Month: February 2015
special news
Happy Bird Corporation NEWSLETTER, Manufacturer of animal water products, activist in water resources for animals, and publisher of fiction, non-fiction and illustration. Special edition 13 February 2015
Nature’s Viewpoint, Volume one of Thomas Hollyday’s animal cartoons has placed number one in Kindle Short reads Humor and Entertainment.
Get your free copy on February 15 at Amazon Kindle.
Don’t have a Kindle app on your phone? Here’s all you do. Go to Amazon.com. Search in Books for Nature’s Viewpoint. Select the ebook version. A prompt will inform you how to download your Kindle app and the free ebook.
Tom’s cartoons shine with joy and amusement as he presents an imaginary nature realm drawn from his childhood on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. A recognized humorist with a fluid line, his playful wildlife drawings guide us through the year with poignant, smile-inducing views of the world around us. Tom is loved by fans for his expressive, simple drawings, reminiscent of Thurber. There’s no better introduction to Hollyday’s unique style than Nature’s Viewpoint.
Enjoy comments on many of Tom’s published drawings from magazines and newsletters over the years Facebook on Hollyday cartoons .
Tom Hollyday will be signing copies of his latest novel China Jewel
at Wellesley Books , 82 Central St, Wellesley, MA 02482 781 431 1160
Thursday 26 February
7 to 8:30 PM.
For all you sailors and history buffs China Jewel , the latest in the series of River Sunday novels of Hollyday’s Chesapeake town and characters , is about a contemporary tall ship race to an old tea port in China. The voyage is filled with treachery, murders and the search for a lost Chinese jewel of great
historical value. Of this novel’s characters none is more
fascinating to modern readers than a father trying to renew a relationship with his long lost son.
The River Sunday series of novels feature Chesapeake lore and his plots
include treasure, pirates, espionage, racism, religion and
terrorists. Titles from his ebook list are listed on Amazon Kindle, Smashwords, Kobo, Itunes and Barnes and Noble. Read his 5 star reviews. You’ll see he is a terrific read and well worth a visit to Wellesley Books for a signed print copy. Read more at facebook.com/riversundayromancemysteries.
CONTACTS
Hollyday Ebooks are sold at Amazon, Nook, Smashwords, Kobo, Itunes. Paperbacks are available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Stores are Barnes and Noble, Powells, and selected bookstores at Mystery Loves Company, Oxford, Maryland, Easton News Center, Easton, Maryland, Wellesley Books, Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Questions contact Happy Bird Corporation, PO Box 86, Weston, MA 02493.
Email tomah@solarsippers.com (Subscribe for free newsletter.To aid in adjusting your mailing, please advise your original email listings. Be patient. The maillist computer takes time to adjust listings).
Writing character thoughts
Writing character thoughts” by Thomas Hollyday
The issue often comes up concerning how to write the inner thoughts of a character as action and normal dialogue takes place in the narrative.
Laura Carr in her essay in Writing.com ”How to write the thoughts of a character” counsels the author to forget the the unnecessary tags like “he thought”, the separate quotation marks, and the tense switches. She claims with good reasoning that these gimmicks only interrupt the flow of the story.
However, K.M. Weiland argues in helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com 2/5/2011, the key to good writing is to tell about these thoughts, she refers to as the inner narrative. She advises to show the thoughts by the character’s language and vision, and incorporate this into the story.
So, instead of writing “He thought¸ ’This is great ice cream.’ ” Write “He smacked his lips as he enjoyed the cone.”
Good enough. However, what is a thought? First of all, there is a difference between a thought and a feeling. Feelings are more sensory, developed from touch, hearing, seeing and so forth. Thoughts are developed from intelligence. See Clint Gallozzi in personal-development.com, February 9, 2011 where he discusses which comes first, feeling or thoughts. Feelings, he says are sensory or emotionsal. What comes first is “a stimulus, which then evokes a feeling or thought.”
Examples are the following: “We hurt our knee against a chair which makes us angry and we think of kicking the chair” Another one is the following: “Charlie walks into the room and smells cigarette smoke with a sudden feeling of nausea. He see his arch enemy across the room smoking. He says, ”You bastard! You’re not supposed to smoke in here.” Note that in both of these examples, the issue of inner narration and character thoughts has been described without special quotes, tense changes, or italics. The story flow had not been interrupted in any way.
Like a story, a flower starts with a root and ends with a bloom
“First flowers of spring”
They bloom to join us in the new sun. It’s in all of our hearts to yearn for spring warmth, especially as we winter the old cold of the season. If we walk our thawing trails we may be treated to a bit of color and bloom among the bare plants alongside. These are the special flowers of the spring, ones that come first out of the wild. Some feed from their underground bulb reservoirs of food. These plants starve for the good weather the same as we do. In my research on the earliest flowers, keep in mind that every area of the country has its favorites, some of which I did not select. On top of that, growing seasons vary and no one can schedule Mother Nature changes. So let’s look together across the nation and see what we can find flowering for us.
