Phalacrocoracidae, Simeon and Tapdancing

Part One: Phalacrocoracidae

The family Phalacrocoracidae is home to some 40 species of birds. Most well-known are
the cormorants, but the family also includes the very unfortunately named “shags.”
They’re tall sea-birds with long beaks adapted for eating slender fish and eels. Typically
saltwater, some varieties have adapted (some would say re-adapted) to inland seas. There
are some three species common in New Hampshire, all with dark plumage and the typical
wing-drying behaviour of the family. This behaviour isn’t widely studied, but in all species
studied thus far, it appears that the feather layers are actually water permeable, so after
any length of soak, they have to dry by the side of the water before resuming fishing.

They aren’t as sociable as gulls, but typically live in small family groups, and while they
tend to avoid humans they have no special fear of them and can be found on piers and
docks, and in backyard ponds. Because their diet consists mostly of “feeder fish” for the
kinds of fish that humans like to eat, they’re often regarded as a nuisance species.

Part Two: Simeon

I love the Gospels. While I tend to find myself navigating through the prophets or
rereading Ecclesiastes or James, I make a conscious effort to re-read them Gospels at
least once a year, just to refresh my memory. It’s always a worthwhile read and I pick up
on something that I missed the last time around.

The story of Simeon, which is only found in Luke’s gospel, is not one of those hidden
stories. The short of it that a Jewish man was told by God Himself that he would not pass
from Earth without seeing The Messiah and, when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus into
the temple at 40 days old, he held him and said a prayer over him. He gave him back to his
parents, telling them their child would bless the world, although Jesus would also suffer
terribly.

And that’s it. A few minutes contact with the divine and Simeon exits the stage. The text doesn’t spell it out
entirely clearly, but in context with what he said, Simeon might well have gone home and died that night, his
destiny and his desire fulfilled.

Part Three: Tapdancing

As with many American forms of dance, tapdancing is … well, complicated, when it comes to its historical
roots, and even to its modern presentation.

Drawing from Irish, English, African and possibly Dutch rhythmic dancing traditions, tapdancing is basically
the dancing art of tapping metal plates on the toe and heel of specially made shoes in a pattern. It dates back
to the 1800s or so, and was a common element of minstrel shows. During the days of vaudeville, dancers
began to add more arm movements, and by the jazz age it was very much the freewheeling style of
tapdancing that’s still evolving, but would be recognizable to an audience today.

As a dance style, it’s most commonly associated with African-American performers, and, based on its early
associations with minstrel shows, some artists have suggested that perhaps tapdancing should be phased
out in favour of more inclusive, less racially-charged forms of dance but, well.

Dule Hill, mostly know for his role as Ovaltine Jenkins on the TV show “Psych,” has said that tapdancing feels
“liberating.” The proof is in the footwork, I think.

Part Four: The Story

On Monday, I went to my son’s dance studio. He’s fifteen, so usually I just drop him off and head back home,
but that particular day I needed to go in to see if his tap shoes had arrived, and to pay for them if they had.

On entering, there were between ten and one hundred people milling about the lobby as two classes were
nearing their end and parents, brothers and sisters milled around. I tried to penetrate through to the front
desk, but there were just too many people. I waited my turn as parents and kids cycled past Kris, one of the
heads of the studio, with their questions, comments and concerns. When I got to her, we exchanged
pleasantries and then she looked out at the nearby highway, cried out, “There’s a duck in the road!” ran out
from behind the desk and outside.

I stood inside, staring at the place where the air was still rushing in to replace Kris’ now-absent form, mouth
somewhat agape, but soon rallied and looked outside. There was indeed a large bird in the middle of the
highway, and as I watched she ran into traffic and guided the bird off the highway and into the relative safety
of a small side street. As she continued her efforts to corral the bird to safety, a minivan turns down the side
street.

At that distance it was impossible to see the actual conversation that ensued, but soon the driver of the
minivan was parked at an angle on the road, and she and Kris were working together with the bird. The
minivan blocked our view, though, so I and the other inhabitants of the dance studio lobby watched and
craned out necks, waiting for her to come back. Soon enough she did, her jacket off and carrying something
inside it, cuddled to her front like a lost child, or a damaged seabird.

She skittered inside and confirmed that she did, indeed, have a seabird wrapped in her jacket and could
someone be a dear and see about getting a blanket because the bird was rather larger to carry to a vet’s
office in a windbreaker.

My trunk is a place of mystery. Even I don’t know exactly what’s in there, but one thing I remembered is that it
still held a costume I wore a few Christmases ago when I played the role of Simeon in a play at church. It was
a large robe on me, and since I periodically wake from a nap to find parties of explorers trying to spelunk
inside me, that meant it was just enormous. I rushed out to the car and found it, and ran back in.

I was outside for perhaps a minute, but in that time the bird had gotten loose and pecked Kris on the bridge of
the nose. She still held it in her arms, but now had a hand holding the bird’s beak shut. That was when I
realized what she’d realized earlier - this wasn’t a duck. The beak was simply too long and slender.

She made her way into the passenger seat of an SUV belonging to a dance mom who’d agreed to drive her to
the vet’s office and they were off. When I returned to pick up Graeme, she was back and reported that the
bird was indeed a cormorant, that it had a broken wing and would be referred to the New Hampshire
Department of Fish and Game to be rehabilitated and returned to the wild.

Part Five - Conclusion

By population, there are approximately five million members of the family Phalacrocoracidae, worldwide.
Assuming that this was a female handling a brood of young, Kris saved the life of, well, just the one adult
because nature’s cruel that way. That seems like a great deal of fuss over one life in five million, but it was an
act of kindness, and that is, so far as I’ve ever been able to determine, its own justification.

Be more kind.

