MandoBob's Blog

The Castration of Folk Music -- Performance Copyrights, Part I

2012-01-23T21:11:00.000-06:00

I left for college (Oklahoma State University) in the fallof 1972. The following year, I took anelective class, unrelated to my major, which would have a profound effect on meto this day. It was called The Geographyof Country Music—a sociology course taught by Dr. George Carney. God blessyou, George, for connecting me with my passion. I also taught myself to playguitar that year, using an Lp instruction record I picked up somewhere and anold pawnshop Kay guitar with f-holes.

In his class, I found my way into a whole new world of music:from ancient British Isle ballads--locked up for safekeeping in Appalachia--to old-time hillbilly, fiddle and banjo music, to bluegrass and earlycountry music--before the Grand Old Opry was even old. And I learned of thesocial forces and changes in our nation’s history that determined where musicmigrated to.

And oh, the blues, and how that morphed, with Europeaninstruments, into jazz, and how it all blended together like gumbo into rhythm and blues inthe ‘40’s before emerging, butterfly-like, into rock and roll in the ‘50’s. [it’sironic that rock & roll put so many performers of these ancestral genresout of business for a number of years—Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, MuddyWaters—these guys couldn’t get gigs when rock & roll burst upon the scene!]

My new musical heroes were the Woody Guthrie’s and PeteSeegers. And Pete’s brother, Mike, and his New Lost City Ramblers with theiracademic fidelity to old-time string band music. And the Highwoods String Band,the Fuzzy Mountain String Band, and the eclectic Red Clay Ramblers. There were hotpickers like Norman Blake and Doc Watson. And blues guys like Robert Johnson,Elmore James, and Brownie & Sonny. Jazz guys like Django. And all the bluegrass,too. The year I started college, the borderline-hippie Nitty Gritty Dirt Band recordedtheir historic sessions with many of the legends of country, folk, andbluegrass music and released the Will TheCircle Be Unbroken album. I devoured it.

But the core of it, for me, was the folk music. The whole process of it. Pete Seeger is fond oftelling his story about jamming with Woody Guthrie and, even with traditionalsongs (public domain), Pete was never sure which verses were the original onesand which were ones that Woody added. And Woody thought this was the way itshould be--how new songs came to be. He once commented on another songwriter to Pete saying, “Oh, he juststole from me, but I steal from everybody!”Pete termed this “the folk process” of music evolution—a healthy, naturalcultural phenomenon. Like biological/ecological succession.

Pete helped to start Sing Out! Magazine in the 1960’s which is still published today. In each issue,they would have the music and lyrics to new songs from the folk singers of theday. Some of Bob Dylan’s iconic songs were first learned by baby boomer musiciansby leafing through the pages of Sing Out!. And that was the point: gettingpeople to sing the songs! And the songs were such a part of what the Sixtiescultural revolution was about. Music was the vehicle that moved the movements. PeteSeeger dusted off an old hymn and offered it up at a civil rights gathering. MartinLuther King loved it and We ShallOvercome soon became the unofficial anthem of the movement.

On the weekends, in the college years, I played rhythmguitar for old ranchers at the Old Time Fiddlers’ Association meetings inRipley, OK. I jammed with my new musical friends and even played in a coffeehouseon campus with a couple of buds as The South Sea Drifters (we played folk andbluegrass while dressed in Hawaiian shirts). We played whatever we liked—and whateverwe could pull off!

Flash forward a few decades: the band I now play in, theHogeye Ramblers, is having trouble finding a venue to play in because of somestrange legal issues involving performance rights to copyrighted music.

In my next post, I’ll share about how this simple folkprocess of music performance and free sharing of songs has been corrupted (canI say castrated?) by the same sort of corporate interests that alarm theOccupy Wall Street folks and that caused a groundswell of reaction against theSOPA/PITA legislation (i.e., regulating the internet in the name of copyrightinfringement). I promise you, the music nazi’s are lurking in your town, too!It threatens coffeehouse owners, restaurants, clubs and even yoga instructorswith hefty lawsuits. Those of you who know me well, know that I am not ordinarilyan alarmist or a loose cannon, but this is real. More to come …

PostScript: Youare more than welcome to visit the Hogeye Ramblers on YouTube but beforewarned—some of the songs may involve copyright infringement overperformance rights! And for heaven’s sake, don’t let anyone see you tappingyour foot or, even worse, start singing the songs yourself …

Ice Flowers and Frostweed

2011-12-28T20:02:00.000-06:00

About three years ago, my wife and I were taking a winter walk to the back of our property. It was a nice, sunny morning, but had frosted hard during the night and the air temperature was still below freezing. After crossing the creek we walked into a clearing between two tree-lined areas. We saw the strangest meadow of flowers we'd ever seen--the flowers were made of ice! Scores of them!

We determined that each was coming from the broken stub of a woody stalk from a perennial plant that grew the previous season. We eventually learned that they were a perennial composite wildflower called Frostweed (Verbesina virginica). The next year we were able to establish them in our backyard. (I also learned not to allow the pretty white flowers to go to seed else all of my non-mowed areas will become a meadow of Frostweed).

The stalks grow 5-7 feet tall and can attract butterflies and other insects. The Wildflowers of Arkansas book says that the leaves are eaten by deer. They grow along streams, roadsides, open slopes and valleys and bloom in late summer and fall.

The really cool thing is that in late fall or on certain days of winter--when the ground is well-saturated and unfrozen, but the nights are cold--the bottom of the frostweed stems will still actively pump water from the perennial roots up through the base of the stem. Since the above ground portion of the stem is dead wood and usually has broken off, the water has nowhere to go but out. The water hits the cold air and immediately turns to ice. The water pressure inside the plant continues to push it out in gorgeous ribbons of ice called "ice flowers" or "frost flowers". Each one is unique. The thin ribbons are adorned with minute striations or lines--like spun ice--when viewed up close, formed by ribs in the tissues at the base of the plant. By late morning they have all disappeared due to the warm sun. Their ephemeral beauty makes them all the more special.

I've seen this nondescript plant for years without giving it any special thought or knowing its name. Now I notice it all along the roadsides and bordering riparian areas (wooded corridors along creeks and rivers). I've seen the pretty ice flowers along Hwy 16 as I drive to work.

Here are some more photos of our frost flowers ...

Here's where I stripped the outer layer of lower stem to see where the "frost" is coming from:

Proto-Rap and Bob Dylan

2011-09-25T21:12:00.001-05:00

I confess that I am not a fan of rap "music". The quotation marks symbolize my problem with it, and with its twin, hip-hop--they simply are not musical to my ear. This genre sounds like angry people talking fast as if they are making a game of it, so I'll have to listen over and over to slowly unwrap their message. Some are crude and vulgar and demeaning to women. No thanks. Lest I be viewed as a crusty, old musical curmudgeon, let me offer a couple of positive points before I move into my thesis. I will say that rap has provided a platform for many people--black, white, and brown--to give voice to the issues in their lives. And rap/hip-hop has penetrated and expanded into middle-class white America and pop radio maybe beyond even that of the 1960's musical icons. That said, let's move to Mr. '60's Protest Icon, himself--Bob Dylan.

For the last several years, a recurring thought to me has been that maybe Bob Dylan invented rap. Every time I hear his song, Subterranean Homesick Blues, I think, "that is not rap, but it sounds like its parent". It was recorded way back in 1965 (when I was 11), on the Bringing It All Back Home album, which, by the way, also included his iconic Mr. Tambourine Man. (if I'm overusing the word "iconic", it's hard to think about Bob Dylan in the context of the '60's without using it. Dylan is the one that moved popular music out of the rut of silly songs like the Beatles "I love you, yeah, yeah, yeah" and on to more substantial ideas.) Here is a video from a 1967 documentary--before there were music videos--of Bob Dylan creatively fooling around with his song playing in the audio.

Check out the bearded guy in the background who is the last to meander away. He is Allen Ginsburg, famous beat poet of the 1950's and one of the mentors of Bob Dylan and scads of other hippie generation movers and shakers.

Let me know what you think of my thesis about Bob Dylan being the first rapper. By the way, Dylan's song is just another incarnation of various talking blues songs that Dylan heard from his other mentor, Woody Guthrie. It seems that even the most creative artists reshape other artists' ideas, add their own reflection, and present them to a new audience. That's good . . . what Pete Seeger calls "the folk process".

A Short History of Strawberries

2011-08-30T21:37:00.004-05:00

Here’s a photo of some strawberries my daughter and her family in Oregon picked this summer. Last year, my wife and I picked strawberries at a small farm near our other daughter/son-in-law in North Carolina. Strawberries are wonderful! (I hated them as a kid because of a texture issue I had with the seeds; what was I thinking!) They are grown in pockets throughout most of the country. Sometimes I’m curious as to where a particular food came from, its history, so to speak. So why not strawberries?

Also, I was intrigued by the description of vast meadows of wild strawberries in early America--acres upon acres of them--given in a book I am reading, called Travels of William Bartram. Bartram was a second generation plant explorer/collector from Pennsylvania who kept a detailed log of a 2-year long trip he spent exploring the wilds of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida in the early 1770's, shortly before the Revolutionary War. It is a fascinating account of encounters with alligators in the middle of the night, beautiful wilderness, and friendly encounters with native Indian cultures. Here is an excerpt about coming upon a huge field of wild strawberries in Cherokee country of North Georgia (note: the spelling and grammar are all his):

Proceeding on our return to town, continued through part of this high forest skirting on the meadows: began to ascend the hills of a ridge which we were under the necessity of crossing; and having gained its summit, enjoyed a most enchanting view; a vast expanse of green meadows and strawberry fields; a meandering river gliding through, saluting in its various turnings the swelling, green, turfy knolls, embellished with parterres of flowers and fruitful strawberry beds; flocks of turkies strolling about them; herds of deer prancing in the meads or bounding over the hills; companies of young, innocent Cherokee virgins, some busy gathering the rich fragrant fruit, others having already filled their baskets, lay reclined under the shade of floriferous and fragrant native bowers of Magnolia, Azalea, . . . disclosing their beauties to the fluttering breeze, and bathing their limbs in the cool fleeting streams; whilst other parties, more gay and libertine, were yet collecting strawberries, or wantonly chasing their companions, tantalising them, staining their lips and cheeks with the rich fruit.

The sylvan scene of primitive innocence was enchanting, and perhaps too enticing for hearty young men long to continue idle spectators. In fine, nature prevailing over reason, we wished at least to have a more active part in their delicious sports.

Bartram and his companion, a local trader, were soon discovered by some older Cherokee matrons who sounded an alarm that sent the young ladies scattering for cover. Some of them subsequently emerged and offered the travelers some fresh strawberries:

We accepted a basket, sat down and regaled ourselves on the delicious fruit, encircled by the whole assembly of the innocent jocose sylvan nymphs: by this time the several parties, under the conduct of the elder matrons, had disposed themselves in companies on the green, turfy banks.

My young companion, the trader, by concessions and suitable apologies for the bold intrusion, having compromised the matter with them, engaged them to bring their collections to his house at a stipulated price: we parted friendly.

I began to wonder if the strawberry was indeed a native plant or had been introduced by early colonists from Europe. After all, Europeans had been a constant presence in the area since the founding of St. Augustine in 1565. By Bartram's time, it had been well over 200 years--nearly as long as his colonial times to our own.

The story of the strawberry is really pretty cool. When Europeans came to Massachusetts the native Indians were already cultivating beds of native strawberries (Fragaria virginiana). When the Spanish arrived to conquer Chile and Peru in the 1500's, the natives had been cultivating and trading strawberries (Frageria chiloensis), probably for many centuries. Unfortunately, the eastern strawberries were very small compared to today's strawberries (actually the native strawberry still grows in wild in parts of the Eastern US); and the western strawberry (grows from Chile to Alaska along the western mountains) was larger but not as flavorful.

It wasn't until 1712 when an enterprising Frenchman named Frezier brought back seven plants from Chile with particularly large fruit. He planted them in France and for 30 years they were propagated and flourished, but never produced fruit. Finally, someone happened to plant some strawberries from the American colonies next to these beds. What Frezier didn't know was that the western strawberry (F. chiloensis) had male and female flowers on different plants. He had only collected female plants. The male pollen from the eastern strawberry plants (F. virginiana) fertilized the Chilean female flowers and the fortuitous result was a large, flavor-packed hybrid. All of our cultivated strawberry varieties today (except ever-bearing types) are descended from this bed of strawberries growing in France. Isn't it ironic that our two native species of strawberry had to go all the way to France to get together, then come back home and fill our baskets.

Remember this bit of botanical serendipity next time you bite into a big 'ol juicy strawberry!

Post Script: William Bartram also spent time, on numerous occasions, as a guest in native Indian villages. There he observed another way to eat strawberries: the women would grind the fruit with mortar and pestle into a mush, then mix it in with corn mush and drop it in hot bear fat for strawberry corn fritters or bake it for strawberry corn bread. Try it out! (maybe sans the bear fat ...)

[facts gleaned from Plants For Man by Robert Schery and the website of Vegetarians in Paradise; for a more complete account, go to this link)]

The Down Side of Democracy

2011-07-30T12:13:00.000-05:00

The projected date of default of U.S. treasury obligations looms like the shadow of El Capitan does over pretty Yosemite Valley. As I write this post, the deadline arrives next week. Congress is busy, but at the wrong things . . . busy voting on partisan legislation as they prepare for the next round of elections in 2012--knowing full well that the current bills will never pass both House and Senate or be signed by the President. Even within each political party there is wide disagreement. All observers agree that the Congress is pathetically dysfunctional.

