TWIB next week

"This week in birds" is taking the week off. It will return next weekend.

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The Good Lord Bird by James McBride: A review

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The Ivory-billed Woodpecker, now likely extinct, was the largest woodpecker endemic to North America. Twenty inches long with a wingspan of thirty inches, it was an impressive sight in flight, so impressive that folks who saw it were known to exclaim in awe, "Good lord!" And so, the story goes, it became known colloquially as the Good Lord Bird. The Good Lord Bird was a denizen of the forests and swamps of the southeastern United States. It's unlikely that it ever lived on the prairies of Kansas except in James McBride's imagination. McBride imagines the bird there in the middle of the nineteenth century, sharing "Bleeding Kansas" with the abolitionist John Brown and his "army." In his telling, the woodpecker became a talisman for the abolitionist. He carried its feathers as a good luck charm, a symbol of hope. Like many, I suppose, I have only the most rudimentary knowledge of John Brown and his campaign to destroy the institution of slavery. I am...
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Election Day

It was primary day in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, and Oregon, and an interesting one it was, too. At this hour, it has been determined that the tea party candidate, Rand Paul, has won the Republican primary for senator of Kentucky. The Democratic race for that office has been much closer with two strong candidates, the current Attorney General and Lt. Governor of the state. At present the Attorney General has a slim lead. Interestingly, both the Attorney General and the Lt. Governor have received more votes than Rand Paul did! I wonder if the mainstream media will mention that. I would guess not. In Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter found that switching parties was not the golden ticket to continued incumbency that he had thought. Rep. Joe Sestak beat him rather decisively. It will be a tough battle for Sestak in the general election, but he might just pull it off. He's a pretty tough campaigner. The really interesting race in Pennsylvania was the special election for the...
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Poetry Sunday: To Daffodils by Robert Herrick

Gardening is a hobby, some might say an obsession, of mine. I live in an area with a growing season that is virtually year-round so there's always something going on in the garden and I spend a lot of time attempting to grow many different kinds of plants. Many plants thrive here and it is very rewarding to watch them grow. But there are some that I've tried to grow that have been a bust. Among those failures are daffodils. You might think daffs would be easy. I mean you can see them growing wild around old abandoned home sites with no one to care for them, but there is something about the heat and humidity here, or maybe it's the soil, or perhaps a combination of both that is inimical to the growth of daffodils. I plant them and they bloom for one year and then they disappear, so I've pretty much given up on them and moved on to other things. Poets love daffodils, of course. One always thinks of William Wordsworth, but Robert Herrick was fond of them, too, and he saw t...
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