A Singular School

An Author Visit. I had never done an author visit to a school before. I could never have anticipated what that entailed, the months of preparation on the part of my school contacts at Clermont Northeastern Middle School in Batavia, Ohio. In order to accommodate an author, in this case for the entire day, they have call assemblies, figure out how many kids they can pack into each assembly, and in general discard any semblance of their normal schedule. Speaking to middle school students is different from speaking at nature festivals or bird club banquets. For one thing, festival goers and bird club members don't have to sit on the floor. There are other differences, too. Middle school students get a lot more excited than bird club people. And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing.

I visited Clermont Northeastern Middle School on November 7. And it was clear to me as the excitement for my visit built up that overhauling their schedule was the least of CNE's preparations. I had first received an inquiry from a gracious and lovely person named Pam Murphy, who was familiar with my work, but who retired from her position as school librarian in the year that ensued. She must have made a good case for hosting me. Library aide Sherri Newberry and science teacher Melody Newman took up Pam's torch and made sure the students were familiar with Letters from Eden. Mrs. Newberry got all fired up, made Letters a centerpiece of her library classes, and read several chapters to her students. In a unique electronic outreach, they and several other teachers took pains to familiarize their students with my blog.

Ooh. Wait a minute.

When the 5th through 8th grade students began digging into the archives of the last three years, I was extremely happy that I've taken care from the very start to keep it reasonably clean, rant-free and kid-friendly. Once a post goes up, it's up, and there it stands for anyone to read at any time. So do the comments.

Pause for other bloggers to think about whether they want 5th through 8th graders reading their blog archives...waiting for their next post...

OK, go get yourselves a glass of wine and come back. Pour me one, too. The genie is out of the bottle. I am not going back to edit old posts. I yam what I yam, as Popeye says.

Not only had the kids read much of my book and begun following my blog, but Melody Newman had spearheaded an effort to have a feeding station put up and a bird blind built overlooking the feeding station...all in time for my visit. This fact really didn't sink in on me until I walked into the blind, redolent of new plywood, and sat down to look at birds visiting the spanking-new feeders. This is not just any bird blind. It is a masterpiece, built as an Eagle Scout project by CNE alum Nick Adams. Here is Nick, with his sister Caitlin, me and Melody Newman. You'll see more of Caitlin later. This is the night before the school visit, and she doesn't know what she is about to discover. Neither do I, but we look like we're expecting something good, don't we?photo by Sherri Newberry

And here is the blind that Nick built, on weekends and evenings for "I don't know, exactly. A really long time."
photo courtesy Melody Newman and Sherri Newberry

I could live in this bird blind.The students were obviously proud and happy to have an official school bird blind. Have you ever seen a middle school with its own bird feeders and observation blind? Me, neither. The middle school I attended was an enormous, dark, windowless prison, a maze of dreadful dark halls and windowless cubicle classrooms. Did I mention that there were no windows? Every bit of vegetation had been scoured away, as if to eliminate places for prison-breakers to hide...But I digress. Shudder...

Clermont Northeastern Middle School was much, much better. It was great. Though the feeders had been up for only a week, cardinals, white-breasted nuthatches, blue jays, white-throated sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, and even a red-bellied woodpecker visited the feeding station while the students and I looked on. I was impressed at the birds' adaptability; they were probably already well-acclimated to the sight and sound of active kids, and our wiggling around in the blind didn't faze them. It was the perfect way for kids without binoculars to get close looks at wild birds on school grounds. Imagine.

It became clear to me that Mrs. Newman is the kind of person who can't help leaving a legacy behind. She cares deeply that her students truly connect with nature, and she puts that caring into action. Thanks to her, plantings around the school building were bird-friendly, fruit-bearing shrubs and trees. A beautiful pond graces school grounds, afloat with Canada geese, home to snapping turtles and minnows, because Mrs. Newman refused to allow it to be filled in for a parking lot. She and her students can be found out there with dip nets and buckets, figuring out what all lives beneath its quiet surface. A school with a pond.Is the sight and sound of Canada geese skimming in to land on a pond, a wriggly crawfish in a child's hand, the sight of a young snapping turtle surfacing to breathe, worth as much as a few extra parking spaces, a slab of hot asphalt? Mrs. Newman thinks so, and so do the CNE students. The pond is an aesthetic oasis and a place of inquiry.

