The Tenth Day of Christmas

Cooper's Hawk in the Courtyard this morning!

Probably an immature female -  very large , but still brown back and brown streaks on breast - not that slate grey back and brick speckled breast yet...  I didn't have my camera with me, and it doesn't have the kind of lens needed to capture her trip from one crab apple tree to the next in the frosty air.  Here's what she looked like though - photo from Google and Wildbirds Unlimited:

here's the courtyard, taken later this morning:

I was thrilled to see her -  needless to say, the juncos and finches were not!


Today I worked on course work, and sent out book lists to the students.
Here is the list of books I sent to the MOD CIV class.  In addition to the History text, and the poetry, each student must choose one of these books ( one to a customer), read it and prepare a presentation on it to the class.  Since they come from all majors, hopefully they can find a book relevant to their particular approach to this time period:

Set in:

1859  England        The Origin of the Species   Darwin  (NF)

1886  London         The Secret Agent     Joseph Conrad

1900-present     Man and Microbes: Disease and Plagues in History and Modern Times ~ Arno Karlen  (NF)

 1800-2000  Western Europe      The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of     Modern Surgery (NF)        Wendy Moore

1911   France          Madame Curie    by Eve Curie  (NF)

1914  England         The Thirty-nine Steps     John Buchan

1917 Germany       All Quiet on the Western Front                    Erich Maria Remarque

1918 – present      The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug        by Thomas Hager (NF)

1930   Russia               Darkness at Noon    Arthur Koestler

1930’s-70’s       England, France,Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey     The Historian    Elizabeth Kostova

1937  Spain                      For Whom the Bell Tolls     Ernest Hemingway

1939 Germany              The Book Thief     by  Markus Zusak

1939    Soviet Union                             The Good Republic     William Palmer

1940s  Italy                           A Kiss from Maddalena              Christopher Castellani

1940’s France                Sarah’s Key      Tatiana de Rosnay

1940  Russia               A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch   Solzhenitsyn

1940  South Africa        Cry, the Beloved Country   Alan Paton

1940 Hungary                 Fateless     Imre Kertész   

1940’s  Hungary/France          The Invisible Bridge             Julie Orringer

1945  Japan                    Hiroshima     John Hersey  (NF)

1948  Israel               Exodus    Leon Uris

1950  Nigeria                 Things Fall Apart    Chinua Achebe

1960  Egypt                         Wedding Song         Naguib Mahfouz 

1960’s Africa      King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in    Colonial Africa        Adam Hochschild (NF)

1965-90  Prague                Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965-1990, by Vaclav Havel 

 1965 South Africa           African Stories     Doris Lessing    

1970  Moscow                          Gorky Park    Martin Cruz Smith

1978  Albania      Broken April,  Ismail Kadare

1970’s Ireland      Harry’s Game   by Gerald Seymour

1980s England/France                              Black Dogs    Ian McEwan

1980s   Turkey                             Snow        Orhan Pamuk

1980s Milan                          The Metal Green Mercedes       Timothy Williams

1980’s   Czechoslovakia         My Merry Mornings (1986) or My First Loves (1986), by Ivan Klima

1989   Berlin                      The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of 89 witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague                 Timothy Garton Ash  (NF)

1950’s – present   Europe       Aftermath: The Remnants of War  (NF)   Donovan Webster

1989  Cuba                               Havana Bay     Martin Cruz Smith

1989  Germany     “Revolution 1989”, by Victor Sebestyen, (NF)
1990   South Africa          Boyhood Scenes from Provincial Life by J. M. Coetzee ( 1998)   (NF)

1990 Kenya                                           The Constant Gardener    John LeCarre

1990’s  Ireland                 My Dream of You    by Nuala O’Faolin

1990s    Eastern Europe           Café Europa: Life After Communism          Drakulic  (NF)

1999 Ireland     The Bombmaker   by Stephen Leather

1995   Belfast Diaries: War as a Way of Life   by John Conroy NF)

1990s   Romania                      The Appointment                 Herta Muller

1993    Eastern Europe         Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (NF)

~ Robert D. Kaplan

1996   Eastern Europe  *Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey (NF) Isabel Fonseca

1996   Russia                                           Wolves Eat Dogs   Martin Cruz Smith

2000   Turkey                          Istanbul: Memories of a City     by Orhan Pamuk  (NF)

2000 Kosovo                       The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo     by   Paula Huntley (NF)

2003   England                                   Saturday    Ian McEwan

2003  London     Londongrad: From Russia with Cash       Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart Lansley (NF)

Europe  2008       A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World   (NF) by Gregory Clark

 It's quite an eclectic list, but the presentations have been very interesting to the class and to me, in previous years!