Winged Wonders

Ever since I was young, I was fascinated by wildlife, particularly birds.  I was mostly familiar with backyard birds: robin, grackle, mockingbird, sparrow, finch, oriole.  Occassionally, I would set up a small tape recorder to capture the sounds. My favorite bird was the mockingbird because it was so adept with making musical imitations. I could spot it anywhere by sound, then locate in the tree or on the wire where it perched.

northern mockingbird

The mockingbird is one of the most observed species of backyard birds in the northeast where I reside and my favorite made-into-movie books is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  The flutist in my wind/string trio named her music studio Mockingbird Studio.  Teresa also works with rehabilitation of wild birds — pretty cool how we met later in life, performed music together.  We recorded our first cd Silver Swan which has a composition Passenger Pigeon. 

At some point in my science studies, I was introduced to endangered and extinct species.   I read about passenger pigeons  and their amazing ability to travel for miles and relocate their original location in order to deliver communication. The were killed into extinction by humans.

I came across an article online about a carrier pigeon that was responsible for saving the lives of thousands of soldiers in Europe.

Over the years I lost my edge of knowledge about backyard birds but decided to name the art and music studio I founded after a majestic bird.  Instead of using the adult bird name of Swan (though easier to spell), I chose the baby swan Cygnet. You can read about the history of the swan and the story of cygnets when you go to the home page on iCygnet.com.  Nearly one year has passed since my amazing company was extinguished — put into extinction by hateful human abuse and terror tactics.

 

This blog began July 2012 as a means to reflect and rebuild for the future.   My new eCygnet eCommerce website, blog and Twitter accounts provide information and products linking the arts world globally.   iCygnet blog and Twitter explore ideas and places in addition to providing information for help and hope for individuals who may have been wounded in spirit through bullying and abuse.

The Write Words

We bloggers have a mission of providing information to the world wide web (www) of followers. “Posting” is mostly done for altruistic purposes.   I started a forum for oboists back in 2005 but wasn’t able to keep the momentum going.  There were too many distractions and my audience was not quite ready to take the time to read and respond.   What has changed?   The speed at which we can access the information and the popularity of the medium.

Then, I found a better medium to do writing and responding — a blog.  A blog allows me to keep in contact with my “fans” and meets the needs of my audience of readers.  Posts are limited in length to match the level of time people can dedicate to being online reading.   I’m able to cover a vast amount of topics which keeps my inquisitive mind intact while healing from losses in my life.

Almost anyone who has experience and information to share can start a blogsite and you can find a blog about almost any topic known to “womankind.”   My mother (83) has just begun her journey in the online writing world after self-publishing 4 picture books, 1 chapter book, and one personal collection of essays.

Now she gets a chance to do what she always claimed was one of her best skills: editing other people’s writing.  (She will probably find something to edit in this post . . .)   My mom was educated in the days of the one room schoolhouse when the class sizes were small and/or integrated with classmates of more skills.   She was always advanced in her reading/writing/grammer.   The grammatical and spelling errors that are prevalant in newspapers and published books astound her and she has a venue to voice her concerns and comments.

Tonight I will continue with my writing and introduce a series of articles that present the power of music for healing.   See you back here soon . . .

mARTi