But there is an even greater legacy now. Behind CNE, on its land, is a very fine stand of old timber, many trees in excess of 100 years old. Dominated by fine, straight oak and hickory trees, it is precisely the kind of stand that, in southern Ohio, might long ago have been cut and sold for lumber. How it escaped timbering this long is a wonder and a mystery. Finally, though, tough financial times and its undeniable monetary value combined to bring it onto the block. The old trees were spray-painted and marked for cutting. Melody Newman said no. And then she yelled NO!!!! long and loud, and a lot of other people yelled with her. She and her students had made a nature trail through that forest, and they meant to keep it. Were these trees, this mature forest ecosystem, worth more than their value as timber? Mrs. Newman thought so, and she'd have lain down in front of the bulldozers if she had to. She may yet have to. There is as yet no formal protection of this woodlot, no covenant to ensure that it will remain forever wooded. But for now, it is safe. Here's Mrs. Newman in her element.
Here is the outdoor classroom that Ivan Glasgow built for the school's science classes. Mrs. Newman's vision at work, again. It's in a beautiful natural amphitheatre and it has all the comfort and wonder of the woods in it.photo courtesy Melody Newman and Sherri Newberry

And it was through that beautiful forest we walked on November 3, and it was there that we found the most magical thing imaginable.
Oh. What's THAT?Next...It's a bird! It's a mouse! It's a...

I love to torture you kids.

The Fuertes Library

The old Lab of Ornithology was a humble block building which subsequently grew to include a string of offices housed in mobile homes in the woods. I doubt that anyone who worked in the old buildings misses the good old days, when the organization’s needs and staff outgrew the original structure. I was eager to see the new building, and it didn’t disappoint. One of the things I was most impressed with was the loving, careful reconstruction of the jewel of the old Lab: the wood-paneled library, adorned with Fuertes paintings. The paintings all appear as they originally did, though it seemed to me the ceiling might have been raised considerably. It’s still warm and intimate and exquisite, and a local artisan contributed handmade chairs with a nodding heron design to finish it off.

Here are some of the panels in the library. I adore this old man turkey, and the winter pastels of the landscape around him. There’s such a mood in this piece. And there's a victorious peregrine with bufflehead buffet. Fuertes did terrific upside-down dead birds, probably because he had one right in front of him to draw from.
A magnificent tryptich of snowy owl, king eider, and Canada goose.

The same owl, with scaup and scoters.

An autumnal gem: a strutting ruffed grouse in glowing sugar maple and white pine woodland. Don’t’ you want to walk with him? Look at the perspective and handling of his tail. I love this piece. I can hear his soft footfalls in the leaves and smell the curing forest litter, hear the calls of migrating jays and feel the melancholy of autumn seeping in.

More panels, these of puddle ducks and a red-shouldered hawk, in situ. You can see a little peek through to the fabulous Wild Birds Unlimited shop just beyond. They sold quite a few copies of Letters from Eden during the show and talks!

The whole works. What a room.

Half of my show, spitting distance from Louis’ work. Happy sigh.

When I was a baby bird artist in the mid-80’s, I gave a talk in the old Fuertes Library, awed that I was surrounded by my hero’s work. I was no less humbled this time, especially by hanging my simple watercolors in a room immediately adjoining the library. Though the Letters from Eden show comprises over 60 paintings (with another bunch still waiting to be framed), we had to cherry-pick the ones we most wanted to hang, and in the end had room for about half of them. In hanging the show, Charles Eldermire and I had to balance our desire to show all the work with the realities of the space. The system involves clips and wires, such that the paintings are suspended from molding near the ceiling, so there was a lot of scurrying up and down a ladder on Charles’ part; it was like a two-day Stairmaster marathon for him. My role was mostly that of fussy arbiter. We were in sync, though, and the hanging went smoothly, even though it took a lot longer than either of us anticipated. There was an international symposium of migration biologists meeting at the same time, so we could work only at night, after the meetings were over. Here's one wall of paintings.
And the second one. We struggled to get the important things up, without overcrowding things. It makes me happy to think that, at least until mid-July, the same air molecules will be circulating over Fuertes' work and mine; that people will be able, perhaps, to see the influence of the master in a student he never knew. If staring holes in book plates can teach a kid how to paint birds, I learned. Here's my favorite plate from Forbush and May's A Natural History of Birds Of Eastern and Central North America. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for that first Fuertes book. It was $3.95 well spent. I remember trying so hard to write straight as I made it all mine.
Come see me at the Scioto Bird Club's one-day bird festival on Saturday, May 3, from 7-noon at the Mound City Group Visitor's Center in Chillicothe, Ohio. I'll be giving my Letters from Eden talk at 10:30 AM and leading a bird walk at 9 AM, as well as signing books. I know at least one blogreader who's coming!

