Little Chickens, RIP

I am one of a growing number of suburbanites who raise chickens, or at least I was. We came home from the Labor Day weekend and discovered the news.
The chicken coop broken into, clumps of black and white feathers everywhere, silence. A fox, or several foxes, had raided the coop and eaten our birds.
It feels so silly to write this, but I miss them. I miss the way they always planted the forward foot so cautiously before delicately lifting the back one, their bobbing heads as they walked, the funny way they’d run to meet me, their soft clucking, the way they turned their heads sideways to examine me from one bright eye.
They each had a distinct personality. There was no mistaking Sorche was the dominant one – she was larger, more mature, and wherever she went the others followed sooner or later. She was not above insisting on her authority with a few well-aimed pecks.
Loretta was almost as large, and sometimes my wife and I couldn’t tell her from Sorche. Loretta must’ve dreamed about staging a coup. When I let them out of the coop in the mornings they’d run to the middle of the grass, and then she and Sorche would face each other and hop into the air. It wasn’t a fight, but it was definitely a test of strength and skill, and both chickens took it very seriously. I think if Loretta had ever managed to hop higher than Sorche, there might have been trouble.
Patsy was the small one and surprisingly independent. She would often forage by herself and nothing was ever officially decided among the chickens – Should we go under the rose bushes or the okra plants? Should we scratch for bugs or just take a siesta in the pine straw? – until Patsy cast her vote. She was the swing state among chickens.
They were sisters, though, and companions. They slept nestled against each other at night, and when they perched on the fence – we had to clip their feathers to keep them from flying over – two would face one way and the third in another to keep watch in all directions.
We ordered more chickens and will give them the same names, but for now the coop is empty. They were never really pets, I guess, in the usual sense. They didn’t care to be picked up, and when I held them to clip their feathers, they fretted like Olive Oyl ineffectually watching Popeye get the worst of it; “Ohhhh, ohhhh,” but they liked to be near me. I’d call them whenever I had a treat, “chick-chick, chick-chick-chick,” and they’d make a dash for me in that uneven gait of running birds. Even when I didn’t have a treat, they’d stay close at hand whenever I was outside. If I moved, they would come and find me. Partly it was because I fed them, of course, but I also think knowing I was there made them feel secure.
Seeing them made me feel the same way.

Collin Kelley Interview

My interview with author Collin Kelley airs Sunday night on GPB at 8:00. You can listen in live by clicking http://www.gpb.org/radio-streaming

Brevity

“Brevity,” as Voltaire once remarked, or rather is supposed to have remarked, there being no concrete evidence that Voltaire ever said such a thing, in fact the quotation having come, as always with Shakespeare’s delicious irony, from a character who demonstrates precisely no concept of brevity – that pompous old windbag, Polonius, in what may well be Shakespeare’s least abbreviated play, Hamlet, all of which does not preclude Voltaire’s having said it later, in the same way that Ben Franklin cribbed most of his best gags from other sources, notably Marcus Aurelius, so that even such famous Franklinisms as “Fish and visitors stink after three days,” were never said by Franklin at all, or at least not originated by him, making it not entirely fair to condemn Voltaire for not saying something people think he said or to have said it only after somebody like Shakespeare said it first – certainly not as appalling as Thoreau’s outright fabrication of an event in which he, sitting in jail for tax evasion, is visited by the eminent transcendentalist Emerson, who demands, “What are you doing in there, Henry?” to which Thoreau, according to the story, retorts, “What are you doing out there, Ralph?” which exchange was invented by Thoreau out of whole cloth – Emerson being too busy on the lecture circuit to go around visiting jail cells – to show how witty and quick-thinking Thoreau was, a bogus episode, dreamt up while cooling his heels thinking of funny things to say in case Emerson dropped and could be induced to demand what he – Thoreau – was doing there, and while it is perfectly acceptable for Thoreau to ascribe any retort to himself he wanted to, it is beyond the pale to go putting straight lines into Emerson’s mouth; moreover, it should be noted that Thoreau’s rejoinder, “What are you doing out there, Ralph?” without Emerson’s opening line to occasion it, not only makes no sense whatsoever in addition to not being a proper rejoinder at all, but at best a kind of joinder, would make any jailer doubt his prisoner’s sanity if said aloud to an empty jailhouse; all of which has no bearing on a statement Voltaire may or may not have made, as Voltaire could have said it, and it is the kind of thing Voltaire might have said, even if he were quoting someone else, such as Shakespeare, especially given the point that Shakespeare himself was enormously fond of stealing quotations, especially from Petrarch and even from his own self, plagiarizing his own plays left and right, to such an extent that if you took out all the lines from Henry IV that appear in Shakespeare’s other plays, there would scarcely be enough left over to pad out a decent-length skit, and that in any case, the whole issue of attributing quotations being a very tricky one; to wit, at Lincoln’s deathbed, Edward Stanton is supposed to have remarked, “He belongs to the ages now,” but some witnesses claim he said, “He belongs to the angels now,” at which historians object Stanton was an atheist and unlikely to bring angels into it, although it should be remembered that in moments of unusual stress, witnessing the demise of the Great Emancipator, for example, we are apt to forget our principles and blurt out the first thing that pops into our heads, but in any case, the thing I am driving at here, is that it is all too often we may be uncertain as to who said what; take for example Sancho Panza who is popularly believed to have said, “Living well is the best revenge,” even though any mediocre Spanish scholar will tell you that using the gerund this way is highly uncharacteristic, and what Sancho actually said would have been something like, “To live well is the best revenge,” leaving aside the question whether you consider it possible to misquote a fictional character, we are led to weigh the best strategy vis-à-vis posterity if you are about to come out with something potentially quotable of your own: should you brazenly make up snappy comebacks for imaginary repartee, as Thoreau did –– or say something not quite as spiffy but which at least has the virtue of originality, and then perhaps be misquoted later in a way that improves on what you actually did say, for instance by substituting “ages” for “angels” – or to steal a quotation, and the attendant credit, as Franklin or Voltaire presumably did, although in Voltaire’s case at least, quite innocently, for who does not occasionally quote Shakespeare? – a question it would do us all well to ponder, “is the soul of wit.”

