Friday Book Shelf

Budget cutting seems to be happening all over the country these days as state, local, and the federal governments struggle under the heavy deficit caused by the recession.

Unfortunately, it is often the things that make us the happiest and healthiest that get placed on the cutting block first; things like state and federal park funding.

Besides keeping us healthy and active, wild places nurture and heal us. Occasionally great things come out of this melding of humanity and nature. Almost everyone has heard of Walden Pond and the great Thoreau. An Indiana author of the same caliber came out of the swamps and wildflower fields of Indiana.

In Gene Stratton Porter's The Song of the Cardinal, Stratton-Porter takes the reader inside the mind and life of a male cardinal. The book is a haunting reminder that mankind is not the only intelligence on earth and that good stewardship of our wild areas should be a requirement in good times as well as bad.

The Song of the Cardinal is a short book that can be read in an afternoon. And I guarantee once you pick it up, like all Stratton-Porter's books, you won't be able to put it down.