Male Robins Have Arrived in Virginia. The Countdown to Spring Has Begun.

It’s official. Spring is upon us. The male contingent of Robins has arrived in Southeast Virginia. On that first morning, it was a pair of advance scouts, walking about with their chins up, orange-clad chests out, checking out local conditions. Within hours, the main group arrived, covering the front lawn like hungry soldiers converging on the chow hall.

A snow shower during the night that left grassy areas white on Wednesday morning did not slow them down. They were back foraging in force under a bright sun that made the snow a memory before noon. Yesterday things began to change.

It appears that many have moved on. Now when seen, they are paired up, using the buddy system. They are no longer totally focused on what is underfoot, hopping about, seeking edibles. The neighborhood cats had entered the picture.

The cats assumed the feline hunting posture. Belly down, tail straight out, neck extended, and that hip-high, leg-disjointed trot that gives them the appearance of a furry alligator on the move.

The Robins knew what was going on. When one moved about, pecking at the ground, the other one stood vigil, erect, focused on something lurking nearby, a shape with only a pair of ears belying the illusion of a multi-colored rock.

Today, individual birds began flying among the maples, the crepe myrtles, and the large field cedars. Each one flew from tree to tree, and then hopped from branch to branch. Occasionally, two would be seen perched together.

The males negotiate and select the general territory. The females, when they arrive, have the final say. Will she choose one of the large maple limbs over the workshop, the more cozy area offered by the crepe myrtle by the fence, or something in the swaying branches of the cedar?

This afternoon, with the Robins mainly in the trees, the neighborhood felines were no longer slinking about. They looked very much like ordinary house cats, their dreams of a primal conquest stymied, just ambling homeward where something from a bag or can, or maybe a table scrap, would have to suffice.

High Tech Design Meets Lowly Hotdog; Is It The Shape of of the Future?

Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics called for the redesign of hot dogs. "If you were to take the best engineers in the world and asked them to design a perfect plug for a child's airway, you couldn't do better than a hot dog," said Dr. Gary Smith, former chairman of the AAP's Committee on Injury, Violence, and Poison Prevention. "When it's wedged in tightly, that child is going to die."

So enter Ravi Swhney, “the founder and CEO of RKS, a global leader in strategy, innovation, and design. RKS has helped generate more than 150 patents and over 90 design awards on behalf of its clients, which include HP, Intel, LG, Medtronic, Seiko, Sprint, and Zyliss. Sawhney invented the popular Psycho-Aesthetics® design strategy, which Harvard adopted as a Business School Case Study and is the subject of Predictable Magic, the forthcoming book co-authored by Sawhney and Deepa Prahalad and published by Wharton School Publishing. Sawhney is an IDSA Fellow and Executive Director of IDSA's Catalyst case study program.”

One has to admit that’s a lot of horsepower to unleash on a common hotdog. But the results are interesting. First came the drawing board.






And what does all this produce, the final product. Take a look.

The Sound of A Baby Giggling StillsBeats Vibrating Phone as most powerful Sound

I’m not certain how representative fifty individuals in New York might be, considering the story didn’t include their ages. But the results may give a wee peak into our current society.

The experiment was to identify the sounds most people react to. Two companies, Buyology, Inc. and Elias Arts, a sound identity company, wired up these 50 volunteers and measured their “galvanic, pupil, and brainwave responses to sounds.”

The results were a surprise. The tests showed that the third most powerful sound is just over 10 years old, and yet it had such a profound effect on the volunteers that as soon as they hear it, they remove their headsets and check their bags for their vibrating cell phone. When we switch our phone into silent mode, we think it cannot be heard. But the vibration has its own sound, and almost immediately the test subjects stopped whatever they were doing to attend to their phones.

The other surprise from the test was that how many commercial brands over the past twenty years have made their way into the world’s ten most powerful and addictive sounds, “beating some of the most familiar and comforting sounds of nature.

It’s a case of my age showing, but I know I've not hear some of the “sounds” on the list below. It leaves me wondering just how representative those 50 people in New York really are.

