Category Archives: Life reflections

Birds Again – – –

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Jack is allowed to be late this time because the Monday book review was late – so there!

John Coltrane

A couple of weeks ago I posted about an imaginary conversation between birds in our front yard. But, actually, I’m really fascinated by their songs. They have the most amazing range of sounds – some just repeated but often with subtle changes between each repeat.

It reminded me about something I read about many years ago –

I remember it as being about the jazz sax player John Coltrane, but it might just as easily have been his contemporary Eric Dolphy.

But whoever it was supposedly recorded bird calls then slowed them on playback to half speed so he could learn the phrasing and then use it in his solos. This was in the 1950s or 1960s when people like Coltrane and Dolphy were pushing at the musical boundaries and looking for inspiration in unlikely places. I believe he also listened to ‘Ceol Mor’ (the great music of the Highland bagpipes also called Pibroch) which takes a simple theme (ground) and then repeats it numerous times with ever more intricate variations.

So combining these two influences that might seem very different actually makes a lot of sense.

Unfortunately, when I searched on-line for corroboration I could only find much more recent references to other and newer players, but I’m convinced that I’m remembering this correctly.

Meanwhile our blue jays, robins and house swifts continue to communicate very melodiously.

PS The greatest of the jazzmen was, arguably, Charlie Parker whose nickname was ‘Bird’.

PPS One of the most famous jazz clubs was ‘Birdland’.

PPPS Our guestroom and my radio show studio is called ‘The Birdhouse’ because of the wallpaper!

The Monday Book: THE SINGING TREE by Kate Seredy

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This YA novel is actually the sequel to a famous children’s classic called The Good Master. Kate and Jansci are cousins introduced in that book, when Kate is sent to live with her father’s brother’s family because she’s a spoiled city girl who has been ill.

The Singing Tree is a much deeper book, detailing the experiences of the Hungarian farmers during World War I. The book deals in childlike innocence with topics such as anti-Jewish sentiment in Hungary, the power grab of Austria, the terrible opening of the war, and how Hungarians and Germans set themselves up for future enmity.

The farm where Marton Nagy (the good master) keeps his family safe, and later shelters neighbors who lose their farms, and then houses Russian prisoners of war who work the farm while he is in the army, and finally takes in a passel of German refugee children, is a big happy place. Part of why I like this book is its sappy “Sound of Music” plot twists. (For one example, a stray cat having kittens makes Kate detour the farm wagon to an army field hospital, where missing Uncle Marton is discovered as an amnesia patient. I know, right? Eye rolling.)

And yet throughout the book are these amazing moments of writing, where true horror is simply spoken out by the beloved characters in heartbreaking poetic ways. Marton tells his family the story of Christmas 2015, when soldiers on each side of the trench separating them from killing each other the next day began lighting candles.

Light a candle for Christmas Eve, men whispered and their very words seemed to turn into tiny stars as dozens and dozens, then hundreds of candles came forth from the knapsacks to be lighted and stuck in the snow…..

Kate sighed, a long, tremulous sigh: Oh that was beautiful! What happened after?

The candles burned down, Kate, and the–darkness closed in again. Let those who made war heard the story of what happened after. Let them see.” He lifted his arm and covered his eyes.

Lots of characters fill out the pages and the plot in lovely ways, like Uncle Moses the shopkeeper and Sergei the head of the Russian prisoners, and Mother, who is described in the title. She is the tree that shelters what turns out to be more than twenty people from five nationalities on their farm. Unbelievable, except, in Seredy’s masterful style, it is.

I loved this book as a child and found additional meaning to it as an adult. Give it a read.