The Hawk and the Crow

An image of a hawk in flight with a crow just above it showed up in my feed on a popular social media site yesterday. The text below it said,

“The crow is the only bird that dares to peck at the hawk, he sits on the hawk's back and bites it on its neck, but the hawk does not respond, nor does it fight the crow nor waste time on the crow. He just opens his wings and starts to rise high in the sky, the higher the flight, the harder it is to breathe up [sic] and then the crows fall due to lack of oxygen! Stop wasting your time with crows, just go to the heights yourself and they will disappear like that!!”

The post is supposed to be motivational. But it demonizes the crow. As well, all I could think of is how the crow was defending its nest against the hawk’s predation. There’s no other reason the crow would bother a hawk. If the crow were not there, we’d see the hawk with a baby crow in its talons.

The message I get is that if you go around causing trouble and making people’s lives difficult, you can escape retribution and get away guilt-free.

Image attribution:

Husky Mom on Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.com/pin/raven-in-2025--443745369554885955/

Herb Alpert – Playing for Eighty Years

The most inspiring thing I’ve heard recently was Scott Simon’s interview with Herb Alpert on NPR’s Weekend Edition today.

Herb Alpert has been playing trumpet for 80 years, and he just released a new album.  And he’s working on two more.  Here’s the part I liked best:

SIMON: Your new album is titled "50," and you have a whole bunch of 50's going on now, don't you?

ALPERT: Oh, it's an exciting time for me, Scott. I've been married 50 years. This is the 50th album. That caught me off guard. I didn't realize I had 50 albums in the can already. And in 2025, I'm going to be celebrating my - I'm stuttering now - 90th birthday. I'm going to do something that I've always wanted to do. I'm going to form the new Tijuana Brass featuring my beautiful wife, Lani Hall, who was the original singer with Sergio Mendes in Brasil '66. So we're going to go out there for a year and just revisit some of the things I used to play, and people are going to enjoy it because I've had so many requests to get the old Tijuana Brass sound back. And I'm going to do it.

SIMON: And what keeps you going making music, being about to turn 90?

ALPERT: Music is a healing vibration that fills me. I believe people as well when they hear a song they like, it does something for you. When you get into art or you hear a great piece of music, your life kind of just gets into that very moment that you're living in. And that's really beautiful.

You can listen to the interview or read the transcript here:

https://www.ctpublic.org/2024-09-28/jazz-legend-herb-alpert-releases-his-50th-album