING BIRDS

The summer that has cheated us;
the gloomy lesson autumn brings.
Beneath the slow, high cumulus,
I see a black bird fly across,
heading south with beating wings.

The magical flight of the wild geese
and cranes with their clamouring cries
over the land like a golden fleece.
Winter brings shadows, dark without cease,
until a new journey fills up the skies.

Vulnerable heart and senses in pain,
There is no home, in east or west,
where, landed, you’re not restless again.
You must learn to love life, that’s plain,
Or, anyway, to love the rest.

By Hubert van Herreweghen, translated by Paul Vincent

From: Verzamelde gedichten
Publisher: Orion, Bruges, 1977

I picked it as a bridge to one of my favorite clips of all time, my go-to when I need peacefulness.

I photographed the migratory swans, geese and cranes this week on their journey in the opposite direction – going North to meet longer days, more light, the delights of mating and nesting season. No longing to follow them – in love with my home, that does exist here in the West, and loving life as always, no need to learn that. Magical flights, though, indeed.

Joys to be had then, this week. Attached to change, in nature and elsewhere. Grateful for the respite.

Geese soaring

TREKVOGELS

De zomer die ons heeft bedrogen;
o weemoed die de herfst ons leert.
Onder de wolken, trage en hoge,
een zwarte vogel voor mijn ogen
die naar het zuiden keert.

Magische vlucht der wilde ganzen
en kraanvogels met luid gekrijs
over het land vol gouden glansen.
Dan valt de schaduw die de ganse
winter verduistert tot de nieuwe reis.

Ontvankelijk hart, kwetsbare zinnen,
er is geen honk in oost of west
of gij zijt rusteloos, er binnen.
Leert toch het leven te beminnen
of wat er van het leven rest.

Music today comes from a vision of migratory destinations for swans. As you can imagine the whole cycle of Cantus Arcticus is a favorite of mine.

And these are about 1000 snow geese on a stop-over, that white strip on the horizon.

I dwell in possibility

Nothing you haven’t seen before, if you have followed this blog for a while. The same vistas, the same trees, the same kind of birds. A recurrent destination for my walks, Sauvies Island. And yet….

Yesterday, the light was moody. It felt like dawn had lingered into mid-morning, reluctant to leave to wherever dawn goes, a darker place perhaps.

The birds were moody. Resting one minute, then driven into the air by the hunters’ shots or a hungry raptor chasing their weakest links, no safety here.

Snow geese, on their migratory routes, in dire need of refueling and rest, where constantly erupting into their airy circling, feeling threatened.

The ducks were just trying to hide, making themselves small in the water.

The clouds were moody as well. Forming bulwark banks in some places, wispy sheets in others, breaking on occasion to remind us the sun still exists. Flecked and blue skies in alternation, until the rain came and washed the light into uniform grey.

The corn was moody. Late, dry stalks whispering when not drowned out by the cries of a thousand geese. Bordering on water that came too late in the year to be of use. Or maybe it was the hunters whispering in their corn-clad hide-outs.

I was moody. But as always, nature soothed with magic. The sandhill cranes danced.

Each return to this ever changing place reminds me of possibility. I might not gather paradise, but at minimum a distraction. If lucky, a kind of peace that descends temporarily from that everlasting roof of a sky.

I dwell in Possibility

BY EMILY DICKINSON

I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –

Might even spot some flying swans, reminding us of nature’s gift of transition.

Music today is Debussy‘s perfect capture of moody possibility.

Dreaming, while snared, of murmurations.

I have been working on a project that, once again, tries to express the feelings associated with our current predicament: longing for freedom of movement and togetherness with others while being forced into spatial isolation. (I wrote about my last one along those lines here.)

The most recent exploration was initiated by watching a clip about those eerie kinetic artists, starlings, swooping through air in energetic and coordinated murmurations. The freedom of movement combined with a sense of communal action seemed like the perfect symbol for all that we deprived of right now during (in)voluntary quarantine due to Covid-19.

