Birds are like people, too

I learn a lot from watching birds. When I was a child, I was taught to recognize the call and the flash of wing from my "Field Guide to Western Birds". The exercise taught me a new way of looking. As a result a trip through a field, forest path, or city street is rich with activity that many others miss.

I have vivid memories of bird dramas through the years. Like the morning a pack of summer birds caught an owl far from her roosting spot. They harrassed her down the street from tree to tree as if she were a hoodlum caught in the act. It was if the whole bird community conspired to squawk their disdain. First in line to harrass the poor owl were the crows, cautiously followed by the magpies. Next were the blue jays, robins, and far in the rear, the sparrows jeered.

Not too close, though. A sparrow has to be careful.

Now, closer to home, I have a chance to get to know my bird neighbours in their daily habits. The crows and the magpies, as annoying as they can be during the day with their raucus calls, are quiet while on the hunt. I've decided the endless calls in the morning are their hungry young. I suspect the crow and magpie parents do their chief hunting in the morning, quietly, snatching the young of their weaker neighbours, to feed their own.

Hunger is a hard taskmaster.

Chickadees, those tiny balls of fluff at the bottom of the food chain, never fail to inspire me. Their cheerful call can be heard through the dead of winter. They are survivors, they are flexible communicators, and they are optimists. Urban legend taught me that chickadees congregate in the winter night in the hollow of a tree for warmth, allowing their body temperature to drop near freezing, then erupting in a mass shiver. I've found out since that this may not be true. One article insists that chickadees are loners. These tiny bundles rather each find their own cranny to wedge themselves in for the night. From a bird feeder they will take away seeds to hide in their own hidden cache. For all their resourcefulness, a hard winter will take casualties. It makes me pause on a hard winter day as I gaze out my double glazed window.

I've also learned another hard fact about small birds...and bees, for that matter. The smaller you are, the higher your metabolic rate. Chickadees, hummingbirds, and bees must be on a constant search for food to keep their little engines running. As a consequence also, all three are highly territorial.

Hunger is a hard taskmaster.

So what does this all have to do with people? Well, people aren't all alike, either. Their habits and choices cannot be explained away in a short, brute list of motivations. My observations as a child that distinguished, say, mother from woman, matured as I got older, and is fine tuned even further as I watch people in place. What pushes people; what pushes me to react one way or another is not always simple. Understanding these nuances can keep me from making brute assumptions, and perhaps I can choose new ways to respond to new situations.

People are Busy Bees Too

Yesterday I opined on the behavior of bees. Their efficiency as they grazed from flower to flower impressed me. It occurs to me as well that as former hunter gatherers, we also show a strong tendency to remember where our food is.

This was brought home to me in a most powerful way by Steven Pinker in his book, "The Language Instinct". Besides proposing that the acquiring of language is an instinctive feature of infant development, he suggests a list of more than a dozen "families of instincts" on page 437 that are hard-wired in to every human being. Notably missing is "love", though it might be included under his designated instincts of Kinship and Mating.

I've been thinking about the instincts as Pinker describes around Intuitive Biology, Mental Maps of large territories, and Food means that we build habits in our day around what we eat, when we eat, and where we find it.

The bees follow a routine. They come back to the same place around the same time of day and expect to find their reliable source. They prefer reliable sources.

Similarly, we like our routines. Since I am attempting to change my base habits around food, I am acutely aware of the portions I take in. If absently I put down a half-eaten piece of toast or a partially finished can of pop, a niggling reminder remains that it is "not finished yet". If hubby manages to interfere by scooping the half-completed can of pop when I am distracted, I am upset. I have a sense of being deprived.

Over time, I can reset my stomach settings of what "complete" means. Being aware that I am fighting base biology rather than personal weakness provides some comfort.

It also makes me wonder about the ever increasing portion sizes that the food industry has foisted on us here in North America.

I remember as a child that a restaurant cup of orange juice came in a tiny glass (by today's standards). Why? That little glass represented a whole lot of squeezed oranges. Over time, that portion became larger and larger. We lost track of where those oranges came from, and how much work it represented.

The cup sizes and portion sizes we take for granted today are all out of proportion for our needs.

I do see a trend towards "less is more"; the 99 c burgers and the 100 calorie snacks for instance. Perhaps this is a sign that our society now worships conservation rather than excess; not only for our own bodies, but for the world.

Flowers and Bees

One of my great pleasures, as those of you who know me, is watching my garden grow. Long hours of contemplation means I have come to know my garden, and it's bees, pretty well. The bees make their way through the garden methodically, checking each flower in turn. He makes his circuit and leaves. A few hours later, he does his tour again.

His grazing pattern reminds me of my Farm Town character, bobbing and weaving with an economy of effort to each task. It made me think that the bee's life, just like all others, is concerned with survival. His ability to find a good feeding ground, and avoid wasted effort, could mean the difference between life and starvation.

I find he has a strong preference for simple flowers that bloom for a short time only, maybe a day. Watching a bee harvest flax flowers is always a delight. The long stems bow under his weight and then catapault him away when he's done. The flowers drop in the heat of the day and then there is a fresh bloom the very next morning. I love watching flax.

He avoids the long-lasting compound flowers as long as he can. Is it because with the new flowers he is guaranteed fresh? Have we as humans, in our desire for complex and exotic shapes and long-lasting blooms, complicated the bee's life?

