It was a beautiful fall morning. The sun was out. The sky was clear. A perfect day to go biking. “Did they call you back yet?” I asked my mom. Ever since my two friends and I had biked to a cafe for drinks in the spring, I’d wanted to do it again. It seemed like every Saturday there was something. Either one of us was out of town, or we had some activity, but for one reason or another, since we got back from summer vacation we hadn’t had a chance to do it. I was determined to meet that day. “Did they?” I nagged my mom again. “Not yet,” my mom said patiently, “but it’s still early.” I was just beginning to give up on it, when my mom told me that it was all arranged. I didn’t have long so I hurried to get ready. As I brushed my hair, I thought about how much fun we would have. I wondered what interesting stories my friends would tell me and what they would order at the cafe. I was planning to get apple juice. It is my favorite. “Oh, wow!” my dad exclaimed from the living room sofa where he was reading the news on his computer. “What?” my mom cried out coming in to the room. “Somebody shot people in a synagogue in Pittsburgh.” my dad replied. Oh no, I thought. Why do such horrible things happen? It is so sad. Usually, I don’t like to think about sad things. They depress me. That’s why I don’t like to read sad books. But this is real life. I can’t just close it and put it back on a shelf. But as sad as it is, I was thinking, does it really affect my life? I know that there was a person there, in Pittsburgh, who hates the Jews, but I didn’t feel like it applied to me, here where I live. In my world, nobody hates me because I am Jewish. I don’t know anyone who would do something like that. Pittsburgh is far away, what happened to the Jews there, doesn’t affect my life in any way here in Illinois. I hear about anti-semitic acts in Europe a lot. How is this so different? “Are you ready, Maya?” my mom calls, her voice cutting through my thoughts. “You need to go. You don’t want to keep your friends waiting.” I went biking with my friends, and then I went to my math club. I was thinking about other things and I even forgot about the shooting. But, later in the day, it came up again. Apparently, my grandfather had called and said that I shouldn’t risk going to Sunday School at the synagogue the next day. Then the Rabbi sent an email about added security. “I don’t understand,” I thought at first. Why is everyone panicking? Like I said before, there have been similar situations in Europe and nobody panicked then. The more I thought about it, the more it became clear. The kind of people that live in Europe could be very different than the people who live in Illinois. But this happened in our country, the one that we live in. I went to Sunday School the next day. I wasn’t scared to go. When I got there, the doors were locked. Police were standing near the front. Instead of regular Sunday school, we talked about what happened in Pittsburgh for part of the time. That was when I realized that some of my friends were scared by what happened. Should I have been scared too? The doors are now locked at our synagogue. You cannot get in unless someone opens the door for you. But it does not make you feel any less welcome. Inside, the fun, the excitement, the joy, and celebrations still go on, just like always. We celebrated Chanukah this whole week. Tonight there is a special Chanukah party for teens. I am going to meet my friends there. As I am getting ready and brushing my hair, I am thinking about how much fun we will have. I wonder what interesting stories my friends would tell me and what games we will play. I wonder who will win in dreidel.
