Saturday, March 30, 2013
Wednesday Afternoon at the Enchanted Forest
Dear George,
We went the other day to Eden
Park to the Krohn Conservatory’s early spring floral show. It’s called “An Enchanted Forest,” and
it actually was quite enchanting, featuring hyacinths, tulips, violas, and daffodils,
along with 22 tons of sandstone boulders and several elf and fairy houses
sprinkled among the flowers. Here
are some photos which capture a bit of the pleasing scene.
Love,
Dave
G-mail Comments
-Phyllis S-S
(3-31): Dave, Gorgeous photos - I think I'll try to get there soon. Best,
Phyllis
-Gayle C-L
(3-31): David, Have a great
holiday! Love. G
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Did You Ever Wish You Were a Duck?
A Pair of Mallards at Burnet Woods
Lake
Dear George,
I started walking to work
through Burnet Woods shortly after we moved to Clifton in the 70’s. There’s a flock of mallards who’ve
always lived at the lake, and I’d check them out as I went by. Years ago I started wondering whether
it’s more satisfying to be a human being or a duck. That sounds weird at first, but the question came up one day
when I was dreading an afternoon of noxious appointments and boring faculty
committee meetings. Not
surprisingly, the ducks’ lives looked idyllic by comparison. Simpler, more peaceful, less
stress. Just paddling around,
dipping into the water now and then for a tasty nibble, enjoying the warm
sunshine and the company of one’s fellows. After watching for a while, I’d head off to my workplace,
vaguely wishing I could spend my day relaxing on the lake instead.
Now that I think of it, our
family has always had an affinity for ducks. Growing up on the Menominee River, they were a regular
feature of our environment. Then
when my parents moved to their Birch Creek Farm, my dad would go out every
afternoon to spread bird seed on the pond for the group of ducks could be
counted on to arrive between 5 and 6 p.m.
My mother, an ardent bird watcher, would keep an eye out from the living
room window, and the ducks’ daily visits were a source of joy for all
concerned.
Thinking seriously about
ducks’ lives poses deep philosophical questions. You might scoff at this because it’s obvious that humans can
do lots of things that ducks can’t, e.g., watch “Downton Abbey”, order takeout
pizza from Dewey’s, play Sudoku, collect South American postage stamps. From a duck’s perspective, though,
these things have no interest.
What’s Sudoku to a duck anyway?
And ducks can do a lot of things that humans can’t. Like laying eggs. Or floating effortlessly for hours on
end. Or flying. (Definitely flying.) As far as I can tell, most ducks like
being ducks and would find human existence a serious comedown. Perhaps the more telling question is
whether a mongoose or a lizard would like to be a human or a duck. There’s no way of knowing for sure, but
my guess is that most would probably opt for duckhood.
Lately I’ve been asking
Google some pithy questions about the lives and emotional well-being of
ducks. Here are some of the things
I’ve discovered so far:
- The word “duck” comes from the Old English “duce”
which means “to duck, bend low, or dive.” (11)
- Duck flocks are called “sords”. (2)
- Mallards are the most common ducks in the U.S.
(about 10 million). They are
the ancestor of nearly all domestic breeds. (9)
- Ducks look awkward on land, but that’s because
Mother Nature set their legs far back on their bodies to give them power
and efficiency when swimming. (2)
- Ducks’ feather coats are so well-constructed that
their bodies don’t get wet when they swim underwater, and they don’t feel
cold even in freezing water. (2)
- Whether on water or land, mallards can take off
nearly straight up into the air for 30 feet or more. (2)
- Ducks can reach speeds of up to 70 feet per
second (9), and they can fly up to 332 miles a day. (6)
- Ducks sleep with half their brains awake, and
those at the edge of sleeping groups keep one eye open, enabling them to
detect predators. (7)
- About 20% of duck mating is by male-male pairs.
(3)
- Most northern ducks go south for the winter. Ducks from North Central states
(e.g., Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin) head for the Grand Prairie of Arkansas.
