Poetry Sunday: The Racist Bone by Cornelius Eady

I remember from long ago the Vincent Price movie that Cornelius Eady writes about here and man, was it scary! Possibly not as scary though as the racist bone. But it may well be that, as Eady says, we never believe that we have it in us - the Tingler or the racist bone - until the pincers close around us. 

The Racist Bone

by Cornelius Eady

I know this is a real thing, because

When I was a kid, my big sister took me

To the Capitol Theater, in my hometown

Of Rochester, NY,

And there was a movie that afternoon,

The Tingler, which starred Vincent Price,

And what I remember best about the film

Was that it was about this extra, insect-like gland, that

We all appeared to have been born with,

But nobody but sci-fi movie scientists knew about.

If it wasn’t fed properly, it would crawl up

Your leg, and choke you to death with its claws!

Your only hope was if you saw it coming, and knew

What it was, you could scream—loud.

Which we did, when it crawled across the screen.

Then the lights blacked out, and Vincent Price

Shouted it had skittered off the screen, hungry—which it hadn’t;

The Capitol was the Black movie house—25 cents a seat,

The last drop of profit squeezed from the theatrical run.

No need to pull Mr. Castle’s hokey string and rubber model

Down the aisle for the likes of us.

In our heads The Tingler scurried, our darkest screams,

The horror we know, but won’t talk about,

From the mouth of the corpse

Like a weevil, looking for a home.

So many characters perished

In that movie—they never believed they had it in them

Until those pincers closed.

This week in birds - #442

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment: 

Many of our avian winter visitors are beginning to move on now that spring temperatures have arrived in our area, but the Cedar Waxwings are still with us. I photographed this one in my next-door neighbor's pear tree which is just beginning to bloom. A fairly large flock of the waxwings have been enjoying a feast in my yard over the last couple of weeks. Most of the berries that they normally dine on are gone now but when our February freeze came, there were still a large number of oranges on my two orange trees. The freeze spoiled them for human consumption but that hasn't bothered the waxwings. They have been eagerly consuming the fruit. I'm just glad I didn't hurry to clean up after the freeze. Sometimes procrastination pays.

*~*~*~*

FINALLY! We have an Environmental Protection Agency director who is actually interested in protecting the environment. President Biden's nominee for the post, Michael S. Regan from North Carolina, was confirmed by the Senate this week. He has a huge job ahead of him, but he seems to be up to it. 

*~*~*~*

Wildlife advocates are cheering the Biden administration’s announcement that it will scrap a Trump-era rule that prevents the federal government from penalizing companies under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) for the unintended but preventable killing of birds. The century-old MBTA is the main law that protects migratory birds on the North American continent.

*~*~*~*

The final environmental review of the first major offshore wind project in the United States has been completed. The Vineyard Wind I 800-megawatt wind farm planned for 15 miles south of Martha's Vineyard was the first offshore wind project selected by Massachusetts utility companies to fulfill part of a 2016 clean energy law.

*~*~*~*

And speaking of wind farms, a new study reports that endangered Whooping Cranes avoid stopover sites that are within five kilometers of wind-energy infrastructure. Avoidance of wind turbines can decrease collision mortality for birds, but can also make it more difficult and time-consuming for migrating flocks to find safe and suitable rest and refueling locations. The study's insights into migratory behavior could improve future siting decisions as wind energy infrastructure continues to expand.

*~*~*~*

Brood X cicadas are soon to emerge along the East Coast and from then until about July that will be a very noisy place. The noise of the cicadas annoys a lot of humans but other than that they do no harm at all and they are an absolute feeding bonanza for birds, squirrels, chipmunks, skunks, and numerous other kinds of wildlife.

*~*~*~*

A recent study shows that many species of oceanic fish are ingesting plastic. These include hundreds of species that are part of the human diet. 

*~*~*~*

Philadelphia will be a "lights out" city beginning April 1. In an effort to save the lives of migrating birds the city will be mostly dark at night from April 1 through May 31, the height of the migration season. 

*~*~*~*

Invasive zebra mussels that have wreaked havoc on the Great Lakes are often found for sale in pet shops that feature aquariums. This represents a new way for them to spread and to damage other aquatic habitats.

*~*~*~*

Warming climates in the tropical forests of Tanzania are slowing tropical birds' population growth rates and that is bad news for the ecosystem of Tanzania and for similar areas right around the world. Birds help to keep ecosystems healthy and fewer of them means it is more difficult to achieve that purpose.

