I got to thinking about this, wondering about how true it is.  We have all experienced loss.   In love affairs when the person we love moves on, we often swear “Never again!”  Never again will we love anybody as deeply or completely, never again will we allow ourselves to be hurt in such a way.  When a beloved pet dies, we swear that never again will we get another one.  Never again do we want to open ourselves to such hurt.

      The more we love, the more we feel, the greater the grief we experience when it ends.  Should we then try to insulate ourselves from caring?  Should we erect barriers behind which we hide to keep ourselves free of emotional attachment?  It is easy to say that we should never do this, that we should never withdraw from life, should never shy away from love, but sometimes this withdrawal is necessary.

     Sometimes the hurt, the despair, the agony is so intense that we must withdraw in order to simply survive.  And here is where people react differently.  Some feel the need to talk about their emotions.  They must find somebody to pour out their feelings, to go over the minutiae of all the events leading to the emotional crisis. 

     Others are different; they seem to ascribe to the adage: “The deeper the hurt the less voice it has.”  They withdraw  and silently contemplate their agony, their minds traveling down each and every aspect of the situation, exploring, digging through the tumulus and detritus, the tortuous byways until a balence is reached.   Only then can they give voice to the hurt, only then can they talk without succumbing to the emotional storm that swept over them.

       As for myself, I have loved deeply and I have grieved deeply.   Is the agony worth it? Of course it is!  And it ain’t over yet…hopefully I still have a way to go!

30August2007, 2:50 am

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat
But always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed
I hope you still feel small
When you stand by the ocean
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me you’ll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
I hope you dance

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Living might mean taking chances
But they’re worth taking
Lovin’ might be a mistake
But it’s worth making
Don’t let some hell bent heart
Leave you bitter
When you come close to selling out
Reconsider
Give the heavens above
More than just a passing glance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
(Time is a real and constant motion always)
I hope you dance
(Rolling us along)
I hope you dance
(Tell me who)
I hope you dance
(Wants to look back on their youth and wonder)
(Where those years have gone)

I hope you still feel small
When you stand by the ocean
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me you’ll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
Dance
I hope you dance

       As the sun begins to slip below the western horizon, the cicadas, which have been shrilling during the heat of the day, gradually slow down.  A discordant clanking arises for a moment as the Green Tree Frogs (Hyla cinerea), impatient for the night, start up and then dies down.  The high pitched trilling of the Narrow Mouth Toads (Gastrophyrne olivacea) began earlier in the afternoon.  They don’t seem to mind calling during the heat of the afternoon and can be heard not only from the aquatic plants floating at the lake’s margin but also in the shallow pools of water left in the woods by the rains.

     As the sun sinks lower, the cicadas begin to stop one by one until just one lone individual is left and then gradually it too stops.  There is a short moment of silence, then almost as at a signal, the tree frogs start up their clanking again, joined by the clicking of the Cricket Frogs (Acris crepitans) who have sang half-heartedly during the day, but now swell in full chorus.  The sun sinks below the horizon but the pink of the clouds are reflected in the water of the lake. 

     I sit on the dock watching the changing light and listening.  Tree crickets soon begin calling and after a while the katydids begin their loud, almost deafening, calls from the trees. I sit patiently listening to the cacophony around me watching the darkening sky.  It isn’t too long before I see a black flickering shadow overhead, wheeling and darting, a piece of night torn from a darker cloth.  It is soon joined by others and soon the pink reflection of the clouds on the water is shattered and broken by the drinking bats. Off in the woods a Barred Owl begins calling before it begins its night of hunting and is soon answered by another in the trees across the slough.

         Finally the mosquitoes become too much, and I make my way across the wooden bridge that my father built, weathered grey by the years.  A Bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana) decides to join in with its deep call, and the sounds of the creatures continue to grow to almost a frenzy as the darkness becomes complete, and I reach the screen door to my father’s house outlined by the golden light from within.

     So passes another wonderful contemplative day at my father’s lake house.  I flew down last Sunday, welcomed by my sister and father who picked me up at the airport and who took me back to my sister’s house where I spent the night, glad to see my sister’s husband and beautiful children.  The next morning my father and I visited my precious mother and spent some time with her before driving out towards the lake, visiting my brother and his wife and daughter and their lovely granddaughter on the way.

        My brother and his wife took me and our father to a really nice Mexican Restaurant in Lakewood near the intersection of Abrams and Gaston.  My sister-in-law wanted us to try the delicious chicken friend steak there which they knew was my favorite dish.  It truly lived up to her praises, requiring no knife to cut, and we ate slowly there just before a huge wall mural which depicted many

Hollywood icons and well-known Dallas people dressed in western attire.  In the center was this remarkable portrait of this Mexican man, who I assumed was the owner, dressed in western garb and wrapped in the Texas flag!

   That was Monday and in the past three days, I have gradually cleaned up the mess in my house left by the latest burglary.  At first I was greatly upset because I thought that these old family photos in antique frames which had been in our family over a hundred years had been stolen, but I found them where I had put them the last time that I had painted the room.  The only thing that I know was stolen was a nice microscope that I had acquired in 1974…oh and the wall air conditioner which my family bought back in 1956 and which had served faithfully all these fifty years.

     Today I put up a ceiling fan with lights which we got at Lowe’s yesterday to replace the malfunctioning fluorescent light fixture which had hung there in the living room since 1971 when my grandfather and his identical twin brother had built the house.  As always in any project that I start, the holdup is usually in the simplest things.  In this instance I found it extraordinarily difficult to attach the ceiling bracket to the large beam that runs the length of the cathedral ceiling in the living room.  I had to climb a tall ladder and getting the screws correctly aligned with the bracket, and then screwing them in proved to be the most time consuming part of the entire process.  After that the electrical connections and the actually hanging and securing the fan with its lights was relatively simple.  I also attached a remote control device to the fan which is handy since the fan is so high up.  It works perfectly and also provides lots of light.

     Later I rested my aching shoulders by finishing Ernest Hemingway’s A Movable Feast, reading the same book that I had bought and read back in 1967.  I have an entire library of books at my lake house, and I always take great delight in taking down these old friends and rereading them.  For some reason I had always had the impression that Hemingway always pared his writing down to the bone, but today I was struck by some of his long descriptive sentences.  Some of his sentences were over half a page long!  He kept referring to his elimination of adjectives, but his writing belied these claims.

     Tomorrow my father and I are going back to town to visit my beloved mother, before setting out for the panhandle of

Florida.  We are going along the Gulf Coast through areas which I have never been but have always wanted to visit.

     Many of us are familiar with the “noble savage” concept of the American Indian, the idea that the aboriginal people of America, have an innate dignity and way of life that tends to ennoble them, but there is also another conception of the American Indian that is also widespread–the idea that they have a natural respect for “Mother Earth” and that they show this respect in the way that they have lived in harmony with the environment.

     I think of this when I travel through a section of Fife and Milton, Washington that is owned by a local group of native Americans. There are zoning laws in Washington that ban large billboards except on the reservations.  The highway in this stretch of Indian land is lined with huge billboards advertising the usual products.  Some of them are so tall that they loom above some of the tallest trees which have been topped so the passing motorists can see them better.   There are also large billboards with flashing displays and moving pictures similar to large tv screens.  These are placed along the highway and at night the flashing of the lights can be quite dazzling.  These apparently are placed here to make money for the local tribe despite the state environmental laws.

     The aboriginal people of American have been mistreated so long, that I do not begrudge them the income from the numerous gambling establishments that they have established in the same area.  I say more power to them!    I also do not begrudge them the tobacco shops where they sell tobacco products that are cheaper because the tax burden is less.    However looking at what has happened on some of their lands I have to say that I wish that they had made some different decisions.  This involves not only the billboards but the commercialization of this strip of Interstate five (see earlier posting: Fife, Washington, the city that sold its soul to the devil).

                Seeing this apparent contradiction to the image of the ecologically responsible red man, made me wonder if the image wasn’t just another romantic notion made up by our media, that perhaps the American Indians were just people like everybody else, and who possibly have adopted the media’s version of themselves in order to find some sort of way to establish a cultural identify, one that differentiates itself from current American society, or possibly for some other agenda.

     The Ecological Indian: Myth and History by Shepherd Krech III of Brown University  puts a little perspective upon this conception of the Indian:

A. It is a well known fact that the Pleistocene extinctions of North Amercian Megafauna coincided with the appearance of man in the New World.  The same thing happened in Europe and Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia, Madagascar, and many other areas.   It seems very likely that early man in North America were at least partly involved in these extinctions. Note: this perfectly reasonable hypothesis has aroused absolute storms of controversy…the more politically correct investigators vehemently claiming that it was climate only not ancient man that caused the extinctions.