(1)
- According to pet authorities, ducks are highly intelligent. One website notes that "they
can understand commands, play with toys, play games, give kisses, and beg
for snuggles like other birds if you take the time to work with
them." (8)
It’s
easy to see why many people wish they were ducks instead. The only way to really resolve the duck
vs. human question is through Science.
What’s needed is an objective test that can determine, once and for all,
whether ducks or humans are best off.
I’ve been working on just such a test for some time, and I think I’ve
finally completed an authoritative version. Here are the critical five most critical items:
- Who is more handsome?
(a) Joe Biden; (b) A mallard drake.
- Which is a more fun way to travel? (a) Jogging; (b) flying.
- Where would you like to live? (a) In the polluted city; (b) On a beautiful lake.
- What do moms prefer?
(a) Pushing your babies in a carriage; (b) Having your babies swim
behind you, all in a row.
- What’s better? (a)
Staying home in the snow and sludge; (b) Flying South for the winter.
I
hate to say it, but, if you’re like me, you probably picked (b) on every
question. If so, the score is 5
points for ducks and 0 for humans.
That seems pretty decisive.
I have to admit, though, that I ran across some additional information
about ducks that complicates the matter and prevents too hasty a
conclusion:
- Ducks get plenty to eat, but their foodstuffs aren’t always
tempting. Along with tasty
entrees like berries and nuts, duck menus include beetles, flies, worms,
snails, slugs, live minnows, small frogs, and dragonflies. Hmm…not so
good. (11)
- Male ducks are chauvinists.
Though monogamous during the breeding season, males abandon their
partner as soon she lays her eggs, i.e., the minute the hard work
begins. They never bother to
come back. (10)
- Quacking looks like fun, but only females get to
do it. Male ducks whistle,
yodel, squeak, or grunt. (11)
- Despite my impression that the ducks on Burnet
Woods Lake live in harmony and brotherly love, experts observe that ducks
are among the most aggressive bird species. Males battle over territory, food, and prospective
mates. (3)
- Mallards can hypothetically live for 7 to 9
years, but over 50% are killed or die by age two. Nasty duck predators include large
fish (e.g., muskies), large birds (e.g., hawks, eagles), snapping turtles,
and various mammals (e.g., foxes, raccoons). Humans are the most frequent
and dangerous predators -- hunters shot about 15.8 million ducks last year
in the U.S. alone. Ducks also
die from accidents and various diseases (e.g., botulism, cholera,
viruses). The duck’s world is a lot more perilous than I realized. Yikes! (5, 10)
- Finally, it can be embarrassing to be a
duck. A British researcher
recently concluded that, of all the birds and animals, ducks are most
frequently the target of humor and silliness (e.g., Donald Duck, Daffy
Duck, Howard the Duck). (11)
Now I find I have to
rethink the whole thing. It’s hard
to accept, but a duck’s life isn’t all fun and games. Being eaten alive by snapping turtles or hawks is totally
unpleasant. Some days I skip the
lake altogether and just walk through the forest. Recently I’ve found myself wondering: What’s better -- being
a human being or a squirrel?
Love,
Dave
SOURCES: (1) www.arkansasduckguiding,com,
“Duck Migratory Patterns”; (2) www.birding.about.com, "What is a
Duck?"; (3) www.desertusa.com,
“Mallard Duck”; (4) www.encyclopedia.com,
“Duck”; (5) www.flyways.us, “Harvest
Diary Surveys”; (6) www.infobarrel.com,
“Interesting Facts about Ducks”; (7) www.lifestyle.iloveindian.com,
“Facts About Ducks”; (8) www.thepetcard.net, "Keeping and caring for pet
ducks"; (9) www.racingducks.com, “Duck
Factoids”; (10) www.squidoo.com/mallard, "The Mallard Duck"; (11) www.wikipedia.org, “Duck”, “Mallard”.
