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The Florida Keys Wild Bird Center appears to travelers down the Overseas Highway as a relatively unassuming establishment, with only a small sign advertising its existence to passers-by. If you make the decision to turn down the narrow gravel road, however, you’re in for quite a treat. Birds of all sorts in large, hand-built enclosures and roaming free line a boardwalk that turns into a sand path along the shore, and ends with an observatory area overlooking a salt marsh. Everything is clearly done by hand, and the Center’s only funding comes from the voluntary donations of visitors (no entrance fee is charged) and from the support of individuals, some of whom have been memorialized on hand-carved wooden plaques nailed throughout the sanctuary.

I took a bunch of pictures at the Center, all available on Flickr here. Most of these are of birds that originally came to the Center because they were injured, and are now in various stages of being re-released to live on their own in the wild. Also, there are some birds that naturally live in the salt marsh near the sanctuary, and undoubtedly have learned to stick close by for the inevitable outpouring of fish that emerges from the Center’s freezers.

You can visit the Center’s website at http://www.fkwbc.org to see all the great work they do rehabilitating sick or injured birds and re-releasing them into the wild, as well as conservation efforts in which the Center takes part. Once you’ve read up on the organization, visit their donation page. You can be sure your money will go to the birds.

Zing.

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A TV tower in Berlin in the former East Germany.

Two years ago, in January of 2005, I was lucky enough to travel to Berlin for the purpose of writing a paper on East German punk rock. While there, I took a bunch of photos, mostly on the theme of the Wall, and the consequent division of the city, both phyisically and psychologically. Almost 20 years after that Wall came down, Berlin is still very much two cities-an Eastern metropolis quickly and ravenously consuming the trappings of Western consumerism, and a glittering Western icon and bastion of capitalism no longer surrounded by the dark threat of Communism.

A bus turnaround necessitated by the Wall.

Most people in the East speak two languages, as do their Western counterparts, but that language is Russian, not English. People my age remember the fall of the Wall vividly, as grandparents and other family members hitherto unreachable for over 30 years were suddenly a 10-minute subway ride away.

18 years ago, satellite dishes were illegal in this part of Berlin, as they carried only capitalist media.

Yet, in spite of the collapse of the physical divide, Berlin remains two cities, clearly demarcated by crumbling bits of the Wall and other fading symbols of the official separation. The unique feeling one gets in Berlin has stuck with me to this day. It is Germany’s most vibrant and cheerful city, yet the memory of its recent violent past still governs the countenances and attitudes of Berliners today. View the Flickr photostream from Berlin beginning here.
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