B. The early aboriginals often set fires to improve hunting, to use against trespassers, and for various other reasons.  Some of these fires according to early settlers got out of control.

C. Some indian groups stampeded hundreds or thousands of buffalo over cliffs and were only able to utilize a small amount of the meat.  The Cree called these sites “deep blood kettles” where 200-300 people lived for weeks near 200,000 kgs. of meat slowly rotting in the sun.

D. Some of the religious beliefs of the Cree and Piegan thought that if any buffalo escaped from these hunts they would warn the other buffalo, so it was necessary to kill any escapees.

 E. Krech also talks about how some tribes over hunted white-tailed deer and beaver in some areas.

F. He also says that overall the preColumbian indian population was too small and primitive technologcally to do widespread damage to the environment and that’s why when European man arrived the area appeared relatively pristine.

For a refutation to this viewpoint see here.  This site quotes many indians (before the modern environmental movement) who express a deep and abiding love for the land.

     I remember reading of the Lewis and Clarke expedition and the statement that in one area which was in contention between two tribes, the game was extremely plentiful because it was rarely hunted by the indians, in contrast to more heavily hunted areas where game was scarce.

     I think there is no doubt that preColumbian indians impacted the environment, perhaps triggering the Pleistocene megafauna extinction, but their numbers and technology were never that great to cause other severe disruptions.  I also would think that even if these early indians weren’t ecological paragons, that because of their lifestyle and their dependence upon the natural world, they would tend to have a greater empathy for the environment than western Europeans.

     For some reason I usually get a bit stressed out before leaving.  There are always last minute things to do, and so I make a list and check it off.  I always catch the shuttle, buying a round trip ticket and catching it at a nearby hotel.  The problem this time I’ll be getting home at 2 am and the shuttle leaves at 4 am. The plane leaves at 6 am.  I don’t like cutting it that close, but I had no choice this time.  If traffic is light I should reach the airport about 5 am which should give me enough time to go through security.  I usually get there way too early and end up sitting around a long time.  In fact that is usually my habit for all appointments–get there in plenty of time.

     After I check in, I usually become less tense. The stress comes from just getting there, and the flight is always a breeze.  I have decided to never check luggage any more, which makes things much more convenient and faster.  Of course it also involves taking only a small carry-on piece.  This time I have a small duffel bag and a small pack.

     Usually my cameras are what take up the most room, but I am keeping the camera equipment to a minimum also.   I always try to get a window seat and keep my nose plastered up against the window, watching every detail of the passing landscape below.  I simply can’t imagine how people travel and have no desire to look out the window. I see them sitting by the window reading or sleeping, paying no attention to the amazing view.  Even traveling in a bus or car, I must be staring out the window taking it all in.  Sometimes  when I leave at odd hours I can hardly keep my eyes open, but I force myself to do so.  However, when it’s cloudy and I can’t see the ground, I welcome the chance to grab a bit of shut-eye.

     There is one thing about flying that really, really irritates me.  Most companies have in-flight movies, which is ok with me, although I never spend the five bucks or so to see them (i.e. rent the earphones to listen to them since nobody has a choice about seeing them since the screens drop down in front of everybody).   What really galls me is when the stewardesses (wait, some are male, what is the male term-steward?) come by and tell me to lower the window shade.  I always indignantly refuse to do this since flying along in semi-darkness looking at soundless movies doesn’t appeal to me, and their assumption that I would like to do this strikes me as curiously inconsiderate. 

      I always want to know where I am when flying.  Usually I can look outside and tell about where we are; sometimes I can tell exactly by certain landmarks.  The flight into Dallas parallels Hwy 287 and passes over my father’s birthplace, my birthplace, the towns where my father and mother lived while growing up, and the towns where my grandparents lived, and where I visited them numerous times.  There have been many times when I could look down and tell which towns are which even to the point of finding a swimming  pool in this one town that I went to as a kid.  Certain landmarks are always easy to find in the other states also, and I always look for them.

     Once on a return flight which tends to swing further west and south after take off, we passed over an area of Texas that I absolutely could not recognize.  It was like a different part of the world.  I was totally disoriented and confused, and to this day I have no idea where we were.

     There are  many variations of this “edge effect.”  Often in sports there is a zone of tension, the edge, where one can venture, pushing until the absolute edge of safety is reached, then drawing back, often repeating this over and over.

     We also often encounter the phenomenon in dealng with people.  At first there is a back and forth interplay between two people when they meet until each becomes familiar with the boundaries of the other person.  We learn where we can venture and where we can’t.  We learn where we need to tread lightly and where there is no need to do so.   When we find ourselves in this position, we can simply take things easy and keep away from those boundary areas where the tension is greatest, or we may deliberately skirt near these areas, knowing that possible trouble might result, but somehow taking satisfaction in riding the edge.

    One can encounter this edge effect or zone in many human endeavors.  For example, in cooking, some cooks tend to experiment and push the taste possibilities, learning the boundaries of taste sensation, and often adding or subtracting ingredients to enhance this edge.   Ecologists are aware of this edge effect, realizing that in this ecotone is often found the greatest species diversity.  

     This area of tension is where we seem to be most alive, most aware of our existence.  Somehow at this knife’s edge,  life can seem sweeter as our perceptions step into overdrive; everything is more real, enhanced with the realization that all can be lost or all can be gained right here, right now.

     People vary in their reaction to this edge.  Some find it frightening, and stay far back in the safe zone, sticking to the tried and true, whereas others tend to push the boundaries, skating on the edge, reveling in the excitement that is intimately intertwined with the tension.  I often see women who always seem to choose the most inappropriate abusive partners, snubbing the “nice guys” for some inexplicable reason.  I suspect they tend to be excitement junkies, preferring the dangerous edge for the safer middle ground.

     Personally I always like to hold back as long as possible before the denouement, slowly reading a good book, unwilling to reach the end, or eating a delicious meal slowly, savoring the taste as long as possible.  

     A dog will gobble his food down immediately, and then look around for more, licking his chops, whereas a cat tends to eat slower and more fastidiously.  I think that I tend to identify with the cat more than the dog in this sort of situation.  I like to take it slow and easy, savoring each moment until the crest is reached and then…riding the edge.

     These articles are often unnecessarily filled with jargon and convoluted syntax.  It is as if the author thinks that obfuscation is a direct reflection of his erudition, forgetting that the purpose of writing is to communicate and not to preen.  I have even heard people accuse one another of being mentally deficient because they are unable to comprehend the meaning of some obscure and pedantic piece of writing.

     When this type of writing is inadvertent, I can sympathise with the author who apparently is unable to present his ideas in a coherent and easily understood manner.  However, I suspect that often such writers have bought into the idea that obscurity somehow reflects the depth of their thinking.

     The ability to write in an obfuscatory and confusing manner is not difficult.  On the contrary, it is much easier to sprinkle one’s diction with obscure references and oddly specialized bits of jargon, trying to impress people with one’s profundity, than it is to write spare, concise prose which presents even difficult subjects in a clear, understandable manner.

      Personally, I find it extraordinarily difficult to write in a clear and precise manner.  Almost inadvertently I find that I tend to throw in tortuous ways of saying something that with a little bit of effort, a modicum of attention, can avoid the serpentine, almost labyrinthine, style, reminiscent of bald-pated academics, squatting in their towers of ivory, poring over ancient, crumbling tomes of some bygone age with liver-spotted hands, absorbed in the rapt contemplation of their umbilicus…::cough::

Hey, the date is 07-07-07!

     In my family I know this is true, especially on my father’s side.  My father’s father almost never spoke.  I remember visiting my grandparents as a child in the small town of Odell, Texas.  It had this wonderful creek that ran near the outskirts of town, and as soon as we reached their house, I always wanted to immediately run down to the creek and start fishing.  However, my parents always said that to run off like that without visiting a bit would be rude.  So I would sit in the living room with my grandparents and my parents to put in my mandatory appearance.

     My grandfather usually didn’t say a word, and neither did my father.  My mother would talk a bit, but the conversation was almost solely carried on by my grandmother.  I loved my grandmother dearly, but how she did talk!  Over the years I noticed that at the breakfast table or anywhere else, she did 99.9% of the talking, whereas my grandfather would very rarely say a word…and when he did talk it was usually just that, a word, maybe two.