The following are the lists, according to the experts. I guess there is so hope that the giggle of a baby still sparks the strongest response.


THE MOST ADDICTIVE SOUNDS IN THE WORLD
Non-branded and branded sounds:
1. Baby giggle
2. Intel
3. Vibrating phone
4. ATM / cash register
5. National Geographic
6. MTV
7. T-Mobile Ringtone
8. McDonald's
9. 'Star Spangled Banner'
10. State Farm

Top 10 Branded sounds:
1. Intel
2. National Geographic
3. MTV
4. T-Mobile
5. McDonald's
7. State Farm
8. AT&T Ringtone
9. Home Depot
10 Palm Treo Ringtone

Top 10 Non-branded sounds:
1. Baby giggle
2. Vibrating phone
3. ATM / cash register
4. "Star Spangled Banner"
5. Sizzling steak
6. 'Hail to the Chief'
7. Cigarette light and inhale
8. "Wedding March"
9. "Wish Upon a Star"
10. Late Night with David Letterman Theme

SUMMER ON BLOSSOM STREET Prompts Trip Down Memory Lane

It was the cover art on SUMMER ON BLOSSOM STREET that caught my attention during a recent visit to the library. It was a visual counterpoint to the weather outside, a typical winter afternoon in Virginia, cold and wet,

The author? Debbie Macomber. I’d seen the author’s name before, but never picked up one of her books. During the checkout process, the librarian held up the book and said, “You’re going to enjoy this one.”

I did, but it took me a while to figure out exactly why.

To say the book is a little bit outside my reading zone is an understatement. And I found reading it was different experience. I did not become drawn into the language. I didn’t find myself racing through pages to see if the hero did escape death and capture the culprit.

It took longer than usual to finish the book. I was reading in shorter sessions, but found each one stirred up something comforting that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It took a couple of days after finishing the book to figure out what it was.

The book had drawn forth childhood memories of my mother in our kitchen. The radio was always playing while she worked, tuned to what she referred to as stories about our neighbors. I could remember sitting at the kitchen table, eating a PB&J, listening to the radio programs, but none of the details.

I had to do a bit of Googling to dig out the names. As I read the brief descriptions of Ma Perkins, Pepper Young’s Family, Stella Dallas, and other radio series from the 1940s, 1950s, I made the connection.

Debbie Macomber’s SUMMER ON BLOSSOM STREET is a literary version of those radio programs. The stories in the book are told without dire warnings and predictions about global warming, economic collapse, or any of the other “end-of-the-world” predictions that is delivered by the media on a daily basis.

It’s stories told on the level where the majority of people exist, about neighbors, ordinary people living ordinary lives, dealing with things both ordinary and extraordinary, things both pleasant and sad, things satisfying and terrifying.

And there is a moral to the stories. The good guys get their rewards. The bad guys get their punishment. And life goes on. The reading and thinking also brought back the memory of a comment I often hear growing up. The secret to getting on in life is to simply keep getting on.

Pat Conroy's SOUTH OF BROAD Delivers A Universal Message About Life's Reality

It’s early Tuesday morning, February the second, two aught ten. My houseguest has left after a three-day visit. When dawn arrived last Saturday morning, the world was wrapped in the snow that had fallen overnight. Sand-sized sleet, driven by a strong north wind, was swirling through the neighborhood like a dust storm.

The weather was quickly forgotten. Pat Conroy once again arrived to tell me another story. This one was called SOUTH OF BROAD. Now that Pat has left after telling me his latest story, I am left with the feeling that it will be the last one from a man who has been a part of my life for the last thirty-four years

My wife and I first met Pat Conroy in 1976, within the pages of THE GREAT SANTINI. Reading about the Meecham family and their respective relationships touched a responsive chord. My son was not quite three years old, at an age when my wife and I were still coming to grips with the responsibilities and duties involved in being a mother and father.

The purchase of our first home, my switching professions, and the birth of my son had consumed our lives to the point we had had missed Conroy’s first novel. It was an error of omission that was quickly rectified. THE WATER IS WIDE, published in 1972, was the story of a young teacher and his experiences with students in the classroom and with the officials in the fiefdom of the school system.

