David Plumb: Day of the Finches

By David Plumb12:00AM / Thursday, August 28, 2003Print Story | Email Story

When I lived on Church Street in North Adams, I had a green parakeet named Rabbit. He died of a cold, or pneumonia or some strange disease that I as a boy did not understand. I didn't even think about getting another bird. I moved to Syracuse, to Albuquerque and San Francisco. Then I moved to Florida. Now I think I want Love Birds. Then I hear them squawk. Ten years ago I might have gone for Squawk. I know about squawk. Now I go for Peep. A couple of weeks later, I find a cage at a garage sale over on 5th Street. Clean. Just right for a pair of finches. I check out pet stores. I look at all kinds of finches, Zebras, Cutthroats, Silverbills, Cordon Bleus, Rainbow Buntings, Pintailed Whydahs, Gouldins, White Javas, Melbas. Whew. All I want are couple of plain old finches. Nothing fancy, just your plain, ordinary affordable, healthy finches. But I want to know who I'm buying from. Then I remember George has finches on top of finches. He breeds them. George runs a small motel, looks fifty-eight, is probably sixty eight, tanned, silver gray curly hair, gold rimmed glasses, wears the navy blue bathing suit all the time; wears the flat gold chain around his neck. I buy a pair of Society Finches from George. He's sure the male is the big brown one with the wide white belly and the white tail. He's wrong. The male is the small one with the chocolate brown back and tail and brown flecks on it's breast. The minute I put them in their new cage, he begins his fluffed up two step mating dance. Two Society Finches become eight Society Finches and it's Peep-town, USA. It seemed like a great idea at the time, but what to do with eight finches? Maybe I can get them to perform Puccini, or Vivaldi's, Four Seasons. Good luck. But maybe we can make a small income selling finches. I hop right on it. I sell three finches to the pet store for three bucks per. The pet store owner sticks them in nice cage by themselves with water and food. I am very pleased. Our house is less noisy. I'm in business. Three nights later I'm at a meeting. I call home. She says she stopped by the pet store and the finches are in a cage with other finches. Another breed, she says. They don't look so good, she says. Not so great for my piece of mind. I feel betrayed. I leave the meeting early and drive to the pet store. I stand outside looking through the window. One finch stands ankle deep in the water dish looking bewildered. The other two flutter and bonk around the small cage while sixteen (I count them) Zebras Finches flit and slam about their business. This was not the deal. A woman, say sixty years old with a mole on her left cheek and dyed red hair stands next to me. I point out my finches. She peers through the store window. "If they were my finches, "she's says, "I'd go in there and tear that guy apart." I share her zeal. I'd like to rip off his face. However, a better part of me says, don't kill the pet shop owner, get the finches back.. I scan the pet shop. He's not there and I don't have a cage to take them home in. I'll have to wait until tomorrow. I go home. I don't sleep. I wake up at three-fifteen. I'm wild. My brain races. I'm panicky. Will I get the birds back? I know they put different breeds in the same cages. I've actually seen a sparrow and a woodpecker in the same tree. I've owned nine kinds of chickens, with ducks to boot. I've slaughtered chickens, but I don't care what somebody else does with their birds. These are my birds. When I was a kid, I had a bird cemetery under a row of maples. Sometimes, when my father took me fishing, we'd come home, we'd get all the fish cleaned and I'd suddenly feel sorry for one of them. We'd get the flashlight and take this tiny skinned Pumpkin Seed down in the back yard and bury it. I'd stick a small stick cross in the ground and say a prayer for it. How could I be so wrong? So much for selling finches. How could this guy he do this? My brain tape is one short loop. I hold court with my dragon until sunrise. First thing, I stop to see George who sold me the birds. I want to make sure I'm not overreacting. After all, they're only birds. I try not to show George how upset I am. I say to George, "What do you think about my Society Finches being put in the with Zebras? They seem to be getting whacked." "I wouldn't worry about it," he says in his bird keeper whisper. "They'll get along fine. No problem." Right! Three birds zonked out of their gourds in a cage full of Zebras. I ask George a second time. It's hard to conceal my concern. I follow him back around to his aviary. George waves off the whole thing. "Don't worry about it," he says backing into the screen door of his aviary. "But they're getting knocked around," I plead. "They're not eating right. Then I see a tinge of contempt in his eyes. Just like a man, I think. Oh BOY! I leaked some microscopic vulnerability. He doesn't want to hear it. I know about birds, but I'm asking George for a little understanding. "They'll be fine," he says. I look around his aviary. You bet all of his finches are separated by breed. So much for George. Ten A.M., I call the pet store and the guy says he'll sell the finches back for ten bucks. An extra buck for feed, he wants. Ok. No hassle. Only today there's another problem. She has the a car. Today, I have the bicycle. I take the small cage out of the closet. I grab my ATM card and head out. It's Wobble City. It's the Bird Bunny Express. I steer the bike with my left hand and hold the cage in my right. I fall over three times on the way to the bank. Intersections play hell with me. I feel like I'm going to get smashed right off the road, splattered all over the sidewalk. What am I doing driving a bike with one hand on a major highway? I feel small and insignificant, but, I am a man on a mission. I must save my finches. I must not flinch. At the bank, I tie the bike to a palm tree. I attach the cage to the bike by hooking the bike lock cord through the bird cage. The