OvoControl P

Reid spotted this one at LAT: Hollywood turns to birth control to clean up its (pigeons') act.

Francisco Vara-Orta writes,

"Eager to reduce the neighborhood pigeon population and the mess that comes with it, Hollywood residents appear ready to try a new birth control method on their wild birds.

"Beginning within the next couple of months, a substance called OvoControl P will be placed in kibble in new rooftop feeders, say residents and state and local officials. The substance, which interferes with egg development, generally is viewed as a humane way to lower the birthrate of the birds, which many residents consider a
nuisance."

Not answered in the story is what this substance does to hawks who eat affected pigeons and what it might do to non-target birds who will certainly also ingest the stuff directly.

OvoControl developers say the risk is negligible: "Fortunately, the chemistry of the active ingredient assures that there is an extraordinarily low risk of any effect on a raptor. To have an effect, the bird MUST consume the bait – raptors enjoy fresh meat and fish, not OvoControl bait. Once OvoControl is digested and absorbed, it is no longer biologically available to another bird. There is effectively no risk of secondary toxicity."

...Except for hawks who eat stomach contents, which they occasionally do. On the other question they say:

"All avians are considered sensitive to the product. OvoControl has therefore been designed to limit non-target exposure to birds. There are five techniques employed:

1. The bait is relatively large, suitable for a pigeon but not to the average songbird. The bait has low oil content.
2. The bait is fed on a restricted basis—roughly 5gm/bird, or roughly 15% of the pigeon’s daily dry matter intake—at the crack of dawn, in the general vicinity of the overnighting birds. Experience shows that once the pigeons are habituated to the bait, it is consumed in 15 minutes or less leaving little opportunity for non-target feeding.
3. Pigeons are flocking birds. Feeders are placed on rooftops where the risk of non-target exposure is limited.
4. A daily dose is required during the breeding season. It is possible that a non-target receives a dose from time-to-time, but periodic observation by the applicator ensures that OvoControl is reaching the target population.
5. Raptors will not consume bread based bait.
   

A lot of variables and qualifiers there. But given the chemical wears off and must be continually used, it is probably mild and not much of a threat except to pigeon family values. However, it sounds like a gold mine for the drug's producers!

Endless act of transference

Thanks both to Mary and Reid for forwarding this NYT editorial by Verlyn Klinkenborg, Should Most Pet Owners Be Required to Neuter Their Animals? (subtitled: "When it comes to pets, Americans are lost in a seemingly endless act of transference.")

"...the opponents of mandatory neutering make it sound as though the problem can be solved mainly by teaching owners to spay or neuter their pets voluntarily. That might be true, if we thought more rationally about our pets. But keeping pets isn’t about rationality. When it comes to them, Americans are lost in a seemingly endless act of transference.

"It’s apparent in the obesity of our dogs and cats, and in our increasing spending on veterinary care and gourmet pet food and dietary supplements and everything else that helps us treat them as our superconsumerist equals.

"This transference extends to how we think about the sexuality of our pets, which is, all too often, a projection of our own. "

This piece is basically a lament for the recent flushing of California's late mandatory spay/neuter bill and a finger-wagging at its opponents. The transference angle is interesting but I think beside the point (and, well, obvious). Of course our pets are representations of ourselves; so are our cars! But that's not the only reason we own them.

Nonetheless, there are some points in this piece in I fully support. I agree most pet owners are irresponsible, sentimental and short-sighted. And I think it's a shame so many dogs and cats are killed by local governments at our expense (not to mention their own). A wider culture of pet adoption vs. pet purchase would be a wonderful thing to support. Ditto free workshops and literature teaching responsible pet ownership. We have these programs here in Baton Rouge on a (too) small scale, and I think they're great. Being sentimental about pets doesn't preclude the possibility of learning to be sensible about them.

But I don't support mandatory spay/neuter, which doesn't solve these problems. Moreover, I am not at all moved by knowing half a million dogs and cats were killed last year by California municipalities. Mind you, I LOVE dogs and cats, at least most of the ones I know personally. But a number by itself is not evidence of anything significant.

Where do these animals come from? They can't all be secretly disposed, irresponsibly bred Dalmatians set loose in the city park six months after the last Disney movie release. Can they?

Some of them must be feral and presumably breeding on their own, especially the cats; in which case they are (let's be frank) a pest control problem, and the fact that we choose to house them at great expense for two weeks before killing them is merely sentimental and a waste of money.

Those that are neighborhood pets jumping fences and trotting around may or may not be the product of irresponsible backyard breeders or puppy mills. Maybe they're just the result of bad fencing. In either case, it's the owner's loss and no one else's fault if the escaped animal is shot or poisoned by an ill tempered or frightened neighbor, or run over by a car, or stolen. On the flip side, these owners might benefit from neighbors who will catch them up and call the number on the tag. My wife and I do this half a dozen times a year, often for the same dogs. I haven't killed one yet, even though I've caught several harassing my hawks (in this case, my own fault for occasionally leaving my yard gate open).