We are witnessing one of the downsides of democracy. Our leaders are producing political campaign fodder instead of skillful agreements. All this pushing and shoving is just jacking around on a narrow trail that leads the country past a dangerous ledge--way down at the bottom of which is a wrecked economy . . . and the beginning of our new chapter in world history as a second-rate, has-been world power. Did you know that the Netherlands was once the world superpower? Portugal was big time! It can happen. China and Brazil are no longer economic slouches.

At the risk of sounding somehow unAmerican, I must pass on what I learned from the teaching of Charles Simpson, an Alabama pastor in the 1980's. He said that democracy is not the best form of government, but monarchy by an all-powerful, all-wise, all-merciful king. In other words, democracy may be the best government formed by men on earth. But as we are witnessing now, democracy can be weak and indecisive, even foolish. A king who knows the right thing to do simply declares it. 'Nuf said. The kingdom of heaven will some day rule the earth in the person of King Jesus. And only then will we have the perfect government.

Beauty Upon Beauty

2011-06-26T16:24:00.002-05:00

It is hard to look at a sunset without stopping to appreciate the utter beauty of it. To then connect that beauty to God’s beauty is an appropriate response of worship. The beauty that we see in God’s creation is only a reflection of His own beauty and majesty.

Three hour-long sunset during the summer soltice in Alaska; taken at midnight
(courtesy of my daughter, Nellie, and her husband, Dustin Vail, 2008 )

My wife and I sometimes try to name all the colors that we see in a sunset. There are problems with that: I’m not an artist, so my vocabulary of color names is limited to something like the 24-pack of Crayolas™ (remember "periwinkle"?). God’s palette is much richer than my vocabulary. Another problem is my lack of perception of all the subtle nuances of color, one ever so slightly different from another. And then, as soon as I try to describe the colors in one single cloud, the colors have all changed as the angle of the sun shifts down or as the cloud itself shifts.

Sunsets are a dynamic art; kind of like those little tubular kaleidoscopes you looked through as a kid, the colors and patterns constantly changing as you twist the end of the cardboard tube. Beauty upon beauty. Sunsets are like that. God is like that … beauty upon beauty if we will stop to notice. Lifestyle worship is about stopping to notice the beauty, the attributes and nature of God—how He impacts our lives, how we don’t deserve it—and then responding appropriately in praise and thanksgiving to Him . . . lavish praise, free and unbridled praise.

Did you know that the LORD is listening and hears when you praise Him? . . . And that He responds? . . . And that it makes Him smile? . . . The Bible says:

“For the LORD takes delight in his people …

Psalm 145 is like a hymn of praise to God, written by King David nearly 3000 years ago. Praise is very much a verb, an action. Our English word, “praise”, is from an Old French word meaning “to prize”.

Check out Psalm 145. As you read through it, notice all the verbs, I will:

praise…exalt…extol…commend…tell…speak…meditate…proclaim…celebrate…joyfully sing.

You can use Psalm 145 to look at a few of the many sides of God, like a God-kaleidoscope, to see Him as He truly is: beauty upon beauty.

No Wonder They Make Such A Racket!

2011-06-05T23:51:00.007-05:00

The sound is pervading, it’s unrelenting . . . surreal. Heard from a distance, one imagines some kind of industrial equipment humming along; or maybe a mass cheer from a far off football stadium—a cheer that doesn’t end. Up close, it sounds like thousands of rattlesnakes in the trees. It’s been thirteen years in the making and now one month of noise-making. We’ve been invaded by the Thirteen Year Cicada.

The love calls begin at daybreak and end at dark . . . until the next daybreak when it starts all over again. Unless you happen to hear an individual cicada (a.k.a. “locust”) zip by or on a branch just above you, what you hear is the mass of cicadas—all doing their thing at once without a break.

Julie and I recently took a jaunt down to our creek to look at some wildflowers. We began to notice the classic empty “shells” of locusts on tree trunks and plant leaves. But it wasn’t the occasional ones that you see every summer in the Ozarks. They were everywhere! And a couple of days later the noise started. It is so constant that the mind unconsciously ignores it—selecting it out as unimportant background--until someone points it out to you. And then you hear it and you are amazed. And it doesn’t go away.

Finally, I saw a live one on our picnic table. The most striking feature is the almost glowing brick-red eyes. I didn’t remember our regular locusts with those eyes. A quick internet search told me that this was not the regular Dog Day Locust that we have each year (so called because they emerge during the hot, dog-days of July and August). This was the first week of May. I determined by its markings that we had Magicicada tredecula. There are basically three species of periodical or cyclical cicadas in the U.S. All three species have a 13-year and a 17-year version of the same insect.

Weirder than those eyes is the fact that these little guys and gals have been waiting since 1998 for this big moment. One month of non-stop flirting and mating. (They do stop at night, apparently, but non-stop in the sense that apparently the adult stage doesn’t even bother to eat) They’re here for one thing only. The noise is from the massive congregation of males calling to the females, trying to attract a mate--like thugs catcalling and talkin’ trash at the girls walking down the street. Check out a wonderful video short from the BBC with David Attenborough of Planet Earth fame.

The males have two little flaps on their segmented bellies covering a hollow chamber. Stretched across the Inside of the chamber is a thin membrane like the skin of a drum, with muscles that it can use to vibrate the drum to make its sound. The female, on the other hand, has no such structure; she only makes a clicking sound with her wings to indicate that she is hot to trot and likes what she hears from her bug-eyed Romeo. After they mate, she uses a saw-like appendage on the end of her belly to cut a couple of slits into a nearby tree stem. She then lays her eggs in a neat row in each slit.

Dime-size emergence holes under our water oak tree.

The eggs will hatch after a few days, and tiny larval versions crawl out of the slit and drop to the ground. They burrow about one foot deep into the earth and start sucking sap from tree roots for the next thirteen summers, buried in the dark, not hearing a sound. God only knows (I mean that literally) how each cicada knows when the thirteen years are up and it’s time for everyone to emerge again.

Geographic range of Brood XIX

It turns out there are different groups or “broods” of these bugs around the country. Each brood might be dispersed over many states in the Upper South and Midwest. Another brood may only be in a couple of states on the Atlantic Seaboard. All of the individual cicadas of a certain brood emerge at the same time: every thirteen or seventeen years, depending on which brood. Ours is Brood Nineteen (XIX) which stretches from the Gulf Coast to Indiana and from Oklahoma to Virginia. [map from Cicadia Mania] The last emergence was in 1998; the next will be in 2024—clean as clockwork. There is a brood of 17-yr cicadas in New England which were first noted by European colonists in the early 1600’s. Four hundred years later the same brood is still emerging every 17 years. They’ve been doing that, no doubt, since the last glaciers retreated from New England ten thousand years ago or so.

Thirteen summers … thirteen winters … thirteen springs and falls … that’s a long time to wait for . . . well, you know. No wonder they make such a racket!

[all photos by Bob Holland; first video by Julie Holland]

A Winter Commute’s Glorious Diversion

2011-01-20T14:38:00.000-06:00

As I drove to work from my little bedroom community into Fayetteville, AR this winter, I spotted what I at first thought was a white plastic bag caught in the top of a tree about forty yards from the highway (known generically in these parts as “a WalMart bag”). After a classic double-take, I realized it was a lone bird—absolutely pure white—sitting in this lone tree in a pasture. It was obviously a raptor of some type, but the only pure white raptor I knew of was a Snowy Owl which, according to my bird book, does migrate from the Arctic in winter as far south as Missouri. A quick internet search informed me that Snowy Owls have been sighted in Arkansas three times over the years. But this just didn’t seem right.

This is as close as it ever let me come.

I saw the same bird in the same tree two more times and again in some riparian woods lining the Middle Fork of the White River about a hundred yards from the highway. Still, these were only observations at 55 mph without binoculars. One Saturday, I grabbed my binoculars, bird books and camera, and drove to the spot that I’d seen the bird before. I was better prepared this time, but no bird. On a lark, I decided to drive down a side road to the back of a subdivision which butts up against pastures and scattered woodlots along the Middle Fork. As I pulled into the last cul-de-sac there was the bird: facing me from seventy-five yards away sitting in an old dead tree behind a house. I snapped a preliminary photo (through my windshield), and grabbed my binocs. It looked like a pure white hawk. It had bright yellow feet (talons). I then slipped open the car door and snuck around the side of the house to try to out-flank the bird. Of course, being a raptor, the bird’s eyesight is much better than my own, maybe even with my binoculars, I don’t know. The bird had flown.

The next week I tried again. Trolling again down the side road, I quickly spotted the bird in a tree at the edge of a 2-acre woodlot where it gives way to a pasture which runs through the Middle Fork valley. I decided to hop the fence and sneak through the woods to try to get a close look. I saw some interesting things in the woods, like this pretty orange Bolete—a wood-rotting mushroom fungus with pores instead of gills. But the bird knew what I was up to and was gone by the time I emerged on the other end.

And then I heard the call.

A long, single, descending “screeeeee ….” rang out from the other side of the pasture. I made my way to that side of the woods and again heard the call. Sure enough, in that direction, was the brilliant white bird sitting in a tree on the other side of the pasture. It was a hawk call, probably a red-tail. As I began to walk across the pasture, the hawk took flight, cursing me with scree! Up until this moment, I had only seen the hawk from the front. As he/she flew away, from my right to left, I could see the wings and sides—pure blazing, beautiful white! All over!

Now I can spot the bird from quite a distance because of the color (or lack thereof). But I have given up harassing the poor thing when I don’t even have a spotting scope to get a better look. I googled pure white hawks and found a website with some really nice photos of albino hawks that look just like my Middle Fork friend. Unfortunately, the site did not give permission to re-use the images, but here are three others from other sites:

white Red-Tailed Hawk, Albany, NY (R. Guthrie)

white Red-tail in rehab center

How gorgeous is this white Red-tail!

I also emailed an ornithologist at the University of Arkansas, Joe Neal, about what I was seeing. He told me that a local birder from Round Mountain, near my town, had been watching this bird for years. Fifteen years to be exact! Joe put me in touch with Jim Morgan who said that the bird has been wintering here since at least 1995, but normally stays up-river about a quarter mile or more, away from the highway and more out of sight.

There has been some discussion about whether this is a red-tail or a red-shouldered hawk. The call is that of a red-tail (a red-shouldered hawk will cry out several times in a row). And Jim saw it once, backlit by the sun, revealing a faint, pink band on the tail like a red-tail. The biggest question is whether it is a true albino or is very leucistic. Joe Neal says that even an albino can have color in the feet and bill. But the eyes will be pink. I can’t get close enough to see the eye color on this bird. Leucism is a genetic trait caused by separate genes those that cause albinism. Leucism can be complete or partial, and can affect all kinds of critters, not just birds. I have a musician friend who has small leucistic patches of white amongst his generally dark, brown hair.

Here are some further distinctions from about.com: Albinism is another genetic condition that can turn a bird’s plumage pale, but there are distinct differences between albino and leucistic birds. Leucism affects only the bird’s feathers, and typically only those with melanin pigment – usually dark feathers. A leucistic bird with different colors may show some colors brightly, especially red, orange or yellow, while feathers that should be brown or black are instead pale or white. Some leucistic birds, however, can lose all the pigment in their feathers and may appear pure white.

Albinism, on the other hand, affects all the pigments, and albino birds show no color whatsoever in their feathers. Furthermore, an albino mutation also affects the bird’s other pigments in the skin and eyes, and albino birds show pale pink or reddish eyes, legs, feet and a pale bill, while leucistic birds often have normally colored eyes, legs, feet and bills.

While leucism can be unusual and exciting for a birder to see, birds with the condition face special challenges in the wild. Lighter plumage may rob the birds of protective camouflage and make them more vulnerable to predators such as hawks and feral cats. Because plumage colors play an important role in courtship rituals, birds with leucism may be unable to find strong, healthy mates. Melanin is also an important structural component of feathers, and birds with extensive leucism have weaker feathers that will wear out more swiftly, making flight more difficult and eliminating some of the bird’s insulation against harsh weather. White feathers also reflect heat more efficiently, which can be fatal for birds that rely on sunbathing and solar radiation for heat in northern climates.

While I can’t vouch for his/her’s sex life, our Middle Fork red-tail seems to be doing quite well and has been for at least 15 years . . . a glorious bit of God’s green earth, and a real treat for me--spicing up an otherwise dull commute on a winter’s morning.

Thoughts on Faith and Evolution

2010-12-11T11:10:00.008-06:00

Someone recently expressed interest in my thoughts--as a committed Christian, a former atheist, and a working scientist—about the contentious topic of evolution. For many years I have simply avoided this discussion. I am ready now to address it. I write this to as broad an audience as possible—Christians, atheists, scientists, and non-scientists, and everyone in-between. And I would love to hear your thoughts back at me, whatever they may be. Let me say a couple of things right up front: as when I was as an atheist, I am only interested in Truth, regardless of what that turns out to be—whether God created the world, much as it is now, in six 24-hr days or gradually over millions and even billions of years. I personally have nothing to gain or lose either way.

My beliefs fall into a category that some have called “theistic evolution”. I believe in the theory of evolution, as presented by Darwin 150 years ago, and developed into the paradigm accepted amongst nearly all practicing biologists today. I also believe that evolution is compatible with my Christian beliefs. I simply believe that evolution is God-driven. This position presents all sorts of questions and objections from either side of the Great Divide of opinion on this topic. I will explore a few of these and tell my story in the next paragraphs. I hope that it provokes fresh, profitable thought in your own mind, and perhaps an interesting, respectful discussion in future blog comments. Here goes . . .

My Journey

I graduated from Oklahoma State University in the spring of 1976 with a B.S. in wildlife ecology. I got my first real job as a scientist the very next month, collecting field data for various environmental studies. The next sixteen years, including graduate school, were spent as a working scientist, initially in the field of plant ecology, later in plant pathology (plant diseases). After many years as an unabashed atheist, somewhere in all of that, I had a spiritual encounter with God and became a born-again Christian. After my university position was relocated to another city to which I didn’t care to move, I spent eleven years in the landscaping industry. Eventually I found myself as pastor of a small church. Now I am back at the same university again as a research scientist.

