The Bluebird Effect Wins 2013 Ohioana Nonfiction Award!

On October 11, Bill and I drove to the State House in Columbus for an awards ceremony. The Ohioana Library Association had given The Bluebird Effect its 2013 Book Award for Nonfiction.

Why thank you!!

Michelle Gubola, member of Ohioana's Board of Trustees, awards the orb.

Photo by James J. Bishop

                                                           photo by James J. Bishop

Attending Ohioana functions has made me keenly aware of just how much writerly talent resides in this big, square state. Ohioana Library Association's main charter is to bring Ohio's deep, wide pool of writer talent to everyone's attention. They've got this huge library made up entirely of works written by Ohioans, about Ohioans, and the gems within would surprise you. It includes more than 45,000 books, 10,000 pieces of sheet music, and approximately 20,000 biographical files on Ohio writers, musicians, artists and others of note. I was really floored that my book floated to the top of their Nonfiction pile. Here are the honorees who were present that night:

from left: JZ (The Bluebird Effect, Nonfiction); Martha Collins (White Papers, Poetry); Bernard Matambo (Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant for Unpublished Author); Joy Kiser (America's Other Audubon, About an Ohioan); Louise Borden (His Name Was Raoul Wallenberg: Courage, Rescue and Mystery During World War II, Juvenile) ; Robert Olmstead (The Coldest Night, Fiction). Also awarded was Tracy Chevalier (The Last Runaway, Fiction Set in Ohio).

We had a panel discussion wherein all the writers were asked a single question to answer in their own way. I tried to keep my answers short and to the point. Everyone did. It was neat to hear about each other's "process." Robert Olmstead said he hates to write. Which made everyone laugh. I said I save writing as dessert when I'm done with ordinary work because I enjoy it so much. Which might have made some of the writers hate me. That's OK. It's true.

 And I am ever so happy to put a beautiful hand-blown blue glass orb (by Ohio artist Robert Eickholt) on the kitchen windowsill, to join the one Ohioana had given me for Art, Writing and Commentary in 2008. A repeat offender! And there's a third, won by Bill for his many books, gracing his office at Bird Watcher's Digest. Ohioana been berry berry good to us. We're grateful. I'm grateful to Bill for these photos, and for being my date to the ceremony. It was sweet. Ohioana is made up of the nicest people. You can join, and in so doing directly support the arts in this great state. Check out ohioana.org. 

Awards are nice, especially when they catch the sun the way these do. Awards make you feel like somebody noticed your work. You want to say thank you, and it's nice to say it in a satisfying way. Here's the text of my acceptance speech, which had to come in under two minutes. Smart, Ohioana, because I'd still be there blathering away. It's in what I call "commentary style." Some things that look right written don't survive in spoken word, and spoken word can look odd when written. So be it.

As someone who had always talked to animals and birds, I’m not sure it sank in on me that I was doing anything at all unusual until I got to college. I looked around, and no one else in the dorms had a baby squirrel in their dresser or a lab-rescued chicken in a pen in their common room. People brought me things in cardboard boxes with holes punched in their tops. They still do.

The Bluebird Effect is about uncommon bonds with common birds. It’s about forging those bonds with them when they’re injured or orphaned, the reward of getting to know individual birds personally. This strikes a common chord in anyone who’s looked at a bird and wondered if it might be the same one they saw yesterday, or last year. If the robin nesting over their porch light could have been the same one that’s been there for seven years.

I think of myself as an advocate for songbirds. So many people rehabilitate and work with raptors; so many fewer choose to work with songbirds. Mostly, that’s because you can lay a frozen rat in a hawk’s cage and be done with it for the day. But you have to feed orphaned baby songbirds every 30 minutes, dawn to dusk. Not many people are willing to do that, or to go through the arduous procedure of readying them for release into the wild. But it’s there that the magic happens. You can’t really know a bird until you’ve been its mama.

The trick in writing about such warm, downy things is not making the birds out to be tiny people. They’re not. They’re a whole lot cooler than people; they’re quivering bundles of instinct, avid curiosity, and flexible intelligence, making new neural connections every hour, fighting their way from an artificial upbringing with a human mother, back to being birds. Functioning wild things, ready to fly, search for food and find mates all by themselves. And I get to watch, and sketch, and write, and marvel at my luck in just being there for that. This book is a memoir of encounters with 26 different species, and yeah, it’s a little unusual. I’m deeply grateful that Ohioana Library Association has smiled upon it. In the words of Mary Oliver,

If you want to talk about this

come to visit. I live in the house

near the corner, which I have named

Gratitude.