Government intervenes in these cases at a waste of taxpayer money and because neighbors no longer solve their own problems. This is not a problem of having too small and weak a system of animal control agencies, best solved by more government, laws, fines, seizures of private property and jail time for citizens. This is a problem of weak communities and irresponsible and careless people. No amount of government will cure those problems.

My dog doesn't poop on my neighbors' yards. She doesn't run unsupervised in the neighborhood. She has all her shots. She is a danger to no one except the small animals I hunt with her, the killing of which is her job and the meat of which never goes to waste. In short, she is not a menace to society, and so my city should have little or nothing say about how manage her....especially about when and if I chose to cut out her ovaries.

Also, Klinkenborg shouldn't trouble himself wondering if my dog and I are co-dependent. We are, and we like it that way.

This is not a problem of animal "overpopulation" but is a problem of too much government money (and concern, for that matter) and not enough personal responsibility and neighborly comportment. Of course I could be dead wrong about that. But it won't change the fact that I would rather deal personally with all the stray animals who happen to find themselves on my property than have some nutty urban politician (who, in the California case, doesn't even own an animal!) force me to sterilize mine.

Breeding Like Rabbits?

Trivia: China claims to have cloned the first rabbit from fetal cells (evidently the French cloned a rabbit earlier from adult cells). It should be noted that this is NOT the easiest way to breed rabbits.

I was warming up for a tirade on the evils of cloning. My point was not to be that God opposes cloned animals (in fact He makes some from time to time) but that only one thing could explain the tremendous investment universities, corporations and governments make in these technologies: profit. What good are lifeforms you can patent? Ask Monsanto about their hybrid corn.

But before I laid bare my embarrassing leftist agrarianism or libertarian paranoia (or got myself fired) I read this interesting passage by Barbara Kingslover (writing on writing erotica) that puts the issue in another light:

"We live in a strange land where marketers can display teenage models in the receptive lordotic posture (look it up) to sell jeans or liquor, but the basics of human procreation can't be discussed in a middle-school science class without sparking parental ire. The same is true of evolution, incedentally, and I think the reason is the same: our traditions deny, for all we're worth, that we're in any way connected with the rest of life on earth. We don't come from it, we're not part of it, we own it.

"It is deeply threatening to our ideology, at the corporate and theological levels, to admit that we're constrained by the laws of biology. Sex is the ultimate animal neccesity."

Here's a toast to every old fashioned thing! Ah hell, I'm going to get in trouble anyway.

Jumbo Squid Invade California

Jumbo squid that can grow up to 7 feet long and weigh more than 110 pounds are invading central California waters and preying on local anchovy, hake and other commercial fish populations. I think we should look on the bright side - calamari anyone?

'Roos

The result of a lawsuit brought by an animals rights group against athletic shoe maker Adidas, has been the confirmation by the California Supreme Court of a state law that bans the use of kangaroo hide for shoe manufacture. Kangaroo leather is apparently favored by soccer players for their shoes.

Australians are puzzled by this. Kangaroo populations vary between 15 and 50 million, largely dependent on climate and rainfall variance' and aren't in any danger. There is a regular cull to keep them from overeating their range:

“Kangaroos are like rabbits in Australia,” said Kalee StClair, who is from Sydney and has lived here {California} for more than four years. “They’re not protected at all, and it’s actually encouraged to kill them.

“I guess they are really cute. And California is a sucker for a cute animal. Look at how people dress their dogs here.”

The law dates to 1971, when a number of kangaroo species were endangered. The Australian consul is lobbying the legislature in Sacramento to repeal the law.

This shows up in the news just as estimable scientist and author Tim Flannery releases what looks like a very interesting book on kangaroos: Chasing Kangaroos: A Continent, a Scientist, and a Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Creature.

Another Significant Cultural Event

A Miraculous Birth

Today's Denver Post tells us of an unusual event that took place on a ranch near Colbran in western Colorado. Kate, a "molly" or female mule, has given birth to a healthy female foal. Mules are officially sterile hybrids from the mating of a female horse and a male donkey. But very rarely they do have offspring.

This case is of special interest in that it is apparently the first time since the mid-1980s that a mule foal will be available for the full gamut of modern genetic testing. Geneticists from the University of Kentucky and the University of California - Davis have already tested samples that definitely prove the mother really is a mule and that the foal really is hers.

In our urbanized society most of us see this as an interesting occurance and look forward to more information on the scientific analysis of the genetics involved. In more traditional societies that are closer to their animals, a mule foal has a whole different meaning. From the article:

" When it reportedly happened in Morocco five years ago, locals feared it signaled the end of the world. In Albania in 1994, it was thought to have unleashed the spawn of the devil on a small village."

snip

"It's an event so rare that the Romans had a saying, 'cum mula peperit,' meaning 'when a mule foals' - the equivalent of 'when hell freezes over.'"

A mule enthusiast's magazine is apparently having a contest to name the foal. I look forward to reading some comments from those of you with a stronger background than mine in horses, mules, and genetics.

Brave Dog

The Denver Post tells us that a five-pound Chihuahua in Masonville, Colorado fought off a rattlesnake to keep a one year-old toddler from being bitten. Zoey the Chihuahua sustained bites herself, but survived. What's that old saying - it's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.

