No Escaping H2O

It was one of those literary works dubbed "classics" that high-school students in my day were required to read and study, even though we ourselves would never have chosen it for our reading entertainment.  It was the exotic, multi-page poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).  Even today, literary critics recognize Coleridge as having been one of the most insightful minds of his time.

The dead albatross hangs from the mariner's neck.

We high-schoolers, knowing we could not escape from the Ancient-Mariner poem, set our minds to finding some intriguing elements in that famous literary work.  We latched onto the bizarre plot development of the sailor in the poem having a dead albatross hung around his neck as a punishment.  We tried to enjoy Coleridge's rhythm and alliteration in some of the stanzas we memorized. For example, here is the description of the plight of the thirsty sailors when their sailing-ship becomes stranded on a windless ocean of undrinkable saltwater, the boards of the ship's deck even shrinking under the hot sun:

              "Water, water everywhere,
           And all the boards did shrink;
               Water, water everywhere
                 Nor any drop to drink."

Those lines popped into my head when I was reflecting upon some of the disturbing news events during the summer of 2022.  In Kentucky, freak floods occurred day after day, killing many.  At the same time, in the southwest of the U.S., the level of the Colorado River -- which several states depended upon for water -- had reached a record low.  Affected by climate change, the news about water was either "too much" or "too little."

There thus has been no escape from being concerned about water.  Even astronomers were searching for signs of it on far-off planets as evidence of the possibility of life elsewhere than on Earth.  Along with biologists, astronomers know that the common denominator of all forms of life we know about is water -- that remarkable liquid formed when atoms of the gas hydrogen and the gas oxygen bond together.

The common interest in water during the summer of 2022 (from the people of Kentucky to those living in the Southwest to even astronomers) was a contrast to most of the sentiments expressed publicly during that year.  More common had been polarized views that suggested that half of the population of people in the U.S. had nothing at all in common with the other half.  But water -- in some way -- became a common concern

Mariner shoots
the  albatross
with his crossbow

Why had the mariner's ship become stymied on a windless ocean?  The answer goes back to why that albatross had been hung around the mariner's neck as a punishment.  He had, for no reason, recklessly shot that great white bird that had been accompanying the ship for several days "for food or play."  The mariner had disregarded the fact that the presence of an albatross had traditionally been considered by sailors to be a good omen.  The poem suggests that there are moral laws to the universe that set limits which humans cannot pass without ensuing consequences.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote at a time when poetry tended to moralize more than it does today.  Nevertheless, if he were writing his tale of the mariner today, I would hope he would still include in its final stanzas another set of lines we memorized in high school. 
They go like this:

"He prayeth well, who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all."

~ ~ ~

(Do any of the lines of Coleridge spark any thoughts or feelings in you?)

(All quotations are from Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
 taken from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, edited by M.H. Abrams, et al., ©1968.)
(Both pictures are in the public domain.)

Something Dependable

As summer approached, there was increasing discussion on the radio about the condition of my state's electric power supply.  Would it be able to withstand the high demands that would be placed upon it during summer's heat, when more air-conditioners would be run more often?  Had enough steps been taken to strengthen the state's electric grid to prevent the type of massive, extended blackouts that had occurred the winter of the year before -- shutting off furnaces, leaving people shivering inside their houses, some even dying?  The state's public-utility board and the electric grid operators both assured the public that the problems had been fixed.  And the company operating my local electricity ran TV commercials showing smiling people, happy that their electric company "had their back" (as the saying goes).  We could depend on them, we were assured. 

Nevertheless, I was not surprised when I awoke at 5:00 one May morning -- even before summer had begun -- and saw that the power was out in our house.  A glance out the window showed me that the same was true for my neighbors across the street, who are on a separate electric line and set of transformers.  Something on a much larger scale than the line to a single block of houses had been put out of commission.  And the cause had not been any extended period of intense heat, but instead a run-of-the-mill thunderstorm in the night.

Storm in the night

Admittedly, a power disruption for several hours is a modest challenge for most homes.  But it can symbolize the many failures of our human societies that can make them so undependable that sometimes we don't want to get out of bed in the morning.  Such incidents can, unfortunately, lead not merely to frustration (and maybe anger) but to hatred of some people who have not been dependable.  After a few hours in my house without hot coffee and without eggs being fried on my electric stove, I remembered that the power-company employees that were trying to restore the system also depended upon the same vulnerable system when they returned to their homes.  They had their challenges as well.

Fortunately, not too long after getting up in my dark house without power, there came something I know I could depend on: The sun gradually rose in the east.  It did so at the same predictable time it had the morning before.  Its light filtered through the clouds, bringing into my house a gentle but appreciated illumination through the windows.  I was able to set aside the flashlight I had been awkwardly carrying about, trying to do those morning tasks that did not require electricity.

In the New Testament's Gospel of Matthew, Jesus presents to his disciples what must be one of the most difficult of his instructions. Namely, “Love your enemies.” And what does Jesus put forward as an example that might inspire his disciples in such a difficult challenge? Does he point to some very noble person around him? No. Does he point to himself? No, not even that. Instead, what he points to is the reliable rising of the sun every morning, saying that we should be inspired by our “Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good.” (Matt. 5:44a & 45a, NRSV). Thus it is that Jesus encourages his disciples to turn their attention to the non-human sphere that they might widen and deepen their appreciation of God, and thus be inspired -- even while living in human societies that can, at times, be so frustratingly undependable.

Seven hours after I had woken up in a house without electricity, the power was still not back on; and the electric company had given up on making any prediction of when it would be.  I, however, was able to make a prediction with considerable assurance: I knew the sun would set in the west that coming evening.  And I knew it would be dutifully rising the coming morning.  And that would be good.