G-mail Comments
-Terry O-S (3-28): Dear
David: By an odd coincidence, my
companion Joe and I were recently talking about ducks. I was telling him
about the "game dinners" that our parents and their friends staged
every year and how awful the wild ducks smelled when they were cooking, because
they ate fish. Joe insisted that ducks do not eat fish because ducks
don't have teeth. We were not sufficiently invested in our respective
positions for either one of us to pursue the matter - and now comes your blog
post! It is silent on the question of whether or not ducks have teeth,
but does include minnows in the duck diet. So: can you resolve this minor dispute? Do or do not
ducks have teeth? And do you agree that the wild ducks smelled awful when
they were cooking? Best, Terry
Friday, March 22, 2013
Silly Dog Pics: Arco and Friends
Arco at Burnet
Woods Lake
Dear George,
There’s a new dog in our
household. I named him Arco (after
the German Shepherd war dog that my Uncle Kent brought back from the battlefields
of France in World War II). I
found Arco at the Dayton flea market.
While I hadn’t been looking for a pet, he was on sale for a great price
and I couldn’t pass him by. I
worried about our sheepdogs’ reactions, but they don’t seem upset at all. Arco is easy to adjust to. He never barks or chews things, doesn’t
need monthly grooming, and doesn’t seem to want to get in the bed at night. I think he might have belonged to a
photographer because he’s so photogenic and such a good model. He poses in a stately manner, gives a
happy smile, and sits in place as long as I need him to. He’s so perfectly behaved Katja doesn’t
even think he’s for real. Here are
some photos I took recently of Arco and a couple of his other friends from our
pack. Looks pretty real to me.
Love,
Dave
G-mail Comments
-Ami G
(3-22): These are a hoot!
-JML
(3-22): Nice photo project
Dad.
-Linda C
(3-22): I love your dogs so much.
I can only have a cat in my apartment, but a quiet dog would be ok. Where do I go to buy one? Flea markets
or pounds? These pictures are
fabulous, so hope you will photograph mine, once I find him. Do you have any ideas of how I would be
able to tell the dogs nature before I buy him, I have decided on a male dog. Thanks, can I call you if I have other questions?
-Jennifer M
(3-22): I love these photos. Great use of perspective. If I hadn't seen Arco in
real life, I wouldn't know how small he is. :-)
Monday, March 18, 2013
Let's Go Find Some Other Lives
Sven Ljungberg
Dear George,
In college I wasn’t that
interested in Calculus or Geology, but I got into a lot of other topics, e.g.,
UFOs, Bigfoot, mental telepathy, the Loch Ness monster, etc. I think I was tired of everyday reality
and eager to move on to more extraordinary things. Reincarnation held
particular appeal. Though I’d
already dismissed notions of Heaven, Hell, and the after-life, the idea that
people can return after death in new bodily forms held a certain
fascination. However, as soon as I
went to graduate school I stopped thinking about all these things. Then when I turned 65 the notion of
reincarnation suddenly reappeared.
That could have been because of panic about my mortality, but I prefer
to think I suddenly had more leisure time to explore life’s deep mysteries.
Reincarnation, of course, is
more of an Eastern notion. In
Hinduism, one's soul is believed to move on to a new existence after the body's
death. The quality of one’s
rebirth depends on their karma (essentially the sum total of one’s past moral
conduct, good or bad). Good deeds
result in a higher caste and a better next life; bad deeds, to a crummier life. The cycle of death and rebirth goes on
forever unless the soul is released through major effort, mainly by devout
Buddhists or saints who abandon all worldly desires and attain a state of
oneness with all of existence. (2)
About 22% of Europeans and
20% of Americans believe in reincarnation (4). According to a CBS news poll, 10% of Americans say that they
have been in touch with one or more of their past lives. (1) Shirley MacLaine is one of the
best-known devotees, having returned to her earlier lives as a harem girl, an
entertainer, and a Muslim gypsy girl. (3)
When I found out that millions of people have had such experiences, I
got depressed because I’ve never been in touch with a single past life. Then I learned that you can do this by
paying $139 at a reincarnation convention, getting hypnotized, and undergoing age
regression. I didn’t want to pay
the $139, but I discovered how to accomplish the same results at home for
practically nothing. Basically,
last Friday night I took a sleeping pill and a shot of Canadian whiskey and
started meditating in front of my computer. Once I’d reached a state of complete bodily relaxation, I
started going back in my mind to earlier stages of life. I worked my way quickly through the ups
and downs of my work life, then lingered for a while on my dissertation orals
and my wedding day. College and
high school whizzed by, and I jumped all the way back to early memories of
playing with neighborhood kids.
