dioramas and sparrows

Before we get to the nitty-gritty, like “who is Sam?” or “Wait I just wanted to check the weather!” or “no seriously what happened to Sam??” I want to talk about dioramas. You heard me. Those shoeboxes on their side, people made out of clothespins and clouds/birds/airplanes suspended from floss from the top. You remember. The little hot glue strings always got all up in your business, and they got a little dented on the school bus, but all in all they were SO DARN COOL. And don’t get me started on the life-size ones at the natural history museums. They put cellophane, backlit fires to shame. To shame! The point is – do you remember the feeling? Do you remember being that awesome combination of mesmerized, excited, and drawn in? Why? A diorama is an interface. It’s taken a moment, an experience, a species (remember those woolly mammoths?) for the most part far away and inaccessible, and brought it into your hands. Even as it has been frozen, shrunken – the viewer is broadened, enlivened. Your imagination roars. You feel wild, outside yourself.

This brings me to the actual nitty-gritty, the point of the blog. We all need some wild-ing. I have spent the last few years unplugging – from facebook, tv, and finally a cell phone, except for emergencies – and re-inserting into something more nourishing. A blog seems like an odd choice, but I’ve come to believe it can be a diorama, an interface. It’s not real – but the hope is that something, sometime here will make you go “whoa, sweet!” And you’ll get the diorama butterflies, and go outside.

Which finally brings me around to Sam. Mr. Peabody is not a person, but (as anyone with binoculars by the window probably knows) the song of the white-throated sparrow. It’s a little bird, generally in the northeast year-round, with a black and white striped head with bright patches of yellow above its eyes. It forages on the ground in flocks come this time of year, but the thing’s in the song. He says “poor-sam-peabody-peabody-peabody!” Or, in Canada it’s “oh-sweet-canada-canada-canada!” Unmistakable. So, birds are great, but why the title of a blog? Because Sam Peabody is a diorama. To know the unknowable, feel kinship and belonging to another species – to recognize! It wilds us. We yoke the song in human terms, but as we bring it in it coaxes us out. This friendly sparrow is a gateway, a door. Yep, it’s a gateway birdsong. Birders bird, in part, because of the accessibility and comfort it brings – the simple satisfaction of hearing that sweet song and thinking, “yes, the white-throat, the world is out there.” We are brought closer, we are more awake. Listen.

Welcome!