Sunday Salon ~ mindfulness, writing, and birds ~ oh, my!

Baby house sparrow photo by tina777 found on Flickr

A few days ago, I noticed two sparrows side by side on my bird feeder.  That had never happened before, since they usually run each other off, so I looked more closely.  The smaller one waited while the slightly larger one stuck her head in the hole and got a seed.  The baby then opened its mouth and the mother bird fed it a seed.  Little bird could fly, but mama bird was apparently teaching it how to find food.  I watched for several minutes as she continued to feed her baby.  When the little one went to another opening and stuck its head inside, mama bird flew away.  Baby looked around with — I swear — a look on its face that clearly said, "Hey, Mom, where ya going?"  With a flip of its wings, the small bird went racing after its mother, leaving me with a beautiful memory.  See a set of photos of a baby sparrow being fed, here.

WRITING

“Clutter is the disease of American writing," says William Zinsser.  "We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.”

On Writing Well ~ by William Zinsser, 1976

This book has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity, and the warmth of its style.  It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of email and the Internet.  Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts, or yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, it offers you fundamental priciples and the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher.  With more than a million copies sold, this volume has stood the test of time and remains a valuable resource for writers and would-be writers.

I highly recommend this book.  Zinsser is now blind, but still at work.  Read what the NYT wrote about Zinsser and writing well.  I like that his former blog "won a National Magazine Award for digital commentary."  Yeah!  I'm a writer of digital commentary.

MINDFULNESS

I've started something new, something I'm calling Monday Mindfulness.  So far I've posted exactly one of 'em, but I plan to come up with something every week.  I don't have a fancy-smancy logo for my meme, but you are welcome to join me in posting something about awareness.  If you do, tell us about it in the comments so we can visit your blog.

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