When I reached my third birthday, I blacked out for a while. Then, as I slowly regained
consciousness, I became vividly aware of my identity as Sven Ljungberg, an
1890’s schoolteacher in rural Sweden.
I looked in the mirror and saw my gaunt face and bloodshot eyes. I was married to Ulrika, a red-haired
woman with the disposition of a fishwife, and we lived in a log house with a thatched
roof and our seven squabbling children.
I taught dim-witted pupils in a one-room schoolhouse during the day, and
I imbibed a quart of vodka each night to escape the horrors of my waking life. Ultimately I got lost in a blinding
snowstorm with my sled dog, Gnurlha, and we both froze to death.
Elated by my discoveries and
still in my trance state, I shifted my attention to various family
members. I quickly discovered that
Katja had formerly been a duchess in Queen Victoria’s Buckingham Palace court. My sister-in-law Ami was a member of
Gertrude Stein’s literary circle in 1920’s Paris, and my brother-in-law David
was a silent film director who specialized in vampire movies. I was amazed that my sister Vicki had
actually starred in David’s films as a vampire love interest. My brothers Peter and Steven were a
railroad tycoon and a riverboat gambler respectively. My brother-in-law George was a beloved actor in the Yiddish
theater on the Lower East Side. J
and K were adventurers who had navigated the Amazon and ridden a dog sled to
the South Pole.
Now that I have indisputable
proof that reincarnation is real, I’m less anxious about what the future
holds. However, I am nervous about
the condition of my karma. When I
add them up, I think my bad deeds in my life so far outweigh the good, and that
could mean that I’ll come back as a destitute person or even a lizard. I still have some time left, but I’m
going to have to pack about a dozen good deeds into every day if I’m going to
alter my fate. That’s a lot. I’m going to start right this minute by
cleaning up the sink and taking the sheepdogs out for a good hike. Wish me luck and good karma to us all.
Love,
Dave
SOURCES: (1) www.cbs.news.com, “Reincarnation:
Believing in second chances”; (2) www.infoplease.com, "transmigration of
souls"; (3) www.oprah.com, “Shirley
MacLaine’s past lives”; (4) www.wikipedia.org,
“Reincarnation”
G-mail Comments
-Gayle C-L
(3-18): David, I always wish you
luck and great karma !! You should probably come back as
a great leader, philosopher,, maybe even F Scott Fitzgerald.. Yes.. Lots of love.. G
-Jennifer M
(3-18): Very exciting discoveries!
-Donna D
(3-18): such a hoot i have a to do list you could work on to wrack up
good deeds
-Linda C
(3-18): You have me convinced, will try it and report my findings.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Wanted: Better Kitchen Help
A Pile of Carrot
Peels
Dear George,
Katja was cooking a pot roast
the other night and asked me to give her a hand. I was sort of surprised. Katja rarely asks me to help cook because she thinks I lack
basic skills. This time, though,
she was working on the onions, and she needed me to peel a pound of
carrots. I went to the
refrigerator and found a bag of shredded carrots, but Katja said she didn’t
want those. She said I should peel
raw carrots instead. I didn’t
understand why shredded carrots weren’t just as good, but I put them back and
got the bag of raw carrots. Katja
added that I could put the carrot peels in the sink. I asked how many carrots were in a pound; Katja said seven. I started in on the first raw
carrot. I was amazed at how long
it takes to peel a large carrot. I
took off the first layer, then the second, then the third, etc. There must be at least twelve layers to
an adult carrot. Soon I had an
impressive pile of orange peels in the sink. Finally there was nothing left of the first carrot except a
thin, pencil-like core. It was too
flimsy to peel any further, so I ate it and started in on the second
carrot. When I was about halfway
done, Katja looked over and asked, “What are you doing?” The sink basin was covered with an inch
or two of peelings. “I’m peeling
the carrots,” I said. “I’m putting
them here in the sink. That’s what
you told me to do.” “I don’t want
the peels,” Katja said. “We throw
them away. I just want the peeled
carrots. Just peel the
carrots.” “Oh”, I replied. I was silently relieved that she hadn’t
said, ‘Just peel the carrots, you idiot.’