My wife, a public school teacher at the time, had been part of a school system in the late 1960s that resisted integration until an ultimatum by the federal courts ended the charade. Again, Conroy’s writing struck home. He seemed to a writer who was looking over our shoulders.

These first two novels were also a painful reminder of what I had left behind⎯the sheer joy of cobbling words together to tell a story. I had traded a typewriter for a calculator, abandoning the newspaper business and writing to join the business world for the increase in income needed to buy our first home and support a family.

We grew to realize Conroy was not a book-a-year writer. It was another four years until THE LORDS OF DISCIPLINE (1980) appeared. In it, Conroy had written about a young man who starts his college career with the dreams of being a writer and basketball player.

At the beginning of the penultimate decade of the twentieth century, my wife was still teaching, and I was back writing as much as my day job as a public official allowed. Our son, now age seven, was in elementary school. College for him was still a decade away, but reading LORDS OF DISCIPLINE was a reminder of our days at college and what was to come for our son.

The next book, PRINCE OF TIDES, published four years later in 1986, gave us one of our most memorable and enjoyable moments; Mrs. Wingo's retaliation to a less than admirable husband. The obedient, subservient wife, doing her expected chores, served her husband a plate of well-fried dog food for breakfast.

My wife and I laughed and joked about that scene for years. And during those moments of our husband and wife “discussions,” she would smile and tell me if I were not careful, I might have to start paying more attention to what she served me for breakfast.

By the time we read BEACH MUSIC, published nine years later, in 1995, we had taken a family vacation to England and France. We understood what Conroy was saying when he wrote about the lure that a foreign land can have, how the idea of living in another part of the world, another culture, can be appealing.

The last half of the 1990s passed into history, and a new century was in its second year when we read the story in MY LOSING SEASON. It chronicled the author’s experience gained as a member of a collegiate sports team. Again, Conroy was looking over our shoulders. Our son was in college, and we had experienced what it means for a young man to participate in college-level sports.

Reading the twenty-two chapters in Conroy’s next book, THE PAT CONROY COOKBOOK (2004) was a tag-team effort. This book is as much about Conroy as it is the culinary arts. My wife and I kept swapping the book back and forth with the comment, “You’ve got to read this chapter.”

It’s not a book that a person would expect to find on a nightstand by a bed. But that’s where one lady told me she keeps her copy, turning to it often to read a chapter before going to sleep. I understand why. It’s that kind of book.

SOUTH OF BROAD was not an easy read. My wife will not be reading it. It's the first Conroy novel about which we will not be sharing comments. She was killed in a vehicle crash in 2006.

I’m not a literary critic. I can only react when a story strikes a responsive chord. To those who have written that the 64-year-old’s latest novel is “uneven,” or “rambles,” or is “rusty in spots,” I can only say, “So is life.”

Its message can be best summed up with this quote from the book. “We’re human. And the older we get, the more human we get. The more human we get, the more painful everything becomes.”

The Story in a an Author's 1st Novel Represents Many stories Never Seen

A conversation about my venture into the world of creative writing and the time being taken can lead to the question, “You mean you are still writing your first book?” The answer is yes and no.

The letter I received from the extensively published author regarding my first manuscript, page and a half of good, nine and a half pages of bad, was like the assessment from the insurance company after the hurricane. It would be easier to rebuild from scratch.

My first manuscript has joined, from what I read, hundreds if not thousands of other first efforts filed away in a drawer, a box, a closet, or the attic. Each time I read about the discovery of a “lost” manuscript, written by a long dead, but still famous author, a question arises. “Wonder if the “lost” manuscript was a first effort filed away, with no thought of it seeing the light of day?”

So, yes, I’m still working on my first book, but not my first manuscript. I am into my second, my third, my…. I’ve quit putting numbers on the manuscript. As my knowledge has grown as to how things should be written, the changes have been so many that it’s not realistic to say it’s still the same manuscript.

