SOUNDTRACK: TOKYO POLICE CLUB-“Bambi” (2010).
I loved the first couple of Tokyo Police Club albums, but I missed this one when it came out. My friend Al said it was one of his favorite albums of the year and that this song was one of his favorite songs.
I was disconcerted when I started listening to this because TPC is all about short, heavy, punk blasts of music. And this song starts with…keyboards.
But it’s clear that this is still TPC, just with new bits and pieces added. The keyboards are strangely out of pitch–they sound off somehow–and they add these bizarre little accents to this super catchy song. The aggressive punk guitars are gone, but the attitude remains and this is a fantastic tune. One that I’ll listen to a lot more.
[READ: December 8, 2010] “Emptying the Skies”
I didn’t think it would happen, but I reached my Franzen saturation point with this article. This is his third article about the disappearance of birds. Originally, these articles came several years apart, so they wouldn’t seem so overwhelming. But reading them all within a few days of each other, I’ve about had it with the doom and gloom.
These articles are devoid of Franzen’s usually charm and wit. Obviously, a story about the disappearance of the earth’s birds should not have charm and wit, so he did his job well. But man, I’m overwhelmed by the devastation of Europe’s migration paths.
The essay looks at three Mediterranean countries and their (reprehensible) attitudes towards birds: Cyprus, Malta and Italy.
Cypriots use sticky lime covered branches to trap birds looking for somewhere to land. If the poachers can sell the birds (at a crazy profit), they take them down, if not, they leave them to die or kill them straight out. Franzen journeyed with some bird rescuers who would take the poor birds down and meticulously remove all of the stickiness from their feet/wings/beaks before setting them free.
In the Republic of Malta, hunters shoot birds more or less at will. Some hunters simply shoot at anything with wings: sparrows on the airport lawn; golden orioles from rooftops; whole flocks of migrating hawks.
Both Cyprus and Malta are small countries that are slowly beginning to realize national wealth. They are each recent additions to the E.U., but they also seem to hold on to the idea that hunting is a “tradition” that they don’t want to give up. In that respect, it is surprising that Italy, certainly no newcomer to the international stage, also clings so tightly to their guns and hunting past. Italy also serve “little birds” in a lot of their meals. So, the “take” for song thrushes is reported at somewhere between three and seven million a year.
All of this poaching runs afoul of EU regulations. But the EU takes a sort of absentee landlord approach to the problem, unwilling to spend the time on birds when there are so many other EU things to worry about. So, even though these newcomer countries want to be in the EU, they flaunt this rule fairly egregiously.
All three countries have passed various hunting restrictions in the last few years. But as many hunters point out, this just restricts the legitimate hunters, many of whom will simply break the law because they can’t get the permits they want. Of course, the hunters are a huge voting bloc, so they are not to be disappointed. This leads to less strict laws. In fact, even the moderate tightening of laws has loosened in the last two years or so.
It’s clear which side of the equation Franzen is on, but he does let the other side have a voice: he talks to hunters, sportsmen and even a poacher or two: The proper sportsmen have reasonable hunting explanations on their side. But if you were to try to restrict them from killing international songbirds, the standard answers are: The money is too good. It’s a tradition to hunt. There is hardly any other meat available.
Even though Franzen presents these voices, it’s clear which side he’s on. At one point he even gets chased by some local poachers when he is with a group of activists who are tearing down their traps. The account of him getting chased is pretty shocking, not least because two of his companions are physically attacked and their video camera destroyed. (The fact that Franzen has to leap over a wall with an injured bird in his jacket pocket is pretty harrowing for all involved).
As the essay comes to an end, despite the astonishing numbers to the contrary, Franzen offers some rays of hope. He mentions the remarkable activism of Anna Giordano who, from the age of 15 has been calling the police on poachers, despite physical threats and actual damage to her cars. The most affecting comment comes when a man she referred to as “one of the worst poachers: a violent, stupid, vulgar guy” approached her and asked if she remembered the last thing she’d said to him. He said:
You said the day would come when I would love the birds instead of killing them. I just came up here to tell you you were right. I used to say to my son when we were going out, Have you got the gun? Now I say, Have you got the binoculars?
The article ends with the fairly surprising scene of Franzen in a restaurant in Cypress preparing to eat the contraband ambelopoulia (pickled or boiled songbirds). His companions (and the restaurant host) are so over the top excited to be serving an American this delicacy that Franzen feels he cannot say no. He eats the almond-sized breast meat and is nearly sick. He can’t decide if the bitter taste is the bird or guilt.
Franzen’s prose is, again, spot on. And it’s clear he is passionate about the issue.
I was going to save this last essay for the last day of the year, but in good conscience, I couldn’t end 2010 on such an unpleasant note.
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