Of course, I do know how to peel a carrot. I’d just gotten off on the wrong track. There were so many peels in the sink by
then that I ate handfuls of them as I started over on a new first carrot. It went much more quickly this time
around. When I finished all seven,
I took the leftover carrot peels, along with Katja’s onion skins, and flushed
them down the garbage disposal.
Katja thanked me for helping.
Relieved that I’d successfully finished my task, I snuck away before she
had could think up any other challenging jobs.
The next morning I was
working upstairs on the computer when Katja called up to say that the garbage
disposal was clogged up. I brought
down the toilet plunger and worked on the sink for several minutes, but I
couldn’t budge it even a millimeter.
Finally Katja called the plumber.
He tried plunging too, but wound up taking the pipes apart. The bend in the pipe was solidly
blocked with ground up onion skins and carrot peels. “You should never put carrots or onion skins down the disposal,”
he said. I thanked him for the
helpful tip. It cost $90. I decided that Katja probably doesn’t
usually ask for my help because it costs too much. We ate the pot roast for supper that night. It was excellent. The meat was tender, the onions were
tasty. The carrots were the
best. If we’d had the same meal at
a fine restaurant, we would have paid more than $90. I felt better.
Everything had turned out o.k. after all.
Love,
Dave
Monday, March 11, 2013
Daylight Whoopee Doopee Time
Dear
George,
We
performed the annual March ritual of springing forward by setting our clocks
ahead one hour on Sunday morning.
The big day always leaves us a little groggy. We get confused whether our go-to-sleep time of midnight is
really 11 p.m. or 1 a.m., so we sleep sporadically, and then we’re exhausted
when we wake up. Fortunately our
digital cable TV and cell phone clocks reset themselves automatically, but it still
takes us a week to get all our other household clocks aligned correctly. Given so many conflicting signals of
“old time” and “new time” scattered throughout the house, it’s a wonder that we
ever get anywhere on time. Just
this afternoon I told Katja I’d be home at 3:00, but I was an hour off because
the clock in our car was wrong. On
a more elemental level, since I’m a person who craves stability and order in my
life above all else, I find the whole idea of altering time unnerving. If there’s anything in the universe
that ought to be constant and objective, you’d think it would be time. I can hardly believe that Congress,
which can’t get anything else done, can just decide that on March 10th 2:00
a.m. will henceforth be 3:00 a.m.
Mother Nature probably rolls over in her grave.
It
turns out that ancient civilizations were more flexible about time. Typically, the daylight period was
divided into twelve hours, regardless of the season and the length of of days. In ancient Rome, for example, the third
hour after sunrise was 44 minutes long at the winter solstice, but 75 minutes
long at the summer solstice.
Benjamin Franklin is credited as the first person to advocate changing
our use of daylight. As the
American envoy to France, Franklin wrote a satirical essay in 1784 proposing
that Parisians cut back on their use of candles by getting up earlier in the
morning. To assist in the process,
he suggested that church bells be rung and cannons be shot off promptly at
dawn. (6)
A
New Zealand entomologist named George Vernon Hudson in 1895 was the first to
propose a modern version of daylight saving time (hereafter, DST). He wanted to have more daylight leisure
time in which to collect insects.
