Big Chill

Thursday, May 20, 2021  (6 days before May’s Super “Flower” Moon rises fullest to Earth + an eclipse!)

How can it be that after a string of 70+ degree days, this area sinks to 50 degrees? Now, where are all those winter jackets? Good grief, why this chill-out just when Miles visits the groomer for a summer coat-shaving?

Adding to misery are northern winds that increase the chill.

I hunkered in, didn’t lunge horses, nor take a thoughtful walk, nor scribble in a journal. Parked inside, I watched Disney Channel’s wonderful documentary, “Secrets of the Whales”.

Its credits are excellent: Executive producer, James Cameron; narrator, Sigourney Weaver; gorgeous photography by National Geographic’s, Brian Skerry.

The series’ four episodes feature five Whale and Dolphin species: Orca (killer whales), Humpback whales, Beluga whales, Sperm whales, and very rare Narwhals. Other species that also appear: Sea turtles, Polar bears, Southern elephant seals, Herring, and Gentoo penguins.

It’s about whale behaviors, and how very effectively the animals can communicate, raise offspring, maintain close families, hunt for food, and train young whales, preparing new generations for future leadership. Scientists consider whales among this planet’s most intelligent beings and equal to humans. The section on Belugas emphasizes the pod’s complex communications, they’re capable of giving individuals actual call names.

Whale species have intense rivalries, they’re mortal enemies–and that’s similar to human behavior. Each whale species fosters within its pods meaningful relationships, team planning, cooperation, and again that’s human-like. This series is “heady stuff”, and we learn, as the series’ creators explain they did in filming and editing.

It can reawaken an ugly painfulness of human history. We cringe remembering how hunters harpooned and destroyed fabulous sea creatures. We cringe at the rampant murders of elephants and hippos, just for ivory and tossed aside. Equally awful, that for hundreds of years one human race managed to dominate by enslaving other humans, and allowing certain religious beliefs to destroy any that differed.

The series reminds us that we humans also are the ocean’s whales and the land’s ants. We’re intelligent and capable like them. Humans need rebalancing, to regain the sense of all beings sharing alikeness. That would require rethinking, and perhaps redirecting current technologies, communications, and social processes.

We’ve grown accustomed to ongoing progress, to promises of more and better ahead, to make us smarter, more special. Meanwhile, eye-opening underwater world whales think and behave similar to ourselves–and effectively (gasp!) without technology. Whale success comes from understanding how to communicate and team superbly.

Some steps could assist reconsiderations and possibly renewals among on-land cultures. Take today’s governing bodies, arguing and in disarray. Congress could benefit by studying as a group the social and working behaviors of whales and ants, and then by applying learning to adjust its processes.

Dear Friends: Maybe somebody can explain, what the heck anyway is a bitcoin! Diana