Some Soviet Planes

I mentioned in an earlier post that for some years I had worked in jobs in aerospace and aviation. In one of those positions I worked at a flight test facility at the Mojave Airport in southern California. My employer manufactured jet engines. Engines that needed to be tested for FAA certification were shipped out to us and we would install them on a Boeing 747 test aircraft and fly them around to conduct the required tests.

Most often engines would be delivered to us by truck, but occasionally they would be air-freighted to us if there was a hurry-up schedule. On one occasion, one of these expedited tests involved the largest engine that we made, a 100,000 pound thrust beast that is used on the Boeing 777. The only aircraft commercially available large enough to carry one of these (the Air Force wouldn’t lend us a C-5 ) was an Antonov An-124, a large Soviet-designed cargo plane that is a relict of the Cold War. This plane was operated by the Russian carrier Volga-Dnepr Heavy Lift, and my employer paid something like $200,000 per trip for them to haul our engines, usually spares from the factory to overseas service depots. Production engines were trucked up to Seattle for installation at Boeing.

On this occasion, back in the mid-1990s, the An-124 was bringing us a spare engine from our service shop in Wales. They loaded the engine at Gatwick and flew non-stop to Houston, where they cleared customs. That plane has legs. They refueled and flew on to Mojave.

Here’s a picture of it after it landed. You can see Volga-Dnepr in Cyrillic on the side of the fuselage.

There was a privately-owned MiG-21 at the airport whose owner kept it parked just off our area of the flight line. I was lucky enough to catch these two old Soviet veterans in one picture.

The crew of 17 was Russian with one exception. When crewmembers left the Antonov, several of them walked right over to the MiG, talking excitedly among themselves. One beaming Russian patted the nose of the MiG affectionately, turned to us and proclaimed, “Is GOOD airplane!”

I’d inspected the MiG closely several times and it intrigued me. On one of those visits I was accompanied by one of our test pilots. He claimed it was the closest he’d been to a MiG-21 since one shot him down in his A-4 over Hanoi. I don’t know where the MiG was built, but all the placards on the hull were in Polish. It was made of high-quality aerospace aluminum, but all the fasteners used on the wings were of carbon steel. This left the shiny surface of the wings spotted with rust dots from the corroded fasteners. It seemed to me emblematic of many of the contradictions of the Soviet system.

Seventeen was an absurdly large crew for the work that needed to be done to operate the Antonov. As we worked on some classified programs at our facility, our security officer was required to review the Russian crew manifest before their arrival. A scan of their names by our security services indicated that 14 of them were known to be working for various Russian intelligence agencies. They obviously weren’t let in to see anything in our shop, and we were told to keep our eyes open for anything unusual.

It is an enormous plane, and we were allowed the run of it – we wanted our $200,000 worth. The ladder goes up to the cockpit.

Here you can see us unloading.

Here’s the inside of the cockpit. Very 1960s looking. It’s the only modern cockpit I can ever recall seeing with a radio operator crew position.

In the time-honored way, we traded patches and stickers with the Russians. I was actually able to find this sticker after all these years.

The Antonov was due to fly out the next morning and we loaded the crew in a couple of vans and took them to a motel in town. Their flight plan called for them to fly from Mojave to Las Vegas to re-fuel (Jet A was expensive at our airport) and clear customs, then non-stop back to Gatwick.

We all came out to the flight line the next morning to watch them take off. As the Antonov took to the air we expected them to head northeast toward Las Vegas. But they didn’t. They circled and headed straight south, flying along the boundary of the “no fly zone” that keeps private and commercial aircraft from flying over Edwards Air Force Base, the Air Force’s main testing facility. This allowed them to see anything that was going on at Edwards. This route took them right over Plant 42 in Palmdale, where Northrup Grumman was then building B-2 bombers, and where the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works is located. We could see them turn east at the southeast corner of the “no fly zone” and they eventually worked their way around three sides of the box before heading to Las Vegas.

This was apparently fully legal under the terms of the Treaty on Open Skies, but also fully obvious. We laughed and laughed.

From Steve

Dear all,

Internets still screwed but:

(1) I am halfway, the worst half, through on the book and if I have a peaceful week-- unlikely-- I could be all drafted in a week.

(2) As of last night they will pay my way air & in- country to go to Almaty for the Primitive Dog Breeds thing 10 September, and Libby likely has enough frequent flyer mile to go too.

Now all I have to do is secure permissions for 100 illustrations for the book, and get out of jury duty.

In frenzied haste,

Steve

An American Vacation

At six a.m. Saturday, I was sipping coffee in a deck chair above a sea oat-covered Florida sand dune, staring into the Atlantic ocean. The sun, already shining on Helen and Darren, lit lingering rainclouds from below to the color of smashed plum. The waves rolled and a good breeze pushed back the tops of palm trees. It would have been another perfect day at the beach, but our time was up, and by ten a.m. every branch of the family was on the road or in the air to nine U.S. cities in five states: Miami, Gainesville, Seattle, Bethesda, Columbus, LaGrange, Brunswick, Houston, and Baton Rouge.

