Stealth and Serendipity on Christmas Eve

 It is Christmas Eve 2009.
The following piece is from Charles's [as yet unpublished] book of his owl photos and essays. "Saw-whet Christmas" also appears in The Fish Jumps Out of the Moon.  Enjoy!

Saw-whet Christmas

    Frankly, I don’t believe that a Saw-whet Owl is likely to be mistaken for the Christ child.  However, it was Christmas Eve. 
    Because it really was Christmas Eve of the first year I ever owned a camera, because I knew the Saw-whet was roosting in a small group of hemlocks on the south edge of the Shakespeare Garden, because it was a holiday eve and I was magically alone, because it was between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m. and the exquisite owl would not have flown out yet to go to its night’s labor and…
    Because it was a soft December evening and I had the passionate feeling that there was nowhere I would rather be, I had no choice but to break a park rule—a small one.  There was a three-and-a-half foot high rustic fence twixt the owl and me.  So I looked over my shoulder several times while awkwardly climbing over the fence, hoping to locate the owl for its Christmas close-up.
    Owls tend to reuse the same spots for daytime roosting and for the previous week this one had its residence in one of the two small conifers very close to where I was clambering over the fence.  Owls are such cryptic masters that I didn’t know exactly where the bird was.  So when I stood up straight I was a bit too on target and bumped a branch that brushed the owl and it flew.  And this is how my life has been.  It flew perhaps two feet and landed on another hemlock where the photographic light was even better.
    There are many unique traits about the Saw-whet and just then the owl illustrated one.  They sit tight.  This owl, a very small raptor, proved that its defensive style is to stay put, even on Christian holidays.
    The Freud of us birders, the man who invented birding, Roger Tory Peterson, actually gave instructions in a book that he wrote in the 1970’s on how to pick up a Saw-whet.  This bird is so committed to its defensive posture, that according to Mr. Peterson, one can wiggle fingers in front of its face and with the other hand, from the rear, pick it up.  For years I had dreamed of holding a Saw-whet, but now, with the perfect opportunity, I wanted the photograph more!
    So I backed up a few feet, got my camera ready, stepped forward and bingo, a perfect Christmas Eve.

the owl

in the moonlight

thinking haiku 

(From the photo essay collection Owls)

On the Cusp of Solstice, Christmas, and Incarnation

Snowshoeing in Rocky Mountain National Park, mid-afternoon, Green Mountain Trail.  This is no longer a workout.  A downhill rhythmic meditation- pole clack, snowshoe smooch-crunch, deep, frozen inhale... exhale steam... repeat. The mind clears, the senses engage and awareness intensifies.  The sun stretches to reach us from its southern arc in glinting bursts through a pine forest kaleidoscope. We stop to enjoy the light show and are bathed in deep silence. Along either side of the trail are deep depressions in the snow where a dozen elk had slept the night before. Immersion in such natural beauty expands into an awareness of how much I love and appreciate Deb, which leads to pure, sweet joy.

Light, beauty, love, and joy even on the shortest of days. Deb and I are fortunate people.

In two days we'll head to Iowa for our traditional Christmas rounds;  visiting family and friends in Marshalltown, Des Moines, and Cedar Rapids. The Kennedys have secular, Santa-style Christmases, which is not a bad thing. We all bring some amount of the spirit of hope and renewal of the Baby Jesus to our gatherings. But year after year, more than any other single person, it was Uncle Charles (our ‘atheist uncle’) who embodied and encouraged the spirit that swirled around the assembled: a warm mix of- what else?- light, beauty, love, and joy. Everyone, from oldest to youngest, looked forward to some special time with Charles.

I believe that the Christmas concept of  ‘incarnation’ is a call to each human to be or reflect as much love and light as possible, as opposed to simply preaching, studying, or wagging a finger at others about either.  Our quite human Uncle Charles brought incarnation right into our midst, simply by how he lived his life and how he treated each of us.  Even his mode of gift-giving was special.  During his jewelry-making years, Charles brought boxes and bags of his fine work and allowed any and all to take their favorite pieces as gifts.  In his nature photography years, we likewise selected from generously offered enlargements and montages of his exquisite work.  For the children, there were spectacular stuffed animals from which to choose. He shared his love of great literature and nature writing by setting out piles of books from which we could take whatever pleased us.  For every gift chosen, Charles had a story that focused in some small way on the uniqueness of the item, but emphasized even more the 'rightness' of the match between the gift and its chooser.  As in every encounter with Charles, this was an invitation and gentle encouragement to seek, appreciate, share- and yes, create- beauty, love, and delight.  