*~*~*~*

Large, charismatic carnivores usually get the lion's share (pun intended) of attention when it comes to conservation efforts, but the smaller and less noticed species can be exceptionally important to the health of an ecosystem and so are particularly worthy of study and research. In the forests of Bangladesh for example, many of the smaller carnivores remain elusive in the wild and are seldom the subject of published research. 

*~*~*~*

Wolf hunting policies in some states are taking an aggressive turn, as Republican lawmakers and conservative hunting groups push to curb their numbers and propose tactics shunned by many wildlife managers. After the previous administration removed gray wolves' protected status under the Endangered Species Act, many states are increasing the number of kills they allow.

*~*~*~*

As personal protective equipment such as masks are in wide use during the pandemic, it becomes essential that the used items are disposed of in a safe manner that does not allow for harm to wildlife. The last thing we need is more pollution.

*~*~*~*

A narwhal's tusk, much like the rings in a tree's trunk, tells the story of conditions that were present when the tusk grew.

*~*~*~*

Nature-rich sites such as woods and wetlands are more valuable than land that is farmed because of the "ecosystem services" that they provide. 

*~*~*~*

Researchers at the universities of Lund and Oxford have determined that bird parents that receive help in raising their offspring live longer than birds that must provide for the kids on their own. Many group-living species do receive such help, often from the offspring from the previous year.

*~*~*~*

Red wolves seem to always be on the brink of extinction and in fact, they have been declared extinct once before in 1980. A conservation effort brought them back but now their numbers have plummeted once again and there may be only ten of the animals left in the wild.

*~*~*~*

The decline or near extinction of tourism in our year of the pandemic has been both a blessing and a curse for Earth's wildlife and wild places.

*~*~*~*

The surprise sighting of a Red-backed Button-quail in New South Wales has excited the birding community there and has given evidence of the explosion in numbers of the species that was previously considered endangered. It has now been taken off the Rarities List.

*~*~*~*

The last of Ireland’s great oak forests were gone by the end of the seventeenth century. But pockets of this ancient forest linger: on coastal headlands, on old country estates, and in remote valleys. These are among the last remnants of temperate rainforests in Europe.

*~*~*~*

European Starling murmurations can be quite amazing sights. Here are some that were recorded by an Irish photographer. 

Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion: A review

 

This short book comprises twelve of Joan Didion's previously published essays, most of them published in magazines. They cover the period of her work from 1968 to 2000. Several of the pieces were written in the momentous year of 1968 and for those of us who were alive and paying attention at the time, they bring back a lot of memories. Others were written in later years, the final one in 2000. That one was about Martha Stewart. The other eleven cover a wide range of topics from Nancy and Ronald Reagan and his tenure as California governor to the Vietnam War to personal meditations such as the 1976 essay entitled "Why I Write."

In "Why I Write," she tells us that it is all to do with the sound of those three words - I, I, I. She writes, she says, "to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means." She acknowledges that she is not an intellectual, a thinker, and so the way that she orders her thoughts is the write them down so that she can "see" them and so begin to interpret the pictures that she holds in her mind. I can relate to that.

The first six essays were all first published in the "Points West" column that she shared with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in The Saturday Evening Post in the '60s. They were all written in 1968. The one that especially caught my attention was titled "Fathers, Sons, and Screaming Eagles." It was about her experience at a reunion of the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles. This was in the '60s so most of the men at that reunion were from the World War II era. Many of them had been at Bastogne, at the Battle of the Bulge, including Gen. Anthony McAuliffe who had given the famous one-word reply to the Germans who had demanded the 101st's surrender: "Nuts!" Didion talked to many of the men and found that quite a few had sons who were then in the Army and some of those sons were in Vietnam. She spoke to one father whose son was missing in Vietnam. I suppose this essay was of particular interest to me for two reasons. First, because my father had also been at the Battle of the Bulge, although not in the 101st; he was in the 3rd Army led by George Patton that had gone to the aid of those pinned down at Bastogne. And second, my husband was in the army and was attached to the 101st about the time of this reunion and Didion's essay. He spent a year in Vietnam around that time. I didn't know him then, thank goodness, but once a Screaming Eagle always a Screaming Eagle.