This was the second incarnation of a sand-centered family reunion. The first was two years ago on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, attended by members of Shelly's extended family, plus me. Shelly's clan is full of surprises, an old-school American mix of faces and places, second and third generation immigrants from Eastern Europe, Cuba, and China, with a smattering of us mongrels-in-residence; at its core, an urban Jewish matriarchy. No hard-edged multiculturalism here. Our histories are present in recipes and family memories, but our culture is the same. Even phenotypes are fading fast. Our kids are (simply) beautiful.

This year my people joined the celebration, renting the beach house next door, available by happy coincidence. With my brother's family, our parents, a cousin and his wife, our grandmother and her friend, we filled out the family roll call and spilled the diner seating on to the porch. There were about twenty-five of us at one point, I think.

We took turns making evening meals, and here the melting pot ceased to be a metaphor. Jewish paella? Cuban shiskabob? Who cares? It's all good! Cousin Dave's homebrewed India Pale Ale goes well with any dish.

A lower deck with high bar stools and a glass-topped table lay in the long shadow of the house. Dave and I split a dark blue bottle of the good stuff there each night before diner. He said it was his best effort, which was easy to believe; any brewer would be proud of it. While our kids drug wave boards and plastic buckets in from the beach, we toasted our tremendous wealth: middle-class American opulence of family, food and a week's vacation. We agreed few humans have ever lived so well.

Nanny State

Today's Denver Post tells us that in the People's Republic of Boulder it is illegal to attach a rope swing to a tree without the permission of the City Manager. When I last lived there 25 years ago we used to say Boulder was four square miles surrounded by reality.

House of Rain

Earlier this week I caught an interview on NPR with Colorado author Craig Childs on the subject of his recent book on the prehistoric Southwest, House of Rain. I read it back in February and really enjoyed it.

I worked in the Southwest while in graduate school, but haven't worked in that part of the country for many years. I find the archaeology there fascinating, but don't have the time to go to conferences about it or really keep up with the literature. Though Childs is not a professional archaeologist, he is an intelligent man who has talked with many experts (some old colleagues of mine) in putting together this book for a general audience. It served much the same function for me as 1491 did when it came out in 2005: it provided a quick run-down of new developments in the research that I wouldn't have had time to pull together myself.

There's lots of good stuff in there about the relationships of site locations and landscape and astronomical phenomena. The prehistoric road system in New Mexico tied to Chaco Canyon has been well known for years, and I learned in this book that a similar road system, not related to Chaco, has recently been discovered in southeast Utah. I'd recommend it to anyone.

I was somewhat surprised last week to see a letter from several senior researchers in the Society for American Archaeology's "Archaeological Record" blasting Childs for an excerpt from the book published in "Natural History" magazine. Sorry I have no link to this. Much of their ire seems to stem from his continued use of the term "Anasazi" for prehistoric peoples of the northern Southwest, which in recent years has been mostly replaced in professional literature by "Ancestral Pueblo" or "Prehistoric Pueblo". Anasazi is derived from a Navajo word. The Navajo are a non-Puebloan people with a history of fractious relationships with the Pueblos. The word translates roughly as "ancestors of our enemies" and Pueblo people say they find it insulting. I won't argue with that, but it's not worth ditching a good book over.

Another Prairie Ramble

Just a few pictures from a stroll the dogs and I took last Sunday in the Hidden Mesa Open Space. This ruined windmill and tank were along the way.


I haven't found any bats under overpasses here yet, but saw lots of swallow nests under this one.

I was able to catch this butterfly grabbing lunch from a thistle.

Where DID that prairie dog go? The route we took goes through two large prairie dog towns and we constantly heard the prairie dogs' chirping alarm calls. The girls were kept busy fruitlessly chasing from hole to hole. Maggie in particular, seemed to be driven to distraction when she heard them. I said to her, "You must think they're saying bad things about your mama."

Most of the yuccas finished blooming here a couple of weeks ago. I kept meaning to get pictures but didn't get it done. I was able to catch this late bloomer along the way.

We continue to have a progression of wildflower blooms. We saw lots of these prickly poppies open. There were also lots of lupines, but they were past their peak.

It was a warm day and it was good that the girls could cool off in Cherry Creek on our way back to the truck. I had a hard time convincing Sadie to get out of the water - when I called her she'd just look at me and grin. Luckily they air-dried by the time I had to load them.

Merle's Door

Last night Connie and I attended a reading and booksigning by Ted Kerasote for his new book Merle's Door: Lessons From a Freethinking Dog at the Tattered Cover Bookstore at LoDo (Lower Downtown). Matt, of course, reviewed this book in a post a couple of weeks ago that elicited lots of discussion. I picked up my copy in the store just before the event and haven't read enough of it yet to comment on it intelligently. We did enjoy the readings which were funny, interesting and heartwarming and that Kerasote did quite well.

I found it interesting that there are no photographs in the book, but didn't realize it in time to ask Kerasote why. He brought a photo album of pictures of Merle with him that he passed around the room. Those pictures are all posted on his web site that I linked to his name above.

He showed delighted surprise when we introduced ourselves as friends of the Bodios and we talked a bit about their tazis. We would have enjoyed talking longer but were holding up the signing line.

