Birding with Kenn and Kimberly

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes:   Back on July 14 I wrote about a feature-length film, A Birder's Guide to Everything, that was about to start shooting under the direction of a remarkable young filmmaker, Rob Meyer.   If you don't want to scroll all the way back to that date, you can read my earlier post at this link. In August, at Meyer's invitation, I had a chance to visit the set for a few days.  Now, I've watched a lot of movies but I didn't know much about how they were made, and it was fascinating to have this behind-the-scenes view.  Although this isn't a filmmaking blog, this particular movie has birding as a main element, so I figured it was legit to write about it here.  To keep things manageable I'll break this up into multiple posts rather than writing one incredibly long post.  So, class, today's lesson: there is a HUGE AMOUNT OF WORK that goes into making a film! Seriously.  I was stunned to see the dedication and the attention

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise - Silent, upon a peak in Darien."                      -- John Keats, 1816 From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: The verse above, the latter half of a sonnet, represented Keats's reaction after first reading the George Chapman translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey .  In modern language, Keats might have written, "Whoa!  This knocked my socks off!"  But fortunately he didn't.  His historically inaccurate, but surely vivid, reaction is still being quoted two centuries later as an example of how a work of literature can produce a powerful emotional response.  We thought about this last night, when we looked at a new book for the first time.  This is a really brand-new book: it hasn't been published yet, won't be out offic