~ ~ ~

(Is there a way you deal with the ordinary frustrations of life?)

(The picture of lightning is by Vedrin Jeliazkov
and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

On Birds and Humans and Love

Spring brings not only the colors of new leaves and flowers; it also brings the sounds of birdsong.  Behind those reassuring notes lies the new life of nests and eggs.  That annual occurrence makes the following Wisdom in Leaves article just as relevant as it was seven years ago:

It is a tale of tender, parental care -- among both humans and birds.  It is also a tale of love, even among the birds, dare I say, even if instinctive.  The story will eventually lead to the family of a virtually forgotten 19th-century author.  But let me begin with the matter of those birds.

The contemporary naturalist David Attenborough, in his TV series and book Life on Earth, pointed out how so much of birds' instincts, behavior, and time expended is centered on nurturing one thing:  the egg, and, of course, what comes from it.  He wrote, "Birds... have to incubate their eggs and that is a very dangerous business."

Now shift back over a century to the Centennial Exposition of 1876, a world's fair held in Philadelphia.  Among the exhibits was a display of the now famous artwork of John James Audubon, who introduced Americans to many of the birds of the North American continent. The critical link in this story is that among the fascinated viewers of Audubon's art was a twenty-nine year-old woman named Genevieve Jones.  Audubon's work engaged with two of her own interests.  Growing up, she had learned watercolor painting from her mother. And she had collected bird nests while accompanying her doctor father on his buggy rounds to patients.

Genevieve Jones

"Gennie" Jones became captivated by the idea of creating a book similar to Audubon's but covering the 130 species of birds that nested in the state of Ohio, where she lived with her parents. She hoped such a book would enable people to do something she had been unable to do as a child -- identify such nests as that of a Baltimore oriole.  The immense project was undertaken, with Genevieve and a friend learning how to make the life-sized lithographic drawings.  Her brother helped collect nests, and her father financed the project.  Neighborhood girls helped hand-color the prints.

Then tragedy struck.  Only two years into the project, with only part of the book published,

Genevieve caught typhoid fever and died.  Nevertheless, just in the way that birds do not abandon a nest after one of the chicks dies, the Jones family committed themselves to completing the project.  The mother learned how to make illustrations more scientifically precise than she ever had.  The technology of the time required transporting the sixty-five-pound printing stones to a printer 50 miles away in Cincinnati. After seven more years, the project was completed. Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of the Birds of Ohio, with text by Genevieve's brother, was published in 1886.

The full story of Genevieve Jones, her family, and their book is told in America's Other Audubon by Joy M. Kiser (© 2012).  I am struck by how the matter of parental nurturing weaves throughout the tale:  Birds nurturing their young in nests.  The parents of Genevieve nurturing their daughter's love of art and of Nature.  The entire family contributing to the Illustrations of Nests project.  And all of that nurturing symbolized by those all so natural nests.

~~~

Do you have any remembrances of nests or of birds nesting?

(The quote about birds is from

 Life on Earth by David Attenborough, © 1979,  p. 195.)

Obliging Animals

As I drove home, I was debating in my head what I was going to do to resolve a problem I had encountered upon leaving home a few hours earlier.  Quite soon after exiting my driveway in the morning, I had noticed a dead opossum in the middle of the street.  It had most likely been struck by a car the night before, because its lifeless body was still intact even though surrounded by a swarm of flies.  And so, as I drove back home after running my errands, I wondered what I was going to do about that unpleasant dead animal on my suburban street. Trying to shovel it up to put it in the trash would be difficult by myself, especially given all the flies.  I had a vague recollection that one of the city's many phone numbers was listed as "Dead Animals," but in a sprawling city of a few million people, how long would it take for the overburdened city servants to respond to one small, dead animal?  What was I going to do?

As I turned the corner onto the street where I live, I was pleased to see that the problem had been taken care of by some obliging, non-human animals: Four vultures were by the street's curb, two of them picking at what little was left of the corpse.  The nicely-designed hooks on the tips of their beaks enabled them to easily tear off bite-sized pieces of meat.

I was struck by the contrast between my previously anxious mind about how to solve a problem and the relaxed casualness of the vultures.  They reminded me of a group of human diners at a Chinese restaurant who, after sharing a large meal, are in no hurry to leave, and so enjoy lingering together.  Two of them were still nibbling, while the other two lingered with the nibblers.

I do not know where the four vultures had been residing before they spotted the dead opossum.  But my appreciating how obliging they were in solving my clean-up problem led to my recalling the mob of flies that had been swarming around the corpse a few hours earlier.  Although distasteful to me, they too had been beginning Nature's disposal of the dead animal, even if in a much slower fashion.

How numerous are the species of animals that obligingly help us humans! (And here I am thinking of animals other than those who are coerced into becoming meat on our dinner plates.)  Such animals as bees that make honey, some of which we snitch.  And the many kinds of other insects that pollinate our fruit and nut trees.  Also, the earthworms that help rejuvenate the life-giving soil.  The list goes on at length.

Flies.  Vultures.  Bees.  Insects.  Worms.  These are all among the "Living Things We Love to Hate," as Des Kennedy expresses it in his book's title.  Nevertheless, such obliging animals, going about their own business, make our human work, recreation, and even lives possible.  We can be thankful for that.

~ ~ ~

Can you think of any other animals that help us in easily overlooked ways?

(The book mentioned is Living Things We Love to Hate: Facts, Fantasies & Fallacies by Des Kennedy, © 1992, 2002.)

The Up-Flight of Birds

English translation
of Le Petit Prince

"... for his escape he took advantage of

  the migration of a flock of wild birds."

With that imaginative explanation, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry tells how his title character in The Little Prince made his escape from the isolation of his own tiny planet to come to the planet Earth. That 1943 children's book weds that statement with Saint-Exupéry's charming drawing in which the little prince grips a cluster of strings that shoot up to eleven birds flying upward, lifting him off the ground -- in the way a cluster of helium-filled balloons might.  Even though the tiny planet and tethered birds are fanciful, the author's imagery takes advantage of something many people have seen in the real world:  The instant and virtually simultaneous flight up from the ground of a small flock of birds.

Birds in flight are not easy to capture convincingly with a camera.  Capturing a virtually simultaneous liftoff from the ground effectively is even harder.   If the shutter speed is too slow, the birds in the photograph will be only a blur, obscuring the gracefulness of their wings.  If the shutter is clicked prematurely, the birds will appear too close to the ground, seemingly leaden, as if they were having a hard time getting aloft.  The camera will not have captured that exhilarating burst of energy in which birds spray upward and outward.

So critical to many birds has been this ability to take to flight instantly as a group that it has been reinforced in some species with instinctive alarm cries.  In the case of white-winged doves, evolution has taken such group-protection to a higher level in two ways. First, white patches on the doves' wings flash when they take flight, thus adding a visual alarm.  Moreover, the white-winged doves need not cry vocally, because the doves' sudden flight upward causes their very wings to give off a sharp, twittering warning-sound made by the air passing through the feathers.

Some mornings on which I was driving to work, following my routine path that some days felt like a rut, I would occasionally see such a liftoff of social birds such as pigeons or grackles. Their sudden energy would give my own spirit a lift.

In a mysterious way, the up-flight of birds intersects with something that seems to be instinctive about our human nature.  Namely, that our own facial expressions and bodily bearings droop when we are discouraged, but then lift up when our spirits become encouraged.

There is something deeper here than individual human psychology. There is something here about being able to open ourselves to greater possibilities that lie unseen in this world.  This deeper level, for example, is evidenced by the way the facial and bodily bearings of "down" and "up" are employed in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament).  When Cain is discouraged by the inequalities of human fortune, God intervenes as if to try to prevent vengeance, asking Cain, "Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen?" (Genesis 4:6, NRSV).  In many of the Biblical books, people are exhorted to lift up their heads.  And lift up their eyes.

~~~

Are there any ways birds lift your spirit?  How does looking up and about restore you?

(The Saint-Exupéry quote is from his The Little Prince, trans. from the French by Katherine Woods, © 1943.  p. 2.)

(The photo of the cover of The Little Prince is used under Fair Use.)

(The photo Pigeons is by Danko Durbić.)

Moving and Memories

Have you ever woken out of a dream in which you had been in a place where you previously lived?  Such dreams are not uncommon.  They were also the framework drawn upon by Marcel Proust to begin his masterwork novel Remembrance of Things Past.  The author tells of how, sometimes dozing in and out of sleep, he would awake disoriented, not sure at first where he was.  He easily imagined for a moment that he was in a childhood or other earlier bedroom. As Proust wrote, "When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years."

Such dreams fascinate me because they express so well how making sense of new experiences and challenges involves placing them within the context of something we already know.  New situations, particularly demanding ones, can be disorienting, just as Proust was momentarily disoriented.  Drawing upon abilities we already possess can help us orient ourselves in less familiar situations -- just as the dream of a familiar room and walls reveals our subconscious's drawing upon something deeply rooted within us.

Thinking back upon our lives, if we have lived in more then one location, we can recall times of transition that entailed moving.  Some moves can be exhilarating; others can be frightening. Leaving for college can be an exciting, hopeful time despite its uncertainties.  Being forced to move because of divorce is inevitably stressful, the atmosphere of a failed marriage suffocating for the time any joy that once was.

Reflecting upon this matter of moving leads me to thoughts of those non-human animals that must make frequent moves.  Twice a year, thousands of wildebeests make a mass migration covering many miles of East Africa.  Annual migrations by bird species, usually north and south, are an integral part of their lives.  Historians have sometimes employed the world "migration" to describe the movement of groups of people as they relocated, but those human "migrations" are in most cases once-in-a-lifetime, in contrast with the demand that instinct places upon such animal species every single year.  Nevertheless, in that instinct lies salvation, protecting the species against too severe weather, and offering the hope of food ahead.

I wonder if animals who migrate have dreams of previous homes.  I do know that researchers in laboratories have been able to detect through brain waves that rats dream about a new task they were challenged with the day before.  Birds are not as biologically close to us as such mammals, but might they also be dreaming of flying when their wings flutter while asleep?

Ecologists speak of "niches" in which species have evolved, finding their place in a life-giving way.  Human beings, try to find their place spiritually in relation to a Higher Truth or Power. Thousands of years ago, one ancient Hebrew, going to the temple for spiritual reorientation, looked up and was encouraged to see that the temple had also provided niches in its walls for nesting birds:

"How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD....

Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself,

 where she may lay her young."

~~~

Have you ever made a move that entailed not just relocation but also growth?

(The Proust quote is from the opening chapter, "Overture," of the first book, Swann's Way,

 in Marcel Proust's 1913-1927 opus, trans by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, © 1928.)

(The quotation about the temple niches is from the Hebrew Bible [Christian New Testament], Psalm 84:1, 3 [NRSV])
(Photo of wildebeests, by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.)

Clearly, Before Chickens

Back when most Western painters were into realism, one classic challenge in learning how to paint was to depict nothing but a white egg resting on a white surface.  That challenge prevented novice painters from easily relying upon a contrast of colors between the egg and its background to depict dimensionality.  Instead, the painter had to represent the subtlest gradations from whites to near-whites to the lightest of grays made by sunlight as it faded around the eggs curvature.  Not to mention the subtle texture of the egg's surface.  I think it was an exercise fitting for an egg, which feels like a wondrous, beautifully polished stone when held in the hand.

We encounter eggs as food early in our lives, and they can come packaged with learning.  What elementary-school child has not at some point encountered the riddle, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"  Even when not yet old enough to engage in abstract thinking, a child can taste of that impossible mental task of thinking back into an infinite regress of time.

One side-benefit of our modern knowledge about the evolution of life on this planet is that we can now answer the chicken-or-egg riddle definitively, although the answer might seem like cheating to some. Clearly, there were eggs before there were chickens -- reptile eggs, that is. (Not to mention the eggs without shells laid by nearly countless species of fish.)  Evolutionary biologists estimate that reptiles, with their ability to lay land-worthy eggs, have been on this planet twice as long as any birds.

ancient Egyptian god Ptah
creating cosmos as egg
on pottery wheel

Perceiving the potentiality that lies within eggs, faith-traditions in ancient times used the egg as a symbol for the cosmos.  In our highly secularized western societies, most people (even some ministers I have known) think of an Easter-egg hunt as just springtime fun.  But those Easter eggs (as well as rabbits, a prolific type) entered Christianity as symbols of new life.  Even today, a large porcelain egg or an ostrich egg hangs in some Coptic churches and mosques as a sign of rebirth and hope.

A peculiarity of chicken eggs many city-dwellers do not know about is that even though chicks come from eggs, hens can lay eggs without being fertilized by a rooster.  That seems counter-intuitive, given that the evolutionary value of fertilized eggs has been that of producing offspring.  Nevertheless, virtually all the chicken eggs marketed by grocers today in Western societies are infertile.  (In his early adulthood, Gandhi, staying in England, abstained from eating eggs so as to not take animal life -- until he was informed that those chicken eggs he was being offered could never have developed into a chick.)

Today, in watching nature shows on TV, I can experience something even more marvelous than being able to eat eggs while eating vegetarian.  I can watch as mother tortoises and other turtles use their clumsy-looking hind legs to dig a pit in the sand.  Then, out of their bodies emerge beautiful white ovals, looking so much like those familiar eggs we all know firsthand.  As part of a long line of reptiles, that mother turtles' usually private ritual dates back over 300 million years.

~~~

Do you have any childhood memories about Easter eggs, other eggs, chicks, or chickens?

A Small, Sound Voice on Stillness

Cultural historical memories are fickle:  A few people are remembered; many are forgotten. This holds true for literature as well.  How many people have written poetry?  The number is unimaginable.  And yet, open any anthology of poetry, and you will find poems by fewer than a hundred poets, usually only a few dozen.

Siegfried Sassoon (1917)

One early 20th-century English-speaking poet who has been a victim of this cultural forgetfulness is Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967).  His poems are mostly forgotten because he got labeled as being a "war poet" for his poems expressing the horrors of World War I.  But his war poems could not match those of his contemporary Wilfred Owen, and so Sassoon became eclipsed by Owen.  However, only some of Siegfried Sassoon's poems are about war.  Many are spiritual.  Some are also about Nature.  One in particular speaks of winter in a way that is meaningful whether the world is at peace or at war.

The poem begins with the words "December stillness," setting the nearly-still atmosphere of both the poem and the winter day the poet is experiencing.  The next words quickly show that it is more than stillness Sassoon is evoking.  He is also speaking about an invisible depth behind the stillness, a spiritual depth -- one that some readers might want to use the word "God" for, even though Sassoon never employs that word:

"December stillness, teach me through your trees

That loom along the west, one with the land,

The veiled evangel of your mysteries."

At this point, it would be tempting for any poet to begin describing those "trees."  After all, winter evergreens can be majestically beautiful, as can the outlines of bare trees with winter snow in the background.  Instead, Sassoon seizes upon another phenomenon of winter -- that the bareness of trees can better allow us to look up at the sky:

"Speak, roofless Nature, your instinctive words;

And let me learn your secret from the sky,"

Continuing to convey his firsthand, immediate experience, Sassoon has his clear line of sight caught by something seemingly unexpected:

"And let me learn your secret from the sky,

Following a flock of steadfast, journeying birds"

Now, Sassoon's contemplative openness to Nature on this still winter day leads to his becoming more aware of, and being able to express, a yearning within his heart.  The desire he speaks in the poem's final line mirrors something he perceived in the birds:

"Teach me to travel far and bear my loads."

We may all be eventually forgotten.  Nonetheless, may our lives more often touch the depths of our own living by being touched by the depths of Nature.

~~~

Even if winter has only begun where you live, have you noticed any changes in Nature?  Have you noticed any changes in the stirrings of your heart at this time of year?

(Sassoon's poem is from Collected Poems of Siegfried Sassoon, © 1918, 1920.)

(The entire poem can be read at this external link:  "December Stillness.")

An Easy Way for Evaluating People?

Oh, if we could only know what is going on in another person's head!  Not everything (that would be a nightmare), but enough to protect ourselves against danger that might be coming from someone else.  How can we know through observation whether another person can be relied upon or not?  Interestingly, one formula that has sometimes been given in literature is to watch how that person treats animals.

Just to give some examples from Western literature:  Charlotte Brontë, in her lesser-known novel Shirley, wrote of one character, "we watch him, and see him kind to animals."  That character turns out to be kind also "to little children, to poor people."  In Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, the body language and speech of the gardener Ben makes him forbidding; but then his deeper character is revealed through his affection for a robin.  In one of Victor Hugo's most famous novels, that kind of contrast is emphasized by a caring for birds being displayed by the hideous-looking hunchback.  In this case, the action toward animals not only reveals character, but also belies Quasimodo's ugly physical appearance.

poem
"Kindness to Animals"
by Jane Taylor (1783-1824)

There are so many examples like these that we might think that with them we have gotten the animal-human connection figured out.  But the matter is more complex.  Setting aside the problem of trying to catch a glimpse of a person mistreating an animal in advance of injuring a person, there is the question of whether treatment of animals is really a sure-fire indicator.  Part of the complexity here is that literature is not neutral, objective observation.  Literature develops familiar patterns to suit particular audiences.  Thus, these recurring scenes of good treatment of animals by reliable people could simply be an easy device for the author to reveal what is within a character's head without using a stream-of-consciousness technique.

Moreover, sometimes literary themes develop in order to teach moral lessons.  English literature, especially in the 1800's, was frequently considered to be a vehicle for teaching children.  That role of stories means that animal-treatment scenes may have been designed to teach good behavior, not as a claim about predicting a person's future behavior.

Nonetheless, recent scientific research indicates that our human brains are indeed inclined to prefer a person who is kinder over a person who is not.  Researchers at Yale had babies only five months old watch two stuffed animals (manipulated like puppets) behave differently toward a third stuffed animal.  After watching one stuffed animal be helpful and another animal be unhelpful toward a third animal, the babies were then offered the two main puppets.  Which would they prefer to have?  The babies reached out their arms for the stuffed animal that had been "nice" 75 % of the time.

That's a pretty good predictor.  Nonetheless, we have to admit that in 25 % of the cases, the babies did not choose the "nice" puppet.  It seems that just as with adults, we cannot always be able to predict how a baby is going to behave.

~~~

Do you remember any story you read as a child in which animals were treated kindly?

(The Brontë quotes are Shirley's words to Charlotte in Chap.12 of Shirley by Charlotte Brontë [1840].)

(The novel by Victor Hugo mentioned is The Hunchback of Notre Dame [1831].)

Kingly Care for Animals

Before the PBS series "The Story of India" provided me a fairly-deep look at that nation's history, my knowledge about that Eastern culture had come through the movies of Satyajit Ray, restaurants, and books.  For example, an Indian over-the-counter vegetarian restaurant named Annapurna's led me to a reference book to discover that it was named after a mountain in the Himalayas.  On a different occasion, however, when a more formal Indian restaurant opened bearing the name "Ashoka's," I was ahead on my knowledge.  I was delighted an establishment with that name was opening not just because I liked Indian cuisine.  It was also because, from my reading, I already knew of and admired Emperor Ashoka's religious tolerance and compassionate attitudes toward animals.

one pillar
erected by Ashoka

Ashoka ruled in the 3rd century B.C.E. and made known his wishes partly through edicts carved on tall stone pillars, ten of which are still standing.  Part of his edict regarding religious tolerance reminds us that we do not increase the appeal of our own faith-tradition by unnecessarily disparaging the faith-traditions of other people.

Ashoka's compassionate attitudes came about as part of his adopting Buddhism, one of the most significant conversion experiences in all of history.  Previously, he had followed the approach of earlier emperors by expanding his kingdom through war.  But after winning a huge battle at Kalinga in 260 B.C.E. (in which 100,00 were killed and 150,000 deported), Ashoka was shocked by the horrible sights when he surveyed the battlefield.  He turned his life around (the root meaning of the word "conversion").

lion capital on
another Ashoka pillar
     

For the 31 years that remained of his rule, Ashoka cultivated throughout his administration a peaceful attitude of enhancing the welfare of all people, and encouraged a similar attitude among the populace.  Here is where the animals come in. Ashoka ordered protections on their lives in many ways (2000 years before the SPCA was created in the West!).  As one edict of Ashoka's explained, "On bipeds and quadrupeds, on birds and aquatic animals, various benefits have been conferred by me even as far as the grant of life."  Another edict specified over two-dozen mammals and birds "declared by me inviolable," rounding off the list by including "all quadrupeds which are neither useful nor edible."

Ashoka matched his words with actions.  Among his humanitarian accomplishments were the construction of  roadside way-stations providing water and shade.  As an edict explained, "wells have been caused to be dug and trees have been caused to be planted, for the use of animals and humans."  He also created hospitals for "medical treatment for humans and medical treatment for animals."  Some of those veterinary clinics are still in existence in India today -- a continuous legacy of care probably unparalleled in the world.

