Mobbed

 A dozen crows mobbed a red-tail hawk above the woodlot. The crows drove it east and then somehow turned it and drove it back west, giving me two looks at the magnificent raptor. The big hawk plodded along as the smaller, more agile crows nipped at its heels and screamed.

I knew the spectacle was coming because I heard the distinctive two-syllable calls.

 

Crows give at least three distinguishable assembly caws that are associated with mobbing, scolding, and diving at potential predators. These “two-syllable caws,” “long caws,” and “harsh caws” focus American Crows on the object of the caller’s scorn — usually a stationary cat or owl — in an attempt to drive the creature from the area, alert others to its presence, or perhaps teach family and flock members about dangerous situations.

 

Biologists have a hard time saying how many different calls crows use. One problem is the variation in regional dialects. But if you play a recording of American crows screaming that two-syllable call in France, the local crows come, looking for trouble.

• Source: John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell, In the Company of Crows and Ravens; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005, p. 201.

A story about the 200th

 Some stories can make you think about the scale of tragedy.

During the Depression, a lot of men in New Mexico picked up extra money by serving in the National Guard. The main unit was a cavalry outfit. The Army still had horses in the 1930s. But with world war coming, the Army didn’t need another cavalry outfit. The New Mexicans became the 200^th Coastal Artillery Regiment. Training was heavy on antiaircraft guns, a new concept for coastal protection units.

With Japan bent on empire, the regiment was called to service and shipped to the Philippines.

The fate the American and Filipino forces is well known. They were bottled up on the Bataan Peninsula and forced to surrender in April 1942. The men were marched to a prison camp. More than 16,000 died or were killed along the way.

The scale of the tragedy is so large it’s hard to grasp. But New Mexico, by population, was a small state. The regiment had 1,800 soldiers from all over the state. About 900 died on the Bataan Death March.

After the war, the survivors returned. While some veterans did fine, others struggled with alcoholism and mental illness. Abuse can prompt abuse, and such problems have a way of lingering, passed down from generation to generation. A man with an addiction turns out to be a descendent of a veteran of the 200^th.

It’s fascinating —how different people can experience the same catastrophe and react in different ways. Some are fine. Others are undone. I would love to better understand that.

Piedmont, early February

 Two male cardinals that had shared the feeders all winter without bloodshed were fighting this morning.

I think of February as a sneaky month for winter storms, made worse by the human tendency to plant too early out of a longing for spring. The battle of the cardinals made me a panentheist for an hour. Humans aren’t the only ones who think spring is almost here.

Ruskin: ‘Traffic’

 John Ruskin’s lecture “Traffic” is infuriating, except in places where it’s intriguing.

In 1864, Ruskin was called to Bradford, a city near Leeds, to advise wool merchants on the plan for a new exchange building. His taste in art and architecture was respected.

Ruskin’s theory of art strikes me as dangerous, rather than dubious. His talk of great national architecture comes with talk of great national churches, great national worship, great national character.

I think that’s a proven recipe for bad thinking. Making generalizations about national character tempts us to overlook the fact that some Americans are selfless philanthropists while others are swindlers and murderers, some are research scientists while others are dedicated to keeping science out of public schools. Generalizations that are honest to that much diversity aren’t worth much.

But Ruskin’s essay is full of intriguing lines, so broad I wonder whether they’re true.

 

Taste is not only a part and an index of morality — it is the ONLY morality.

 

Ruskin thought if people told you what they liked, you knew them. The person who liked his gin and a pipe was one kind of person, and everyone in Victorian England knew him. The person who liked her kitchen tidy and her family nearby was another kind of person. Everyone knew her. In Ruskin’s view, to know a person’s taste was to know the person.

 

What we like determines what we are, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is inevitably to form character.

Our sense of taste can identify us in some ways. If you read this collection of notes, you’d have a sense of my interests. You’ll have an idea of what types of judgments and misjudgments I’m prone to. You might have a sense of my character.

But in other ways, taste is just a matter of preferences that have become habits. I don’t think it tells you anything about character.

One of the cafes in Stone Mountain serves collard greens and sweet potatoes every day. It does so because in this part of the world, Democrats like them and so do Republicans. People of many colors and many religions like them. I’d guess that police officers and criminals like them, and that librarians and book banners do too.

If you are looking at taste as a marker of identity, visiting the café won’t help.

• Source and notes: John Ruskin’s lecture “Traffic” was published in The Crown of Wild Olive.   The Victorian Web has it here:

https://victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/traffic.html

I’ve been thinking about taste since reading “Good taste, bad taste, no taste, why taste?” Salmagundi, Fall-Winter, 2024-2025. My first note was “A matter of taste,” Jan. 26, 2025.

Fear of cows

 T.S. Eliot was afraid of cows. He wrote a poem about it, “The Country Walk.” It begins:

Of all the beasts that God allows 
In England’s green and pleasant land, 
I most of all dislike the Cows: 
Their ways I do not understand.

 

He says that’s a trait that rustics — people like me — would scorn.

 

You may reply, to fear a Cow 
Is Cowardice the rustic scorns; 
But still your reason must allow 
That I am weak, and she has horns.

 

The old cowhands of my grandfather’s generation would never have admitted to a fear of cows, but all of them professed a healthy respect.

I have been kicked, stomped, butted and hooked. Because of my own stupidity and inattention, I was roughed up by a Brahma bull that weighed more than a ton. I imagine that I have encountered cattle-inspired fear in a way Eliot did not. What I can’t understand is the casual, almost charming, way he gives in to it.

I’m trying to imagine what the opposite of this situation would look like. Imagine a rustic, like me, who goes to the big city but is afraid of getting on the subway or into a cab. Because he’s afraid to travel, he doesn’t get out and see the city, doesn’t sample the food, doesn’t meet the natives, doesn’t see the sights that interest them.

Because he gives into fear, he doesn’t see anything but a hotel room. Yet he comes back speaking disparagingly of big cities and city slickers.

I wouldn’t trust that voice.
Maybe that comparison is not fair. But when Eliot speaks, I am skeptical. A lot of Eliot’s poetry has an underlying sensibility that is alien to me.