The Treehouse

It seemed fitting, somehow, to read Naomi Wolf's The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom from My Father on How to Live, Love, and See on Father's Day. I had heard her interviewed when it was first released in 2005 and filed the title away in some back recess of my mind, deciding to read it in the future. Later, when I stumbled across copy of the newly-released paperback in my local Barnes & Noble, I took it home with me. That was some time ago.

You may know Wolf as the Yale-educated, Rhodes Scholar, feminist author of The Beauty Myth. You may also know that her father was Leonard Wolf, a teacher/author and philosopher of sorts, who found his way through the early days of the American Communist Party to teaching creative writing in San Francisco in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Given her background, you might expect Naomi Wolf's voice to be stridently feminist, unwilling to accept advice from any father figure, even her own. She readily admits to having done that. Finally, in her forties and beginning to take on the role of teacher herself, she asked her father to share with her the lessons he had taught so many students along the way. The lessons take place as three generations work together to build a treehouse for seven-year-old Rosa Wolf.

The lessons are simple yet somehow profound; a few seem hopelessly impractical. You may come away with the sense that there are Quixotic windmills nearby. But that's the magic of this father's lessons - encouraging you to do what you love, be who you are, and allow the "grace of the imagination" to guide you through your life. They are lessons worth reading.

A different kind of Father's Day movie

With many thanks to PBS and a "Nature" re-run, I finally saw the short documentary called "Pale Male."

I had heard part of the story a while ago when CBS "Sunday Morning" did a segment on the male Red-tailed Hawk who had made his home in Manhattan's Upper East Side for close to ten years. I had even visited Lincoln Karim's site viewing many of the photos that have been added there for over five years. Both were interesting, but the program is so much more.

The show itself is wonderful - telling about Pale Male's unlikely appearance in New York, then weaving in the story of the many New Yorker's who took up the vigil as he mated with his "First Love" and began raising the first of many chicks. He has now out-lived four mates and has sired more than twenty chicks.

He hunts tirelessly to feed his chicks, protects them from marauding flocks of crows, and ultimately entices them out of the nest when it's time for the chicks to learn to fend for themselves. In short, he's a father. And a good one, at that.

The camera work is beautiful, capturing close-up shots of the birds along with beautiful views of the city's skyline and Central Park. We get to know some of the New Yorker's who come together daily to celebrate Pale Male's life. Like them, we watch breathlessly as the first fledgling chick is blown off the nest (150 feet above the nearest tree) and tries to fly. We feel the loss of Pale Male's first mate, and celebrate his devotion to his chicks.

But the real story is this remarkable bird who decided to make a Fifth Avenue co-op near Central Park his home. That this small bird somehow brought together strangers and turned them into friends - well, that's just a bonus.

If you have the opportunity, watch "Pale Male." It's an extraordinary story, purely natural, and a very positive kind of Father's Day tale.