Journal of a Sabbatical

July 8, 1999

boys and their adventures

Today's Starting Pitcher: I don't know. I should look it up. Pedro Martinez had 14 strikeouts last night and struck out the side in 2 innings, but Sox lost 3-2 to the Devil Rays.

Today's Reading: Before the Dawn by Shimazaki Toson, Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

I finished The Storm Petrel and the Owl of Athena last night. Except for the epilogue to the first part (the philosophical stuff I mentioned the other day) and one essay "The Water Rail" on the subject of "men and birds", I enjoyed it. Halle is a philosopher and diplomat as well as a birder and he weaves in global themes with some of his bird observations. He does that to best effect in the essay "The Owl of Athena" in which he goes from observing a short-eared owl at the Parthenon to man's relationship to the gods and everything in between. His philosophizing comes off much better in "The Owl of Athena" than in any of the other philosophical essays because he keeps bringing the reader back to what birds he's seeing and observing his physical surroundings. Overall the book is a good springboard for thought about the relationships between humans and nature.

One small drawback is that many of the essays were written in the 1960's and the situations of many of the birds he talks about have changed drastically since then - in the case of the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon they've changed for the better. It's best read as a historical snapshot of how things were before the environmental movement rather than as an up to date field chronicle. For that matter, his references to Cold War diplomacy issues are also outdated but give a glimpse into a thoughtful mind involved in world events.

If you chance upon The Storm Petrel and the Owl of Athena in the library or in a used bookstore, go ahead and pick it up. It's uneven but parts of it are excellent.

I also finished The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign last night. Once again these brave teenagers accomplish six impossible things behind enemy lines before breakfast. The Boy Allies series was written around 1916 and the adventures take place during The Great War. What amazes me is that the heroes, brave American boys Chester Crawford and Hal Paine, speak perfect French and perfect German. Come to think of it, I think they speak Russian too. It's one thing for American heroes to be able to fix aeroplanes and automobiles and rig up Dictaphones to listen in on the Germans, but Americans who speak other languages? Unbelievable.

I actually bought The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign to send to BiB for his birthday 'cause I thought he'd get a kick out of it - what with the boys saving Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, and so on from the Austro-German forces. My how times and alliances change. Anyway, I got this idea when I spotted one of the Boy Allies books in La Madre's attic and remembered the series. The one in the attic turned out to be The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders, but I checked the list of titles in the back pages of the book and sure enough I had remembered correctly that there was a Balkans adventure in the series. I tried to get Domino, the cat at Old Port Book Shop, to lead me to it, but ended up seeking it out on bibliofind. And I couldn't just send it on to Bobby in the Balkans without reading it, now could I?

I'm not planning to start a collection of the Boy Allies series. In fact I was thinking I'd see if the folks at Old Port Book Shop would trade me a Bobbsey Twins #53 or maybe a WPA guide for The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders. Yes, there are humans at Old Port, Domino doesn't know how to work the cash register. :-)

I carried Before the Dawn with me to Starbucks this morning and read a few more pages over coffee. The espresso machine is back online so the coffee actually had flavor. As I was reading I started to feel very sleepy and I noticed it was dark outside whereas it had been bright when I walked in. Then the heavens opened and rain fell intensely for a few minutes, the clouds blew away, and all was bright again.

Once the rain stopped, I went over to Andover Bookstore to get something for Lizzy's upcoming birthday now that I have to compress all the family occasions for the summer into the few weeks before I leave for Hungary (July 31). Lizzy's not as hard to please as Andrea but it's still a challenge to find books I think she'll like. My mother has given them both all the classics of children's literature. I thought briefly of getting her the first two Harry Potter books after I heard a news story about kids in the UK going wild for the third one but Harry is after all a boy (though a wizard) and neither of the girls likes to read about boys and their adventures. I wouldn't dream of giving them the Boy Allies books even if they didn't loathe used books (they're not going to grow up to be book collectors).

I finally settled on My Side of the Mountain and its sequel The Far Side of the Mountain even though the main character is a boy because Lizzy likes things having to do with animals and nature. Besides that the sequel has a girl character, the main character's sister. I also picked Sea Star, one of the sequels to Misty of Chincoteague (which she begged me for last year and then didn't read) and The View from Saturday. They're all classics with at least some girls in them.

I don't recall having much problem relating to boy protagonists in the books I read as a kid. In fact, I preferred the Hard Boys to Nancy Drew because the Hardy Boys adventures were riskier. And I loved the Mercer Boys (another of those early 20th century boys series that came from a neighbor's attic) because they were always on sailing ships getting caught in storms and the like.

I read everything I could get my hands on in the children's room of the library (or the neighbor's attic) and counted the days until I could get the words "adult privilege" stamped on my library card. Nowadays they don't have separate library cards for kids and adults and kids aren't restricted to the children's room. Lucky kids.

I keep wanting to share favorites with Lizzy and Andrea, but they keep not being interested. It occurred to me that they may never read Moby Dick because there are no girls in it. More's the pity.