In the Shade Coffee Plantation

Coffee in bloom. Do you ever think of the flower that precedes the bean, with its light, citrusy fragrance?

That day with the long-tailed manakins at Tarrales was magic. As I sat and watched for the manakins, a tropical pewee came down and sat quietly not far from my right shoulder.
Waiting for manakins, I saw everything else--a Swainson's thrush, eating the same lauraceous fruit that the manakins were enjoying. A Baltimore oriole, perched on an inga tree above the shade coffee plantation where the manakins were foraging. It was a flash back to my painting of the same subject for the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. Full circle! Trying to get a photograph of the oriole reminded me why there will always be a place for artists who can paint an idealized scene. Would you know that the oriole in my photo was inhabiting a shade coffee plantation? The fact is, all this bird activity was taking place within an active agricultural field of shade-grown coffee. Shade growing leaves the overstory largely intact, if thinned, and replaces the understory with coffee shrubs. It's not virgin forest by any means, but it's highly valuable habitat for Neotropical migrants and tropical resident birds.
The entire time I sat quietly watching for manakins, a gray hawk screamed at me from across a valley.
It was clear to me that this vociferous bird had a nest nearby, because its mate would periodically come to join it and add its protests.
Gray hawks (Buteo nitidus) sound a lot like gulls, or red-shouldered hawks. This species is a rare prize near Nogales, Arizona, on the Mexican border, but they're very common around Tarrales.
Looking across the valley, I could see the most gorgeous golden trees in full bloom. Could anything send a clearer message to a honeycreeper to come sample some nectar?
Walking down from the manakin feeding area at last, I found a tree that had fallen across the path. The richness of canopy life hit me when I realized that the trunk was covered with creeping orchids. Oh, oh, oh. Of course, they were spicily fragrant, their tiny pink flowers no larger than my thumbnail. Charmed, I'm sure. Twitching, in fact.
Like the vast majority of things I found in Guatemala, I had no idea what they were. I knew they were orchids, and that was about it. Sigh. Another thing to figure out. Being mostly on the tree's underbelly, I hoped they would get enough moisture to survive, or perhaps be transferred to a more suitable spot before the tree rotted away. One could collect many such doomed plants if one were so inclined. Every tree that comes down holds treasures untold from the upper reaches of the forest. I could go pretty wild, having a garden in Guatemala.

As I rounded a turn in the dark trail, I spotted my life white-eared ground-sparrow (Melozone leucotis). What a bird! Buried in shadow, there was no way I could get a photograph of it. I stood, letting the feeling wash over me, of seeing something I'd never seen before. I looked down at the ground--I usually stare at the ground when I'm not looking for a bird--and there in the leaf litter lay the molted tail feather of a blue-crowned motmot. Well, would you look at that.
Magic, that's all it was, the whole day, and as tough as the trip turned out to be, I was glad I'd come here. I dream of spending a week or so just doodling around Los Tarrales, seeing what it has to show me.

Department of Shameless Promotion

Note to New Yorkers: I'll be speaking at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Sapsucker Woods in Ithaca on Monday evening, April 7--and opening the Letters from Eden art show at the same time. The show of 60-plus watercolors and drawings will hang at the Lab until July 7. Having never seen the new building, I'm really excited to be loaning some art to decorate it for three months! Many thanks to Jerry Regan and the Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art for helping me put the show together, creating the fabulous labels, curating and transporting the show, and kicking off its national tour! For more details, see the Lab of Ornithology's web site.

For All The Stinkers on Your List

...the perfect gift.

I met a woman named Diane in New Mexico. She's had Flower since she (the skunk) was one day old. Flower's pretty imprinted on people, and unreleasable, so she's the ideal education skunk for The Wildlife Center. Ooh, I'm jealous. I've always wanted to raise a skunk or two.

Diane just sent me some pictures of Flower checking out Letters from Eden. Just a reminder for all you folks looking for that perfect after-Christmas, anytime gift...I'll sign it for you.This time last year I was taking garden cartloads of boxed books to the Whipple post office. And I wondered why I had no time to Christmas shop or wrap presents or do anything but paddle madly to stay afloat...I'm thrilled not to be handling a holiday rush on book sales. Almost 800 individually-signed and boxed copies later, I've had my fill of fulfillment for awhile.

