Mysterious flights

The migration of birds has long been one of the great mysteries of nature. In Long Hops, Mark Denny adds to the mystery even as he tries his best to solve it.

Not that Denny fails in his task. Rather he points out so many variables in bird migration that simple solutions do not suffice.

We normally think of birds flying south for the winter and north for summer, at least in the northern hemisphere. Yet some birds migrate east-west. Others go up and down — up the mountain in warm weather, down again when it turns cooler. Robins have been known to change direction in mid-migration as temperatures change.

Blue grouses can’t fly. They migrate on foot.

Some birds migrate by sight, following coastlines or other markers. Others migrate by smell or by infrasound. Some follow their favorite foods. Others find their way by the stars. Others by internal compasses. Some seem to have been hatched with the knowledge of where they are supposed to be at a certain time of year.

As his title suggests, Denny is primarily interested in birds that travel long distances, sometimes thousands  of miles. He lives in Hawaii, and birds that migrate to and from there must fly a long way without stopping to rest or to refuel. He estimates that a high percentage of birds die simply because they lack the energy for such distances.

Denny’s book, published in 2016, is probably too basic for experts in this field, yet often too technical for us amateurs. There is enough here, however, for anyone with even the slightest interest in bird migration to find fascinating. And mysterious.

Mellowing period

In the book business you can usually reckon that it takes at least ten years for work of any really subtle quality to become widely known. That is not as regrettable as you might imagine: ten years is a fair mellowing period, and strong work does not easily evaporate.

Christopher Morley, John Mistletoe

Christopher Morley

Christopher Morley points out that it took several years for the quality of Emily Dickinson's poems to be recognized and appreciated. The same is true of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and a number of other works of literature. He calls this a "mellowing period," the time it takes for the cream to rise to the top.

When I notice how quickly books, even excellent books, disappear from Barnes & Noble shelves, I find it difficult to be as optimistic as Morley. How can quality books be rediscovered a few years from now if they cannot be found? And nowadays used book stores are disappearing as quickly as independent bookstores.

Yet examine those same Barnes & Noble shelves and one can find many books published a number of years ago and yet still in print. One can still find new editions of novels by James Michener, Ken Kesey and Jacqueline Susann, for example, decades after they were first published. But are such books still in print because of their quality or their popularity? The best books are not necessarily the bestsellers, and publishers are mostly interested in making money.

At one time literary critics and literature professors played an important role in rediscovering quality literature. They wrote books about forgotten books and writers, bringing them back into the public's attention. They lectured on these books in college classes, and if one must read a book for a class, one assumes it must be a quality book. And thus its stature rises.

At present, however, the author of a book — sex, race, sexual preference — can be more important than literary quality. It can be a challenge these days even for white heterosexual men to get a book published, let alone for it to receive literary attention.

And then there is the issue of quantity, as well as quality. This has always been a problem, I suspect. My view is that there are probably more fine books written than can be fully appreciated, mellowing period or no mellowing period. Just as only so many movies and so many actors can be nominated for Academy Awards, only so many works of literature can gain wide acceptance and appreciation over time.

Many fine books and poems are likely to always be ignored or forgotten. There is room at the top only for the fortunate few.

The octopus detective

Can an octopus be a detective? Well, he can in Shelby Van Pelt's wonderful first novel Remarkably Bright Creatures (2022).

Marcellus is an octopus in an aquarium in a relatively small town in the state of Washington. He is nearing the end of his four-year life span, and he is smart enough to know it. He is also smart enough to read English, to identify people by their fingerprints on the glass of his tank, to escape each night to consume seafood in other tanks and even to have a hidden coin collection.

Marcellus is a part-time narrator, as well, but mostly the novel is about Tova, a 70-year-old woman who cleans the Sowell Bay Aquarium each night, and Cameron, a 30-year-old man who leads an aimless life until he starts working there, too.

Tova still mourns the recent loss of her dear husband, as well as the death of her teenage son at sea 30 years before. Yes, those 30 years are significant. Marcellus is the one who recognizes that Tova and Cameron are related somehow. One thing he can't do is speak, so how can he communicate what he knows to these two hapless humans? And can he do it before his own rapidly approaching death?

Van Pelt makes us believe this fantasy. She fills her novel with pleasures and surprises, strong characters and an octopus to love.

Dialogue versus monologue

Dialogue, then, is the basic form of human speech — and monologue, in which one speaker is silent for a very long time, exists only in special cases such as theatrical performances, prayers, and ceremonial speeches.

Peter Farb, Word Play

Peter Farb never met my father or a guy I used to work with or any number of other people I've known who can't seem to stop talking. I saw an old man in a restaurant one day who wouldn't pause his monologue long enough for his server to break away and attend to other diners.