     So we would be sitting in the living room, my grandmother would talk and soon my grandfather would nod off.  To give him credit he worked hard all day as the foreman of a Santa Fe railroad track crew, and I’m sure the drowsy atmosphere and the talking of my grandmother, would simply lull him to sleep.  After a while my grandmother would gradually wind down and the next thing you knew, she was asleep.

     So there we would sit, me, still a small boy with lots of nervous energy, raring at the bit to run down to the creek to go fishing, and my mother and dad, and my sleeping grandparents…all sitting without a word in the living room.  I remember it was almost all I could bear.  

     This interlude usually didn’t last too long before my grandmother would wake with a start and begin talkng where she left off.  In later years I don’t remember my grandparents dozing off, but the same scenario always held, my grandfather sitting quietly, saying not a word and my grandmother doing all the talking.

     It wasn’t just my grandfather that didn’t say anything, none of his brothers talked either.  I never saw his oldest brother, so I can’t really say much about him, but if he was like his other brothers, then he too was a non-talker.  I saw three of my grandfather’s brothers, and I never heard two of them say a single word.   This was at my grandparent’s fiftyeth wedding anniversary though, and perhaps there wasn’t much for them to say.  I also saw my grandfather’s sister there for the occasion, and yes, she said nothing the entire time.  I did see two of his brothers on other occasions, however.  Uncle Wes seemed to talk more than the others, but Uncle Lloyd…well, let’s say that Uncle Lloyd was unusual.  He stayed with my grandparents a while (they often had a relative living with them), and I would see him when I visited.  He actually stayed in the adjoining bunkhouse, but would come over for meals and would sit a while in the living room where the water cooler made it so nice.  I would be in there, reading a book or something, and he would come in, sit down, put his head on his hand, and would sit there until supper time never saying a word.

     At breakfast I remember that he mixed his jelly up thoroughly with the butter before applying it to his biscuits.  I was fascinated by that and thought it was a great idea.  However he never spoke at mealtimes.  In fact the entire two weeks that I was there, he spoke not a word.  I never heard him speak.

     Now my father wasn’t that silent.  He did speak a bit more, however as a child I thought that he was a mite quiet, and I remember my mother talking about how quiet he was.  However, now he seems quiet loquacious and is very easy to talk to.

    I was always quiet also, but I think that the expression of the “gene of silence” has been diluted in me, and I tend to be the most talkative.  However, there are many times in company, where I don’t seem to feel much of a need to say anything, and so I sit there, silent…but hardly inscrutable.

      Back in Texas the mosquito fish, Gambusia affinis, is ideal for controlling mosquitoes and can often be seen just under the surface of the water in almost all bodies of fresh water.  They have a particular distinctive curl to the tail and a silvery triangle on their head (brain?) when view from above.  I see these fish swimming around unconcernedly at the lake where my father lives, and they seem to not be bothered by the various predator fish (sunfish, bass, crappie, etc).  I’m sure this impression can’t be accurate since I can’t think of anything that would give the fish any sort of immunity to this sort of predation.  They are live bearers and can live in extremely brackish water.  I remember doing a project study on them in a Comparative Physology class and found they could tolerate an extremely hypertonic medium. Unfortunately the  species has been introduced worldwide in a mistaken attempt to control mosquitoes when the native fish are perfectly capable of doing this.

     Since there are no Gambusia in this area, I have been trying to figure out what is best to put into the barrels for mosquito control.   I was going to try some guppies since they resemble Gambusia very much, but I balked at their price ($4 apiece).  I finally settled on some feeder goldfish ($.35).  When I introduced the fish to the barrels last week, the barrels were full of mosquito larvae–now there are none.  Not a single solitary one.

It looks as if I shall get no sleep tonight.  I won’t get home until four am, and I have to go to the airport at 5 am.  I’ll try for a few hours in the late morning perhaps.

	A lifelong interest in Conservation.
	A through knowledge of the Old Testatment.
	An abiding hatred of baseball.

     I remember the indomitable Mrs. Baird as being one of the oldest teachers that I ever had.  Of course to a second grader at Dean Highland Elementary School in Waco, Texas, old was almost certainly extremely subjective.  I mean almost everybody was older than me, but it seemed that Mrs. Baird was really old.  She had grey hair and spectacles, but she seemed to have a backbone of titanium steel.  

     Perhaps it is a testimony to my sensitivity to some things back then, when you consider how I reacted to her stories about trees.  She talked eloquently of how America was covered with tall beautiful trees when the first settlers arrived.  And then she would recount sorrowfully how these same settlers would cut the trees down, pile them in stacks and then burn them!  Her voice would become grave when she talked about this, and I could just imagine vast tracks of trees being cut down and burned.  Of course being in central Texas we didn’t have large forests.  We did have trees but nothing like those that she described.   It wasn’t until many years later that I saw miles of clear cut forest in the northwest with trailing plumes of smoke from the burning slash; I immediately thought of Mrs. Baird when I saw these horrors.

        She went on to recount the story about a farmer that she knew who had these two huge beautiful oak trees at the entrance to his drive way.  They shaded the place in the hot summers and provided homes for the birds, and food for the squirrels in the fall and winter.  One spring she went by the farmer’s house and noticed that the two beautiful trees were gone except for the stumps.  She asked the farmer what had happened, and he said that he had cut them for firewood.  When she asked him why he didn’t cut the other dead trees on his property, he said that it was cold and he didn’t want to go that far.   Her voice then dropped to an indignant whisper when she recounted the story to us, “He cut those beautiful trees because he was too lazy to go out onto his acreage and cut the already dead trees.” Her eyes flashed fire, and her voice was full of disgust.   This and other stories that she told made a lasting impression on me, and always since then I have been an ardent conservationist.

     Mrs. Baird also did something that today would get her ridden out of town on a rail, but back then nobody thought anything of it.   She read to us from Hurlbert’s Stories of the Bible!  Perhaps in deference to the one jewish boy in the class she only read from the stories of the Old Testament.  I was given this book when I was in the second grade, possibly because of her reading these stories.  I still have the book and keep it in the section of my book case where I put my most valued books.

     She read one story each morning until she had progressed through all the stories on the Old Testament, and I remember being enthralled with the bloodthirsty nature of the Jews of this time.  I thought it was full of adventure with great stories.  I learned more from her readings than I ever did later in Sunday School.

      Mrs. Baird also taught the boys baseball.  We didn’t have any bats or baseballs but we had these big red rubber balls that we used for baseballs and used our arms and fists for bats.  I hated the screaming and arguing that ensued amongst the little boys.  It seemed that they would argue and fight over every little thing about the game, and I developed an intense hatred for it which lasted me into adulthood.  The rules seemed absolutely incomprehensible.  I was the designated pitcher since I could get the ball over the plate at the right height better than anybody else, and I remember getting the ball and stepping on third base to put a fellow out, which caused Mrs. Baird to grab her grey hair and scream “Nooooo!”  I still don’t know what I did wrong…

      I wondered later if Mrs. Baird had had any military training because she would get the entire class out on the play ground and run us through an exhausting regimen of calisthenics.  The worst that I remember was having to duckwalk the length of the playground.

     There were other stories about Mrs. Baird that I could recount, like the time she almost quarantined me because she thought I might have had Scarlet Fever, and the time she held me after school in my cub scout uniform and lectured me until I felt knee high to a mushroom because I had talked during the rest period. 

     I must have learned my academic lessons also, but the lessons that I remember learning from Mrs. Baird was never gotten from any textbook.

When pyrite absorbs sunlight, a weak electrical current is generated which would have been enhanced in the early Earth’s anaerobic environment.  Matthew Edwards of the University of Calgary said that this photoelectric quality could have led to carbon and nitrogen fixation which could have led to a  primitive metabolism at these fixation sites.

     It is suggested that a biofilm could have formed on the surface of the iron pyrite. The surface of iron pyrite would have protected the organic molecules from not only wave action, but also against the harmful effects of ultraviolet light.  If the organic molecules were to form further than ten nanometers from the surface of the iron pyrite, then the molecules would tear themselves apart when excited by the UV, but if they were within ten nanometers of the surface then the iron pyrite would absorb the energy and then release it as heat (Tributsch).

     Tributsch also suggested that chlorophyll may have originated within this ten nanometer area on the surface of pyrite and may have supplied energy to primitive cells.  The first life forms appeared at least 3.8 billion years ago, and it appears that photosynthesis may have appeared by 3.7 billion years ago.

