Tag Nature

Tuning in to the nature channel

Michael 5 Comments

Tomorrow is the day everyone is waiting for. No. Wait. I’ve done that not much too often already. Maybe tomorrow is. It’s Pi Day, but I already wrote that one to death. Maybe it’s Wednesday, the Ides of March. (Nobody ever talks about other Ides although every month has one.) (Hmm, is that right? Oh yes, every month has an Ides, but grammatically, it’s that right making Ides a singular?) (I think it is.) (where was I?) (oh,yes…) In truth, any day can be the day that somebody is waiting for. And that’s a good thing. It shows we are still alive and looking forward, rather than being withdrawn and looking back.

Spring is naturally a time to look forward. Vernal, the fancy adjective for all things spring-like (think vernal equinox) can itself be replaced by the not so fancy adjective, youthful. Spring truly blooms with new growth, youthful buds beginning their journey to full fledged flower-hood, or leaf land, or whatever they may grow to be.

In most American living rooms you find a similar furniture placement. A nice comfy sofa, loveseat, or couch, an easy chair with or without matching ottoman, and/or a recliner (or two or three) aimed facing or providing an obstructed view to — the centerpiece of American culture, the television. The bigger the better! Everything happens on that screen: sports, dramas, movies, upcoming coronations, bits of news, and Saturday Night Live.

My living room isn’t much different than that prototypical gathering spot. There is one addition though. I am fortunate to have one wall in my living room that is all window. (Maybe not so fortunate during the heating months but poetically speaking, fortuitously fortunate.) And I have facing that window a small couch and in that couch I sat the other day and looked out the window at the real life movie called spring. (This was before the snow squalls of this past weekend [sigh].) Out there the trees were budding and birds were looking for a good spot where they might anchor their nest. Other birds could be heard singing, and the grass in the field behind the trees was taking on that lush green we’ll only see the first few weeks of spring. And it’s not even spring yet! It was like watching the coming attractions on my own movie screen that looks out to nature.

So yes, tomorrow is the day someone is looking forward to. And tomorrow’s tomorrow will be the day someone is looking forward to tomorrow. And so on, and so on. Any day can be the day somebody is looking forward to. Even the birds. They told me that the day I sat in my spot, when I was tuned in to the nature channel.

How well do you thank your cast and crew? We talked about our supporting casts in the most recent edition of Uplift! at ROAMcare.org.

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Have a Little Faith

Michael 2 Comments
 
Over the weekend my daughter and I were discussing how people are no longer allowed to change their minds. Well of course, they can, and many do, but the world in general doesn’t like change. It may have to do with how many people can no longer think for themselves. Not that they don’t want to think for themselves but that they’ve lost the ability to do so. So many have gotten so used to doing whatever they are told, including what to think, they have lost faith in their own ability to reason. 
 
Reason says there are things that happen of which we are aware and we can explain and we have to adapt to survive. Sometimes those are physical things. People who study the earth’s geological history know that even in the absence of man the earth is getting warmer. The sun is getting hotter, the earth’s orbit around the sun is changing, the speed of the earth’s rotation is changing, and instability deep within the earth the leads to volcanic eruptions continues. Just as the earth moved from its ice age to a state that can support human life it will someday move beyond that point to be uninhabitable by man. That doesn’t mean we don’t do what we can to lessen man’s impact. We can and should make changes, and many, many billions do make changes to preserve the environment. But we should not be so arrogant to think we’ll always have the climate we want and are comfortable with. We may have to change because the earth is certainly going to whether we believe it or not and that change is going to have an impact on us.
 
Reason also says there are things we cannot explain but they happen anyway. These are the changes we have a harder time with globally. Christians throughout the world recognize the power of change in the life of St. Paul of Tarsis who changed from persecutor of early Christians to one of Christianity’s greatest evangelists. His change was one taken on faith,  hearing words heard by no one else. Arguments can be made that Paul saw that it was “better” that he serve the way of God rather than that of Caesar but then one has to make the argument for what constitutes better and how far one goes to make one’s point and no matter how you defend or attack those arguments it doesn’t change the fact that somebody changed his mind and in his mind the change was for what he considered better. He did not let what he was told earlier in his life prevent him from believing what he was told later. Regardless of what you believe, he believed and changed and that change made an impact in the world. 
 