The Tattered Cover is a Denver institution that any bibliophile (like the ones who hang out here!) should visit if he finds himself in town. I started buying books from the old Cherry Creek store with the dutch door in 1977. Their stock grew and grew and they moved to a bigger space across the street. By the mid-80s they had moved again into a old department store building and had it jammed with four floors of books. Devoted customers volunteered to help them move in. It was some store. Unfortunately they lost their lease there about a year ago and the main store (branches were opened in LoDo and Highlands Ranch in the 90s) moved into the old Bonfils Theater building on Colfax. It doesn't have quite the same visual impact and atmosphere that the old store had, but all three stores are wonderful places for people like us.

After the event we had dinner down the street at the Wynkoop Brewing Company brew pub. I highly recommend it.

UPDATE

"Merle's Door" debuted at number 21 on the 15 July 2007 New York Times bestseller list.

Well, Dang...

I feel like I'm 5.4 Random Things in debt!

But this is fun. I'm learning things about my blog partners I didn't know.

To keep the chain letter going, I'll finish my job.

1) We just had our kitchen remodeled. It's much nicer than it was, with a new tile back splash, granite counter tops and task lighting, among other improvements. But the big change--the point at which a house becomes a home--already happened. Some months after Katrina, once our New Orleans friends had regained their footing and found new digs, I realized it was their stay with us that completed our home. We had lived in what was merely a house for two years prior to that.

2) I've worked for LSU (Reid's "abandoned outhouse") for more than 10 years, most of which I've spent in Web development. I am the least technically-proficient professional Web developer you will ever meet. And three months into my new job, I have digressed further in that area. Don't tell my boss.

3) Speaking of Reid's Outhouse (do I sound defensive yet?) they may actually find it. University archaeologists are now excavating the old state capital in search of the buildings that once held the young military school that would become LSU.

4) Small world randomness: My hawk Charlie had a male offspring who was purchased and flown by Teddy Moritz, who is a part-time groundhog hunter and an acquaintance of Patrick Burns's and breeds hunting dachshunds, one of which is owned by Steve Bodio. Teddy is also a longdog fanatic and has corresponded with Gregg Barrow about the Hancock lurchers they both own (as does Steve). We all met independently of each other!

5) I have fewer college degrees than any adult in my immediate family, including both parents, brother, and wife. My BA in sociology marks the beginning of the family backslide into illiterate peasantry. I'm sort of proud of that.

.4) I have a small, C-shaped scar on my...?

Reid's Eight

Tagged by Patrick! Thanks for the honor, I think. Rebecca got tagged, too, and calls this Crazy 8s, which seems about right. I appreciate Matt staking out the position that we only are obligated for 2.6 items each, but I’ll go the full monty. I'll take Steve’s course of making two of them about my blog partners, but won’t go to ten like he did.

1. My full name is Travis Reid Farmer. My mother wanted to name me Mark. My father prevailed with his insistence of naming me after my mother’s father, Travis Reid, who he greatly admired. One of my professors at Tulane said I was the first student he had ever met with three last names.

2. I have a compulsive habit of writing my name, the date of purchase, and the city where purchased on the flyleaf of each book I buy. I’ve been doing that since 1972.

3. My only sibling is my sister Carol, who is six years younger than me.

4. People here know me as an archaeologist. I started out in that field, but economic circumstances prompted me to switch careers and I worked in management positions in aviation and aerospace manufacturing for many years. I’m glad that things have worked out for me to switch back.

5. My last job in aviation was in a business unit that manufactured and installed custom interiors in aircraft like Boeing Business Jets and Bombardier Global Expresses. Working in that business can involve you in some strange endeavors. For one client we had to conclusively prove to the FAA that installing and operating two Sony Playstations in the client’s BBJ wouldn’t affect the flight controls. For the same client I had to buy $25,000 worth of custom-dyed stingray hides that we used to upholster panels installed under the windows. I can’t tell you the client’s name but his family is related to Mickey Mouse.

6. When our two children were young, they looked a lot like me. As they get older they seem to take on more characteristics of Connie’s side of the family. But you could assemble a random selection of baby and toddler pictures of the three of us and a stranger couldn’t tell who was who.

7. Matt works at LSU, just up the road from my alma mater in New Orleans, Tulane. When I was in school they were deadly rivals in athletics, made deadlier on the Tulane side by the fact that LSU regularly thumped us in football. I can’t help it, but whenever Matt mentions his connection to LSU, inside my head I hear a derisive song we used to sing about our rival. The first few lines go like this:

“High above the Mississippi,
Standing in plain view,
Stands an old abandoned outhouse,
Known as LSU”

Nothing personal, Matt. It’s like a Pavlovian response!

8. The first time I heard Steve’s voice over the telephone I was totally floored. I knew he had grown up in Boston, but he had not a trace of that distinctive Beantown accent that I had expected. When I mentioned this to him once, he said he was the only person in his family that didn’t have the accent and attributed it to the private school he attended. He told me his brother jokes that the school was “…where Steve lost his r’s” referring to the distinctive “r” Bostonians want to tack on the ends of lots of words.

Eight Random Facts About Steve

Steve here.

I had dreaded being tagged with this meme and was ducking Dr Hypercube when Patrick came in on my blind side. But it turns out that when I brainstormed it with Libby I had more than "2.6". So:

1) I am the oldest of nine children. The last two (twins) were born after I left home.

2) My paternal grandparents came from a tiny village on Lake Maggiore just south of Switzerland. When I came to Magdalena I found that people from neighboring villages had come here in the Nineteenth Century as herders and miners, and several had founded long- lasting ranch dynasties, even though some had lost the original names (Papa, Bianchi, Strozzi, Gianera. I have contemporaries who still remember the strange patois the old folks spoke, more akin to Provencal than modern Italian. I never met such people in Boston, though there are also some in Raton NM. We now call each other "primo", Spanish (!) for cousin. One woman (Sis Olney) looks like the twin of one of my brothers.

3) I live "downtown on a dirt road" in a town of less than a thousand, 100 miles from the nearest city. Yet somehow I own nine sport jackets, four suits, and a tux. I don't own a single T- shirt and haven't for thirty years, except one I bought because it had a cladogram of raptors ( I photographed it and gave it to a poor drunk).

4) I have been married four times, twice briefly and twice to Libby without a divorce (C of E and local Catholic-- LOOONG story). My best man on my first to Libby was John Carlson of Prairie Ice blog and penguin fame

5) I have never owned a new car or truck.

6) My life has been full of looped coincidences. For instance: several months after I had been seeing Libby I called her to find her in a state of (happy) shock. Her mother had been reading Querencia- The- Book and had come to the part of Betsy’s being born in China and her twenty - year- older sister Jane. She called Libby to say that she and Jane had been the first two Anglo babies born in Anwei province.

And she was holding a photo of them sharing a baby carriage when both were less than a week old.

Patty, Lib’s mother, had left China at the age of eight. We put them in touch for the first time in over seventy years. And I was able to tell her who all the people in her China photos were.

7) I have a book that used to belong to Lawrence of Arabia.

8) There were armed equestrian bronzes of a female warrior in all my grammar school classrooms.



And what about the 2.6? Well, I’ll give you two.

Matt trained his first bird in Panama.

Reid is the only archaeologist I know who also used to work in the aerospace industry.

Back when I can! I couldn’t get blogger at all, and got disconnected twice while typing this!

Dillard / Macdonald

One of the books in my "pile" is For The Time Being by Annie Dillard, a writer I've come to think of as a soul mate to Helen Macdonald, but without any better justification than this imprecise observation: Most of us connect words and ideas with the standard tools. We use stout, brown cords, mostly. But sometimes cheap twine, causing later regrets. We use Bungee when we feel up to stretching a bit.

Dillard and Macdonald connect ideas through worm holes. Or they lace them together with unbreakable, invisible nano-fibers.

Here's a passage of Dillard's I just read that caught me. Dillard is pondering ancient Kabbalists:

Their legends have a gilded, antique air. Rabbi Isaac Luria, said his disciple, could understand the language of the birds. Birds' voices contain deep mysteries of the Torah.

Once, while Rabbi Isaac Luria was studying Torah in the fields of Safad, he saw a bunch of souls in a tree. He noticed, he told his disciple, that "all the trees were full of souls beyond number The same was true of the field." God had cast them out for failing to repent. They had heard that he, Isaac Luria, had the power "to repair exiled souls." And so "several souls clad themselves in his prayer to accompany it" to God's very throne. Souls can aid one another; with combined effort and with their rabbi, they can batter a way through to God.

Eight (count 'em, 8)

Some quirk of Blogger prevents me from putting a title to this post in the proper place. But you get the picture.

Patrick has graciously infected us with another blog-cootie--a blootie, if you will---called Eight Random Things.

The rules of this meme: Explain the rules; name eight random things about yourself; pass it along.

The rules about the rules: All rules are made to be broken. Therefore I propose Steve and Reid and I each name 2.6 random things about each other.

Random Thing 1) Steve deliberated at some length about whether to leave the oxtail cooking on the wood stove while we went down the street to meet Libby. In the balance of this deliberation hung the fate of meat (no small consideration) and a good time (ditto) and the general uncertainty of the universe, which reserves the right to burn anyone's house down.

Random Thing 2) Reid once almost made a trip to Baton Rouge to meet me, and might yet. Such a meeting would bring together two sides of a cosmic triangle, leaving the third span to be bridged by a joint Querencia meeting at the annual Quemado Street Party and Brawl.

Random Thing 2.6) Mid July is the time of year we can mark as the beginning of the end of Summer, as evidenced by...?

Random enough for you? Take it away, boys.

The Mapinguary

The NY Times (among others, I saw it in the Denver Post) had this story of a strange beast of the Amazonian jungles that the natives there call the mapinguary - which means "the roaring animal" or "the fetid beast." Many researchers believe that this is a legendary animal, but natives insist that they continue to see them. It is described thus:

"... all accounts agree that the creature is tall, seven feet or more when it stands on two legs, that it emits a strong, extremely disagreeable odor, and that it has thick, matted fur, which covers a carapace that makes it all but impervious to bullets and arrows."

