Launching and re-launching

[pameladean]

Hi, you guys. I'm sorry that I haven't posted in so long. There's no particular excuse other than general harriedness.

The weather has been of the sort that makes mowing the lawn difficult to schedule. It will rain a lot and be very hot and sticky; then there will be a nice day when the grass gradually dries out, but then either it will rain again, or there will be another nice day and Raphael and I will go hiking; and then it will rain some more. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that I don't really want to mow the lawn at all. It's not that the task is so very onerous in itself, but I find lawns boring and am much more interested in seeing what comes up and blooms if I leave them alone. Sadly, the city of Minneapolis, while willing to permit prairie meadows, is not on board with simply neglecting one's lawn, however experimental the spirit in which it is done. And it's true that one would need to scythe down or burn volunteer trees, and that it is useful to be able to make one's way from the house to the garage with trash or recycling, and even to sit in the yard to watch for bats or chimney swifts or swallowtail butterflies.

Today is not great for dragonflies because it's too cloudy, so we did not go hiking; and I decided I'd actually mow the front lawn. I had taken the lawn mower around from the back and was eying the fallen branch of the neighbors' pea-bush hedge with disfavor when I noticed a bright eye in the grass. A little stripey bird stared at me, bits of gray fluff protruding from its stripes and vibrating with its breathing. It did not gape for food or make any sound at all, and no parent bird clicked or chirped or shrieked at me. I got the pruning shears and did some haphazard reduction of the volunteer trees in the side gardens and the back yard. When I was tired of that, I went back around. The bird was still there. I came into the house and grumpily told Raphael, who suggested looking up what one was recommended to do. I was pretty sure we both knew, but I looked it up. Sure enough, fledglings of most species spend two to five days on the ground being taught important life experiences by their parents. One is strongly advised by the Audubon Society and other similar organizations to leave the babies alone and let them get on with life.

It's very sad, but I cannot mow the front lawn. Raphael said that the city (which, in addition to its lack of enthusiasm for unplanned spontaneous meadows, also dislikes grass and weeds higher than eight inches in one's yard -- there is simply no pleasing some people) would surely understand this situation. I said I looked forward to explaining it to them.

Both appearance and statistics suggest that the baby bird is a house sparrow, but I am not going to mess with it even so. It can't help being part of an imported rapacious species, any more than I can.

In other news, David and I are working on re-issuing my 1998 novel Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary as an ebook and a POD. I'm about three-quarters of the way through reading the OCR and checking it against the previously published version. I remember writing it well enough, but it's been long enough that I keep reacting to it as if someone else had written it. This means that sometimes I enjoy it so much that I stay up late to keep reading, and other times I address the author in exasperated terms.

It is an odd sideways book in some ways. I still feel that my actual point was overstated and obvious, but this has not been the experience of most readers. I don't plan to rewrite anything, though. The people who love the book do love it a lot, and I have plenty of new stuff to write. But JG&R probably didn't even reach all of the small audience it should have, because it was published right around the time that the mass-market distribution system broke down, so that it had no mass-market paperback edition and people were not yet resigned to trade paperbacks. So I hope to at least remedy that.

We hope to reissue "Owlswater" and The Dubious Hills as well.

Pamela

P.S. Parental chipping and high fledgling eeeeeings are now coming from the front yard. I'm glad someone is on the job.

ETA: I saw the parent. It might be a chipping sparrow, or maybe an American tree sparrow, only I didn't see a chest spot. I didn't want to stare too long, since the bird was busy and not best pleased with my arrival.

Comments

[inlaterdays.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm glad you looked up what to do about the baby sparrow! I wouldn't have thought of that and probably would have just panicked. Hope it gets its life lessons learned and is able to get up in the air and back with its parents soon.

[pameladean]

I would have thought of it eventually, but Raphael thought of it right away.

I've since seen a parent bird -- I think it might be a chipping sparrow, but I'm quite bad at identifying sparrows.

P.

[inlaterdays.livejournal.com]

Hooray for parent bird sightings!

(And incidentally, I just went over and patted my copy of Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary.)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Owlswater! Dubious Hills!

[pameladean]

<3

P.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

All sparrows are something of a challenge, I do believe. (Except possibly towhees in some regions, where there is nothing to mistake them with.)

The availability of "Owlswater" and The Dubious Hills would be exceeding welcome from this corner.

I thought Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary was entirely brilliant, and it horrified me with such thoroughness I have never re-read it. I do have a particular sensitivity to, well, what would be spoilers by direct referent.

Still have my copy; I can be a completist even if I am a twitchy completist.