I'd tell you more about this man, but I've got to stop writing and go put fresh water in the water dish on my deck.  I've been reminded by Ashoka that the birds might be thirsty.

~~~

Do you think any of Ashoka's ideas are applicable today?  Which ones?  How?

(All quotations are from Ashoka's Rock Edicts, Nos. II, V, II, and II, respectively,

adapted from the translation in Asoka's Edicts, by Amulyachandra Sen. © 1956.)

(Photo of full pillar by Amit Bikram Kanungo, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

Seeing What Animals See... Kind of

The contemporary author Andrew Parker writes:  "Today we live in a visual world."  It certainly sounds as if he's describing our contemporary urban societies.  Signs (mostly advertisements) sprout from every surface, all the way down to the tops of gasoline pumps.  Television (especially its commercials) uses more images per minute, trying to hold our attention .  Even our portable phones now use a visual screen.

stick insect
on end of a tree trunk

Andrew Parker was not, however, writing about modern technological societies.  Nor was the "today" he referred to even the past half-century.  Instead, his topic was what resulted from a development in biological evolution that began 500 million years ago -- the sense of sight. Parker's very next sentence describing some of this "visual world" also reveals that he is referring to the world of animals:  "There would be no such animals as stick insects, chameleons, or birds of paradise... if we did not [live in a visual world]." We have a clue as to what Parker means in that two of the animals he lists are familiar examples of camouflage:  A stick insect is hidden from predators because its body so closely resembles a stick.  A chameleon's skin changes colors to match that of its surroundings.

I enjoy watching shows such as PBS's Nature, whose cameras give me a peak into the world of such animals. On TV nature documentaries, however, the narrator usually talks about the evolution of the features of the stick insect, chameleon, or other camouflaged creature.  Andrew Parker points to the other side of the coin, which is equally important.  Namely, the evolution of vision in the predator who sees (or does not see) that camouflaged prey.

Those two sides of one coin thus demonstrate one type of what evolutionary biologists call co-evolution, which means that features of two species evolve in conjunction with each other. The two sides, camouflaged prey and seeing predator, evolved together -- each driving the evolution of the other. Camouflage is an example of one of the paradoxical forms of co-evolution. Part of the paradox is that predators have improved the evolution of their camouflaged prey, making what they want to catch harder to catch.  The paradox also extends to the other side of the coin: The increased camouflage of the prey improves the evolution of the predator species' eyes, making the prey easier to catch.  A sneeky, unconscious cooperation between what seem to be enemies.

This also means that as we look at Nature, a great deal of the diversity of appearances we see has resulted from the evolution of the eyes and power of vision in animals.  We see a world shaped by sight.  It also means that as I delight in looking at the almost amusing stick insect, I am also getting a glimpse into the vision and mind of whatever preys upon that insect.  Thus, in a way, I see some of what animals see... but only up to a point.  Through contemporary scientific research, we also know that some animals eyes can see things our human eyes cannot, such as the ultraviolet end of the spectrum.  To some degree, the worlds of other animals must remain their own, not meant for our eyes.

~~~

Do you remember every seeing an insect, lizard, or other animal whose color especially interested you?  Do you know why that species had evolved that way?

(The quotation by Parker is from Seven Deadly Colours, by Andrew Parker, © 2005.  p.265.)
(The photo of the stick insect is used under a under a
 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license [no name given].)

Of Nests and Love and Nurturing

It is a tale of tender, parental care -- among both humans and birds.  It is also a tale of love, even among the birds, dare I say, even if instinctive.  The story will eventually lead to the family of a virtually forgotten 19th-century author.  But let me begin with the matter of those birds.

The contemporary naturalist David Attenborough, in his TV series and book Life on Earth, pointed out how so much of birds' instincts, behavior, and time expended is centered on nurturing one thing:  the egg, and, of course, what comes from it.  He wrote, "Birds... have to incubate their eggs and that is a very dangerous business."

Now shift back over a century to the Centennial Exposition of 1876, a world's fair held in Philadelphia.  Among the exhibits was a display of the now famous artwork of John James Audubon, who introduced Americans to many of the birds of the North American continent. The critical link in this story is that among the fascinated viewers of Audubon's art was a twenty-nine year-old woman named Genevieve Jones.  Audubon's work engaged with two of her own interests.  Growing up, she had learned watercolor painting from her mother. And she had collected bird nests while accompanying her doctor father on his buggy rounds to patients.

Genevieve Jones

"Gennie" Jones became captivated by the idea of creating a book similar to Audubon's but covering the 130 species of birds that nested in the state of Ohio, where she lived with her parents. She hoped such a book would enable people to do something she had been unable to do as a child -- identify such nests as that of a Baltimore oriole.  The immense project was undertaken, with Genevieve and a friend learning how to make the life-sized lithographic drawings.  Her brother helped collect nests, and her father financed the project.  Neighborhood girls helped hand-color the prints.

Then tragedy struck.  Only two years into the project, with only part of the book published,

Genevieve caught typhoid fever and died.  Nevertheless, just in the way that birds do not abandon a nest after one of the chicks dies, the Jones family committed themselves to completing the project.  The mother learned how to make illustrations more scientifically precise than she ever had.  The technology of the time required transporting the sixty-five-pound printing stones to a printer 50 miles away in Cincinnati. After seven more years, the project was completed. Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of the Birds of Ohio, with text by Genevieve's brother, was published in 1886.

