vol. 7 issue 3

Greetings,

I grew up in South Florida — various places around Palm Beach County, where I have b…

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vol. 7 issue 2

Greetings,

It was so warm this week — a welcome event after so many days of deep cold — that a meadowlark began to sing from the field behind my home.

I was startled. It was not the song of mid-Winter.

I have more than a few books on birds cluttering my desk, so I looked it up and discovered meadowlarks do not migrate. I hadn’t known that because, until now — having lived in cities (or in the case of NJ, a pine barren) most of my adult life — I haven’t been able to observe meadowlarks over time in their own habitat.

After startling, I then felt a thrill of joy to hear the call of the feathered neighbor who’d kept me company throughout the summer as I sat on my deck working, thinking, or having a beer. And I was delighted that the little patch of land I have studied so lovingly every day since moving here provided me with something unexpected, like a gift for no reason other than love.

But then I felt defeated.

During the summer last year, the field was sold to what we thought was a manufacturer of ferrier equipment, but now I’m told it’s the maker of horse pills — supplements for thoroughbreds.

All summer and early autumn, I watched the surveyors driving (driving!) their trucks across the emerald field, hammering plywood sticks with floppy pink streamers attached at the top, into the ground to mark off where the boundaries actually are or could be.

That is to say, the purchaser’s agents wanted to know if the plot could be larger, which meant, could the factory be that much closer to my deck, not just obliterating the field, but also my view of whatever might be left of it. (I’m already resigned to losing the stars to the 24/7 pole lamp that will undoubtedly go up.)

One day in early September, several meadowlarks sang simultaneously. That was to me, as unusual as hearing one sing in winter. But it gave me an idea: what if I could stop the construction by having someone official declare it too precious a habitat?

I worked at that for a few weeks. Ultimately, I was told that because Kentucky is still considered largely rural, there is plenty of habitat for meadowlarks elsewhere. So, nice try, but no.

Of course, because the meadowlarks nest in the grass — in the meadow — who’s to say they won’t be killed when the backhoe starts clawing at the earth this coming spring, if that is when construction starts?

It’s not like the current inhabitants of the field get notified beforehand and can collect their eggs and haul out of there so they continue to live, and to procreate more little yellow tufted singers: “Sorry Mister and Missus, we’re wrecking your neighborhood Tuesday, next week. Better be gone by then. We thought you’d wanna know. Yer welcome.”

The horse pill people have zoning on their side. All the meadowlark has is a song.

That part about Kentucky being largely rural is ironic. Now would be the time to start thinking about all that will disappear under the mashing thrust of earth movers that will be necessary to accommodate the 80% growth rate my county here in the east-central part of the state is projected to experience in the next two decades.

That’s according to the Kentucky State Data Center, and that’s just my county, mind you. We’re about sixth on the list of the “fastest growing” counties in the state.

Now would be the time to save as many meadowlarks as we possibly can. Instead, we’re barely even thinking about how we’re going to house all these people moving here from the coasts, the offspring of folks already here, the ones who will graduate from the college here and want to stay and work in the region, and the ones who will come for the manufacturing jobs as there is a concerted effort to being heavy industry here.

It’s true — we’re 1,100 houses short per the demand by folks already here, by the city’s own accounting of the situation.

This is the moment to consider the meadowlark. This is the moment to consider that if you’re going to build enough houses to shelter 1,100 people and then still need houses for hordes more, you will use the land, maybe all the land, that state law currently claims is abundant enough to make the meadowlark not a threatened species.

Can you even consider a world without bird song?

And while for me it is a bitter pill that anything beautiful must be explained reductively by Almighty Science, the god of the same intellectuals who until only very recently insisted that animals did not have an emotional life, here’s a video short by a Washington Post columnist who wrote about scientific studies that have found birdsong is good for humans.

So, in case you were holding out until data confirmed what you already knew in your heart, but didn’t want to admit, this video and his column should provide relief.

Still, the reassurance that birds are good for our various flavors of whack is fleeting when you hear the part where he talks about how listening to recorded birdsong on your headphones is just as good as the real thing.

If all we have are simulations of our beautiful life, will it be worth living?

In the meantime, whoever it is that wants to make horse pills will be building upon the face of my friend and all her children.

I wish the person who bought the property would at least walk it first before building upon it. I wish they would say hello to it, talk to it — explain what is happening. I mean, how often do we enter a stranger’s home and take a jack hammer to their living room floor without even a wave hello?

Humans need houses, and I guess horses need pills. And sure, landowners have a right to a return on their investment, and to prosper without actually getting to know the piece of land they intend to transform, without considering all the knock-on effects, without considering what could be done instead.

These are the expected outcomes in a paradigm where the earth is just our bitch whore that we smack around till she does what we say and does it how we say she should do it.

We could step out of that paradigm, but then again, we have birdsong recordings.

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vol. 1 issue 2

Hello, Friends.

I was sitting on my deck in the early morning, enjoying the stillness of the world around me, especially this bit of farmland, pictured above, soon to be developed for an as yet unannounced industrial use.

For a Winter’s day, it sure was vibrant. The long grass was so rusty pink, the short grass was so green, and the frost stiffening both sharpened the scene and deepened the hush.

Regarding the colors and the contours of the land, the curve of the field that slopes and undulates toward the little creek that disappears underground — as do so many water sources in this karst region of our continent’s geology — caught my attention in a way it hadn’t previously.

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Dear Friends,

Last week, I was asked out on a date by a normal man (a triumph, right?) — also handsome, quite accomplished. He was older than I am, but not by a lot.

The surprise was delightful, and led to a rush of excitement that I struggled to contain, until a growing sense of dread dampened my glee. I realized I have become too scruffy for fancy people since leaving the Big City; I generally look unsophisticated anymore. I imagined myself on a date with someone not scruffy and I couldn’t make it synch up.

My doubts led me to conduct due diligence.

A few quick digs into the man’s social media and a spin through his business’s web page, and soon my heart burned, then sunk like a stone.

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vol. 1 issue 1

Dear Friend,

This here, in the picture above, is also my friend. I don’t really know her name, if she even has one, but I call her Mamma. She is one of a herd of Angus, with a fe…

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