THE HUMAN PAGEANT

Who is not fascinated with the variety of people in the world? For years I’ve collected literary celebrations of the human pageant — a bookish variation on watching people on the street. Here are a few of my favorites:

Virginia Woolf, from Orlando: “At the carnival in the Royal enclosure in London: “…the couple lingered there, shouldered by apprentices; tailors; fishwives; horse dealers; cony catchers; starving scholars; maid-servants in their whimples; orange girls; ostlers; sober citizens; bawdy tapsters; and a crowd of little ragamuffins…– all the riff-raff of the London streets indeed was there, jesting and jostling, here casting dice, telling fortunes, shoving, tickling, pinching…”

James Joyce, one of many examples from Ulysses: “To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul’s men, runners, flatcaps, waistcoaters, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game…”

Joyce again, from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where Stephen “enumerates glibly his father’s attributes”:

“A medical student, an oarsman, a tenor, an amateur actor, a shouting politician, a small landlord, a small investor, a drinker, a good fellow, a storyteller, somebody’s secretary, something in a distillery, a taxgatherer, a bankrupt and at present a praiser of his own past.”

Van Wyck Brooks, describing the societies that descended upon Concord during the glory days of the transcendentalists, from The Life of Emerson:

“The reformers thronged the roads. The Chardon Street Convention in Boston had assembled a thousand messiahs from the woods and mountains. Dunkers, Muggletonians, Agrarians, Abolitionists, Groaners, Come-outers. Every village crossroads in New England had contributed a voice and a scroll.

“They roamed about the countryside in long gowns and with hair over their shoulders, and many a strange apparition haunted Emerson’s house. The vegetarians came…and those who would not eat rice because it was raised by slaves; and those who would not wear leather… and those who rejected vegetables the roots of which grew downward.

“The Phrenologists came too, and the Mesmerists, and the Homeopaths, and the Swedenborgians. And the Rat-Hole Spiritualists whose gospel came by taps in the wall and thumps in the table-drawer – wizards that peeped and muttered… New types, desires that had never been voiced before in prosaic America. What were they seeking, these young men, what were they feeling, thinking, for what were they groping?”

Cormac McCarthy, from Suttree, in which protagonist Cornelius Suttree casts his lot with “thieves, derelicts, miscreants, pariahs, poltroons, spalpeens, curmudgeons, clotpolls, murderers, gamblers, bawds, whores, trulls, brigands, topers, tosspots, sots, and archsots, lobcocks, smellsmocks, runagates, rakes, and other assorted and felonious debauchees.”

Henry Miller, from Tropic of Capricorn: “I heard men beg for work who had been Egyptologists, botanists, surgeons, gold miners, professors of Oriental languages, musicians, engineers, physicians, astronomers, anthropologists, chemists, mathematicians, mayors of cities and governors of states, prison wardens, cowpunchers, lumberjacks, sailors, oyster pirates, stevedores, riveters, dentists, painters, sculptors, plumbers, architects, dope peddlers, abortionists, white slavers, sea divers, steeplejacks, farmers, cloak and suit salesmen, trappers, lighthouse keepers, pimps, aldermen, senators, every bloody thing under the sun…”

Saul Bellow, from Mr. Sammler’s Planet: “What one sees on Broadway while bound for the bus. All human types reproduced, the barbarian, redskin, or Fiji, the dandy, the buffalo hunter, the desperado, the queer, the sexual fantasist, the squaw; bluestocking, princess, poet, painter, prospector, troubadour, guerrilla, Che Guevara, the new Thomas a Becket. Not imitated are the businessman, the soldier, the priest, and the square.”

Saul Bellow again, from Henderson the Rain King:  “…I have made a thorough study of the types, resulting in an entire classification system, as: The agony. The appetite. The obstinate. The immune elephant. The shrewd pig. The fateful hysterical. The death-accepting. The phallic-proud or hollow genital. The fast asleep. The narcissus intoxicated. The mad laughers. The pedantics. The fighting Lazaruses. Oh, Henderson-Sungo, how many shapes and forms! Numberless!”

