Impromptus

Bye-bye, birdie, &c.

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An Audubon’s shearwater (hstiver / iStock / Getty Images)
On an ornithological edict; presidential politics; a new school holiday; murder by mushroom; and more

When to rename things, when not to. It’s an old and interesting topic. I have written on it many times. Bias, I believe, should be on the side of not renaming. That does not mean that renaming is never right. But there ought to be a good reason.

I’ve often quoted a line that, apparently, originates with Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland: “When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.”

Have you seen this story? I have linked to an Associated Press report. It begins, “Birds in North America will no longer be named after people, the American Ornithological Society announced Wednesday.” When I read that, I interpreted it as follows: From now on, birds — newly discovered ones — will not be named for people. But that was wrong.

Let me continue with the article:

Next year, the organization will begin to rename around 80 species found in the U.S. and Canada.

“There is power in a name, and some English bird names have associations with the past that continue to be exclusionary and harmful today,” the organization’s president, Colleen Handel, said . . .

Rather than review each bird named after a person individually, all such birds will be renamed, the organization announced.

Wow.

Have a little more:

Birds that will be renamed include those currently called Wilson’s warbler and Wilson’s snipe, both named after the 19th-century naturalist Alexander Wilson. Audubon’s shearwater, a seabird named for John James Audubon, also will get a new name.

Kind of a shame: “Audubon’s shearwater” is such a beautiful moniker. Stylish.

A lot of people call Canada geese “Canadian geese.” Years ago, I heard that this was incorrect because this particular species (if that’s the right word) was named after a man named “John Canada.”

This turns out not to be true.

Anyhow, “John Canada” puts me in mind of John Ireland, the composer (1879–1962). When I was young, I thought that Ireland was Irish. Turned out he was English.

And his best-known piece is a song, “Sea-Fever,” based on the poem of John Masefield. To hear Bryn Terfel sing it, go here. Ireland’s song is, in my judgment, pretty much perfect — an exemplary marriage of music and words.

About those birds: a pity. I have no doubt that a few of the names are problematic and could use changing. But to wipe them out wholesale — unnecessary, even petty or mean, I’m tempted to say.

• An article from Bloomberg News is headed “China’s Confucius Institutes Are Disappearing from U.S. Campuses.” That’s okay by me. I’d like to tell you something that may surprise you. (It did me.)

Some years ago, I was preparing a biggish piece on Confucius Institutes for National Review. I had collected a lot of material on the subject. I then discovered that Marshall Sahlins, the anthropologist, had written a big piece on Confucius Institutes for . . . The Nation. That piece was so good, and so thorough, I saw no need to proceed with my own.

Really.

Here is that piece by the late Professor Sahlins.

• Turn now to U.S. politics. (Sorry.) In my view, nothing would help the Democrats more than if they (a) acknowledged that our southwestern border is a mess, in need of order, and (b) called out wokeness on campus and elsewhere as illiberal, un-American, and pestilent.

Here is a (c): President Biden could take a clear stand — even a showy one — against Squadery.

• As of now, it seems that next year’s presidential race will be a repeat of 2020’s: Biden versus Donald Trump, except with the positions of incumbent and challenger reversed. There is a quality I sort of like in Trump. He has bursts of candor, saying what he really thinks. Does he view the January 6 prisoners, or convicts, as hostages? Why, yes, he does — and more than that, he says so:

No one can say that, in Trump, America does not know what it’s getting.

Here is another example of the way Trump thinks and talks:

Did you happen to see the following? If people believe Trump — maybe we deserve to be suckered, I don’t know.

If Trump were interested in debt reduction — fast or slow — he had four years in which to demonstrate such an interest.

• Vivek Ramaswamy is another brazen populist. For a long time, Dick Cheney was a bogeyman of the Left. He is now serving as a bogeyman of the (populist) Right. It must be dizzying to be him. Also: I think he should be sort of proud.

• Regular readers have heard me say this often, but maybe there are some new readers who would find it interesting: Everyone likes to “speak truth to power.” And, in a liberal democracy, there is nothing easier to do. You get plaudits for it. You know what’s hard? Speaking truth to people (which is where the real power lies, in a democracy such as ours).

Check out Chris Christie:

• Senator Marco Rubio, before his Trumpification, used to speak of the “children of Reagan.” He identified as one. Who are the children of Trump? Such youth as the below?

• If you think there was no Princetonian — no Princeton student — in the January 6 mob, you are mistaken. He went with his mom. And he has now been convicted.

For a news report, go here.

• This is interesting: Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff in the White House, wrote a book saying that the election was “stolen and rigged.” You know: the standard MAGA catechism. But he has apparently been singing a different tune to prosecutors — and the book’s publisher is suing.

Ron Filipkowski has the story, here.

The whole question of honesty: It seems . . . premodern.

• New York City public schools have adopted a new holiday: Diwali. This is the Hindu festival of lights. Students will have a day off. Let me tell you the reaction of my friend Vivek Dave, whom listeners to my Q&A podcast know as a sports guru: “A day off from school is very un-Indian. I would push for an extra day of learning, on Saturday.”

• I witnessed something in New York: Two boys, about 14, and very polite to adults, were conversing. They were not speaking in English but rather in the tongue of their immigrant parents. Yet they began many sentences with “Like,” — American-style.

Can you stand another item about language, on which I am such a bore? I constantly hear young people say, e.g., “I wish he would have known.” Or, “If he would have realized how long it would take, he would not have started.” Can anyone do anything about this? I cannot. This error seems as irresistible as the tides.

• Something to note:

When people say, “I used to like you,” it may well mean that they never knew you, or what you stood for, or what you were made of.

• A horrendous story: “A lunch host is accused of killing her ex-husband’s parents and aunt with poisonous mushrooms.” (Go here.) The murder of three people should not lead to an opera note by me: but the title character in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, by Shostakovich, kills her father-in-law that way.

• Music, actually? For my chronicle in the current New Criterion, go here. For a post on a song recital, go here. For a review of a concert by the New York Philharmonic, go here.

• Take a look at the opera house in Summit, N.J.:

La Scala, eat your heart out.

And how about the theater? Not too shabby, right?

Here is a church steeple in the early-morning light:

In my opinion, a pretty sweet name for a bakery:

• Frank Howard, the baseball player, has died. Let me excerpt something from his obit in the New York Times, not related to baseball:

Howard married Carol Johanski in 1959. They divorced in the mid-1980s. He and Donna (Scott) Howard were married from 1990 until her death in 2016. A few years ago, Howard and his first wife remarried.

Such marriages, or remarriages, are not uncommon. Someone should write a book about them. Probably, someone already has.

• Yuri Temirkanov, the conductor, has died. Here is the obit in the Washington Post. I met him once. I said (something like), “Many of us prize your recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 with the Royal Philharmonic.” (An early recording by Temirkanov.) He sort of cupped my face and said, “Aw, I didn’t know what I was doing!” I said, “Yes, you did.” I think he knew it, too.

Bless you all. Thank you for joining me today.

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