Thursday, September 17, 2020

I ran across this interesting comment: In back-boned animals, being social means having to keep track of many other individuals. It’s understandable that science may categorize “back-boned” as a key identifier among physiologies. Animals with a backbone are called vertebrates. The backbone is is a column of bones supporting the body, and also protecting the spinal cord. Examples of creatures that lack backbones are bees and ants.

It’s striking that back-boned suggests unique social inclinations, and seems unarguable. My brain’s listing of back-boned types are those we know, love, and admire, like dogs, horses, cats, people, bears, fish, and…you get the picture. These are social, and some are a little anti-social, but all keep track tightly or loosely of others in their categories, and of others in different type categories.

For example, fish behavior illustrates tracking, too. (A recent underwater video wowed me, so fish pop into my mind.) The small freshwater aquariums in my home have me watching individuals and groups, for signs of wellness, sluggishness, or illness. These back-boned swimmers track similar others by schooling, and a type that’s cautious toward another type tracks to avoid closeness.

Behaviors of back-boned creatures suggest also that they have large brains. But, consider non-backboned creatures with tiny brains, like ants and bees. They’re mostly thought of pre-programmed to do specific work for which they’re hatched. Ant research teaches, however, that these creatures demonstrate amazing abilities to adapt, both in physiology and behavior, during times of great need. Bee studies are showing scientists that some bees have developed larger brains after having adapted to more varied diets.

About the broad spread in which humans track others, I’m wowed. For example, there’s tracking as I work in a part-time job and recognize frequent shoppers. We’ve become friends and discuss mutual events since our last meeting. At home, folks in my neighborhood may meet casually and stay fairly-closely in contact. And then, there’s social media making it possible to track early-life contacts. Social media can add cement to recent and physically-distant contacts. Oh and Zoom! But later for Zoom, as we’re still learning.

Dear Friends: All fascinating, for who’d a thought so much can ride on back-bones? Diana

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Perhaps it’s because we’re experiencing a long stretch of heat, smoky air, and very dry weather. Perhaps it’s because few creatures might be interesting as octopuses. I paused a Netflix series I’m following and watched instead the newly-added documentary, “My Octopus Teacher”.

It took a creative team seven years to put together this video, filmed during a year in which a South African documentary cameraman swam daily in the ocean. His swimming routine began as a counter to his high burnout from overwork and deep feelings of alienation from work and family life. To “find himself”, he trained himself to swim in the very cold Atlantic, so cold it forced him to work hard and long before his body could adjust to the temperature. The effort took his mind off all else, until eventually he could slip easily into the ocean and swim.

During a daily swim, he discovered on the ocean floor a curious-looking rock, which turned out to be a young female octopus in disguise. He followed that octopus to her den, and in days afterwards, found her often. He became interested in studying her and engaged a fellow documentary cameraman to captured his swims with the animal. The camera beautifully captures over time how the swimmer and octopus develop a unique and lasting relationship.

We swim along, too, in that marine world where surrounding water brings senses of closeness and silence, deepening our comprehension of the enormous ocean-supported beauty and intelligence. Above all, we’re introduced to this octopus. We watch as she swims and plays, as she hunts and is hunted, when she becomes damaged and manages to recover, and then as she mates and finally gives birth.

It’s unique, this mutual trust between octopus and human. She can be seen wrapping her body around the swimmer’s hand and holding tightly so that together they may swim. The swimmer’s intense focus on the octopus leads more toward his healing from burnout from overwork. This truly is a love story.

Watching, I was fascinated, having wished to know more about octopuses. My scientific readings have described them as highly intelligent creatures. Some marine scientists who keep an octopus as a pet describe ways in which the creatures move, respond, interact, and interestingly also display emotions. Without having seen a real octopus, I couldn’t visualize one totally from written descriptions.

“My Octopus Teacher” shows a whole octopus–its physical dimensions, its ways of moving and of resting, its high intelligence, and its capacity for emotion. The video’s human does a masterful job of explaining his responses to her. He speaks to the relationship, and eventually after its ending, shares what more he’s come to understand.

Dear Friends: I recommend this hour-and-a-half video, it offers joy and learning. Diana

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

My weekend is over, today means returning to work. Work is tiring, cuts into time for other (and to me, more important) activities. But I’m grateful for a commitment that forces me to be out and about. These throat-burning smoke days are easier among a variety of folks in a busy store. Best are the opportunities at work to greet old friends and make new ones.