Artists have, of course, taken an interest in starlings for centuries. A contemporary one is photographer Søren Solkær who has observed the flights for many years now and published the images in a series called Black Sun. It’s worth clicking on the link below (Colossal) to see a spread of what he captured, some etherial beauty of stark landscapes in addition to the murmurations.

This project has taken me back to the landscape of my childhood and youth in the marshlands of Southern Denmark. A place where as many as one million starlings gather in the spring and fall, prior to onwards migration, and set the stage for one of nature’s most spectacular phenomena. As the countless birds congregate in large murmurations before collectively settling in the reeds at dusk they put on an incredible show of collaboration and performance skills. And now and then, by the added drama of attacking birds of prey, the flock will unfold a breathtaking and veritable ballet of life or death. The starlings move as one unified organism that vigorously opposes any outside threat. A strong visual expression is created – like that of an ink drawing or a calligraphic brush stroke – asserting itself against the sky. Shapes and black lines of condensation form within the swarm, resembling waves of interference or mathematical abstractions written across the horizon. At times the flock seems to possess the cohesive power of super fluids, changing shape in an endless flux: From geometric to organic, from solid to fluid, from matter to ethereal, from reality to dream – an exchange in which real time ceases to exist and mythical time pervades. This is the moment I have attempted to capture – a fragment of eternity.

BLACK SUN: Amorphous Flocks of Starlings Swell Above the Danish Marshlands

One of my favorite paintings of a young starling is by Dutch painter Jan Mankes (1889 – 1920) who, come to think of it, deserves his own YDP one of these days.

Starlings are often snared – they are perceived as a nuisance when they descend in great numbers onto cities, Rome being a case in point, where 5 million of them spend the entire winter before flying to Scandinavia to nest in spring. The city, no longer allowing nets, now has taken to releasing falcons to hunt them and places loudspeaker with starling distress calls and calls by other predatory birds near their roosting sites. Why such efforts, you wonder? In one word: Poopocalypse….. More than a nuisance are starlings at airports, endangering safety when they get caught in the jets of planes – Seattle’s airport SEA TAC catches over a thousand each year.

In any case, I had to combine, for my own Covid response purposes in my montages, a sense of being snared with a sense of symbolic murmuration. You tell me if the sentiment is adequately captured.

Music today is in honor of Mozart’s starling – a bird he held as a pet. Details on that in an interesting interview here. Apparently Mozart’s piece Musical Joke was part of their collaboration….

“Mozart’s Musical Joke was completed very shortly after his starling died in 1787. And I’m not the first to make the connection between this starling and this piece of music. That was Meredith West in a 1990 piece for American Scientist magazine [co-written with Andrew King]. She noticed that musicians hated this piece because it made them sound really bad — a lot of disharmony, fractured phrases, very odd key changes. Finally, she noticed that if you overlaid some of the most disconcerting parts over the song of a starling, there are a lot of similarities. You find the same kind of fractured phrases and general playfulness.”

Birds of a Feather

Birds of a feather, and loners. Time to share some the birds that hopped or flew across my way while in San Francisco, or simply hung out to be admired.

Looking at them will be the easy part. Reading assignments for today, on the other hand, will involve some effort, one, I PROMISE, that will be highly rewarded. Not a coincidence that I am posting some of my favorite subjects – the birds – after a particularly depressing day given the travesty of the new Supreme Court appointment, and offer readings that will help us battle our despondent states. Or so I hope.

The two authors I picked are birds of a feather in some ways – progressive, politically engaged, extremely talented writers who tackle the pressing issues of our time. Smart women with a laser focus on the topics of their choice, the legal system in one case, women’s issues in the other, both within the context of the history of power distribution in our country.

Dahlia Litwick has a background in Law (she holds a JD from Stanford and clerked for the 9th circuit Court of Appeals) and writes for publication as diverse as Newsweek, The New York Times Op-Ed page (as guest columnist) and Slate, where she is Senior editor. Her writing has developed over the years, becoming increasingly passionate, committed, but never shrill. Two years ago she received the prestigious Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, deemed to be the best legal commentator in the last many decades. I could not agree more – I turn to her writing on a regular basis, both for the amount of information conveyed, the ease with which it enables me to digest complicated issues, and the cleverness of the way she creates concepts that feel intuitively like perfect descriptions of a given situation.

