Blog

Planes flying into LaGuardia pass right over my house. When I first moved in and saw them approaching at night I thought it was some sort of magical, magnificent, once-in-a-lifetime convergence. Until the planes kept doing it every single night. Still, it’s quite a spectacle when seven or eight planes are lined up from here to Staten Island to New Jersey. Here’s a blurry photo.

People still keep coops of pigeons on their roofs in my Brooklyn neighborhood. There is one coop very nearby so that when I look out my front window I’m often able to witness a gorgeous, fighting-weight flock, swooping and circling. The birds turn together as if hearing some silent command. It is a fantastic act of choreography and one I never tire of seeing.

Years ago my husband wrote a story about the pigeon keepers of Coney Island. The men all belonged to a pigeon club and while they were bird lovers they also used the birds to gamble, betting which pigeon would make it back to the coop first. The men told my husband about a man from their club who’d been caught cheating at the bird races. My husband asked what happened to the cheater. There was silence. The men said nothing. Next question!

I love the city’s wild birds as well though I don’t regularly feed them except from my back fire escape. I can’t understand City Councilman Simcha Felder plans to ban pigeon feeding and fine those who break the law $1,000. Has he never seen a pigeon? They are beautiful. Their necks are like jewels. They have pink feet! And what would happen to all the lonely souls in NYC’s parks who depend on the birds for companionship? Perhaps they could show up at Councilman Felder’s house for supper.

If my house were burning I’d be tempted to run back in for a couple of special books. I found Margaret Storm’s Return of the Dove while I was doing research on Tesla and still thinking I should own every possible point of view about the man. Hers certainly was a unique one. The chapter on Tesla begins, “Nikola Tesla was not an Earth man. The space
people have stated that a male child was born on board a space ship which was on flight from Venus to earth in July, 1856. The little boy was called Nikola.”

Beyond the fact that she sounds nutty as an almond, I’m particularly fond of Storm’s grammatical eccentricities. Why does “Venus” get a capital and not poor “earth”? Why does “space ship” take the more human “which” over “that”? At least she spelled his name right. (A street in Michigan that was supposed to be honoring the man ended up as Tesla Street.)

The unjacketed book arrived and I was surprised to find that not only was the cover bright Kelly green, so was the text. Storm had had the book printed in green ink. And, I suppose, why not? Still the spookiest part was the name plate. The previous owner, Mrs. LaFaye Fouts had chosen a book plate with a poem about PIGEONS! — Tesla’s favorite creatures. Spooky!

The book is part of my friends’ Shelley and Christine’s Interstitial
Library.