The Merlin Songbook

Lady Jay was in New Haven for Memorial Day Weekend, and among the highlights was being able to take a new app of hers into East Rock Park.

It’s called “Merlin Bird ID,” and it was created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University to identify birds based on their calls and songs. You just open the app, press the “Sound” button and within a few seconds, the app identifies the species you’re hearing at that very moment.

It’s like “Shazam” but for birds.

Armed with the app and a small pair of binoculars, we felt like true birders — folks that I’ve largely blown right past as I listen to podcasts on my walks through East Rock Park.

We heard about 20 different species that day, from Yellow Warblers to Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks to Black-Capped Chickadees and many others. Having the app tell us which birds are there is helpful, though the tricky part is actually spotting them.

After seeing it come up on the app, we did track down a Wood Thrush thanks to its flute-like song that sounded to me like R2-D2. I loved seeing its white underbelly with large brown spots. I’m sure it’s common around here but it felt special being able to identify it and see it up close.

We bumped into a few fellow birders a short time later, and while looking at some Ospreys flying overhead, they told us we had just missed a Bald Eagle. Rats!

Doing this activity together was a blast for me and Lady Jay. I got such a kick out of it that I downloaded the app myself. On a solo walk in the park on Tuesday, I put my headphones in my pocket and opened my ears — and the Merlin app — to the sounds above me. Though I missed my partner, I added a few more species to our list (American Goldfinch, Cedar Waxwing, Hermit Thrush). I also noticed something else: rather than racing through my walk as usual, I discovered myself slowing down, listening, paying more attention to nature.

It’s a little sad that it took an app to get me to behave this way, but I suppose it’s better than not doing it at all.

At one point, I saw a woman on the trail who was also walking slowly, her phone facing skyward in her outstretched palm.

“Merlin app?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said with a smile.

We birders know what’s up.

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The Best…

…Op-ed I Read This Week

“The Most Human Class at Yale” — By Grace Albright, The Yale Daily News, May 17, 2025

I’ve been wrestling with how to approach this piece of writing — a farewell Yale Daily News column written by a graduating senior named Grace Albright — because it conjures so many different thoughts in me.

Albright discusses the impact of a class she took called “Daily Themes,” in which students are asked to write a 300-word essay every weekday for an entire semester.

Not only did I not take this class, I don’t even remember it existing, though it’s been offered at Yale since 1907. I can relate to its premise, however. I imposed a similar kind of structure on myself when I started writing a blog in 2011 (“Twenty Minutes a Day” on Tumblr), and this Substack newsletter offered a similar challenge when I launched it 2023, though in weekly form rather than daily. In both of those cases, committing to a writing practice helped me handle unexpected upheaval in my life.

The piece also has some insightful things to say about the grind of writing, especially for college students. “After seven semesters steeped in the rigor of analytic philosophy, my prose was overworked,” she writes. “Every sentence tried to prove something, and every paragraph braced itself for rebuttal. I had forgotten how to write freely.” Like a lot of writers, I struggle with this too. Back in March 2023, I expressed my appreciation for Rick Rubin’s book on creativity. Anytime I feel my creativity losing out to “proving something,” I think of this line:

“All art is a work in progress. It’s helpful to see the piece we’re working on as an experiment. One in which we can’t predict the outcome. Whatever the result, we will receive useful information that will benefit the next experiment.”

(Though how much original writing will matter in the future is up for debate. Less than an hour after I first saw Albright’s essay, I read this disheartening piece in New York that basically outlines all the ways that college students are using generative AI tools to cheat — particularly on writing assignments.)

The piece is also an effective bit of memoir for a time that is still very fresh in her mind but will become more distant with every passing day. “Just as I’m beginning to find my voice, just as my writing has started to feel less like a performance and more like a practice, it’s all slipping away,” she writes. Oh, to be nostalgic for college while you’re still in college!

But the most compelling reason I wanted to share Albright’s essay here is because it’s a loving tribute to Lary Bloom, who was her tutor in the “Daily Themes” class. Lary is a treasured member of the East Rock community here in New Haven and has been a professional writer for decades. Working with the students in this class, he says, is part of what keeps him young.

I’ve written before about how my newsletter connected me to Lary and his wife Sue through my Aunt Laura. That initial meeting has led to many wonderful hours spent with them, and lots of time talking with Lary about writing. Through his unique form of self-deprecating wisdom, he never fails to offer encouragement, empathy, and some nourishing food for thought. It’s an experience I always relish, and one Albright clearly enjoyed, too.

I found myself nodding along with everything she writes about Lary, particularly these lines:

Lary never hovered above my work with a red pen — he sat with it. Whenever something in my writing fell short, he didn’t reach for a rule or a correction. He reached for a story. A moment when his own sentence structure collapsed under the weight of an idea. A Broadway play that reframed the way he saw the human condition. His feedback never arrived at a verdict; it arrived as a memory, a shared vulnerability.

Lary has more published bylines than I could ever dream of, more book projects than I can imagine, and enough stories to impress even Scheherazade. But as Albright points out, “Lary never felt like a tutor in the traditional sense. He was a fellow writer, if not a peer.”

I know that feeling well. And I couldn’t have described it any better myself.

(For the latest example of Lary’s published writing, check out his report from his recent visit to Normandy: “A Vietnam Vet At Omaha Beach” from The New Haven Independent.)