Category Archives: Reading

H is For Hawk

Posted on by

 

“We carry the lives we’ve imagined
as we carry the lives we have,
and sometimes a
reckoning comes of
all the lives we have lost.”
Helen Macdonald

 

h-is-for-hawk

 

Recently I read Helen Macdonald’s book, H is For Hawk.

The book is about the author’s inconsolable grief after the death of her father.

In an effort to heal her soul and regain a connection with her father, she sets out to find and train a hawk. Not just any hawk, a Goshawk.

That is just one of the beauties of her story. She writes about nature and the healing process of her grief through nature and bonding with her Goshawk.

If you are intrigued by birds of prey, as I am, you will enjoy this book immensely. Not only for its behind scenes life of a falconer, but the history of the hobby. Helen Macdonald writes beautiful prose about her life and struggles with depression and how her Goshawk helps her through a difficult time in her life. This book definitely deserves all the attention it has received and I give high marks to H is For Hawk.

Shine On

Bird Man of Our Century

Posted on by

 

“A bird’s experience is far richer,
complex, and thoughtful than I’d imagined.”
David Allen Sibley

 

Birdman of the New Millennium
In a previous blog post I wrote about The Bird Man of America, John James Audubon. However, it appears there’s a new bird man of America artist that has been painting and studying birds for over 50 years. He has been called the most important illustrator of birds since Audubon.

David Allen Sibley, ornithologist, self-taught artist and author was born and raised in Plattsburgh, New York. His love of birds began at the age of eight years old while hiking with his father, Fred Sibley, famous ornithologist at Yale University.

Often after hiking with his dad, David would sketch all the different birds he had encountered from memory. His bird-watching hobby became a life-long passion. Much so, that he dropped out of college at Cornell University to pursue the study of birds.

Through the past five decades, Sibley has drawn and painted thousands of species of birds. His love of birds and painting them has never wavered. It was his goal to one day publish a field guide book for other bird watchers. With encouragement from his wife, also an ornithologist, he spent 14 years traveling, researching and painting birds for the book.

His hard work paid off and his goal was achieved in 2000, when his first book, The Sibley Field Guide to Birds was published. Shortly after publication, his first volume was on the New York best seller list and David followed up that book with numerous other popular guide books.

Even after half a century of bird-watching, David Sibley continues to study and learn new things about his favorite topic. When he did research for his recent book, What’s It’s Like to Be a Bird, he became convinced of something he had not previously anticipated: “Birds routinely make complex decisions and experience emotions”. In this book, he also covers such topics as; Do birds have a good sense of smell? Where do birds go at night? Where do they sleep?

With over 8.7 million species of birds throughout the entire world, I’m pretty sure his latest bird book won’t be the last for this bird man of our century.

Shine On

The Pandumbic

Posted on by

 

“If you laugh with somebody,
then you share something.”
Trevor Noah

 

Trevor Noah

When the Coronavirus pandemic began, all the late-night shows such as The Tonight Show, The Late, Late Show and even Stephen Colbert began broadcasting their shows from home, usually their significant other filming their host husbands.

There was one show I had not watched before and that was  The Daily Show with host Trevor Noah. However, that changed when I began watching Trevor along with the other daily YouTube late night shows.

If you’re not familiar with Trevor Noah, he’s a 36-year old South African comedian, political commentator, writer and television host of The Daily Show. Born in Johannesburg, he began his career in 2002 as a comedian, presenter, and actor in South Africa. After coming to America in 2011, he became the first South African comedian to appear on The Tonight Show in the summer of 2013. As his popularity grew and Trevor became a recurring contributor on The Daily Show, he replaced Jon Stewart as host of The Daily Show September 28, 2015.

I was a fan of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show but I must admit I stopped watching after he retired. I didn’t even give Trevor Noah a chance to show his talent. I now regret I did that, after becoming a diehard fan of Trevor.