Well, let’s not forget the benefits of a regular paycheck, I like that, too, and especially now as our economy struggles mightily to find a footing that may encourage everybody, regardless of economic status, toward optimism about the future. Currently in our daily living the economy, and other alive elements, like fires, riots, and declining environmental health, rolled together are taking a massive toll on American optimism.

Remember this booster-phrase? “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!” Well, it’s an opening and for sure no end game. Sure we fear, but without action also to improve how our governing bodies make decisions and investments, modern societies may be heading toward self-destructing. There are no caveats to boost this mega-destructive 2020. All talk must be about planning and funding needed action for sustainable fixing.

I’ll be happier escaping to work where my role is to smile and parrot-talk: “Here’s a product, it costs such and such, is on a shelf over there, and hey, take some home today!” For a few hours, unless customers pause to share their takes on what’s happening beyond the store, I’ll escape from the driving worries about what our stars may be holding for us.

Dear Friends: The heavy smoke disallows escapes from social/environmental needs. Diana

Monday, September 14, 2020

I’m drinking a ground coffee infused with functional mushrooms to start this day. Early this spring I got interested in mushrooms, when my friend Dave introduced the pleasures in hunting for wild versions in the high forest. His understanding of fungi made me aware of a larger concept of mushroom worthiness way beyond good-eating. The massive fungi world has potentials to improve human health and clean the environment. Eating mushrooms apparently can strengthen our immune systems, and today’s experts are employing fungi against environmental abuses.

Over the years I’ve wondered if mushrooms also offer calming qualities. I can’t recall when or why this notion popped up and haven’t explored it, but it might be worth looking into.

We need every ounce of help relative to immunity, calmness, and environment. Up and down the West Coast, air quality is poor to zero, and we’re ill-prepared victims to numerous wildfires. While inside our homes and vehicles, we breathe heavy smoke and eyes burn, we’re coughing and worrying. I’m situated beyond active fire lines, and folks closer to active fires, and those awaiting orders to evacuate, soon will offer fuller perspectives.

There’s no need to recount how humans have exploited and neglected worldwide forest-lands and infrastructures. Appropriate ongoing funding, and routine maintenance to support environmental care and longevity, would have provided more and at the ready highly trained firefighters with improved methods of control.

Anyway, my Laird’s coffee is infused with such as Chaga, Cordyceps, & Lion’s Mane mushrooms. It’s on grocery shelves, is an eye-catcher. I love learning about coffees and drinking them, so grabbed a bag. But I brewed the Laird’s only this morning, hastened by having noticed pharmacy products show up that are mushroom based and being promoted as supporting the immune system. I don’t know the truth of such claims, am mainly just interested, and always willing to sample coffees.

Dear Friends: Interests and activities may ease worries of nearby, gobbling firestorms. Diana

Sunday, September 13, 2020

My brain plays tricks on me. Recognizing each makes me laugh and feel irritation and anger at myself. Okay, everybody suffers brain tricks. For example, “losing keys”. Recently held and somewhere set down, they’re where! Not lost and must be nearby, forcing searches in all the usual places. On finding our keys, we acknowledge a brain trick and go on with our business.

Recently, my brain’s trick was a lulu. While working at my part-time job and feeling bored, I put pen to paper and started creating a story. I’ve yearned to start writing creatively, imagined my scribbles as beginning what might become a novel. My writing was rapid and tiny, my hand seemed moving on its own, and from my mind words flowed. I felt on my way. Upon folding that paper and putting it into my apron pocket, it seemed my creative aspect was being realized, and about time!

I got busy and forgot the writing until later that evening when I looked for the paper. Certain to have set it with the day’s mail, I searched but to no avail. I looked in all the usual places but no story-start to be found. Might I have left it in the apron pocket?

Because of the pandemic, on arriving home from work I remove all my outerwear and toss it into the washing machine. The next day I again wear everything, and with two gains: first, all’s clean, and second, no time wasted looking for an acceptable outfit. Upon remembering my apron, I hurried to the dryer. It’s open door revealed bits of dried paper floating, and for sure, my story.

My brain was protecting me from work I’ve been avoiding. Frankly, I’m an untrained writer who lacks confidence in my ability to create a long fiction. Plus, I’ve minimal time to focus on the great effort of writing decently. My heart wants to write a story, my mind doesn’t think it possible. That had been a surprising moment, finding myself putting pen to paper and scribbling. It signalled a big want.