Didion is a fifth-generation Californian and she speaks with a Californian voice. Some of the best of these essays have a California connection. She writes of her memories of studying Milton's Paradise Lost on the train commute between Sacramento and Berkeley and tells us that she can't actually remember much about the subject she was studying but she vividly remembers the "exact rancidity of the butter in the City of San Francisco's dining car." Sensory memories are the most real to her. Another California memory is of a visit to San Simeon castle which she recounts in "A Trip to Xanadu." She says it both was and was not what she expected. She describes it as a "sand castle, an implausibility" and "a pleasure dome decreed by a man who insisted, out of the one dark fear we all know about, that all the surfaces be gay and brilliant and playful." 

Reading Didion is always a pleasure and reading the essays from long ago 1968, in particular, reminds us about her prescience on various topics. Her voice is always no-nonsense and often amusing. She draws us in and makes us feel that she is writing especially for us. It's a quality that I've noted in the past as well. My favorite Didion book is My Year of Magical Thinking which is all about loss and grief and learning to deal with all that. It was published in the year after I had lost my mother. She might have been writing to me. That ability to connect with the reader is her special talent.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler: A review

This is Lauren Oyler's debut novel after a career as a critic studying and explicating the novels of others. It is an innovative work that describes the way that social media has surreptitiously crept into our daily lives and, in some ways, has come to redefine our relationships with others and even the way that we think of ourselves. The relationships described include online stalking and the creation of fake identities, as well as the descent into paranoia and conspiracy theories and a kind of social disengagement and political derangement. That's quite a lot and it isn't even all; the book also includes numerous references - some of which I caught and some I probably missed - to other contemporary writers.

The narrative begins at a specific and unsettled point in time, the months between the 2016 presidential election and the inauguration of Donald Trump. Our narrator (who of course is nameless - how could it be otherwise?) is a young woman with a boyfriend who is named. He is Felix and the narrator has just discovered by snooping through his phone that he has a secret Instagram account devoted to the posting of conspiracy theories. It's a side of Felix that she never knew existed and it seems that he has developed quite a following for his posts. The narrator decides that she will break up with him but before she has a chance to act on that decision, she receives a call from his mother in California telling her that he has died in a bicycle accident in upstate New York. A little later she receives a thousand dollars, ostensibly from the mother. Why? There is no explanation.

The narrator had met Felix in Berlin where he had worked as a tour guide. After his death and the political upheaval following the election, she leaves her job as a blogger, supposedly to work on a novel, and she decides to move to Berlin. 

In Berlin, she becomes obsessed with posting on online dating apps and meeting the men that she connects with there. But all the profiles she creates are fake. The life events that she regales her "dates" with as they meet in bars and restaurants are all imaginary - fake lives, fake accounts.

Oyler is quite a funny writer and her narrator is full of irony and snark, but underneath all that is a disquieting sense that she doesn't really know how to simply be herself and relate to the world at an honest level. She doesn't really know who that self is. We meet the narrator at a moment of profound unease in our history, a time of "fake news" and "alternate facts" and in a sense, it is not surprising such a character should create her own fake persona or multiple fake personas with which to interact with a world in which she faces an appalling rise in the alt-right and the discovery that her boyfriend may have been a part of all that. 

It is also not surprising that the reader begins to apprehend much earlier than the narrator the full extent of Felix's betrayal. When knowledge comes to the narrator, the realization dawns that she has been subtly manipulated as much as she herself has manipulated those "fake accounts."

Oyler has created a clever, stylish, and droll narrative and there is nothing fake about that.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Poetry Sunday: Every day as a wide field, every page by Naomi Shihab Nye

Of all the poems I read over the past week, this was the one that really grabbed me. I hope it grabs you, too, because...

"When you paused for a poem
it could reshape the day"

Every day as a wide field, every page

by Naomi Shihab Nye

1

Standing outside

staring at a tree

gentles our eyes

We cheer

to see fireflies

winking again

Where have our friends been

all the long hours?

Minds stretching

beyond the field

become

their own skies

Windows  doors

grow more

important

Look through a word

swing that sentence

wide open

Kneeling outside

to find

sturdy green

glistening blossoms

under the breeze

that carries us silently

2

And there were so many more poems to read!

Countless friends to listen to.

We didn’t have to be in the same room—

the great modern magic.

Everywhere together now.

Even scared together now

from all points of the globe

which lessened it somehow.

Hopeful together too, exchanging

winks in the dark, the little lights blinking.