cage falls apart in three pieces at my feet with the cord threaded through it. The bike slides down the palm tree with the broken bird cage. What a mess. I have to untangle bike and cage and reassemble the cage in front of the bank. Such aggravation. I feel like a banana. I get the money and I hit the road. I tool up Bayview holding the cage away from me in my right hand. Such a balancing act. I'm learning. It's like high wire. I pull up at the pet store, but the boss isn't at the counter. I see the assistant and I think, maybe I'll get off the hook with the confrontation. Now, I can do confrontation. I appear to be very good at it, but I hate it. I'm your basic coward. Then I see the boss down the mall a ways talking to a woman. I slip in the store and talk to his assistant. I tell him I called ahead. I'm here for my birds. The assistant, a big man with thick glasses and a moustache is stacking cat food. He points to the boss. I look at the fish tank on my left. A huge goldfish bangs his lips on the glass. No getting around it. I walk up to the boss. He's shorter than I am. He's overweight. He too has a moustache. We exchange sidelong glances. We stand amid the dog leashes and the doggy bones. We're awash in doggy dishes, dog blankets, dog beds, flea collars, Bark Bars, Doggy Sunglasses, New York Giants Dog hats, Video Catnip, gold studded cat collars and a book, 101 Questions Your Dog Would Ask Its Vet.. His turf. We exchange calm, but suspicious looks. Does he know, that I know about his finch abuse?. Does he know we had this unwritten bargain? I'm convinced he put my three Society Finches in their own one cage and the minute I left, he whipped them in with the Zebras. He knows! He knows, that I know, that he knows! I'll never shop here again, except for the chlorophyll bird bedding I can't get anywhere else. We shall never speak of this atrocity again. I hand him the ten bucks and go back to get my birds. The assistant reaches in the cage. The finches go crazy. His big hand filters through the maze of finches, following first one finch, then another. They flit and storm and dive and sweep. He grabs at one of my Society Finches. Don't squeeze them! Careful! It's bang-a-bird-against-the-cage time. There's a great whirr of wings and the tinging of wire. And shrieks and squeaky peeps. He misses. It takes time. First one, then two. My third finch runs out of gas and drops to the bottom of the cage. The big man lifts it gently out and slips it into my cage. My heart stops pounding. YES! Me and my birds fly down the sidewalk, where there is a sidewalk on Federal Highway. Cool, ah yes. I hold the cage away from me. Ah, I've got it now. Headed home with my three babies, but I still feel upset. I ride over a stone bridge. As I pass over it, it I realize I can solve this problem of too many finches. All I have to do is swing close to the wall, hold out the arm with the cage and....let go....and keep on riding. How simple. For a split second I think, this must be what a young mother with a baby and no one to help her might feel in a moment of despair. Just let go! Then I'm over the bridge with my birds, swooping past Boston Chicken, past California Pizza on my cool white bike and for the first time in fourteen hours I feel calm. Now I decide I'll sell the birds to the little woman in the Chinese take out restaurant. I know, I just know she likes birds. Why I'll slip in with my beautiful finches. I'll tell her I want food to go. Then suddenly, I'll realize I can't carry the food because I have these finches. I'll hold up the cage. "See my birds?" I'll say. And she'll say. "Oh, look at those nice birds." Then she'll call the cook. He'll wear the apron and he'll hold long spatula in his right hand. He'll gaze at the birds and nod approval. She'll swoon over my finches. She'll just go nutso bananas to have my finches. Maybe I can exchange the price of the meal for the finches? I stop at the Chinese restaurant, just off Federal and up behind another building. The compact car out front boasts a phone number on top that ends with RICE. I park the bike and take the cage in the restaurant. The woman behind the counter smiles a beautiful sweet Cantonese hello. NOW, I ask for the take out menu explaining, I really can't buy anything because I have these birds. "See my birds," I say, and I snap the cage up to her eye level. She smiles and hands me a menu. Back on the highway the wind blows and the birds crouch in the bottom of the cage shielded from the great Florida gales. For my inside Society Finches, this must feel like be a hurricane. It's a little more difficult to manage bike and cage, but I'm cool. I turn right at 13th Avenue and sail over to 17th Way. I'm in the home stretch, down 17th Way, five long blocks. The wind blows hard. The finches are safe in the bottom of said cage. A big woman walks up the block on my right. She wears a dark tee shirt and big shorts. She smokes a cigarette. She wears shoulder length curly hair. As we get closer, she glances over without turning her head." She says, "What'cha doin', walking your cage?" And I, I in an instant snit, a raging resentment, the heat rising inside, shout back, "NO! I'm RIDING MY BIRDS!." Just as suddenly she's behind me. It's quiet. I feel silence. I hear the wind. I'm almost home. And I began to laugh. How could it be presented more clearly; the way I think of myself in the world and the way it really is. I rage at this woman for not seeing my birds. How could she know? This is like life. I assume everyone sees these beautiful birds inside me, but all they can see is the cage I came in? How easy to misunderstand or to be misunderstood. It's such a beautiful day after all. Me and my three birds sail down the highway. We're headed home. I step inside the house. For a few seconds it's quiet, then it's Peep Town USA. Home again. I pause. I see my parakeet, Rabbit sitting on his perch in m living room on Church Street. Then I see the empty cage. Then it's ok. It is going to be fine, just fine. My finches seem to think so too.