Ideally dialogue is the basic form of human speech, yet monologues are found in more than just stage plays, literary works, speeches and prayer. (Actually, prayer is ideally supposed to be a dialogue. Most people just don't do it very well.) So many individuals enjoy the sound of their own voices. They have their stories to tell and insist that others listen to them, even if they have heard them before. So many of us just don't know when to shut up. Listening is the part of conversation most often ignored. Even when we seem to be listening, we may actually just be waiting for a chance to launch into our own monologue.

Tom Hanks in Cast Away

The best conversations are, of course, dialogues. And dialogue is often the best part of a novel, at least when the author is kind enough to remind us frequently who it is who is talking. Movies without much dialogue are possible — I am thinking of Robert Redford';s Alone and Tom Hanks's Cast Away. Yet in most movies, as in most plays and TV shows, things start to get interesting when people talk to each other.

And so it is in life. Most of us need somebody to talk with, at least once in awhile. Those monologues we recite when we are alone just aren't the same.

Wartime murder

The social dislocation and the emotional toll of war increased deadly violence in the family and among strangers, while the bomb-scarred landscape helped to hide the victims.

Amy Helen Bell, Under Cover of Darkness

As if the Germans didn't kill enough Londoners during World War II — with the Blitz and later the V-1 and V-2 missile attacks — the city's residents seemed driven to kill each other during this period, as well. Amy Helen Bell tells us about it in her 2024 book Under Cover of Darkness: Murders in Blackout London.

Before the war, murders in London averaged between 250 and 300 a year. The murder rate rose throughout the war, climbing to a high of 492 murders in 1945, the last year of the war. And because the bombing left behind so many bodies, there is no telling how many other murders went undetected.

Some of the most tragic cases detailed by Bell were the result of the fear of a German invasion. A nanny killed the child in her care and herself to keep the girl out of the hands of the Nazis. A mother killed her beloved daughter for similar reasons.

Other murders were committed by soldiers stationed in London. Their victims were usually women.

Abortion was illegal, yet not uncommon during this period. Some murder cases involved abortion in one way or another. Women, as well as babies, often became statistics in suspicious-death cases.

People of other races came to the city during the war, and some murders were racially motivated.

Bell tells us about two serial killers operating in London. In one of these cases, an innocent man probably went to the gallows for a murder committed by someone else.

And then there were the domestic crimes, usually husbands killing wives, that are all too common even in peacetime.

Bell observes that in most crime reporting, the focus usually falls more on the killers than their victims. She tries to reverse that spotlight as much as possible in her book, telling us as much as she can about the victims. Yet this is not always possible, for the killers are the ones who are thoroughly investigated and who go to trial, while victims often leave little behind in the public record.

Wandering minds

Is a wandering mind a good thing or a bad thing? It depends.

When our minds wandered when we were in school it was a bad thing, or at least it seemed that way. That moment seemed to be when your teacher was most likely to ask you a question. When our minds wander at work, we could lose some time, lose a customer or even, as in my father's case, lose a finger.

I know when my mind is wandering in church because that is when I am most likely to start yawning. Yet sometimes during a sermon my mind turns to a sermon I might preach on that same topic, and because I do sometimes preach sermons, this is perhaps not all bad.

The worst time for mind-wandering, it seems to me, is when one is trying to sleep. Sometimes I awaken at 3 a.m. and cannot get back to sleep because my mind will not relax. It floats from one topic to another — things I've done, things I need to do and fantasies about things I wish would happen. Yet sometimes during these wanderings I think of something I need to do but would have otherwise probably forgotten. So even here, a wandering mind can sometimes be beneficial.

As a part-time writer, I find a wandering mind vital to what I do. So many of my best ideas come unbidden, while my mind is straying from one topic to another. Great thoughts come to me while driving or while taking a shower when I didn't even realize I was thinking about what those ideas pertained to.

I suspect that many of the best inventions, most original business ideas, best lines of poetry, best novel plots, etc., have been the result of a wandering mind.

Unreturned books

McKinney Hubbard

Everything comes to him who waits, except a loaned book.

McKinney Hubbard

Public libraries stamp their name on every book they loan out, as well as the date when it is due back. They know the names of the lenders and where to find them. Yet even they often don't get their books back. Try to walk out of a library with a book you failed to check out properly and alarms will likely go off.

If libraries with their various levels of security have difficulty keeping track of all their books, it is certainly no easier for individuals to ever see their books again after letting friends or acquaintances borrow them. There are many reasons for this:

1. People often have difficulty finishing books, however much they want to. They put them aside to get back to later, and days turn into months and into years.

2. Books can get lost. We put books on top of books. We move. We put clutter away when company comes, then fail to put things back where they were.

3. As time passes, we forgot who actually owns a particular book. Is this mine or did I borrow it from somebody? If I borrowed it, from whom?

4. After a long period of time, it can be embarrassing to return a borrowed item. It calls attention to the failure to return it promptly. Maybe the owner has forgotten all about it. Or at least we may hope.

5. Sometimes those who borrow books like them so much they simply don't want to give them back.