Birds Watching

I started feeding the birds a couple of winters ago. It began as an effort to entertain my indoor cats. They still come and pretend they can hunt them through the force field, also known as a window pane. But I am the primary bird watcher.   I can see the as I work. That first winter I had cardinals, finches, blue jays - which I gather some folks like like, black-capped chickadees - our state bird, nuthatches.  The second  winter the sparrows pretty much took over so I was not diligent about putting it up.  Now, to lure back my chickadees and finches I have more than one kind of feeder.  I have noticed many things about these birds as I have been doing this.  One is the way the birds react when I put the feeder in a different position - hanging it, instead of putting it on the fire escape grating, putting it on a barrel, stringing it up in stead of using a wire hook.  For one, they are more cooperative when the feeder situation is new.  Perhaps it is a kind of wariness.  They also take their time approaching.

Down in the Caribbean when birds find a school of prey fish they make a racket, alerting others of their find.  I used to wonder about that behavior.  I had theories, including reciprocity, strength of a flock - though these are in the main non-migratory birds.  But watching the birds at my feeder another idea presented itself.

The birds are not only watched, they watch.  They watch me, for one thing.   If I get too close to the window most take off. A couple of clever mourning doves will stay put waiting to see if I'm actually going to open the window.  Occasionally, I leave the window open so I can hear them better, cracking the nuts, the flap of their wings.  When they all take off at once, for reasons I have yet to work out, the sound will come straight through the window, a short sharp gust.  Sometimes, on very cold days, it will happen when a number of them are still eating. Doesn't matter. Whatever the signal all of them are off in that instant. i don't know if a hawk or falcon gets spotted over head, we have plenty here, or if it's just a favorable breeze. I do know that eating at a bird feeder is perilous.  Not only because I have heard tales, but because these birds show me.  They will hop to the feeder, grab a morsel and hop to the wrought iron to eat.  There is always one bird facing away from the feeder and from the building out to the dangerous world.  Some birds do prefer to be alone at the feeder, the tiny chickadee, the timid Downy Woodpecker. Cardinals are okay with a few fellows around but are put off by a crowd. Finches are elitists, it seems and the males, at least, prefer to eat only around other finches. Oddly the nuthatch doesn't seem to care, as long as it can forage upside down.

They know when the window is open.  On occasion a chickadee has flown in, looped around my lavender and bougainvillea and flown out again, but I think they are just checking for a secret stash.  They don't linger.  And thankfully, they don't defecate.  The Starlings seem to know I don't like them.  I am pro-immigration, but they seem more like an invading horde.  And they bully other birds at the feeder.  My Blue Jays don't bully.  Perhaps because the space where the feeder sits or hangs is too confined.  When the window is open the Starlings will not come to the feeder.  They wait below for the seeds that fall into the planter I have on the second floor fire escape.  Clever birds.

 They don't worry about me when I am engrossed in work.  I can peak over and see them having their chat, whether it's a morning get together, or a late afternoon forage.  If I watch them, they watch me more closely.  Some are camera shy, others pose.  I've had this happen elsewhere. In Chengdu, China I swear swallows were taunting me.  Then in Santiago, Chile one particular parrot was ever so ready for his close-up. Birds have their personalities, for sure.  I have come to think of the birds at my feeder as "my birds." There is a finch couple that visits only a couple of times a week.  The male stays in the tree while the female eats.  I am sure when she flies off she has a meaty nut for him. I wonder why he doesn't come over. He's a ruby breasted beauty.  The tree, bare of leaves, is not much in the way of cover. Perhaps he's an introvert? Or is he standing guard?

All the while they are careful about me, the one who puts out the food.  And they know I do. They watch me do it from nearby trees.  That first winter if I slept in a Mourning Dove would peck at my window, tap tap, tap tap. It worked, but they stopped doing it the second winter. Perhaps because last winter was so devoid of snow they didn't need the feeder.  These days the birds simply come to the fire escape in the morning and chat until I put out the food.  It's like having a very popular coffee spot and going in every morning to open-up with the clientele already outside having their conversations.  Maybe humans don't do that anymore. Maybe they are all on their phones and tablets.  But the birds do it.  They chat, they problem solve together, they warn each other of danger, they have each other's back - even if some of them will totally throw another bird's eggs out of a nest.  Me, they are not so sure about, and I cannot blame them. I have trouble trusting humans, too.

Old Coke, or the Tonic that Racism built.

Before I was born, before my parents were born, there was this drink, made in Georgia, with alcohol and cocaine in it.  It was called Pemberton's French Wine Coca.  The alcohol/ethanol in the wine and the active ingredient in the cocaine combined in the liver to create cocaethylene. (Not a scary word, just coca + ethylene.) This combination produces a longer and more intense euphoria than cocaine alone. Now, I have never tried cocaine, euphoria comes to me from dancing, bike riding, the Red Sox beating the Yankees.  But an intense long lasting euphoria is very appealing in our current dystopia.  Perhaps too appealing and I should let the bitter cold be damned and go for a good ride (coasting is a sin.)  Still, I was curious about what happened to this drink.  Well, temperance happened.

