When I was young, my father would walk in the door after being out in Chicago's cold, windy weather and declare: "The hawk is out there today!" He had another raptor reference that equally puzzled me and had no connection to the first: "The eagle flies on Friday..," which I learned is borrowed from an old blues tune and means "it's payday." My childhood is dotted with memories of blustery walks to school and feeling as though I'd be lifted by the wind and blown away like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.
Yet, the literal reference to the hawk puzzled me until I did some research (another of my father's saying whenever you asked him a question was "look it up--that's what they have libraries for!"). So I looked up hawks. We know that they swoop on their prey, they soar and shoot through the sky and swoop down again. Yesterday, I went for a leisurely ride of about 75 miles. Winds gusts were out of the southeast 44 mil
