Wings at My Window

by Ada Clapham Govan; illustrated by Dorothy Bayley (Macmillian 1960)

Someone named Barbara N. Johnston gave this book to my mother in July of 1962. I think Mrs. Johnston must have been the mother of my friend Penny, whom I had met at summer riding camp and become close to, despite the fact that Penny was a few years older than I was. Mrs. Johnston wrote, “With much thanks and the hope that you will enjoy this book as much as I do.” She did, and so did I, and now I have read it again, with much enjoyment. Now that we are again feeding our local birds throughout the third pandemic winter, it was a good time to reread it.

Ada Govan had lost two young children and her own health when her husband moved the family to a house which bordered a woodland near Boston. Severely depressed and in constant pain, Govan was saved by the wild birds that frequented her yard, beginning with a tiny chickadee. As she and her husband and son concocted feeding stations and began putting out seeds and table scraps, the birds began to gather in large numbers (sometimes flocks numbered in the hundreds!). Govan was inspired to learn everything she could about her birds, and she eventually became quite an expert; she and her son even learned how to capture and band them. She began to contribute columns to several Boston area newspapers and magazines, writing about the birds and how she attracted them to her feeding stations. Through her writing, she became acquainted with several ornithologists and editors, and eventually put together this book, which describes her journey from disability to health for which she credits the birds. The last chapter describes how her friends and readers helped her to save the woodland next to her yard, which provided essential shelter to the birds she fed. It’s a lovely book, and reading it, I thought what a kind person Govan was. Her name was unfamiliar to me, but a Google search turned up this 2020 article from the Audubon Society as well as many reviews of the book. In her quiet way, and without ever leaving her home, she became a rock star of the birding world. This was definitely worth keeping around.

Though published in 1960, the book covers mainly a period in the late 1930s prior to World War 2.

Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City

by Wes Moore with Erica L. Green (One World 2020; printed in the US by Random House)

In April of 2015, a young man named Freddie Gray died in police custody in Baltimore, Maryland. The Black Lives Matter movement was two years old, and people were beginning to pay attention to the number of young Black men, often unarmed, who were dying in encounters with police. The city of Baltimore became the scene of protests and riots over five days, April 25 – 29. Moore and Green focus on eight people who lived through these protests: Tawanda Jones, a teacher whose brother, Tyrone West, had died in police custody in 2013, and she has never given up her fight for justice for him; John Angelos, the owner of the Baltimore Orioles; Marc Partee, the Inner Harbor police commander; Greg Butler, who almost overcame the odds of leaving the ghetto of West Baltimore for a college education and an athletic career; Nick Mosby, a Baltimore City Councilman married to Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby; Anthony Williams, manager of a popular Baltimore skating rink known as the Shake & Bake; Jenny Egan, a juvenile public defender in Baltimore; and Billy Murphy, a Baltimore attorney and former mayoral candidate. There is an introductory timeline of Freddie Gray’s short life (premature birth, lead poisoning in early childhood, interrupted education, life on the streets, encounters with the law and imprisonment) and, in more detail, the fateful day–April 12, 2015, when Freddie was arrested for making eye contact with a police officer at 8:40 am and trying to run away. Seven days later, he was declared dead. Then, in short chapters of just a few pages each, Moore and Greene advance the story of Baltimore’s riots as seen through the eyes of these eight people. Two of them are white (Jenny Egan and John Angelos); the rest are African-American.

This is followed by an epilogue that tells what has happened to the eight people since 2015. And then Wes Moore’s “Author’s Note 2020”, which considers what happened and what needs to be done. In a way, this was my favorite part of the book; it provides a glimpse into Moore’s thinking about how to begin to solve America’s problems with racism and poverty. I wish I could include that entire Note here, but instead I will just copy out some sentences which really resonate with me:

*Freddie’s short life underscores a dramatic truth: wealth and income inequality define modern American life.

*Some critics will counter that poverty is a choice made by those who are lazy or who lack the desire to change their lives for the better. I agree that poverty is a choice. But that choice is not made by the people who live under its oppressive effects. Rather, the choice is ours. It’s the choice of the government that represents our priorities and allocates our investments. It’s a choice reinforced by the companies we patronize and the organizations we support.

*In America, help from society is closely indexed to your ability to work. Those disconnected from the labor market. . . are largely excluded from the societal safety net. . . . Our society’s insistence on limiting help to those who “deserve it,” as indicated by their status in the labor market, has a profound impact on the capacity of those living in deep poverty to escape.

*. . . There are few impacts as pernicious and unrelenting on the development and life prospects of people than lead poisoning. Lead poisoning is a nationwide and preventable crisis.

*It’s our time to use our individual voices, power, will, and privilege to address economic injustice. To fight for those who have been consistently left out. Pay homage to those who worked tirelessly to clean and fix houses, roads, and bridges that they were not allowed to live in or travel on. Those who built economies that they could not participate in. Those who were repeatedly asked to be patient, told that the American story would include them, but never saw their place in line advance.Those who were unknowingly writing the American story, but were never acknowledged as authors. . . .

And this quote from the Prologue: This book is about more than Freddie Gray’s death and its aftermath. This book is about more than Baltimore. It’s about privilege, history, entitlement, greed, and pain. And complicity. Mine. All of ours.

At this writing, Wes Moore is a candidate for Governor of Maryland.