There are many takes on the temperance movement.  What seems clear to me is that it, like the effort to send corn to the starving Irish tenant farmers, missed the larger picture.  It was easier to attack alcohol than the economic system that roiled between booms and busts through which financiers and robber barons benefitting on both ups and downs and working men and women losing their jobs every few years. Non-union jobs with lousy pay, little regard for worker safety and zero regard for families. To take that on one would have to side with unions, one would have to allow women to use birth control, one would have to tax the rich to provide a stable economic platform for the working classes.  While there were activists for these causes they were not united and they were marginal, and marginalized, and what's more, criminalized.  (True Carrie Nation was arrested for attacking saloons with a hatchet, she was not beaten to a pulp by the rent-a-cops that "took care of" union "agitators." And most temperance leaders did not engage in direct violence.)

Ok, we lost Wine Coca, but surely, cocaine and high fructose corn syrup could stick around as a pick me up.  It did alright for awhile, actually.  It was a big seller at soda fountains in Georgia.  There was no concern about some demon drug taking over the minds of the genteel folk of Georgia.  In fact, as anyone from Boston knows, what are referred to now as soda or pop were, in fact, tonics. They were believed to have medicinal qualities.  Coca-Cola improved stamina and mood.  Pepsi aided digestion before temperance hit Georgia alcohol in beverages was common. It reduced pain and anxiety.  It was, in moderate doses, good for you.  And so was cocaine.  So, what happened?

Industrial bottling came to Coca-Cola.  What was 5 cents a glass was now 5 cents a bottle. And you could buy it anywhere.  You did not have to go into the soda shop.  This was a game changer because, and I know this will shock you, but I swear it is true, in the 1890s and early 20th century black people were not allowed into the soda shops.  Once Coca-Cola was bottled black men could buy it.  Black, brown, every shade of African American.  This was a problem because, according to the gentle white people of Georgia, the cocaine in Coca-Cola turned black men into rapists, specifically, rapists of white women.   Perhaps it had something to do with the interaction of lethal racism and a fear that "what goes around comes around." At any rate, Coca-Cola was the gateway to sniffing cocaine which, for black men, meant becoming anti-social racially particular rapists. This was a huge public policy concern, and though a matter of fiction it needed to be addressed.

I don't want to pick on Georgia, here.  The concern about happy black men was nationwide.  The New York Times ran an editorial in 1914 on the "Negro Cocaine Fiends" menacing the South.  The Times blamed the problem on Southern prohibition.  Deprived of alcohol blacks resorted to cocaine.  I guess it never occurred to them that black people could also set up stills.  Presciently, the opinion piece, by Dr. Edward Huntington Williams states that the only way to deal with a "Negro cocaine fiend" is to imprison him.

At any rate, Asa Candler removed cocaine from Coca-Cola, as he had removed the alcohol from Wine Coca, ahead of the legal requirement to do so. In fact, he beat the law by 11 years, making the move in 1903.  Yet he still used, and Coca-Cola still uses, an extract from the coca leaf.  What's more, the method for extracting the stimulant alkaloid was not perfected until 1929, leaving some cocaine in Coca-Cola a full 23 years after it was "removed" and 15 years after the narcotic was made illegal.  Of course, it was still legal for medicinal purposes. This was good news for Coca-Cola, because now they could team up with the pharmaceutical companies who  would process the leaves to remove the drug, and sell on the remnants to them. 

The spanner in this works was created by popularity and mass distribution.  Coca-Cola needed more coca leaf than the medical market did.  So, they got an exception to the law. Coca-Cola could import all the coca leaf it needed.  Not that this was considered ideal.  Not at all.  An attempt was made to grow coca- leaf in Hawaii.  It even worked, for six years. Then a fungus wiped out the crop.  So, back to the original suppliers.  Where are they? Peru.  Yes, the coca growers of Peru are essential to Coca-Cola.  And now that there is no cocaine in the drink it is safe for everyone, even black men, who don't mind dying of diseases linked to consumption of large amounts of sugar - diabetes, heart disease, stroke.  At least they won't be rampaging rapists immune to bullets.  It's funny, though, because in the 1980s powdered cocaine use among the moneyed was very popular, though illegal.  There was no concern that those indulging at Miami hot spots and L.A. mansions would become violent fiends. It was only the users of the supposedly stronger, reportedly more addictive and most definitely cheaper crack cocaine that caused violent anti-social behavior and bullet immunity. To say that the fear was of black people and not of the drug would be "playing the race card," I am told. 

I'm not certain who the people who think feminism and civil rights are parlor games are, but I am certain I do not want to find myself alone in a parlor with them.  I actually do not have any woman card or race card, what I have is history, from our nations founding to Jeff Sessions as AG. History and our current moment tell me that drug laws in America are all about race. Also, that Coca-Cola was never actually good for you, even it made you feel good for a little bit. Stick with coffee and tea, they are much better pick-me-ups.

Not Talking. Listening.

