{"product_id":"blackie-co","title":"Blackie \u0026 Co.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Each page [is] a radiance of curiosity and kindness, the whole of it a bright assurance of the tenacity of life . . . To extend [friendship] across the barrier of biology and sentience, to another creature endowed with a wholly other consciousness, partakes of the miraculous.” —Maria Popova, from the Foreword\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e\n\n\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom Marginalian Editions comes a moving meditation on our connection with other creatures, told through the unforgettable story of a family of blackbirds sharing a birder’s backyard garden.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn the savage winter of 1962—Europe’s coldest in eighty years—a blackbird began roosting in the elderberry tree outside Hockley Clarke’s window. Clarke, a retired headmaster and lifelong birder, named him “Blackie” and began bringing him food every morning and evening. What followed was a quiet miracle: an exchange of trust and tenderness between a man and a bird, deepening into something like friendship.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFirst published in 1978, \u003ci\u003eBlackie \u0026amp; Co.\u003c\/i\u003e is Clarke’s luminous account of the blackbird family that took up residence in his garden. With warmth, humility, and wonder, Clarke records the small, daily rituals through which interspecies connection can take root: a chuckle of greeting, a flight to the hand, a shared rhythm of weather and care. “I spoke to him; he knew my voice and I am sure that he answered in his own language,” Clarke writes. “There was perfect trust between us, a source of joy to me, and it must have been a comfort to him.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEchoing the spirit of Gilbert White, J. A. Baker, and Helen Macdonald, Clarke reminds us that our relationships with other species need not be symbolic or sentimental to be profound. With a foreword by Maria Popova—who describes the book as “a bright assurance of the tenacity of life”—\u003ci\u003eBlackie \u0026amp; Co.\u003c\/i\u003e is a forgotten classic of uncommon grace: a hymn to the unspectacular wonders of the everyday.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"McNally Jackson Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57258356867416,"sku":"9781961341722","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/blackie-co","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}