Stories from the natives have intrigued many outsiders:

"So widespread and so consistent are such accounts that in recent years a few scientists have organized expeditions to try to find the creature. They have not succeeded, but at least one says he can explain the beast and its origins.

“It is quite clear to me that the legend of the mapinguary is based on human contact with the last of the ground sloths,” thousands of years ago, said David Oren, a former director of research at the Goeldi Institute in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon River. “We know that extinct species can survive as legends for hundreds of years. But whether such an animal still exists or not is another question, one we can’t answer yet.”

I find the possibility that the legends are based on native contact with Megatherium fascinating and this seems to agree with some North American Indian legends. Adrienne Mayor's interesting book, Fossil Legends of the First Americans, does an excellent job in tying Indian legends of giant birds, giant bears, giant beavers, and other huge monsters to native memories of condors, teratorns, the short-faced bear (Arctodus simus - half again as large as the largest grizzly), the giant beaver (Castorides ohioensis - as large as a black bear) , mammoths and other extinct Pleistocene birds and animals.


But the natives still say that the mapinguary is a living animal. They have almost convinced some people:


"Glenn Shepard Jr., an American ethnobiologist and anthropologist based in Manaus, said he was among the skeptics until 1997, when he was doing research about local wildlife among the Machiguenga people of the far western Amazon, in Peru. Tribal members all mentioned a fearsome slothlike creature that inhabited a hilly, forested area in their territory.

Dr. Shepard said 'the clincher that really blew me away' came when a member of the tribe remarked matter of factly that he had also seen a mapinguary at the natural history museum in Lima. Dr. Shepard checked; the museum has a diorama with a model of the giant prehistoric ground sloth."


snip

"'There’s still an awful lot of room out there for a large sloth to be roaming around,' Dr. Shepard said."

Happy Birthday, Mr. Heinlein

Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Robert A. Heinlein, the great American science fiction writer who died in 1988. His influence has been so great in so many areas that there are tributes to him all over the web this week. Here's a good one and another short one from John Derbyshire. Derb's piece tells of Heinlein's participation in Edward R. Murrow's "This I Believe" in the 1950s and gives a copy of his contribution, something I had not seen before. Here it is borrowed from NRO:


Our Noble, Essential Decency

by Robert A. Heinlein

I am not going to talk about religious beliefs but about matters so obvious that it has gone out of style to mention them. I believe in my neighbors. I know their faults, and I know that their virtues far outweigh their faults.

Take Father Michael down our road a piece. I'm not of his creed, but I know that his goodness and charity and loving kindness shine in his daily actions. I believe in Father Mike. If I'm in trouble, I'll go to him. My next-door neighbor's a veterinary doctor. Doc will get out of bed after a hard day to help a stray cat—no fee, no prospect of a fee. I believe in Doc.

I believe in my townspeople. You can knock on any door in our town, say, "I'm hungry," and you'll be fed. Our town is no exception. I've found the same ready charity everywhere. For the one who says, "The heck with you, I've got mine," there are a hundred, a thousand, who will say, "Sure, pal, sit down." I know that despite all warnings against hitchhikers, I can step to the highway, thumb for a ride, and in a few minutes a car or a truck will stop and someone will say, "Climb in, Mack. How far you going?"

I believe in my fellow citizens. Our headlines are splashed with crime. Yet for every criminal, there are ten thousand honest, decent, kindly men. If it were not so. no child would live to grow up. Business could not go on from day to day. Decency is not news. It is buried in the obituaries, but it is a force stronger than crime.

I believe in the patient gallantry of nurses, in the tedious sacrifices of teachers. I believe in the unseen and unending fight against desperate odds that goes on quietly in almost every home in the land. I believe in the honest craft of workmen. Take a look around you. There never were enough bosses to check up on all that work. From Independence Hall to the Grand Coulee Dam, these things were built level and square by craftsmen who were honest in their bones.

I believe that almost all politicians are honest. For every bribed alderman, there are hundreds of politicians—low paid or not paid at all—doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work. If this were not true, we would never have gotten past the thirteen colonies.

I believe in Roger Young. You and I are free today because of endless unnamed heroes from Valley Forge to the Yalu River. I believe in—I am proud to belong to—the United States. Despite shortcomings—from lynchings, to bad faith in high places—our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history.

And finally, I believe in my whole race—yellow, white, black, red, brown—in the honesty, courage, intelligence, durability, and goodness of the overwhelming majority of my brothers and sisters everywhere on this planet. I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth—that we always make it just by the skin of our teeth—but that we will always make it, survive, endure.

I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching oversized braincase and the opposable thumb—this animal barely up from the apes—will endure, will endure longer than his home planet, will spread out to the other planets—to the stars and beyond—carrying with him his honesty, his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage, and his noble essential decency. This I believe with all my heart.


Heinlein was one of the first science fiction writers (along with Poul Anderson) who got his hooks into me, something I talked about in a previous post. The first Heinlein novel I ever read was Sixth Column, not his best. I believe my favorites are The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers (which has taken much unjust criticism) and I am partial to the Lazarus Long books. I will be the first to admit that some of his later works lack the quality of those in his prime. Making lists of your favorite Heinlein books (and why) is a sort of trivial pursuit game for his fans. I spent so many hours of my youth lost in the enjoyment of reading his books I felt compelled to wish him a happy birthday.