As a child

On the way to school

My pants were painted

With daubs of yellow

As I walked through

 Fields of nodding flowers

I’m not sure how it all came on…this feeling of loss.  I was thinking how as a child, my friends and I would hike across a grassy prairie to Jim Miller Woods in Pleasant Grove, now a suburb of Dallas, Texas.  This land on the prairie was the thick, black gumbo typical of this part of Texas, rich and deep, ideal for cotton and any other crop you cared to grow.  From our houses the prairie stretched for several miles to the intersection of Bruton and Jim Miller, where the Austin Chalk erupted from the dark soil to support a wide diversity of trees on a bluff overlooking the White Rock Creek Bottoms and the skyline of downtown Dallas.   Many of my fondest memories involve roaming these woodlands, digging nodules of iron pyrite from the limestone rocks and watching the gradual encroachment of bulldozers and developers until most of it was turned into a residential area.  Fortunately the developers had enough sense to preserve most of the trees.

     On the praire that we crossed, the appearance of building stakes were an unwelcome sight.  Then with the naivete of youth we would pull up the stakes and hurl them across the grasslands, enraged that anybody would dare to build on our territory.  It was merely tilting at windmills, however, and we knew it at the time.  Now on the once empty prairie are old residential areas with large trees in the yards of the brick homes, and I doubt if anybody remembers back to when that entire area was open grasslands.

     With this on my mind I happened across a website talking about the Pleasant Grove First Baptist Church, established over a hundred years ago, being closed and sold.  This was the church that my family attended faithfully for over forty years.  I was baptised in this church along with my father and my brother and my sister.  I was married in the church.  I passed it everyday on the way to and from school as a child and watched it grow.  When my father had to work, my mother would take us children and we would walk the long distance to the church in order to not miss a single Sunday. I intimately knew and went to school with many of the members. We all literally grew up in the church.   My mother taught in the Sunday School for many  years, was president of the WMU and was active in many other capacities.  This church whose steps I have not darkened for many years, was, I found to my intense sadness, an intimate and integral part of what I was.  I was overwhelmed with memories of that long ago time and was surprised at the depth of feeling I had on learning that it was due to be sold and destroyed.  I saw a later newspaper article that said that an arsonist had caused major damage to it.

       To top all this off, I came across a cemetery record of a dearly beloved person from that era of my life when I teetered on the brink between childhood and manhood, and then saw the photo and a podcast interview with another beloved one from the past.  Listening to her voice brought back an absolute avalanche of memories.

     It was as if so many ties and roots from long ago had been severed and I felt liked a drifting raft that had lost its moorings.  

                 “So lonely am I
                My body is a floating weed
                   Severed at the roots…”

  Ono no Komachi
 

     Weyerhaeuser (”the tree growing company”) responded indignantly by saying that most of these clear cut areas had been replanted with trees whereas the Amazonian rain forest clearcuts had not been replanted.  I’m sure that some people were reassured by learning that this company, the largest private owner of softwood forests in the world, was diligently replanting the denuded forest land which they had cut.

     There are at least a couple of questions a person might ask:

	Are these replanting efforts by timber companies effective in re-establishing the same type of forest that was removed by clearcutting?  Are these “tree farms” ecologically equivalent to those that were cut?
	Is Weyerhaeuser only cutting trees from their “tree farms?”  Are their replanting effforts enough to enable the company to conserve their old growth forests?

     To compare these replanted tree farms to a mature natural forest would be tantamount to comparing a wheat or corn field to a natural grass prairie.  When the first settlers came to the great grass prairies of the midwestern United States, they found an extremely diverse community of plants and animals comprised of many species which had evolved together to form the tall and short grass ecosystems of the area.  When the settlers first plowed these virgin prairies and planted their crops, often wheat or corn, they supplanted this diverse, well balenced community with a monoculture.

      Monocultures in this context refers to a single crop species that is grown in an area.  The increase of large areas planted in a single crop reached its zenith with the advent of corporate farms, and has both pros and cons.

     The pros:

	It is more efficient in the SHORT run.
	The grower can use machines that are specifically designed for a particular crop.
	The grower can apply the same fertilizers and pesticides.
	The harvesting, processing and marketing can be streamlined with a corresponding savings.  And that of course is the bottom line–money.

     The cons:

	Pests that feed upon the crop often explode in numbers as they react to the huge new food supply.
	The use of chemical pesticides are often applied in greater quantities to keep up with the burgeoning pest population (e.g. the boll weevil and the drenching of the South with DDT).
	The large amounts of fertilizers and pesticides don’t just stay on the applied areas but spread throughout the ecosystem, often with dire results.
	The soil condition often is neglected in these large fertilizer-dependent monocultures which eventually results in the application of more fertilizer than was initially needed as the soil becomes depleted.
	In addition to various animal pests, disease organisms often become established.
	Since the monoculture crop is often genetically similar, they usually have the same genetic susceptibility to diseases (and other pests).  In a genetically diverse crop some individuals by chance would have a genetic resistance to these diseases.
	Many species are eliminated.

     Healthy ecosystems have a tremendous amount of genetic diversity.   This usually means not only a large number of species, but a large amount of genetic variation within the species–various geographic races, etc.   As the genetic diversity is reduced for any reason, the ecosystem becomes more unstable.  On these tree farms, usually a single species of tree is planted (e.g. Douglas Fir), and often it is a particular variant of a species that is planted.  For example in some areas the trees have been selected for their rapid growth or some other desirable trait, and entire forests of this same particular variation may be planted in rows.

         Some of the forests in the northwestern U.S. are thousands of years old with a corresponding huge amount of genetic diversity in the form of thousands of species, not only plant species, but mammals and birds, insects, spiders, and soil organisms.  The claim of Weyerhaeuser that their monoculture tree farms are equivalent to the mature forests in the area can be viewed in several ways in my opinion:

	They could have made an honest mistake.  This is doubtful since they employ thousands of employees, many who have advanced degrees in the science of forestry.  Of course forestry majors may not have the same perspective as forest ecologists!
	They may have simply suggested that the forests they plant are equivalent to the mature forests of the area.
	They may have deliberately lied in a despicable attempt to cover up the fact that they are currently denuding the mature forests in over eighteen countries, including the United States, Canada, Uruguay, Australia, New Zealand, China, Mexico, Ireland and France, and causing irreparable harm to the ecosystems and species of the area.  This site may help answer that question.

     Which brings up the second question listed above.  Are these timber companies simply “harvesting” second or third growth trees on the tree farms that they have planted? Are they managing to leave the mature forests alone?  They are approaching this goal in Washington and a few other places but see the above link and this quote from the Seattle Times which tries to answer that question.  The Seattle Times article also talks about Weyerhaeuser’s history and presence in Canada.

But it’s in Canada, where trees take 40 to 100 years to reach a size worth felling, that Weyerhaeuser is logging hard. Despite decades of cutting, there are not enough mature, second-generation trees to maintain the industry at its present production levels. So Weyerhaeuser and other companies are targeting an ever-widening arc of first-growth forests, which may have been singed by fire or infested with beetles but have never before been logged.

Here is another quote concerning Weyerhaeuser in British Colombia:

“Vancouver Island, British Columbia, was once graced with one of the most magnificent forested ecosystems on Earth.

After 150 years of industrial logging, more than 80 per cent of the primeval forests have now been destroyed. 85 of a total of 91 watersheds have been roaded and gutted in the most thoughtless and brutal manner, and what is left is being cut down at the fastest rate ever. It took 120 years to cut the first half of the island’s forests, and it’s taken 30 years to clear the remainder. 20 per cent of Vancouver Island is logged without any regulation at all as ‘private land,’ - much of which is ‘owned’ by Weyerhaeuser.

Last year [2004], Weyerhaeuser destroyed a 50 hectare stand of single aged 1000 year old western red cedar in the Walbran Valley, not three hours away from Victoria, British Columbia, from where I write to you. This magnificent ancient forest is now a mass of stumps on average about four meters in diameter.

Weyerhaeuser is now invading East Creek, one of the last of five intact and unprotected primeval watersheds on Vancouver Island. The company wantonly mows down the forests even as First Nations struggle in Kafkaesque negotiations to get back their territories which have never been ceded. I have directly seen  the horrors that Weyerhaeuser has inflicted on our forests, and I understand how this giant American corporation is enabled to continue on with the invasion.

 

What? Me worry?

 

     According to annual bird counts and an analysis of breedng records, in the past forty years birds such as the Evening Grosbeak and the Bonapart’s Gull have dropped 97%!  The Purple Finch populations have dropped 87%; the Yellow-Headed Blackbird 72%, and the Western Meadow Lark 60%.  See this and related articles here.  The reason most likely is destruction of habitat.  For example as the prairies and open areas are built up the Meadow Lark has no place to live.  Destruction of forests (see post of two days ago) and other habitats are also responsible.

