"Watching" Topic Exploration

The nerdy, perennial student who lives inside me leapt with joy when it saw this assignment. I must admit that I love nothing better than finding a new topic to explore. When I was a little kid, I'd go to the public library and systematically check out every book they owned on whatever my hot topic of the moment was--horses, the Lindbergh kidnapping, Anastasia, and so on. As I got older, I added buying books to the mix and now there's the Internet...watch the pool of drool. Anyway, it was difficult to decide on what to pursue. I've had this jones for the Arts and Crafts movement for several years. When my husband was at the Newberry Library in Chicago, I worshipped at the Art Institute and gazed with love at all the Louis Sullivan and FLW buildings. During our stay in London, it was William Morris and the V&A and the Tate. My son's life as a Buddhist and a vegan makes me interested in both those topics. My daughter's career in the theater which was also my original training and my husband's work, fans that interest. My fascination with all birds and now owls in particular. The lives of my favorite writers, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Louisa May Alcott. And the list goes on and on.

I spent a lot of time looking through my books, pictures from our trips and doing lots of Internet surfing to see where one of these topics might lead me. Since many of these areas of interest are historical, there isn't really much new happening with the information about them. With owls, it was a different story. There were lots of really compelling issues--endangered species, people trying to adopt owls as pets as a result of the Harry Potter films, rehabilitation of injured owls, captive breeding and reintroduction. I found myself coming back to those sites again to check out more links and wanting to find out more about what could be done to return more of these remarkable birds to the world.