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Passenger Martha
Image of Passenger Pigeon via WikiMedia River of feathers Crossing the sky May not see it ever again Beating wings Whoosh up high May not hear that ever again A winding brown-blue cloud of Passenger Pigeons covered the sky, wings whirring in a roaring river of sound. Less than 50 years later, the last passenger pigeon fell to the ground, heart still, from her perch four inches above the ground. In the 1800s, 40% of all North American birds were Passenger Pigeons. Passenger Pigeons, or simply Wild Pigeons, were the most plentiful bird in North America by far, and were easy to shoot. Their squabs, or fledglings, were served in pigeon pies. Most people thought these social birds were protected by their numbers, until the last pigeon, Martha. Martha was bred and raised in captivity by Charles Whitman, a zoologist. He had a collection of various species of pigeons and doves that were initially kept for studying their behavior. Martha was named after George Washington’s wife, Martha Washington. One of the males Martha was kept with was named George. Whitman partnered with the Cincinnati Zoo, recognizing the Passenger Pigeon numbers were on a sharp decline. Whitman’s collection of Passenger Pigeons were the only known surviving pigeons. Martha and the males she was kept with were sent to the zoo. In 1907, Martha and the two males were the only surviving Passenger Pigeons. Attempts to breed Martha were unsuccessful, and both males died in the following years. Martha was the only Passenger Pigeon, an endling. The zoo frantically tried to find mates for her, offering $1,000 to anyone who could capture a live male pigeon. No one ever found Martha a mate, and Martha got older each year. Visitors crowded around her pen, eager to get a glimpse of the last Passenger Pigeon, who was often perched on a branch in her enclosure. What were the visitor’s thoughts when, not long before, farmers would draw their guns at the sight of thousands of birds descending upon their crops, devouring all the grain in a matter of hours? In 1911, Martha suffered an apoplectic stroke, and she was severely weakened. In the following months, worried zookeepers had to lower her perch for her to be able to flap up to it. In the end, Martha’s perch was barely above the ground. On September 1, 1914, at 1pm, Martha breathed her last, and fell lifelessly onto the cage floor. The Passenger Pigeon was extinct. Martha lived an astounding 29 years; most pigeons in captivity live up to 17 years. As soon as the zookeepers found her dead on the cage floor, she was brought to the Cincinnati Ice Company and packed into a 300 pound block of ice. She was sent by an express train to the Smithsonian, and arrived there three days after her death. Martha was molting when she died so she was missing some of her long tail coverts. William Palmer skinned the pigeon and Nelson Wood mounted her skin. Four years after Martha’s death, in her previously vacant cage, was the last Carolina Parakeet, Incus. Incus died in the same cage as Martha. In observance of the Passenger Pigeon’s day of extinction, September 1, 2014, Martha’s mount was brought out on public display at the museum. There are many questions to be asked about Martha and the Passenger Pigeons in general. Why didn’t Martha breed? Were the captive pigeons somehow negatively affected by not seeing many other pigeons? Why didn’t the pigeons survive in smaller flocks? First, the nature of Passenger Pigeons should be discussed. They lived in huge flocks, up to half a billion strong. John James Audubon, a nationally renowned Ornithologist, describes the flock as, “The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow.” Ironically, there is a saying that “The ornithologist’s greatest tool is a gun.” Audubon shot and killed all the birds he painted, including Passenger Pigeons. Passenger Pigeons bred near the Great lakes. The male had a pale blue head, nape and wings. Its chest and was peach, and it had an iridescent bronze patch on the sides of its neck. Its secondaries, or innermost flight feathers, were dotted with black and its primaries, or outermost flight feathers were dark gray. It had dark gray tail coverts, or top-of-the-tail, and a white undertail feathers. The female was a brownish shade, but overall the color patterns were similar to the male. Passenger Pigeons fed on fruits and insects and could fly up to 62 miles per hour. At the population’s peak there were about five billion pigeons, more than humans at that time. Since so many were shot, about 50,000 birds each day, and their habitat was being destroyed, evolution couldn’t keep up with the pigeon’s ever-shrinking population. Eventually, when there were only small flocks left, this hyper-social bird did not know what to do. Before they were all killed, they were used to being protected by numbers and since the population had been sectioned into small flocks, other predators like Peregrine Falcons could pick the birds off easily. So, is this why no small flocks remained? We can’t know for sure, but it is the most probable answer. Why didn’t Martha breed? In the wild, there were many male Passenger Pigeons to one female. A plausible answer is that Martha had a mutation that prevented her from breeding. It could also be that captive pigeons were somehow affected by not seeing many other pigeons, making them behave unlike wild pigeons. But the most likely answer lies in…flamingos. Flamingos’ mating drive does not trigger if the flock is too small. No one knows why this happens, but it could be to prevent inbreeding. This might have been the case with Passenger Pigeons. Martha was in a group of only three pigeons, but in the wild, each flock is over a million strong. Like flamingos, this