For example, not only the the forests and prairies are disappearing, in Eastern Washington the shrub steppe prairies, wetlands and grasslands are also rapidly disappearing along with the species that depend upon them.

     Of course the factors involved can be quite complex.  Pollution and global warming no doubt is having an effect.   As species such as the herring and crustacean populations of Puget Sound plumet it has an inevitable effect on the species on the uppper part of the food chain, such as the Bonaparte’s Gull.  The delicate web of life is being torn and shredded with unpredictable effects.

    One of the shocking things is that these are not the already endangered or rare species, but once common species that we see at our bird feeders.  The disappearance of common species will have a much larger effect upon our ecosystems than if the problem involved only rare species.

     Audubon lists some things that everybody can do to help.

However, I believe that this tendency of people to discriminate and look down on other races or cultures reflects a basic intolerance that is pervasive throughout our psyche. People have a tendency to set themselves up on a particular cultural prominence, and then sneeringly look down on all those that don’t share their particular “elevated” position.

It might be instructive to look at some definitions:

 Intolerance: an unwillingness to share or grant social, political, or professional rights. I would extend this unwillingness to all aspects of human endeavor.

Bigot: One who treats or regards the members of a group (as a racial or ethinic group) with hatred and intolerance.

Snob: A.  one who tends to rebuff, avoid, or ignore those regarded as inferior B. one who has an offensive air of superiority in matters of knowledge or taste.

       There seems to be a sort of commonality here, especially when comparing bigots and snobs.  Bigots seem to be the more extreme with their attention more  directed  at ethinic and racial groups.  Snobs seem to me to be part and parcel of the same disease that we all have–a tendency to smugly regard anybody outside our little group (whatever the group is) as somehow inferior.  I tend to use the two terms synonymously since I believe they are basically the same.

     This tendency occurs in almost all areas of human endeavor, not only the well known intolerance towards other racial and ethnic groups, but also in politics, religion, sexual preference, music, art, etc.  When carried to the extreme, it tends almost in some cases to lead to a sort of prim Puritanism with the advocates recoiling in horror at those that transgress their narrow rules of behavior. 

    For example, I have often seen this in the area of food.  Now I myself, sympathize with some of these positions, but I try to draw the line once the positions lead into the slippery areas of intolerance.  For example, organic food advocates sometimes become extreme in their denunciation of the food and chemical industry  and their attempts to “poison” our bodies (I have done this myself!).  Vegetarians are another example of food bigots.  Some “vegans” tend to get on their soap box and rant at the barbarians that continue to kill, yes actually kill innocent animals in order to eat their flesh.

Music is another area that brings out the basic intolerance that courses through all of our veins.  Not only do we often denigrate particular types of music, but we ascribe unsavory characteristics to the people that like these types.  Sometimes we think of them as being of a lower order of humans, unwashed, uneducated and unreachable.

     We have also what I call the provincial bigots.  These people sneeringly put down entire peoples based on where they live.  It’s like an automatic reflex with some of these snobs/bigots.  For example think of people from the southern United States.  What immediately comes to mind?  Where did you get this impression of this large area of the U.S.?  What about Texas?  New York?  San Francisco?  Each area often automatically elicits certain preconceived ideas about the people there, their sexuality, their religion, their reading habits, their politics, etc. 

      Stereotypes are an important aspect of this intolerance, I think.  Stereotypes can be a lazy way of immediately categorizing complex subjects.  Often stereotypes do have a basis in fact.  It often summarizes and typifies large masses of information, but…it panders to racism, bigotry and snobbery and should be avoided whenever possible.

This intolerance can be found in almost any realm of endeavor.  Take fishing for example.  Yes, fishing…how can anybody be snobbish about their fishing?  I have found that there are various levels of intolerance amongst certain categories of fishing.

     Below are the categories ranked in order of increasing uncouthness:

a. Dry Fly Fishing

b. Wet Fly Fishing

c. Fishing with artificial lures

d. Fishing with bait (live or dead)

The dry fly purists tend to turn their noses up at wet fly fishermen, and so on down the line.  Probably the lowest of the low would be the stink bait fishermen (which is one of my favorites).

So…are you familiar with a skill, a profession,  a realm of endeavor that has these levels of hierarchies?  And at the top of the hierarchies, are there the elite, the cognoscenti, the true “in” group?   I tend to be reminded of the dominance hierarchies in social primates.  Perhaps these are just other ways of establishing our dominance in our complex societies.

I just drove past where my old friends have been growing since time out of mind.

The trees are gone.  Only stumps remain along with “slash,” the broken branches and detritus left over from the logging operations.  A pile of these giants lie stacked awaiting the logging trucks.   A great bleeding wound is left on the earth. 

It’s not the first time that I’ve shed tears over such.

I am left handed, my mother was left handed, and her mother was left handed; beyond that I am unsure.  Lefties have always been not only passively discriminated against but also actively.  My grandmother was forced to only use her right hand in school and ever after did so when she wrote.  A friend of mine had his hand slapped repeatedly with a ruler by nuns in the Catholic school he attended because he persisted in using his left hand.

In English the etymology of left is ‘lyft’ which means worthless.  The word sinister came from the Latin for left.  Witches always proceed widdershins or counterclockwise (left) in their practices.  Some say that part of this bias may proceed from the fact that the sun in the northern hemisphere rises and proceeds to one’s right in it’s course across the sky. In primitive societies to go against the sun would not be wise.  Other terms like “gauche,” and “droit” reveal the bias against the left.  One could go on and on in this vein, for example our guardian angels stand to our right and the devil to the left.

And then there are the medical claims about left handers (90% of women and 86% of men are right handed) that have been made: they don’t live as long; it’s the result of brain damage; the immune system of lefties is lower; disorders such as dyslexia, attention deficit disorders, learning disabilities,  mental retardation, Alzheimers, and bed wetting.  Much of this was claimed by Geschwind, Behan, and Galaburta (GBG Theory) in the eighties and much of since then has been discounted or modified.

    Since the left hander tends to be right brained dominant, it would follow that lefties might show a predominance in fields utilizing the superior visual-spatial abilities of this side of the brain which would include math, music, architecture, etc.  Other studies claimed links to homosexuality, which could never be conclusively demonstrated.  Another study suggested that lefties had an advantage in hand to hand combat which would be selected for in more primitive times.  They point to the prevalence of left handers in some sports.  In my fencing class I was able to consistently beat the rest of the class possibly in part of my left handed fencing style!

Evidence has also accumulated refuting the early deaths of lefties…in fact much of the claims listed above have either been shown to be disproven or doubtful.  Obviously further studies are needed to conclusively prove any of these claims.

  One of my favorite quotes is as follows by Rudolf Steiner:

In general, you will find that those children who have spiritual tendencies can write with either the left or right hand without trouble, but those children with materialistic tendencies will become addled if they are allowed to write with both hands.

You may already know that sex in humans is determined by the Y chromosome. Females have two of the X sex chromosomes, whereas males have XY. These two chromosomes, although probably very similiar originally, diverged more and more after the male determining gene became ensconced on the Y chromosome probably over 300 million years ago. Below is an outline based on information presented by a paper by Willard in Nature and a medley of other sources.