Just got in from recording three more NPR commentaries in Athens, and leisurely shopping for stocking stuffers. What a blast. I never do stuff like that. Had a nice Reuben at a diner and did some people watching; saw a college girl in a long black trenchcoat, rainbow scarf, Raggedy Ann striped tights and dreadlocks skip across the street. That was cool, something I don't get to see every day. I used to skip, too, when I wasn't rolling along on red Krypto skatewheels.

Thanks for the pictures of sweet Flower, Diane. You made my day. Mustelids rule!

My Show of Shows

photo by Phoebe Linnea Thompson
All right, then. About the show in Pennsylvania. I hadn't had a one-woman show since 1993, upon moving here to Ohio. There were about 70 works in it. I took it to two venues, one in Marietta, and one in Parkersburg, WV, and I sold two small works. And decided that was enough of that. I folded my showtent.

This one was different. It wasn't my idea; it was the idea of people who think a lot bigger. Scott Weidensaul, who is on the board of the Center, asked if I'd like to do a show there, and I didn't hesitate to say yes. The Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art knows how to put on a show. That's what they do. So all I had to do was get our good friend John to frame about 60 pieces, and the Ned Smith Center did the rest, including some fabbo signage, labels, and even outtakes from the text of Letters from Eden, right there on the walls along with the art. They hung it in their beautiful gallery and invited a bunch of people, and the people came. They planned a huge Friday night gala/auction at the Harrisburg Country Club, with a keynote by me (including music with Bill); on Saturday, two gallery tours, a book signing, and a two-hour art seminar. There were radio and television interviews, newspaper articles, and 170 books to sign (and a bunch to paint original color remarques in). It was different from my show in 1993. It was a whole lot different from that.

David Sibley showed at the Ned Smith Center last year, and had a wonderful series of events. When asked whether he'd ever had a weekend show like that one, I'm told he said, "Well, I've given talks, and led field trips, and had book signings, and done gallery tours. But not all at one time." That's a wonderful little Sibleyism, and it mirrors my experience, too.photo by Bill Thompson, III

It was so strange to walk into the august surroundings of the Harrisburg Country Club, hear the muted roar of many, many voices, sneak around with a glass of merlot in my hand, and think, "Who are these people, and why are they here?"photo by Bill Thompson, III

I knew one person there, besides the Center staff and my immediate family. An old friend from high school in Virginia came up to see me, and he helped get me through the cocktail hour. It became clear in a sudden flash to me that everyone else was there to support the Ned Smith Center, and I was just the entertainment. I hadn't really grasped that before I walked into the country club, but realizing that helped me handle the scene, which is somewhat removed from my usual habitat (cluttered studio with kids and pets underfoot, or quiet woods), and put it in perspective. photo by Bill Thompson, III

Bill and I got the kids all cleaned up, and Bill set about documenting the event in these photos. Here, Phoebe and Liam do the Vanna White thing with one of the beautiful placards prepared by the Center. No, I didn't get to keep them. Rats!
After drinks and lots of conversation with a lot of nice, well-dressed people, it was upstairs to the banquet room. Zow. Double zow. That's a lot of people at $150 a plate. No, we are not in southern Ohio anymore.
The auction and talk went well. I had three pieces in the live auction and several more in the silent auction. I'm told they went well. I was barely there, thinking about what I was going to say. Did some reading from Letters from Eden, some poetry, and a couple of songs with Bill. They seemed to like it. By now it was about 10 PM and pretty well past my bedtime. There were some books to sign. Kathy B. kept me company, and Phoebe assisted. She loves to assist at book signings, but she is starting to make me look bad. She can wear Limited Too duds better than I can wear Coldwater Creek. Oh, well. We can't all be budding supermodels.photo by Bill Thompson, III

Liam was a Very Good Boy all weekend. The Center staff was great at keeping him in paper and markers and computers to play on. photo by Bill Thompson, III

By the end of the gala evening, along about 11 PM, poor little Liam was reduced to a puddle of sleeping boy, first on Bill's lap, and then on the floor of the dining room, and finally on a couch downstairs near the fireplace. Thanks to Bill for not only masterminding the AV needs of the evening, but tending the kids while I did my thing. I was so proud of my little family. Those kids are troopers.That was Friday. On Monday, I'll write about Saturday. Thanks to the folks who emailed and pestered me to prepare these posts in a vaguely timely manner. You know me...the blog ant, still talking about cranes and New Mexico, while the world spins madly on.