The full story of Genevieve Jones, her family, and their book is told in America's Other Audubon by Joy M. Kiser (© 2012).  I am struck by how the matter of parental nurturing weaves throughout the tale:  Birds nurturing their young in nests.  The parents of Genevieve nurturing their daughter's love of art and of Nature.  The entire family contributing to the Illustrations of Nests project.  And all of that nurturing symbolized by those all so natural nests.

~~~

Do you have any remembrances of nests or of birds nesting?

(The quote about birds is from

 Life on Earth by David Attenborough, © 1979,  p. 195.)

Are Ravens Spooky?

A fair number of people have heard the memorable line, "Quoth the Raven 'Nevermore.' "  In the poem by Edgar Allan Poe that line comes from, the raven is given the role of bringing the message that a long-lost hope will have to stay long lost forever.  A haunting remembrance of past events hangs over Poe's narrator in the poem. In contrast, ravens have in Western culture usually been considered to bring a message about the future -- particularly an omen of death. Thus it is that in Shakespeare's play Macbeth, Lady Macbeth says:

"The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan..."

Such a death-connection comes not just from ravens' being black (the absence of light usually being in Christianity a symbol of separation from God).  The stronger linking of that bird with death most certainly developed because ravens sometimes feast on dead carcasses.

Easily mistaken for their cousins crows (both in the same Corvidae family), ravens have larger, stockier beaks, which can given them a patrician air.  Ravens are larger in size too, which, along with their feeding on carcasses, may have led people to conclude that they had big appetites.  Thus it is that our words "ravenous" and "raven" come from the same root.

Scavenging the dead is just one source of food for ravens.  Their diets are varied (from insects to birds' eggs to our household scraps) because they are enterprising and intelligent.  As my Audubon guide explains, the raven "seems to apply reasoning in situations entirely new to it. Its 'insight' behavior at least matches that of a dog."  Their intelligence extends even to their ability to distinguish between individual members of other species and between individual humans. Ravens readily learn which individuals they need to fear and which ones they do not, and are even able to establish at a distance if a human is carrying a shotgun.

It is probably because of that intelligence, along with their playfulness, that native Americans of the West Coast adopted the raven as a symbol upon which they projected human qualities, both good and questionable.  Among such mythological stories are tales of Raven creating the world and acting cleverly, but also tales of  Raven acting in sneaky and foolish ways.

I remember once watching at length a raven that had established itself at a panoramic lookout point in the Rocky Mountains.  It was also, not by coincidence, a place where sandwiches were sold to the tourists who could enjoy the outdoor seating.  The raven had the best of both worlds:  Easy pickings on any food that was not closely guarded, and the bird's natural home in the form of the vast, sweeping downward slope of the canyon. And, unlike us humans, the raven had no trouble taking off into flight at a moment's notice, floating as light as air, on dramatic outstretched wings.

~~~

Do you have any recollections about ravens or their cousins crows, both with their distinctive "caws"?

(Poe's poem can be read at this external link:  "The Raven.")

(The Shakespeare lines are from Macbeth, Act I, Scene 5.)

(The quote re. intelligence is from The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds, Western Region, © 1977, p. 686.)

Turning Our Brains to Birds

In the book To Kill a Mockingbird (adapted into a movie). Atticus Finch tells his children that they are allowed to shoot some birds with their air-rifles, but that "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."  That directive resembles many laws in the U.S. when it was a rural society. Shooting birds such as crows in defense of one's crops was allowed, but killing "songbirds" (such as the versatile, melodious mockingbird) was prohibited.

Fortunately, birds have not been so discriminatory toward the human race.  They have blessed us in many ways, whether or not their calls have been labeled "songs" by us.

Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds (based on the Daphne du Maurier book) is an unforgettable movie in which birds attack humans for undetermined reasons.  The trailer for the movie, instead of showing frightening clips from the film, presented Hitchcock himself drolly giving a mock lecture about the history of the bird-human relationship.   As he speaks, Hitchcock casually picks up a quill pen, letting the viewer make the connection to our use of birds.  He then escalates from picking up a hat with a feather to picking up a hat with an entire stuffed bird decorating it.  Finally, he sits down at a dining table with an entire roasted chicken before him.  Throughout the trailer, his "lecture" feigns a naive innocence, wondering why birds, would ever be unappreciative of us humans.

A Pheasant and
a Bird Called Tabut
(1717  C.E.)

I was once given an insight into how critical birds have been for some cultures.  I found myself in a conversation with a group of people comparing their families' plans for the upcoming Thanksgiving.  Most people were opting for turkey, but a few had in the past sometimes eaten chicken instead.  One person then asked a member of the group who had been silent -- an immigrant from Haiti -- what kind of birds his family had eaten in Haiti.  His unhesitating and quite earnest reply was, "Any kind we could catch."  His reply revealed how, for some people living in poverty, birds have been life-savers.

Today, in highly technological societies, almost all the birds we eat are domesticated animals (which we distinguish by calling them "fowl" or "poultry.")  We virtually never see them when they are alive, even as the protein from their bodies gives life to our own bodies.

Despite that disconnect, there might be a way that the living birds singing all around us can add more life to our spirits.  That way is captured by Lisel Mueller in her poem "Why I Need the Birds."  Mueller imagines birds with their songs as traveling ahead of her throughout the day as they follow the arc of the sun.  Part of the poem reads:

"... the birds, leading

their own discreet lives

of hunger and watchfulness,

are with me all the way...."

~~~

Do you ever hear the songs of birds during the course of your day?  When?

(The photograph of the manuscript is used under a Creative Commons license,
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, by the Walters Art Museum.)
(Mueller's complete poem can be read on-line at this external link:  "Why I Need the Birds".) 

The Harmony of Feathers

Even since I was a boy, I've picked up feathers.  I do not go about intentionally trying to find them, nor do I have any large or scientifically-arranged collection.  But ever since I was a child, I've had the habit of picking up that occasional feather I've come across on the ground.  In a way, it seemed to me such a waste to leave such a polished finished product just lying on the ground, unappreciated.  In another way, possessing a feather felt a bit like having a talisman because it seemed to be like a free and lucky find.

Humans have appreciated the beauty of birds' feathers since before recorded history.  Both native Americans and some Pacific cultures incorporated feathers into their ritual dress.  As I examine even a single one of my relatively simple feathers from a Blue Jay or Mockingbird, I can see why:  The feather's combination of rigidity and softness to the touch.  The feather's simple elegance of design with a striking contrast of colors.

Walt Whitman

Thinking about this matter of found feathers, the phrase that comes to my mind is "designedly dropped."  It's a phrase Walt Whitman uses as he reflects on the wonder of a handful of grass brought to him by a child who asks the child's perennial question, "What is this?"  Whitman, confessing to the reader that he cannot say ultimately what grass is (so wondrous it seems), contents himself with imaginative musings about what this natural object from the Creator might be.  This is where Whitman likens the Nature-object to God's initialed handkerchief "designedly dropped,  /  Bearing the owner's name... that we may see and remark, and say Whose?"

To me, this mystery of feathers (or of a blade of grass) goes right to the heart of our spiritual relation to Nature.  There is a paradox:  I know that God did not intentionally drop that feather on the path along which I was about to walk so that I might find it.  And I know that the symmetrical tidiness of the rows of thin branches projecting from a feather's stem was not created so that I might marvel.  Nor were the colored designs created in order that I might enjoy their beauty.

Nevertheless, our human brains and cultures evolved so that we might engage the world in a way that unites our minds and hearts with the fascinating features of the world.  I think one hymn writer spoke to this when that hymnist wrote of "the mystic harmony linking sense to sound and sight."

