PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

Recent entries july 4, 2018 - 2018-07-04 the triangle continues of courtney, boobear, & nyota - 2018-07-03 Cookie so cute telling, "Hello" to sparrows - 2018-07-01 lovebirb in love - 2018-06-30 wren with fluffffff - 2018-06-24 Read my new book, The 10 Best Things You Can Do For Your Bird at Amazon or at many other fine distributors like Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and more. By public demand, and after a delay of an embarrassing number of years, I've finally put my notorious essay, Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman, free on the fabulous internets. A bibliography of my published books and stories. Here's a simple card-counting FAQ to get you up to speed on the basics. Here's the true story of the notorious DD' blackjack team, told for the first time on the fabulous internets. No other team went from a starting investor's bankroll of zero to winning millions of dollars. A Sadean take on Asimov's classic Three Laws of Robotics can be found in Roger Williams' NOW REVIEWED ON SLASHDOT!!! The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Adult readers only please -- explicit sex and violence. For updates on the "Dead Tree Project" and other topics, you may visit the official fan site, Passages in the Void.. My Bird Lists -- My Louisiana State Life List, My Yard List and, tah dah, My World Life List. HEY! What happened to the Peachfront Conure Files? The world's only OFFICIAL Peachfront Conure site now features free peachfront conure coverage, including a magazine length Intro to Conures previously published in American Cage-Bird Magazine, now free on the web. I offer the best free Peachfront Conure information on the internet. If you have great Peachfront Conure info, stories, or photos to share, contact me so I can publicize your pet, your breeding success, your great photograph, etc. on my site. Thanks.

the hollywood dodo 2007-09-21 - 10:00 a.m. � 2004 by elaine radford dodo at the natural history museum, london I read The Hollywood Dodo by Geoff Nicholson. Yes, a British farce, but still a story that sneaks in and touches your heart. The scenes set in the 1600s focus on a hero whose great dream is to breed the dodo and repopulate the world with them. Sad how life makes his dream slip away step by step, day by day, year by year. I want to note here a particularly affecting scene, but if you haven't yet read the book, it's time to close this page because of S P O I L E R S . . . I was brought to tears by the scene when King Charles the Second restores the practice of laying on the hands, as the king's touch is said to cure a disfiguring illness known as the King's Evil. Of course, "the bent, the feeble, the mad" stand in line in hopes of the miracle cure, even if their particular illness is something other. Our hero has a disfiguring porphyria. At last William's turn comes. He kneels, casts his eyes down, then raises them upwards, towards the king's face and the heavens beyond. Charles's features form a mask of serene sanctity. His hand moves toward William, who wriggles and stirs beneath the cloak, and something else stirs there too. When the royal hand is just an inch from his forehead, William ducks aside, twists his body, and from the folds of the cloak produces his ailing dodo. He moves her up swiftly, like an offering, like a surprise gift, though he has no intention of handing her over, and the king's hand makes brief but firm contact with the dodo's thining gray feathers. Immediately the contact has been made, William, more of the conjurer, conceals the bird again. The faces of the king and his courtiers, of his holy men and his mace carriers, show an amazement that threatens to turn to anger. William imagines himself being dragged from the hall, being beaten and boxed as he goes, taken and chained in some dank basement cell. It is a risk he has always been prepared to run for the sake of his poor dodo. Yet the act is both so audacious and so brief that all concerned choose to ignore it. To make a fuss would only make them look foolish. William moves on, walks out of the hall, a job well done. But kingship has its limitations. The dodo does not improve. Her gray feathers look grayer. Her sad eyes look sadder. There was always something mournful in her voice, but now it sounds like a half-forgotten, melancholy hymn. William wonders if it is a matter of faith. The king is the conduit for the Lord's healing divinity, but this is surely not a thing to be dispensed promiscuously. It is surely not, for instance, to be dispensed to nonbelievers. A bird is incapable of belief, therefore incapable of saving itself. Perhaps the dodo is simply beneath God's attention. Perhaps she is beneath contempt. Two weeks later William Draper's dodo is dead. back - next All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford