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July 27, 2006
Island getaway
We spent part of our July vacation in Florida. In all the years I lived there as a child and a young man, I had never been to Sanibel and Captiva, the two gulf islands just off Fort Myers. The islands are connected to the mainland by a causeway and to each other by a short bridge.
I’m sure old-timers would say Sanibel and Captiva aren’t what they used to be, but they’re still pretty cool. They’re famous for shells, birds and flora. Apparently they lost their cover of Australian pines, the long-needled evergreens that I remember well from my youth, to Hurricane Charley in 2004. But in many places the vegetation remains thick, tangled and close to the ground.
We stayed at a resort on Captiva, ’Tween Waters Inn. We were there for a mini-reunion with several members of my high school class. As it turned out, one of them, Cynthia Cohlmeyer, had a special connection to the inn and the islands. Her connection made the visit special for the rest of us as well.
In high school, we knew her as Cindy Darling. Her grandfather was Jay Norling “Ding” Darling, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who lived from 1876 to 1962.
I knew nothing about Ding Darling, but more than 40 years after his death, his presence is everywhere on Captiva and Sanibel. We first noticed this when we saw that his cartoons and wildlife paintings graced the walls of the main restaurant at ’Tween Waters Inn.
Darling was not only a fine editorial cartoonist (his cartoons appeared on the front page of the Des Moines Register for decades) but also a conservationist of the first order. Long before the environmental movement took hold in this country, many a Darling cartoon depicted human disregard for and mistreatment of the Earth.
Darling was a Republican and a Teddy Roosevelt conservationist, but he wound up in the administration of the other Roosevelt. FDR appointed him director of the U.S. Biological Survey. He started the duck stamp program, among other good deeds, designing the first stamp himself. He also got private financial backing to bring several sportsmen’s organizations together as the National Wildlife Federation, believing – correctly – that this would strengthen the voice of conservationists.
Most impressive for a visitor to the islands that Darling loved, a foundation formed after his death carried on his work. One of his favorite bird-watching locales is now the J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge. In its visitors’ center, one exhibit is built around his drawing desk and another includes the colorful work of the young artists who compete each year to design the duck stamp.
Every time I visit Florida’s Gulf Coast, I am amazed by the high-rises that blot out yet another beach. I’m sure Captiva and Sanibel have lost much of the wild charm that first attracted Ding Darling to them, and no doubt developers have further designs on the islands. But it retains at least vestiges of the old Florida.
Along with a resolve to return one year in winter and spend time in the refuge, I departed with this thought: What an amazing personal legacy for one human being. Known during his day as one of the nation’s great editorial cartoonists, Darling is even better known today by his posterity as a protector of nature.
Posted by Mike Pride at 06:02 PM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2006
Back soon
Mike's blog is taking a break. See you soon.
Posted by Mike Pride at 07:45 AM | Comments (1)
July 05, 2006
The new neighbor
I spent much of the Fourth of July working on writing projects on the back porch of our camp. Writing is a natural act to me, and it feels especially natural in the still of the dawn’s early light. Although my eyes were fixed on the screen of my laptop, they were also alert for animal movement around me.
The air was a little murky, a little yellow, the pond morning gray. I saw a great blue heron swoop in and land on a rocky peak that rises maybe six inches out of the water near our shore. I saw a mink swim toward our boulders with its catch. Then a raccoon walked right through the backyard. I stood for a better look, and the raccoon heard me, stopped and looked back. We made eye contact for two seconds before it bounded into the woods.
During the weekend I had seen a large bird in a deadish tree at the pond’s edge. Leaves obstructed its head from my view, but I saw that its body was a mottled brown, and I saw it at a distance in flight. It seemed to be about gull size. I guessed that it might be an osprey, but T.C. Cutter, who lives across the pond, didn’t think so. I know most of the birds on the pond, and maybe they know me, but this was a new neighbor.
I took a break from my work just after lunch. As I did, I looked out and saw our friends, Judi and Rich Locke, in their thankfully quiet aluminum launch, idling 20 feet from shore. Rich had on his goofy Fourth of July hat, a real attention-getter when the Lockes tour the pond, and Judy held her hand to her forehead as a visor. They were peering up into the tree at the bird I had seen. They kindly offered to pick me up and take me around for a better look. I grabbed my binoculars and climbed aboard.
The bird did not seem to mind the intrusion. It sat there while I catalogued its traits: leg color, eye color, beak shape. Clearly this was no raptor; it looked like a heron.