[pameladean]

The only sparrow I can reliably identify is the dark-eyed junco. Well, and the house sparrow, but they are really finches, so it doesn't count.

I remember having an email discussion with you about JG&R. I think it was some parental dispositions that horrified you, and while this was really not what I had in mind at all, it was a coherent view of what is in the book.

P.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Juncos hereabouts get into questions of wandering members of one sub-species or another, and the simple grey back, dark eye, and decidedly pink beak on a small flitting bird observed against snow doesn't quite save one from the multiplying possibilities.

Grasshopper sparrows can be surprisingly easy from dead astern in dawn light perpendicular to the un-occluded sparrow, a condition in which I have seen them only once.

But generally the identification of sparrows is a misery; the local ornithological club had a talk by a retired academic sparrow expert and the end of the talk was a sequence of slides with really excellent photographs of birds no one had been able to plausibly identify to species. ("this picture was taken in 1984..." sort of thing.) It was somehow reassuring.

(It was indeed the parental dispositions; not quite right in the feels, but certainly dead centre in the sense of plausibility, and with substantial oomph; it's a tremendously coherent, as well as tremendously well-written, book, at least as I experienced it; all to the one destination.)

[pameladean]

I had not considered the difficulties of identifying juncoes in other geographical areas. Here they arrive in October and leave in April, and there's just not much else around that looks like them. The white flash of the departing bird and their ground-feeding habits also help.

I hope to see a grasshopper sparrow one day; so far, I may have heard some, but that's all.

I can see that the evidence that even experts can't reliably identify some sparrows would be very reassuring. Raphael once told me that you could take a three-day seminar just on sparrows.

As for the book, hmm, it's hard for me to say more without potential spoilers, too, but I'm glad you liked the craft and sorry that the reading experience wasn't pleasant. I'd aimed for a different mix than I delivered.

P.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

The grasshopper sparrow was in some sense cheating; I was up on the Carden Alvar for an annual population point count, so able to enter areas from which the public is generally barred, and then there were a couple sparrows drinking from road puddles not thirty feet away as the little group I was in walked out to our first survey point. (There are some more accessible nearby locations if you're ever in the area.)

JGR was by no means an unpleasant reading experience; it was a pleasant reading experience, and then when I got to the end it all sort of totalled up thematically and bricked me. Which is an accomplishment on your part, really it is.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

Horray for the sparrows! I'm glad things are working out well for them, and that they have nice neighbors who understand them and are willing to learn about their social customs.

[pameladean]

:-) We do our best. In better financial times I'd be feeding them, but at least all the mulberries are ripening.

P.

[rolypolypony.livejournal.com]

Aww, shucks - no lawn mowing! What a shame! ;) Hope the little bird gets on his/her way soon enough!

I am so thrilled to hear that J,G,&R will be an ebook - then I can thrust it upon people. I have been reluctant to lend my hardcover for fear of never seeing it again.

My Birthday telescope is named Gentian, which may tell you a bit about how much I love that book of yours :)

[pameladean]

Oh yeah, it was so very sad that I couldn't mow. (I did do part of the back yard later, sadly.)

You'll even be able to get a paper book to lend out if you want to, though the cover probably won't be as nice, because we can't afford it.

I am really flattered at the name of your telescope. I hope you have many thrilling years with it.

P.

[rolypolypony.livejournal.com]

Woe! Woe! ;)

OH! That's even better! A paper copy will make it easier to gift upon people! Muwhahahah!!

Thank you! I am quite happy with her so far - she's lovely!

[pameladean]

Yes, I should make that clearer in subsequent posts. We'll be reissuing everything as both an ebook and a print-on-demand paperback. I am not sure about a hardcover, but there will definitely be a paper book for all of these things.

I'm glad the telescope is giving satisfaction.

P.

[rolypolypony.livejournal.com]

Fantastic! :)

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I love this sentence: "It can't help being part of an imported rapacious species, any more than I can."

[pameladean]

Thank you. It's all too true, isn't it?

P.

[alexfandra.livejournal.com]

Excellent response to the fledgling situation! Chipping Sparrows are easier to ID here in Seattle, as the rufous head is distinctive, whereas you also get Swamp Sparrows there which can look very similar. We only get those here as rarities.

The best decision I ever made about my yard shortly after I bought Dog End was to take out the grass. I hate mowing and am allergic to grass, so now I have 3500 sf of trees, shrubs, flower beds, roses, herbs, paths and paving -- it's a ton of work but the kind I thoroughly enjoy (weeding is very therapeutic!).

