WRITING LEFT HANDED

When living and working in Montreal I enjoyed spending my lunch hour in old Montreal. The business district was there, so were the many ageless used bookstores. Old buildings that had been there for a lifetime already.

You stepped inside and you couldn’t help but breath in the warmth of the surroundings.

I was with a magazine and spent most lunches poking through old slightly worn editions that gave life to years past.

I enjoyed fiction best, but that didn’t stop me from reading nonfiction. One that struck me was ‘THE LEFT-HANDED BOOK (’66) by Michael Barsley. The dedication: to ‘MY MOTHER who let me be Left-Handed’.

My mom did the same. Bless her.

Among the books that caught my imagination was THE EDIBLE WILD, by Berndt Berglund and Clare E. Bolsby. ‘A complete cookbook and guide to edible wild plants in Canada and Eastern North America.’ The titles of the chapters couldn’t help but intrigue me.

EDIBLE FRUITS: Chokecherry. Elderberry. Wild Rose.

And these under ‘Tobacco and Sugar Substitutes: Bearberry, Sugar Maple. Sugar Pine.

A book catching my attention was WILDERNESS SURVIVAL: 'a COMPLETE HANDBOOK AND GUIDE FOR SURVIVAL IN THE North American wilds. Don’t go anywhere in (wild) without it.'

Author’s comment: The LEFT-HANDED BOOK is one you can’t help buying: at least I couldn’t. The sub-title: ‘An investigation history of left-handedness’.

That’ me. Left-handed. I write what they call ‘upside down’ with the hand literally bent over from the top, if that makes sense. Some lefties curve the hand under, writing from the bottom. Confusing? I know. Watch for left-handers to see how they write. One in ten of us is left-handed.

BIRDS SURVIVING WINTER

I looked up from writing to see birds on the deck railing waiting their turn to feed from the wire basket hanging in full view. We also dump mixed seeds in one of the metal feeders, fixed on a post attached to the deck.

Ever wonder how the smallest of them survive temperatures dipping well below freezing during the day? Here it’s -14 C. That makes me shiver thinking about it.

I’ve spent the last few hours digging into how birds survive these conditions. It will take a couple of blogs to put down what I’ve learned and it’s fascinating. For instance:

Cold climate birds pack on body weight in late summer and autumn to help them handle what’s coming. They add feathers as well, bulking themselves up. Many species keep warm with blood circulating near the vital organs which allow ‘extremities to cool down’.

Birds keep warm by shivering. Like us jumping up and down outside when it’s cold. We shiver too like birds do. Another way is by them trapping air in their feathers to create ‘a layer of warmth around itself’.

Many birds have no feathers on their legs or feet. This allows the feet to reduce temperatures to align with temperatures of whatever they stand on.

Smaller birds such as long-tailed tits, sparrows and chickadees, the ones I see most, conserve heat at night by huddling together to reduce the surface area. They jostle for the best position because those on the outer edges lose the most heat.

Author’s comment: What I’m saving for next time is how ‘winter’ birds cache away seeds for the colder months. They even remember where they hid it.

I sometimes wish I could do the same thing. Find whatever goes missing.