I wrote a blog post inspired by this song back in May 2018.

It delves into the physics of how planes fly AND how we human beings sing involving something called the Bernoulli effect.

You can click here to visit (or re-visit) it if you are curious.

Now I am releasing “Wind Beneath My Wings” this November as a bow of thanksgiving to my sweetheart along with all of the family, friends, fans, medical team members, and fellow bloggers who lift me up when my spirits are at a low ebb.

THANK YOU for sharing your enthusiasm and positive energy with me.

And THANK YOU, too, for keeping quiet when you are unmoved by and/or don’t like what I have created.

I also want to honor all of the grassroots activists who have worked diligently for many years to help achieve the results of last week’s midterm elections here in the USA — as well as grassroots activists in other countries such as Brazil, Serbia and Hungary.

They/we are the wind beneath the wings of so many great candidates!

THANK YOU!!!!

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

This blog post is rather long (the result of drafting more than one version during the past few months).

I totally understand if you just want to read for a bit and then quit.

But I am only sharing one or two blog posts per month these days; so maybe you will make it to the end of this one…

I spent a lot of time this summer in upstate New York, gazing at birds of prey soaring in the sky.

Once I saw a bunch of bald eagles (!!!) circling above the AMTRAK station in Syracuse.

I also spotted ospreys — who live near Cayuga Lake, where my extended family has a very rustic cottage — and lots of hawks.

But mostly what I saw were turkey vultures — sometimes as many as twenty at a time — zooming and looping on thermals over my head.

I learned from the Cornell Department of Ornithology website that vultures are not always classified as a bird of prey because they tend to eat animals which are already dead.

Turkey vultures use their “sense of smell to locate carrion. The part of its brain responsible for processing smells is particularly large, compared to other birds. Its heightened ability to detect odors — it can detect just a few parts per trillion — allows it to find dead animals below a forest canopy.”

So while they are soaring in the sky, they are also sniffing for something to eat!

We witnessed turkey vultures in action when an opossum was run over on a road near us last week.

After a few days, all that remained was fur and bones…

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

There are many more fascinating turkey vulture details — including the unexpected fact that they poop on their feet to cool themselves down in the summer— listed on this webpage if you are curious to learn more.

I very much admire that birds of prey continue to eke out a living despite our human encroachment on their terrain.

Where I live most of the time (in East Arlington, MA, outside of Boston) I often see hawks overhead.

And one hawk in particular has been alighting at the top of an office building next door to our condominium.

Smaller birds — usually blue jays or mockingbirds — announce the presence of this particular hawk with lots of raucous yelling accompanied by judicious dive-bombing in an attempt to drive her/him away.

And this spring, as I was walking home from the Alewife subway stop, I was shocked to see a bald eagle swoop very low over a bunch of us human beings walking and biking home on the local bike path.

Wow!

S/he was carrying a big fish; so maybe that’s why they were flying so low to the ground?

There are several ponds and lakes nearby where bald eagles are able to catch fish.

Tragically, human beings in our town regularly kill and injure raptors.

I only know this because we have a passionate group of residents who keep track of the health (and deaths) of our local eagles, hawks and owls.

They often post signs which urge all of us to stop using certain kinds of poison in our homes AND to be more careful with our fishing tackle.

Recently one of the bald eagles who nest at the top of a pine tree in a cemetery in the middle of town was found dead due to rodent poisoning.

And not too long ago a screech owl was rescued from fishing line entanglement at one of our town ponds.

Yet another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer with my blog posts, but I can’t help observing that we human beings continue to be very blithe and/or ignorant/uninformed about the potential consequences of our daily actions.

In our house we now use small bowls of pancake mix + baking soda to kill unwanted mice/rat visitors.

We have been told that this makes their digestive system explode — which sounds like a very painful death — but it does not leave them full of poison which will also kill any other animal who consumes their dead bodies.

And I have never gone fishing as an adult — although I did fish a little bit as a child — and I probably left fishing line tangled up in a tree at some point due to poor casting choices…

Shifting to a less traumaatic tangent related to this lovely song, I was surprised to learn from Wikipedia how many people recorded “Wind Beneath My Wings” before Bette Midler’s version became a huge hit.

It was written by American songwriters Jeff Silbar and Larry Henley in 1982, inspired by the title of a poem which Larry had written for his ex-wife.

An Australian singer named Kamahl took the first whack at recording it for a country album he was making, but his version was never released.

Then Roger Whittaker, Sheena Easton, Lee Greenwood, Colleen Hewett, Lou Rawls, Gladys Knight & the Pips, and Gary Morris each recorded their own versions — some of which were minor hits in Australia, the UK and the USA.

It wasn’t until 1988 that Ms. Midler recorded it for the soundtrack of her movie with Barbara Hershey called BEACHES — and the rest is herstory…

You can learn much more about this song by clicking here if you are curious.

You can also stream my and Doug’s version by clicking here.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for playing piano so magnificently and for his prodigious engineering skills.

Thank you to Nicki Nichols Gamble, who asked me to learn and perform this song at her husband Richard’s memorial service many years ago.

Thank you to the generous, talented photographers at Pixabay.

Thank you to my sister Christianne for taking the photo of me which we used in the graphic design when she was an undergraduate at Yale.

Thank you to Stephen C. Fischer for his graphic design expertise and ongoing patience with me.

Thank you to Bette Midler for making this song a huge hit.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to yet another one of my blog posts.

PS: After I wrote this blog post, I saw a rather extraordinary reel on Facebook.

I hope it’s not AI-generated…

A harpy eagle is summoned by what appears to be a park ranger.

S/he swoops towards the ranger, who lies down and gives the seemingly very happy harpy eagle a hug!

You can click here if you’d like to check it out.

As Emily Dickinson once observed,

“Hope is the thing with feathers —

That perches in the soul —

And sings the tune without the words —

And never stops – at all…”

One final deep breath in.

And deep breath out.