Editorial 6.3, March 2004, by Deirdre Helfferich The Annoying Noises of Spring Election Season Yap I screamed out loud in laughter the other day, reading a guest political column in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner by some yahoo of a Republican who thought he was a Democrat. Dick Morris’ piece was one of the more hilarious Democratic rants I’d read in a long time, although the writer was dead serious. (Said yahoo was an advisor to Bill Clinton, so he’s a Democrat’s Democrat, and really should know what he’s talking about.) The article was all about the terrible mistake the Democrats are making in choosing an unelectable candidate, John Kerry, because—get this—he is an “extreme liberal.” Who is he kidding? Tells you where moderates and toe-on-the-left liberals are on the political scale these days. Kerry is not extreme. I think he’s right about Kerry being unelectable, though. It’s because a) we now have paperless voting all over the country, and b) Kerry seems to have only one campaigning strength, and that is his Vietnam record, both during and post-service. Well, maybe he has two strengths, the other being that he’s not George Bush. Bush, on the other hand, has the virtue of being the incumbent. (That, and a lot of money from very few people.) But the REALLY funny part came in Morris’ critique of Kerry for his record in the Senate, where he has, according to the writer, missed two-thirds of the votes. “The voters will not be tolerant of a man who picks up his paycheck and doesn’t do the job.” I cracked up. I just couldn’t maintain my composure. His faith in the electorate was touching, really, but so naïve! He was funnier than Dave Barry—even Barry can’t make up things like this. The writer obviously didn’t catch the front-page News-Miner headline from two days before (and why would he?), above the fold in big letters: “Young votes for bill.” Yup, it’s news when our representative to Congress actually votes. Always has been. The voters here are so grateful that Don Young DOES vote every once in a while that they keep electing him to office, over and over and over again. (Except for his first time in office, when a dead man won the election in preference to Mr. Young—and people knew Nick Begich was probably dead.) This guy is way out of touch with reality if he thinks that the voters won’t put up with somebody who’s managed to vote one-third of the time. Hey, that’s a really good record! Bet Kerry makes the papers in Massachusetts all the time. Morris has a future career in comedy, I swear. And he’ll need it—his political prognostication skills look a little skimpy to me. I’d Rather Sleep In Every spring, as the days grow longer but before the snow really starts to melt, my neighbor, Judy, welcomes into her yard thousands of little feathered noisemakers. I can tell spring is coming because the goddamned chirping birds yelling their heads off at each other every morning tell me that warm temperatures are on their way. One or two birds making a few peeps is one thing, but hundreds of these guys—redpolls, chickadees, who knows what—all chirping, twittering, whistling, and cheeping their societal obligations and territorial little battles over the best bird feeder or trying to bluster the best and impress the cute hen—that is entirely another thing. It’s a great cacophony, that’s what it is. Why do we believe that chirping birds in the springtime are cheerful? Is it because they are small, and the chirps are high-pitched? Do they tweak us in our parental instincts, reminding us of helpless and cute infants with their high voices and little round beady-eyed faces? Innocent, sweet little birds, singing for the joy of returning summer. Ha! Don’t you believe it—they may be cute, but those widdle birdies are cussing each other up one side and down the other, in the best tradition of red squirrels and sailors. That pile of bird seed, suet, and peanut butter in my neighbor’s feeder is serious business, and those birds will fight over it. And they’ll make a big stink about it, too. They seem to be arguing and discussing and bragging at the top of their little lungs for about an hour before I need to get up. It turns out that there is an entire field of research called bioacoustics that is about animal sounds. Birds, whose brains are larger in proportion to their bodies than any other vertebrates except mammals, need complex neurology not only for flight, but for song. There’s some evidence that the songs need to be learned, which requires a bit more gray matter. You can find recordings of all manner of songbirds on the web, although why you’d need to is beyond me. I can hear the tweeting birdbrains right outside. Every year Ester has a bird food brunch or ball, and there are bird feeders all over the village. My next door neighbor is an ornithologist, and one of the Rays on the Lump is a bird enthusiast. There are lots of Esterites who participate in the Christmas bird count, and my own brother-in-law is a certified bird nut. Evidence of fascination with birds is all around me. As for myself, I have five cats, three of whom are fine hunters. Need I say more? | ||
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