The Joys of Winter

Snow!

Using my Digging Stick

Written for a blogging friend who has had a miscarriage and another who must have an hysterectomy.

We were going to be a four child family. It was in The Plan, along with establishing careers and setting up a lifestyle that included lots of outdoor activities. The first half had been accomplished -- two beautiful, healthy babies as close together as possible, one career on track and one avocation established, recreational land purchased and weekend home built. The first two kids were in school and old enough to do a lot of things for themselves.

The joker in the woodpile was a negative Rhesus factor. Mine. Antibodies built up and up and up, and for that and other unassailably good reasons (or so I thought at the time and still, in the main, support) I found myself, in my late thirties, in a doctor's office signing up for a tubal ligation. I hated the man at first sight and his questions and comments to me confirmed my instant reaction. 'Do you not want a son?' he asked. Later, while I was on the examination table with my feet in stirrups and his very cold fingers in most uncomfortable places he remarked, 'I will have to have your husband's permission, you know, for this procedure.' Fuming, I convinced him that he was not going to get my husband's permission and I stayed with him for the simple reason that at the time he was the only doctor in our city doing tubal ligation through the vaginal wall and it seemed like the best procedure. I didn't realize that what I hated was the decision, not the doctor.

And so I 'got my tubes tied'. And I thought it would be no big deal. No incision. No more danger of miscarriage. No more birth control. I was free. The day after my surgery I forged off into the scrum and did most of my Christmas shopping, then did all the Christmas stuff you do with two kids and an extended family, hosted the dinner, did the school holiday sports stuff. After the girls went back to school in January, there was time for what I had done to sink in and I collapsed into a puddle of misery.

The only grief I can compare it to was what I felt when I lost my adored mother. But this grief was keener, the knife edged with poison, because I had done it to myself. Hindsight tells me that part of the problem was the obvious; I was exhausted. But the babies who would never be were ghosts in the daylight and haunted my dreams at night. No chance now of the son who would have my father's eyes and gentle humour and whom we had planned to bear his name. No chance now of another little one, a unique combination of genes, whom we would meet with fascination and joy. No little round head in the crook of my arm, relaxing into satiated sleep. No next one.

In her post about her upcoming hysterectomy, Slouching Mom wrote this heart tearing paragraph:

Because someday you might be in my shoes, and you'll have so many regrets, regrets about the moments you didn't enjoy your babies, because you always believed that there'd be another chance to be a better, wiser, kinder, gentler mother, that no matter how many mistakes you made with your first and second children, there was always the promise of a third child, the one you'd more perfectly parent. That's why (isn't it?) after a particularly trying battle with a child who hadn't yet attained the age of reason, you so often found yourself muttering, "I have to remember not to do this the same way with the next one."

I don't know how it feels to have fertility slowly slip away in the menopause years. I read the things that women write as it happens and I read what is written about this slow, irrevocable loss, and I can't relate. But oh, I can relate to you whose miscarriage was your last try and I can relate to you whose body has to go under the knife to save your health. There is no pain like it.

It passes, that pain. The ghost babies fade away and other joys make themselves known. When your children are grown, all children become, in some sense, yours and there is a solid comfort in working for the community and making a difference in the lives of the little ones. And of their mothers, who are the same age as the children you did not have.

If you are lucky, someday your children will put their babies into your lap and the last little ghosts will be gone. I regarded my mother's devoted slavery to her grandchildren with a somewhat jaundiced eye, as it was my job to coax the little monsters back into some kind of civilized behaviour after she had looked after them. I see that same resigned look on my daughter's face when Little Stuff is reunited with her after a stay with Grama and Grampa. Grandparenting is sheer, indulgent fun. But the best thing is that I have found that grandparenting is a generic activity that I can do in all sorts of ways.

In Woman, an Intimate Biography, Natalie Angier devotes a chapter to the utility of the menopause in creating grandmothers way back in prehistory, infertile women whose contributions of food and child care increased the survival rate of their near kin and thus perpetuated the anomaly. Off these women went with their digging sticks and the food they brought back (plus child care, I am sure) made a huge difference. These women enabled our distant ancestors to thrive and spread out across the world. Angier calls it the 'grandmother hypothesis'. It's a fascinating take on the thesis of menopause as a survival characteristic. Working in and for the community (digging stick optional) is something I love. It's a role that fits me and that I fit. Hard work, sometimes, but satisfying and fun. It doesn't require you to deal with tantrums and vomit at 2:00 am either. Priceless!