During all of my years in science, I've never had a colleague question me about my faith (how can I be a born-again Christian and be a scientist at the same time?) or made to feel second rate as a professional scientist because of my faith (which I freely made known). Never did my faith waiver in the university climate. Never even did the debate about evolution and creation arise on the job—until my job was as pastor of a church. There it was assumed that I agreed that the whole bunk about evolution was just that--bunk. I was teetering now at the very edge of The Great Divide: the false dichotomy that one must believe in God or believe in evolution, but never shall the twain meet. I don’t remember a single Christian admitting to me that they believed in the process of evolution (that doesn’t mean there were no such people in my midst; if so, they simply, like me, kept their mouths shut). I don’t believe this Great Divide of opinion necessarily exists in all parts of the country or in all Christian circles.

During the pastor years, I had successfully evaded the notion to reconcile my belief in God with my steadfast confidence in the “theory” (see below) of evolution as the only plausible explanation for the natural order of things that scientists study on a daily basis. As mentioned before, I never felt any pressure from university colleagues to explain the seeming contradiction, despite a thick cloud of controversy in the air--my adopted state of Arkansas had recently made national news for its part in a contentious legal case, McLean vs. Arkansas Board of Education, involving the teaching of creation science in public schools (ruled unconstitutional by a federal court in 1982 as “religion, not science”). It would be another decade before I felt inclined to tackle the issue.

My time in the landscaping business only fueled my awe of nature and my appreciation of God as its Creator. The how orwhen of creation was--and is--a secondary issue for me. As a theologically conservative Christian, I was considerably torn, being told that we were in a culture war and that believing in evolution was tantamount to siding with the enemy. Because of my science background, I could not let go of the notion that natural selection over a long period of time--whereby individuals with genetic traits that are most compatible with their current circumstances and environment are most likely to live long enough to breed and reproduce those genetic traits--and the genetic interrelatedness of creatures, is the best explanation for the innumerable observations that researchers make on a daily basis. As a pastor, my convictions about evolution by natural selection remained solid. However, such a stance is considered heretical in many conservative circles, so I simply kept my opinions to myself.

An Unprofitable Debate

Here is as good a place as any to make an important point: I truly doubt that Jesus is pleased about the premier role that the evolution-creation debate has taken in the spiritual life of America. This debate has hijacked the more critical issues of faith, love, grace, eternity and the purpose of life. It seems that what one’s stance is on the creation-evolution question often becomes a litmus test for being a Christian or an intellectual—that is, you cannot be a Christian if you believe in Darwin’s theory; you cannot be an intellectual if you are a Christian. This is hooey! And many good people, possibly open to spiritual truth, have needlessly fled as a result. If you believe that there is a Satan (I do), then believe this: he loves the creation-evolution debate!

So Exactly What Do I Think?

During my five years as pastor of an evangelical Christian church, my ideas quietly solidified into the following nine convictions:

(1) Natural Selection.

The natural world that we see today developed gradually over millions of years by the process of speciation (descent) by natural selection (i.e., evolution). I believe that God directed this process, and continues to oversee or observe it, because evolution is, by definition, an on-going process. I believe that, although the process appears to be random from a scientific perspective, it is not. Evolution is God-engineered (the original genetic engineer), perhaps from a distance, so to speak, by creating the process and then letting it run its course; or by close involvement in the various turns that speciation has taken over time. Since He lives eternally, time is something that God has plenty of.

(2) The Big Bang. The physical earth and the physical universe developed as a consequence of what is known as The Big Bang—an incredible explosion of energy that became matter (remember E = mc² ?). Power-packed matter expanded from something the size of a pin head to the universe we know today, containing an estimated 100 billion galaxies, each with from millions to a hundred trillion stars (suns) and innumerable planets. It is estimated that there is a total of
1, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars like our Sun! (that’s 24 zeroes—a trillion trillion.) God said, “Let there be light”, and buddy, there was light! We can’t look directly at the sun because the intense light (solar radiation) can damage our retina. Think of the total amount of light, and heat energy, coming from a trillion trillion suns. Let there be light indeed!

Scientists have formed a consensus around the Big Bang Theory that is very well documented and reasoned, and yet they don’t hesitate to say that how or why or what existed before is totally out of their purview. By their own admission, it can’t be known. They can explain the physics of everything back to microseconds after the initial bang (13 to 14 billion years ago), but they can’t know what was before—physics does not apply on that side.

(3) God Lit the Fuse. The God described in the Bible (by both Jews and Christians) is responsible for the Big Bang. The Big Bang is not a threat to people of faith or an affront to God in any way. If you cannot believe that God could create such a big bang, then perhaps your own picture of God is not big enough. This applies whether you or secular or religious.

(4) Genesis tells Who, not how. The creation account in chapter one of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, is an allegorical account (symbolic) meant to say Who created what we see and are. It is not meant to be a scientific treatise or literal timeline of the creation. I realize that this part of the discussion—the interpretation of Genesis--is the real sticky point for many Christians, and perhaps many Jews as well. I do not take lightly how we interpret this or any other part of the Bible. Perhaps one could think of the creation account in chapter one as a story, along the lines of the many parables (representative stories that convey important truths) that Jesus told, such as, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father …” (the Prodigal Son parable). I believe the creation account in Genesis is meant simply to convey what David summarized in Psalm 24: “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.”

Genesis is the cliff note version of creation. The Apostle John said that there are a lot of things left out of the Bible. In the last sentence of his Gospel account of Jesus, John said: “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” So the Bible tells the essentials of the story, but not all the details.

If God had shared the scientific details with Moses in writing the Genesis account, it would have remained confusing nonsense for another four thousand or so years, until scientific understanding caught up with it. Can you imagine the Israelites trying to piece together what a guanine-cytosine base pair is, what DNA/RNA and proteins are? And what any of this has to do with why a hyrax (small mammal mentioned in the Bible) is so different from a stork, and yet shares so many genes and basic characteristics of metabolism? Read through the following link and see if you think such an account would have been appropriate reading for people of Moses’ time who were still more than 3,000 years ahead of even figuring out the germ theory of disease (i.e., that most diseases are caused by “invisible” microorganisms, not by spontaneous generation, moon phases or black cats). Check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_evolution .

(5) The Human Species. This God-directed process, begun on earth around 4 billion years ago, evolved many branches, including various hominid genera (human-like mammals), with the genus Homo appearing around 2.5 million years ago. Various Homo species developed--some living at the same time--all but Homo sapiens eventually dying out. At some point, probably about 200,000 years ago (see the proposed timeline link above), the only human species left was Homo sapiens, subspecies sapiens.

(6) An Animal of a Different Sort. At this point, around 200,000 years ago, God intervened, I hypothesize, and supernaturally endowed Homo sapiens--either an individual pair (Adam and Eve), a small group of humans (consider the argument: where did Cain’s wife come from?), or the entire species--with a whole new dimension. He gave them an eternal soul and a concomitant knowledge of the Moral Law (that is, knowledge of right from wrong). Note: If you cannot accept this because you do not believe in the existence of God, the spiritual realm, or immortal souls, I understand. Neither did I for many years, and I know that neither I nor anyone else can argue you into it. Or perhaps you are a person of faith, but cannot accept it because it requires an alternative view of the Creation story and the Garden of Eden. Either way, please bear with me and let’s see where this goes . . .

(7) Spread of Mankind and Development of Religion. Mankind developed into many cultures and races, beginning in Africa, spreading to the Middle East, Europe and Asia--all with a consciousness of the supernatural realm and a felt need to search for meaning in life. Anthropologists and archaeologists have documented a near universal interest in the supernatural amongst primitive people groups, present and past. By 40,000-60,000 years ago, early humans had island-hopped across stretches of ocean (up to 60 miles at a time) to populate Australia. Around 16,000 years ago, some crossed a frozen land bridge over the Bering Strait, during the most recent of four great ice ages, and “quickly” colonized North, Central, and South America. God had imparted a supernatural or God-consciousness to humans, but had not begun any personal relationships. No human knew God.

.Perhaps around 2000 B.C., God got personal with a fellow named Abram in what is now considered southern Iraq. After a name change to Abraham, he became a central figure in three great world religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. You can read about Abraham and his progeny--the patriarchs Isaac and Jacob—beginning in Genesis 11 to the end of that book. Around 1400 B.C., God got personal again with one of Abraham’s descendents, a Hebrew-Egyptian named Moses. God did many incredible, even miraculous, things during Moses’ lifetime. Moses began writing down these and other things that God has done--and why he did them. Moses was the first of many biblical authors, writing the first five books of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, including Genesis. Of course, other people groups throughout the world developed alternative religious beliefs, often based on the natural environment around them.

(8) God’s Glory Displayed By Nature. The vast array of plants, animals, microbes, physical elements and physical laws of nature—all—are a part of God’s glory. [go watch a few episodes of Planet Earth if you want to get a sense of this; or just go take a nature hike.] Natural phenomena should bring each of us to a sense of awe in God. The more we observe and learn of the intricacies of His creation, the more awe we should feel. Worship is an appropriate response to this feeling.

There is nothing in science that people of faith should fear or obstruct. God and faith are beyond the purview of science and yet are compatible with it. For me, seeing something new under the microscope and then reading the incredible nature stories that others have uncovered about it, brings me to an attitude of worship to the Creator. I could bore you for hours about the intricate biochemical warfare going on all around us between plants and fungi. The more we peer into the invisible worlds of biochemistry and quantum physics (the “solar system” of atoms), and ecology, the better we can appreciate our powerfully creative and intelligent God. Beauty in nature and the beauty of God are part of the same thing. Science merely pulls back the curtain from the masterpiece and enables us to see it better.

(9) God Is Totally Interested in Me and You. God is intimately familiar with--and interested in--every individual human being, including you. Yes, you! (insert your name here …). He is interested in your well-being and He is interested in what you think about Him. He wants you to know Him. I don’t believe that God simply started the process of evolution and remained aloof ever after, or that Homo sapiens just happened into existence by chance after the ball got rolling. I believe that H. sapiens was always a part of God’s plan in evolution and, in fact, His primary purpose. I also believe that God is intimately involved in forming each individual person.

I live in a rural area with little "light pollution" and a clear view of the sky. I oftentimes have had the experience on a clear night, looking up at the expanse of stars that we call the Milky Way galaxy, and wondering how the One that made all of that could give a hoot about me. King David, about 1000 B.C., expressed the same thing in a poem that we call Psalm 8: “O LORD, our Lord . . .When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” As we shall see, God does very much care about you. One implication is that, if God can design and implement such a grand, complex universe, can He not make things happen in your life and mine? Can He not help fix a marriage, a career, or an addiction?

Even as the ideas presented above began to gel in my mind, I was still not interested in devoting study time to these issues. I felt (and still feel) that way too much time and negative emotional energy has been expended on the creation-evolution debate. Disrespectful, ugly behaviors and haughty attitudes on both sides often kill the conversation. The discussion has been largely unproductive, even destructive. Way too many secular people have fled from faith because of this argument; and way too many believers have fled from science, perhaps in a misguided attempt to somehow defend God, as if that were necessary. And yet, I felt a need to clarify my position in my own mind.

I read several books about the evolution-creation debate, including books by real scientists who are also committed Christians. (Note: not all who write about the science part of this debate are real scientists. Some who write about science in books or popular literature are merely parroting the arguments of someone else who are parroting someone else, very few of whom are practicing scientists. Others “masquerade” as creation-scientists, dabbling outside of the realm of peer-reviewed journals and legitimate scientific institutions, in order to “prove” that the scientific establishment is wrong about its evolution paradigm.) [Note: I will concede--after receiving an email critical of this article, and doing an internet search--that there are a few exceptions within the creation science/intellegent design camp, who indeed have published scientific articles in bonifide, peer-reviewed journals, who work as faculty members of major university science departments, and who are, undoubtably brilliant scientists. The views of some of these scientists are not accepted within their own university departments. I accept the ideal of scientific freedom to advance unpopular theories--Galileo and Einstein had the same problem. However, I stand by my previous statement that many creation-scientists are not ligitimate scientists in the sense of engaging the scientific community within the realm of accepted journals and meetings.] At the end of this paper I’ve listed a few authors that I think understand both science and God.

What Some Others Think

I suppose I am like most other folks in being especially attracted to authors and books that confirm what I already think or who point in the direction I am already inclined to go. What they do is help us to consolidate and order our own ideas and to articulate them for us. One book that details the history of the debate is Saving Darwin—How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution by Karl W. Giberson. I hope soon to post his section called A Brief History of Everything , a succinct account of the Big Bang (not to be confused with similarly titled books by Ken Wilber and Bill Bryson).

My favorite book that I read is The Language of God—A Scientist Presents Evidence For Belief by Dr. Francis S. Collins (2006). Collins was head of the Human Genome Project, a worldwide collaborative effort that successfully translated the entire human DNA code. In 2009, he was appointed head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the lead government agency funding health research projects. Collins is a serious scientist, a physician, and a Christian philosopher.

Dr. Collins gives a good summary on the origins of the universe, the expansion of life on planet Earth, and a primer on how genes tell us so much about where we came from. He discusses the biblical description of creation and how Galileo and Darwin unintentionally rankled (irritated) the Church. He then spends a chapter each on atheists and agnostics, on Creation Science, Intelligent Design, and Theistic Evolution --science and faith in harmony. I consider myself in the latter category. Below, I’ve listed six premises that Collins says are common to a theistic evolution stance:

1. The universe came into being out of nothingness, approximately 14 billion years ago.

2. Despite massive improbabilities, the properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life. [in other words, physical laws, such as the speed of light, the force of gravity, electromagnetic forces between subatomic particles, etc.]

