Daily Archives: June 12, 2013

Family, Feelings, Garden, Memories

Archaeology of the Heart

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Beltane                                                                         Solstice Moon

While watching a NOVA program on dogs, a reference was made to archaeology.  I studied archaeology and the broader discipline of anthropology seriously in college.  Seriously enough that I applied for doctoral work in theoretical anthropology.  Why I didn’t follow that up is a story for another time, but archaeology resonates for me and the mention of it in this context triggered a memory only recently interpreted.

Over the course of my life when confronted with the odd plumbing job or carpentry task, you know, the men things, I would fob them off with the stock phrase, “Oh, I learned everything my Dad knew about these things.  Nothing.”  And, as far I know, that’s a true statement in both instances.  I’m still not able in those areas though I admit I’ve never tried too hard to learn.

Kate and I work outside together a lot, though she works in one area and I work in another.  I found myself having a rising sense of impatience, irritation about her work.  Those who know me well would recognize this mood in me.  I’m not proud of it, but it does surface from time to time.  This time I knew my mood simply had no basis in reality.

Kate works hard.  She works well.  And she was doing both of those, as I know she always does, so this mood was about me, not her.  Suddenly buckets of water sloshing in the wee hours of the morning came to mind.  Uh, oh.  When we moved to our home at 419 N. Canal, it was the first, and last, home my father and mother owned.  We moved there in 1959 and my dad had his stroke there in the  1990’s and died after having moved to a nursing home from there.

In my years there, from 1959 to 1965, I don’t recall a service person ever coming to our house to repair anything.  Likewise, I don’t recall anything ever getting repaired.  Must of have happened, but I don’t recall it.  The only such incident I do recall was a recurring one in which our basement, which housed our furnace and little else, would flood.  When that happened, Dad would get me up and together we would bail out the basement, one bucket at a time.

Roused from sleep, cold and wet, these were not my favorite memories.  I do remember that as we worked, Dad would become silent, sullen.  In fact, I remember him being irritated and impatient with my willingness to do this chore.  Aha.  My memory of teamwork seems to be tied to those nights and I seem to have selected my father’s attitudes to carry on, carrying his water into my own life.  As sons often do.

Rethinking this time also made me realize a second thing.  Why didn’t Dad try to solve the problem rather than resort to such a makeshift solution every time?  I don’t know the answer.  It might have been money.  It might have been pride.  It might have been that these matters simply didn’t show up as problems to solve, but rather came up as problems to ameliorate.  Whatever the reason, I learned to be incurious about solving problems around the house.  Doesn’t matter.  Maybe it’ll go away or fix itself.

Now, I have owned homes since 1969, 7 altogether, one in Appleton, Wisconsin, one in Minneapolis, one outside Nevis, Minnesota, 3 in St. Paul and 1 here in Andover.  Over that time I’ve learned some very minor skills in home repair and one big one.  The big one?  Hire somebody.  Works most of the time.  As far as I can tell, solving day to day problems in the house is one of the few things I’m incurious about.  Fortunately Kate is better than I am and together we can call anybody.

The archaeology of our own thoughts and feelings is the most rudimentary and personal dig we will ever engage.  And that, I’m plenty curious about.

 

GeekWorld

Are You An Infovore?

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Beltane                                                                          Solstice Moon

So many information sources, so little time.  Those of us who are indiscriminate infovores have entered the paradise period of the human era.  It’s not only the internet, though it looms very large in easy access to information (see the snapping turtle info below), it’s also the smart phone and the services that disaggregate television programs and resort them into chunks we can watch all at once with no commercials.

While the physical information stream has begun to dwindle like an old man’s (oh, no, I won’t go there.), the condensation and availability of information continues to accelerate.  The mail box has little of interest anymore and the post office is beginning to hear the hoof beats of the Pony Express.  And books.  Heavy physical paper things.  So yesterday.  Meanwhile, I can get TED talks on so wide a range of topics that interest me that I can spend all day watching them.  And not get anything done.

And there’s the youtube talks I just signed up for from Big Think, mentors giving advice about their areas of specialty.  Also, I get e-mails from Foreign Affairs, the Chinese Human Rights folks, Big Think, Brain Pickings, Delancy Place, NASA, Trendline and others I’ve forgotten, each one with interesting, compelling information about things I didn’t know I had an interest in, but suddenly I do.

Managing our information streams is not something any of us have been trained to do.  Yes, we were taught to read.  And an increasingly small number of people read an increasingly large number of books.  But who was taught to watch youtube videos.  or TED talks.  Or to sort out condensed information like the folks from Big Think and Brain Pickings offer up for germane and reliable data.  Who can manage–and interpret–personal information available both to us as individuals and increasingly to government and large corporations?

Notice that I haven’t mentioned podcasts, audio books or the extraordinary ease with which we can receive music tailored to our tastes.  Pandora.  Playlists on I-pods.  Classical or current or jazz or oldies radio stations  Neither have I mentioned my all time least favorite, the robo-call.  Or, the old fashioned, but still extant slow information venues like theaters, museums and sports arenas.  Real time entertainment?  Now there’s an idea.

I’ve not got a handle on this and I don’t know who has, though I’d sure like to hear from them.  I’m eager to get as much information as I can, but now, like never before in all of history, the inflection is on the can.  And the limits on our capacity to get information are now chronological more than anything else, i.e. we can’t have our ears and eyes occupied 24/7.  God forbid.

How do you manage your information streams?  Or do you?  Do they manage you?  Leave you exhausted?  Or, energized, better informed and more able to be what and who you want to be?  An interesting dilemma of our time.

OMG.  How last century of me.  I left out social media.  Twitter, Facebook, this blog for example.  And, I thought I was being clever in inventing infovore.  Nope.  It’s the title of a book on Amazon.

Dogs, Minnesota

Another Species

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Beltane                                                                            Solstice Moon

Rigel has a small pink abrasion on her right nostril.  Kate showed it to me this morning.  We both concluded it probably got there via snapping turtle.  Here’s the story.

(chelydra_serpentina)

Rigel’s job is to patrol the fence line and warn off any invaders, be they dog, human, cat or, in yesterday’s case, snapping turtle.  Usually we let her do her job without intervention, but while I took a shower, Rigel set up an alarm bark that agitated all the other dogs.  And, in the occasional assertion of her coyote hound genes, she wouldn’t stop.  Usually, she barks at something, then, after a bit, calms down.  Not this  time.

Kate got up from her nap to go investigate.  Rigel had found a snapping turtle just on the other side of our chain link fence and had already expended considerable energy telling it to stay there.  Do not come in here.  This is my yard.  Stay out.  Go away.

Rigel and Kate returned to the house.  After my shower, and unaware of all this excitement, I let the dogs out again.  And.  They found the turtle, this time inside our property and, Kate, again going to see what was up, discovered Rigel  on her belly, legs out in front, barking at the turtle, but this time from a distance.  Vega patrolled the rear, going back and forth around it.  The turtle had gotten about halfway through our woods from our fence line paralleling 153rd to the rear fence line, traveling on a diagonal to a spot that was well over two football fields away.

Kate, who has taken the turtle as her totem animal, recovered the turtle, holding its shell at the rear.  Even then, she said, the turtle’s long neck kept snaking around toward her hands.  She removed the turtle to a position outside our fence line and we’ve not heard any new alarms.

Based on reading the material* below I imagine this was a female hunting for a place to lay her eggs. (see the video)

*Group:

reptile

Class:

Chelonia

Order:

Cryptodeira

Family:

Chelydridae

Habitats:

Breeding takes place any time that the turtles are active, but occurs most frequently in the spring and fall. During June, females travel to open areas that are suitable for nesting, and may travel 1 km (0.62 mi.) or more from water. Suitable nesting areas must be open and sunny and contain moist but well-drained sand or soil. Nesting areas are commonly sandy banks and fields, but also include gravel roads and lawns. The female uses her hind feet to dig out a cavity, and then lays 10-100 (usually 25-50) eggs, using her hind feet to guide them into the nest. The eggs are 2.2-3.2 cm (.87-1.25 in.) in diameter, white, and have a leathery shell. Once the eggs are laid, the female covers the nest with sand or soil and returns to water. Depending on the weather, the eggs will hatch in 50-125 days. Incubation temperature affects the sex of the hatchling turtles, with more females hatching during warmer temperatures, and more males hatching during cooler temperatures. Hatchling turtles use their egg tooth and claws to break out of their shell, and then must dig their way out of the nest and find water. When they emerge, hatchlings are 2.5-3.2 cm (1-1.25 in.) in length. Young turtles are vulnerable to predation and desiccation. From any given clutch of eggs, 60%-100% of the young may be lost to predators. Primary nest predators include raccoons (Procyon lotor), skunks, foxes, and mink (Mustela vison). In addition to these animals, hatchlings are also preyed on by large fish, large frogs, northern water snakes (Nerodia sipedon), and some bird species. Common snapping turtles are slow to mature, reaching sexual maturity in 5-7 years.