The Bird Hotel

FANS!  We know.  But we're back now with a report of our first ever Susan Lindgren Imagination and Inventions Fair!  It was tonight.  Our Hero showcased a Bird Hotel.  Just 18 suites, this is a sophisticated and contemporary property for your modern and discriminating bird.  Joe had been a week or two collecting milk cartons in the lunch room after hatching this idea.  Then, he and Clara painted and bedazzled them.  They only part of the execution that Joe did not do was the gluing, and only because it required Krazy Glue and as much as we love the vision, we didn't want it permanently stuck to the floor or some such.  Ted was a key part of the success of seeing the idea through from concept, through execution.  He is a trained engineer after all, and comes from science-minded stock.

The Fair itself was wall-to-wall chaos.  Julie is friends with one of the organizers on the PTSO (which is what the PTO is called nowadays, at least here) so she was roped into interviewing kids about their projects.  So as she fought her way through the throngs to hear about the projects of 10 or so kindergartners and first graders, Ted and Birdie hung out with Joe who ran between his station and those of all his buddies.  Julie learned about fairy gardens ("My sister likes to move things around."), dog houses ("It has solar panels on the outside to keep the dogs, cats, and bears warm."  Dog house a bit of a misnomer.), building things with paper ("I like to build with paper because you can build anything with paper!"), the White House (the one in Washington, DC Fans; "There's a room in it where a lot of people died!"), birds (tough to say if they were the right clientele for the Bird Hotel), potato clocks (its maker does not like to eat potatoes), and Legos (lots of Legos).  Julie also learned that interviewing while fun, is tough when the room is filled with over a hundred kids under the age of 10 and you can't hear so well out of one ear.  But she heard enough to know that whatever Joe said about the Bird Hotel must have been pretty amusing to whatever lucky interviewer got to hear about it.

Joe is already planning for next year.  He has mentioned "a road town, made of paper, but not, because it will have a water feature, too."