For a little over two years now I have posted essays, reviews, musings, idle thoughts, and a host of other intellectual creations here on Born Again Bird Watcher. From this activity I have met some wonderfully friendly, thoughtful people and made more than a few professional connections. However following prolonged reflection upon a few conversations with different individuals, I have come to realize that over all this time I have been a bit ambiguous as to the spirit of Born Again Bird Watcher as well as a bit too guarded about myself in general. I hope the following words will help to remedy both problems.
Who am I?
Most people who wish to already know that my name is John Riutta, that I live somewhere in northwest Oregon (a small town named Scappoose, to be exact), that I am married and have at least one child. In fact, I have been married to the same wonderful woman, Polly, for going on sixteen years now and we have one daughter, Elizabeth, who will be nine years old in just a few months. Also in the household is my mother, Rayona, and our small Havanese dog named Bebe (her name is actually Victoria Regina Volcano Kumquat something something something on her AKC papers but as she has a more impressive pedigree than any of us do, we try not to inflate her ego by using her full name). Polly and I grew up in the same small town just down the road from where we live now and, despite the best efforts of four different universities collectively, are pretty much just as small-town at heart as when we were kids.
What do I do?
As just about anyone who writes a blog will attest, blogging is not so much a career as it is a mental irregularity. You don’t write a blog for the financial rewards, or any financial rewards for that matter; you write it because you have something you wish to communicate to others. Therefore in order to support this activity a job or jobs are necessary. Once upon a time I had a really good one with the optics firm Leupold & Stevens, Inc. where I was, over the course of my decade plus career, a technical advisor, marketing communications specialist, birding and nature specialist, and finally observation market development leader (essentially a combination product development and market development manager for a particular market area). Sadly, pride and self-importance on my part ended that career and I am now wearing a few different hats.
One of these hats is that of the owner of Born Again Bird Watcher LLC, through which I provide consulting services, especially marketing, communications, and subject matter expert work, to firms, organizations, governmental entities, and anyone else with a product or project touching upon nature or nature-based recreation. Another of my hats is that of a writer and reviewer. Wearing this hat I produce the column “Did you know…” in The Backyard Birds, contribute regular articles and reviews to Bird Watcher’s Digest and The Binocular Site, and provide freelance work to other publications, which have included WildBird and Backyard Birding. As well as writing the Born Again Bird Watcher blog, I am also part of the teams that produce the Nature Blog Network and Wingscapes blogs.
So what does the “born again” in Born Again Bird Watcher mean?
This is the proverbial sixty-four thousand dollar question. Born Again Bird Watcher actually has many meanings. Let’s get the most common understanding of it addressed first – yes, it’s religious. Despite the best efforts of the some of the most vocal and publicly visible (often self-appointed) representatives of the Christian faith, I continue to practice it. At times in my life this has not always been the case; I have been known to have, as my dear and recently departed friend Klaus Ferfort was fond of saying, “let the [fornicators] get me down.” (note: Klaus didn’t use the word “fornicators” in this context) However thanks to the continued and untiring efforts of many good people, some to whom I am known and others who have no idea of my very existence, I manage to retain my faith and even sometimes practice it. As a bit of trivia – I actually majored in religious studies as an undergraduate and intended to attend San Francisco Theological Seminary, Graduate Theological Union for my doctorate but life had a few other plans that saw me take a B.A. in English literature, an M.A. in education, and most recently an M.B.A.
However there are other explanations of Born Again Bird Watcher as well. I am a cancer survivor, living now nine years past a diagnosis of malignant melanoma. For those doing the math, yes, that meant that I was diagnosed just before our daughter Elizabeth was born. For those doing the psychology, yes, this was unexplainably difficult both physically and psychologically. Even to this day, despite the fact that once I pass the “ten years with no recurrence” milestone my chance of a recurrence is essentially back to that of a person who has never experienced it at all, the subject is too painful to recall and write about. Suffice it to say that, in addition to the immense unpayable debt I owe my family and friends, I also owe a great deal to my taking up the pursuit of bird watching and from it discovering a metaphorical place in which to on occasion mentally retreat from the constant fear of not living long enough for the memory of me to be securely established in the mind of our daughter. Cancer is not only a disease of the cells, it has a vast emotional and psychological toll to be paid as well – something not always recognized in its treatment.
Then there is a meaning of Born Again Bird Watcher that is now lost to me – one born of the previously mentioned pride and self-importance that cost me my previous career. When I began writing the original blog, I saw myself as emerging from the business world of predominantly hunting-oriented products and their creation into one of bird watching. However I have now come to see this mistaken and horridly simplistic idea as one of the supreme errors of my life (at least to this point in it). The two worlds only differ in the minds of certain lobbyists on Capitol Hill, and in those of other individuals whose organizational, political, or personal interests lay in the continued public perception that harmony between various groups of outdoor recreation enthusiasts, groups all reliant on the continued existence of wildlife and wild areas for the practice of their preferred activities, cannot be achieved.
Thus there you have it – a better explanation of who I am, where I’ve been, and what I do. In the future, I intend to provide a little more openness with the readers of Born Again Bird Watcher, as well as provide a little more expansiveness in what is written about here. This will include, among other things, some infusion of “faith related topics.” However lest anyone make assumptions, I want to state firmly and clearly that I am an ardent admirer of Charles Darwin and his writings (in fact, if a recent request I have made to a publisher is granted, I intend to post a series of commentaries on a long-term reading of his major works). When it comes to the tensions, both legal and theological, that exist between Christianity and the theory of evolution, my long-standing favorite saying is “science gives us the ages of rocks, faith gives us the Rock of Ages.” Don’t confuse the two and most things seem to work out just fine.
