‘The Feather Detective' Review: Her Eye Was on the Sparrow
Laybourne was an expert in the field of forensic ornithology, a sort of avian CSI. She came to the field after Eastern Air Lines Flight 375, en route from Boston to Philadelphia, crashed into Boston Harbor on Oct. 4, 1960, killing 62 of the 72 people on board. Witnesses described seeing a flash of fire from one of the plane's engines before the aircraft abruptly lifted, then plunged vertically into the water.
In the aftermath, a flock of European starlings was found scattered across the end of the runway. The prevailing belief, held by the Federal Aviation Administration, was that bird strikes were rare and didn't warrant much concern. Only the windshield was at risk; the massive jet engines were thought to be capable of ingesting and processing birds with barely a shudder.
The FAA turned to Laybourne, a 50-year-old ornithologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., to investigate. 'The idea that a few hollow-boned birds could destroy a massive piece of machinery and kill scores of people in the process was terrifying,' writes Chris Sweeney in 'The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
10 hours ago
- Associated Press
Gullah Geechee elders work to preserve sacred songs passed down by enslaved ancestors
ST. HELENA ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — Minnie 'Gracie' Gadson claps her hands and stomps her feet against the floorboards, lifting her voice in a song passed down from her enslaved ancestors who were forced to work the cotton and rice plantations of the South Carolina Sea Islands. It's a Gullah spiritual, and the 78-year-old singer is one of a growing group of artists and scholars trying to preserve these sacred songs and their Gullah Geechee culture for future generations. 'I have a passion to sing these songs,' Gadson said. On a recent summer day, her voice rang out inside Coffin Point Praise House. It's one of three remaining wooden structures on St. Helena Island that once served as a place of worship for the enslaved, and later, for generations of free Black Americans. Gadson grew up singing in these praise houses. Today, as a Voices of Gullah member, she travels the U.S. with others in their 70s and 80s singing in the Gullah Creole language that has West African roots. 'This Gullah Geechee thing is what connects us all across the African diaspora because Gullah Geechee is the blending of all of these cultures that came together during that terrible time in our history called the trans-Atlantic slave trade,' said Anita Singleton-Prather, who recently performed and directed a play about Gullah history. The show highlighted Gullah contributions during the American Revolution, including rice farming and indigo dying expertise. At the theater entrance, vendors offered Gullah rice dishes and demonstrated how to weave sweetgrass into baskets. More than 5,000 descendants of enslaved plantation workers are estimated to live on St. Helena Island, the largest Gullah community on the South Carolina coast where respect for tradition and deep cultural roots persists. 'A lot of our songs were coded, and this language is a language of survival, a language of resilience, a language of tenacity,' Singleton-Prather said, adding that despite slavery's brutality, the Gullah people were able to thrive, 'giving our children a legacy — not a legacy of shame and victimization, but a legacy of strength and resilience.' Discovering Gullah culture and the roots of Kumbaya Gullah culture includes art forms, language and food by the descendants of West Africans who have lived on the coasts of the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia since slavery. 'It's important to preserve the Gullah culture, mainly because it informs us all, African Americans, where they come from and that it's still here,' said Eric Crawford, author of 'Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest in the South Carolina Sea Islands.' For most of his life, he hadn't heard the word Gullah. That changed in 2007 with a student's master's thesis about Gullah culture in public schools. 'As I began to investigate it, I began to understand that 'Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen,' 'Roll Jordan Roll,' 'Kumbaya!' — all these iconic songs came from this area,' he said. Versions of these songs, he said, can be traced back to the 19th century when 'Slave Songs of the United States,' the first book of African American spirituals, was recorded on St. Helena Island. 'And so my question was: 'These songs that trace back to the 1800s — were they still being done over 150 years later?'' He was so curious that he traveled to St. Helena, where he met the singers and began recording their music. 'These songs became pivotal,' Crawford said, sitting on the original wooden pews of the island's Mary Jenkins Praise House. 'They were forced to go to their owners' church and stay in the balcony. But then in the evening, typically on Sunday evenings, Tuesday and Thursday, they had this space by themselves, away from the watchful eye of the owners, and they could engage in their own songs.' At the praise houses, he said, they connected with their ancestors following West and Central African practices. Prayers and song would end with a counterclockwise dance and a 'ring shout' — a rare outlet of joy for the enslaved. These days the singers no longer rise to do the ring shout due to their age. But at a recent concert they clapped their hands in one rhythm, stomped the floor in another and swayed, singing at the island's Brick Baptist Church. 'These singers are as close as we would ever come to how the enslaved sang these songs,' Crawford said. 'That authenticity — you just cannot duplicate that.' The Voices of Gullah goes global He began to take the singers on tour in 2014. Since then, they've performed across the U.S. as well as in Belize and Mexico. The touring band's members include Gadson; 89-year-old Rosa Murray; 87-year-old Joe Murray; and their son, Charles 'Jojo' Brown. 