Fair Fodder -- Hump Day Humm

Julie Pippert at Using My Words has this topic for this Wednesday's Hump Day Hmm: Are other people and the things they do (blog, email, news etc) fair fodder for our blogs? What are your ethics and mores as a writer, when it comes to characterizing others.

This is a very question very close to my heart today because a blogger I know is critically ill -- at best she has a 50/50 chance of pulling through. She is a highly talented, creative, warm, funny, involved person, a young woman, with young children. The news of the seriousness of her illness is truly a blow to the heart. I would like to direct you to her blog so that you could better feel with me the enormity of this, the sheer devastation her loss would bring to her family, to her friends, to the whole community.

But I am not going to say anything more about her here because I don't know whether she or her family would want me to do so. If she recovers, WHEN she recovers, I hope we will get beautifully crafted and hilariously funny stories of her hospital stay, thoughtful posts about how being so ill affected her and hers, incisive posts about what made her ill and how it was handled, reports on her children and pets, all the marvelous things she creates. And then I will be able to talk about it in detail. I don't know if I could write an eulogy, but that would also, in my mind be ethical. To go into any more detail than I have would not.

And so I am going to try to make my mind work rather than fret, try to go from the particular to the general and answer Julie's (she credits Lawyer Mama for the idea) very important question.

I will write only about facts that are public or that people have made public. For bloggers, that means something that has been written about in the blog or peripherals, photographed or referenced. If a blogger has been given an award, that's public. If there are ads or links on a site, that's also fair game.

Where there is information about family or friends, that's public. And so that is also the edge of a slippery slope. When I write about myself, no matter how carefully I do it, I am revealing facts that could lead a reader to my identity. And if I am identified, the trail then leads to my husband, daughters, grandchildren, friends and neighbours. Consequently, I am extremely careful not to post anything about friends or family that would hurt or embarrass them or that I would not say to them.

I very rarely make negative comments, child of the 1940's that I am. I don't make them to someone's face and I don't make them online, tempting as it sometimes may be. A correction of grammar or fact would go in an email to the writer unless it is so trivial as to be innocuous. If I really disagree with something, that goes into the comment section of the writer's blog. Politely. Only then would I write about that in my own blog. And cue the writer about the contrary opinion post. In fact, if I am picking up a theme from another blog, whatever it is, I reference the blogger.
Does this bowdlerize my blog? Make it less relevant, less real, less true? Probably. I read posts where people have laid something very sensitive out in the open and, I must admit, admire their courage for doing so. But I can't do it myself. I do feel entirely free to criticize government, business, public announcements and organizations of any sort, bad public practice, wherever I find it. Whee, fun! One of the best things about blogging, to my mind. As is analyzing and posting about what is going on in my own mind and heart, and sharing it with you.

There's another award hopping from blog to blog in the neighbourhood this last little while. I haven't traced it back to source yet but I've seen it here and there and last night I found that I had been given it by just making it up as i go, the amazingly competent blogger who lured me into starting this blog almost a year ago now. (Thanks, you, and back at you.) I love N's blog -- its humour and candour are like really dark chocolate, rich, smooth and satisfying.

And recipients are supposed to pass it on to ten other bloggers. Which gives me an opportunity to put up some links to the wonderful places I go. I could, of course, update my right column link list at the same time, but I don't have a lot of time this morning and so that will remain on the ToDo list, gathering dust like the rest of the jobs there.

There are a lot more than ten, when I think about it. There's Bub and Pie, who writes so well she's intimidating and whose descriptions of her son's struggles and triumphs are so perceptive and loving and funny and exasperated, all at once, that you live them with her. There's Under the Mad Hat, whose creative energy could power a rocket into space and who comes up with brilliant and funny twists on a lot of topics that make me grind my teeth in envy and want to hug her, both at once. There's NotSoSage, living and writing with her heart and mind and soul fully engaged, giving so much of herself. Julie Pippert at Using My Words has a stainless steel ethic and a brain to match, wonderful humour and is a hugely giving bloggy citizen. There's Lawyer Mama, whose celebration of her life and family, in words and pictures, is creative, beautiful and brilliant, just like her. And Painted Maypole, another giving, loving blog citizen, who writes with warmth and style. Nomotherearth already has this award, but she's getting it again from me because I love her deadpan style and adoring acerbity as she talks about her son.