Case in point: Litwick’s latest essay talks about the mechanisms in which current power distributions both within the legal system and the political realm at large have been cemented and simultaneously used to make us willing participants in a move towards minority rule. If you don’t have the time or energy to read her short piece, here is one excerpt that exemplifies what I mean:

If nobody in any position of authority feels the need to provide information, it’s a decent bet you aren’t in a functional democracy anymore. And I am not here to tell you how to fight the cynicism that comes with being lied to or told you can’t change anything. I am just here to note that the inchoate rage and despair are real, and that even the possible resounding defeat of Lindsey Graham in his race for his Senate seat may not be enough to cure it. I am also here to remind you that some of the reflexive reaction to the daily reminders of your own powerlessness—including your possible hopelessness, blame-shifting, and the ritual saying of “who cares”—really is the reaction they are trying to elicit. It is the object of the exercise. You’re now in the autocracy trainee program. Mitch McConnell’s court coup is designed not just to decrease your political power but to teach you that you should expect yet more political powerlessness. That is how they are trying to ensure that even though there are more of you than there are of them, it doesn’t matter and they still get to call the shots.

Autocracy training program: the perfect encapsulation of the goal to keep the citizenry in check. As she points out eventually, though, it’s up to us to refuse hopelessness. There are ways to resist.

This is a point that is echoed in Rebecca Traister‘s writing as well, the second author I’d like to introduce today. In fact, her most recent book, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger is all about the ways of organizing resistance in these times. Writing for New York Magazine and its website The Cut, editing for Elle Magazine, and some years back interestingly also for the New Republic, Traister’s gift for analysis and her wit are equally sharp.

If you have time, DO read the attached article from yesterday’s The Cut. It is long, I know, and the real meat appears way into the description of all of the movements uniting to fight our slide into autocracy, not just the women’s movement. The author is at her best when she lays out the dangers and complications arising from the diverse strands of groups and ideologies who should, must unite to fight the onslaught onto our democracy. Her optimism is tempered by pessimism, which both reflects what so many of us are feeling, and also makes it hard reading because we are so brilliantly reminded of the mountains that need to be climbed, even if the election should produce a new and improved government.

Not to read these kinds of pieces, though, is exactly giving in to the danger that they point out: the fatigue, the helplessness, the retreat into passive lives. I know, I’m prodding. Yield already! Anyone who called on Obama to seat a judge on the US Supreme Court who is a cross between Rachel Maddow and Emma Goldman (in 2009 no less, anticipating what would eventually come true), is worth your time!

Crows, Pursued.

I have written about crows before, describing my fascination with and admiration for corvids.

Les Corbeaux

New research results have the birds back on my mind, as did observing their antics during a short walk on the beach when the air cleared.

The newest neurobiological evidence claims that crows have a kind of consciousness previously believed to only exists in humans and macaque monkeys. Should we trust those claims? They are based on the the fact that the 1.5 billion neurons in a crow’s brain are architecturally arranged in similar ways as are our’s, and that they seem to fire in a similar manner to our’s when we consciously experience something or relate that we are experiencing something.

I am always weary of the “if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it must be a duck!” kind of arguments pursuing the quest to find ourselves in other forms of life. To equate forms of neuronal reactions to our human consciousness is a huge step; I would be much happier if people cautiously formulated that along a continuum of reacting to a stimulus directly on one end to having thoughts about one’s reaction, or being aware of one’s thoughts on the other end of the scale, some biological entities approach us more closely than others, but all in degrees.

There is no question that corvids are extremely smart, but why insist that their experience is the same as ours, when you are a scientist? Let’s leave that to the poets. And none has done a better job of pursuing crows as conscious, questing heroes than Ted Hughes in his book Crow, From the Life and Songs of a Crow (1970.) Recovering from the loss of his wife through suicide, he responded to the American artist Leonard Baskin’s request to write a collection that would complement Baskin’s crow-focussed artwork.

