Wisdom from Woody

  "More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

   These days many who are religious see signs of the “End Times", while many more have good reason to believe we are living in the “Grim Times”. I suggest that our era could be characterized as the “Whim Times” since citizens all around the world are affected by the capriciousness of one unstable and powerful autocrat in one country. As Dylan might say, “The answers, my friend, are blowin’ in the whim.”
   “Weltschmerz” might be the word that the Germans or the more learned would use to describe the general consensus held, at least, by the non-MAGA people, that things are not good. Given that things are bad, one might think that the wisdom of Woody was revealed very recently. That is not the case.
   Woody’s thoughtful remark was written at the end of the 1970s, a decade which would not generally be defined, by even the most nostalgic, as one containing a large number of the good old days. Still, 1979, the year of the Woody quote, must have been better than any since, say the inauguration of 2017. While many of the religious are anxiously wondering “What Would Jesus Do?”, I think the much more interesting question is now “What Would Woody Say?”

Source:
(And much, much more since my wife insists you don’t look at this part.)

The quotation is found in, “My Speech to the Graduates,” by Woody Allen, The New York Times, Aug. 10, 1979.

   I wondered if a closer look at his speech and the entire issue of The New York Times on Aug.10, of 1979 might reveal why Woody was feeling so glum. Many of the headlines then were similar to ones found now. Israel was an issue even at that time: “Giving Up Sinai is Deeply Painful to Israelis There” and “Mideast Plan is Offered and Quickly Disclaimed in Bonn,” are examples. Some things were simpler in the summer of ‘79. When the 24,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics announced that “The Girl Athlete” was to be the subject of a seminar at their next meeting, no mention of gender (trans or all the others) was made and the discussions were to be about such matters as athletic injuries. Woody could have been upset about the athletic endeavours of the NY baseball teams since the Yankees lost to the Sox, 5-1 and the Mets to the Cardinals by 4-0.
   Some things were better back then. At least for that one day in August in 1979, there was no mention in the NYT of the crook from Queen's, who in the 80s was to be often referred to as the “short-fingered vulgarian", and in this century to be elected as President of the United States - twice!

   Like Woody, I was around in 1979, but in Canada where maybe things were better than they were for Woody in the U.S. But, I doubt that he ever thought the situation there would be as bad as it is now. He does offer us some additional wisdom at the end of the article which does make one feel better:
“Summing up, it is clear the future holds great opportunities. It also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get back home by six o’clock.”
 ----
                               "Making Light of Heavy Things Since 2016"

Birds & Eggs

The Feather Thief

     

     I do not often offer reviews of books I am reading, but I will do so in the case of The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession and the Natural History Heist of the Century, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I read it so quickly I am sure to forget what it was about even faster than usual, unless I attempt a brief summary for you. You also will enjoy it even though it is about the following things: fly-tying; the feathers of birds and a flautist (what the Brits call a player of the flute) who may or may not have Asperger’s. Hardly compelling ingredients, you’re thinking.

      At an early age Edwin Rist became obsessed with tying flies like the one pictured above which requires “the crest feathers of the Golden Pheasant from the mountain forests of China, black and fiery orange breast feathers from the Red-Ruffed Fruitcrow of South America, ribbon-like filaments of Ostrich herl feathers from South Africa, and tiny turquoise plumes from the Blue Chatterer of the lowlands of Central America". As an aside, such flies are rarely used for fishing, but they are highly valued piscatorial objets d'art that attract collectors.

      Such feathers are as rare as the birds from which they are plucked and it is illegal to trade in them. Fortunately Rist the flautist found himself at the Royal Academy of Music in London which is not too far from the Natural History Museum in Tring. It is full of feathers and Rist broke into it and “ stuffed into his suitcase 39 resplendent quetzals, 47 Indian crows, 98 blue chatterers, 37 king birds-of-paradise, 17 flame bowerbirds and so on.”

     Kirk Wallace Johnson the author becomes obsessed with Trist and the fly-tyers and with finding out what happens to the criminal and what became of the proceeds of the crime. It is a very interesting story and along the way one learns about Alfred Russel Wallace (the collector of the feathers held at Tring), Lionel Walter Rothschild (the original owner of Tring), exotic birds and the use of feathers in Victorian fashions. 

 For those of you who rely on opening sentences to choose a book, here they are:

“Alfred Russel Wallace stood on the quarterdeck of a burning ship, seven hundred  miles off the coast of Bermuda, the planks heating beneath his feet, yellow smoke curling up through the cracks. Sweat and sea spray clung to him as the balsam and rubber boiled and hissed below deck. He sensed the flames would soon burst through. The crew of the Helen raced frantically around him, heaving belongings and supplies into the two small lifeboats that were being lowered down the ship’s flank.”

Post Script:

     One of the funniest books I have ever read has the word 'Feathers' in the title. Consisting of several short pieces, my favourite is The Whore of Mensa. It is about intellectual call girls, the kind a man wants if he is more interested in the mind than the body and where in the whore house one finds "pale, nervous girls with black-rimmed glasses and blunt-cut hair [lolling] around on sofas, riffling Penguin Classics provocatively." Among the services rendered in such an establishment: "For a hundred, a girl would lend you her Bartók records, have dinner, and then let you watch while she had an anxiety attack. For one-fifty, you could listen to FM radio with twins. For three bills, you got the works: A thin Jewish brunette would pretend to pick you up at the Museum of Modern Art, let you read her master’s, get you involved in a screaming quarrel at Elaine’s over Freud’s conception of women, and then fake a suicide of your choosing—the perfect evening, for some guys. Nice racket. Great town, New York."

    You can read these short stories in the book below. Most of them appeared in The New Yorker and you can find "The Whore of Mensa" in the Dec. 16, 1974 issue (it is readable via the Internet, but I won't put the link in out of fear it will soon rot).


What About the EGGS?

     I mentioned that word in the title and will offer a few articles about some oologists who are even more obsessive than the feather collectors. Stealing and collecting birds’ eggs is big business. Start with the fascinating story in The New Yorker:

“Operation Easter: The Hunt for Illegal Egg Collectors", Julian Rubinstein, July 15, 2013.

See also:

"Inside the Bizarre, Secretive World of Obsessive Egg Thieves: Audubon talks with filmmaker Tim Wheeler, whose documentary exposes the underworld of Britain’s illegal egg collectors. Audubon, By Emma Bryce, January 06, 2016.

"Journalist Joshua Hammer recounts the story of egg thief Jeffrey Lendrum and his latest jail sentence," CBC Radio · Posted: Jan 23, 2019

See the entry in Wikipedia for The Jourdain Society, and the one for Colin Watson.