Newspapers and Returning Hummers

Well, I got the article whittled down to 750 words. Had to kill all "my darlings" as the saying goes. It was painful, and I really feel like cutting some of them weakened the message of the piece, but the editor is pleased, and so am I to have it off my desk. Just heard from him and it will run this Sunday. Sunday is always a good day for a column because it's the day with the most circulation. People go buy the Sunday paper when they won't buy any other day of the week, and there are many people who subscribe to only the weekend editions. So Sunday is an excellent day to have something read by a lot more people. It will be nice to see my words in print again. It's been over a year since I had anything published anywhere, or made any money writing. I think they would like for me to come back to the paper, but I don't want to review anymore books. Reviewing books just about ruined my enjoyment of reading. For six months after I left the paper I read nothing but a few magazines. Lately I've been reading again and really enjoying the books I've chosen. My shelves are stuffed to the edges with unread books.

For some reason reading inspires me to write. Always has. I've had writer-friends tell me that they cannot read other people's work when they're in the middle of a writing project. I'm just the opposite, especially when it's someone who is an especially fine writer. Just finished with Anne Proulx's story collection that includes "Brokeback Mountain." We listened to it on the way back from the mountains, and the excellence of the prose held both of us riveted. Had three good readers which helped, actors all of them. Campbell Scott read "Brokeback" and did a wonderful job. I was sobbing by the end, just as I sobbed when I saw the movie. I'm ecstatic that my SO loves books almost as much as I do. It makes life so much better. He even helped me kill my darlings last night as we were watching the president on Letterman.

Which brings me around to my homelife again. A blustery norther blew in this morning, turned the sky steel gray and poured rain for a little while -- another quarter inch that is most welcome. The hummingbirds are slowly returning. The day I left to catch the plane to Denver, I had hundreds swarming the feeders. I was filling four feeders each and every day. They were, of course, all empty when I got home, and one of the first things we did was set out more juice. It took two days for the first one to return. And then yesterday the SO found a dead one beside the sliding door in the sunroom. He worried that our food might be poisoning them, but I assured him the bird probably just flew into the glass kamikaze-like and killed himself, well, in this case, herself. These little birds are so aggressive and territorial, especially the females. Likely the bird saw its own reflection and thought it was an interloper going for its jug of juice. Which should teach any bird to learn to share a little better.

Onward ....