	The two human sex chromosomes, X and Y, originated about 300 hundred million years ago from the same ancestral autosome — a non-sex chromosome — during the evolution of sex determination”
	They gradually diverged in their base sequence.
	At either end of the Y chromosome, however, there are still regions that are similar to the X chromosome with crossing over occurring between these areas.
	95% of the Y chromosome is specific to this chromosome (about 23 million base pairs) which is referred to as the Male Specific Region of the Y, or MSY and involves no crossing over with the X chromosome. This includes the gene that determines maleness (SRY) and any other genes beneficial to males.
	10-15% of the MSY include sequences (the X transposed) that moved from the X chromosome only in the past few million years, and are still 99% identical to the corresponding sections on the X chromosome.
	Another 20% of the MSY consists of a class of base sequences that appear to be more distantly related to the X chromosome and probably are pieces of ancient autosomes from which both the X and Y chromosomes evolved. These are the X-degenerate sequences. The rest of the bases are specific to the Y chromosome, and tend to be repetitive palindromes—reading the same on both DNA strands (the ampliconic sequences).
	Insights have been made into the evolutionary strategies that the Y chromosome has made in order to survive. Unlike the sequences on the ends, the MSY section of the Y chromosome does not exchange segments with the X chromosome. This can be seen to be necessary to prevent complications. If it did occur, then males would be missing both essential Y chromosomal genes and X chromosomal genes, and females could have extra genes on their X chromosomes which were obtained from the Y chromosome. Females could also end up missing essential X chromosomal genes. Selection appears to have occurred on the testis specific genes that may enhance fertility. Most of these genes occur in the palindromes mentioned above. However, as crossing over between the Y and X chromosomes ceased, the danger of accumulating mutations that would inactivate the Y chromosome genes would tend to increase. These mutations, no longer eliminated through recombination, would eventually cause the demise of the entire chromosome. Apparently to prevent this from happening, the sequence on one arm of the palindrome can alter or convert the sequence on the other arm—crossing over (recombination) between the two DNA strands. Apparently this has been happening in the larger primates at least since the line leading to humans branched off (five million plus years). It was calculated that as many as 600 base pairs in each new born male must be converted in this way.
	This led to the conclusion that this gene conversion may be more common in other areas of the genome, especially in palindromic and other duplicated areas.
	This supports a dynamic view of genome change in which not only do mutations occur (as much as 100-200 base pairs per person), but that thousands of gene conversions occur also. Skeletsky et al. sequenced the Y chromosome.
	Theoretically if the Y chromosome was eventually reduced down to just the gene causing maleness (SRY), then the gene could attach to either an X chromosome or another non-sex chromosome (autosome) which would create a new Y chromosome. Another possibility could involve a piece of an autosome attaching itself to the sex chromosomes. Both these things have happened in other organisms.

Out of curiosity I took a test on bias. There were several tests on the subject, and I took the one dealing with gender bias in the sciences. My results were: “Slight association of males with science and females with liberal arts compared to females with science and males with liberal arts.” In my opinion the way the test was given automatically predisposes the results towards this sort of bias.

These are the large flightless birds of the southern continents, characterized by the absence of a keel on their sternum (breast bone).  Sternal keels act as attachments for muscle in birds that fly.  Since the ratites are flightless, they have no need for such a structure (ratite: from latin ratis for raft). These Paleognath (old jaw) birds are grouped together based upon their unique palate, and are all flightless, although fossil forms show a keel on their sternum which indicates that the living forms evolved from early Cenozoic ancestors that could fly.  The flightless habit has arisen independently and many other flightless birds such as penguins and rails belong to the NEOgnathae along with most of the flying birds. 

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Superorder: Paleognathae
Order: Struthioniformes    

 Families:      

        Struthionidae (ostriches)
       Rheidae (rheas)
       Casuariidae (emus etc.)
        Aepyornithidae           (elephant birds)         
        Dinornithidae (moa)
        Apterygidae (kiwis)

 Order: Tinamiformes                 (Tinamous) 

Some sources:  Wikipedia article    DNA of ratites     Eating ratites

Having nothing better to do, I just took the nerd test.  I mean, I thought that perhaps I was slightly nerdy…maybe…ya know?  Like in a kool sort of way.  Imagine to my surprise when I scored 91% which ranks me as…well look what the results said:

 What does this mean? Your nerdiness is:Supreme Nerd. Apply for a professorship at MIT now!!!.

There has to be a mistake…dontcha think?
 

I’m trying an experiment by not putting a heading for this entry yet.  Yesterday I tried to add to a previous entry that had a heading and got error messages about the heading when I published it.  I ended up losing the original entry. So I will publish this entry and will try again later in the day, adding a heading, and will see what happens.

I just took a personality test (Meyers-Brigg typology test)  here, and found out that I’m classified as an INTJ or a  mastermind rational, also see here.

This is 18 hours later.  I had a nice afternoon eating lunch with Jessica and her fiance.  It was a nice Father’s Day and I appreciated being invited very much.  I also talked with my father.  From last summer throughout the fall and early winter, it was very dry in that part of Texas and the lake had already retreated far out from the normal shoreline when I was there last summer.  However, they have been having lots of rain now and the lake is full to overflowing, and it keeps on raining.  Nobody, of course, wants to complain about the rain since it’s alway on the verge of being too dry there.

Last summer we walked down the dry lake bed that extended up to where his house was and found the dry bed littered with dead freshwater mussels.  There are at least 18 species of mussel in this area and about 52 species in Texas as compared to almost 300 species in the entire United States and only 12 species in Europe.  See here for a photographic collection of these critters that are found in the Dallas area. 

The life cycle of these molluscs are interesting.  The female has to suck in spermatozoa from males which release their sperm into the water.  They enter through the siphon and fertilize the females.  The young are released as larvae (glochidia)  which must temporarily parasitize fish for a while before dropping off to complete their development in the bottom of the river or lake.

Some mussel species mimic small fish or other food items like worms or insects in order to attract fish.  When the fish is sensed by the mussel the larvae are released and thus have a better chance of finding a temporary fish home without which they would perish.

     In many places of course mussels are endangered and efforts are sometimes late in trying to perserve them.  Besides having interesting sex lives and of great interest to biologists and people interested in nature, they are often indicators of water quality, and a flourishing population indicates a healthy freshwater ecosystem.

Why do my thoughts keep returning to Hotel Angela?  Why do I long to return to this little funky hotel on that muddy street in Bocas del Toro, Panama?

Perhaps it is because of it’s remarkable owner, Claudio, who will bend over backwards to help you in any way possible;  perhaps it was the clean and simple establishment that Claudio started back in the nineties when, as he said, he was looking for a place to put his boat and do some fishing.  I know that much of its appeal is the restaurant set over the water, where I would come down at 6 am and help myself to the free coffee from a large silver urn.  I would then sit at the second table from the left (looking at the rear from the perspective of the photo) and drink my coffee from the china cup as I watched the sun rise.  There was always a cool, mild breeze and sometimes the tide flow would make little noises against the pilings.  I would look over the side of the railing and watch colorful tropical fish feed on tiny delectables that the tide brought.  After a while my Dad would come down, and we would both drink our coffee and watch the panorama on the water.  Soon dugouts would be passing by along with motorized boats of all descriptions.  The light on the water would continue to vary as the light changed, and soon it would be breakfast time.     

The free breakfasts were delicious and the people that worked there were always exquisitely polite and helpful.  All the meals that we ate there were delicious without fail and were very reasonable.   For about $15 you could take day-long boat expeditions to the surrounding archipelago.  This was an incredible bargain since private agencies would charge almost twice as much for the same trips.  We went to Coral Cay where we ate a delicious fish lunch at a restaurant set on pilings over the blue water.  As we waited I went snorkeling in the clear waters among the schools of tropical fish.  There were dolphins in Dolphin Bay feeding on schools of fish, their backs grey against the blue water as they sounded.  On the way back we dropped by RedFrog Beach with it’s bright red poison arrow frogs sounding like chirping birds in the surrounding vegetation.    Other trips included a boat ride to Bird Island, a small rocky island, where Red-Billed Tropic birds (Phaethon aethereus)wheeled and soared, their white bodies with their two long tail feathers distinct against the green vegetation of the island.  This is the only Caribbean location where they can be found.  Starfish beach, Boca del Drago, a cave full of bats and the incredible rainforest with it’s luxuriant bromeliads were also visited.   

               We went to other places in Panama, but when I think of the visit there, I think most often of Hotel Angela.  Don’t go there if you like luxury or fancy, but if you like a clean, simple hotel with excellent food and employees, internet access, and an owner who is simply charming and wonderful, set in a beach combers paradise, then you should seriously consider this marvelous place.

Drupal is “said” to be the most powerful and the most flexible, and where I am at right now I certainly can NOT see this. Joomla’s user manual is so well organized and so clear in its presentation, that it seems to be inspired. The Drupal instructions seem to be so diffuse and disorganized that it makes the entire learning process a slow and laborous process–more than the content warrants.
So, I am sure that I shall be commenting further on the two programs in the future.

The weather here has been sunshine interspersed with rain–mostly rain all day today in fact. The wind is blowing the little paper-like cups that cover the growing tips of the Douglas Fir all over the place. As the twig tips grow, the little brown cups fall off. Many flowers, too numerous to mention now, but soon I would like to post some photos.

After over a week of effort I have finally been able to construct a very basic site (not put onto the web yet–if ever!), but so far it seems cumbersome and non-intuitive. Now I am speaking as a complete novice as far as my knowledge about such things goes. I sometimes spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out the directions which assume a modicum of prior knowledge at least.

I feel sorta like the non-mechanical fella who is trying to put some oil in in his car. The directions say to find the oil cap, remove and add the oil. The poor guy looks all over the car trying to find the right place before finally realizing that the the directions have failed to say to open the hood! There have been a couple of incidents like this for me in following the directions.