That's seven of the bunch on my sidebar that I think of as 'established' on my little mental list. I want to do another list of people who are not so widely read, judging from their comment numbers, but that is going to have to wait until next week sometime. Because just now I have to go and have lunch with the Chair of our Fundraising Committee at her request. I think she is going to tell me that she is burned out and wants to leave. In which case I am going to be crying in my soup since I will have to take over the lead. Oh dear, says I, most inadequately.

I will, as they say, keep you posted.

This is the way the Lady rides.....

I have been amusing myself by thinking of the process of training and riding a horse as a metaphor for the process of writing. The unbroken horse is the equivalent of the store of words and grammatical structures that we must learn as a preface to writing; the act of ordering and choosing the words to express our ideas is similar to the taming and schooling of the horse; putting our thoughts and ideas into writing equates with riding and directing the beast.

In this context, Jane Austen's steed is a sleek little thoroughbred mare, highly trained and with smooth gaits but a nervous, sensitive beast that is uncomfortable in busy surroundings. Charles Dickens rides a big, rawboned stallion with immense stamina, capable of travelling long and weary distances, but sensitive to the reins. Byron exercised himself on a Lippizaner stallion; Robert Louis Stevenson alternated a pony with a serviceable gelding. (This is a fun exercise; try it yourself. What would Chaucer ride, for instance?)

Some of us have better trained steeds than others. Some of them are better bred. My horse is poorly trained since it has spent its working life being forced to alternately pull a cart and compete in dressage, without having had enough time to learn either thoroughly. It has a lot of excess fat that does not get worked off. My horse also has a mind and will of its own and will from time to time get the bit between its teeth and gallop madly off in a direction I did not choose. I am saying 'it' and 'horse' although she is, of course, a Canadian mare. I am now trying to school her properly and persuade her to go where I want her to go without stopping to snatch bites of grass along the way.

I am quietly chuckling as I write this because in real life I am terrified of horses, an irrational fear learned in childhood, and have never so much as patted the nose of one.

PS It is sometimes possible to advantageously split an infinitive.

Under the Mad Hat's posts on parenting often make my mind work overtime. She put one up recently titled One Kind of Parent I Want to Be. It is a thoughtful, and thought provoking essay. And so I am going to riff off it and write a post about the kind of parent I tried to be, first informing you that my daughters are just perfect adults, of course.

A little bias there? Nah. Not me. Seriously, though, by most measures of success, I think my daughters rate way up there. Well educated? Check. Successful careers? Check. Satisfying family and friends? Mostly. Well rounded? Sports and outdoor activities, check. Involvement in the arts, spotty. Readers, yes. Current events and community aware, yes, in different ways. Contributors to society, yes (they both have a collection of awards and honours). Happy? Some of the time, as I see them. Too busy to draw breath? Yep. Well, so are all of us.

I had a bit of a conversation about this with the YD yesterday because she came out from the city for the day to help her father clear trails. She was talking about being comfortable in the woods, and how a friend of hers with whom she had gone cross country skiing was not because she did not have a sense of where she was and was nervous she would get lost. The YD and her sister, from the ages of eight and nine were allowed to roam loose in the woods around our weekend cabin. We taught them how to find their way, how to make a fire if they needed one, gave them whistles to use if they got lost and, mainly, allowed them to go where they pleased. Later they had a boat of their own that they were allowed to use by themselves (once they passed basic swimming competency level) on the marsh and streams near our property. And they trotted off to play by themselves when they weren't needed for chores.

You see, when they were seven and eight we bought recreational land, built a four season cabin on it and spent almost every weekend there, year round. We started with 100 acres and ended up with 300, including a sugar bush and miles and miles of old logging trails which we cleared for hiking and skiing and JG's ATV and snowmobile. I taught them how to start and manoeuver a snowmobile when they were so small that it took both of them to steer properly. A matter of necessity, as I saw it, because if they were with their father and he got stuck, they would have to be able to get back and summon help. So they learned to love the woods and to love to ski. We skated on the beaver ponds. We hiked for miles. And, because the cabin had no electricity, after dark the amusements were reading and playing games.

It worried me. I worried that they were losing out on the scheduled weekend activities that their peer group was getting -- things like organized soccer. I fretted about their not having the access to the weekend television programs that all their friends would be talking about. I tried to get them the sort of lessons and skill training that I felt they should have, things like swimming lessons, music lessons, Brownies. They got Bible stories but not Sunday School. I also worried that they were missing out on opportunities to learn about the arts -- another area where events often took place on weekends. I tried to get them to concerts, to plays, to show them what was available. We went to see the D'oyle Carte do the Pirates of Penzance, I recall. To see the Lippizaner stallions. Their grandparents took them to a Toronto performance of Guys and Dolls one summer. One girl joined a city wide children's choir which performed some pretty serious music.

