Morning News — “Dead Raven”
During an early-morning visit by his friend JB, Balzac stops mid-sentence because they both hear a loud thud. It seems to have come from outside the high, shuttered, ancient cypress windows that frame the center parlor of The Manor, facing its “back-40” lot.
The 1830’s center-hall villa on St. Peter Street in New Orleans’ Vieux Carre’ comes with many “stories” from the underworld of voodoo to the majestic music culture, which Balzac transposes or converts into music. Each theme has a different beat, a separate melody line, in a different key….
Today’s theme is called “The Raven” — composed as a funeral dirge for the next Second Line parade sending-over another local….
JB peeks through a couple broken cypress shutter slats and, after hesitating whether to say anything or not, announces it seems that a bird flew into the thick-plastered wall that frames the middle parlor room.
“You might want to go bury it,” the astronomer tells his friend. JB takes a quick look, himself, to verify, and says something like,
“Poor blackbird! He must have slammed into the side of the Manor; wow, that’s never happened before that I remember during my 30 years here.”
The composer tells his friend to make himself at home, don’t let his coffee and chicory get cold. He goes outside and finds a shovel with a broken handle dug into a flower bed waiting to be used again.
Balzac takes his time. “Time waits for dead birds,” he mummers with sarcasm; and with some sadness — and even anger that the Fates would allow such a tragedy to happen, especially on the sacred grounds of The Manor.
“The Fates” can be so cruel. One moment a bird, flying free, is dead. Bam! Bea-first up beside a brick wall. The Manor has been there 200 years, why would the poor feathered soul not see the 100-square-foot wall? Why this particular flight — one of thousands, surely — around the plush Creole garden of the plantation winter house, as the young raven cheerfully and skillfully—although not-quite masterfully, obviously— conquers the soft blue sky….?
As he walks back around the manor house with the shovel, to bury the unlucky creature, a thought flies through Balzac’s mind: that humans — even those living within the extra-security of modern times — suffer the same, surprising and tragic, instant-Fates as nature’s creatures small and large.
“Take, for instance,” he elaborates to JB, who has come outside and informs Balzac he is exhausted from a long all-nighter showing the stars.
As New Orleans’ only “sidewalk astronomer” in the French Quarter, JB often must deal with drunken tourists loitering in front of Café du Monde near the river, who apparently believe the au lait special and powdered-sugar beignets will sober them up. Luckily few intoxicated people are interested in astronomy, so encounters are few.
The astronomer doesn’t mind drunks — he lives a block away from Bourbon Street — but, for safety reasons JB has had to ban very drunk tourists when the stars are located in a position requiring the use of a stepladder to reach one’s eye to the eyepiece of the telescope.
Most every night, however, is peaceful, watching the stars and sharing views with tourists, travelers or locals passing by; for instance, here is a photo of “Bill Nye the Science Guy” viewing through the eyepiece of JB’s 12.5-inch Meade reflecting telescope. Balzac was assisting his friend this night and was fortunate to take the photo.
Many other very well known people have viewed through the eyepieces of JB’s telescopes. He and Balzac — two amateur, but serious astronomers — have had many genial interactions with these celebrities, actors, “real” scientists and the like. From these interactions, Balzac has composed an opera (still awaiting acceptance, even Off Broadway) titled: “Autographs”…
As he walks toward the dead raven beside a garden wall, the neighbor — a potter — has her radio on in her backyard studio. Above the humming of a spinning wheel molding a clay vase, Balzac overhears this morning’s news, an update on the condo-tower collapse near Miami that killed more than 100 residents and their guests.
Balzac cannot shake the uncomfortable feeling that the cruel twist of Fate of these poor 100 souls was no less swift and tragic as that of the dead raven. Earlier that morning, on impulse, the music composer posts a Tweet with a hidden suggestion — that perhaps the condo implosion was, intentional; meaning, an intentional act of God:
Whether by God’s or Man’s hands, the Fates have had their way. There is no escaping one’s destiny. America thought it could coerce its own; it made-up the notion of “manifest destiny” as the big lie allowing the theft of land, slaughter of First — real — Americans, and enslavement of humans.
But, today, the United States is only half-steeped in guilt, and only evenly divided on remedies; and there is little chance the American experiment will work out well…. These are his thoughts when Balzac bends down to scoop up the poor little dead raven.
JB is the first to notice, nudging Balzac out of his trance, silently motioning to him to look closer. When he does, the composer is shocked to see the black feathered bird is alive — apparently.
Its eyes are glazed over, a deathly-grey but the raven remains standing on its two feet —dead-still:
And the poor creature’s sharp beak is open wide, with its head pointing toward the sky, as if silently screaming or calling out for God….
Balzac and JB think that, since it is — apparently — alive, surely, the raven will fly away as they get closer. But it remains still as a French Quarter street theater mime; stiff, as if a taxidermy job. JB takes the shovel from his friend and slowly scoops-up the bird, which remains completely motionless.
The shovel is carried-over to a tall bird fountain and the astronomer gently sets it down among some aloe plants. The two friends look at each other, a bit stunned like their raven friend. They then laugh out loud (no reaction by the bird), each give a “oh, well” shrug, and then JB bids Balzac farewell….
…It turns out, as explained later that day by Flower, “birds fly into reflective surfaces (such as the outside panes of The Manor) and become concussed. They recover and fly away…unless a cat or other predator gets to it first!” she reports.
In this lucky raven’s case, after about 20 minutes, it indeed does recover and flies away into the blue mid-morning sky overlooking New Orleans’ French Quarter. In later talks, Balzac and JB realize that — no matter how bad their Fate appears to be — people should always keep hope alive….
The old composer tunes his iPhone to the 7 a.m. “Washington Journal” radio broadcast — today a discussion about the removal of Confederate statues from the Capitol — and impulsively darts off a Tweet on the subject:
“To the dustbin! We need more like New Orleans jazz great Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong’s bronze statue by sculptor Elizabeth Catlett standing in “Louis Armstrong Park.” The plaque reads: “His trumpet & heart brought everlasting joy to the world, embodying jazz as ‘The Pulse of Life’”….”
Today’s question by C-Span to America is simple-enough:
“This will take away your freedom. We need to unite and STOP this!” one angry caller ends her conversation with program host Pedro Echevarria…
Another caller ends her call with, “I love President Trump!”