An exception to the compound bloom avoidance theory, was this bee. Naomi and I took pictures. But he wasn't acting normally at all. He was either drunk or very near death. He literally rested on the flower as he took his drink. This was the first time I ever saw a "lazy bee".

Linda's Bees is a blog I follow. She watches over her bees with an intensity that I can relate to.

Let's see how long this lasts

I'm going to re-start my blog. I fight a malady of my own making to do it. After taking on an exciting enterprise, I follow it zealously, completely, and determinedly until I stop. Why, oh why do I stop?

I stopped this blog on May 17, 2009.

Why do I stop so suddenly, so assuredly, and so completely? I am not sure, but I have some theories. Like so many other problems, my inclination is to study the problem in the finest detail. By knowing the problem, I find my resolution. Why does my motivation deflate like a punctured balloon? It might be a simple problem of boredom. Once I have mastered the media and I feel I have nothing to learn, I may not be able to maintain the momentum.

Or perhaps, recognition stops me cold.

I had just come to the point where I shared my blog with a person I admired deeply. I was exposing my work, my "self" to an external audience for the first time. I received some fine words of praise. I allowed myself the thought that I might have built something worthwhile, beyond the audience of one. Then I stopped.

I am reminded of one of Grimm's fairy tales, of a poor cobbler who had a sudden change of fortune. During the night all his work from the night before would be done. He prospered from this unexpected fortune, so decided to find out the why. Elves, barefoot, were laboring in his shop overnight. Grateful, he crafted small shoes for the industrious elves. That night, the elves celebrated their good fortune in song, then left, never to return. The now wealthy cobbler was happy to let them go. He had his good fortune and did a good deed as well.

I have always felt a deep connection to those elves, laboring through the night, unrecognized. I wondered why they could not bask in their good fortune, and remain? Perhaps that one ray of light was all they needed, and any more would be unbearable.

Anyways, I give myself lots to think on.

Let's see if I will be back tomorrow.

Am I a workaholic if I love what I do?

There's lots of talk about work/life balance these days. And it's true that there are those who sacrifice all - relationships, friends, health - for a misplaced passion. Workaholism in my mind shows all the marks of other addictions. There's the shame/reformaton/abstension/fall cycle to them all, whether it's reaching for the dirty syringe, the liter bottle of wine, or the fatty doughnut.

But on the other hand, I think we underestimate the rich benefits of community that work provides. We spend time with some of our co-workers than we do with some of our family and friends. All that investment of time and commitment very often builds in to something good.

Then there's the matter of how much time I have to invest. I'm in the happy place of middle age where my children have flown the nest and are building their own lives. If I want to spend an evening working on a proposal, I can; and I do so without sacrificing time elsewhere.

So am I workaholic? I am not slaving away at the tasks with no thought to time, health, or relationships. The time I invest I enjoy, and what I produce is it's own form of creativity. I don't hide away when I spend on these activities.

Creativity can be all-consuming, but I don't think that is necessarily bad. In those moments I can enter a flow state. These are moments of intense pleasure, with no fear of a subsequent crash.

Which brings me to a pet peeve of mine. There's talk of limiting hours that workers can access their work account. Due to my peculiar cycle of hot flashes, I am often my most creative and productive at 3:30 in the morning. I know this is unorthodox, but it's me. When I am engrossed in an idea, the fastest way to rest is to put the idea down. Then I am at rest. If I were limited to government hours, it would increase my distress, not reduce it.

I borrow the picture from nature.com

It's a dog's life

My daughter recently adopted a senior dog to take care of. The dog's name is Ariel and she is a sweet tempered Afghan, twelve years old. My daughter has known her since she was a glossy black puppy, and cheered from the sidelines as Ariel won "best in show" and gave birth to two litters of award winning puppies.

Ariel is now grey, and mostly sleeps and eats. She's only been with my daughter for a few short weeks, but already she's broken all the doggy rules. She loves to sleep on the couch and on the bed. She happily takes scraps from the table.

My daughter indulges. After all, if you have lived a long, full life, you deserve to break a few rules, don't you think?

I reminded my daughter to "take notes" because there are a few rules I would like to break when I am old and tired. Chief among them is to drink as many aspartame-laced beverages as I want, and to cook from aluminum cookware with impunity.

Either-Or

Have you ever wondered how the games we play affect our thinking; our view of the world?

Consider the difference between Eastern and Western game pieces. On one end of our world we have Mahjongg. On the other, we have checkers. The Western games are ordered black and red, up or down, right or wrong. Choices are thereby simplified. Eastern games are not as straightforward. To succeed, one might have to take a path congruent or obtuse to the goal.

Western thinking, through the Greeks, have been affected by this concept of either-or. Do you sacrifice the sickly member of your team in order for most to survive? Make the hard choice.

But sharpening the choice to one or another fails to pattern real life. Sometimes we make the hard choice with the hope to bring back the fallen member over time. In the long view, both win.

I have an example. When my children were young adults; one well and one ill, I had to choose who had to leave the family home. I told the sick one to leave. Why? In the blunt light of either-or, the welfare of the well took precedence. I am happy to say, though, that the story did not end there. The sick child did not wither and die. He learned the hard lessons of the street and became a humbler man because of it. Not to diminish the harshness of the choice, but by reinforcing my love in the face of hard choices over the intervening years, my son and I are reconciled.

The moral of the tale? Be slow to assume the consequences of your choices. Don't give up in the face of a "negative" choice. Hope gives new chances, and life is more complex than pass or fail.