The Birds!

I could hear birds twittering even as I trudged groggily down the stairs this morning. Outside under one of the trees, a couple of doves were contentedly chirping and eating, and judging from the sounds, a few hundred of their friends were also in the area. That's such a wonderful way to start the day.

Hitchcock's movie The Birds could never have been set in Michigan. We are so damned glad to see the little critters that we'd never run shrieking in fear from them.

The newspaper was missing this morning. It happens from time to time. When we first moved here, our carrier/delivery boy was a member of a huge family, and whenever he had to be somewhere else, do something else, a sibling would take over his route for him. That usually meant that half the houses were skipped and probably nonsubscribers wound up with our newspapers. We complained to the newspaper office, who in turn complained to the boy, who in turn told his mother, who in turn went postal on us. Apparently the family was in some pretty serious financial troubles and needed every penny they could get. Our complaint, they feared, would cause the boy to lose his job delivering papers. My husband (who is so much more pragmatic than I) just told her, "Hey, that's not our problem. We pay to get the newspaper. If it's not delivered, then we're out money." She wanted us to call her rather than complain to the newspaper's main office. So that's what we did until a new carrier took over. I don't know if the boy willingly gave up his route or if the newspaper made the change. It doesn't matter. Service is no better.

Sometimes I go weeks without even reading the newspapers. They stack up until finally I just give up and realize that I can't catch up, so out they go. Sometimes I just catch up on the comics and save the crossword puzzles. Usually, though, I'll spend the twenty minutes it takes to read through the little rag. The op-ed page is so conservative that I often avoid it (unless I'm looking for examples of logical fallacies to show my students). The presumed wisdom is that newspapers as we know them are dying, and that's likely true. It's still sad. As a little kid, I taught myself to draw and to read using the newspaper comics and Ann Landers. I used to draw Nancy and Sluggo over and over and over. It would surprise me for anyone to even remember Nancy and Sluggo now.

Combining my two trends of thought today, I had drawn my own cartoon strip for a class I took in cartooning back when I was an art student. My characters were birds. Hey, they're way easier to draw than cats. And at least some birds actually do talk. (Okay, my cat talks, but not all of them do. Certainly not like Garfield.) I ought to pick that strip back up one day to see if I can do it again. It might be fun. This time I'll make them doves. Dr. S.