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Pittsfield Schools Schedule Morningside, Budget Hearings This Week

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff
05:23AM / Monday, April 06, 2026

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The School Committee will hold another public hearing for the potential closure of Morningside Community School.

On Thursday, April 9, at 6 p.m., community members will have the chance to give feedback in the Reid Middle School library. Last month, the Pittsfield Public Schools announced the possible closure of Morningside, which serves elementary grades, for the 2026-2027 school year and redistribution of its students to other city schools.

In the last couple of weeks, the district has solicited input from employees and community members through meetings at the school.

Morningside Community School was built in the mid-1970s with an open classroom concept. Morningside serves about 374 students and has a 7 percent accountability score, outperformed by 93 percent of the state.

For fiscal year 2027, the district has allocated about $5.2 million for the school. The committee has also requested a version of the proposed $87.2 million district budget with Morningside closed.

Pittsfield has another open concept school, Conte Community School, that is planned to consolidate with Crosby Elementary School, and possibly Stearns Elementary School, in a new building on the Crosby site by 2030. The status of the project's owner's project manager will be discussed on Tuesday, April 7, at 5 p.m. at Taconic High School during the School Building Needs Commission meeting.

That leaves the school officials wondering if Morningside students could have better educational outcomes if resources followed them to other nearby schools. Interim Superintendent Latifah Phillips has stressed that a decision has not yet been made.

Considerations for the school’s closure include: The feasibility of the facility to provide a conducive teaching and learning environment with an open campus design, the funding allocation needed to ensure Morningside students can have equitable learning opportunities, and declining enrollment across Pittsfield elementary schools.