Crow, born from a nightmare in the story, is an ultimately inadequate hero on a quest. Lots of mythological and folkloric tidbits are woven into the narrative, and this little hero is very much like a traditional trickster, challenging, funny, amoral, sometimes destructive and always sharp.

Here is one of Hughes’ poems that fits perfectly with my recent observations of crows (and brought home how many birds I am sorely missing) at the edge of the ocean:

Aware of their thoughts or not, they sure know how to survive, and seem to have fun while at it. My kind of model!

Music today was inspired by Hughes’ book – the piece by Benjamin Dwyer is called Crow’s Vanity. For a bit more cheerful enjoyment let’s have Charlie Parker guide us into the weekend with Ornithology.

The Grace of the World

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

All Human Beings

Today the text is the music and the music is the text. The words of the 1948 UN Human Rights Declaration, in their demands for and implicit belief in humanity – the vision of a better and fairer world that is within our reach if we choose it – remind us that we still have a long way to relieve the trauma that millions of people undergo everyday, imposed by cruelty, greed and injustice.

Eleanor Roosevelt, credited with its inspiration, was the chair person of the UN Committee that drafted the document. She referred to the Declaration as the “international Magna Carta for all mankind,” and considered the 30 Articles of the Declaration as her greatest achievement. It was adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. Here is Roosevelt reading the preamble.

Composer Max Richter put her words to music, incorporating her reading of the preamble into a piece called All Human Beings from his new album Voices, to be released by the end of July. He then crowdsourced hundreds of readers of all ages who repeated the words in various languages, interwoven with the music. They are the voices of the title.

Here is an interview with the composer about his approach to music as a conduit for political or philosophical thought and here is a play list of his works broadcast on NPR.

Photographs today are a variety of finches, gold finches, house finches – the male plumage still intense for mating, to produce a second clutch of eggs. Their color comes from pigments in the food they eat, and so varies depending on the quality of the food. The better quality food, the more intense color, the more likely to be chosen as a mate by Ms. Finch….

I chose finches because they range across the entire world – in tune with the United Nations mission. Bunting, canary, cardinal, chaffinch, crossbill, Galapagos finch, goldfinch, grass finch, grosbeak, and sparrow classify as finches.

Of Bloodlust and Shorebirds

There we were sitting outside on the deck having dinner. Halfway through, one of us who shall remain nameless, departed for the kitchen where he finished his plate without being constantly attacked by mosquitoes, at the cost of staring at the dirty dishes. “Where is my boy,”he moaned, “he used to be the mosquito magnet, so I could eat in peace. ”

Ever wondered how dangerous mosquitoes really are, beyond being an itch-producing nuisance? Turns out they are the most dangerous animals in the world – the females are feeding on vertebrate blood, necessary to make the eggs for their own reproduction, transmitting pathogens that are deadly: some species are a vector for malaria, others for dengue fever, yellow fever, chikungunya, and Zika. That used to be geographically constrained, but some of these mosquitoes have hitchhiked on container ships and airplanes to more temperate zones now as well. In fact some researchers believe they have killed half of all humans ever alive (debated, but not too much of an exaggeration – – in case you needed a downward comparison to the rotten Corona virus!) Here is the book about mosquitoes that tells you more.

And ever wondered if it is really true that some people are more frequently bitten than others, and if so, why that should be? Looks like it is a fact that people differ in their attractiveness for mosquitoes, and much of it has to do with genetics. There seem to be some 7 spots on our DNA that can make us more or less susceptible to the flying plague, likely related to kinds of body odors that either seduce or repel. How do we know? Good old epidemiological studies, collecting data from tens of thousands of people who report how attractive or not they are to mosquitoes and then comparing their DNA for similarities and differences, isolating causal factors. Furthermore, good old twin studies – we can vary how alike subjects are (with most other factors being held constant,) and then exposing siblings, fraternal twins or identical twins to mosquitoes. If one twin is judged to be the best thing on the menu by the mosquitoes, they should show the same interest in the other twin, which they do, and do so particularly with identical twins, who of course share all their genes.