When your hope shrinks

you might feel the hope of

someone far away lifting you up.

Hope is the thing ...

Hope was always the thing!

What else did we give each other

from such distances?

Breath of syllables,

sing to me from your balcony

please! Befriend me

in the deep space.

When you paused for a poem

it could reshape the day

This week in birds - #441

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

A Phainopepla stops by a desert water source in the Chihuahua Nature Center in West Texas.

*~*~*~*

The previous administration in Washington removed endangered species status for the gray wolf last year. That allowed the state of Wisconsin to authorize a  recent week-long hunt for the animals. They set a quota of 119 wolves that could be killed in that time. In less than 60 hours, hunters killed 216 wolves. The remainder of the time for the hunt was canceled. Environmentalists say the large number of gray wolves killed in such a short time underscores the need to reinstate protections for the species. 

*~*~*~*

Asian songbirds are being trapped and sold as singing caged birds at such an alarming rate that the practice threatens to cause the extinction in the wild of several species.

*~*~*~*

The rate of decline of various species of butterflies in the western United States is so calamitous that it threatens the continued survival of some 450 kinds of them. The main reason, according to scientists, is that the region is becoming hotter, drier, and more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. (All of which reminds me that I have not seen a single butterfly in my yard since our recent extended spell of freezing weather.)

*~*~*~*

"Lights Out" movements are gaining some steam in cities around the country. Turning city lights out helps to protect migrating birds that can be disoriented by them. Conservation groups in Austin are working to get that city to sign on to the movement. It is hoped that other cities in Texas might follow.

*~*~*~*

A recent study makes the argument that limiting invasive species might be a more productive goal than actually eliminating them.

*~*~*~*

A new report shows that deforestation is increasing in forest-rich regions in Indonesia, even as the government claims the national average has gone down. The NGOs behind the report attribute any decline in the national deforestation rate to the fact that there’s virtually no forest left to clear in parts of Sumatra and Borneo.

*~*~*~*

The Sierra Club, like some other organizations, is reassessing its past and in particular, looking at its exclusion of Native Americans and its failure to take their rights into consideration. It is looking at ways to try to make up for those failures.

*~*~*~*

Spotted Owls thrive in environments that feature a combination of intact older forests along with the incidence of naturally caused wildfires. Logging those areas where wildfires have occurred reduces their availability as habitat for the threatened owls.

*~*~*~*

Do you have questions about climate change? The New York Times has some answers for you.

*~*~*~*

The Andean páramo moorlands are home to high-altitude lakes, countless mountain streams, and a host of unique plants and wildlife. Protecting and saving them is a priority of conservationists in Ecuador. In order to accomplish that, it is important to educate the next generation about that priority and to involve them in achieving it.

*~*~*~*

The U.S. Forest Service has withdrawn the final environmental impact statement for a huge copper mine near Superior, Arizona, temporarily halting a land swap that would have given the mine's owners title to a parcel deemed sacred by many Apaches and other Southwestern tribes. In a statement released Monday, Tonto National Forest said the federal government had received significant input from many parties after the release of the final environmental impact statement on January 15.  As a result, the U.S. Department of Agriculture directed the forest service to rescind the decision it made based on the review document.

*~*~*~*

One of the few benefits derived from the pandemic has been the fact that a reduction in traffic and other human-made sounds has made Earth quieter and made birdsong more apparent and more easily heard.

*~*~*~*

The record year of wildfires in the western U.S. and indeed all around the world in 2020 are strongly correlated to the effects of climate change according to NASA.

*~*~*~*

Democrats in the House of Representatives on Tuesday introduced a revamped version of a major bill aiming to get the country on the road to carbon neutrality by 2050. The bill is called the CLEAN Future Act and it promises an active effort to participate in the world's transition to green economies.

*~*~*~*

Foraging differences in male and female Gannets were identified in a new study. The study showed that in some years female breeding Gannets traveled farther in search of food for their chicks than did the males of the species. However, in other years they did not. It seems evident that they were responding to conditions in the environment as they existed at that particular time.  

*~*~*~*

A study has found that Britain's moths have declined by one-third over the last fifty years. Causes of the decline are said to be habitat loss, intensive farming, climate change, and light pollution.

*~*~*~*

Infrastructure failures following bitterly cold temperatures in Mississippi caused dozens of water mains to burst and freeze in Jackson, leaving thousands without running water for weeks. The water crisis affects mostly Black residents of the city and it continues.