1998 Kentucky Appearance

This is a podcast from an old reading I did at Western Kentucky University. It's pretty damn long - over an hour - and contains dinging clocks and various background noises - but there's some interesting stuff in here during the Q&A period about Schrodinger's Cat, how to propose marriage, and the writing process.

28th Wedding Anniversary

I’ve got this idea, only I can’t get Nancy to cooperate. I want to say, “After you’ve been married as long as we have…” And Nancy would jump in with “… you start to finish each other’s sentences.” We would do this in company every time the subject of marriage came up. It’d be great, but Nancy doesn’t see it.
Having been married twenty-eight years, I feel I ought to qualify as something as an expert, but I don’t really have any advice to pass on. Oprah, as far as I can tell, has never been married, but she’s full of good ideas. I hear about some of these when I come home from work. For example, when your spouse is upset, put your arm around her shoulders to put her at ease. Try to get her to lie on her side, if you can. Stroke her hair and talk to her soothingly. It may help to put her on a table.
Actually, I think that was trimming your dog’s toenails, but except for the table part it’s all pretty applicable.
The truth is, marriage is a pretty sweet deal, and there’s no doubt men get the better end of the bargain. I have been married longer than I’ve been single – I have fewer and fewer important memories in which Nancy does not play a role. There is no person on the planet I know as well as my wife, nor she me. She loves me in spite of this. I am a lucky man.

Button, Button, Who's Got the Button?

On July 2, GPB's Georgia Gazette gave me the opportunity to wax learned on a Georgian who was one of the last people to sign the Declaration of Independence. Click title to listen.

Two-Bit Goon Contest Number Four

July's contest to is to come up with the worst possible idea for a contest, the sort of thing you'd hate to have a t-shirt saying, "I won first place in a -- contest." An example might be a wax fruit eating contest. To enter, post your contest idea to this blog before August 1, 2009. The winner will have to email me a mailing address.
First prize is a an autographed copy of the award-winning Days of the Endless Corvette, a certificate of authenticity averring that you have indeed won a contest for Two-Bt Goons and a second certificate of authenticity averring the authenticity of the first certificate. All this will be delivered to your home by a PAID REPRESENTATIVE OF THE US GOVERNMENT. Entries must be original -- as far as I can tell -- must not contain obscenities, racial or sexual slurs, or mugwumps. I cannot stress this aspect strongly enough; there must be no mugwumps. I will select the winner on any criteria I choose. Employees, friends, and family of Man Martin and his subsidaries are welcome to enter. Offer excludes taxes, tags, and title. Dealer retains all rebates.