Yesterday was the first night of Hanukkah. The photo below appeared all last week in various Jewish publications, a timely reminder of how close light and darkness, faith and fascism existed in the past. Not surprised it resurfaced this year across many voices. It was taken by the wife of Rabbi Akiva Posner the last night of Hanukkah in 1931. They lived across from the NS headquarters in Kiel, a small Northern German harbor town, and were acutely aware of the rising danger. The family left Germany early, in 1934, and due to the Rabbi’s diligent warnings, the community of ca. 800 Jews in that town lost fewer than 1% to Nazi murder because they heeded the signs without complacency.

May the lights shine in remembrance, warning and consolation for those of us who celebrate this minor holiday.

***

Between the bustle of the holidays and the end-of-year fatigue my capacity to write in-depth musings is limited. Maybe the same is true for your capacity to read, but maybe not. Therefore my compromise for the rest of the year is to link to some texts that I found interesting, or funny, or meaningful – and for whom I had a nice challenge to pick appropriate visual companions.

We’ll start with something that today’s title riffed of: Thoughts on slow birding. The idea, in a nutshell, is to forgo the hunt for ever more, ever rarer species, but instead get your fill on what’s right in front of you out of your windows, at your feeders, in your backyard, on your balcony, the glimpses taken on your walks. Here is the link to the article that favorably reviews a book about just this topic, Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard,” by Joan E. Strassmann, an animal behaviorist and biology professor at Washington University in St. Louis. If you have a bird enthusiast for whom you still need a present this would be handy, but spendy at $27.

The library has the book – wait time in Multnomah County is 14 weeks, however, which tells you something about birders in our communities!

Photographs of diverse sparrows, finches, robins, and one Rufus Towhee were all taken last week in my immediate surround. Slowly and patiently.

Music today is a sweet song of calm and peace from Beethoven’s late string quartets, Op. 135, to go with the “Let’s take it slow” motto. I chose that over the 5th Symphony, although it is claimed that the beginning notes were borrowed from the song of the song sparrow.