On September 9, 2001, I had a rather large group of international friends, mostly fellow moms. Among the emotions that roiled me that day I remember having this sense that I just did not want to talk to these friends.  It wasn't that I thought they would be callous.  It wasn't that I thought they wouldn't be sympathetic. It was a sense I had that this had not happened to them.  It wasn't true, actually, they were living here, they had some of the same friends as I did living and working in lower Manhattan that they were trying to reach.  I knew that.  I just didn't feel it.  I felt a grief that I wanted to own, and that I knew was true.  While they lived here for a time, they had friends here, they were not Americans.  This attack was not about them.  I love my friends, all of them, but I needed space to feel that part of this.  It was a short lived cocoon, but it was real.

I am remembering this now. I am crying.  I do not know what to do.  Black lives are being taken and (some) white people are lying about this.  Yes, they are lying.  The truth is there, black lives are taken by police disproportionately, black men and women are arrested and imprisoned disproportionately (even when looking at the very same crimes) this means that black men and women are also disproportionately permanently disenfranchised.  In so many ways my neighbors, my fellow citizens and residents, are being silenced.  While this is happening (some) white people are taking to the airwaves, to the blogosphere, to social media and lying about the numbers. They are lying about the reality facing this country and the people who live here.

I want so much to show up at a meeting this week.  But I am wondering, am I wanted?  I don't mean ever, I mean right now.  I mean, as a white woman will I be intruding in a space that the majority members of this community need for themselves right now.  There are times when it is helpful to listen, to hear, to be there.  But in my experience there are times when it is helpful to stand back and understand, I  have a part play, it is my country, but it is not happening to me. I am not the target, I am not in constant fear for my sons. I am not afraid to let them walk with a group of friends through our neighborhood at night.  I never expect the police to stop them as they walk with their coffee to class and ask them where they are going and where they came from.  I live in a different version of this country.  I don't know if right now my neighbors who live in that other version would rather see me sit in the back and listen in solidarity or have a moment to themselves to grieve and be angry and feel safe with one another.

What I will not do is bear one more lie. And I will march with Black Lives Matter and I will continue to ask for legislative changes, systemic changes, and honesty.  But maybe, this one time, I will stay home. Maybe that would be the most loving, the most understanding thing to do.

Nobel Terrorist Cell?

My husband was nearly arrested at Arlanda

International airport due to a laser pointer I bought him. He had travelled to Sweden, going through security at Logan and at Heathrow, no problem. Trying to get home was another matter, The pen shaped device with batteries in it caught the attention of the sharp security agents at Arlanda. (Nothing gets past a Swede!) Ah ha! A LASER POINTER! Great scott! He must be planning to give a power point on the plane! That was it. Passport confiscated, police by his side; it looked bad for a return trip and more like a trip to jail with a call to the embassy. A colleague travelling with him suggested Jack "play the Nobel card." Instead, he showed why he got the Nobel, i.e., he's kind of smart and he believes in doing the experiment. He suggested the security personnel point the laser at the floor to test its strength. They did, gave it back to him and he got on the plane. Good thing they didn't know blue violet light is highly scattered and so in a bright place it will appear dimmer (less powerful.)

I do wonder, what is the fear, that he will conduct surgery on the plane? He was 30 to 100 watts shy of the power to do that. Perhaps the blue beam made them fear it was actually a sonic screwdriver? That seems more likely to happen at Heathrow, somehow. If anyone does know the reason for this embargo, please share.

addendum: A friend asked me if it would have worked, Jack saying he was a Nobel Laureate. My initial response was that it probably would have ticked them off. But then I realized, this was Sweden, land of the Nobel. I'm not sure it would have gone much differently, but on the off chance they weren't willing to test the laser, trotting out that particular credential may have moved them. Anyway, they were more sensible than I can imagine TSA agents being. Discretion has become a dirty word in this country.

Who Is going to fix this?

It's raining here in Boston. Raining all over the east coast. There's flooding here, and in the Midwest and in Melbourne, Australia. It's not a sign of the End of Days. It may be a consequence of climate change. There is a column in the Guardian that is essentially asking, "When are we going to do something about climate change?" I've linked to it.

Below is my off the cuff response to the article.

Seems nit picky doesn't it, to say you might the answer in what you left out? But in 2010 do we really still say "mankind?" I'm not saying men have a lock on destructive, linear thinking. I'm not saying women are naturally more nurturing and future oriented. I think that's hogwash. But I do think that the words we use shape our understanding and to continue to say 'mankind" makes it seem as though both the problem and it's possible solution are the purview of men. Leaving out half the population seems a bit, well, stupid.

Frankly, the best folks for thinking about the future are kids. They literally live for it. And they are engaged on the issues of catastrophic climate change. My nine year old son said, "The problem is we keep thinking of better ways to use our current systems, but we need to think of new systems." (Yes, he really talks like that. I blame scifi and science journals for kids. ) No one wants to take children seriously, and they don't have a good grasp of physics and engineering - barring the odd genius. Still, if we did listen, to boys and girls and employed men and women to work out how to shape the worlds envisioned by our kids into reality, we might have something good going.

Sounds silly, I know. But none of this deadly serious crap is working.