But all of this had to be scheduled for weekdays after school, not weekends. They both started gymnastics lessons and for one girl it became a passion. She took it up at school but until she was in secondary school, it was still a weeknight activity. The other girl tried different sports and activities and finally settled on one that could, until she was well into her teens, be carried on on Friday nights. But in some ways, I figured they were losing out, especially on the time just to hang out with their friends unscheduled. And if it happened on Saturday night or Sunday, we did not go.

By the time they were in their upper teens, I felt confident about leaving them in the city if there was something important going on. They got driver's licenses as soon as they could and got themselves to their own activities in my car or by bus. I gave them a lot of independence, in fact. I guess I always favoured letting them do things, from boating by themselves to taking a plane solo to their grandparents' city. They had bikes which they rode through city traffic (my mother was horrified). I never restricted what they read. I tried always to be respectful of their opinions and needs, with varying degrees of success, I suspect.

The limiting factor was that they had to fit their activities and lives into our lives. We did not schedule around them; we did not become parent supporters. Frequently they got themselves to their own activities and, as they got older, did things themselves, singly or as a pair. (They went to Disney World as a pair in their teens on a trip one of them won; wild horses could not have dragged their father there.) I do not know, I will never know, whether I could have done better for them. But that doesn't matter. I think parenting contains a paradox: you only get one chance to raise a child but you get a new chance every day. And so we all have to play it by ear, and to a great extent trust our instincts, our sense of what feels right and of what is valuable. For ourselves as well as for them.

The Little Tree

Monday Mission - a children's story or poem. Guess who is dreaming about spring!

There was once a little tree that sat by itself on a small patch of lawn. In the winter time the little tree was covered in snow and ice. Under the snow and ice the little tree slept and it dreamed about butterflies. Lots of butterflies, gold ones and orange ones and yellow ones, dipping and drifting in the summer breeze. Once and a while the little tree would wake up, just a bit, but when it saw all the snow it would go back to sleep again.

Then one day the little tree woke up a bit more than usual, and the snow and the ice were almost all gone.

'Oh, my goodness', it said. 'The sun feels warm, and my roots aren't frozen and cold any more. I will have to do something to celebrate!'

And so the little tree sucked up some water from the newly thawed soil and it made some little green buds. Then it waited.

Soon the sun got much warmer. The last of the snow went away and green grass shoots started to push up out of the mud around the little tree's patch of lawn. A robin perched on the very tip of the little tree and sang its spring song.

'Wow', said the little tree. 'It's really spring. I will have to do something to celebrate'.

And so the little tree sucked up lots of nice warm rain water from the soil and it made some flower buds. Then it waited.

The little tree kept waiting until just the right day came along. The sun was very warm, and a lovely breeze was blowing just right.

'Whee,' said the little tree. 'It's time for me to bloom!'

And so the little tree pushed very hard on the buds that it had made and POP, out came beautiful purple blooms that had a wonderful perfume. Then the little tree waited.

The lovely smell of the flowers drifted along on the breeze. Soon a handsome yellow butterfly smelled the perfume.

'Oh, my', it said. 'That smells delicious. I bet there is some sweet nectar in a flower that smells so good.'

And away it flew, following the perfume, to the small lawn where the little tree waited.

'Hello, butterfly', said the little tree. 'Come and have a drink of my nectar. I've been waiting for you to help me celebrate spring!'

'Oh, thank you, lilac tree', said the butterfly.

And he did.

More butterflies came. Yellow ones and orange ones and gold ones. There were enough flowers for them all to have a drink. And the little lilac tree was very happy.

Great chieftain o' the pudding-race!

I live in a community that has deep Scottish roots. There are summer Highland games, the place names and family names are, more often than not, imported from Scotland; no family is without its heritage recipe for shortbread, although more than a few are based on maple rather than castor sugar. And so it seems strange that I had never, before Saturday night, attended that quintessential Scottish heritage event, the Rabbie Burns dinner.

