"The scope of what some museums now call 'rapid response collecting' has expanded significantly in recent years."

"Curators often mingle with crowds, scoop up fliers and ask people to part with signs, or perhaps a piece of clothing. Such collecting has taken place at demonstrations around the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015, and during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo., after the death of Michael Brown."

From "Museums Collect Protest Signs to Preserve History in Real Time/Curators surveyed the area outside the White House on Wednesday for artifacts that will help record the emotional turmoil" (NYT).

They swoop in.

This morning, driving to the sunrise, at the turtle crossing, we saw birds picking over the smashed body of a plate-sized turtle.



I thought: How mean of the birds. But the birds didn't smash the turtle. Yes, but they delighted in the corpse.

What does a bird symbolize?

Sunrise, captured at its predictable time — it was 5:19 — with the sudden appearance of a bird. Seeing it only now, as I process this morning's photographs, I wonder what does a bird symbolize?

The internet answers most simplistically: Freedom!

Which cues "Ballad in Plain D"...

Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me
“How good, how good does it feel to be free?”
And I answer them most mysteriously
“Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?

ADDED: I have made a study of the birds of the Bible, and I have produced a list of 8 quotations, which I've ranked in the order that seemed right to me:

8. Matthew 8:20 — "Jesus replied, 'Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.'"

7. Ezekiel 38:20 — "The fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the beasts of the field, every creature that moves along the ground, and all the people on the face of the earth will tremble at my presence. The mountains will be overturned, the cliffs will crumble and every wall will fall to the ground."

6. Psalm 50:11 — "I know every bird in the mountains, and the insects in the fields are mine."

5. Ecclesiastes 9:12 — "Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them."

4. Job 12:7-8 — "But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you."

3. Psalm 102:7  — "I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins. I lie awake; I have become like a bird alone on a roof. All day long my enemies taunt me; those who rail against me use my name as a curse."

2. Matthew 6:26 — "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"

1. Job 41:1-5 —"Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope? Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook? Will it keep begging you for mercy? Will it speak to you with gentle words? Will it make an agreement with you for you to take it as your slave for life? Can you make a pet of it like a bird or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?"

"I know why the Nicolas Caged Bird sings extra loud."

Overheard at Henhouse... I mean Meadhouse.

The point is: Maybe this blog has a theme today. And throw in last night's café last post from yesterday, in which the sandhill cranes have large talons. 

"People around the world are reporting that birds are much louder these days."

"But Sue Anne Zollinger, an ornithologist from Manchester Metropolitan University, cautions: Don't believe everything you hear. With the decrease in traffic, there's less noise pollution. That means birds have less noise to compete with, she says. 'Although our perception might be that they're singing louder, it's actually likely in places that are typically noisy that they're singing more quietly than normal... But when the noise is gone, they're probably singing quieter than they do normally.'"

NPR reports.

At the Blue Stripe Café...

... you can talk all night (and shop through the Althouse Portal to Amazon).

The photo was taken at 5:49 this morning. The actual sunrise time was 5:45. I almost did not make it out to my vantage point. As I stepped onto the trail in the twilight, I heard the loudest, craziest crane noise I have ever heard. I kept going, the noise stopped, but then I saw — up ahead, on the hill about 20 feet away from the trail — 2 very large cranes standing side by side. They were not moving away. They had their territory staked out, and I was the intruder. I considered turning around and leaving, but I decided to keep going. Do cranes attack? I didn't think they were sandhill cranes, because I didn't see the red patch on their head, and they were strangely huge. But I've researched the sound of all the large birds at that location, and I have to admit that they were sandhill cranes, which I think of as friendly. But these things were spooky. I really did not trust them at all.

Ah, here is an article in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette about the dangerousness of sandhill cranes:

Sandhills are big. They’re as tall as humans, with a wingspan approaching 7 feet.... Sandhill cranes are also delicious... “the prime rib of game birds” or “ribeye in the sky”.... Imagine a crumpled marionette suddenly springing to life as the puppeteer lifts its strings. Glenn’s crane [the crane Glenn shot] did that.... My brave friend now finds himself eye to eye with a fiercely angry bird, a bird with a foot-long rapier for a beak, a bird with an eagle’s talons, a bird now trying to pounce on my back-pedaling buddy.... I am standing now beside another crane [which] decides to re-enact the drama just played out. A scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds races through my head — the scene where the guy’s eyes get pecked out by seagulls. Only this is no itty-bitty seagull. It’s the bloodthirsty pterodactyl from Jurassic Park. Wilkerson screams again: “Shoot him! Shoot him!” And just as the demon is about to thrust his beak through my pounding heart, I do. Wilkerson had warned us. “Cranes can be dangerous,” he said. “Be careful how you approach birds, even when they look like they’re dead.” On another day... [a] man had [a] sandhill’s neck in a death-grip, but again and again the bird buried its knifelike beak in his face. The talons of one foot were embedded in the man’s arm; those of the other were locked in his thigh. Fortunately, the bird’s thrusting bill missed his eyes, but the hunter was frightfully injured and had to be transported to a hospital... I figured out then why there are no crane dogs to retrieve the birds. Imagine a Labrador or Chesapeake shish kebab. Picture your favorite hunting dog carried off in the talons of your game....

Bookshelves.

The best thing about these Skype TV interviews is we can be on the lookout for problematic material on politicians’ bookshelves.

I’m compiling a database of MPs who might be reading beyond the scope of permitted opinions.

Report any suspicious books to me. I’ll do the rest. pic.twitter.com/dPTKvj6Aes

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) May 4, 2020

Ha. Not looking to call down the PC police, but this is just something else about the lockdown and the bookshelves, from Roz Chast:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @rozchast on May 1, 2020 at 2:10pm PDT

That's the one Philip K. Dick book that I read, loved, and found to be sufficient: "The 3 Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch."

Also:

Nailed it. Depth. Color. Composition. And cool glasses. 10/10 @AlRoker pic.twitter.com/hUM7FoH2x4

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) May 3, 2020

Movies that begin with a person entering a particular place and end with him leaving.

Help me think of examples of this sequence:

In the first scene, a man (could be a woman) approaches the place (maybe a town). Then, there are many scenes of various people he encounters there and problems that arise. Doesn't matter what. The important thing is the final scene: He's walking away from the place. Could be driving or riding a horse. That's not what matters. What matters is that the only resolution of the story is just that the guy who approached this place is now leaving the place. Nothing about where he's going or what he plans to do next or how he's tied things up or any of that. The resolution is just that he's putting that place behind him.

I saw a movie like that last night. It's a fairly obscure movie, so I'm not going to mention it or encourage you to guess. What I want is to hear about other movies that fit that pattern. Please try to avoid talking about movies that don't fit that pattern.

Also, do you like stories like that? Assuming the things that happen in the place are interesting to watch, are you okay with endings that just have the guy walking out of the town?

ADDED: Here's the movie we watched:



We have big windows behind the TV and, at one point, we saw an owl fly up and land in the tree. We paused and made our own tiny movie. Visually, it's mostly darkness, but you can hear the bird's charming 8-note tune:



The David Sedaris story on which the movie is based is not the one with "owl" in the title. It's "Naked."

Robin in the snow.

This morning:

Sandhill cranes take flight.

This morning at dawn, on Lake Mendota.



That was at 7:28, at the beginning of the sunrise run. About 20 minutes later, they were lingering by the parking lot, as if to request another photo session, in brighter lighting:

Morning story.