A Moment for Bloomsbury and Literature

Whoa!  The past week dived by faster than a red-tailed hawk after a Central Park pigeon.  On Friday the 11th I had the pleasure of attending the 30th birthday party for The Bloomsbury Review, the fine literary magazine published in Denver.  'The Blooms' mission is laudable.  From the website:

Since 1980, we have published a book magazine with you, the discriminating book reader, in mind. We don’t plug the mega-bestsellers. We don’t push celebrity biographies or “how-to-get-richer-thinner-smarter-happier books.” And we don’t hype books or authors that are reviewed in every newspaper and magazine in the country. You hear enough about them already.

The Bloomsbury Review® is not slick, stuffy, fluffy, snobby, ponderous, or presumptuous.
The Bloomsbury Review® is simply lively writing about good reading and great writers.

If you are visiting this website and are not familiar with the Bloomsbury Review, we must rectify the situation.  Go to their website and subscribe.  You will be richer for it.  I promise!

Charles wrote several reviews about nonfiction nature books for The Blooms.  His reviews came from the same 'voice' as the essays in his own books- at once technical, whimsical, and informative- and always a joy to read.  One of his (and my) favorite reviews was of a book profiling Vladimir Nabokov's passion for butterfly study.  Charles was a head-over-heels fan of everything Nabokov wrote AND of butterflies.  There will be more to come on butterflies and literature in future posts.

I am currently reading a powerful triptych-style historical novel, Shadow Country: A New Rendering of the Watson Legend, by another literary master, Peter Matthiessen.  It was originally published as a three-novel trilogy in the 1990s and has been reworked into a single novel, in three 'books' (2008: Modern Library.)  At many points in the novel I've felt a vestigial twinge- wishing I could share powerful passages and themes of the book with Charles, as we would so often do.  Matthiessen explores themes that were important to Charles and me, and he writes with great clarity and power.
From Matthiessen's Author's Note:
"...it might be argued that the metaphor of the Watson [focal character] legend represents our tragic history of unbridled enterprise and racism and the ongoing erosion of our human habitat as these affect the lives of those living too close to the bone and way out on the edge, with no voice in the economic and environmental attrition that erode the foundation of their hopes and nothing with which to confront their own irrelevance than grit and rage." (p. xi) 

Snow, Cold, and Owls

Winter's weather is preceding the season's official arrival.  A blizzard just rifled across Iowa.  The Cedar Rapids family is snowbound.  The nieces and nephews are enjoying no-school 'snow days'.

Deb and I took a walk at Cherry Creek State Park as the sun set this afternoon, crunching along snowy trails in the woods, listening and watching for owls.

In the previous post, I wrote of looking for eagles in Iowa the day after Christmas.  For many years in a row Charles would fly in from NYC and we'd drive from Colorado for our large family Christmas gathering.  Some years, Charles, Deb, and I would participate in the Linn County Christmas Bird Count, at the invitation of our dear friend and birding master, Pete Wickham.  One year, we began the count out near 'the old Linn County Home'-- at 5 a.m.  The temperature was well below zero.  A million stars were frozen solid in the icy darkness.  We eight or nine bird counters huddled around our cars and marveled at the crystalline silence. Warm smiles crinkled raw faces when the first "Who are you? You too?!" calls of Great-horned Owls boomed from long distance across the picked corn fields.  Charles was thrilled with the whole scene.  A short time later, as we drove slowly along a gravel road, a Barred Owl flashed huge in front of our headlights, landing on a low branch of a small tree in the ditch, still in the glow of the headlights.  Deb, Charles, and I were transfixed. It was a 'life bird' for us. Even Pete, the Christmas Count veteran, was agog.  For many years after, Charles would excitedly recall the pitch black morning when we saw the best possible owl and nearly froze to death.

It was not many years later that the owls in the cold dark of Central Park became favorite haiku subjects for Charles.  Plucked from The Fish Jumps Out of the Moon:


  the sun drops                                         sitting under a pine
the cold slides in                                  waiting for the owl to fly
     owl time                                               soft snow falling




     tree                                                            5:30 a.m.
in winter nude                                      owl back on her branch
    an owl                                                  the dawn the cold

On Beauty

Today is my father's birthday.  "The Coyote" is Charles's only sibling.  The best of our family birding traditions was snaking along the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the day after Christmas, with Charles, my dad, and my wife, in search of Bald Eagles. One year, 125 Baldies, in glorious mobs and clusters, adorned the trees and owned three miles of that river.


