Life of the Skies
The Life of the Skies, by Jonathan Rosen, is subtitled “Birding at the End of Nature”. It is nominally about bird-watching, but really about a symbolic interaction with nature. The author points out that birds are the only wild animals that most people ever see, which is not exactly true. Squirrels are an easy counter-example, and depending on where one lives, one may see deer, or lizards, or whales. However, birds can fly over fences and across borders, so the bird in your back yard may have come from thousands of miles away. I think it would be more accurate to say that there is not much wilderness left, and migratory birds are the closest connection that most of us have with that wilderness.
And so the author touches on poetry, literature and philosophy. He rambles from Thoreau to Whitman to Frost, from Audobon’s drawings to Darwin’s finches, from Adam’s naming the birds in Eden to modern birders with their classification, nomenclature and life lists. In between the more abstract discussions, he takes us on canoe trips through Louisiana and Arkansas looking for the ivory-billed woodpecker. And yet, even here the birds are symbolic. The search is real enough, but the birds may or may not exist.
About the only the thing he doesn’t discuss is the symbolism of dreams. For example, I don’t dream about birds, or about being a bird, but I do dream about flying. Maybe I like birds just because they can fly, and it has nothing to do with a connection with nature. Flying symbolizes freedom, as in free as a you-know-what.
Well. My review is all over the place, which is appropriate because Rosen’s book is all over the place. It’s a fantastic book, but it’s not for everybody. I hope I’ve either piqued your interest or warned you off.
I’ve been reading “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”, by Thomas Frank. This is the book-length version of Obama’s pithy remark about “bitter” voters clinging to guns and religion.
The subtitle to Shelby Steele’s A Bound Man was irresistible: “Why we are excited about Obama and why he can’t win”. Oh, really? Right or wrong, this is a fascinating book.
I’ve been reading Plain Secrets, Joe Mackall’s account of his friendship with his Amish neighbors. Here I’d like to focus on one particular issue, namely the use of the bright orange triangle, the “slow-moving vehicle” sign, on Amish buggies. Amish life has a lot of rules, called the 