Part Six - Denouement

The tap shoes had come in, but they were the wrong size.

Be More Kind

I unashamedly love Frank Turner. I mean, I like his music because it's amazing and sincere and driving and all the things that I want from pleasant ear-sounds, but I also love Frank Turner. Not in spite of him being an atheist and a punk, but because of those things, because what he is, is something I can learn a lot from and because those things make him sincere and open - what you hear when he talks and when he sings is what he is, and I like that.

His latest album is called "Be More Kind," the title taken from a phenomenal poem by the phenomenal Clive James. I like the album, as I've liked every previous album, and honestly the title track isn't my favourite*, but it is a great song, and has the distinction of encapsulating a thought that had been passing through my head for some time now.

This last Wednesday, June 27th, I took my son to a Frank Turner - my first concert with this artist, and my son's first concert in a club setting. It was a great night. The opening acts were amazing**, the crowd was active but not too rowdy and Frank Turner really knows how to put on a show.

And, yes, he did sing "Be More Kind." He introduced it with the admission that kindness won't actually solve the world's problems. I mean, not all of them, it will take more work and effort than just, "be more kind," but it's a place to start and perhaps the only place to start from. And I agree with that and have been posting up to Facebook, various message boards and other places examples of kindness and working in my own life to show more kindness to those around me. I don't expect massive dividends from that, but, well, it's something to do, and I've reached the conclusion lately that only doing things because they "pay off" in some giant way is another kind of bigotry.

See, I'm a Christian, and in the past year or so, that's become a statement that I have to defend. Not in the sense of defending my faith, but defending what people perceive Christians to be.

Don't try to defend this. Just don't.

"I'm a Christian, but not the kind that thinks it's cool to make fun of disabled people."

"I'm a Christian, but not the kind that thinks that abortion will stop if we just passed the right laws, but that public shootings can't be stopped by passing the right laws."

"I'm a Christian, but not the kind that enthusiastically supports the separation of families at the border because it's 'legal.'"

As the list of atrocities that my fellow believers willing associate with rises, I find myself frankly exhausted by it, but there's a distinct pattern I notice to the things that I find I have to defend myself against: they are, by default, rather passive.

Voting is a straightforward and simple process, the absolute basic minimum expected in a functioning democracy. Most anti-abortionists I know do absolutely nothing about their pet issue other than share memes on Facebook. And defending immigrants? That takes work. I know more about that than most, being an immigrant and all.

I was pondering this on the drive home as Graeme rifled through the radio stations, trying to find something he could listen to that wouldn't keep him from napping and settled on a Christian music station.

(Pause for laughter)

In total, we ended up listening to five songs, plus, of course, Oceans.*** Three of them were perfectly forgettable fluff, the sort of songs where you really could replace all of the names of God in the song with "baby" and end up with a treacly pop love song. Two of them stuck out in just how wrong they were. First, God Is On The Move by 7eventh Time Down which, first, let's pause about that name for a moment. Anyone else want to pronounce the first word there as "Seveneventh Time Down?" Anyhow, this is about things that make God move. It is, apparently anytime:

The modern Christian's protest sign.

• a heart turns from darkness to light
• temptation comes and someone stands to fight
• somebody lives to serve and not be served
• in weakness someone falls upon their knee
• [someone] dares to speak the truth that sets men free
• the choice is made to stand upon the Word

So, the first two are completely internal and passive, with nothing about how they actual impact anything other than the nameless heart/someone feeling any effect of the change. The third is utterly undefined but it, indeed active. The fourth is, again, completely internal. The last two are nebulous Christian-speak that basically mean, "telling people about God." So, not entirely passive, but not what I'd call "sharing the gospel" because, well, there's a lot more to that then just saying stuff.

" It's like, how much more evangelical
George Michael could this be? And
the answer is none. None more evangelical
George Michael.

The other song was literally just about people being unwilling to say "the truth." This truth was utterly undefined in the song, but it was clear, from the songwriter's perspective, that "the truth" was dangerous and people didn't like it.

Frankly both of these songs are worse than their bubblegum pop brethren because they're a call to passivity wrapped up in the package of a call to action. I should clarify, though, lest this be seen as my shaking my cane at the kids these days. My generation has no right to really complain about vapidity in our music. For every time Rich Mullins wrote "Hard To Get," Michael W. Smith wrote "Go West Young Man."

Which, let's talk more about songwriting and Christianity, shall we? That first song, by Seveneventh Time Down, leans heavily on the phrase, "God moves," which comes from the poetry of William Cowper, an 18th century English poet, hymnwriter, abolitionist and insane person. No, really, he was institutionalized a couple of times in life, for what we now think was bipolar disorder, and yet he wrote these poems excoriating the slave trade, and Britain's participation in it. Why does that matter? Let's go to verse four of God Moves In Mysterious Ways:

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Do you think that an abolitionist was writing to the white members of the congregation when he wrote that? Cowper's poetry was a call to action, not a back-pat for all the awesome stuff we've already done. So, act. Be more kind. All the time, every day, as much as we can. And, yes, some times, "be more kind," is going to mean, "stay at home and eat ice cream because you're exhausted," because self-care is a thing, but be there when you can. Don't stand. Don't speak, unless you need to. Be. Do. Move.

* That would be "Don't Worry," which is a fantastic reverse advice column where the writer is basically saying, "I have no advice, other than don't worry about not knowing what to do because none of us know either."

** I'd heard of The Restorations and caught one or two tracks, but they put on a fantastic live show. The other act, a vaguely reassembled version of Dead Rosenstock, was wonderful as well, with that same brutal honesty I love in a musician. I didn't buy anything from them but a sticker, though, being somewhat low on funds.

*** An extension of Godwin's Law - as you listen to a Christian music station, the probability of hearing Oceans approaches 1.