I was on the road today, on a consulting trip in icy Eastern Colorado; blowing light snow, muted grays on white.  Red-tailed Hawks hunted from fence posts and telephone poles every couple of miles.  Along the Platte River, Bald Eagles glowered from cottonwood towers.  Each bird on each perch whispered, just loud enough: "Snap the shutter, inhale... exhale a haiku... and smile."  Even at 60 miles per hour I was rolling from one 'Charles moment' to another.  It brought to mind a clip from the introduction to The Fish Jumps Out of the Moon.  

In personal notes, Charles wrote: “Is there anything to live for besides beauty?”  Of his birding hero he wrote, “Roger Tory Peterson … taught us how to find joy in the identification of the gems of our world, to see the exquisite beauty that goes flashing by us.”  Charles adhered to this discipline of being ready, awake and waiting, in rapt anticipation.

on the bridge

waiting for first fireflies

with Venus

His haiku are Zen camera shots, composed to capture the flashing beauty and poignancy of a scene and then cropped to their lean, evocative core.

BLOOMSBURY REVIEW runs a feature on The Fish Jumps and Charles

In its Sept-Oct issue, the literary review magazine The Bloomsbury Review ran a lovely full-page feature on Charles, called "The Zen Spirit of a Natural Artist: Charles Kennedy", which included a fine review of the Fish Jumps Out of the Moon: Haiku of Charles F. Kennedy. The review and the profile of Charles were written by author and poet, Robert Milo Baldwin.

Here are some excerpts from Mr. Baldwin's review of the book:

Many poets never receive any recognition at all, in this lifetime or any other. Some poets wait until the end of their lives for recognition. A few poets, like Tu Fu, William Blake, and Emily Dickinson, don't receive recognition in their lifetime but become giants after they are gone, casting shadows far beyond their contemporaries. We should be grateful that although Charles Kennedy passed from this world in 2004, we now have at least some of his previously unpublished haiku, collected posthumously in a beautiful edition entitled The Fish Jumps Out of the Moon. Taking its title from the classic image in Japanese verse in which the moon is reflected in the water, this brief collection of Kennedy's haiku is as unexpected, unconventional, and surprising as its name, juxtaposing poems with the poet's photographs and essays.

************

Through his poetic eye, stars become trapped in trees, the moon becomes clouded by his breath, and wind could scatter the moon across the surface of a lake. Better yet:

after the rain
thousands of summer moons
on leaf tips

************

He wrote not only of birds and hawks and the moon,but also of spiders and slugs. His acute sensitivity and imagination may best be shown by this rendering of the flight of a bat:

is there an echo
when a bat flies
by a bell

or this wonderful image of the rather Blakean depiction of a child's innocence:

the three year old
misses the falling star
grabs for the firefly

or these two haunting images of long-eared owls, accmpanied by concise journal entries on how he and his friends would gather to watch them fly out of their roosts at dusk:

a wisp of fog
flows past the park lamp
looking for the owl

and

flying owl
and falling petal
no sound

Reading Kennedy's haiku, you wish to blessed by further editions of his work, since this collection contains only what has been selected from his "night haiku." Additional volumes on other themes would be most welcome, which the penultimate poem nicely sums up:

the robins
call for dawn
the pond appears

Let's hope more robins, more dawns, and more small ponds of Kennedy's haiku appear soon.

http://www.bloomsburyreview.com

Thanksgiving and Charles Part 2

It's been two days since Thanksgiving when I posted about Charles's approach to gratitude. Here now are some expressions of appreciation and gratitude from his book dedicated to the great Red-tailed Hawk of Central Park, Pale Male.

Excerpted from Pale Male and Family: Essays and Photos of Charles F. Kennedy

from "MOM STARING"
Question: what could be better than being 150 feet in the air on a beautiful terrace that overlooks Central Park with exquisite hawks on both sides?