~~~

As a child, did you collect any objects from Nature?  Do you do so now?

(The lines from the hymn are from
  "For the Beauty of the Earth," lyrics by Folliott Sandford Pierpoint, 1864.)

(Portrait of Walt Whitman is in public domain because its copyright has expired.)

Of Warps and Wefts and Life

"Everything's connected" -- it has now become a maxim, almost a cliché.  Connected, yes, but how?  That's the harder question.  (Not to mention the challenge of deciding and learning how to behave as if everything is connected.)  One of the most common of metaphors is the "web of life," but I have my reservations about it, as I shall explain.

Although many people today have now heard of the phrase the "web of life," few people know that it was coined way back in 1914 by a Scottish biologist, J. Arthur Thompson.  Like many other phrases of our contemporary environmental vocabulary, it took some time before it worked its way into the general vocabulary.  The  choice of that word "web" has proved quite useful in conveying an image of the multiple interconnections of Nature, rather than a simple chain of cause and effect.  For example, in some biology textbooks, the phrase "food webs" has become preferred over the more familiar "food chains," as a way of conveying that digestible substances do not follow a simple linear path, but instead create multiple interconnections among plants and animals.

I have just one reservation about that standard word "web," however:  It has an association with spiders!  And everybody knows how repellent spiders can be to many people, not just to Little Miss Muffet (even though only a few kinds of spiders are potentially dangerous). Because ecologists and environmentalists would like to cultivate in more people a love of Nature, I wonder if risking mental associations with spider bites and sticky cobwebs and haunted houses is the best idea.

male lesser masked weaver

More appealing than "web" I think, is another metaphor -- the "fabric of life."  That metaphor can convey the image of a protective cloth, even a beautifully woven one. Recently, I was reminded of the weaving metaphor for interconnectedness when I saw pictures of the weaverbirds of Africa.  Those skillful birds actually weave thin strips torn from grass to create a nest that protects their young against sun and snakes.  One species of weaverbirds even constructs a nest that is elegantly spherical.  Certainly an association with cute birds is more appealing than an association with spiders!

The metaphor of "fabric" has other advantages.   It can also convey the image of a cloth being torn, the connecting threads being broken by human carelessness, with the fabric unraveling as a result.  That was the way Rachel Carson employed the metaphor when, in Silent Spring, she warned about the indiscriminate overuse of pesticides.  She wrote:  "As crude a weapon as the cave man's club... has been hurled against the fabric of life."

Moreover, the "fabric" metaphor can be adapted to refer to the work of finding a new pattern for human living that will strengthen the living systems of the Earth.  That was the very imagery that was employed by a group of feminist ecological writers.  The subtitle of their book was The Emergence of Ecofeminism.  And the book's title? Reweaving the World.

~~~

Do the metaphors of fabric and of weaving convey anything to you?

(The quotation by Carson is from

 Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, © 1962.)
(Both photographs licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licenses. 
The bird photograph by Dick Daniels, http://carolinabirds.org
The fabric by Cochas, Peru, 2008.)

Billboard Birds

In the shopping-center parking lot outside the family-run donut shop near where I live, there is a large billboard.  The sign stands three stories up on a massive pole.  To the pigeons who sit atop the large billboard in the morning, the sign has no purpose as an advertisement.  To them, it is a launching pad for their morning practice expeditions.

When I occasionally have coffee at the donut shop, I have a full view of the sign through the large plate-glass window.  A couple dozen of the pigeons will start out on the top of the double-faced billboard soon after sunrise, probably having roosted there during the night.

Although we city-dwellers call them "pigeons," I know they are, to ornithologists, descendants of "rock doves". The species has readily adjusted to city life because their ancient ancestors evolved to survive and nest on the narrow ledges of rocky cliffs.

Periodically, a large group of the billboard birds will spring off the sign, taking a brief practice flight to test either the day's air or their wings.  As they fly out and back, they swirl into a large horizontal wheel, slightly tilted, silhouetted against the light sky.

When I get back home, I think I'll get out the bird guide.  No so much to read about the birds as to leaf through the book's photographs so that I might get a close-up look at the birds' colorations, which I cannot make out at a distance.  So that I might enjoy the polished-stone smoothness of the rock dove's wings when folded back.

I hope my own day will be as smooth as the circular sweep of those pigeons in flight.  And maybe somebody will experience some beauty through something I do today -- some beauty I cannot so easily see in myself.

As my mind shifts to thoughts about myself, lines from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke come to my mind.  The lines, I know, are prompted by my seeing that horizontal circle the birds made in flight as they prepared themselves for their journey further out into the world.  Rilke wrote:

"I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world....

and I still don't know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?"

~ ~ ~

What memories of birds do you have that you would like to hold onto?

(The lines by Rainer Maria Rilke are from his Book of Hours,
 published in 1905, trans. by Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy, © 1996.)