That has been one of the big differences discovered between creative writing and historical non-fiction. The type of non-fiction I write is what I call popular history. It’s event driven, connecting the dots (external facts) in some orderly fashion.

I make the distinction to set what I write apart from the historians who write, “The senator always wore a gray suit, white shirt, and red tie.” A simple statement followed by five pages of psychological analysis of the man’s life back to prep school as an explanation as to his choice of attire.

There are no dots of external facts to connect in creative writing. It’s all fiction, or as one writer say, “All facts in creative writing are lies.” Even historical fiction, creative writing built around actual events, places and things string those elements together with “lies.”

Jumping to creative writing has led to understanding a comment made by Dorothy Parker (no relation) who said. “I can't write five words but that I change seven.” That is a succinct summation of the curse of rewriting.

I don’t know the time of day this lady of letters wrote. but my writing, split evenly between early morning and evenings had led me to the conclusion that my brain functions differently during the two periods. I will complete a scene or chapter, and be satisfied with the result before going to bed.

The next morning, a review of the previous evenings work lead to the the urge to change much of what was written. I have learned his urge to constant rewrite is a curse. I’ve asked several published authors, “When do you know when to stop rewriting?”

The answers have been both consistent and consistently depressing. All have said the urge to rewrite continues until the manuscript is beyond the point in the publishing system where further changes are not possible.

One published author told me she finds it impossible to read her previously published works. That leads, she said, to finding so many things she wants to change that it becomes depressing.

Getting the elements in a mystery story aligned in the proper flow and the curse of rewriting only two of the time consumers in the effort to write that first book. And there is more, for next time.

An Attempt at Creative Writing......... Should be Kept a Secret

I blew it. Big time. Naive. Ignorant. Dumb. Over confident. Clueless. All of that, plus any other synonyms you want to throw in. In other words, I had no idea what I was saying when I opened my big mouth some four years ago. Nor did I realize the problem I was creating for myself.

I’ve been hanging around the same town for 45-plus years, and over those years folks in some circles came to know me as a word cobbler. It started when I was a sports writer for the local newspaper, followed by years of writing local history articles and books.

At a point after finishing the last book, a biographical history of seventeen men who formed the first civic club in the city, folks around town started asking, “What are you writing these days?” I said I was trying my hand at creative writing, a mystery story.

“Good,” which was the response at first, has turned into lots of different questions like, “Where’s that book?” or “why is it taking so long?” I know some who read this will be chortling at my predicament, but I’m finding most folks do not understand the process when I say, “It’s takes time.”

The answer is too long and complicated to answer during a chance encounter at a local restaurant, grocery store, or street corner. If the people who ask the questions have Internet access⎯and 99.9 percent say they do⎯I’ve decided to start a new approach to answering the answers that are being asked.

When asked questions about the book, the response will be to give them my card, which includes the web address for my Blog site, with the suggestion they can read my explanations, or excuses on the site at their leisure.

None of the people I’ve talked with have been more shocked than I have been as to the time involved. It been a process of first unlearning a half century of one style of word cobbling and learning a new one.

I find it has a lot in common with an experience I shared with a friend several years ago. He and I were both accomplished amateur carpenters, but got the idea we wanted to learn the craft of masonry.

Walls built from lumber or brick or cement blocks have a few things in common. Both need to be plum, straight, and level. But the commonality stops there. Step one is to forget everything learned about building a wall out of lumber. The techniques and tools used to build a masonry wall are totally different.

Non-fiction and creative writing have a few things common. Both require the proper use of language, spelling, and punctuation. But beyond that, there’s a whole new world of techniques and tools that must be mastered.

I was made painfully aware of the difference when I was lucky enough to have an author with nearly two dozen published novels review my first attempt at writing a mystery story. He sent me an eleven-page, single spaced letter. The first page and a half were complimentary as to what was well written. The next nine and a half pages listed all the things I needed to learn to master the craft of creative writing.

There’s more to the story, but enough for now. There will be another day and more comments on the differences between a wooden wall and a masonry wall.