Over the last year we’ve heard what could be construed as conflicting reports on everything from what to use to wash your hands to how and when to wear your masks to whether it is safe to play sports and at what size does a gathering become a risk. That’s not to say that if we were told something – by experts – in October of 2020 that contradicts what we were told – by experts – in March 2020, that what was said earlier in the year was wrong. It means the experts learned something new about something that changed. Something became different, something that is measurable and addressable. You may not like that the virus mutated and that it might be best addressed by re-institution of isolation procedures but the mutation happened and just not believing is not an option. You can decide to not isolate but that won’t change that a mutation occured. And that others also probably will.
 
This is probably why, unless it has stood the test of a couple thousand years like the words of Paul, we should probably not “take as gospel” things we hear and may even ourselves say. But like Paul, we should recognize that even though we firmly believed something yesterday we can be open to believing something completely different tomorrow because whether you believe or not, the world will be different tomorrow.
Having a little faith in what you hear today, and believing in the change you make tomorrow, might make a big difference and have a great impact in your world.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Extra! Extra!

Michael 3 Comments
What are your plans for Saturday? You remember Saturday? February 29, our quadrennial reminder that in the struggle between man and nature man is lucky to struggle into second place.
 
We (that’s the big “we” and that means you too), we so arrogantly preen and posture and spends oh so much energy saving the planet for future generations that we completely miss that we know so little about our planet.  We can’t even tell how long it takes to get around the sun.
 
Years, months, days, hours, minutes. All man made methods of marking time. We (the big “we”) came up with these. They weren’t forced upon us. We defined them as we chose. Can you hear the discussion? “I know, let’s make a ‘year’ our standard.” Great! What’s that? “The length of time it takes to go around the sun.” Wonderful! How long is that? “Heck if I know.” And in the true sense of being human in a world where being human was seemingly an afterthought, and an arrogant one at that, we picked 365 days. ish. Hmm. What’s a day? 
 
And so, because somebody didn’t take the time to measure twice, declare once, we get an extra day every 4 years. ish. Every couple of years, nothing specific mind you, an extra second gets added in order for man to keep up with nature and the natural order of things. Somebody decides when to insert these “leap seconds” by probably following some multi-page calculation harkening as many laws of physics as possible in a single formula. Probably the same people deride poor Punxsutawney Phil as an inaccurate teller of things to come. 
 
We absolutely must do our best to preserve the resources nature let’s us borrow, but we should also take heed that we are not in charge. Long before the first underarm deodorant was sprayed the glaciers began receding to carve out the Great Lakes and the Liddar Valley. Long before the first well was drilled the great land mass began separating into a handful of continental chunks. It’s not done. Long after man leaves Earth nature will continue its ongoing process of global renewal. 
 
It’s good we screwed up measuring time. Now at least once every four years we get to remind ourselves that we aren’t all that after all. To be honest, I’m surprised somebody hasn’t worked in a drinking holiday or appliance sale around Leap Day. I suppose it’s only a matter of time.
 
 
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Too Often In a Blue Moon

Michael Leave a comment

Did you see the “Super Worm Equinox Moon” last night? I saw a moon. It was a nice moon. Big, bright, beautiful in a moonly sort of way. Didn’t see no worms though. I don’t want to get into a “remember when” thing here but…remember when the moon was just the moon. Sometimes it was full. Sometimes you looked up. Sometimes you didn’t. Sometimes you went ahh. The moon was just “The Moon.”

Songs were written about it, couples shared their first kiss under it, now and then a couple got engaged under it, probably some couples got pregnant under it, ghost stories were told in its light, and Halloweens were scarier when it was full that night. For over 4-1/2 billion years it has hung in the sky, orbiting the earth, reflecting sunlight at night so we don’t curse the darkness. And still today we look to it, we wish on it, we wonder how high it is, how far it is, how big it is. And still today we take it for granted.

The moon keeps our days at what we call days. Without the moon’s gravity pulling at the earth and slowing its rotation, a day would be about 6 hours. And you already think there aren’t enough hours in one! The moon power our tides so we don’t become a stagnant pool, keeps the earth’s rotational tilt so we don’t fall over, and keeps the planet spinning smoothly rather than wobbling its way through space.