I had a bit of a debate with myself about what I should wear. I own a kilted skirt in Royal Stewart, purchased on a holiday in Scotland some years ago and in need of a lot of inventive adjustment of the pleats outward before it would be wearable. But somewhere I had picked up the idea that at Burns Dinners the women do not wear kilts; that sartorial splendour is left to the men. Women, I thought, are supposed to wear the tartan to which their heritage entitles them as a scarf or sash (arisaid) over ordinary evening dress. I do have a scarf in my husband's designated tartan but I thought that might be a bit ostentatious, given that my own heritage, while British Isles mongrel, includes not a drop of blood from north of the border. So I put on my usual uniform of black dress suit (and red shoes). My husband's curtsey to heritage was to dig out his school tie, said school being aggressively Scottish in nature.

I need not have worried. While there was one woman decked out in the long skirt and wound sash of perfect compliance, there were also many women in kilts and floor length tartan skirts, tartan jumpers and tartan suits. Those who did not rise to tartan wore black. And the attire of the men ranged from suit jacket with tartan scarf or jacket and kilt through the gamut to the full Highland regalia of black boiled wool jacket with small tails and silver buttons, obscure tartans that I am sure were their family heritage, highly decorated sporrans, shirts with stocks and some most creative socks and footwear. They were gorgeous -- peacocks in full plumage. It was the mirror image of the bright dress and black suit chiaroscuro of an ordinary dinner dance.

What is a Burns dinner, you ask. (I am going to tell you anyway!) At this dinner, the evening started with some dedicated drinking, followed by the piping in of the haggis, a Scottish delicacy immortalized in Burns' verse. That is, a resplendent gentleman appears carrying a large tartan bag with various things sticking out of it, blows into it and commences to march. The result is a howling noise not suited to indoor dining. Following him is a decked out person of indeterminate sex, bearing a silver platter on which reposes an undistinguished brown blob. All of the guests are supposed to follow this couple in procession around the room but the assembly skipped this step (I am not sure why as the master of ceremonies requested us to march).

After the haggis processes, it is placed on a table in the centre of the room, Burns' Address is read out and it is ceremonially stabbed with a sharp instrument. This instrument is probably a dirk although I hope the presiding mentor did not whip it out of his sock. The assembly is invited to recite the Selkirk Grace before meat in its best Scots accent. Dinner is then served. We were offered a roast beef dinner, accompanied by a small spoonful of haggis on request. One haggis served over 100 diners. I rather enjoyed my taste.

After dinner and a good few toasts and congratulations to the various cooks and organizers, a troupe of 'Highland' dancers took the floor and performed a variety of strenuous leaping dances, ending with a Highland fling. The dancers, all girls, ranged in age from perhaps ten to the late teens and were lovely to watch, although I was a bit puzzled by one set of dances in which they wore petticoats under their kilts and held the edge of said petticoat daintily in one hand throughout the leaps. A lot of discussion takes place about what is customarily worn under a kilt, but I have never heard of ruffled underskirts before.

After the dancers came a serenade by the piper. He seemed to have a defective pipe somewhere as one high note consistently became a dissonant squawk. The tunes, however, were recognizable and many people sang along.

When he left, a pair of musicians set up and played dance music. JG and I were among the youngest couples at the party, we figured, at 65 and 68. Much to our amazement, the bulk of the attendees danced, steadily and skillfully, for the better part of two hours. The older people in our community like to dance, throng to dances and dance well, even with the added weight and arthritic joints that most of them have. It was a lot of fun to watch the people on the dance floor but a tad dangerous to be on it if something like the 'Gay Gordon' was underway. And you have not plumbed the depths of delight, let me tell you, until you have seen a two kilted couple performing a spirited waltz.

I hope we go again next year. After I do one of A) serious dieting or B) letting out a pleated kilt.

Wordless Wednesday

It's a good thing it's Wordless Wednesday because I'm so annoyed I'm (almost) speechless. Here is a letter that appeared in the National Post to-day:

More Conrad Black, please
National Post Published: Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Re: A Nation Seeking A Hero, Conrad Black, Jan. 12.
Callipygian. Yes of course I looked it up. There are not many positive things that have come from the witch-hunt prosecution of Conrad Black. But if locking him up gives him time to write special pieces for the National Post on a regular basis, then I see the positive side much more clearly. Playful, well-researched, intelligent and powerful writing is lacking in much of journalism today. More of this great stuff to come I hope.
Stephen Morin, Toronto.

http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=241146

ps: Callipygian = shapely buttocks. Yeah, a LOT of research.

More than Just Bad Taste

Okay, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more. Conrad Black has finally pushed me over the edge. I don't normally read the man but my husband reads everything in the paper and Conrad's latest lapse of good taste was brought to my attention because JG wanted to know if I knew what 'callipygian' meant.

