March 23, 2009

I don't know why I bother reading the news every morning. It is just about the same as all the days in the past. Doom and Gloom, but always with a smile and a "Have a nice day!" 

Maybe I'll start skipping reading it starting now and see if things improve. 

One thing that has improved - For years we fed the birds attempting to entice a nice bluebird couple to inhabit one of the birdhouses in our backyard. We even went so far as to heavily invest in bird food that was intended to draw bluebirds. That part worked. It enticed many bluebirds to stop by and have a bite or six. They sat around the feeder chatting about the neighborhood and where they were going to put down some roots for the summer, and once full, off they went. They didn't even tip the waiter... me! Oh, we had birdhouse lookers, but never any takers. We had chickadees, titmice (that's a bird, not some little creature that inhabits certain clothing), and several others. Never, ever, a bluebird. Once I decided to retire, we stopped spending $100 a month for bird food. As a result, last year we did not have many songbirds in our yard. This past winter, no birds, except for junkos, the gray and white ones that mysteriously appear before it snows. And then, amazingly enough, a few weeks ago we noticed, what else, but a bluebird couple scoping out the one remaining birdhouse I did not take down. Yesterday, it was confirmed! We actually saw the female bluebird carting nest building material into the house! The male, stud that he must be, sat on a branch of our apple tree and watched. So, based on that, my advice to anyone who wants to attract bluebirds into their yard - put up the house(s) and forget about them. No food. No water. Just the house. Maybe you'll get lucky long before we did.

Speaking of male birds, when we were in London several years ago we were waiting outside the hotel for a taxi to take us to the airport. We noticed some activity in one of the trees in front of the hotel. There were a pair of pigeons building a nest. We watched as one of them, presumably the male, swooped down to the ground, strutted around looking for what he thought was good nest building material, grab several pieces and fly expectantly back to his mate, who sat there, took one piece after another, analyzed it (even birds are into statistics now, I guess), and tossed it aside. I can't remember her picking one piece her hardworking mate selected to use in their nest. She seemed to be extremely particular. But then, as many as she tossed out, perhaps when he went back to the search, he picked up the same pieces that she had already tossed out. Unfortunately, our taxi arrived long before we saw any progress on the nest other than the pieces that were there when we first looked, and whether if one time when he flew off, he just gave up and didn't return... 

I personally find it interesting writing fiction. I never seem to know when my characters are going to do something that I did not consciously think of having them do. For example, in the first book, when the Jews were ordered to place the Star of David on their shops, a friend of the main character, an artist, painted an elaborate scene showing a man watering a star that had vines growing out of it containing beautiful flowers of all colours. His reasoning - I am an artist, he said, and I refuse to stop loving beauty!  

The structure of my second book will be different from the first. In the first book, the main story was in a diary written by a young woman living in Paris during the years 1939 into early 1941. She wanted to become an artist, and grew to love capturing life and colour at an early age. There were even times when she imagined communicating with the Impressionists, but then, perhaps it was not her imagination...

The second book will pick up where the first one leaves off. It will be structured differently. There will be three different stories, all coming together in 1976 in Paris (like, where else?). Each of the main characters were carryovers from book one. But, since I have actually started writing it, yet a different carryover character seems to have snuck in and seems to be one that will play a much bigger roll than first thought. In a different story thread, I have already created a new character, not intended when I started, that will play a large part in that thread. This, the unknown, is what makes it fun to write and be able to watch the characters move through their lives! I can't wait to see how this book will develop, and more importantly, how it will end...