George Levine writes

Carolina Beach, 2011

My memories of Michael are many, almost always of Michael as caretaker --

in particular, of Sasha, whom he guided around the world and
took with us birding, and loved.  He extended that way of being to
everything, even to the young mockingbird he saved, took to his
office, raised and sadly and rightly released, to the Myna bird who
walked across Marge's dinner dish at his house.  I remember well his
little article about us birders wandering around a garbage dump, and
the first little trip we took together out to Staten Island, when his
curiosity about birding first developed, and where he mistook a
mockingbird for a shrike, and the wonderful speed with which he
learned the birding world, as he learned so many things, and then
outgrew it, returning to observe not so much the birds as the people
who watched the birds.  I loved his wonderfully smart discussions with
Paul and me as we drove from birding site to birding site, during
which he taught us both a lot about different cultures, and different
ways of seeing.  And most comically for Paul and me, who until Michael
joined us were austerely severe birders, I remember his determination
that we should pause during our birding outings and take a serious
lunch.  He became our restaurant guide to birders' New Jersey. Paul
and I still go to the Italian restaurant he found for us near Jamaica
Bay, and we still order the same dish of spicy pasta and mussels to
which he introduced us, and we talk of Michael every time we are lucky
enough to get out there.  He was always, first, a friend who
recognized that birding was as much a way to bond with us as to see
the birds. He is one of the stars of my little book, LIFEBIRDS,
along with Paul -- two of the people I have cared most about in my
life, and I am all the more happy that I wrote about him there as he
watched us watching and made us aware of everything in new ways.

Do give him my love.  He must know that he matters a great deal to me.

With love,
George