Quote of the Day

Steve's internet access problems are still preventing him from posting. He e-mailed to ask if I could put this up for him.

Steve is a fan of the books, print journalism, and on-line work of John Derbyshire. Derb is also a fan of Steve's. I read his great review of Eagle Dreams long before I met Steve and it was my first notification that he had a new book out.

One of Derb's regular on-line features is a monthly diary. A passage from his June Diary , out earlier this week, resonated for Steve:

"I am more and more at odds with the world. It isn’t just a matter of disagreement about principles or taste. There are ever-expanding zones of early-21st-century life that I just don’t get. I suppose someone looking from the outside would say that this is just the effect of advancing age working on an innately contrary and antisocial personality.

Possibly that’s right. It doesn’t feel like that, though. What does it feel like? It feels like being John the Savage in Brave New World, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mork in Mork and Mindy, or any of the other literary misfits somehow gone astray in spacetime.

Oh well. At least — like Mork and John the Savage, but unlike poor Winston Smith — I’m allowed to roam free. God bless America! And, er, nanu-nanu."

Wingshooter and Russophile Steve didn't mention it in his e-mail, but I'm sure he enjoyed Derb's delight, expressed elsewhere in the June Diary, at his first experiences shooting skeet and firing a Mosin-Nagant and an AK-47.

2Blowhards on Hobbies

We are pleased, as Her Majesty says, to be mentioned again at 2Blowhards! Steve's post on bully whippets made the latest round of blogrolling by team member "Michael." This regular feature (called Elsewhere) is something I watch for at 2BH, sure to provide a captivating sample of the Web in lighting-round format.

Tagged to the end of the list was a link to Michael's earlier post on hobbies. I missed this one first time around and was glad to catch up. Here's a snip:

...Middle-class people don't have careers; they have jobs, if more upscale ones than working-class people do. Careers are for other people, if not outright make-believe. (The idea of enjoying what you do during the workday -- and getting well-paid for it -- seems outrageous. We might as well imagine being movie stars.) If what a man spends his work hours on is A Job, then no doubt such a man needs A Hobby.

We know something about hobbies here at Querencia; in fact, I don't know much about anything else! Michael worries he may not have developed his own taste for hobbies sufficiently. Sufficient for whom, you ask? He wonders that too, although there seems to be pressure on us all to balance work with appropriate play.

For serious hobbyists, finding a balance between work and play is an equally pressing concern, if for entirely opposite reason. This is basically my dilemma, having learned long before my first earned dollar that flying hawks, running dogs and generally chasing small animals around trump just about every other human activity.

At one point Michael immerses himself in the Asian board game, Go, which reminded me of my own temporary compulsion for the game Mancala. Although the board game finally loses its magic for Michael, it hints at something maybe vital to a successful hobby, a mental state that insulates and focuses ones attention to a simple task. This task, I think, is improved by being part logical puzzle, part pretty to watch, and partly something one gets better at with practice. Within these three attributes it may be possible to list all the world's great pastimes.

Future Trends and More Merle

This blog may bend the boundaries of our Querencia, but I'll try to wrangle it back around.

According to AP, "The Pew Research Center survey on marriage and parenting found that children had fallen to eighth out of nine on a list of factors that people associate with successful marriages..."

The survey charted other trends, like cohabitation and divorce, and grouped responses by demographic. If I can find it on the Web, I'll post the study.

AP writer David Crary goes on:

The survey also found that, by a margin of nearly 3-to-1, Americans say the main purpose of marriage is the "mutual happiness and fulfillment" of adults rather than the "bearing and raising of children."

The survey's findings buttress concerns expressed by numerous scholars and family-policy experts, among them Barbara Dafoe Whitehead of Rutgers University's National Marriage Project.

"The popular culture is increasingly oriented to fulfilling the X-rated fantasies and desires of adults," she wrote in a recent report. "Child-rearing values — sacrifice, stability, dependability, maturity — seem stale and musty by comparison."

That quote was going to stand alone as my Crotchety Observation of the Day. But then it reminded me of a question I had during my reading of Merle's Door: What if, as a man with young children, I am more inclined to treat my dog like a child? In the field, we act more like partners, but at home I admit to behaving toward Rina with the same affectionate or cross demeanor my kids receive. Right down to the nonsense baby-talk and kisses on the nose.

In contrast, Ted Kerasote's relationship with Merle seems to have been informed by a different metaphor, developing into something akin to the adult friendships common to his life as (I gather) an unmarried man without children.

I wonder: How does parenting influence behavior toward pets, dogs in particular? Without kids, are we more likely to view our dogs as equal partners? What about the cliche that suggests pets become surrogate children to the childless? Does gender weigh in somehow?

Back to the Pew survey (see?): If Americans are becoming more comfortable with the notion of childless marriages, or of not marrying at all, how is this likely to change the way we see our companion animals?

Feel free to discuss!