This is the ‘let’s chat’ post. Enjoy!
5 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread | What are you reading, writing, thinking about?”
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Old Schoolhouse Road Publishing
Old School Stories for Today's Readers
Old Schoolhouse Road Publishing
Old School Stories for Today's Readers
Oh my goodness. I take the weekend off and look at all of the great posts and conversation that I missed! I am going to have to carve out some time this afternoon/evening to get caught up.
Jane! Marcia and I were texting last evening and I think we both had a nagging worry you’d abandoned us! So good to see you. 🙂 Hope you enjoyed your weekend off.
Quiet day.
Reading: Re-read a few paragraphs on the similarity between the way a gobble moves his flock and military maneuvers, from Being a Boy by Charles Dudley Warner (1877).
“Perhaps it is not generally known that we get the idea of some of our best military maneuvers from the turkey. The deploying of the skirmish-line in advance of an army is one of them. The drum-major of our holiday militia companies is copied exactly from the turkey gobbler; he has the same splendid appearance, the same proud step, and the same martial aspect. The gobbler does not lead his forces in the field, but goes behind them, like the colonel of a regiment, so that he can see every part of the line and direct its movements. This resemblance is one of the most singular things in natural history. I like to watch the gobbler maneuvering his forces in a grasshopper-field. He throws out his company of two dozen turkeys in a crescent-shaped skirmish-line, the number disposed at equal distances, while he walks majestically in the rear. They advance rapidly, picking right and left, with military precision, killing the foe and disposing of the dead bodies with the same peck. Nobody has yet discovered how many grasshoppers a turkey will hold; but he is very much like a boy at a Thanksgiving dinner– he keeps on eating as long as the supplies last. The gobbler, in one of these raids, does not condescend to grab a single grasshopper,—at least, not while anybody is watching him. But I suppose he makes up for it when his dignity cannot be injured by having spectators of his voracity; perhaps he falls upon the grasshoppers when they are driven into a corner of the field. But he is only fattening himself for destruction; like all greedy persons, he comes to a bad end. And if the turkeys had any Sunday-school, they would be taught this.”
Writing: Blog posts and reposts
Thinking: I really should get back to The Amenities of Book Collecting.
What a great descriptive narrative. Now I want to see a bunch of turkeys in action. But, I did get a kick out of watching my kitten think she could catch a guinea hen. It was amazing. The hens were doing guinea things, minding there own business when Marble the cat came upon them, crouched down in pounce position. Amazingly the guineas in unison started to form a circle around the cat. They moved in, the circle getting smaller and smaller. I could see the panic in the cat as she looked for an escape route. What a amazing site.
Being a Boy is one of my all time favorite books of this sort–old men reflecting on growing up. There’s one chapter where he tells the story of a rich girl embarrassing him and he tells it–the progression from confusion to embarrassment to anger–so well I can feel my cheeks get hot.
I would loved to have seen the guineas and kitten. Hilarious!