3. While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, once life arose, the process of evolution and natural selection permitted the development of biological diversity and complexity over very long periods of time.

4. Once evolution got under way, no special supernatural intervention was required. [I don’t subscribe to this part necessarily ...]

5. Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes. [This is not the same as saying that we came from monkeys or chimpanzees, which is not true.]

6. But humans are also unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanation and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the Moral Law (the knowledge of right and wrong) and the search for God that characterizes all human cultures throughout history.

About Theories and Evolution

A sidebar is in order here. I have purposely avoided using the phrase, The “Theory of Evolution”, for a reason. There is sort of myth that is widespread among non-scientists, particularly those who oppose evolution, about what a “theory” is. It often goes something like this:

“Well, the Theory of Evolution is just that—it is only a theory. Evolution has not been proven.”

Scientists have a different take on this word. Allow Francis Collins to clarify the issue:

My Funk & Wagnall’s dictionary provides the following two alternative definitions for the word “theory”: “(1) a speculative or conjectural view of something; (2) fundamental principles underlying a science, art, etc: music theory, theory of equations.”

It is this second usage that scientists intend when they talk about evolutionary theory, just as when they mention gravitational theory or the germ theory of infectious disease. In this context, the word ‘theory’ is not intended to convey uncertainty; for that purpose a scientist would use the word “hypothesis”. In common, everyday usage, however, “theory” takes on a much more casual context, as reflected in Funk & Wagnall’s option 1: “I have a theory that Bill has a crush on Mary,” or “Linda’s theory is that the butler did it.” It is too bad that our language lacks the necessary subtleties of distinction here, as clearly this simple confusion of the meaning of the word has made things worse in the contentious dialogue between science and faith about how living things are related.

In other words, when scientists and educators talk about evolution as a theory, it is like talking about gravitational theory, electromagnetic theory, or music theory. A major tonic chord in music is made up of the root note, together with the third and fifth tones of that scale. Even though every music professor, teacher or musician in the country could agree on what tones make a tonic chord, we still call it “music theory”, that is, the theoretical aspects of music. Think of this when you hear a scientist talk about evolutionary theory. Evolution is the working paradigm amongst mainstream biologists the world over. They are not arguing over its merits, and haven’t during my lifetime and before.

The uncertainties in evolutionary theory arise over specific questions such as what ecological factors force biochemical changes in a certain group of organisms. But if a person has scriptural or faith issues with the concept of evolution, it is an entirely different debate--one that, like other issues of faith, will not be resolved in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Is Evolution a Scientifically Sound Idea?

Some people will argue that the Theory of Evolution is based on faulty data (“Carbon¹⁴ dating of fossils is not accurate”) or lacks adequate evidence (“No one has ever found the missing links—the intermediate species between major animal groups.”). These are empty claims by well-meaning people who are parroting others who are parroting others who don’t know better. In fact, a great number of what are called variously transitional or intermediate species have been uncovered in fossil form. Clink the link to see a web page with graphics and information (with more links) on these transitional fossils:

Ichthyornis, a transitional reptile/bird that retains small teeth.

The total number of fossilized species is less than paleontologists would like. The necessary conditions for fossilization are so narrow that it is an extremely rare phenomenon, and for someone that knows what they are looking at to unearth it is even rarer. Organisms without hard shells or bones almost never undergo fossilization. Compared to the number of species that are alive today, the number of fossilized species that have been unearthed is only 5% of the total number of current species that have been so far described. It is estimated that of all the species that have ever lived, only 1% have been discovered as fossils.

In fact, we haven’t even yet discovered all of the species that are living right now on this earth. New species are discovered and described by scientists every week. In just two months of a survey of Papua New Guinea, researchers in 2009 discovered 200 new species of plants and animals, including newly described mammal species.. The Amazon Basin is so diverse that 1,200 new species have been described over the last ten years. That’s 120 new species every year from the Amazon alone. Is it any wonder that we haven’t found all of the ancient, extinct species?

Fortunately, great strides in evolutionary research have been made in recent years without fossils. The field of cladistics utilizes biochemical data of genetic nucleotide sequences and the amino acid sequences from proteins of various organisms to analyze statistically to estimate relatedness of organisms. The “family trees” that are produced by this research corroborate those based on physical, structural relatedness, but are able to go well beyond the limitations of classical morphological study.

Boiling It Down

Much of this debate boils down to faith or no faith. And one cannot muster faith from thin air; I believe it is a gift of God. One can not prove faith or argue one into or out of faith. Everyone must play what I call The Great Cosmic Card Game—we all have to decide one way or another what to do about God and about Jesus. (I’ll try to write a blog on that sometime.) This paper is meant merely to throw out ideas, to start a conversation, not to prove anything, especially something that, by its essence, cannot be proven—which is what faith is about.

This paper is perhaps more challenging or pertinent to Christians who have not settled in their mind the gulf between the creation account in Genesis and accepted science. Or maybe for Christians who ascribe to Creation Science or its twin, Intelligent Design. I do not consider either of these to be good science. You can jumble geologic and genetic evidence all you want in order to force it to fit your stance, but it is still bad science.

Humans running around at the same time as dinosaurs may assuage your religious sensibilities but it is bad science in my opinion, and is not necessary. And if a thinking secular person gets the impression that they must swallow the tenets of Creation Science in order to follow Jesus Christ, they may well opt out at worst, or be mightily conflicted at the least.

What If I’m Wrong About Theistic Evolution

Even if I am all wrong about evolution and my notion about God instilling an immortal soul into a couple or a larger group of evolved Homo sapiens—it doesn’t matter! These are all peripheral issues that don’t alter the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the only thing in the universe that ultimately matters. Some of my views about the how’s and when’s of the creation may change even yet with time; but the truth of the Gospel does not change. The Gospel is like a scientific physical constant—like the speed of light—but perhaps even more unshakeable than that. Who knows if the speed of light is the same on the other side of the universe or in potential universes in other dimensions of time and space. Still there is one Gospel. … Believe the Gospel or not … it is your call. It is a matter of faith.

The Gospel

There is a God, there is Jesus (one with God), there are angels and demons, and the lead demon is Satan, the devil. Satan opposes God in every way possible as long as he can (the timeline is determined by God). One way that Satan opposes God is to force a wedge between mankind and God. Because God is pure and holy to the nth degree, He cannot be in the presence of impurity and unholiness. That is why God initiated the Gospel: He Himself pays the penalty of sin (rebellion) for His humans, so they are transformed to become as pure as God, Himself, in order to commune with Him. This is through human faith in the sacrificial, final death of Jesus, the Son of God. God Himself provides the solution. There is nothing we can possibly do to earn it.

So what is this sin thing that Satan uses against us? I believe that most sin is simply our human animal nature which God calls us to rise above. When God imparted a spirit into mankind, He provided a connection to Himself. He also revealed Himself and imparted to humans the Moral Law, giving them a sense of right and wrong. He said essentially that you are no longer just an animal, but you will become like Me in order to commune with Me. He said, “I have chosen you as a species and, further, I have chosen you as an individual.”

From an evolutionary perspective, God directed a physical change—an enormous frontal lobe of the brain—in order to enable a spiritual outcome: As scientists have discovered, the oldest parts of our brain, from an evolutionary perspective, control our most primal instincts, such as our sex drive, our reaction to pain, hunger, thirst, cold, danger, etc. This part of our brain is quite similar both in physical shape, makeup and function as that of, say, a lizard, which is much, much older and more primitive in the paradigm of evolution. A frontal lobe, on the other hand, is much more recent, and culminates in Homo sapiens subspecies sapiens. This part of the brain is used for higher thinking, logic, projection of future outcomes of various scenarios, planning, etc.

Using biochemical and electrical impulse studies, researchers can see the real-time struggle going on in the various parts of the brain—the battle between instinct (hard-wired into the old brain) and higher thinking (in the frontal lobe). In other words, it is the weighing of right and wrong. And not only are the physical lobes of the brain important, but more so the complex wiring of the nerve cells--the connections that enable this higher thinking. That is why teenagers often have trouble with higher thinking and weighing outcomes before they act. Our brains are still developing these complex wiring connections even into our early 20’s. This is no joke.

God has given us this ability to know right from wrong (perhaps even this Moral Law is instinctive in us) and has given us the mental ability to rise above instinct in matters of right and wrong, So He holds us responsible for the outcome. And yet He knows that often we will fail. We all fall short of God’s purity and righteous standards. That is why the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is where Satan works to keep humans and God apart.

A Few Words About Science and Scientists

The vast majority of scientists are not terribly interested in the evolution-creation debate. It is settled for them; they don’t take it seriously as a debate. Contrary to what a large number of conservative Christians believe, most scientists are not part of any agenda or conspiracy to usurp God or belittle Christianity by forcing data or inventing techniques that produce false data. Scientists are truth-seekers at their very core—truth about the natural world. Since supernatural truth is beyond their scope, they do not concern themselves, in their scientific work, with such things. Scientists are also competitive and accountable to each other. If one scientist uses shakey techniques or flawed interpretation, other scientists will call them out on it. In fact, such work would probably never even appear in a respectable peer-reviewed scientific journal where the standards are incredibly high.

Our research group recently helped to host a meeting of scientists working on the genetics and ecology of a particular devastating disease of soybeans (yes, soybeans get sick, too). I was taken with the intelligence and diligence with which these men and women attack this problem. They discussed advanced genetic techniques and hypotheses that left me in a haze of incomprehension. They blew my mind with the agility of their minds. Talking with some of them socially, I could see how much they loved the scientific work they do. And they collaborated so freely with one another, all in the common purpose of finding ways to defeat this threat to world food production. Nearly all scientists are this way. They have a narrow area of expertise in which they focus all of their energy and genius. They are not thinking about how to denigrate God or people of faith.

This antipathy of some Christians against science has not always been so. In fact, apart from Galileo (a Christian himself) and his problems with the Catholic Church, Darwin’s descent by natural selection is the only other major issue the church as had with science. Eventually Christians got over the contentious issue of Galileo’s day and accepted his theory that the universe does not revolve around God’s green earth and that, in fact, the earth revolves around the sun just like other planets, and that the sun itself moves about our galaxy like other stars. No big deal. God is still God. Hopefully, today’s Christians can get over the evolution issue in a similar way. The book list at the end of this paper could be of some use if you desire further understanding of the scientific side of the issues.

My Motive

Lest readers get the impression that I am somehow anti-Christian: NO, NO, NO! I am one! I am committed, to the core of my being, to Jesus Christ as LORD and Savior. In fact, my great desire is for secular scientists to experience the joy of seeing a more complete picture of what they are now observing in nature; that is, to couple their appreciation of natural beauty and order with an indelible awe of God . I desire, as well, for Christians who are non-scientists to more fully appreciate God’s incredible universe through the details that scientists are continually uncovering. In other words, I desire that walls come down, the two sides respect each other, and both more fully experience the glory of God.

John Muir, the 19^th century naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club, understood it: “Everything is so inseparably united. As soon as one begins to describe a flower or a tree or a storm or an Indian or a chipmunk, up jumps the whole heavens and earth and God Himself in one inseparable glory!”

I have more to say about God in nature, evolution, and the like. Hopefully, I’ll post some of it on future blogs. If you hung in with me this far, perhaps you will go a little further in the future. And I would love to hear your thoughts as well. I feel very sure that many of you disagree with me, in whole or in part: maybe with the God part; maybe the evolution part. That’s okay . . . I invite you to make comments at the bottom of this blog entry. Or write me an email (mandobobholland@yahoo.com). Or write your own blog and send me the link. I would be interested in seeing some discussion develop between readers--friendly, respectful discussion--where we can agree to disagree and still enjoy each other’s company. Remember, we won’t likely argue each other into a completely different stance than we already have. But perhaps we can scatter some seeds for thought in each other’s mental garden that weren’t there before.

Peace on Earth and goodwill towards men,

Bob Holland, December, 2010

P.S. There are probably way too many books on this subject; but if you are interested in looking further into the slant that I have taken, here are a few good ones (I like the first one best):

The Language of God by Dr. Francis Collins (medical doctor and biochemist; 2006)

Saving Darwin by Karl W. Giberson

The Fingerprint of God by Dr. Hugh Ross (an astrophysicist; 1991)

Beyond the Cosmos by Dr. Hugh Ross (an astrophysicist; 1999)

A Biblical Case for An Old Earth by Dr. David Snoke (a physicist and theologian; 2006)

Is God a Creationist? Edited by Roland Mushat Frye (a professor of English and Theology)

Fall Photos at 290 O'Neal Ln

2010-11-21T23:29:00.006-06:00

It has been a gorgeous fall here in NW Arkansas. Here are a few images of fall foliage I've taken, mostly at 290 O'Neal Lane (our place)--some from our yard, or our fenceline, or our ditch. A few towards the end are from the Univ. of Arkansas campus. All but four images are of native shrubs and trees. Fall beauty can show up in some surprising places if you have the eye to see it. Click on the image to see a slight enlargement, then hit the reverse arrow to return.

native Arrowleaf Viburnum

ash tree

bald cypress

wild cherry fragrant sumac hickory hickory hyacinth bean with green stink bug nymphs hybrid red maple "wooly booger" (Isabella moth larva) ... a sure sign of fall itea poison ivy . red buckeye (top) and smooth sumac (bottom) sweetgum tulip tree winged elm winged sumac
Viburnum (top) and American beauty berry (bottom) Shumard Oak Northern red oak witch hazel crepe myrtle ginkgo witch hazel flowers (fall blooming) American holly sugar maple Northern red oak

Only A Shadow

2010-08-28T13:55:00.005-05:00

This is a photo of a window curtain in our living room, with the early morning sun behind it casting the shadow of a an 8-ft tall native wildflower, Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium fistulosum) that graces the east side of our house:

It brings to mind some scripture verses from Hebrews 9 & 10:
"The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming--not the realities themselves. . . . For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. . . . Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him."

