April 2003 Archives

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5:45 AM

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5:43 AM

"Never apologize, never explain." -- Neil Gaiman

Well, I'm sorry, Neil, but I feel I should explain this journal's recent involuntary hiatus. The simple explanation is that on April 1st, Blogger.com played a rather extended joke on me. That afternoon, something at their end went blooie and disabled the publishing for me and everyone else using their service. Within a few hours, the outage was repaired for most users, but not me; since that time I've been unable to publish here. What was really annoying was that the people at Blogger.com not only failed to fix the problem, they never even reviewed the notices I'd sent them.

Luckily, petercashwell.com has wonderful designers (quietspace.com) and a gracious host (FictCo), both of whom spent their time trying to help solve the problem. Eventually Mignon, one of quietspace's cyber-goddesses, figured out a way around the Blogger issue, and *poof*, my April Fool's day message finally appeared here--just in time for me to shut up until May.

Why May? Because I'm heading out of town for a couple of weeks. Kelly and I will be doing some research for a project we're working on together, and it will take me offline for a while.

When I get back I'll be providing details about my upcoming travels for readings and conventions and birding sessions. From Culpeper to Los Angeles, from Chapel Hill to Raleigh, I'll be spreading my message of universal brotherhood, appreciating nature, and thinking twice about using Blogger.com for your online journal needs.

In the meantime, I hope everyone will head to the local bookstore and ask for The Verb 'To Bird' in a VERY LOUD VOICE.

See you next month!--PC

10:57 PM

I was trying to decide how to observe April Fool's Day here, but then Blogger went down and stayed down and the joke was on me. Still, I'm going ahead with my holiday observation by doing something I'm usually very reluctant to do: toot my own horn. Despite having a big ego and a loud mouth, I also have something in my personality that prevents me from accepting good news without qualification, let alone proclaiming "I done good!" at an audible volume.

But today I'll change that. Or at least let someone else do the proclaiming.

GOOD THINGS ABOUT THE VERB 'TO BIRD'

1) As noted below, it has been chosen as a Barnes & Noble Discover selection for summer 2003.

2) Reviewer Aaron Carico, in C-VILLE Weekly, March 18-24, 2003 said of the book:

As a “birder” himself, Cashwell treats the matter with wit and self-deprecating humor... he has the good sense not to bore the uninitiated with copious details and mind-numbing lists. Were Cashwell a less adequate writer, the reader might have found himself wishing for charts on the brown-headed cowbird. Cashwell, though, writes with ease, humor and clarity, if not always with narrative cohesion (the book at times can be a bit haphazard and clunky), about a topic that if written about poorly would be ripe for parody.

Judging by his choice of epigraphs and his pop-cultural savvy, Cashwell’s web of interests is far flung and generally serves him well here. His sense of humor has a sort of sunny derision about it--there’s an element of cheerfulness to his sarcasm and a bluntness to his wit. Cashwell tries hard, almost too hard, not to exclude the reader in new and uncertain waters, always giving an elbow and a wink to punctuate the joke, to make sure no one has gotten lost along the way.

Given the task Cashwell has undertaken--to write a funny, eclectic and engaging book about birds, birders, and birding--he succeeds to a laudable degree. The book will inevitably be of greatest interest to birders in Central Virginia, but it is to Cashwell’s credit that a reader with only a vague curiosity about the topic can finish the book more fascinated by the ivory-billed woodpecker than when he began.

3) Robert Finch, co-editor of The Norton Book of Nature Writing, says:

Peter Cashwell possesses one of the rarest of all qualities in a nature writer: an intelligent wit. This, combined with a felicitous passion for both language and birds, makes The Verb 'To Bird' a book that will engage even readers who cannot tell a hawk from a handsaw --and may even make a few converts.

4) Katharine Weber, author of The Music Lesson, Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, and the forthcoming The Little Women, says:

Reading this book was the next best thing to wandering in the woods with Peter Cashwell hoping to add a rufous-capped warbler to my life list. No, it was better -- I could laugh out loud in delight as I turned the pages without fear of scaring the birds.

5) Henry T. Armistead, of the Free Library of Philadelphia, says in today's issue of Library Journal:

Many birdwatching books are cute and quite often forgettable, but this one is much better than most. A teacher of English and speech at a private school in Virginia, Cashwell presents and entertaining and witty meditation on birding, full of relevant quotes from the classics and infused with a sort of Victorian travelog and anecdotal narrative that is pleasant and, in a circuitous way, informative. Cashwell pretends not to be an expert, but his curiosity, sense of humor, irreverence, and lively writing style (e.g., "a horizon shaped like Kate Winslet") more than compensate. Divided into three sections, the book covers a range of topics, from raptors to the contrast between wildlife in rural North Carolina and New York City, in chapters that have snappy, emphatic, and often unexpected endings. Nonbirders as well as birders would enjoy this. As Cashwell's emphasis is on the East Coast, this is recommended for larger regional collections.

6) Pope John Paul II has initiated a revision of the New Testament which will include the first chapter of The Verb 'To Bird.'

Okay, that last one's not true. But the other ones are--even on April Fool's Day.

6:14 PM