Here is what Black said:

With trepidation, but not embarrassment, I offer the thought that Mrs. Obama, a formerly disadvantaged alumna of Princeton and Harvard, to judge from her well-strategized appearances on national television in exiguous dresses and trousers, is as callipygian as Jennifer Lopez. (That is my only concession to political correctness for 2008; you look it up if you must.) I saw her on TouTube saying that, "Reform must be from the bottom up." In her well-favoured case, this could be a double-entendre.

If this is what Black thinks is politically correct, the sooner he goes to jail the better. Sans dictionary and, one hopes, sans access to the outside world. The idiot loves big words. 'Exiguous' is defined as 'scanty' in JG's Random House Dictionary. 'Callipygian' means 'having well-shaped buttocks' in the same source. And so what I think Conrad has said about Michelle Obama (whose first name he could not be bothered to use) is that she wears sexy clothes and shows off her butt. Or so I interpret it. The comment tells you more about Black that it does about Mrs. Obama; patronizing, sexist and in very, very poor taste. Is there anyone in the English speaking world other that Black who doesn't need to look up a word like that? What are you prepared to bet that he wrote the paragraph to give himself a chance to use it? Here, by the way, is the only photo of her that I found that would in any way validate Black's description, and I had to page through a lot of photos of her in full skirts and pearls. She strikes me as thoughtfully turned out.

I am extremely tired of reading physical descriptions of women that intend to establish their characters through the way they look. We don't judge men that way, to state the obvious. With very few exceptions, a woman in the public eye has her hair, figure, clothing choices and general attractiveness mentioned before anything else. And, historically, her 'womanly' skills. Cookie baking! Queen Elizabeth II has had her 'dowdiness' and hats analyzed to death. Jacquie Kennedy Onassis' hats and spending habits were constantly picked at. Whether a woman is too attractive or less than attractive is always a factor. Blonde and busty denotes stupidity. Anything other than extreme thinness is treated as a character flaw. Bloody hell!

The question is not one of women who choose to dress provocatively. The problem is that just being a woman is provocative -- riding a bike in lycra shorts and a tank top can get a young woman raped and killed. So can being out late in a parka and heavy boots. I believe that the kind of garbage Black wrote about Michelle Obama is a sort of licence to men to think about women only in terms of their physical attractiveness, to depersonalize them, to produce an atmosphere of complicit salaciousness which gives permission to move toward the extreme of mindless lust. If that sounds overdramatic, so be it. I am resolved to protest the publication of this stuff wherever I find it.

Starting with Saturday's National Post. A shortened form of this rant has just gone into the Letters to the Editor section. I'll be really surprised if it gets printed.

The Bird Feeder

Monday's Mission is to write a post in the style of a movie synopsis.

January 14th, 2008

The Bird Feeder


The Bird Feeder chronicles the winter life of a varied cast of feathered friends. Featuring Charles Chicadee, Harriette Woodpecker and Natalie Nuthatch, playing themselves, with a host of relatives and peers, stuffing their beaks at the Chez G sunflower dispenser and suet ball. An ongoing subplot brings in the antics of the Chez G bluejays who both visit at the feeder with Charles and Natalie et al. and compete with the squirrels below for bread and nuts. As a contrast, the varied visitors to Little Stuff's Christmas gift feeder in the city are briefly featured.

The film provides audiences a rare opportunity to experience Charlie and his team as they travel to and from the feeders and performa dawn to dusk show every day. Charlie and his team bring their unique styles and perspectives to watchers at every window.Through rousing onfeeder performances and behind-the-scenes caching, this engaging film breaks down the true essence of each bird's feeding habits and the personal and professional challenges that unite legions of fans from Hollywood to the Heartland.


Release Date: January , 2008

Genre: Comedy and Documentary

Running Time: dawn to dusk.

Distributor(s): Canadian Winter

MPAA Rating: R for pervasive language and some sex-related humor.
Director: Helmet Hawk

Producer: George Goldfinch

Movie Casts:Charles Chicadee- Himself

Harriette Woodpecker- Herself

Natalie Nuthatch- Herself

Guest appearences: Mr and Mrs Urban Cardinal; Bruno Blue Jay; Sara TreeSparrow, Janey Junco; Norvo Nuthatch, Guilliame Grosbeak, Hamish R Hawk;
Cameo: The Flying Squirrels