After a few months of watching him on the Daily Show, I read his 2016 book, Born A Crime. He writes about growing up in South Africa, a child of interracial parents and apartheid South Africa. Trevor was kept mostly indoors in his youth by his mother, for fear that at any moment the government could take him away from her because of his interracial status. In South Africa before 1985, it was a crime to have interracial marriages as well as have an interracial child, hence the title of the book, Born a Crime. Against all odds, this smart, handsome, talented young comedian has made his way to the top. In my opinion, Born a Crime should be required reading for all young people.

If you don’t have cable, you can watch him on YouTube. Here’s a recent segment of  The Daily Social Distancing Show from July 22, 2020 he calls, The Pandumbic:

Shine On

Icon of American Art

Posted on by

“People should take time to be happy.”
  Grandma Moses

grandma-moses-painting1

The Old Checkered House, 1943 oil on pressed wood

 

I have quite a few hobbies, but there’s one I really enjoy, drawing and watercolor painting. It’s one hobby that can put me into that zone of a perfect “flow”.

There are many artists I admire and try to emulate. When I started drawing and painting again in my 60’s, my late husband would kid me about becoming the next Grandma Moses. I always admired her recognizable Naïve art style, but knew little about the woman, so I read her 1952 autobiography.

Anna Mary Robertson Moses, known throughout the world as “Grandma Moses” was born September 7, 1860 in Greenwich, New York. In her 101-year life span, she witnessed the Civil War, a pandemic, two World Wars, the advent of the telegraph, the telephone, automobiles, airplanes and countless other innovations. She had always dabbled in the field of art all her life but it was only after all 10 of her children were grown and the burden of farm life lifted, did she begin painting full time.

Her life is really the story of twentieth-century folk art. Although she was not the first folk artist, she was the most well known throughout history and the world. How did she come to be so revered? The answer would appear to lie in a combination of factors. The nature of the field, the personality of the artist, and timing, which we all know is everything.

She had just turned 80 when in the 1940s Americans were reeling from the effects of a prolonged financial depression and filled with dread of rising fascism in Europe. In this time of tribulation, she emerged as an artist whose work embodied everything that seemed good about America.

She painted scenes of the farms and small towns that were then either the present or the near past for many citizens. She proclaimed the virtues of family, church, community and the nation at a moment when these were under attack from without and within, and she lived these virtues. Her basic honesty, generosity and good-heartedness shined forth both in her life and in her art.

grandma-moses-life-cover

When her paintings began to sell for sizable sums, she became the first artist whose work was routinely licensed for such products as greetings cards, textiles, and the like. In 1953 she appeared on the cover of Time magazine. In 1955 she was interviewed on live television by Edward R. Murrow. Then, for her 100th birthday on September 19, 1960, Life magazine did a cover story to celebrate this remarkable woman.

Grandma Moses passed away on December 13, 1961, at the age of 101, having witnessed a broad swath of American history. She was born the year Lincoln was elected, and died while Kennedy was president.

Both her work and her legend endures here and abroad. This reflects not only the quality of her work but also the fact that she remains an icon of American art.

Shine On

Time Traveling

Posted on by

“Once confined to fantasy and science fiction,
time travel is now simply an engineering problem.”
Michio Kaku

Mr Peabody

Mr. Peabody, his boy Sherman and the “Wayback Machine”

The concept of traveling backward and forward in time has always held my fascination. My interest began as a child. Introduced to the idea of time travel by none other than Mr. Peabody and his Wayback machine.

Conceptually, time travel goes back several centuries. Long before H. G. Wells wrote the book, The Time Machine, Japanese, Hindu, and Buddhist all wrote about time travel. In more recent times, people such as Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku have discussed the possibilities of traveling back and forth in time.

Time travel will forever be one of my favorite genres of novels and movies. Whether I’m reading Stephen King’s novel 11/26/63 or watching, Midnight in Paris, and Back to the Future for the hundredth time, the idea of going back to a time before I existed will always hold my interest in time traveling.

Shine On