I LIKE Crows

First, a recent news report: 

(Reuters) Patna, India: Train services were disrupted in parts of eastern India...after flocks of agitated crows snapped overhead powerlines when railway workers tried to clear their nests.

Penny, my wife, is a devoted bird watcher. Due mostly to her, we have bird feeders in front and back of our rental house. It falls to me to keep them filled with tasty seeds. In the act, I somehow found myself actually looking at the different birds and growing involved with them. Especially with crows. The crows on Martha's Vineyard are larger than crows in New Jersey; I thought they were ravens. We have one who sits on the edge of the bird bath and drops in tasty crumpets he's seized from some workingman's lunch bag, to soften them, then flies off. 

Crows in general are full of behavior. When they walk, they strut. When they get together to chat, they go chit-chit-chit. When they sing up the dawn like roosters, it's a kawww, kawww. When they swoop, other birds get out of the way. I have grown to like/love them. 

However, this guy, an outdoors columnist no less, doesn't understand crows. Or birds, apparently!  http://www.meridianstar.com/outdoors/local_story_040002917.html.

Hard to fathom how he can be so puzzled...

The 1-Minute Pitch

Ah, the joys of going to a conference. Last Thursday I drove down to Princeton, NJ, to the Theological Seminary, where the NJ branch of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) hosted a conference for those of us who Truly Believe that some child will want to read what we have written. 

 It was a gorgeous couple days. Over 200 fellow TBs plus editors and agents--all of them wiser beyond their years (I think wisdom is thrust on those who must sit in judgment on our works... hmm, perhaps that could be an educational tool, eh?) We were fed well and I had a bed in a spartan little dorm room with a shared bath. 

 I tried to keep up with my exercises, but the second day felt too early for me and simply showered and dressed and showed up for the initial session. I didn't write anything new, but had some interesting comments from an agent on something I'd submitted in advance. He liked part of it and didn't like another. I may revise after I think about it some more.

 But the nicest surprise was the 1-Minute Pitch at the last. This was an opportunity to capture an editor's interest with a Quick Pitch: a coherent but fast summary of a book I'm working on. It was a bit like fast dating. I took a chair in front of an editor, handed her my (outdated) greeting card, and started spieling. She listened and responded. Then a whistle blew and I jumped to the next chair and the next editor and repeated the process, changing slightly what I said because of the experience of the first one. 

 Three editors in about 6 minutes. And all of them were interested and told me to submit more of the project. 

 Ah, love!

In the Oughties

In the movie "The Music Man", starring Robert Preston, Prof. Harold Hill claims to have graduated in the class of "ought-five." Sounds good to me - we're living in the Oughts.

Maybe we're in the Ought-to's. As in, we ought to...

-use our incredible affluence to feed the world's hungry instead of buying expensive disposables...

- explain to our kids how to distinguish between right and wrong instead of letting relativism muddy the moral air...

- realize that entertainment, like sugar candy, is only healthy according to its quality and scarcity...

- stop holding up the President of USA up as a role model, hero-big-brother who's gonna take care of us; instead, treat him as what he or she is--a guy in an 8-year job with limited powers and then she's outta there, and that anyone who's a citizen can and should perform the job as a duty, not an ego trip...

- stop worshipping celebrities...

- de-sensualize our culture.