I stare
she stares back

red-tail mother
__________________________________________________

From "LAYLA'S PUPPY"
















Smiles and warm grins seem inevitable when looking at this kid. And after my decade-long affair with the father, a good Red-tail quote still brings pleasure. Pale Male and his young son are formally titled Buteo jamaicensis, one of the dozen species of the genus Buteo. I suppose it’s not a belly laugh, but in the hot new reference book, The Sibley Guide to Birds, a line very much pleases me: “Red-tail, the Buteo to which all others are compared.” Now check the picture again and smile.
_______________________________________________________

From "TALONS WIN"

And so she tossed the heart, ate her rat, wiped her beak on the apple branch, and now flies from her victory. I stand by the apple tree collecting my thoughts and camera stuff. An hour has passed. The bright gray noon is now a glorious blue afternoon. She is back on her street light with a crop so full she can barely see over. I’m so fortunate to have been there, fortunate this fierce young warrior allowed me to be the voyeur in this particular circle of her life. Thanks, lady.
_______________________________________________________


From "STUFFED CROP"

I have special affection for this photograph. This young hawk gave me a privileged view of its life as it caught the rat, ate it on a low limb, and then posed on a streetlight. Growing up the Red-tailed way, and I got to be there for a bit of it.

Thanksgiving and Charles

It is Thanksgiving Day, 2009. It is obvious that I'll be eternally grateful for having my Uncle Charles guide my life for nearly 50 years. Charles's approach to gratitude was so simple and powerful that it will be featured here over the next few days via some excerpts from the first two books of his works. Look for the joy, wonder, and deep appreciation in these pieces. And enjoy the way Charles expressed his gratitude at his good fortune by inviting everyone around into his ecstatic experience of Nature's beauty, and by creating pieces of his own that captured and illuminated for others those same experiences. Today, it will be a few clips from The Fish Jumps Out of the Moon: Haiku of Charles F. Kennedy.

[From the introduction to The Fish Jumps Out of the Moon]
Like the Japanese masters, Charles had an expressly non-theistic worldview. He had no time for a “too-small god.” Those who knew him saw him as a naturally “spiritual” person. Loved ones and casual acquaintances commonly described him as the most generous, patient, and persistently joyful person they had ever known. Charles found rich pleasure in providing joyful experiences for others, most often by helping them see a bit of Nature’s beauty or drama in the park. He spent long days in the spring at the “hawk bench” near the model boat pond on the park’s east side. He reveled in bringing the famous nesting Red-tailed Hawks of 5th Avenue to the attention of dozens of passersby, employing his considerable knowledge and eloquence to engage and amaze. This exuberance is evident in Charles’s writing and he made gifts of his haiku and photos to commemorate special, common experiences.

Charles delighted in bringing his Iowa roots [and our family's history] into shared study of urban nature. It was part of his infectious charm.


the sweetcorn
planted next to the back door
mom understood


thinning tiny carrots
while lying between the rows
childhood job


reed riders
my father loved you too
redwings

[From the body of The Fish Jumps Out of the Moon]















the moon
paints so beautifully
tonight

_____________________________________________________

Anyway, you must sit here and watch her weave that web and you’ll see why I believe that spiders know Chopin. It’s so, well, musical sitting here watching Diadematus sing and dance.


watching the dance
dreaming
a spider song

Charles F. Kennedy Biography

I've been back in Colorado now for a few days and finally catching up, and reflecting on 'The Legend of Pale Male'. The portrayal of Charles in the film is so compelling that it has fueled my resolve to complete the biography I've begun about him. Charles' story needs to be committed to print for many to enjoy and learn from. I'll pick up the task in earnest in January. Along the road I hope to get Charles' 'owl book' published. Those who have read it say it may be his best compilation. I'll begin to put a bit of it on the site here in the coming days and weeks.

THE LEGEND OF PALE MALE-- FANTASTIC FILM

Filmmaker Frederic Lilien and screenwriter Janet Hess have created a masterpiece documentary film. My niece, Jill, and I had the pleasure of attending the New York premiere of the pair's "The Legend of Pale Male." The screening, attended by over 300 nature enthusiasts, benefitted New York City Audubon.

This inspired film centers around the remarkably intertwined lives of a famous clan of Red-tailed Hawks and a large community of hawk-loving New Yorkers. The cinematography, editing, and writing are superb. Throughout the film tribute is paid to Charles-- for his role in mentoring Frederic through many years of filming and hawk stalking, and for his devotion to the hawks and hawk watchers.

There will be much more said about this lovely film in future posts. For now, however, if you're reading this post, please move to the right side of this page and click on the "The Legend of Pale Male" icon and learn more. And, keep your eyes to the skies.... "The Legend" may well be coming to a city near you!