Advice to Writers, and Myself

photo by David Fitzsimmons
I spent yesterday at Ashland University of Ohio, where English professor and gifted photographer David Fitzsimmons had invited me to come up and speak. David became aware of my work when he heard the commentary, "OK 1902" (about a dying beech tree on our land), on NPR last winter. As a naturalist, conservationist and awesome photographer (click the link!) as well as an English professor, he connected with the commentary and did a little digging around on the Web. That led him to Letters from Eden, which he decided to use as a text in his composition classes at Ashland University. Gaa-aaw-leee.

So I walk into the morning classroom with 16 adorable smart thoughtful students yesterday and there's one of my sentences up on the board with circles and arrows around it. Another Gomer Pyle moment. We settled down for a Q and A session. I was blown away by the questions the students asked. Several of them cut right to the emotional core of the book and we were off. A high school student who is taking college courses asked the most penetrating question of the day. She's the tiny blonde in the Superman T-shirt, front left row. "You are so passionate about nature and writing and art, and so much of your creative work seems to be done alone. Does this ever impact or hurt your personal relationships?"

Give me a second here. I was really expecting something more along the lines of, "How long did it take you to write the book?"

From there, we got into the issue of how one preserves time and mental space for creative pursuits, and I had a quote from Tillie Olsen ready. I've excerpted this from The Writer's Almanac, which sends me meaty things to think about every day. Tillie was 48 when her short story won the O. Henry Award. She was 49 when her first book came out. We have a little common ground...

It's the birthday of American novelist Tillie Olsen, born Tillie Lerner, in Omaha, Nebraska (1913). A young radical, she started work on a novel about the struggles of the working class, but put it aside when she was raising her children. Her short story, "Tell Me a Riddle," won the O. Henry Award for the best American short story in 1961, and became the title story of her first published book (1962). In Silences (1979), she wrote about the conflict between motherhood and writing. She wrote: "Children need you now ... The very fact that these are real needs, that you feel them as your own, that there is no one else responsible for these needs, gives them primacy. It is distraction, not meditation, that becomes habitual; interruption, not continuity; ... Unused capacities atrophy, cease to be."

It was so good to share, and as a published writer make real for the students, that struggle that all artists and writers and creative people fight each and every day--to push aside that which is unnecessary and make room for that which is vital to their spiritual health. I told the questioner that if I let myself, I'd do nothing but wipe counters all day, that it would be easy to let laundry, lawn care and kid-taxiing rule. That sometimes it does, for days or weeks at a time. And that every creative spirit has this conflict, and must find his or her own answer to how to balance the things that must be done with the more spiritual and fulfilling things that really should rule the day. I told the class about sitting at basketball games and practices with my laptop, typing madly, thinking, writing...cheering Phoebe on, in an absent-minded way. Knowing that it was a compromise all around, hoping that Phoebe and Liam understand and see that it's a way for me to strike some kind of balance, hoping that they learn from it how to keep their creative cores burning bright. (To my left, Liam is drawing a cityscape, with night club and coffey shop, peopled with penguins, ghosts and Halloween pumpkins. I think it's working.)

It is an honor that David Fitzsimmons chose Letters from Eden as a textbook for his composition classes. Thank you, David, and thank you for bringing me to Ashland. It was nice to sign every student's book, to meet each one and shake their hands and connect with them. Some of them had me sign it to their mothers, or grandmothers, because they would love the book.photo by David Fitzsimmons

Many had removed the dustcover to keep it unbent. I loved hearing that they like the book and are enjoying dissecting it for composition and style. But the fulfilling thing for me was to show them that an ordinary, sweaty human being who gets stuck behind trucks and is 20 minutes late to class, who trips over strewn toys and cobbles together suboptimal meals and never catches up with housework, who tries to do too many things and screws up and falls asleep at the wheel and sometimes gets utterly lost, also manages to squeeze out a book. I want them to know that it's in their grasp to do all these things--to do a lot of things badly, and to do one or two things well. Putting out a product should be part of every creative person's life. It's their duty, in a way, and also a reward. And the thrashing about and clawing for creative freedom and the mental space to use it well is part of the cost. Nobody has the answer as to how best to go about keeping the creative flame alive. How to remain a giving human being, a member of family and society, while still answering the call to be wild and introspective and silent and alone. We're all just blundering, no one more than I. That's what I hope they took home, that and the spirit to keep trying.

Here's Louise Erdrich.

Advice to Myself
Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.