We could start near the Pacific Ocean in the state of Washington with the calypso orchid (calypso bulbosa). This red flower (or small lady slipper) with a white lip appears in late March in California, the Rocky Mountains and across the northern states. Strangely, it attracts insects to pollinate it but fools them and gives no nectar in return for their effort. It’s also known as Fairy Slipper or Venus’s slipper. It’s named for the Greek nymph Calypso of ancient poet Homer’s Odyssey.
Calypso (calypso bulbosa )(photo wiki)
As we approach the middle of the country, we see the popular bloodroot (sanguinaria canadensis) which has a pretty flower to cheer us up. The plant which is poisonous has a red sap which the Native Americans used as an insect repellent and a sunscreen. This use may have given birth to the English colonists’ description of red decorated native men and women as “redskins.”
The Algonquins and the Missouri Indians used the red stain on their palms as a love charm.
Bloodroot (sanguinaria Canadensis) (photo wiki)
Further east, we find coming into blossom the entrancing Pennsylvania bittercress (cardamine pensylvanica). These plants like others of the early season grow in moist soil. The term cardamine comes from the Greek Kardamon a type of spice. It is also called Quaker Bittercress. This is a herb, not too bitter, and the leaves can be eaten raw or cooked. The glucosinolates in the plant can help to remove carcinogens from the human body. (Before eating make sure to identify the actual plant by pictures of bittercress in eattheplanet.com).
Pennsylvania bittercress (cardamine pensylvanica) (photo USDA)
When we get to Virginia we find one of the most handsome of the spring blossoms. It’s called spring beauty (claytonia virginica). Another more practical name is fairy spud, because the Native Americans used the early growing roots as a form of potato after the winter scarcity of food.
Spring beauty (claytonia virginica) (photo wiki)
Here’s a flower which takes on the end of winter with a stubborn and beautiful flower. It’s called roundleaf yellow violet (viola rotundifolia). It lives close to the ground and does not possess the stem of violets which sprout later in the spring. This plant has come down to us in poetic terms. Check out William Cullen Bryant’s famous poem “The Yellow Violet” from the Poetry Foundation, (poetry foundation.org)
Yellow violet (viola rotundifolia) (photo wiki)
“When beechen buds begin to swell,
And woods the blue-bird’s warble know,
The yellow violet’s modest bell
Peeps from the last year’s leaves below”
Yellow trout lilies (erythronium americanum) have to be included. They come up in the spring as far south as Georgia. The leaves of this plant are grey-green mottled with brown and resemble brook trout, thus the name. They grow in colonies that can be three hundred years old. Here’s something for you fishermen and women. The Cherokees used to chew on the root, a little tuber that tastes like cucumber, and then spit it into the river to make fish bite.
Yellow trout lily (erythronium americanum) (photo wiki)
Thanks to Wikipedia.com, usda.gov, wildflowers.org, eattheplanet.com, fairfaxcounty.gov, and illinoiswildflowers.info for various data on these flowers.
Happy Bird Corporation February
Happy Bird Corporation NEWSLETTER, Manufacturer of animal water products, activist in water resources for animals, and publisher of fiction, non-fiction and illustration. February 2015
ANIMAL SECTION
The Commercial animal unit which covers the drinking water, insulates, and provides passive solar heating has found a home with backyard poultry farms. Passive solar means that expensive solar cells are not used to convert heat to electricity and to use that electricity to run heaters. Instead it directly radiates the heat from a dark surface to the water that surface covers. Simple, inexpensive, and efficient like the solar pipes heating water on a roof. It is competitive to electric powered drinkers and operates in sunlight when animals range outside and like to drink. It has no wires for animals like chickens to peck or chew. Since it only works to about 20 deg. F, it doesn’t allow animals to freeze parts of their bodies as can happen with too hot open water being provided in frigid temperatures. Check out recent videos of these Solar Sipper units 10040, 10008, and the dog version Solar Sipper 10011 in operation on YouTube. Compare their drinking water to the frozen water nearby in the open bowl. These videos show backyard weather down to 20 degrees F. even with some clouds and light wind compromising the sunlight. Remember, every effort you make to use less electricity keeps us from using fossil fuels to make that electricity, and thus, keeps the climate clean. Go solar!
From our friends in the industry
Plow and Hearth is offering a three decker Outdoor Cat House. Duncraft promotes a well designed three in one Bird Feeder
Distributor Goldcrest in Mexico MO is excited to report that their 2014 warehouse sale grew to 600 retailers from 46 states and 4 Canadian provinces. Grant Toellner has announced expansion by opening a showroom at America’s Mart. For more, contact grant@goldcrestdistributing.com
World water resource meetings.
