LETTERS FROM HOME: `BABY BIRD EATS BURGERS' & OTHER HEADLINES

June 8, 1995

Dear Julie,

Thanks for the newspaper clippings. We don't see many "Dog-doo stockpile bursts into flames" or "Bomb squad finds adult toy in suspicious parcel" headlines around here.

Ours are mostly humdrum, like another big flood.

I've been playing lots of golf in the mornings, and taking lessons in an attempt to turn my flailing swing into a graceful arc. Golfers consider a beautiful swing a work of art. You probably have to be a hacker to understand.

The more I learn, the more fun I have. I also meet people I ordinarily wouldn't. Like Bob and Fred, who invited me to join them one day I was playing alone.

Bob and Fred are retired and get around the course well enough, but I think they play golf because it's an excuse to hang out with each other for a few hours.

The bantering never stopped: "I'll give it to you, Fred, even though I've seen you putt."

We played fast and loose, and I shot the best round of my life.

DC doesn't try to hide her incredulity when I mention golf and art in the same sentence, so I escorted her to the Dixon Gallery in Memphis last weekend. The exhibit was work by Gaugin and some painters who lived in the tiny French town of Pont-Aven in Brittany.

Most were Impressionists who'd decided to take the next step and subjectify what they saw in nature.

They called this "synthetism."

Lots of contrasting colors but the lack of perspective was the most distinctive characteristic. Foreshortening and shadowing were abandoned, giving all the paintings a flat quality.

The effect allows the viewer no entree into the painting, closing the work off emotionally for me.

My favorite was "Maternity," which showed a mother with her baby at her breast. The woman was the innkeeper where the Pont-Aven painters stayed. They decorated her walls with art, she fed and housed them.

Despite the off-putting technique, you could see the painter loved her.

We've been feeding a baby of our own lately, a robin DC discovered hopping about in our yard. It can't quite fly yet, and its left foot either was broken when it fell or is deformed.

Like a lot of new parents, we didn't know what to do. DC pureed hamburger into a disgusting concoction meant to simulate the texture of earthworms. She feeds it with a syringe normally used to give medicine to babies.

At first, the robin resisted opening its mouth, terrified I'm sure by the huge, wingless monsters trying to force-feed it brown goo. Gradually its beak began opening whenever the syringe appeared.

Now we can distinguish between the chirp chirps and the FEED-ME chirps.

DC takes the robin to the clinic with her because it demands food every few hours like any other baby. She also takes it out in the yard while she gardens, hoping the parents will come down. I guess this robin is ours for now.

We finally reached someone who nurses injured animals back to health. He told DC to stop giving the robin cow flesh and provide it with something nutritious -- earthworms.

As I write this, my wife is in the yard digging up worms and slicing them into bite-size morsels.

The animal expert also said we must, like all parents, give it room to learn to fly.

Right now it can fly from the floor to the porch swing. Soon, we trust, its wings will turn from flailing to flapping and our wounded little orphan will rise in a beautiful arc and fly away. That would be a masterpiece.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.