Mosquitoes also go for carbon dioxide, so if your metabolism is up, you exercised, you’re pregnant, they come for you. I forget the names of the other volatiles that either attract or deter the pest, but researchers believe that heredity of your deliciousness to stingers is comparable to that for height or IQ.

A lot of research on this topic is coming out of New Mexico, with work on all aspects of mosquito lives and troubles done by the Hansen Lab. One of the things they explore has certainly applications for our household: what can you use to repel them, short of poisoning yourself and your environment with DEET or other similarly toxic chemicals? They found that peppermint and lemongrass oil were effective for 30 min. Spearmint and garlic oil had a strong initial effect, however, both lost their efficacy at 30 min. Cinnamon oil was effective in significantly reducing mosquito attraction for 1.5 h.

You know what to apply or burn or drip around you now. Happy al fresco dining!

Time spent photographing critters and shorebirds at inland ponds this week required long sleeves and constant cursing: the insects were out at the edge of the water and no wind to blow them away. But it was worth to see the many killdeers, sand pipers and greater yellow legs feasting on – potentially – mosquitoes.

And whole swarms of mosquitoes can be heard in this music, Crumb’s Music for a summer evening.

Sweetness and Beauty

Meet Jumper. A recent addition to our neighborhood, this chick lives up to her name.

Meet Miles. He tends to Jumper and her two companions with care, dedication and an abundance of tenderness.

There are numerous chickens around the area, despite the constant lurking of hungry coyotes. Some are in coops all day, some are let loose under close supervision, and some are supper.

I cherish the noises, particularly those of the occasional rooster – officially prohibited to be kept in residential neighborhoods for exactly that reason, noise – because it reminds me of my childhood.

I cherish the sight, because there is something marvelous about the dedicated business of chickens pecking away at anything they can find. Singular focus on the business at hand – survival! – is a welcome model to this here worrier of mythic proportions.

I cherish the idea of children growing up with animals that are not just cuddly pets to be toyed with, but require real responsibilities and commitments. Miles is certainly doing his share of feeding, watering, supervising and endlessly cleaning the boxes before the final coop is built by him and his Dad.

The chicks are surely attached to him, or his sun-warmed rubber boots, which provide perfect resting places.

I was reminded of old science on imprinting of avians, and found this clip from 1975 (!) about the research of Konrad Lorenz and associates here, little goslings following their human foster parents unperturbed. A sight to be seen.

Chicks become chickens, chicken lay eggs, and what better use of those than being whisked into batter. Batter to make pies, to be precise, although I believe they are then called crusts? English can be so confounding.

I wonder if the German baker of pies, Karin Pfeiff-Boscheck, encounters the same problems with technical terms, or, for that matter, recalculating German measurements into American ones. Ounces vs grams, anyone? Conversion of oven temperature from Celsius to Fahrenheit?

She has certainly surmounted any obstacle to come up with these marvelous creations – in fact artful ones, high brow art connoisseur- eye rolling be damned. She is also generously sharing her knowledge – here is her book that helps even kitchen-phobic people like me to approach baking. I first learned about it here.

Her background in design is obvious; I just wonder how it would feel to cut into these little art works when you are ready to eat, but not ready to destroy the pattern.

Sweetness and beauty, on all fronts, as I said. How is that for ending the week?

Music a bit on the saccharine end of the spectrum, but a fitting companion to the baked goods. The Schlagober (whipped cream) Suite by Strauss was also performed as a ballet by ABT – here are extracts.

Hope there is pie in your weekend!

YDP – your daily picture

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

YDP – your daily picture

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

YDP – your daily picture

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Bird Photography

French Revolution meet my Pear Tree

Trekvogels

I dwell in possibility

I dwell in Possibility

Dreaming, while snared, of murmurations.

Birds of a Feather

Crows, Pursued.

The Grace of the World

All Human Beings

Of Bloodlust and Shorebirds

Sweetness and Beauty