The shadow on the curtain is interesting, but is not as beautiful as the real thing. The shadow is a lifeless caricature of the real thing, which is full of life--buzzing with bees and butterflies that pollinate its airy, lavender blooms. Similarly, all that we know on earth that is good and beautiful is only a shadow of the goodness and beauty that we will come to know in heaven. Our life here is only a shadow of the glorious life to come, made possible by our faith--however tenuous--in Jesus Christ, who is bringing salvation to those who are waiting for him.

P.S. Here are some pics of the living, breathing, pollinating Joe Pye Weed:

Bees--bumble and honey--pollinating a Joe Pye Weed bloom

Tree frog waiting in the Joe Pye Weed for a little pollinator lunch.

Primordial Ooze on My Boxwood

2010-05-31T23:01:00.002-05:00

I was shearing a large boxwood hedge at the corner of our house recently when I had a little Planet Earth moment. As I reached down to clip some low hanging shoots that rested on the ground, I noticed a striking pattern of small gray-colored balls covering every leaflet of several shoots, actually somewhat suspended above the deep green of the leaf. A tiny pattern of beauty for the eye of whomever would pause long enough, stoop low enough, and look closely enough to see and appreciate it. The pattern extended even to some dead boxwood leaves on the ground and even to a section of rubber garden hose lying in that spot. It was a slime mold . . . one of God’s most ancient and mysterious of creatures . . . part fungus, part animal. Biologists and taxonomists must throw up their hands and classify it somewhere in-between, in the Myxomycota.

Slime molds actually move! Or ooze or flow, actually. Generally unseen, beneath the surface layer of decaying leaves and mulch in your yard, and in wild forested areas all over the world, they scarf up bacteria that are decaying the fallen vegetation. At some point, this gooey blob of ooze dries up and forms itself into little balls of dried spores, like powdery seeds, often climbing onto some vegetation, or even a garden hose, and lifting itself on a home-made stalk to catch a breeze and scatter itself hither and yon to a new spot to colonize. This process has been going on probably for hundreds of millions of years.

My house is quite old, by human standards (especially by Arkansas standards)—a little more than one hundred years old. Julie, my wife, planted that boxwood I’m trimming maybe 20 years ago. Now, at one time, this valley I live in didn’t exist. The tops of these “mountains”—the Ozark Plateau—were actually the bottom of an ancient, shallow tropical sea. Ever since the waters receded and land plants colonized and covered the land here, slime molds have been doing what they do, year after year, over countless millennia. Only recently have me and my boxwood shown up on the scene.

All of this—the beauty, the complexity, and the incredible span of time and years—just reinforces in my mind those same qualities of God which He possesses to an even greater degree. Who or what is older than God? Who or what is more creative, more complex, more full of beauty than the One who dreamed it all up in the first place . . . a long time ago.

Happy gardening . . .

A Hard Teacher

2010-04-27T23:29:00.002-05:00

I once knew a sharp-minded old-timer that lived way up in the hills around here. He was a retired schoolteacher (from back in the one-room country school house days) named Carl Van Landingham, or simply, Mr. Carl. Talking about how people learn best, he once told me, "Experience is a hard teacher, but she is also the most effective!" I recently came across a similar quote attributed to Vernon Sanders Law: "Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards."

It reminds me of a story my father told me. When he was a little boy, in the 1920's, he once came upon his uncle hunkered over the engine of a car. As the uncle listened to the purr of the motor, little Charles' curiosity brought him up close. The uncle issued a challenge: "Say Charles, I bet you can't pee on that spark plug--I bet you couldn't even hit it." Well, Charles had undoubtedly spent some time learning to aim and shoot as he relieved himself. So he was up to the challenge. It didn't occur to him that it might matter that the engine was running. He climbed up on the fender and soon summoned a stream which he deftly directed straight onto the target.

He suddenly found himself lying on his back--on the ground. Charles gathered himself and stood, shaking his head in dazed wonder. Eventually the uncle was able to stifle his laughter,and he explained to my dad that cars produce electricity that flows through the spark plug when the motor is running. Little Charles also learned that day that water--and pee--are great conductors of electricity. The spark climbed the stream as his poor little unit completed the circuit. It was "... the test first, the lesson afterwards." I'm pretty sure that my dad never peed on another spark plug in all of his 87 years. He learned his lesson well. I guess he learned something about that uncle as well.

Sounds of Spring--"Love" is in the Air

2010-04-13T20:40:00.075-05:00

Spring hit here in NW Arkansas, about a week ago--with a wallop! As a nature lover, there are many little signs of spring that are nostalgic for me. Like catching up with old friends. There is something about the predictability and the rhythm of it all. One of the first things is the chorus of Spring Peepers--tiny frogs that come out of hibernation all at once and immediately begin advertising for a mate. It's crazy! It is an amphibian version of a high school prom that lasts for a month. It's a four week spring break at Daytona Beach with males and females clamoring for attention, advertising their wares all night, all at once.

We have three ponds near our house. One is about 150 feet in front of our house; one is a hundred yards behind our house; and another is a hundred yards to the side of our house, across the road. All three sites are crazy with sexual passion all through the month of April. These little guys and gals have been in a self-imposed stupor since late last fall, buried in mud. Suddenly the mud warms, the sun comes out, and buddy . . . when the sun goes down, it's every guy and every gal for him or herself! The males are like hundreds of carnival barkers crying out why they are the best game in town. Check out these links to get an idea of what I'm talking about. To get back to this blog, just keep hitting the left-pointing arrow at the top-left of your screen until you are back to the blog. The first one is poor video, but a good audio of exactly what we hear at 290 O'Neal Lane from three directions every night this time of year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SM6leUVorY

The next is a close-up video of one of these little frogs making all of that noise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhBsNqF7Hkk&NR=1

A little later on, we will start hearing a slightly different sound--the gray tree frog (which can be either gray or bright green at any one time). They live in our trees and shrubs and love to "pig-out" on the insects that flock to our porch lights in the summer. They leave frog poop on our front window and air conditioner. I posted a blog article last year on them: http://mandobobsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/tree-frogs.html
Check out this video of a gray tree frog calling raucously for some female company:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k5CTLNw04w&feature=related

As it happens, your landscape and mine are much like the jungles of the Amazon or Congo, or the Serengeti Plains of East Africa, in this: it is a wild, unnoticed drama of sex, violence, and just making a living, being played out in a myriad of connected ways. The same basic biology is happening in your backyard as is happening on those Planet Earth episodes. And if you can swallow one more thing: God orchestrates it all as a testament to His beauty and creativity.

Take notice of the natural rhythms going on around you. It can bring you a bit of peace and connection--even in your own backyard. I'll leave you with a line from T.S. Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Peace . . .

Community

2010-03-31T23:10:00.004-05:00

Here’s a little ecology lesson . . . It starts with trees and it ends with you. When you look at a tree, realize this one thing: it is not just a tree—it is a community. Kind of a micro-ecosystem. I have a large Post Oak in my back yard that is three feet in diameter! (I measured it …) Periodically, on a windy day, it drops dead stems and branches. They are absolutely filled with a fascinating (to me, anyway) array of organisms. Various colorful lichens and fungi mostly. This is a fungus on a stem from my oak:

But that is only the beginning—a tree is a vast community of bacteria, viruses, mycoplasmas, fungi, lichens, mosses, liverworts, nematodes, mollusks, worms, insects, mites, birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles even—my little friends, the northern fence lizards and lined skinks. Here's another shot with three snails crawling over a fallen stem of my oak tree and scarfing up lichens. Can you imagine literally crawling through your salad--head high--as you eat it?

Probably hundreds of species of organisms interact with my Post Oak tree--each with their own intricate associations with this tree. It reminds me a little of Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed in Matthew 13:31-32: “He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.” That is, the kingdom of heaven is where life happens, and is a haven for those who need God’s shelter and the community of abundant, spiritual life He provides.

I heard a story recently on NPR (a common opening phrase for me …) about Noah Fierer, a University of Colorado at Boulder microbiologist, who immerses himself into the strange world of bacteria—one of the most primitive, yet numerous life forms on the planet. He is trying to develop a method of using bacterial profiles on human skin to identify criminals for CSI investigations. He made the point that our bodies are huge repositories of bacteria—on our skin, in our gut, our hair, under our fingernails, between our toes, in our mouth . . . shall I go on? He even made the claim that there are more bacterial cells in and on our bodies than there are human cells. Now, I’m not sure how to check on the accuracy of that, but that is a rather amazing—and unsettling—statement. In other words, you are more germs than you are you!

Bacterial cells are much smaller than human cells, so perhaps this could be true in terms of number of cells instead of volume. [About 500 average-size human cells would fit inside the period at the end of this sentence; about 25,000 bacterial cells would fit into it.] The point is that, biologically speaking, you are not just you. Your body is a community of species—bacteria, viruses, fungi, mites, and mycoplasmas. Depending on where you live, maybe even a few rikettsia, worm larvae, ticks, etc. But that’s okay, that’s the way it is—like a tree or a mustard plant--you are a community.

Here’s a sideline story: A recent study at San Diego State University, funded by the Clorox Co., tested the assumption known variously as the “Three Second Rule” or the “Five Second Rule”. You know: if you drop some food on the floor, you have a certain number of seconds before it becomes contaminated. Pick it up quickly and you can still eat it. Microbiologists tested microbial activity of baby carrots before and after dropping on a tile floor, a kitchen sink, a carpeted floor, etc. Their results? …. Turns out, whatever “germs” (that is, bacteria and fungi) the carrot picked up was picked up instantaneously—it doesn’t take five seconds. The good news is that nearly all bacteria and fungi that occur on your home surfaces won’t hurt you. (the rim of your toilet is another matter). Of the thousands of microbe species out there, your body has the ability to neutralize nearly all of them. Only a very few have developed ways to overcome our body’s natural defenses. In fact, some medical researchers have suggested that young children of overly fastidious (meticulous, easily disgusted, squeamish) parents--who clean their floors and counter tops like operating tables--may be more vulnerable to infections than those whose parents are less hung-up about it. That’s because our bodies develop defenses early-on against most germs. Children who are not exposed to germs don’t develop the defenses. Or so goes the theory. So, make your own judgment on the Five Second Rule.

If there is a central theme to this rambling blog: community is built into the system—to nature, to your body, to the human condition, to Christian believers. Embrace community.

Another Side of Me

2010-03-06T11:39:00.002-06:00

This posting is a follow-up to the previous posting, “My Alter Ego?”. Maybe that alter ego—the irresponsible, but harmless vagabond—is a piece of me in an unrealistic dream world, but not in the real world. I was out of work for six months and was not myself. It gives me empathy for anyone in this depressed economy that is looking for work, especially those looking for a career.

There is a side to many of us, I suspect, that stares dreamily into the distance of time and reality at the thought of being irresponsible and self-indulgent and carefree. The vagabond, Mr. Browne, played by Buddy Ebson in one of the old Andy Griffith episodes, tells Andy: “I live the kind of life that most men only dream about because they don’t have the courage to live it.” Well, when you have a wife and especially a wife and kids, all bets are off, Mr. Browne.

The neurobiologist, Robert M. Sapolski, author of Monkeyluv—And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals (2005) says that behavioral studies of other primates have shown that it is not just the physical studs that attract female monkeys or baboons for mating; or the ones who intimidate other weaker potential male suitors to flee out of the picture (think Biff vs. Michael J. Foxe’s nerd dad in Back to the Future). But often, the males who “get the girl” are the ones who demonstrate relationally that they are the kind of guy who is in it for the long haul. Biologically, that means that a female somehow senses which potential mates will likely be around to help her do the heavy lifting of raising this child, and who will partner with her through the travails of life. Sapolski essentially says that, even amongst monkeys, responsible can be sexy.

As a pastor, I used to counsel young couples who were preparing to be married. One story that I often used was one that I heard on the radio many years before. It goes something like this: the radio show guest said that he was pastor of a church and one of the elderly women in his congregation was incapacitated, living in a nursing home. Periodically the minister would call on her as part of his pastoral duties. One day he walked down the nursing home hallway to her room and found the door slightly ajar. He peaked in, not wanting to enter at an inopportune moment. What he saw was the ultimate love story.

He saw an elderly gentleman leaning over his wife’s bed with a spoon hovering before her blank face. He coaxed, “Please dear, one more bite … you need to take one more bite.” Her unresponsive eyes told him that she didn’t comprehend, or maybe that she had given up on life altogether. He was undeterred. “The doctor says that you need to eat, dear. Please… you can do it … I know you can do it … open up one more time.” She opens her mouth briefly and he shoves the spoon home. Some of the food drips unattractively down her chin and on to her gown. He patiently grabs a cloth and dabs her clean, all the while praising her effort. Then he begins anew: “That was wonderful! … Okay, one more bite … you can take one more bite, just for me …”

She probably didn’t even know who he was--didn’t remember they had been married for sixty years or more. Maybe she had Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t know. But what a love scene! I used to tell the young husbands-to-be the same as I told my two sons-in-law when they asked for my daughters’ hands in marriage: this is the kind of guy that girls ultimately want. This is the kind of guy that I want for my daughter—one who will love her when she is gray and wrinkled and no longer sexy. Who will love her for the long haul, even into the nursing home. (By the way, at the end of the program I finally heard the name of the radio guest and pastor: then Arkansas governor, Mike Huckabee.) My favorite love songs are the rare ones about old people still in love, like Michael Smith’s The Dutchman (from Steve Goodman) and Eva Cassidy singing Anniversary Song.

