Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Heartache

















1963 - Click To Watch:  Lesley Gore

2008 - Click To Watch:  Jazmine Sullivan

Saturday, June 12, 2010

States Of Mind



“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

     Albert Einstein

“There is no greater stressor than to be made responsible for something we cannot control.”

     From a neurologist's lecture

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

As Smart As They Need To Be















Spring has displayed its usual spectacular reawakening this year. As summer approaches, I've been reflecting on the profusion of flora and fauna that surround and sometimes inundate my home and yard. After enjoying many species of birds at our winter feeders, the last few weeks have been replete with Northern flickers, red bellied woodpeckers, rose breasted grosbeaks, and hummingbirds. Great blue herons are regularly overhead and the ground at my feet is chock full of turtles, rabbits, raccoons, chipmunks, and a family of adult and adolescent gray squirrels. Pink lady slippers and Jack-in-the-Pulpits are in abundance, and my favorite insect, the dragonfly is ever present.

 


Several years ago, I read a book titled Altruistic Armadillos, Zen-Like Zebras - A Menagerie Of 100 Favorite Animals by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. What stuck with me from amongst all the anecdotes and observations presented, is that animals are as smart as they need to be. We humans like to think of ourselves as being at the top of the food chain, the pinnacle of evolution, and the best and brightest of the bunch. But, animals, in whatever niche they fill, in whatever domain or realm they occupy, have carved out a space for themselves that has taken millenia to sort out. The perfection of the ebb and flow of their individual and species existence is nothing short of awesome. How odd, that as humans, we take such a different tack in our approach to our surroundings and our egotistical notions about our place on this planet.


Simply put, I think animals adapt, where humans seek to dominate. I'm not knocking what we as a species have accomplished. It's just that our sense of mastery, power, and ownership is sometimes at odds with the world around us - that fragile sphere we occupy - and with our adaptive neighbors who seem to have gotten along just fine without us.