Director Elia Kazan, in a letter urging Tennessee Williams to add a speech “in praise of bohemianism” to his play Camino Reel:
“A dying race call them what you will: romantics, eccentrics, rebels, Bohemians, freaks, harum-scarum, bob-tail, Punchinellos, odd-ducks, the out-of-steps, the queers, double-gated lechers, secret livers, dreamers, left-handed pitchers, defrocked bishops… the artists, the wanderers, the would-be wanderers, the secret wanderers, the foggy-minded, the asleep on the job, the loafers, the out-and-out hobos, the down and out, the grifters and drifters, the winos and boozers, the old maids who don’t venture to the other side of their windows, the good for nothings, the unfenceables, the rebels inside, the rebels manifest.”

And the soliloquy it inspired Tennessee Williams to write: “God bless all con men and hustlers and pitchmen who hawk their hearts on the street, all two-time losers who’re likely to lose once more, the courtesan who made the mistake of love, the greatest of lovers crowned with the longest horns, the poet who wandered far from his heart’s green country and possibly will and possibly won’t be able to find his way back, look down with a smile tonight on the last cavaliers, the ones with the rusty armor and soiled white plumes, and visit with understanding and something that’s almost tender those fading legends that come and go in this plaza like songs not clearly remembered.”

SHAKESPEARE’S BIRDS

The European Starling

We meddle. Apparently we can’t resist. Consider Eugene Schieffelin, the amiable lunatic I mentioned yesterday who is so often accused of trying to bring all the birds mentioned by Shakespeare to America. Although there’s some question about his Shakespearean connection, there’s no doubt that he kidnapped his share of birds and dragged them across the Atlantic. As a member of the American Acclimatization Society, it was his duty, after all. The Society’s goal was to introduce to America “such foreign varieties of the animal and vegetable kingdom as may be useful or interesting.” We know now what a bad idea that was. You won’t be surprised to learn that the American Acclimatization Society went quietly extinct long ago.

Schieffelin is usually blamed for bringing us the English sparrow (we now call it the house sparrow). He had less luck with skylarks, nightingales, chaffinches, and bullfinches, none of which survived acclimatization. Donald Peattie, in his 1941 memoir The Road of a Naturalist, suggested that Schieffelin might have tried to transplant European robins, thrushes, and blackbirds as well, but they didn’t survive either. Then in 1890 and 1891 Eugene carried starlings to America –  40, 60, 80, or 100 of them, depending on whom you ask — and released them into Central Park. The American sky would never be the same.

It took a few years for starlings to thrive here, but then they really thrived. A search through the archives of The New York Times (with free viewing of articles published 1851-1922) reveals the dramatic change in public opinion as starlings spread across America.
On March 2, 1900, in a letter to the editors, a city resident named E. Brown asked:
“Can you inform me what sort of bird it is which frequents this neighborhood, answering closely the                                 description of a starling, viz., brown plumage, penciled, and darker on head than body; beak about one inch                 long, and rich yellow color; tail rather short, and legs rather long? … It may be found almost any clear morning             on a large tree in a yard at the southwest corner of Seventy-fifth Street and the Boulevard. Do you know of any             foreign birds having been liberated in this city besides sparrows, and by whom? Research has so far failed to                identify these birds.”

The editors responded:
“In reply to the above questions, William T. Davis, a Staten Island naturalist, who is familiar with the birds in             this vicinity, says: ‘There seems to me to be no doubt that Mr. Brown has been observing the starling…  A flock             of about forty starlings was liberated by Mr. Eugene Schieffelin [sic] in Central Park in March, 1890. A pair of             these birds built their nest in the roof of the Natural History Museum, at Seventy-seventh Street, in May, 1892,             and another pair were seen with their young on the lawn of a residence on Riverside Drive during the same                 year. At that time their fate as resident birds was far from certain, but now there are colonies in many places                 near the city. Many starlings may be seen at times in the tall trees at Livingston, S.I.  They have also been                     observed in Prospect Park, Flatbush, Spuyten Duyvil, New Rochelle, Oyster Bay, and Pelham Bay Park.’”