So what is it like when a young man transitions from carefree, unattached player to provider and care-giver and sacrificial partner for life? Here is an interesting poem that I heard on the Garrison Keiller’s Writers’ Almanac on National Public Radio (9:00 am weekdays on 91.3 FM in my part of the world). It is a poem by Thomas C. Hunley called, “Father to a Man”. You can see the transition happening before your very eyes in this young husband’s life, much like it happened to me when my Junius Maltby went into hibernation. But, as it turns out, I’m a much happier man for it. Follow the action:

Father to the Man

The OBGYN said babies almost never
arrive right on their due dates, so
the night before my firstborn was due
to make his debut, I went out with the guys

until a guilt-twinge convinced me to convince them
to leave the sports bar and watch game six
on my 20-inch, rabbit eared, crap TV. After we
arrived, my wife whispered, "My water broke"

as the guys cheered and spilled potato chips
for our little dog to eat up. I can't remember
who was playing whom, but someone got called
for a technical, as the crowd made a noise

that could have been a quick wind, high-fiving
leaf after leaf after leaf. I grabbed our suitcase
and told the guys they could stay put, but we
were heading for the hospital and the rest of

our lives. No, we're out of here, they said.
Part of me wanted to head out with them,
back to the smell of hot wings and microbrews,
then maybe to a night club full of heavy bass

and perfume, or just into a beater Ford with a full
ash tray, speeding farther and farther into
the night, into nowhere in particular. Instead I walked
my wife to our minivan, held her hand as she

stepped down from the curb, opened her door,
shut the suitcases into the trunk, and
ran right over that part of me, left it
bleeding and limping like a poor, stupid squirrel.

"Father to the Man" by Tom C. Hunley, from Octopus. © Logan House, 2008.

My Alter Ego?

2010-02-28T00:50:00.004-06:00

There’s this recurring character in several of my all-time favorite movies and stories. I think maybe he is my alter ego: the character, Murray, in A Thousand Clowns ; Junius Maltby, the main character in a short story of the same name by John Steinbeck; a little bit of Doc from John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row; Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey. Maybe some Woody Guthrie thrown in for good measure. There are probably more. The intelligent, thoughtful, pleasant, humble, harmless, humorous, unsuccessful, under-achieving, ‘ner-do-well who piddles away great gobs of time with no regret. In some of these stories, he is a tragic or near-tragic figure as well. Perhaps I see a part of me in them . . .

A Thousand Clowns and Junius Maltby are practically the same story except the former is an urban version taking place in New York City; the latter a rural version in Central California. The Steinbeck story used to be a sort of appendage to Bantam copies of The Red Pony, but is not in any of the ones at our Barnes & Noble. It was originally a chapter of Pastures of Heaven published in 1932. I found it on-line at one time, but not today. Here is a site where you can listen to an audio recording (podcast) of someone reading you Junius Maltby. It will take you 49 minutes, sure. About the length of one episode of “Survivor” or “Biggest Loser”. Do you get my drift? Check it out: http://audiolingo.org/?p=112

Harvey is available from Netflix and other outlets. It was a 1950 film starring Jimmy Stewart, from a Mary Chase play (that my mom saw performed, I think, on Broadway, back in the day). Elwood P. Dowd is as kooky as he can be—his best friend is a six foot three-inch invisible rabbit. But at the same time, he exemplifies all the characteristics of humility, empathy, politeness, consideration, justice, love, and humor that every Christian should live out habitually. It won an Oscar and was nominated for another.

If you ever get a chance to see A Thousand Clowns--a black-and-white movie from 1965, starring Jason Robards, Jr.--by all means take it. I always thought that To Kill A Mockingbird was my all-time favorite. But it’s been a long time since I saw Thousand Clowns. I just happened to catch it recently on Turner Classic Movies on regular TV, and now I’m not so sure anymore about my all-time favorite. Wow … and you can’t rent it on Netflix or buy it from Amazon. There must be some weird contractual thing whereby corporate lawyers keep it mostly out of circulation. It won an Oscar and was nominated for three others. It was originally a play, written by Herb Gardener, which I read when I was in my twenties. It’s good, too.

I don’t know what this all means--that I somehow identify with these goofy characters. Those of you who know me can draw your own conclusions, especially if you've been able to see any of these movies/plays/books . Do you have fictional characters that you identify with? Who? Why? You can comment at the bottom of this blog just for kicks …

Here’s a Wikipedia synopsis of Steinbeck’s short story:

Junius Maltby

The short story concerns a man named Junius Maltby, who, unsatisfied with his life as an accountant in San Francisco, finally breaks with that life on the advice of his doctor, who recommends drier weather for his respiratory illness. Junius, in fairer climate, takes boarding with a widow and her children in his convalescence. After some time, with the townsfolk beginning to talk about the single man living so long with the widow, Junius promptly marries his landlord and becomes the head of the well-kept, profitable ranch/farm. The widow releases her working man and tries to put Junius to work on the farmstead, but Junius, having become accustomed to a life of leisure, ignores his duties. Eventually the farm falls into disrepair, the family goes broke and without enough food or clothes, and the widow and her own children succumb to disease.

Only Junius and his lone son by the widow survive. Junius, with his barefoot child and a hired servant as lazy as he, spends his time reading books and having fanciful discussions with his companions, never actually working. Because of this, his son is raised in rags, though well trained to independent thought and flights of the imagination. Despite his appearance and the intentions of the other children to torment him, the child is well-received at school and indeed becomes a leader of the children. So influenced by him are they, the other children begin to spurn their shoes and tear holes in their clothes.

Except for the teacher, who finds the man and his son to be romantically dignified, the rest of the community has nothing but scorn for Junius and sympathy for his child. The story ends with members of the school board attempting to give the child some shoes and new clothes as a present. Upon realizing the regard in which he is held by society, he loses the last of his innocence and becomes ashamed, realizing for the first time that he is poor. The last scene has the sympathetic teacher see Junius and his son, cleaned and well dressed though painfully so, on their way back to San Francisco where Junius will go back to dull work and ill-health in order to provide for his unwilling son.

Now, lest you get an incomplete picture of me, tune-in to the next installment: http://mandobobsblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/another-side-of-me.html

Fallow Times

2010-02-25T19:52:00.004-06:00

Fallow: land plowed but not planted; land that is resting, waiting; derived from a word for “pale skin”

We have had so much winter this year in Arkansas thanks to El Nino, the tropical condition whereby warmer than usual ocean waters in tropical zones affect temperate regions in unusual ways—for the Southeast USA it is colder than normal temperatures in the winter (by goofing up the normal position of the Jet Stream) and wetter than normal precipitation (warm oceans mean moist air). Our last snow was exactly three weeks ago. And yet, today, in a parking lot, I saw a pile of snow that was about three-and-a-half feet tall and nine feet wide. Still there after 3 weeks because of our extra cool temps. Now they are predicting more snow or sleet on Friday.

Like many fellow Arkansans, I’m ready for spring, when nature awakens from its slumber. And yet, I must appreciate every season for what it is—even a long, cold winter. We need to accept down times.

Rest is a fundamental aspect of life that is built into the universe. Birds rest: most birds sleep at night in protected places; owls "work" the night shift and sleep during the day. Insects rest, many at night, like bees, wasps, flies, beetles, etc. Others are most active at night, like fireflies, moths, and orb spiders that build the big complex webs (most of them tear them down at sunrise and rebuild the next evening). Temperate zone insects "rest" all winter as dormant adults or larvae, as cocoons, pupae, or eggs. Even plants "rest". Plants do not photosynthesize at night (no sunlight), which is the main "work" of a plant: manufacturing the carbohydrates that all nature--including humans--are ultimately dependent on for energy. Most Temperate zone plants also go dormant for the winter. All mammals rest: again some during the night (most humans), some during the day (mice, coyotes, etc.).

Time-off is built into the fabric of nature. It's part of the Biblical concept of Sabbath rest. Even the non-religious appreciate their Saturday or Sunday off. Sometimes our rest is forced on us, as when we get sick or injured. There is a sense in which our "fallow time" may even represent an entire season of our life.

Here are the lyrics to a song from the 60’s/70’s folk musician, Judy Collins. Check it out on this YouTube link if you will—it’s beautiful. Drink in the words and be content with your own down times. It is part of the rhythm of life. Let's be content with the fallow seasons of our lives. Maybe I’m in one now. It’s okay. I’ve included a couple of photos I took of some fallow fields in our area. After her lyrics, I’ll leave you with a little wisdom from King Solomon in Ecclesiastes (written while he still had wisdom). Here’s Judy Collins . . .

Fallow Way
Words and Music by Judy Collins
Universal Music Corp. (ASCAP)/ The Wildflowers Company (ASCAP)
(Administered by Universal Music Corp.)

I'll learn to love the fallow way
When winter draws the valley down
And stills the rivers in their storm
And freezes all the little brooks
Time when our steps slow to the song
Of falling flakes and crackling flames
When silver stars are high and still
Deep in the velvet of the night sky

The crystal time the silence times
I'll learn to love their quietness
While deep beneath the glistening snow
The black earth dreams of violets
I'll learn to love the fallow way

I'll learn to love the fallow way
When all my colors fade to white
And flying birds fold back their wings
Upon my anxious wonderings
The sun has slanted all her rays
Across the vast and harvest plains
My memories mingle in the dawn
I dream a joyful vagabonds

The crystal times the silence times
I'll learn to love their quietness
When deep beneath the glistening snow
The black earth dreams in of violets
I'll learn to love the fallow times

No drummer comes across the plains
To tell of triumph or of pain
No word far off battle's cry
To draw me out or draw me nigh
I'll learn to love the fallow way

I'll learn to love the fallow way
And gather in the patient fruits
And after autumns blaze and burn
I'll know the full still, deep roots
That nothing seem to know or need

That crack the ice in frozen ponds
And slumbering in winter's folds
Have dreams of green and blue and gold
I'll learn to love the fallow way
And listening for blossoming
Of my own heart once more in spring

As sure as time, as sure as snow
As sure as moonlight, wind and stars
The fallow time will fall away
The sun will bring an April day
And I will yield to Summer's way

This reminds me that there is a time for everything and every season … check out Ecclesiastes 3:1-11

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace . . .

I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Another winter storm in NW Arkansas

2010-01-31T00:15:00.000-06:00

Here we go again. Winter storms like this used to be rare in Arkansas, but not so over the last couple of years. At least this one was more snow than ice and the power stayed on. At first it was freezing rain which turned to sleet and then to snow. All and all, we received about one-third inch of ice and then five inches of snow. Here are a few pics I took. At the end of the first day we had a pretty blanket of snow that made our patio somehow festive even in January.

For those of you who know her, here is Talulah in the water garden.

Statues look somehow comical in the snow. We have another one near the upper part of the water garden who is supposed to be blowing something in her hand. I've photographed her before. She had icecycles dripping off her toes.. How about a nature shot . . . below is a witch hazel tree between our driveway and house. Witch hazel is an interesting small-statured tree. Interesting because it blooms in the winter. There are two species in Arkansas; I think this one is Hamamelis virginiana, or common witch hazel, as opposed to Ozark witchhazel. Here are two pics: one with the flower buds encased in ice and sort of magnified by it. The other is a flower that, I think, bloomed today, because there was no snow or ice on it. The petals are only about a centimeter long (2.5 cm to an inch) and look up close like gaudy Mardi Gras decorations. The woody fruit dries over the summer, winding it's fibers down like a coiled spring. When conditions are right in early fall, the fruit splits explodes open under pressure, flinging the two seeds up to 30 feet away. Extracts from the stems and bark were used by Indians and later by Europeans as an astringent to stop bleeding or swelling among other things. It is still used commonly in shaving lotions, acne medicine, and hemorroidal creams. We have a bottle of it right now in our medicine cabinet. I have no idea why and have never used any.

As I walked around my place, I noticed these speckles on the fresh snow (see below). As I looked more closely, I realized the speckles were freshly dispersed seeds from the sycamore tree in my front yard. Sycamore trees produce round, dangling fruit in the fall that look like brown Christmas ornaments hanging all over the tree. The seeds are crammed into this hard little ball and are not released for a while. In fact, it is oftentimes not until early spring when the seeds are released. I've never really seen them being released and would not have noticed these had it not been for the white background provided by the snow. These seed will seep into the soil surface as the snow melts to be ready to germinate this spring. In fact, the tree that produced these seed itself came from a sycamore ball that I pulled off a tree along the creek at the back of my land. I broke the ball apart and sowed the seed in a flat in the greenhouse. It produced a small lawn of sycamore seedlings. I planted three of these in my yard about 25 years ago. Two were cut down over the years and this is the sole survivor, now producing its own crop of seed.

Here's the seedling grown up about 40 feet tall:

Seeds are important, not only for making next years seedlings, but also as food for birds and small mammals. These left over seed heads are from Sawtooth Sunflower, a native

perennial that loves the wet, boggy area behind our back yard. Encased in ice, these seeds are unavailable for birds during this rather desperate weather event for wildlife. Fortunately for the birds, there is an ample supply of berries up and down the fence rows of our street--from a rampant weedy shrub called privet (below). This is a European ornamental that has escaped into the American countryside and displaced a lot of our native vegetation. Join me in learning to love to hate this escaped alien plant. But that's a whole other blog . . .

Then there is the native Buckbrush or Indian Currant. This grows along the edges of woods throughout Arkansas and Oklahoma, and planted itself along the back of our house. It is great food for deer, quail, turkey and lots of song birds. The berries are somewhat magnified by the ice.