With all the moon does for us does it not deserve some respect from us? Instead we treat it like an attraction at a carnival.

STEP RIGHT UP,
YES STEP RIGHT UP
AND SEE THE AMAZING,
THE STUPENDOUS,
THE UNBELIEVABLE,
THE ONE, THE ONLY,
THE SUPER WORM EQUINOX MOON!

Only twenty-five cents per person
have your tickets ready
please hold your own tickets
no readmissions
no exchanges
no refunds
this is a limited time offer.

They say, and I suppose they ought to know, this is the last supermoon for 2019. Apparently we’ve had our fill of micromoons for 2019 also. (Oh yes, that’s a thing too.) That means we can all go back to our porches and patios in the evening and listen to the crickets chirp and stare into the sky and not have to worry about whether we might feel foolish tomorrow at work (or worse on Facebook) when we say something like “Wasn’t the moon pretty last night?” and hear in reply “Pretty! Why that was best darned whiskey pourer blood pressure red possum longitudinal moon ever last night!”

Oh, and happy first full day of spring.

Supermoon

Leafed by the Side of the Road

Michael 2 Comments

Yesterday, for the fourth time this month I took the little car out of the garage, dropped the top, donned a pair of polarizing sunglasses (one lens Democrat, the other Republican), grabbed the real camera, and set out in search of autumnal magic, fall leaves. And for the fourth time I was disappointed.

The first time, which happened to be the 1st, I wasn’t surprised that not many trees had shifted from their summery green foliage. On the second Sunday I saw some yellowing and was given hope that the following week would be more colorful. Last week’s attempt fell in the middle of what the TV weather forecasters predicted to be the peak for color. The only red I saw was the car’s paint job. (In fairness I should have expected no colored leaves since I was going on a weather person’s prediction. After all, these were the same people who brought us “partly cloudy.”)

But yesterday’s disappointment hit a little on the hard side. There’s only one Sunday left to October. If the foliage is still as dull then as it had been I fear I may not see another leaf as pretty as on a fall tree, given that my medical history and its corresponding future are as uncertain as weather forecasting. (My long range plan is to live to at least 100. I tell my daughter that every chance I get so she won’t get to thinking that she’ll be able to live into her golden years off her inheritance. Of course only I know it’s really because if I were to drop dead tomorrow she’d only be able to live comfortably until next Thursday, so my only chance of not disappointing her in that regard is to grow so old that she herself will be old enough that she forgets that she has anything coming to her.)

It’s been an exceptionally warm fall so far this year. If you are to believe the Farmer’s Almanac (and why shouldn’t you?) it will stay above average in temperature until the week before Thanksgiving, much too late for fall foliage festivities. I don’t know if it’s the extended warm weather causing the poor color spectacle. Those pesky weather people who two weeks ago said it wouldn’t are now saying it is. But then in the past, they have said disappointing color was because it got too cold too soon. Other years it was too dry. During still others, too much rain was the cause for a dull fall.

Leaves100909

Last good color I shot, October 2009

To be perfectly honest, I haven’t seen a really vibrant fall for some years now. I suppose the easy thing to blame it on would be climate change. That seems to be a good reason for just about anything we aren’t happy with climatically speaking. Which makes perfect sense since in the truest sense of it, any change in the air can be defined as climate change. Unfortunately we actually believe we can do something about it.

The hardest thing for us to accept is recognizing that yes, people do things that aren’t good for the environment but that the environment is going to change anyway. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be respectful of the environment and do what is good and healthy for it and for us. It is to say though that eventually, the world’s history is going to catch up with it and there are going to be changes that we aren’t responsible for and that we can’t do anything about.

As hard as it is for us and our egos to accept, we aren’t in charge here. The world came before us and had its routine well established before we propelled our first ozones into the ozone. It’s been hot, it’s been cold, it was covered in ice and covered in water. We are here at its invitation and are welcomed to ride the rides while we are here but that’s as far as it is willing to go.

This year’s colors might not be to my liking and that’s going to have to be ok. Colorful or not, the leaves will drop, spring will be back and new ones will bud on the trees. Next fall I’ll again look forward to a day when I can aim my camera at the beauty of the fall foliage.

Until then, like yesterday, I’ll just enjoy the ride.