Those bits of paper floating in the dryer told a story that may stay short or go long. After a couple of days thinking, I’ll move on and use what’s been learned. This morning, I began a new version of my story. It’s being written and saved on the computer, and in random moments, may be continued on my iPhone or iPad.

Dear Friends: Your inner-self gives clues to a mighty struggle of moving forward. Diana

Saturday, September 12, 2020

Smoke thick enough to cut with a knife, all day yesterday, and still hangs darkly as this day begins. The fires haven’t crossed the Cascades. We on the east side keenly are aware of blazes and hope they’re contained over west, especially before an occurrence of big winds.

Staying indoors doesn’t help, it’s equally smokey. Yesterday, while in Costco and masked, a smoke-smell was strong. In a short time my eyes were burning. Everybody inside the store said smoke was affecting them. Some customers had managed to cross the Cascades to Bend before that highway’s shut-down. They described devastation they’d seen and concerns about families and friends with threatened homes.

I think about preparing to escape in case Bend residents receive a Level Three evacuation notice. While that seems unlikely, who can say? Yesterday, the contents of shopping carts suggested that residents are uneasy. Those carts carried (besides many cases of wine) large boxes of survival foods packaged to retain a half-life of nearly-forever. Also carts full of storage containers went out, maybe destined to move supplies quickly.

Maybe it’s not mostly from our collective fear of wildfires? Maybe it’s because we’re forced simultaneously to cope-on through this never-ending pandemic? Together, can’t these inspire humans to fill shopping carts with such as booze, storage containers, and sweat-clothing.

It’s about our attempts to work through an ongoing panic mode that we now recognize has enlarged. It’s about humans struggling against nature’s most aggressive elements. They are confronting humans to the limits of our current preparations and capabilities.

Dear Friends: The wildfires are add-ons to an already lengthy, exhausting panic-storm. Diana

Friday, September 11, 2020 (Nine-Eleven)

Today, we remember one of those remarkable events that within us are a lifelong “memory series”. This one begins exactly at the moment we became aware of airplanes attacking New York’s Twin Towers. We’ve frozen that moment in our memory banks. For me, living in Los Angeles and early in the morning talking with a close friend, I learned that on-the-spot video had captured the collapsings of New York’s tallest buildings. Those moments, of sudden awareness and my after-the-fact witnessing on TV, and the bravery of passengers on American Airlines 77, are etched in my memory and still painful.

Associated experiences over many years also are well brain-etched. There are instants of murderings that took away America’s JFK, RFK, and MLK. I remember MM’s sudden death, the OJ trial’s oddly-effective glove-defense, the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, and the mass shootings that killed many gathered at school and in public events.

My earliest etched-memory is of a very old 1949 event, when three-year-old Kathy Fiscus fell into a narrow well in San Marino, CA. The newspapers for days reported on rescue attempts, all failed. Then a little girl myself, that locked me into a lifelong fear of old wells hiding in open areas. Even today, while riding horseback and occasionally bushwacking across natural landscapes, I fear evidence of previous dwellers and undiscovered wells.

We are social beings who participate in smallish family and work-related groups. We’re also highly connected to the whole human social system. In essence, what happens to any of us impacts all of us. After nine-eleven, Americans became highly aware of what is happening worldwide. A current international case in point is the terrible murdering of Jamal Khashoggi–a shocking social travesty, it is bolstering an humane outcry for social justice.

Dear Friends: Remembering events, implications, feelings, and lessons-learned. Diana

Thursday, September 10, 2020

The skies over Central Oregon are murky gray from wildfires raging over west. After burning small towns just across the mountains, those fires have closed the Cascades highway. Our local air quality is poor and the changing weather confuses. Many active blazes up and down the west coast have slimmed available resources for firefighting rapidly.

I’m thinking about how to evacuate. I’d pack my small horse trailer with supplies and if there’s time would hitch quickly and depart. But above all, my animals must be saved. In a case of very little time, I’d load the horses and stuff the big trailer’s tack-room (and my truck’s back seat) with pets. Off we’d go, and depending on circumstances, I’d return for the supply trailer or forget it.

At least, that’s a plan and seems easy enough. But in real time evacuating would be chaotic.