*~*~*~*

Powerful Owls - yes, that's their actual name - are an Australian species that seems to be increasingly choosing to sleep in urban areas, from backyard trees to city parks. This was the finding when a study attached tracking devices to 20 of the critters in Melbourne. 

*~*~*~*

Avian cholera is a deadly disease that can often affect large flocks of birds in close quarters to disastrous effect. It is uncommon for a group of birds to develop "herd immunity" to the disease, but that appears to be what happened to the largest colony of sea ducks in the Canadian Arctic over the years of 2005 to 2012. The Northern Common Eiders there seem to have developed such immunity to the dread disease.

*~*~*~* 

President Biden has now stopped border wall construction and a broad coalition of advocacy groups in Southern Arizona and across the nation have wasted no time letting him know exactly where they want him to tear down what had been built. A coalition of nearly 70 environmental groups, civil-rights organizations, and tribal entities sent a report last week to lawmakers and Biden administration officials asking for 59 miles of 30-foot-tall border wall in Arizona to be removed, along with sections of wall elsewhere along the U.S.-Mexico border. This section of the wall blocks wildlife corridors and it is destructive to the sacred places with deep cultural significance for Native Americans in the area.

*~*~*~*

A citizen science project led by North Carolina State University researchers has gathered more than 2.2 million wildlife photos in three years. The project is called North Carolina Candid Critters and it used 580 trained volunteers to take the pictures with heat-sensitive cameras.

My Year Abroad by Chang-Rae Lee: A review

 

I was very excited to get my hands on the new Chang-Rae Lee book. I've heard and read so much praise for his previous books, none of which I had ever read even though I had the best intentions of doing so. So I jumped at the chance to read this one. I found his writing to be very controlled, directed, and philosophical in the way that he developed his narrative. The narrative, in other words, seemed to take us exactly where Lee wanted us to go, but that was not necessarily a good place.

Lee's protagonist is a 20-year-old college student from New Jersey named Tiller, who at the time that we meet him has had some sort of traumatic experience that has brought him, for reasons that are unknown, to the Hong Kong airport, where he meets Val, a single mother in her 30s who is also from New Jersey. It turns out they have things in common; Val, too, has had some kind of trauma in her life and they are each one-eighth Asian in heritage and both are only children. These commonalities form a basis for an instant relationship that continues when they return to New Jersey. 

Back in New Jersey, they move in together and we begin to learn something about their backgrounds. Val is in the witness protection program after having informed on her husband who was apparently involved in organized crime and possibly in aiding and abetting terrorists. We also learn about Tiller's childhood and about his recent friendship with a Chinese-American entrepreneur named Pong Lou. Tiller had accompanied Pong Lou on an Asian business trip where they spent a lot of time feasting on gourmet foods, all of which are lovingly described. But the trip ended badly for both men and finally led to Tiller being alone and abandoned in the Hong Kong airport where we met him.

Back in New Jersey with Val, Tiller meets her son Victor Jr., a precocious 8-year-old. His precocity reveals itself in relation to food. He is quite the little chef, creating amazing dishes on a daily basis which leads Val and Tiller to assist him in opening a pop-up restaurant in their home. The restaurant becomes instantly famous in the neighborhood, leading to people lining up at their door every night to partake of the latest gourmet meal.

If all of this sounds a little implausible, it is only because it is. 

First, I found the character of Tiller to be unbelievable. He is twenty years old and he's supposed to be this worldly-wise individual. He has certainly had some worldly experiences, but I see no evidence that they have made him wise.

Second, Val, who is in witness protection apparently because her life is in danger, cooperates in the opening of a pop-up restaurant that brings the world to her dining room and makes her very visible in the neighborhood.

Third, the eight-year-old master chef. No, it's just too much.

This is really a book for foodies. All of the imagery and the best descriptive passages here have to do with food and I can understand how such a person might really get involved in this book and enjoy it. My personal food preferences are more pedestrian and downhome and the narrative was simply overkill and lost on me.

So, my first experience with Chang-Rae Lee was disappointing. I think my main problem was that I just didn't believe Tiller and he was the narrator, the vehicle through which the story was revealed to us. I just couldn't take him or his experiences seriously. This hasn't necessarily put me off Chang-Rae Lee. I still hope to go back and read those other books, but I would only recommend this one to serious foodaholics.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars