Writing the recent post about our mockingbird jiggled loose some memories that had become crusted over with the dusts of time. Memories of another bird that I found to be very entertaining; Glitch, the African Grey Tierney parrot. Please forgive the quality of these photos, these are scans of old photograph prints.
Meet Glitch. In this photo he is fully grown and had become a well educated and sassy bird indeed. He had a vocabulary of over 100 words and phrases and what was amazing was the way he would use them to converse. For example; we also had two cats, Ratso and Bear. Bear liked to stretch up the base of Glitch’s platform like we has going to climb it. Glitch would lean over the edge of his platform and yell, “Get down, Bear, get down.” Of course he learned this from hearing me scold the cat in these situations. But he rarely used that phrase except when Bear was teasing him. Continue reading “Parrot of the Past”
What a person wears can sometimes tell us a fair bit about them. Someone in a uniform can be identified as a police officer, utility worker, fire fighter, or soldier. Someone in an expensive power suit is likely a business person. Sometimes clothing can tell us something about a person’s beliefs; A nun’s habit or priest’s collar, robes and shaved head of a Buddhist monk, the crisp white shirt and black tie & trousers commonly worm by Mormons working a neighborhood all tip us off to what they hold to be true about religion.
I am, I must confess Dear Reader, one of those people who has an opinion on just about everything and feels compelled to share it. Oh, you too? Fancy that! It is a great thing when our opinions about something mesh and we can celebrate or commiserate the topic together. But what happens when we disagree?
My wife and I were attending a “serious” art show in a ritzy section of St Louis when an older woman approached a young man who was decked out in woven leather sandals, lime green Capri style pants, a bright yellow shirt – too small and unbuttoned to the navel – and a pair of bright pink Ben Franklin style eye glasses. His hair style was pretty odd too. The woman beamed as she approached and gushed, “Oh! Are you an artist?”