Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

Given your digiscoping efforts, you seem to have an avid interest in birds, so I'm attaching a couple of photos to see if you can help ID this bird. They were taken with my handheld mini zoom camera yesterday evening. The photos are cropped, as the bird appears to be the size of a cardinal, or very possibly smaller, and it was singing in the tops of the tallest pine trees on our route.
    The only bird I have ever seen that comes close to this is a western tanager. The complications there being that as far as I know the western tanager is only found west of the Mississippi River, and those I have seen don't have a vivid red cape like this bird; they were red only on the head and maybe part of the neck. I may be about to embarrass myself here by forgetting something obvious, but I am drawing a blank on what else this bird might be. And if it is a western tanager, what on earth is it doing here in Central NC???

[Editor's note: my wife suggests that the bird might be an immature summer tanager in the process of becoming an adult, a "teenage" bird testing its boundaries as its hormones drive it to find a mate. When we lived in Chapel Hill, we were visited by summer tanagers; they loved our Dogwood berries. Their habitat was bought up for preservation by The Triangle Land Conservancy: Johnston Mill Nature Preserve.]

We saw African Cats [which I reviewed recently] at the show (I've always called it that), and we liked it but I have to confess it made me almost hate male adult lions. It is very well done.

Mything something? From Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By:

Significant images render insights beyond speech, beyond the kinds of meaning speech defines. And if they do not speak to you, that is because you are not ready for them, and words will only serve to make you think you have understood, thus cutting you off altogether. You don’t ask what a dance means, you enjoy it. You don’t ask what the world means, you enjoy it. You don’t ask what you mean, you enjoy yourself; or at least, so you do when you are up to snuff.
    But to enjoy the world requires something more than mere good health and good spirits; for this world, as we all now surely know, is horrendous. "All life," said the Buddha, "is sorrowful"; and so, indeed, it is. Life consuming life: that is the essence of its being, which is forever a becoming. "The world," said the Buddha, "is an ever-burning fire." And so it is. And that is what one has to affirm, with a yea! a dance! a knowing, solemn, stately dance of the mystic bliss beyond pain that is at the heart of every mythic rite.

Highly creative people tend to get out of their own heads.
    Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist at New York University who has spent years researching creativity, argues that another purpose of daydreaming is to help us to get out of our own limited perspective and explore other ways of thinking, which can be an important asset to creative work.
    "Daydreaming has evolved to allow us to let go of the present," says Kaufman. "The same brain network associated with daydreaming is the brain network associated with theory of mind – I like calling it the 'imagination brain network' – it allows you to imagine your future self, but it also allows you to imagine what someone else is thinking."
    Research has also suggested that inducing "psychological distance" – that is, taking another person's perspective or thinking about a question as if it was unreal or unfamiliar – can boost creative thinking.

The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

Look what you're missing, Morris, by not attending your class reunion: "1964 50th Reunion Schedule." For example:

Age Is Unnecessary: Shakespeare and the End of Life Story
    Stephen Greenblatt, University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard and the celebrated author of numerous books, including most recently The Swerve (winner of the National Book Award), will discuss King Lear and old age.
    Friday, May 30, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
    Sprague Hall - 470 College Street
    Room: Concert Hall

Didn't you interview Greenblatt a few weeks ago? [Yes, on Shakespeare's 450th birthday]

Last photo in the camera:

Hey, Morris, I saw your name in the paper on Tuesday: "Mebane council approves 2-cent property tax increase." Excerpt:

The Mebane City Council voted unanimously to approve a roughly $21 million budget for fiscal 2015 with a 2-cent tax increase Monday night — and was thanked for it.
    “We are privileged to live in a city that has as its guardians a rational council like this that takes into account what is required to have a functioning and civilized society,” said Morris Dean before the vote. He went on to quote Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Taxes are what we pay for living in a civilized society.”

Limerick of the Week:

They brand Mebane "positively charming,"
but its population growth is alarming;
    they must hope to attract
    new citizens with tact,
whose manners are discreet and disarming.

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Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

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