'I'm gonna continue doing it until I can't do it no more, and hope that younger people will come in, others younger than me, to keep it going,' said Brown who, at 71, is affectionally called the 'baby.' His mother agrees. Sitting in her living room, surrounded by framed photos of dozens of grandchildren, she said she'll continue singing for them. 'I hope and pray one or two of them will fall in my footsteps,' she said. 'I'm leaving a legacy for them to do what I'm doing for the Lord.' Other community members share that mission to teach future generations. The Gullah Heritage Trails Tours take visitors through historic neighborhoods surrounded by beaches, wealthy vacation homes and golf resorts on Hilton Head Island. The tours were started by a family of 12 brothers and sisters in 1996. 'We thought it was important for people to know that Gullah people live on this island,' said Emory Campbell, 82, who helped translate the New Testament into Gullah and for decades led the respected Penn Center, one of the country's first schools for freed slaves. 'If we don't know who we are, we're lost,' said Marlena Smalls, a singer and actor who for decades has been performing adaptations of Gullah spirituals for new audiences and founded the popular Gullah Festival. Her work even appeared on an SAT question about Gullah culture. 'I want to know who I am. And I want my children to know who they are and their children to know who they are. That's why it's important,' said Smalls, who is also known for playing Bubba's mother in the film 'Forrest Gump.' Her adaptations of Gullah music, she said, are a way of preserving it by appealing to a mass audience. But she treasures the old spirituals, calling the group of singers, 'true keepers of the culture.' Given their age, Crawford sometimes asks himself 'who will carry the torch.' He has been working to get grants so students can also start projects to preserve the songs, language and culture. On a recent day, a group of students from Atlanta's Morehouse College arrived at the Mary Jenkins Praise House to admire a site built in the early 1900s. 'It is a portal into the past and a window into the future,' said Tendaji Bailey, 35, founder of 'Gullah Geechee Futures,' a project that focuses on the preservation of Gullah communities and cultural sites. For the past three years, he has been bringing Morehouse students to visit praise houses. 'They hear some of the prayers, some of the songs, and they always come out of that experience transformed. So, I know that there's power in this place, still.' ___ Associated Press journalist Jessie Wardarski contributed to this report. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Woman Says Yes to Marriage Proposal Just Before Her Plane Crashes in Turkiye
It's safe to say that this marriage proposal didn't go as planned. Turkish media reports the cell phone video was taken to document this man's sky-high proposal. The woman he proposed to is reportedly on the plane and he made his request via walkie-talkie, but unfortunately she and the pilot were seriously injured when the ultralight training aircraft crashed into a citrus grove. According to reports, she said yes! Inside Edition Digital's Mara Montalbano has more. Solve the daily Crossword
Fox News
4 days ago
- Fox News
Radioactive wasp nest discovered by workers at former nuclear bomb site
Officials at a former nuclear bomb site in South Carolina have discovered a radioactive wasp nest. Workers were conducting a routine radiation level check at the Savannah River Site near Aiken when a nest was identified with liquid nuclear waste tanks, The Associated Press (AP) reported. The U.S. Department of Energy filed a report on July 22 stating the nest had 10 times the radiation level that is permitted by federal regulations. Officials said no wasps were found at the nest. "The wasp nest was sprayed to kill wasps, then bagged as radiological waste," the report said. "The ground and surround[ing] area did not have any contamination." It is believed the nest became radioactive through "onsite legacy radioactive contamination" from activity left when the site was fully operational. The site now makes fuel for nuclear plants and cleanup, AP reported. There are still 43 of the underground tanks in use, while eight have been closed. A watchdog group, Savannah River Site Watch, called out the report, saying it lacked details about the source of the contamination and how the wasps encountered it, according to AP. Tom Clements, Savannah River Site Watch executive director, slammed the report in text messages obtained by AP. "I'm as mad as a hornet that SRS didn't explain where the radioactive waste came from or if there is some kind of leak from the waste tanks that the public should be aware of," Clements wrote, as AP reported. The Savannah River Mission Completion monitors the site and provided a statement to the Aiken Standard, a local news outlet. "Upon discovery of the contaminated nest, the immediate area was secured and surveyed; no contamination was found in the area," the statement noted. "I'm as mad as a hornet [about this]." "There were no impacts to workers, the environment or the public." The nest was found in F Tank Farm area, which is "centrally located inside the 310-square-mile Savannah River Site. Generally, wasps travel only a few hundred yards from their nest," it continued. In 1950, President Harry Truman announced that the United States would accelerate the atomic energy program; the plant opened during the start of the Cold War. The plant was in charge of producing "basic materials" in support of American defense programs, primarily tritium and plutonium-239, according to the Savannah River Site. It has produced over 165 million gallons of liquid nuclear waste, reducing it through evaporation to about 34 million gallons, according to Savannah River Mission Completion. Of the remaining 43 tanks, eight have closed. Regarding the radioactive wasp nest, three additional nests have since been discovered at the site, The New York Times reported on Saturday. The Savannah River Site occupies some 310 square miles in the sandhills of South Carolina, near the Georgia border.