And check out the frost on these buttonbush fruit (Cephalanthus occidentalis). Buttonbush is native to moist areas along creeks, rivers, ponds, and lakes. But it likes our yard just fine, and is--hands down--our best shrub for butterflies. They flock to the round white blossoms in the summer. So do other insects. I have a photo of a bright green tree frog lying in wait in the green foliage quietly eying its next meal of some unaware pollinator (see post on Tree Frogs in this blog for June 24, 2009) . All of those characters are somewhere laying out the winter right now; summer flowers and insect meals seem far away when you look at this photo.

I also saw Julie's lavender plant that's been growing in that spot for several years now. A really fragrant herb that is incredibly tough--the snow graces the lovely lavendar leaves but does them no harm.

Here's an old bell attached to our shade house, sharing a post with twining trunks of trumpet vine. This is the very bell that my mother would ring when I was a kid to call me in for meals as I played with my friends in the woods behind my house. The bell is now cracked and doesn't really work. You'll have to ask her if it ever did work in rousting me out of those woods.

We have lots of gray squirrels around our place. They grow fat off the leftover dog food in the dishes and rob the bird feeder. Our dogs seemed to have lost their fascination with chasing them. Every now and then I see a fox squirrel pass through. These are the kind we had where I grew up in southeastern Oklahoma. I think they are more handsome than the grays, what with that big bushy, reddish tail. It seems this one had a close shave with some trouble. Check out the reverse mohawk down his back.

Well, that's about it for now. I'll leave with a moon rise over the snowy Boston Mountains that we saw at the end of the day.

Check out the beauty in your own backyard soon. Peace . . .

Snow

2010-01-07T08:15:00.000-06:00

It’s January again and we are experiencing, in NW Arkansas, our third or fourth snow of the winter. I’m already losing track. Not a big deal for Northerners, but significant for us. Even more significant is the temperature and windchill: At 7:08 AM right now on a Thursday, it is 9^o F, with a wind chill of -7^o. It is projected to be -1^o when I awake tomorrow, with a high of 9^o. Pretty chilly for the mid-South. I’m glad of two things right now. First, that I am not experiencing temperatures like those in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Secondly, that we are not under a layer of ice, as we were this time last year—see last January’s blog.

We had a pretty, 3-inch snow on Christmas a couple of weeks ago—the first white one here since 1983, the year I moved into this house. Here is a poem from a contemporary poet, named George Bilgere. He writes poetry I can digest. Google him and check it out. Some of you may be put off by this poem, especially wives, and perhaps grown children, but it is sweetly philosophical for me.

Snow

A heavy snow, and men my age
all over the city
are having heart attacks in their driveways,

dropping their nice new shovels
with the ergonomic handles
that finally did them no good.

Gray-headed men who meant no harm,
who abided by the rules and worked hard
for modest rewards, are slipping

softly from their mortgages,
falling out of their marriages.
How gracefully they swoon—

that lovely, old-fashioned word—
from grandkids, pension plans,
winters in Florida.

They should have known better
than to shovel snow at their age.
If only they’d heeded

the sensible advice of their wives
and hired a snow removal service.
But there’s more to life

than merely being sensible. Sometimes
a man must take up his shovel
and head out alone into the snow.

George Bilgere's latest book, Haywire, won the May Swenson Poetry Award in 2006, and he received the Ohioana Poetry Award in 2007. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and teaches at John Carroll University.

The Awe-Inspiring Beauty of Nature (let's call a truce).

2009-08-20T20:35:00.000-05:00

I am routinely struck by intricacies in nature that I see as I go about my day. I am literally awed by many of the things that I observe or learn about. As awe-inspiring as our natural world is, I am convinced that it is only a shadow of the beauty and complexities of heaven, which are really only reflections of God Himself.

The Depression-era hobo of the desert Southwest, Everett Ruess, [thanks, Dustin, for bringing him to my attention--see Adventure magazine, from National Geographic, the April/May, 2009 issue] wrote to his brother from Southern Utah or Northern Arizona saying, "I've seen almost more beauty than I can stand." I don't think Everett--or anyone on earth--has seen the half of it.

And it's too bad, this enmity between people of faith and people of science. The Christian knows God but often understands poorly the many natural reflections of His glory; the scientist understands the creation, but often not the Creator. Perhaps some dialog between them--and some mutual respect!--would be of benefit to both sides. If the people of faith would quit trying to protect God from Science [He does not need the "help".]. And if scientists would quit trying to protect science from God, maybe more people could learn to see God in His greater glory, and appreciate nature for all that it is.

Where Geometry, Biology and Poetry Meet

2009-08-09T19:33:00.000-05:00

Here is a little poem about lost love from Robert W. Service that should be a humerous brush-up in geometry (and biology) for you . . . enjoy.

Maternity

There once was a Square, such a square little Square,
And he loved a trim Triangle;
But she was a flirt and around her skirt
Vainly she made him dangle.
Oh he wanted to wed and he had no dread
Of domestic woes and wrangles;
For he thought that his fate was to procreate
Cute little Squares and Triangles.

Now it happened one day on that geometric way
There swaggered a big bold Cube,
With a haughty stare and he made that Square
Have the air of a perfect boob;
To his solid spell the Triangle fell,
And she thrilled with love's sweet sickness,
For she took delight in his breadth and height--
But how she adored his thickness!

So that poor little Square just died of despair,
For his love he could not strangle;
While the bold Cube led to the bridal bed
That cute and acute Triangle.
The Square's sad lot she has long forgot, And his passionate pretensions . . .
For she dotes on her kids--Oh such cute Pyramids
In a world of three dimensions.

-- Robert W. Service (1874-1958)

It's Just the Kind of Day I'm Wanting

2009-07-21T20:07:00.000-05:00

There are three things, lately, that I've noticed about myself. And that is that I place high value in these things: beauty, wonder, and contentment. Beauty includes not just the physical beauty of some people (we are inundated with that by the media), but beauty in nature, in art, and in music, for instance. Even fragrances. I try to stop myself and literally "smell the roses" (i.e., any fragrant blossom that I come across)--and if I'm too busy for that, then I'm too busy!

And the wonder of it all. To take the time to be amazed by things, to ponder the intricacies of things, and to see God's hand in wondrous things.

Contentment, however, is a little more tricky. Discontentment plagues us when things do not pan out like we'd hoped--when expectations and reality do not overlap. The way I see it, there are two ways to combat our discontent: we can either reduce our expectations, or we can be philosophical about our disappointments.

An extensive scientific study was done several years ago by some sociologists who wanted to know who were the most happy, contented people on the planet. They studied diverse cultures all over the world--urban, rural, rich, poor, sophisticated, backward, first-world, third-world, etc. The conclusion was that the most happy people were those who had almost nothing, but who expected almost nothing. These were third-world people who first-world people would pity--for their lack of prosperity--but were none-the-less more content than others. Most were in poor, tropical countries like those in Central America.

The key, the researchers found, was that their relatively poor "realities" best matched their relatively low expectations of life. In our 21st Century USA, having genuinely low expectations is not realistic, what with our culture, our media marketing machine, etc. For Americans, contentment is probably more attainable by mentally "taking it all in stride". By putting things in context--in perspective--we can re-orient our thinking so our attitudes do not suffer from the little things that go awry, while forgetting the big things that are still on track. That's why a funeral now and then is good for the soul (someone else's funeral, that is!). Also, why a trip to a third-world country (not the tourist spots) is also good for gaining perspective.

Thanksgiving (focusing on all the good parts of your life), too, is a great means of promoting contentment.

For the Christian, regularly focusing on what the Gospel means to our future is a powerful attitude adjustment. The Apostle Paul told his protege, Timothy, "But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that." And to his friends in the town of Philippi he wrote, "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength."

Of course, lack of things or money or food are not the only sources of discontent. It could be our situation (family circumstances, family individuals, job, where we live, etc.). Many of these are things we can't change anyway. Like the weather.

My dad, the late Dr. Charles K. Holland, loved "the people's poet" of his generation, Robert W. Service. He passed that love on to me. Here's an appropriate one for you to chew on. Don't mind the ol' timey language with the Scottish brogue; and don't worry, Service wrote light verse, not the deep, incomprehensible kind.

Contentment

An ancient gaffer once I knew,
Who puffed a pipe and tossed a tankard;
He claimed a hundred years and two,
And for a dozen more he hankered;
So o'er a pint I asked how he
Had kept his timbers tight together;
He grinned and answered: "It maun be
Because I likes all kinds o' weather.

"For every morn when I get up
I lights me clay pipe wi' a cinder
And as me mug o' tea I sup
I looks from out the cottage winder;
And if it's shade or if it's shine
Or wind or snow befit to freeze me,
I always say: 'Well, now, that's fine . . .
It's just the sort o' day to please me.'

For I have found it wise in life
To take the luck the way it's coming;
A wake, a worry or a wife--
Just carry on and keep a-humming.
And so I lights me pipe o' clay,
And though the morn on blizzard borders,
I chuckle in me guts and say:
'It's just the day the doctor orders.' "

A mighty good philosophy
Thought I, and leads to longer living,
To make the best of things that be,
And take the weather of God's giving;
So though the sky be ashen grey,
And winds be edged and sleet be slanting,
Heap faggots on the fire and say:
"It's just the kind of day I'm wanting."

-- Robert W. Service (1874-1958)

Life Is A Fight, But Then . . .

2009-07-12T19:35:00.000-05:00

Life on earth is a fight. There are three things about life on earth that we must battle continually: gravity, ecological succession, and human nature. Gravity stoops, creases and sags our bodies; succession erases our efforts for tidy yards and gardens; and human nature degrades our best efforts to live at peace with each other. Heaven is eternal release from all three.

Whatever humans erect or lift up, gravity will eventually bring down--be it a satallite or a house. If it weren't for gravity we could run a marathon and not feel winded. Gravity is why plastic surgeons get paid so well for lifting and tucking the bodies of wealthy, vain ladies. It is to take a break from gravity that we sit down to rest and lay down flat to sleep. When we breath our last we will be lying down with only the earth's surface holding us up. That will be the end of our fight with gravity.

Then there is succession. Back in the 1940's, my grandmother used to keep a formal garden at her 11-acre estate in eastern Mississippi. It was the English-type garden with intricate designs made from manicured boxwood hedges. By the time I was in high school in the 1970's, it was smothered under the local native vegetation. It was located to the left of the driveway near the top of the hill. If you didn't know any better, you would drive by and never guess a formal garden was ever there. All you can see now is a tangle of native grape vines and fallen branches with native trees growing up through it all.

My grandparents loved to travel in their car. Everywhere they visited, they collected a few rocks to remember that place. After many years of this, they used the rocks to build a beautiful waterfall next to their patio. They regularly had friends and their "supper club" visiting on the patio and admiring the water as it cascaded down all those interesting rocks from all those interesting places from all over North America. Today, the ivy and other vegetation has grown thickly over the rocks and--just like the English garden--no one would ever guess what once was there. Now it looks just like the wild brambles at the edge of the field.

I must admit that the thought of this is somewhat discouraging to me as I pull the weeds in my garden beds. A friend of ours who, as far as I know, has no formal training in the science of ecology put it well. She said, "I'm tired of trying to hold back the Ozarks." That's layman's talk for ecological succession.

Before someone cleared my pasture (probably many decades ago), it was Eastern Deciduous Forest--oak, hickory, black gum, red maple, sycamore, dogwood, etc. As long as I brush hog it with my tractor two or three times each year, it remains a tall fescue pasture. But if I hold off for even a few months, I see the blackberries coming in, and the buck brush, and the ash trees. These are all early-succession woody plants in the Ozarks. As they fill the space, they change the conditions so that red maples and other trees come in, until finally it is a deciduous forest again.

So, everytime I pull weeds in my garden or mow my lawn or brush hog my pasture, I am trying to "hold back the Ozarks". I can show you a whole host of tree species growing as volunteer seedlings in the cracks of the vast parking lot of your local shopping mall. In fact, the more artificial we try to keep the land, the more effort it takes to keep it that way--be it a formal landscape or a soybean field. Left alone, ecological succession will inexoribly lead--like gravity--to where it "wants" to go. It's like keeping a heavy ball up in the air trying not to let it touch the ground. That's our fight with succession.

Ahh . . . and then there is human nature! Possibly the strongest force we have to contend with. Human nature makes me selfish, and prideful, and impatient, and worrisome, and demanding, and . . . miserable. It causes me to let other people down and get purturbed at me. It makes me to forever want more things and to be discontent with what is. On the other hand, the Bible says that the Spirit of God empowers us to see these kinds of qualities in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Because human nature is so strong, experiencing these "fruits of the Spirit" is almost like defying gravity. It ain't natural. It's a miracle of God when we experience it in ourselves. But someday, it will be the norm, the routine. In heaven, there are no wars, no lawsuits, no arguments, no jealous rages, no revenge. Like gravity and succession, the fight with human nature will be over.

Perhaps there is one more fight to consider. Perhaps I should add: time. Time gets away from us and stresses us and ages us. We say that “time is of the essence” and “time is money”. Time is the currency used by the other enemies—gravity, succession, and human nature. Given enough time, all three will undo us. But heaven is eternal because God’s nature is eternal and transcends time. The Bible says that, to God, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day—both are true at the same instant. So time has no meaning or relevance in the context of heaven. Heaven is a release from time, and from everything else that wears us down or binds us up. Look forward to it! And make your arrangements . . .

Just The Right Word

2009-07-12T19:22:00.000-05:00

I value beauty in the things around me, including really good writing. I aspire towards writing this blog on a regular basis, but tend to shirk it because I don't want to publish anything that is written badly. And good writing requires, not only inspiration, but a lot of work . . . and time.

Here’s a good quote about writing from an email I received last fall from Stephen Caldwell:

"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." Mark Twain

Some final advice for my readers: Never turn a cold shoulder to a new word … LOOK IT UP!