We more often than not find that there is gold within us all. When we dig down and get to really get to know somebody, we often find that underneath that outside mask is a warm, loving individual, full of doubts and fears, pain and hope…we find a person with whom we can forge empathetic bonds, a person whom we can grow to like and to even love.

I read a story once about a man facing the final judgment after his life was over. He was facing a group of judges who were once men and who had lived on earth before passing over that great divide. God was present, but only as an advocate for the accused. The final judgment as to the man’s fate rested solely upon the judges. All the man’s past sins were brought forth before the judges. It was shown how from an early age the man had lied and cheated. He grew into a thief and a murder. He became a despicable person full of sin and all sorts of vice of the lowest sort.
God told the judges about how he knew the motivations that drove the man. He talked about how he was born a sweet baby, full of the special goodness that all children have. He talked about how he was beaten by a drunken father, how he stole food in order to feed his mother and his many brothers and sisters. He told the judges how the man’s environment had twisted and changed him into what he was. He told all the man’s inner feelings and how at heart he was still good and true.
The judges took all that into account in their judgement, but in the end they condemned the man to Hell. They said that all men have their own peculiar motivations–both good and bad, but not all men act upon them. This man acted upon whatever it was that formed and made him, and that is what made the difference. This man had acted, and they were judging the man for his actions not his motivations. Hitler, I assume, was once a sweet child, full of dreams and aspirations as all children are. What were the factors in his environment, what were his motivations that turned him into a monster? To human judges that is all irrelevant. History judges him on his actions.

And so that I suppose is what we do in our lives. We usually have, unlike God, no idea as to a persons motivations, and so we usually are reduced to forming judgements and opinions concerning someone on their actions. When I see a person acting offensively, I form a reaction based on his actions without regard to what made him act in such a manner. That is all I can do with somebody whom I don’t know. I can make a mental note to be more understanding, but that understanding doesn’t always go very far when a person acts in such a way.

But what about a person whom you DO know very well…or think you do? What happens when such a person treats you with contempt, hurts you in mean sorts of ways, and in general seems to loathe the very ground you walk upon? How should you react when this happens?

The wind picked up in the afternoon, and when I left the house the porch and driveway was covered with the tiny dried up corpses of male Douglas Fir cones…yes the ones that spewed out so much pollen a while back. I can always tell the time of year just by looking at my driveway. The plants go through their annual cycles and shed their various structures just like clockwork. There were a few yellow Madrone Leaves on the driveway also, foretelling the month of June when they shed all their old leaves.

My new project is to learn all about the program, Drupal, which I want to learn in order to be more flexible in posting my web site. I’m not quite sure about it yet, and I can tell that it will be a time consuming process.

That is I had no more problems with THAT window. The robin then proceeded over the next few weeks to attack every single window on the east side of the house. It didn’t merely give the windows a few dusultory pecks. No, it acted as if its territory (my front yard) had been invaded by an army of other robins, and it spent every waking moment fiercely attacking its reflection—over and over and over. At the end of this campaign, all my windows had been smeared almost completely with what I could only call…Robin grease.

The material on the windows appeared to be some type of oily substance which was very difficult to wash off. I assume it was the oil that the bird rubbed on its feathers which it got by rubbing it’s head on it’s pygidium, sometimes indelicately called the “Pope’s Nose,” which forms that little stub which most people call a tail.

Last year I only heard a few pecks from the robin. I assumed that the original robin had possibly moved on to that worm farm in the sky and breathed a sigh of relief. But now it’s back, back with a vengeance. At the moment it is only attacking the top three panes of my large front living room window…just those three. And sure enough, I see the tell-tale smears of robin grease. I watched it today as it sat in a bush outside the window. It would sit there impassively, staring with it’s crazed beady eyes at my window for a few moments, and then with no discernable change in it’s demeanor it would launch itself like a rocket at the window.

I’m taking no chances; I’m looking high and low for the Raggedy Anne Doll.

I had a teacher once whose words spoken with a quiet intensity changed my life forever. It was on a limestone hillside in Texas many years ago. It was spring and the Bluebonnets and Indian Blankets covered the land in the warm sunshine, and the song of Meadowlarks filled the air. Students in my Historical Geology class were every where over the hillside, but I only had eyes and ears for Dr. L. Frank Brown who was my teacher.
I had just caught a young snake whose identify I didn’t know, and I was a bit disappointed that Dr. Brown, a geologist, said he didn’t know what kind of snake it was when I asked him. The snake must have been a guide, leading me to my teacher, for Dr. Brown motioned to me and another student as he knelt down and picked up the fossil of a clam from the limestone outcrop that we stood upon.

“Look at this!” he said, holding the fossil out in his hand, his voice intense and directed right at me. “This area is filled with these broken clam shells. Look…you can see where the shell was broken after death, and you can see that the broken edges of the shell are smooth and worn. These shells of these clams were washed back and forth by wave action to form this ripple mark made of clam shells which was on the floor of a shallow Cretaceous sea. If you could find an adjoining ripple bed, you could calculate the depth of water that these shells were in by the distance between the ripple marks. These clams were probably just offshore, their shells worn smooth by the wave action. Listen! Smell! Can’t you just hear that ancient sea and smell the tidal flats these clams lived in?”

And so, in an instant was my life changed forever. That moment was inscribed on my being never to be erased. I can remember it exactly. The sun warm on my neck and bare arms, the snake wriggling in my hands totally forgotten, the buzz of grasshoppers, the smell of that good Texas country…engraved forever along with those simple intense words spoken with a fervor that spoke excitedly of momentous secrets being revealed.
I simply felt doors swing open in my mind and through them I had a far off glimpse of lands never before dreamed of. The idea that from a few simple observations the ecology of a land gone to dust over sixty five million years ago could be deduced was something absolutely inconceivable to me. And it was far more than that…it was an introduction into a way of looking at things that I had never experienced.

I finished the course with an “A,” and received in the mail a copy of Loren Eisley’s The Immense Journey with an inscription on the front page by Dr. Brown congratulating me on my achievement of making the highest grade in the class. In the future I took additional courses from Dr. L. Frank Brown—two semesters of Invertebrate Paleontology and a course in Sedimentology/Stratigraphy. All of these courses involved weekly field trips with some of them extending all week end. The Stratigraphy course also involved one on one trips with Dr. Brown who dedicated all his weekends during that semester to his students. I often wondered how his wife tolerated his being gone constantly.
In all of these courses, Dr. Brown taught with an intensity and enthusiasm which captured and riveted the attention of his students. His dedication and single-minded pursuit of teaching excellence has remained with me all my life. It was quite simply impossible to be around him without catching the fire that he gave off—a fire that made one want to know more about the secrets of the universe that he imparted with such ease and facility.
When he had to leave our school at the end of my senior year, all the students were devastated and appalled. He burned so brightly that he showed most of the other faculty in the Baylor Geology department to be dim and dusty cinders. He had to move on. This was my first glimpse of what envy on such a level could do to the best and brightest.

I never saw Dr. Brown again. However, because of his incredible influence I went on to finish my Bachelors, then my Masters and eventually my Doctorate. I have taught many hundreds of students since those days, and every day that I do so, I think of Dr. Brown and wonder just how he would explain a particularly difficult concept, or how he would try and enthuse students in the subject that he loved so much. What a role model he was!
And just before he left I had intended to write him and tell him how much he had influenced and changed my life, but…I never did, he left before I wrote the letter. And all these years I have regretted not writing that letter…until now. I recently to my astonishment found him online and wrote him at his email address repeating much of what I have just written. I can’t begin to say how pleased I am to tell him how much he changed my life.
I don’t think it would be an invasion of his privacy to provide this link to his profile. You can go here and see how he has progressed since he left the narrow strictures of Baylor University.

Also the lilacs are at their height. I have two bushes, one on the front corner of the house and the other by the porch and driveway. I especially like the latter since it curls over the porch steps which gives me an opportunity for a wonderful sniff of lilac every time that I go by. Also, however, they act like sponges which dumps water on me if I brush against them after a rain!

