From Birds to Edible Ornaments
Girl Scout bird treats, gossip, and candy!
This is your Monday Lunchbreak, with some talk about birds, my Grandma decorating the tree with candy and sneaking those candies throughout Xmas break.
At some point when I was a Girl Scout—probably in the 6th grade if I had to take a guess—there was an activity sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas that I remember as the tree decorating. Not the tree lighting - that was in front of City Hall and definitely a bigger affair.
This tree decorating in suburban New Jersey was to take place at a triangular plot of land somewhat near the downtown. I had to make a very specific decoration for the tree. It was cheerios on pipe cleaner and then twisted closed to make a loop. The loop was almost never circular, and resisted being circular in the most frustrating ways. In my recollection there were a lot of times in my childhood where I was given a craft like this makeshift bird ornament feeder that obviously was on a list of traditions and activities that some committee put together and thought we would have a blast doing. In reality, it was training all of us to go through the motions of doing something together, whether it be for ourselves, presumably for the birds of Rahway, or to bring a modicum of cheer to the rare pedestrian in our car-centric town.
Of course an activity like this would likely be frowned on in modern society, but at the time feeding geese your bread-ends was an activity doled out by Grandmas to bored grandchildren in the middle of a string of cold, icy days with the exclamation “they’re probably starving!”
Those Gossiping Robins.
Now, I know that the Pink Robins above are most definitely *not* from New Jersey, rather from Tasmania. I really, really like that plumage. I was drawing over zoom with my friend Courtney last Saturday and I decided I would draw some birds on a wire, and remembered sending someone a photo of a pink robin a few years ago on their birthday (one of those people that never remembered to say happy birthday back, you know the type!)
The pink robins pictured above are males. I like to think about how gossip is perceived - is it all about the delivery? Or gender? No! It’s the intent. Men certainly do get together and share information. Most people get together to share information. But I rarely if ever in my whole life ever heard someone admonish a group of men chatting with a blistering “you’re gossiping!” like it’s delivered to girls. There’s something especially malicious about gossip and women that I’m going to spend a minute pondering.
What is gossip? My daughter has been trolling us lately—she’ll yell from the other room “ARE YOU GOSSIPING ABOUT ME??” if she hears a remote whisper of her name. This is all hilarious because of my daughter was once told by a neighborhood friend that her mother said they were no longer allowed to gossip, because it isn’t nice. Of course, that girl’s mother was one of the biggest gossips I’ve ever encountered so I can only guess she was teaching a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do moment to her girl.
Let’s Switch to Candy.
CANDY! My Grandma always bought some candy a day or two before Christmas. She’d buy a beautiful bag of hard candies—always with the soft, gooey sweet syrup center that sometimes left a hole in the middle of the candy and would cut your tongue if you weren’t careful. She’d carefully pop through the top twisty cellophane with a needle and lead a black thread through, quickly cut the thread with her teeth and tie a knot so that the candies appeared to float all over the tree.
We always took those candies from the tree.
I just bought some Italian chocolates from Trader Joe’s and had fun decorating our tree with them, along with some candy candy canes and various much more normal, round, inedible ornaments.
If you enjoyed this and want more, take a moment to subscribe! Thank you!