Saturday Newsletter: December 15, 2018
“Frozen Beauty” by Hanna Gustafson, 12. Photograph published in Stone Soup, January 2018. A note from William Rubel Thanks to all of you who have so far answered our call for donations. We are overwhelmed by your generosity and support for our work in 2018. Click here if you didn’t receive the donor drive letter, or would like to read its message again. Do you love podcasts? Podcasters! We recently agreed to work with a South African podcaster who specializes in podcasts by kids. Details will follow in a few weeks. This podcaster told us that we should start our own podcast program. I’d like to know who amongst you—kid or adult—has worked on a podcast. If you have, or if you have skills you think might be helpful to us—please send me a letter by replying to this email. If you have worked on a published podcast, then please include the URL. A project for this week(end) For the project this week, I’d like you to look at the photograph “Frozen Beauty,” by Hanna Gustafson, which we are republishing here from last January’s issue, and to read the poem by Sheila Northrup it is paired with at the bottom of the newsletter. I want you to go outside with a phone or camera and take a photograph of winter beauty where you live. Where I live, this is a tough assignment; our winter beauty looks more like what for most of you would look like spring. If you live in Arizona or Florida or Texas or in my California, your winter beauty photograph will look very different from that of a reader in Maine or Wisconsin or Alaska. The poem says, “Now it is official./ Winter is finally here.” I want you to capture in a photograph what, to you, makes winter “official” where you live. As always, if you really like what you have done and think you have nailed the assignment, please upload it to our submissions website so Emma can see it. By the way, my daughter and I are flying to Egypt today! My colleagues will take over the newsletter while I’m away. Best wishes for the holidays! Until I return, More winners in our 45th birthday promotion: every 45th subscriber gets a free subscription! Congratulations to our latest winners–including our 450th subscriber since the promotion began, who gets extra prizes! Stone Soup was 45 years old this year. We are celebrating that birthday and celebrating being back in print with an offer to our loyal readers. Can you help us meet our target of 1,000 new print subscribers by the end of the year? We are offering free subscriptions and extra prizes at various points along the way, all tied into our age, and we are more than half way there!. Every 45th subscriber receives a free subscription (3 more this week, in New York, Wisconsin, and California) The 450th and 900th subscribers receive a free subscription, plus copies of all ten of the Stone Soup books in our collection (8 anthologies and 2 Annuals). A parcel will be on its way to Portland, Oregon, next week. And, the 1,000th will receive all of that, plus a free site license for the institution (school or public library) of their choice. It’s easy to subscribe: visit this page. This particular promotion will continue until we meet our target or get to the end of the year, whichever comes first. Please share this with everyone you think would benefit from joining the readership of Stone Soup. And don’t forget, you (and anyone you share the code with) can get a 10% discount on your annual subscription using the code CHEER2018 on our subscription form. This week on the blog This week, read Lucy Ward’s review of Noggin, by John Corey Whaley, and think, if you can, about what it might be like to wake up to find your head stuck on a different body! Holiday shopping For holiday gifts: all print subscriptions and other book and product orders ship within two days of being received. All orders received for the remainder of the year will be sent by Priority Mail. To be sure of delivery in time for Christmas, please order by December 17, or select one of the FedEx delivery options. For last-minute shoppers: Digital subscriptions (and the digital portion of combined print/digital subscriptions) are available immediately! Print and digital subscriptions via our website, Stonesoup.com. Use code CHEER2018 on annual subscriptions and receive a 10% discount (until December 31 only) Annuals, anthologies, notebooks, and sketchbooks, via our online store, Stonesoupstore.com Published in Stone Soup, January 2018 Winter By Sheila Northrup, 10 Illustrated with ‘Frozen Beauty’ by Hanna Gustafson, 12 Soft, white, flakes drift down, following the wind. They bring a sense of happiness to the air. The golden rays of warmth strike onto the fluffy blanket below. The harsh cold still manages to crawl inside houses. Heat vents roar and the windows give out a moan. Thick clouds soon hide the sun. Smoke floats out of the chimneys into the bitter air, while leaves and grass are out of sight. The snow is swallowing up trees. Hot chocolate is being slurped down at every house. Now it is official. Winter is finally here. Click here to read more poems and stories about winter published in Stone Soup. Our customer service contact details for anyone seeking help with a subscription: Email: stonesoup@icnfull.com (response usually within 24–48 hours) Phone: 215-458-8555 (between 7:30 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday; and 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET on Saturday and Sunday) Stone Soup’s Advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia & Joe Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, Susan Wilky. To our adult readers and supporters… as Winston Churchill once said, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” The smallest gift from just a few