Finally we reached a wider place in the passage which contained a small pool of water. We were on our bellies with the ceiling pressing into our backs and my claustrophobia had increased.
“Here!” he shouted excitedly and took out a small brush and a vial of alcohol.
Looking closer in the weak yellow beam of his flashlight I could see extremely small hopping insects on the surface film of the water. This is what we were after–new species of Collembola, commonly called Springtails. Back in those simple days of 1974 these curious creatures were considered insects, but now with sophisticated means of genetic analysis, we are able to divide and subdivide, clump and unclump taxa based upon DNA esoterica which has provided taxonomic “splitters” with a dream tool. They now (for the moment) appear to be put into a class of their own along with other apparently unrelated Arthropods that have internal mouth parts (Entognatha).
As he gently caught the creatures on the tip of his camel hair brush and dipped them into their final bath of alcohol, I could see his hands shake, his breath puffing forth in dense clouds of vapor in the cool air. He was almost beside himself with excitement. He had found and described these creatures which through isolation and eons had differentiated into distinct species. Since this was in one of those “islands” which had not been covered by the lastest glaciation (Wisconsin), they may have been isolated longer than we realized. Even though he was just an undergraduate at nearby Luther College, he had already accomplished much. Caught up by his excitement, I forgot the pressure on my back, the chill and the wet and became absorbed in these tiny creatures that lived in the utter darkness of this cave.

Sometimes I think back on this young man with his incredible enthusiasm for a small insignificant group of animals. Most people had never heard of these creatures, and if they did, they probably would be amazed that anybody would pay any attention to them. However, in the dim chill of that wet cave, with the sense of imminent doom from the rock pressing on my back, I caught a part of his fire and felt myself becoming excited in turn. I carry a part of this fire still. And this is the lesson that I learned from him:

Life should be full of such enthusiasms. We should search out and cultivate these passions! We should open ourself to this incredible universe and catch something of the mysterious fire that lies at its root. I love and admire anybody with overpowering passion and enthusiasms which fill them with a holy fire which can illuminate and fill all those who come in contact with them. And it can be anything! Springtails or painting, music or archery…can you feel it?

There are many small decisions that we make throughout the day that affect our lives, but there seem to be a few pivotal events I can think of which would have led to major changes in my life if I had made a slightly different decision. It is usually only with hindsight that we can spot these pivotal episodes. I am sure that there are many choices that we make throughout the day that have the potential to be one of these nexus points, but because of the choices that we make, we never realize that we have passed one of these probability points. Most choices lead to a continuation of our daily routine, but if we make slightly different decisions then major changes can occur.

I can remember one cold wintery night back in January, 1974 in Decorah, Iowa. I was enjoying a drowsy evening listening to classical music, reading and drinking tea, when there was a sudden knock at the door. I was somewhat irritated at being disturbed and I was loathe to get up and open the door to the frigid cold. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was one of those critical nexus points. If I had decided to ignore the knock, I would have gone on down the life path that I was on at that time, and I would never have realized that I had been brushed by the dark wings of change. However, I got up reluctantly, opened the door…and my life was sucked into a hurricane of change and turmoil which led me down a dark divergent path far from my loved ones and all that I had known before. I stand here where I am today because of that long ago decision.

This is just one fork in my life that I remember, but when I ponder this, I realize that my life was full of such episodes–arguably an infinite number of nexus possibilities. And not just my life, but the lives of those around me, the lives of my parents, the decisions that they made each moment of their lives which led to the present reality…and so on, the decisions of their parents, etc, etc. back to the beginning. When pondering this I realize that the probability of ANY event occurring is infinitesimal. NOTHING is really possible when the infinite probabilities are considered for any one event. And yet, of course, things do happen, improbable as these events are! The arrow does move!

Those are the main headings of what I want to do. Totally unrealistic I know, but if I can do all but “D” and “M.” I shall be happy. Unfortunately I am working my days off this week, and so will be short of free time to do all this.

While in Seattle I walked down by the waterfront (windy and chilly and looking a bit run-down), and meandered my way through all the construction before climbing the hill to Pike Place mark. As usual the market is a place full of sights, sounds and smells that capture the senses. The tulips are reaching their height and the flower stalls were full of them.
I always like looking at the vegetable stands also. The vegetables and fruits are always carefully arranged so that they create a wonderful assemblage of color and texture. I am also always amazed at their price!

And of course I have to visit the fish stands with their incredible assortment of fish and other types of sea food. Sometimes the fishmongers put on a show by tossing the fish about for the benefit of the tourists, but today they were fairly quiet, not even shouting out their wares. In fact the place was relatively quiet and uncrowded. Relatively I say since it was still quite full of people and noise. It is a great place to browse and see the sights, and then to stop in some small eatery to eat lunch or breakfast. The entire area has been converted into a series of shops, stalls and restaurants of all types and descriptions. I was thinking how nice it would be, if money were no object, to live in a condo overlooking Puget Sound and the ferries, and then to come down to shop in the market and eat in the astounding number of restaurants. Maybe I should start buying lottery tickets?

It’s a great place to walk also, going up and down the steep streets, wandering from one end of the downtown area to the other. The buses are free in the main city area, and you can get on and off whenever you wish. The driver always announces the last free stop, so you can leave before you have to pay!

It all sounds very wonderful, and it is–IF YOU LIKE DREARY, CHILLY, RAINY WEATHER! And that’s the fly in the ointment of living in the Northwest. You can go for weeks without seeing the sun, and when you do it is a weak, watery thing, low on the horizon giving forth slanting rays that always makes me think that it is either early in the morning or late in the afternoon. The rain is legendary–not the hard pounding rain that one finds in the rest of the world, but drizzle, ranging from a fine mist to a steady rain that goes on and on and on… August and September are, however, wonderful with perfect warm, sunny weather and chilly nights. I suppose that it is a good thing for the area that it has such lousy weather, otherwise everybody and their dogs would flock here as they have to California. Actually the weather seems to have little impact on the burgeoning population which is rapidly filling the narrow corridor between the mountains and the sea, clear cutting the forests, polluting the water and the air, and in general befouling the pristine eden that once was here. But what else is new, huh?

As this paper says, this ban is long overdue. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that drivers quadruple their chances of being in an accident when they use their cell phones. The surprising thing shown by this study is that this accident rate holds whether the drivers HOLD their phones or use HANDS FREE DEVICES! The legislature decided to only address hand-held phones because police officers wouldn’t be able to tell whether or not the person was using a hands-free phone.

I was filled with astonishment as I read this article! SURELY, the officers could be able in some way to detect that drivers were using a hands-free phone. I thought that perhaps they could use binoculars to see if a person’s lips were moving IN THE ABSENCE OF ANY PASSENGERS! Then another thought occurred to me.

If the accident rate was the same for people talking on hands-free phones as it was for phones that they had to hold, then what exactly WAS the common factor that could be causing the increase in accidents? It couldn’t be the fact that the drivers were only using one hand on the steering wheel while their other hand held the phone since the accident rate was the same for hands-free phones. After a short period of cogitation on this, I realized in a sudden flash of inspiration that it was the ACT OF TALKING! The act of talking was causing a fourfold increase in accidents. This leads me to urge our prescient legislature to extend this ban! PROHIBIT ALL TALKING IN CARS!

I am enclosing some more photos. To the left is the fiddle head from my least favorite fern–the Bracken Fern(Pteridium aquilinum) that I have mentioned before. They are coming up everywhere like weeds–which they are! They occur worldwide and is such a pest in Britain that they initiated a program to control their spread. People eat them like asparagus as I said before, but this fern contains carcinogens, and in areas where they are consumed regularly such as Japan, the occurrence of stomach cancer is among the highest in the world.

I also found that the Horsetails (Equisetum) are coming up in my yard. They used to be used as scouring pads because of the large amount of silicon in their cell walls. These are a primitive group of Vascular Plants (containing tubes) that reproduce by spores instead of seeds. The strobilus, shown here, is the spore producing body which in this area comes up before the photosynthetic stems. The photosynthetic vegetative stems can be quite attractive, especially when they catch the light in shaded areas, but they can be a nuisance because of their tendency to spread.

It is also that time of year for my old friend the Dandelion (Taraxcum sp.) to blossom forth in all its glory. I had very few Dandelions until I disturbed my yard a few years ago in order to empty the septic tank. This disturbance in the grassy lawn was all it took for them to take hold with a vengeance. I just gave in and learned to enjoy their beauty before they go to seed and become all raggedy. The Dandelions in the Northwestern U.S. are the most beautiful that I have ever seen. They seem to be larger and deeper yellow than those I have observed elsewhere.
The birds are also singing their little heads off. Like clockwork on April 1 in open areas, I heard the White Crowned Sparrow (Poor little me, deep!). About my house, I hear the species that are most common to the woods and boundary areas. The WinterWren, the Robin, the Varied Thrush along with the Chestnut Backed Chickadee are all singing loudly. The Spotted Towhee is just getting started and will remain the most vocal bird in the area through July. Also, although I have seen the Song Sparrow , it has barely begun vocalizing. Soon it will become, like the Towhee, one of the most heard bird around my house.