Thank you Mimi for that poem. Thank you Jeanne for your light. Thank you Dad for your storytelling. Thank you Mom for letting me fix robins and doves on the kitchen table. Thank you Phoebe and Liam for looking at the changing light with me. Thank you Bill for everything, for prodding me into writing Letters from Eden, my first book. And for wearing your bluebird tie.

photo by James J. Bishop

Working on the next book now. It's about baby bird development. Dessert after the wildest summer and fall on record. My total output yesterday was four titmice. Four mourning doves today. That's a pret-ty good day.

You can order a personalized copy of The Bluebird Effect on the right sidebar of this blog or by clicking here. I'll sign it to whomever you wish, box it up and send it. 

Sole employee at Indigo Hill Arts. Answers phone, email, works in mailroom, head of promotional department, staff blogger, social media director; head horticulturist and director of animal care; shrew, bat and dog videographer. Also writes and illustrates books when not being a scrubby-dubby housewife.

photo by James J. Bishop--thank you!!
And thanks to Rudine Sims Bishop, President of the Ohioana Board of Trustees, for help with this post. 

Danger Rocks

On the weekend Bill took the kids whitewater rafting in West Virginia, one of the things I did by myself was go canoeing on quiet waters. It was kind of a protest. I wasn't too happy about having my family on whitewater, being a rapidophobe myself. I had to chuckle when I saw this warning buoy at Wolf Run:

No, actually, it doesn't. Quiet waters rock.

Phoebe and I were on high alert this day when we went out together, and it paid off in spades, because the beavers I'd spotted on my last visit to Wolf Run were around again. The first thing I needed to teach her was to be conscious of keeping the paddle from hitting the sides of the canoe. I told her that you can spot a rube a mile off over the water by the clunk-clunk of paddle hitting canoe sides. You should always paddle as if you're sneaking up on something, because in all likelihood, you are.

There is great pleasure in silent conveyance on still waters.

In the first cove we checked out, a beaver floated quietly, watching us. It circled, always keeping an eye on us.

Finally, it drew close, and I could tell it was winding up to smack its big flat leathery tail on the water. I could just see it in that glittering eye. So I focused on his back and was ready when it happened!

He's taking a big breath in. Something's going down.

KER-SPLOOOOOSH!

This is one of my favorite pictures of the summer--it shows the enormous webbed paddles the beaver uses to swim so swiftly and dive so deeply. There is a big roostertail of water on either side of the tail, which has been smacked down on the water. Gosh, beavers are so cool. Beavers do this to let you know they see you--it's analogous to a white-tailed deer flashing its big white flag at you. Hey you. Don't bother chasing me. I'm already gone.

Herons were everywhere. I took a lot of heron photos. And no, I don't use the "burst" or rapid-fire/multiple frame function when shooting birds in flight--though I must try it soon. Probably would have been useful for the beaversmack.

Big birds that sit still and then flap off majestically are irresistible to me.Who says pterodactyls are all gone? His croaking rasp only enhances the metaphor--it sounds like someone opening a stuck root cellar door.

Speaking of irresistible, I saw a water naiad on the shore. Where's Maxfield Parrish when you need him?

Another heartbreakingly beautiful September 11 in southern Ohio. Soon enough, rain will come--all these hurricanes have to amount to something. But for now, it's pellucid and clear and the cool afternoon air is like a draught of Riesling. This morning before dawn I stood in the dissolving dark and listened to the calls of dozens of migrating thrushes--pips, peeps and queerps!--headed for destinations only they know. Most of them Swainson's, but maybe a grey-cheeked in there, too. There were so many, calling unseen from horizon to horizon, just as the shivering light broke. We marvel at them, so brave! flying through the starry night, but they have a clearer idea where they are headed than do we, and they have the wings to go.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

from The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

For you, of course, sweet B. Thanks for the sweet canoeing companion and the scowly little Art Elf; thanks for the 15 (17) years; thanks for the acreage and the warblers, and thanks for sticking around. I love you.
*thank you for this poem, Kris.