Davis proceeded to bestow praise that was probably shared by most people, at least for a while:
“’They are common in England and over most of Europe, and, as they devour insects, they are of use to the                     farmer. It is said that they will eat potato bugs. Their nests are usually built in the eaves of buildings and in old             hollow trees, and their whistling is pleasant and cheerful. As the starling has not been found to interfere with                 other birds, we may be glad that he has come to stay. The European goldfinch was introduced into this country             at Hoboken, N.J., in 1878, and has since spread over the upper parts of Manhattan Island and the vicinity.  It                 resembles the American goldfinch or thistlefinch.’”

A decade and a half later starlings were no longer considered “of use to the farmer.” They had become an infestation:
October 15, 1914:  “Glen Ridge, N.J., Oct. 14. — The State Game and Fish Commission has given permission to             the authorities of this borough to destroy the European starlings which have great amazed residents of several             streets where the birds congregated in enormous numbers.  Attempts of the residents to drive away the birds                 have been fruitless and they petitioned the local authorities to destroy them.”

December 20, 1931:  “Baltimore has recently waged a defensive war against an army of starlings. Thousands of             birds swooped down upon the city without warning…”

Jan 6, 1933:  “An army of starlings estimated at 50,000 is making a night sanctuary of the Exterior of the                     Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was disclosed yesterday. The police regard this as a conservative estimate, and             believe that [the number should be] 100,000 birds at least…”

July 9, 1933:  “Like the English sparrow, the European starling is rolling up enemies by the score. Michigan                 farmers recently reported that thousands of starlings had settled in every county of the State. The huge flocks             not only ravage the orchards, eating tons of fruit, but they commit a more serious offense, driving other birds             out of their homes and sanctuaries.”

By 1950 starlings had colonized North America from coast to coast and from Mexico to Hudson Bay. Today their numbers are estimated at more than 200 million.

August 19, 1951:  “The starlings and purple martins that have made nights hideous in a fashionable section                     here are getting a bitter taste of their own medicine — noise. Eddie Boyes, a Detroit radio engineer, is matching             the starlings whistle for whistle and shriek for shriek and they don’t like it.”

January 20, 1957:  “Tenacious as office holders, persistent as lobbyists, insensitive as social climbers — all                     familiar types here — the starlings of Washington will not quit it.”

March 16, 1959:  “Each day at sundown, motorists commuting over the Henry Hudson Parkway witness a                     ‘black blizzard’ of birds at 125th Street.”

But our feelings are complex. When the city of New York tried to reduce the pigeon population with poison, they inadvertently killed many starlings, awakening a surge of compassion:

Dec 5, 1975:  “A cluster of bird-lovers, some of them sobbing, gathered outside the Ethical Culture School at 33             Central Park West last night to mourn dozens of starlings, their feet mired in a chemical, that fell to their                     deaths from the school’s roof…”

The Other Birds

It’s not clear how many birds Schieffelin and the American Acclimatization Society tried to bring to America, but if they had Shakespeare’s complete aviary in mind they probably fell short. Scholars have assembled an inventory of about 600 birds mentioned by Shakespeare, including:
blackbird
bunting
chough
cock
cormorant
crow
cuckoo
daw
dive-dapper
dove
duck
eagle
falcon
finch
fowl
goose
guinea hen
hedge sparrow
heron
jay
kestrel
kingfisher
kite
lapwing
lark
loon
magpie
mallard
martin (martlet)
nightingale
osprey
ostrich
owl
paraquito
parrot
partridge
peacock
pelican
pheasant
phoenix
pigeon
popinjay
quail
raven
rook
sea gull
snipe
sparrow
starling
swallow
swan
thrush
turkey
vulture
woodcock
wren

A starling appears in Shakespeare just once, in Henry IV, Part I (Act I, Scene III). In that scene the angry Hotspur, wanting to torment Henry, conceives the idea of having a starling repeat the name of the king’s brother-in-law over and over. He says:
“But I will find him when he lies asleep,
And in his ear I’ll hollow ‘Mortimer!’
Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but ‘Mortimer,’ and give it him
To keep his anger still in motion.”

Shakespeare knew, of course, that starlings are excellent mimics and that they can sometimes be taught to speak a few words. Whether one can be taught to say “Mortimer” remains to be seen.

