Laura Erickson's For the Birds

In 1888, Ludvig Nobel, brother of explosives manufacturer and dynamite inventor Alfred, died in France of a heart attack. According to History.com:

Thanks to poor reporting, at least one French newspaper believed that it was Alfred who had perished, and it proceeded to write a scathing obituary that branded him a “merchant of death” who had grown rich by developing new ways to “mutilate and kill.” The error was later corrected, but not before Alfred had the unpleasant experience of reading his own death notice. The incident may have brought on a crisis of conscience and led him to reevaluate his career. According to biographer Kenne Fant, Nobel “became so obsessed with the posthumous reputation that he rewrote his last will, bequeathing most of his fortune to a cause upon which no future obituary writer would be able to cast aspersions.”

I learned of this story this week, when a New York Times commentary suggested that some healthcare insurance CEOs, reading the unprecedented public response to the murder of a different CEO, might have a similar change of heart and do their best to fix the horrifyingly broken system that has enriched so many of them at the expense of so many bankruptcies and human lives. Like all major corporations, healthcare insurers are legally mandated to maximize profits for their shareholders regardless of ethics or the needs of their paying customers, so I’m not holding my breath. Reading reports of his own death did nothing to change Mark Twain’s character, but his response to the New York Journal would be misquoted for ever more:

I can understand perfectly how the report of my illness got about, I have even heard on good authority that I was dead. James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness. The report of my death was an exaggeration.

When I wrote yesterday about my beloved Pileated Woodpecker BB disappearing when a Cooper’s Hawk was in the neighborhood two weeks ago, my suggestion that he was probably dead was premature. BB showed up at midmorning today, proving the silliness of thinking Friday the Thirteenth is unlucky. I didn’t have my camera when I first spotted him, but got a few photos in my back boxelder and then on our telephone pole, where he hammered out an announcement to the neighborhood that he’s still in charge.