God of the Clouds

2009-07-01T13:27:00.000-05:00

"Listen to this, Job:
stop and consider God’s wonders.

Do you know how God controls the clouds
and makes his lightning flash?

Do you know how the clouds hang poised,
those wonders of him who is perfect in knowledge?”

Job 37:14-16 NIV

The last six chapters of Job point out--using the wonders of nature as illustrations--that God is in control and we are merely humble participants of His creation.

(photos looking north on 1st Ave, near our farm in Elkins, AR)

Tree Frogs

2009-06-24T16:04:00.000-05:00

I came across this “cute” little green-colored tree frog today on my front porch.

Just “hanging out” in the shade during the hot part of a June day—he/she’ll be hoppin’ busy tonight though. Tree frogs eat insects, spiders, mites, and snails during the night—mostly on the ground. Although this individual is green in color, he/she is a Gray Treefrog (Hyla versicolor) which often is gray or brown, but can be green. They like moist, wooded areas which is what our home landscape is. At night they take to the trees. They court and mate from March to October, singing their little hearts out from the branches of trees. The males sing to attract females in order to … well, you know … to make tadpoles! They stake out territories and are said to defend them vigorously if another male enters in. I wonder, just how ferocious can a male tree frog be?

They live for only 2-3 years, overwintering under leaf litter, rotted logs, rocks, etc. They successfully survive our somewhat cold winters by producing large amounts of glycerol in their blood and body tissues, which acts as a sort of “anti-freeze”, preventing ice from forming in their body cells (from Amphibians and Reptiles of Arkansas by Trauth, et. al.). Plants that are cold-hardy in the winter do the same thing for the same reason. So how about that ... plants and animals produce antifreeze!

We have lots of tree frogs that show up in surprising places. They will sit and pose for a picture and even sit in your hand without trying to escape. We have so many because our “yard” is similar to their natural habitat (moist, shady with trees and lots of leaf litter) and partly because we don’t spray our trees and shrubs with insecticides. This means we are not killing either the frogs themselves or the prey that they subsist on. Also, our water garden provides a place for them to lay their eggs, where the tadpoles will develop. The coloration—either mottled gray or green—is probably more for blending into the background in order to avoid the attention of predators (like birds, especially) than it is for sneaking up on prey. Here’s a pic from last year where I noticed a green-colored Gray Tree Frog passing the day inside the canopy of my native Button Bush shrub.

Tree frogs have expanded, flattened toes with suction cups that secrete a sticky mucous which allows them to hang on to just about anything they want to hang on to—like windows or, in this case, storm doors .

At night, in the summer, all kinds of insects are attracted to our windows, either from the porch light or to lights inside the house that they can’t get to. So tree frogs will often congregate where the action is. They hang on to the slick surface with these sticky suction cups. You can watch them stalk an insect on the window until suddenly an incredibly long, sticky tongue darts out in a flash and the frog begins to munch his/her meal. After a few nights of this, we have to clean up tree frog poop from the window sill. It means there was lots of action for the tree frogs that week! So, even a summer front porch can be an ecological hotbed of living and dying--call it "porch light ecology". You don’t have to go to the African plains to see that—just walk outside your house and open your eyes!

Bogged down blog!

2009-06-24T12:58:00.000-05:00

6-23-09
Dear readers, I am going to try to restart my blog after all my good intentions sputtered out in February. I’ve decided that if I wait for pure inspiration and masterful copy, I will never publish anything. So, I’ll try again with whatever I come up with. There are several topic areas that interest me. One area that I hope to document, or share, is the natural history of our own yard—dare I say, “yard ecology”? There is a term—“landscape ecology”—that I prefer, since it includes the natural history of other urban landscapes like malls and office parks. But I’ve also seen this term used for bonafide wild areas as well. So, “yard ecology” fits for now. It can be surprising how much interesting natural history goes on beneath our noses.

A couple of other subject areas that might crop up relate to music and to spiritual things. Actually there is a lot of overlap in my mind between the three areas. We’ll see how it goes. To God be the glory for all the interesting things we see and hear.

2009-02-13T20:49:00.000-06:00

Thoughts about music and creativity …

Music—outside of the church—is nowadays mostly performance, not participation (sometimes even there, in the church). It wasn’t always so; this is a modern development. Dr. Daniel Levitin, in This is Your Brain on Music, discusses in detail what is happening inside the brain while playing or listening to music. He theorizes that music might even pre-date language as a form of communication. Throughout the history of mankind, most people participated in the making/playing/creating of music, or at least, dancing to it. Music has always been an important, basic form of human communication.

Only in modern times have we specialized into a dichotomy of professional performers and paying audiences (active vs. passive). We appreciate music vicariously (i.e., we let them do it) because the performers are so good: the cream of the crop, who do nothing but get better and better at playing/performing music. We don’t expect that we can be that good—and we can’t—so we don’t participate at all. We listen to the professionals, or the cd’s they sell, and we buy tickets to their concerts and watch their videos on television. They play music more and more actively and skillfully, as they become more and more successful, and we get more and more passive in our musical—and artistic—expression.

Grateful Dead (left) and Ted Nugent (right).

A new wrinkle has developed in recent years that could be considered somewhere in-between the extremes of the historical universal participation in making music versus the modern professional performing for a passive audience. This in-between version began a few years ago with the appearance of the Karaoke phenomenon. Not just a fad blowing through our culture, karaoke has kept a worldwide presence and even built on its early popularity. Of course, karaoke is simply recorded music, played over speakers without the vocal tracks, which are then added “live” by participants with a microphone. It is still a matter of a performer and an audience; only with karaoke the performer is a non-professional, maybe a non-musician.

Next to come down the pike was Guitar Hero—an innovative “music game” that plays recorded music while a participant watches a video screen and manipulates a computer-guitar along with the music. The more skillfully you push the correct buttons as the music plays, the more points you score. It still is one participant “playing” to previously recorded music—now as a video game with an objective scoring system. Music competition for points, like music-sports entertainment.

The next logical step appeared in 2008 as “Rock Band”. Now, with a little more outlay for “instruments”, you and your friends can “perform” previously recorded versions of all kinds of hit rock songs as a “band”. One or more have a microphone for vocals, one has a Guitar Hero-like computer-guitar, another has electronic drum pads, and so on. Again, you are watching a video screen and scoring points—individually and as a band.

Sorry, folks, but you are not playing music; you are “playing”, but you are not creating or even recreating music.

Recently, I played at a house party where several skilled musicians, who don’t normally play together, were invited to jam while others watched and listened. When I say skilled musicians, I mean people who regularly play in public, several of whom tour professionally for their sole livelihood. I’ve been to these before, but this time was different. At some point, someone began doling out percussion instruments to the “unskilled listeners”—a djemba, a couple of washboards, a tambourine, etc.

The pounding and scraping and shaking of these neophyte percussionists did not detract from the quality of the music played by the “skilled” musicians. And it brought a wonderful sense of participation and inclusion for those “unskilled” percussion players. They were suddenly “making music” with the “real musicians”. I thought it was lovely.

It took me back to a time when I first began playing guitar and banjo, as an unskilled musician, at college house parties that would often turn into a nightlong songfest, with everyone present participating, singing shared songs at the top of their lungs. I remember the magic of those times. It was like recreating a Pete Seeger concert, coaxing an entire audience to sing along on the very first song. There is great community in making music together, skilled or not.

And yet, there is artistic value and great advantage when skilled musicians—performers—have long experience playing and creating good music together. Improvisational musicians—be it jazz, bluegrass, blues, rock or whatever—know well the magic of melodic ideas bouncing off one musician only to feed related, but new, ideas to others as the music moves around the circle of soloists.

A very different dynamic happens in other genres when musicians play--not by improvising, but together in unison--recreating a beautiful piece of music. Classical musicians or Irish or Appalachian fiddle/banjo music is performed with all participants playing the same melody, or harmonies thereof, at the same time. There are generally no soloists taking turns (although classical music can also feature soloists), but multiple individuals playing the same melody at the same time, perhaps supplemented with rhythm and percussion instruments. Perhaps less of the free expression and competitiveness of improvised music, but the pleasure and camaraderie is just as pleasing and valid.

Music in all of its styles and traditions, in all of its different venues and contexts, is pure aural beauty expressed in a way that God gave only to humans—of all His creatures--the ability to express. The animals, for sure, can make wonderful music: a chorus of spring peepers (frogs) or the melodious wood thrush, which can produce two distinct notes simultaneously—notes that are in harmony with each other (i.e., can sing harmony with itself!). But these are mindless expressions of genetic encoding for establishing territories and attracting mates (not that human music is never used for the latter purpose…). God has given only man the ability to express his deepest emotions through voice or musical instrument.

Donald Miller’s book, Blue Like Jazz, is not about jazz or even about music, it is about finding God. But an author’s note at the beginning of the book captures the God-given mystery of music:

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.

After that I liked jazz music.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way…

So, listen to music, savor music like dark chocolate, make music with abandon. Even if you are no good, make real music—actively participate in music—it is good for your soul, God knows.

The Big Freeze of '09

2009-01-29T14:42:00.000-06:00

The Big Freeze. Wow, what an experience ... and we are not out of it yet. As I write, I can hear a continual tinkle of ice as it rains, non-stop, from the trees. On Tuesday and Wednesday, it rained non-stop and became ice on the trees. Today it is raining ice from the trees. The sun is out and the temperature is above freezing. The ground is littered with ice fragments in the shapes of the stems from whence they came. Sometimes a huge shower of ice will fall, but always there is the tinkle and sprinkle of ice. It's pretty cool, but you have to watch out where you are watching from (so to speak) or you'll get a facefull.

Ozark Electric says two-thirds of its customers are without power. I think SWEPCO is about the same, as most of Fayetteville-Springdale is out. Our power came back on (kind of) around 9:00 am on Thursday (Jan 29th). I say "kind of" because most of the wires on our electrical box on the side of our house were ripped out when the utility pole snapped off and the feed wire sagged to about 6 ft off the ground across the street and our driveway. Now that it is "hot" it is very dangerous and we are trying to warn kids that like to walk the street to play with the dogs. We are waiting for Ozark Electric to put in a new pole, but they have some other stuff going on, I guess! We have random outlets around the house that work, like the refridgerator, but not the stove; the microwave, but not the garbage disposal; lamps on tables, but not over-head lights, etc. But we are happy to have something.

It actually was kind of interesting living for a couple of days and nights with oil lamps and candles, and cooking on top of the heater. We actually cooked a pot of beans and a pot of soup on it. And heated water for French press coffee in the morning (Thanks, Laurel for the Sumatra Gayo from Stumptown Coffee). I read so much that I'm not sure I want to pay the cable bill anymore; it was kind of refreshing to not flip continually through all those dumb tv shows. (I don't know who is dumb and who is dumbest when I'm doing that!)

As you can see from the next photos, we have a lot of work ahead of us cleaning up the tree limbs. And so does everyone else between here and Louisville, KY. We drove into Fayetteville yesterday and saw whole trees uprooted--fallen over from the weight of the ice, with their roots above ground. I took a walk down O'Neal Lane on Tuesday afternoon and about every 15 to 20 seconds you heard what sounded like a rifle shot as another tree limb splintered and crashed to the ground somewhere. I love trees so much (although I rarely hug them), I could hardly stand it so I went back home. Also, since there were about five trees laying across our street, I decided I was not being too bright anyway. Occasionally, you saw the blue or green flash of another electrical transformer blowing in the distance. You can see why there was so much damage to utility lines and trees, look how thick the ice was on everything ...

Here's a view of the driveway with electrical wires and cable down low. The next is looking back towards the house and the compost pile from the Dog Roundup Office (barn).

But as awful as it all was, it was beautiful at the same time, especially when the sun peaked out. The ice sparkled like diamonds as far as the eye could see. And if you looked carefully, at just the right angle, you could see colors. The ice acts as a prism (frozen water forms a crystal lattice and all..) and splits the bright sunlight into all the colors of the rainbow, one at a time. If you stare at a particular spot and move your head very slightly, you can see that spot change from bright red to orange to yellow to green and blue and so on. I tried to capture it with my camera--see if you can make it out on this cedar tree...there is a central spot that is brightest, but secondary spots of blue and green that were in focus with the human eye but out of focus with the camera.

By Thursday, it had begun to melt (notice Atticus in the background) ...

Speaking of dogs, here are a couple of the one boarder we had during the worst of the storm, a standard poodle name Smith Wilson (both names are his, not his owners' last name). He was very bouncy as you can see when he plays with E.B.

The limited power that we had at first was off and on. On Friday, the utility pole that had snapped finally crashed all the way to the ground which further ripped the lines off the house and left the hot electric line about four feet off the ground across the street and driveway. This trapped all the neighbors who had to park at our house and scoot under the wire. Others were visiting their house and couldn't leave (as was Hayden). The Elkins police came with flashing lights to secure the situation. Finally, just before nightfall, they were able to get Ozarks Electric to cut the power and remove the line.

So today (Tuesday), after a week without power, a neighbor re-installed the panel and meter to the house so--after an electrician okays it--Ozark Electric can install a new pole and connect the line. A utility worker told me that it would probably be another week before that happens! In the meantime, the trailer/office and the DDR bunkhouse had power. We moved the kitchen (microwave, coffeemaker, food, utensils, etc.) to the trailer and "lived" there except for sleeping and showering.

Finally, on Friday--after 10 days--we got our power back! Everything seems so bright inside! We had gotten kind of use to the more intimate feel of the candles and oil lamps. So we're back on track after an interesting adventure. There is still a lot of cutting and dragging and burning to do outside. Later, I'll try to send a few pics of Fayetteville trees.