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Yesterday I recommended Richard Barnes’s photos of the starlings that flock above Rome in the evenings. Those images are best displayed in his book, Murmur. See www.richardbarnes.net

Flocking Starlings

I was driving along  I-75 north of Bay City, Michigan, in an area of open fields in the flatlands of the Saginaw Valley, when I saw what I thought was a distant swirl of black smoke. I looked more closely and realized that it was a single flock of thousands or maybe tens of thousands of starlings in flight. They were a mile or more away, too far for individual birds to be visible, which gave the flock the appearance of a large dark cloud sailing over the field.

But what caught my attention was the swirling and graceful movements of this mass of birds. It was so striking and unusual that I pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway, breaking the law for a better look. The flock was passing in sweeping whorls and slow curves that made me think of smoke swirling in the vortex of a passing car. It was  mesmerizing. Here in mostly wooded Michigan we don’t get many open views, and can usually watch flocking behavior for only a few moments at a time.

As I watched I noticed a larger speck isolated at the center of a whorl within the flock. It took a moment to realize it was a hawk diving through the birds like a barracuda through a school of minnows. The flock morphed into a funnel, with the hawk plummeting through the open neck. The shape was like an Einsteinian diagram of curved space, or an artist’s  rendition of galaxies being sucked into a black hole. There was something about it that reminded me also of iron filings in a magnetic blossom. The hawk turned for another assault, and the flock switched and turned, then spiraled into shapes no geometry has  yet named.

What makes congregations of this sort stay together? How can birds in a flock or minnows in a school make such apparently instantaneous switches, dives, swoops, and banking turns without crashing into one another?  Writer Henry Beston watched birds on Cape Cod and asked, “Does some current flow through them and between them as they fly?” We’ve all wondered that. Is there an intelligence at work? A theory popular a century ago, that a leader signals orders to the flock like a drum major at the head of a marching band, was disproved when high-speed photography made it possible to see that a flock constantly changes leaders. More recent studies have focused on mathematical chaos theory, an approach that was pioneered by zoologist Frank Heppner, who studied flocking synchronism for many years, and proposed four rules for the behavior:

1) Birds are attracted to a focal point, such as a roost, and the closer they approach it the stronger its attraction.
2) Birds are attracted to each other, because there is safety in numbers, but if they get too close, they are repelled to avoid collisions.
3) Birds want to maintain a steady velocity.
4) The path of a bird’s flight can be altered by random factors such as gusts of wind or the sudden shadow of a hawk.

When Heppner fed all four rules into a computer program and animated a collection of figures on the screen to represent birds, their motion closely duplicated actual flight behavior of flocking birds. More recently, software engineer Craig Reynolds has designed computer “Boids” that fly in simulated flocks, adding much to the knowledge of swarming birds and fish. (Watch Boids in action here.)

Of course there’s another side to all of this. We can consider all the explanations – the binary codes of behavior, the tensions of desire opposed, the need to stay close for safety but far enough apart not to injure, the various stimuli and responses, the oppositions of gravity and flight – and perhaps it helps us in a small way to understand the world, in the sense that it’s probably not bewitchment we’re witnessing or God idly stirring a swizzle stick. We’re reminded that the world is an unfolding story. This particular one includes the story of Eugene Schiefellin, the amiable lunatic who in the mid-19th century set out to transplant all of Shakespeare’s birds to America and unleashed a plague of starlings and house sparrows. It’s the story of predators and prey, of sky and field and thermal updrafts and a  horizon blowing up red at sunset, of superhighways cutting across the land, of our seldom taking the time to pull out of traffic and try to notice a thing or two.

Are patterns in nature evidence of organizing principle — or are we the principle organizer? Is order proof of Design — or an artificial system created by complex neurological systems when confronted by masses of data? Standing beside my car on the shoulder of the highway I became  aware that an entire river of phenomena was flowing around me. The face of a young woman driving past, the blare of a horn, the flash of sunlight off a windshield, the cars and semis making little windstorms that rocked my truck on its wheels – these, too, were starlings in a flock. Step back far enough and you can sometimes see a pattern, and sometimes you’ll find it beautiful.
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Richard Barnes’s book of photography, Animal Logic, comes highly recommended. It includes a stunning series of photos of starlings flocking over Rome. The patterns are similar to those I saw over the field in Michigan.

Google Images offers dozens of interesting flock photos here.