Review of Pale Male and The Fish Jumps by E.J. McAdams

This review, by E.J McAdams, appeared in the NYC Audubon Newsletter The Urban Audubon Nov-Dec 2009 issue. (Thank you, Marcia Fowle!) Visit NYC Audubon at www.nycaudubon.org

BOOK REVIEW

The Fish Jumps Out of the Moon: Haiku of Charles Kennedy

Edited by Steve Kennedy and Dan Guenther

Xlibris, 2009

Pale Male and Family: Essays and Photos of Charles Kennedy

Edited by Steve Kennedy

Xlibris, 2009

The human star of Frederic Lilien’s documentary film Pale Male was Charles Kennedy, who passed away in 2004. If you saw that film you know that Charles was kind, funny, Romantic, and obsessed with Pale Male. His role as one of the most dedicated of the Regulars is what gave the film its human heart. If you loved the moments that Charles was on camera – and you would have to have a pretty hard heart not to – then Steve Kennedy, Charles’ devoted nephew, has edited the book for you. Pale Male and Family gives us the first-person perspective on his experience with Pale Male that the film only provides glimpses of.

The book is a collection of unpublished photos that he took of Pale Male and his many mates and progeny, along with vignettes that Charles wrote about these photos. If you knew Charles personally – and many people did because he was so outgoing and friendly – you might have read some of these individual pieces, but Steve Kennedy has done a great service for Pale Male’s fans by bringing these together in one book.

Charles was an attentive naturalist, an unabashed sensualist, an incredible self-taught photographer, a natural philosopher, a trickster, and a generous teacher. All of these modes come across in the work. What distinguishes his book from Marie Winn’s seminal Red-tails in Love and Lilien’s film is the concentration on the (photographic) moment of observation: for example, the three chicks on their nest looking off in different directions who seem ready to “declare their opinion to the sky.” Although Steve Kennedy has gently wrangled these discrete pieces into a narrative of the hawklings from birth to adulthood, the book is really a poetic diary that follows the thread of Charles’ delight. It makes the book a delight to read and a welcome addition to the growing Pale Male bibliography.

What is especially striking is the intimacy of the photos and the writing – how close he came to the birds, both physically and imaginatively. Whereas much nature writing concentrates on description, Charles’ writing is very concerned with relationship: his relationship with the hawks, the fledglings with their parents, predator and prey. “Stuffed Crop” is my favorite meditation: the photo is of a fledgling shot from below, its yellow-tinged crop bulging with what we find out is a rat. Although the rat has been consumed Charles opens this chapter saying: “This is a photograph of not one animal but two.” It is the “living” presence of the dead rat in the hawk that is so spooky and wonderful – and rare to find in other authors’ nature writing.

*

After all of that praise, I would still say the better of these two wonderful books is The Fish Jumps Out of the Moon.

The reason is that haiku is the perfect literary form to capture the moment. He is very accomplished in haiku and brings an unusual mix of western and eastern tendencies, especially in the series “Cicada,” as if he were channeling Basho the master haiku poet and Ovid the ultimate poet of metamorphosis.

If haiku are typically thought of as cool and “objective,” Charles returns the warmth and longing (and sexuality) back to haiku:

great sex life

plus a mushroom diet

oh to be a slug

Because his subjects vary from slugs to spiders to owls and of course hawks, Charles has the chance to introduce other interests like jazz, food, and books. The suite “Spider Songs” goes to great lengths to capture the “music” he hears in his moments alone with the orb weavers.

Some of my favorite photos are collected in this book. Again and again Charles zooms in so close that we are almost touching the subjects. In contrast to the prose in Pale Male and Family, here the writing doesn’t so much describe what is being presented in these close-up photos of animals as play around and against the images. These memorable haiku are an equal art to his photos.

*

It is important to note that I am not at all unbiased in this review. I am one of the ones who was under the spell of Charles Kennedy. It is a spell that made every moment charged with significance and wonder. Thanks to Steve Kennedy, a wide audience of readers now has a chance to fall under that spell too.

Legend of Pale Male

Photo from Pale Male and Family: Essays and Photos of Charles F. Kennedy

It's great to be back in NYC and anticipating seeing many friends. I'm looking forward to seeing a special screening of Frederic Lilien's new documentary film, "The Legend of Pale Male." The screening, tomorrow evening, Nov. 6. will be a benefit for NYC Audubon The Audubon folks have graciously invited me to make Charles' books available at the screening. (Thank you, Melissa Husby!) Both books were reviewed in the November/December NYC Audubon newsletter by Charles' friend, and fine poet, E.J. McAdams.

I'll post a review of the film in the next couple of days. Visit the film website– http://www.thelegendofpalemale.com/HOME.html

Here we go, friends. New format, books to view, and stories to tell. Stand by.

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Just taking my time, trying to set up this site.  Testing.