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A Jasper Moment

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This is Jasper. He is staring at the oven. The very appliance I had just placed a casserole in to cook for dinner. When I took this picture he had been waiting for 15 minutes already with 30 more to go.

This is a common occurrence in my house when anyone cooks. The bird will climb up to as high as he can and just wait for whatever is being prepared for the family ah well in his mind him. Once I leave the kitchen he will yell at me loudly as if to say,”Wait where are you going? You need to be back in the kitchen cooking so I can eat. You know it is all about me me me.” That is what it sounds like as he yells and tries to motivate me to go back to the stove.

If that is not bad enough when I set the table he will slide down his cage, cross his bird stand and climb onto the nearest chair and pace back and forth as he waits. Really bird? I mean really? It just makes me think of the people who have told me in my life that my bird is stupid. He is anything but.

He knows the word no and when to use it. His latest accomplishment has been to learn the phrase, “I know.” So now when I talk to him he will sit on his rail and go, “ I know.” as if he is a dear friend listening to me complain as he sympathizes with me.

He is really an amazing bird and has taught all of us here so much about animal behavior and their personalities. These fascinating creatures are more than just a pet. They infuse themselves into our lives especially one that can talk back to you. Though my favorite line he has every learned has been,” Mom where where where?” which is his way of asking where am I in the house if he does not see me. Does he mimic us…absolutely. But with that mimicking he is learning to interact with us on a different level as he learns when to use certain phrases at the right time.

I know a lot of people don’t get it as over the years I have heard people make fun of me being owned by a flock of birds. My response has always been, “Well you have probably never been owned by one of these splendid animals or taken the time to know them.” They love me as much as any dog or cat I have ever owned in my life. I have tried to imagine how it was before I was adopted by my first birds, Maxie and Twopiece, in 1998 but that is a blur to me. Twopiece is still with me and is my little buddy who sits by my desk on many a day.

I am owned by eight birds and know it. This is not something I would change for the world.

Guest Blog, Published, Writers, Writing

Guest Post: Victoria Treder

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What Makes a Writer?

We’ve all heard the line, “If you want to be a writer, then write,” but what kind of writing counts? If you want to write novels, but you spend your time posting to a blog, does that count? Sure, you are practicing your craft, but are you “writing”? Is writing in the eye of the beholder or the pen holder?

What if your penchant is for poetry, but your rent requires writing articles. Of course, you can say that you are a writer, but are you a “writer”? You know, the kind who gets asked at cocktail parties, “What have you written? Have I read it?” If your answer is, “I extolled the virtues of Jenny Craig over Weight Watchers in the latest issue of Glamour,” you’re liable to get a blank look in response. If you can at least say, “In last month’s Cosmo, I raved about this little known island in the Pacific. Have you ever heard of Atuitaki?”, you’ll get a bit of wide-eyed interest back. Travel is fun and exciting. Dieting is not.

The only way to get respect for writing how-to’s on mundane subjects is to squeeze out an entire book. An article on choosing the right college elicits only yawns, but a book on How to Get the Most Out of Your College Experience rates oohs and aahs. Making a living explaining the dull, everyday stuff pegs you as in it just for the money, unless you can manage to cobble together a sufficient number of words for independent publication, a feat that immediately elevates you to the status of “author”. But what if you’ve published your How-To book? Are you then a “writer”, if your dream is to publish a novel? Or are you just a hack with a knack for stringing together a lot of words?

What makes a writer? Is it the content, the length, or the aspirations of the person herself? If you are making a living writing articles for magazines, a job that others only dream of, are you a writer if you really prefer to pen poignant short stories on the meaning of life?

Is the definition of writer determined by you, or by others? Is there a difference between calling yourself a “writer”, and saying that you write for a living? There are millions of words that surround us every day; someone has set them down in a particular order; someone has put some thought into their placement. Is it the thought that makes a writer? Or the ultimate goal the writer seeks to attain?

Is writing just another skill? Or is it a calling? Is it the level of discourse that determines, or the mechanism through which writers choose to communicate?  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I chose to call myself a writer when I first decided to write fiction, even though so far I have been paid only for my non-fiction work. I have a streak of romanticism that refuses to be subdued.

Guest blogger Victoria Treder blogs about politics, education, and the state of our nation at http://tredalong.com/

Guest Post, History, Merry Farmer

Guest Post: Merry Farmer

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Why History Makes the Best Stories: Part 2

Sharon invited me over to talk about why history makes the best stories. But you know, the magic of history goes even further than that. History doesn’t just provide us with the best plots, it gives us some of the best settings you can imagine.

I love the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” We tend to think that the years in which we live are either the most mundane, everyday kind of times or that they must be the most interesting, action-packed years since the beginning of recorded history. Neither are true, really. There have been some periods of history that have been smooth and uneventful and there have been some that were veritably bursting at the seams with excitement.

The history of the United States has been pretty much non-stop action, for example. That’s probably because we’re actually the new guys in the world. We’ve only been around for a couple hundred years. In those couple hundred years there have been wars, genocide, exploration, invention, and romance. I happen to be a big fan of the story of the American West. I’ve even started writing about it in my Montana Romance series. Few movements in history are more fascinating to me than the expansion of America westward. What kind of people got it in their heads that they needed to venture out into the wilderness? What would prompt someone to leave everything they knew behind to make a life taming that wilderness? What did the indigenous people who had lived on that land for generations think when pale foreigners started claiming their homeland as some sort of prize? How did the early pioneers make it through harsh winters and long droughts to build a thriving community?

It’s no wonder there is an entire genre of literature devoted to this time period. Westerns have been popular since they were contemporary fiction. Why? Because that period of history was just so dang interesting! It had everything that the very best novels need, from conflict to camaraderie and back again. The story of the West is one of epic voyages and the triumph of ingenuity. It’s also one of the bitter lows that mankind can sink to and the consequences of heartless governments.

Pretty awesome stuff, eh? There are worlds of stories just waiting to be discovered within the annals of history. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of writing about it. And I’ll certainly never run out of ideas!

 

Merry’s Author Bio

Merry Farmer is an award-winning novelist who lives in suburban Philadelphia with her two cats, Butterfly and Torpedo. She has been writing since she was ten years old and realized one day that she didn’t have to wait for the teacher to assign a creative writing project to write something. It was the best day of her life. She then went on to earn not one but two degrees in History so that she would always having something to write about. Today she is a giant History nerd and a hopeless romantic waiting for her own love story to start. Her first book, The Loyal Heart, is a swashbuckling Medieval Historical Romance involving a love triangle that will keep you guessing. Both The Loyal Heart and its sequels, The Faithful Heart and The Courageous Heart, are available wherever eBooks are sold. She has also begun a new Western Historical Romance series set in Montana in 1895. The first of that series, Our Little Secrets, is now available. The second, Fool for Love, will be released in early 2013. Merry is also passionate about blogging, knitting, and cricket and is working towards becoming an internationally certified cricket scorer.

Merry can be found here: http://merryfarmer.net/

The Musings of A New Englander