In 1907 an English outdoorsman and avid golfer named William Willett,
who disliked cutting his golf rounds short at dusk, argued for DST, but the
British parliament failed to follow up on his proposal. (6)
Germany
and its allies were the first countries to actually adopt DST, their aim being
to reduce energy usage and conserve coal in World War I. Britain and its partners soon followed
suit, and the U.S. adopted DST when it entered the war in 1918. DST was repealed in the U.S. in 1919,
then reinstated in World War II until 1945, and finally adopted by Congress in
the Uniform Time Act of 1966.
Arizona (aside from the Navaho Nation) and Hawaii are the only states
that don’t currently observe DST.
Arizona’s reasoning is that, because of excessive summer heat, it’s
worse to prolong daytime hours.
A 2008 Department of Energy study found that electricity use decreases
about 0.5% a day during DST. That
sounds miniscule, but it’s enough to power 122,000 U.S. homes for a year. (1)
Daylight
Saving Time has always been controversial, and arrangements across the country
were a mess for many decades.
Despite being an avid golfer, President Warren G. Harding strongly
opposed daylight saving time and made it voluntary in Washington D.C. in 1922
for private employers but not for federal employees. Needless to say, Harding's policy created chaos, and the
practice was subsequently terminated.
(3) In the 1950s and 1960s
every U.S. community could choose for itself when to begin and end DST. My home town of Menominee and its twin
city of Marinette operated on different summer times, and we regularly crossed
the river to do some shopping, only to find the stores closed. On a bigger scale, Boston, New York,
and Philadelphia found themselves on different times than Washington D.C.,
Cleveland, and Baltimore. Bus
passengers from Steubenville, OH, to Moundsville, WV, had to change their
watches seven times in the space of 35 miles. The situation led to millions of dollars in costs to various
businesses and industries. Extra
railroad timetables all by themselves cost over $12 million a year. (5)
People
cite many advantages of DST, e.g., more daylight to do outdoor chores,
socialize or do recreational activities, and spend outdoor time with children
after work, as well as reducing electricity usage, traffic accidents, and crime
(since criminals like darkness).
(4) DST has generally been
favored by retailers, outdoor sports enthusiasts, and tourism interests. Farmers dislike it because their
animals don’t observe it and they have to get up early anyway. One Internet discussant
also adds, “That extra hr. of sun just burns my garden up in the
summertime." (2) That’s
a serious problem, though there’s something iffy about the logic. DST also has negative effects on
prime-time TV ratings, drive-ins, movie theater attendance, and other evening
entertainment. Bar patrons sometimes get upset when they lose an hour of
drinking time on the night that DST springs forward. In 1997 in Athens, OH, home of Ohio University, over
1000 students and other late night partiers chanted “Freedom” as they threw
liquor bottles at the mounted horse patrol police who were attempting to
control rioting when the bars closed early. (5)
Despite
my minor misgivings, we ourselves love Daylight Saving Time. It is a Whoopee Doopee time. That’s not because of energy
conservation, crime, Dairy Queen hours, or the tourism industry. By March we’ve had it with the
seemingly endless stretch of bleak, dark days. Shifting to Daylight Saving Time symbolizes the beginning of
Spring and happier days. In particular,
it makes for more evening outings with the sheepdogs. That, in turn, makes the world a better place for the dogs,
the people, and the neighborhood at large. Happy DST!
Love,
Dave
SOURCES:
(1) www.abcnews.go.com,
“Daylight Saving Time 3013: 5 Things You didn’t Know”; (2) www.gowilkes.com,
"Daylight Savings Time - For Or Against"; (3)
www.science.howstuffworks.com, "How Daylight Saving Time Works"; (4)
www.timeanddate.com, "The Never-ending Daylight Saving Debate"; (5) www.webexhibits.org, “Daylight Saving
Time: Incidents and Anecdotes”; (6) www.wikipedia.org,
“Daylight Saving Time”
G-mail Comments
-Linda C (3-11): The first
week of dst makes me nuts, by a week I'm fine, but I spend a lot of time saying
" if I get up at 8am is it really 7 am or 9 am?
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