I realized shortly after sending Saturday’s newsletter that I had neglected to include any photos of Flaco himself. The Flaco photo is, by now, a rather mature genre; there are dozens of wonderful shots out there, and perhaps you’ve seen many of them. The above image, taken through binoculars by Will Seifstad, is from February 11. Here are some other good ones: Flaco on the arm of an excavator, Flaco stretching, Flaco kind of fluffing, Flaco yawning, Flaco hooing, Flaco staring, Flaco glaring, and Flaco flying.
Not directly related to Flaco, but it seems that emails sent as replies to my newsletters don’t always reach me. If you replied to a newsletter and didn’t hear back, please write me directly at jnathankazis@gmail.com.
Here’s something that didn’t quite fit in Saturday’s essay. A 1926 book called “Ritual and Belief in Morocco” by a Finnish sociologist named Edvard Westermarck contains the following report: In a certain part of Morocco, it was believed that if a man put the right eye of an eagle-owl in the hand of his sleeping wife or daughter, she would “begin to talk and tell what she has done during the day.” What would happen if a man used an eagle-owl’s left eye was not recorded.
Here’s an incredible 1862 print of an eagle-owl feeding a baby rabbit to its owlets from the collection of the New York Public Library.
That’s all I’ve got!