Month: February 2010

1250
25 Feb 10

The Cooper’s hawk is back outside my window! In the past week I have
seen it there twice. Right now it is eating another pigeon it has
killed. And of course, the squirrels are poking around nearby quite
obliviously. When I saw it earlier it was on that frigid day when
light snow was coming down. It just sat there, with flakes collecting
on its puffed-out feathers until it shook them off. Not even the
squirrels were out, it was so cold. Today it’s much warmer and the
hawk is apparently doing quite well for itself. Since it’s a regular
visitor I think it may be time for me to name it.

I received an envelope addressed to *** Hanson, 1915 **** Ave S. The return address was hidden on the opposite side. It looked like it was a Christmas letter, perhaps containing cash. It may have come from a forgetful grandmother or wife. I thought I might make a quick twenty bucks if I were cold-hearted enough to open it and steal it for myself.

But I kept it and drove over to the person’s house today before work. He was an old guy in sweatpants and sweatshirt, there with his daughter. I explained that I was Isaac Hanson on 1915 2nd Ave, a similar address and name. He thanked me profusely for driving over and dropping it off. He shook my hand. I said you’re welcome and left.

As I left I thought of how awful it would have been if I had opened the card and taken the cash for myself. How could I look into the eyes of this nice old man and steal from him? The answer is, I couldn’t. I have a tender spot in my heart for old people like this. I think it compensates for the twisted knot where my love for infants and children should be.

Isaac

19 Feb 2010

15 Feb 10

As an update, I read in the Southwest Journal that the victim of the
shooting showed up to Hennepin County Medical Center five hours after
the shooting with a gunshot wound. But he refused to cooperate with
police, probably due to the “no snitching” code of street culture.
Luckily the shooter was arrested. But I doubt he will receive more
than a light sentence since there is no one to seek a conviction!

Proust and the Squid 15 Feb 10

I just finished a good book called “Proust and the Squid” by Maryanne
Wolf, a neuroscientist and child developmental psychologist. The book
is a brief overview of how the brain manages to read, how it evolved
to do so, and how it sometimes fails to read in the case of dyslexia.
I would recommend it – don’t let the stupid name put you off (The name
is only superficially related to the subject matter).

Wolf begins her exploration by meditating on a childhood love of
reading. Pairing her own recollections with a sentimental essay from
Marcel Proust about early forays into literary fantasy, she launches
into a description of the reading brain. She presents a summary of the
findings of modern neuroscience: brain scans suggest a novel
adaptation of ancient neural structures devoted to speech, spatial
recognition, and higher cognition. Autopsies of stroke victims reveal
severed links in the chain of reading comprehension. And the natural
history of childhood shows a progression from storytelling to decoding
of text to fluent comprehension to expert reading and going “beyond
the text.” The overall picture is of a human brain with no real
“reading center” but which has adapted through amazing plasticity to
accomplish automatically what took millions of years to develop:
experiencing another’s thoughts, mirrored through seemingly inert
symbols on paper.

As Wolf recounts, the transformation from oralcy to literacy took
place in the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms but over many
thousands of years of human history (In some societies reading never
developed at all). The author describes the development of visual
symbols, the alphabetic breakthrough, and Socrates’ vehement
objections to what he thought of as the hollow wisdom conveyed by
written texts.

The last third of “Proust and the Squid” addresses Wolf’s day-to-day
work as a child psychologist: what happens when the brain can’t learn
to read. Multiple lines of evidence point to several theories, not all
of which are incompatible with each other. In essence, the dyslexic
brain has failed to co-opt the necessary neural circuitry for fluent
reading. But it may possess strengths in other areas due to the
brain’s tendency to compensate. Whether there is an evolutionary basis
for the rather high prevalence of dyslexia is the subject of brief
speculation at the end of the book.

I would recommend “Proust and the Squid.” It is a brief treatment of
the reading brain that will interest anyone who loves to read and is
curious about reading’s cognitive and historical basis.

A Hawk Meal 9 Feb 10

A few days ago I looked out of my window near Nicollet and Franklin to
see a hawk picking apart a rock dove that lay on a branch nearby. The
pigeon was prone, straddling the branch, and the hawk was definitely a
Cooper’s hawk. I pulled out my guide and verified it: I confirmed the
wide white tail band on the distal rectrices, the rounded tail tip,
and the relatively large size that distinguished it from a
sharp-shinned hawk. This bird was at the northern edge of its winter
range, but apparently was doing quite well for itself. Even more
impressive, it retained the yellow eyes of a juvenile, yet managed to
survive in a Minnesota February, learning as it went.

I watched as it picked at its prey, looking around with each bite.
Once it even seemed to look at me as I peered through my binoculars.
It pulled out about a foot of small intestine, which dangled from the
branch with down feathers stuck to its moist surface. The hawk pulled
out the stomach and cast it down into the yard below. The neighbor’s
dog (named Theodin from Lord of the Rings?) would probably investigate
the lost organ the next day.

The bird picked away at the ribs and spinal column and then ate the
liver, lungs and heart. It ate a large yellowish organ I didn’t
recognize – a pancreas maybe? The (rather dumb) neighborhood squirrels
were extremely curious about the newcomer. The poked around on the
nearby branches very close to the feasting hawk, even crawling on the
underside of the branch on which the bird sat. They occasionally gave
their chittering “danger” call when a glimmer of recognition overcame
them.

Later I looked up and saw the hawk fluff out its feathers and sit
plumply on the branch, with the corpse still at its feet, with gray
down feathers stuck to its hooked raptor’s bill. It eyed with seeming
irritation the squirrels that clambered around there. They were
oblivious to the threat a Cooper’s hawk posed to them. These stupid,
ignorant city squirrels were so fat off dumpster fare they didn’t even
bother hibernating like their country kin. Why conserve fat stores
when you can feast daily on pizza crusts and apple cores? I wished the
hawk would kill one of them.

Later the hawk was gone, only the pigeon’s remains were left on the
branch. Two fully feathered wings hung down from the branch, with two
bloody-bare scapulae. The whole apparatus hugged the branch pronely,
as if it were a ghoul awaiting some demented backrub. People walked by
unknowing in the alley, below and beyond where I watched. If I were a
hawk, I would take the greatest joy in being a city bird – stalking, killing,
dismembering and eating hapless pigeons amidst the people and buildings all day long.