Seattle clearly has no such ordinances on its books, judging by the mini-prairies I've seen around town. Not that I'd ever have one myself, but it's nice to know I can let things go should I wish to!

[pameladean]

I'm not at all accustomed to seeing any sparrow other than juncoes right in my yard. I was really pleased.

I have thought of at least reducing the amount of grass, but fortunately am not allergic to it, and could never get up the energy to do the initial work. Also, it's much easier to just flatten everything with the mower periodically than to be weeding and mulching. I always fail at gardening when the midsummer heat and humidity descend; also if I have a book deadline.

Minneapolis will let you have a mini-prairie, but it has to be an actual prairie with native grasses and plants, not just random stuff that hasn't been mowed.

P.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

What a lovely find. It's kind of neat that something so vulnerable was able to have the power to get you (willingly, as you say, but still!) to hold back on lawn mowing.

It can't help being part of an imported rapacious species, any more than I can.


Amen!

I find lawns boring and am much more interested in seeing what comes up and blooms if I leave them alone. --me too. High fives for shared feelings!

I'm very glad to hear about all your reissues, especially the ebooks. I *prefer* physical books, but it's nice to have the option of ebooks.

[pameladean]

The fledgling so clearly didn't know what to do other than be very quiet and watch me, and it had an air of "not scared yet" that was very touching. And such a bright eye.

*high fives back* I actually found a patch of Virginia waterleaf way back in a corner a couple of years ago. It's not spreading, but I don't feel that moving it would please it either. Maybe when I take out the peony next to it, which can't bloom in such dense shade, it will feel free to increase a little bit.

P.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I had to look up a picture of Virginia waterleaf on Google (all the while thinking how handy this is: as it happens, I have wildflower books, so if this were 20 years ago, I could have looked it up in one of them, but how much more handy it is to be able to just type the words and have the picture appear).

It's very pretty!

[17catherines.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, I remember finding it rather difficult to get hold of Juniper, Gentian, Rosemary. And I have to say, I don't know which particular point you think was overstated and obvious, because I found it even more poetic and elliptical than your usual novels - which is not a complaint, incidentally, just noting that I don't think you are as obvious as you think you are. I did find it rather a sad novel to read, because the friendships were the core of the book for me.


love

Catherine

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Yeah, same. It's somewhere between Fire and Hemlock and Finnegans Wake for me (okay, I'm kidding about Finnegans Wake).

I feel a re-read coming on.

[pameladean]

This made me snort with laughter (the bit about Finnegans Wake). I had a great deal of trouble with the end Fire and Hemlock myself until I read an essay about it describing the influence on it of Eliot's Burnt Norton.


P.

[pameladean]

I've been studying how to answer this without committing too many spoilers. The friendships were very important to me too, and I did intend a very strong note of hope about them to be evident at the end.

I was attempting to say a lot of things about gender essentialism and the imbalance of romantic relationships in American (at least) culture.

P.

[pameladean]

Ack, I finally answered this comment but did it at top level, so you'll find it below. Would fix this better, but am at Fourth Street just peeking in before bed.

P.

[thinkum]

Has your fledgling disappeared yet?

So delighted to hear that your work will be both eBookified and PODified! We treasure our hardcovers, and have been hesitant to lend them out -- now we'll be able to recommend them more freely, by pointing people to the links for purchase. Yay!

[pameladean]

After three or four days of hearing fledglings meeping and parents chipping warningly, all fell silent. I checked the yard, and there were no fledglings. So I did have to mow it. I have looked for the sparrows, but there is so much uncut brush and tall grass and weeds that they could easily disappear if they didn't like the look of me. Their basic call sounds so much like any bird complaining of danger that I can't tell if they are out there.

I hope that JG&R will be out soon. We are still wrestling with the cover.

P.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

It's possibly wrong of me, but I get an escapable mental image of trying to get a large mattress up narrow, twisty stairs when you say "wrestling with the cover".

[pameladean]

Perhaps we are not quite at the wrestling stage, as the whole thing is rather misty at the moment and we are still looking for the images we need. Apparently late-Victorian houses with telescope domes are not common, not photographed, or do not have their photographs on the internets.

P.

[eavanmoore.livejournal.com]

I'm very glad I bought J,G&R when it was in print in the early 2000s, when I was in high school, ebcause it's one of my favourites. I got out The Dubious Hills from the library in college and would be very pleased to have a POD edition.

[pameladean]

I'm glad you bought it too! Very few people did. There will be a POD edition of both JG&R and The Dubious Hills in the next year.

P.