As we prepared to leave it in peace, the bird began to stir. Suddenly it defecated, and copiously, sending a white stream splashing into the pond below. “Must be a male,” said Judi Locke.
My brain hung onto the bird’s characteristics until I got back to the porch, but I didn't need them. I picked up my bird book and quickly found the bird’s spitting image. It was as though the photographer had shot the bird's picture right in that tree, 30 feet from where I sat.
It was an immature black-crowned night heron, a/k/a Nycticorax nycticorax. Bird literature says many unkind things about this species. They are the squat members of the heron family and do not assume the look their name implies until they turn 3. They are sluggish hunters, one guide says, mainly just standing there waiting for a fish or frog to happen by. They rob the nests of gulls and other heron species, gobbling their chicks. They eat just about anything, including garbage.
One guide describes their table manners this way: “Prey is shaken vigorously until stunned or killed and then juggled about in the beak and swallowed head first. They have strong digestive acids that can dissolve even bones. Their feces are white and limey because of the dissolved calcium.”
Well, I am always elated when I see a bird new to me, and it didn’t bother me one bit that the black-crowned night heron is a bad actor.
About the “night” word, incidentally, only speculation in the guides: Generally these herons do not begin to feed till dusk. Other herons are prone to attack them by day, but after breeding season, perhaps feeling safer, they are sometimes seen in broad daylight.
Later yesterday afternoon, Greg Chase, another pond friend, sailed his Sunfish to about the point where I had first seen the Lockes. Greg had heard about the heron and come to see it, but it was gone. We chatted, and I told him what I had found out about the bird and said I was sure it would be back.
“Good to have a new neighbor on the pond,” Greg said, and he swung his sail to catch the wind, and off he went.
Posted by Mike Pride at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
July 02, 2006
Biden hits the ground running
Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware is making the rounds in New Hampshire. He’s running for president, he says.
Biden is a man with a hole in his reputation, which, on a practical level, makes his candidacy an exercise in self-delusion. It is beyond me why anyone would want to go through repeated questioning on the speech-lifting problem that disqualified him from the presidential chase nearly 20 years ago. And if no one is asking this question – why did you do that, senator? – Biden can be sure his candidacy is not being taken seriously.
Plus, Biden is the quintessential United States senator, with more than 30 years of legislating to muddy the meandering stream of his rhetoric. He’s not Bob Dole, referring to bills by shorthand and reminding people of decade-old subcommittee votes. He’s smoother than that. But Biden is quick to sink listeners in the mire of policy history, with an emphasis on his seminal role. In the latter respect, he lacks Dole’s modesty.
And yet one of the enduring values of New Hampshire’s presidential primary campaigns is the opportunity they give the parties – especially the out party – to figure out where they stand. In this respect, Biden deserves a careful hearing.
The senator gave the Monitor editorial board a long interview on Friday. The next day we published Monitor reporter Lauren R. Dorgan’s excellent account of the highlights of the interview.
The Iraq war is the stickiest issue for every presidential candidate. There is a temptation to seek a position on one of the poles, creating the false impression that the choice is war vs. surrender.
Biden knows it’s not that simple. He has not only followed the war every step of the way as an insider but has also made repeated visits to Iraq to assess the situation on the ground. As he describes it, our future policy there rests as much on the realities of troop strength as on presidential resolve. The force level will have to be reduced substantially in coming months because it cannot be sustained. Any sense of how to proceed in Iraq, Biden says, must begin with that realization.
The current debate on the airwaves – and, I might add, in the run-up to the midterm elections – is cut and run vs. stay the course. This Rovian scenario is a Republican dream, and so far the Democrats are playing right into it (see Connecticut, and the party’s crusade to do a Bob Smith-ectomy on Sen. Joe Lieberman). Dems have plenty of issues on their side – the administration’s deadly incompetence after Katrina, its ocean of red ink and, above all, its woeful post-Shock and Awe performance in Iraq. But their schism over the war prevents them from presenting a unified front on anything.
Biden’s knowledgeable, reality-based views on Iraq, and his guarded optimism about the outcome there, provide a strong direction for his party. Whether they will do anything for his own prospects for 2008 is beside the point. Taking to the stump in New Hampshire as an avowed presidential candidate provides a bigger megaphone for Biden’s positions than he would otherwise have. That in itself is good for both his party and his country.
Posted by Mike Pride at 07:29 PM | Comments (2)