COP 21, The Conference of the Parties, will meet at Le Bourget, Paris, 30 November to 11 December 2015. Its goal will be to limit the global average temperature rise to a maximum of 2 degrees Celcius (3.6 deg F). the meeting will assemble 196 Parties to the United Nations Framework convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Climate control will affect clean water for animals. COP21
From ARC news. (ESRI.COM) We now have a computerized view of the world in terms of 250 x 250 meter squares using common terms, the report says. The characteristics are landform, climate, and rock type. The fourth characteristics, land cover, is influenced by these first three. The graphics show us how species can survive. This is a wonderful study instrument for planning ecological work on our planet.
The Groundwater Foundation is thirty years old this year. With this anniversary a call is out to protect our national drinking water. Check out the EPA program on this at http://www2.epa.gov/safedrinkingwater40. Keep in mind that safe drinking water applies to our backyard animal friends too.
BOOK SECTION
Animal water materials
A 3rd edition of Happy Bird Corporation Tips on Watering Wild Birds in Waterers and Birdbaths is available at our EBAY store.
A new chapbook Watering Backyard Pets and Wildlife will be published in the spring of 2015 to draw attention to the need for fresh unpolluted water for wildlife. This short book provides ways to inventory your backyard for water and references to learn more about animal needs.
Subscribe to our blog on animal water and our Facebook page facebook.com/solarsipper
Fiction and Non-fiction
Poem “the blonde girl” is published in Mused, Winter solstice issue.
FREE Kindle EBOOK Slave Graves thrilling romantic murder mystery novel! Dr. Frank Light, archaeologist, is dragged into the marshes of Maryland. Maggie, his feisty colleague, is sure she’s found something amazing.
Thomas Hollyday will be meeting fans at Wellesley Books, Wellesley Ma on February 26, 2015, 7 to 830 PM. Nature’s Viewpoint, his cartoon book, will be introduced.
The author plans to show his suspense novels Powerboat Racer on civil rights and China Jewel on a modern sea saga at the famous Gaithersburg Book Festival, Gaithersburg, Maryland .May 16.
Monthly writing blog by Johns Hopkins Writing Seminar trained novelist and historian. Writing
Photographs and technical information as well as reviews behind all the Happy Bird titles. – Facebook on Hollyday novels..
From Our Friends in Books
Osprey Point, Dave Reinhart. A supervisor at a nuclear power plant is found dead in his office. Is it suicide, an accident—or murder?
CitizenChip, Wil Howitt. From his character “Me, I kinda like humans. They have fun quirks. But not all of my kind agree with me, and they’re losing patience”
Aquarian Awakenings, Lisa Shea. Commander Jon Paxton was transfixed by the woman before him. He’d had lovers in the past, certainly – women who eased his loneliness. But none had ever called to him the way Nicole did. None had ever fit into his life as neatly as a key fits into its lock.
Eastern Shore Writers Association
Authors showing this spring at Gaithersburg Maryland Book Festival
Joan Cooper The Portia Journal – In an effort to reconcile with her estranged family, Edith Troth spends the summer on an Outer Banks island. A web of long-held secrets tangle and break as the family’s machinations are revealed.
Joyce Edelston THE ROCK CREEK SHAMAN is the story of War-ne-la, named after a shaman from her mother’s British Columbian Kwakiutl tribe;. War-ne-la becomes aware at a young age of her abilities to interact with the spirit world who teach her how to become a healing shaman.
J.C.Elkin World Class: Poems Inspired by the ESL Classroom. A teacher illustrates their struggles and triumphs by addressing their linguistic and cultural challenges alongside social issues such as poverty, abuse, religion, illegal immigration, education, feminism, and war.
ILLUSTRATION SECTION
The National Cartoonists Society is pleased to announce a new digital magazine. The publication is free to those of us who are fans of the illustrators of comic drawings.
Nature’s Viewpoint, Volume one of Thomas Hollyday’s animal cartoons has placed number one in Kindle Short reads Humor and Entertainment. Get your copy at our free day on February 15 at Kindle. Tom’s cartoons shine with joy and amusement as he presents an imaginary nature realm drawn from his childhood on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. A recognized humorist with a fluid line, his playful wildlife drawings guide us through the year with poignant, smile-inducing views of the world around us. Tom is loved by fans for his expressive, simple drawings, reminiscent of Thurber. There’s no better introduction to Hollyday’s unique style than Nature’s Viewpoint.
CONTACTS
Hollyday Ebooks are sold at Amazon, Nook, Smashwords, Kobo, Itunes. Paperbacks are available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Stores are Barnes and Noble, Powells, and selected bookstores at Mystery Loves Company, Oxford, Maryland, Easton News Center, Easton, Maryland, Wellesley Books, Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Questions contact Happy Bird Corporation, PO Box 86, Weston, MA 02493.
Email tomah@solarsippers.com (Subscribe for free newsletter.To aid in adjusting your mailing, please advise your original email listings. Be patient. The maillist computer takes time to adjust listings).
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