The thing is, it’s not fires usually that worry me. I more often wonder about a possibility of escape if the South Sister’s rumbling increases until that mountain explodes. While it’s not a likely happening, at least soon, we musn’t forget that not so-long-ago Mt. St. Helen’s rumbling fronted a sudden explosion that devastated a large area. If hot lava from South Sister suddenly rains on our area, there’ll be no time to escape. Periodically, I consider this.

I’m not a doomsday predictor. I’ve met many who are during my years of working part-time at Costco. It’s surprising the number of people who shop actively for “what if supplies”. They seek nonperishable items, that will over time will remain edible, or could become negotiable in periods of shortages.

These current unusual times fueled by pandemic and fire are the tip of an iceberg. Worldwide, nations have wasted resources. Instead of developing infrastructure, equipment, know-how, and manpower for emergencies, our created world is unable to communicate, collaborate, cooperate, and agree to apply resources in a manner to assure longevity. Instead, our world is a victim to known forces of nature that for too-long were ignored and underfunded.

Whether any planning works appropriately depends on what’s foreseeable vs. what ain’t.

Dear Friends: Let’s think ahead without going overboard, and for sure vote. Diana

Wednesday, September 09, 2020

I’ll be bored on this day at work while representing a new product. Customers only may look at it, and so will ask few (if any) questions about this product’s worthiness or otherwise. Instead, they’ll ask lots about why we’re not serving food samples.

I’ll have to stand for hours in one spot. So, I’ll amuse myself by reading t-shirts. It’s actually fun, for many are adorned with clever designs and messages. One of my favorites was, “Man Beer (the one you’ve been practicing for).” I checked the internet and discovered Man Beer is really a brand. I’m starting to carry a small notebook and intending to record some of the better t-shirt messages.

Mainly, I’ll be watching people’s masks, observing how they’re being worn. Many folks are doing the right thing by covering completely their mouths and noses with masks. I’ve been hearing shopping mom’s reminding their masked kids to lift the masks over their noses.

On the other hand, many adults, and of course their kids, are rejecting the idea and purpose of masks. They wear them below their noses, or worst, leave them hanging loosely around their necks. The store’s employees often remind shoppers to reset their masks properly, but to little avail.

It’s a sad situation.

Some customers who pause and want to talk, want to try convincing me that the pandemic is a hoax, doesn’t exist, and that all about it is BS. Well, I disagree. I step back from them, and from others improperly masked, who try engagine me in conversations.

This part-time job keeps demo folks focused on sanitation. We keep our tables and the big plastic shields well-sanitized, change our gloves and masks frequently, don’t touch our faces before washing our hands. As for me on arriving home after each workday, there’s the extra step of tossing all my work-related outerwear (including sneakers) into the washing machine.

Stay away coronavirus.

Dear Friends: “Reality is in the eyes of the observer.” As for this virus, I’m a believer. Diana

Tuesday, September 08, 2020

Central Oregon’s having a coldslide! It’s chilly out after yesterday’s mega-windy late afternoon. This evening, I’ll pull from storage an electric blanket and have it at-the-ready. So amazing, how quickly our weather changes. Just a little experience with its patterns teaches locals to pay attention.

Yesterday, Anna and I rode in an eastside public land. We got started late, after suddenly remembering that hunting season has begun, requiring us all to be outfitted colorfully. I have for Pimmy a set of bright red pack bags, but she’s too fat, and we couldn’t secure the buckles. So Pimmy had to stay home. I found a gold outdoor jacket for my Ranger, hounddog, and he went along. Anna figured out how to brighten the horses and I dug out for us a couple of bright vests.

Becoming more colorful needed this practice session. Our next preparations will be more efficient. Hunting seasons are frights for us who enjoy playing in the forests. Mostly, we fear newer hunters, those eager beavers impatiently wanting to take shots. I worry less for easier-to-spot horseback riders than for my entourage of dogs and lagging-follower donkey.

We escaped hunter issues yesterday while en route by making a sudden decision to nix the forest. Instead, we turned toward a safer desert area. If we’d thought ahead, all the dogs and Pimmy could have gone along, but c’est la vie, and “next time”.

Hey, ride with us! 27 seconds of Sunni following Ranger & Rosie: https://youtu.be/1eCu3zvp5Sc

Dear Friends: Yesterday, late afternoon turned huffing-puffing, smokey and dim. Diana