A Day for the Birds?

Here is a Valentine's Day myth I was not familiar with but which I find amusing. Michael Sims writes about today in Darwin's Orchestra:

The natural history of Valentine's Day can be found fossilized in literature. For centuries, it was an accepted fact of nature that birds chose their mates on February 14. Chaucer assumed it in The Parlement of Foules: 

"For this was Seynt Valentyne's day, 

When every foul cometh ther to chose his mate."

Shakespeare and poets Robert Herrick and John Donne also wrote about the romance of birds on Valentine's Day. I don't think their spelling was any better.

(At first, I misread mates as names and thought it was so sweet that birds chose their names on this day. I was a bit confused as to what that had to do with romance and then I discovered my error.) 

No matter if you are choosing a name or a mate, enjoy your day and be sure to eat plenty of chocolate. 

Also, today marks the half-way point of my Month in Letters and I am sending off in the mail my fourteenth handwritten note. I find that part of the fun of mailing letters to friends and family is the anticipation of their surprise and one would hope, joy, upon receipt of my missive. 

On Earth and Sky

Loren Eiseley

The early nineties (which was so last century) found me working in a large, independent bookstore. It was my ideal job. I had no desk, no deadlines, and no day planner.

I showed up. I waited on customers - face-to-face or on the phone. I worked the checkout counter. I shelved books. At the end of my day, I grabbed my purse and walked out the door.

What wasn't there to like?

I was responsible for the upkeep of four different sections in the store: 

Romance - this was the least interesting to me but was a very popular section. All those sagas by Danielle Steel and LaVyrle Spencer.

Animals - books on different dog and cat breeds, dog training, pet birds, reptiles.


Gardening - how to design gardens and fill them with flowers, trees, and shrubs.

Nature and Science - everything from the musings of Thoreau to the lectures of physicist Richard Feynman.

Which brings me in a roundabout way to Loren Eiseley whose writings were the subject in today's entry in Darwin's Orchestra by Michael Sims, an almanac of short essays on 'Nature and History in the Arts' which I am enjoying reading each morning.

I remember Mr. Eisley's name from my Nature and Science section although I never did read any of his writings. He has many: fifteen books, two memoirs, and three books of poetry.

Mr. Eiseley (1907-1977) was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. He graduated from the University of Nebraska and received a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania where he taught for three decades. He wrote essays about the earth and the cosmos. He was a naturalist and a philosopher and a poet. A lovely combination. 

So now my interest is piqued. I enjoy reading about the natural world from a literary point of view. I am thinking here of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire. Perhaps, now, I can add Mr. Eiseley to my list. It looks as if The Immense Journey (1957) or The Unexpected Universe (1969) might be a good starting point.

What say you? Are you familiar with Loren Eiseley and his thoughts on earth and sky? 

A Book of Days

I have already pulled off my shelves three books that I bought in 2012 and that I have been saving to read this year. 

It has been a few years since I have read daily from a 'book of days'. One year I read the daily diary entries in the anthology The Assassin's Cloak compiled by Irene and Alan Taylor. Another year it was Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach. And then there was the year I started each day with a meditation from 365 Tao by Deng Ming-Dao.

This year's book is Darwin's Orchestra: An Almanac of Nature in History and the Arts (1997) by Michael Sims (author of The Story of Charlotte's Web that I so loved). It offers a daily reading of essays by Mr. Sims on such varied subjects as: January 1 - Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons; May 22 - Singing insects; September 4 - Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit; and December 19 - Doctor Doolittle. 

It looks to be an entertaining and informative way to begin each day.

The second is really a 'book of months': The Shape of a Year (1967) by Jean Hersey. I bought this fine hardcover book at a used book sale last summer and instead of reading it in one big gulp, I thought I would follow month-by-month Ms. Hersey's chronicle of events in her life on her farm in Connecticut. I love reading this type of book and look forward to spending the year with Ms. Hersey, her family, her neighbors, and her gardens.

The third book is a whopper: The Art of the Personal Essay - An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present (1994) selected and with an introduction by Philip Lopate. I already owned a paperback copy of this 770-page collection. It was so unwieldy to read that I never quite got around to finishing all the wisdom it had to offer. When I found a hardcover edition at the same summer used book sale as above, I snapped it up. 

I will keep this one - it is heavy - on my new desk and dip into it again and again. I can't wait to read the likes of Seneca (On Noise); Robert Louis Stevenson (An Apology for Idlers); Virginia Woolf (Street Haunting); and, M.F.K. Fisher (Once a Tramp, Always).

It is going to be a great year.