We are going to the birds (2/27/2025)

We pride ourselves on having an eco-friendly or wildlife-friendly yard. We do not use fertilizers and pesticides and mostly use plants native to the area or those that have at least some wildlife, bird or pollinator benefit. We have five birdfeeders and at least two water stations. Birds are therefore plentiful in our backyard, in particular this winter. It has been a fairly severe winter for us in the Tidewater of Virginia. There have been days that the temperatures did not come above freezing and we had at least three snow events. This has not been fun for the birds in the area, and our feeders have been busy. Below is a list of the visitors that came over for some food or drinks:

Yellow Rumped Warbler	Cedar Waxwing
Red-Winged Blackbird	Song sparrow
White crowned sparrow	White- throated sparrow
Carolina Chickadee	Tufted titmouse
Carolina Wren	Brown Thrasher
Northern Mockingbird	Northern Cardinal
Red bellied Woodpecker	Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker	Northern Flicker
Eastern Bluebird	American Robin
European Starling	Brown-headed Cowbird
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker	White-breasted Nuthatch
Common Grackle	Dark-eyed Junco
American Goldfinch	House finch
Purple finch	Blue Jay
Mourning dove	Eastern Towhee
Hermit Thrush

At least 31 species, not bad for a suburban yard. This list is not in any particular order, but just as I remember them. Watching them on the feeders or bird baths is interesting. There definitely is a pecking order amount the birds. I am amazed about how dominant the yellow-rumped warblers try to be. They will stand up to the big birds on the feeders, sit in the middle, ruffle their feathers and take a defensive stand. They even peck at other birds. Tough little critters they are! They will vacate the feeder when confronted by the bigger birds such as the mockingbird, the bluejay and the various blackbirds. But they will stand up against the thrasher. Bluebirds are a different story. They are fairly dominant as well and they will confront the warbler with varying result. At times they tolerate each other. There is somewhat of a peace between the cardinals and the warbler as well. The goldfinches use a different tactic. They dominate by the numbers, and all the sudden a feeder is swamped by 5 or more goldfinches and there just is no room for other birds, until a bully bird such as the blue jay or mockingbird flies in.

The shiest birds (or maybe the lowest on the packing order) appear to be the thrush, cedar waxwing, titmouse and the junco. The cedar waxwing only uses the birdbath. Thrasher is very secretive but will stand its ground, especially when they gorge themselves on the suet. It is just a lot of fun to observe all the birds, their interactions and behavior during our breakfasts and lunches.

One of the nicest moments occurred the other day. We were sitting inside with our morning coffee and newspaper when we heard a familiar bonk against our sliding door, a bird strike. Looking for the poor victim, I noticed a tiny bird, face down in a snow drift on our deck. Actually, the only thing I saw was a tail sticking out of the snow. I ran outside and softly scooped the poor bird up. It was a “butter but” or a yellow-rumped warbler as they are officially known as. I gently put it under a chair in our yard, in the sun but out of the snow. When I went to check it an hour later, the bird was gone; it had survived the crash. Approximately 15 minutes later I was in the yard and right above me in a tree was a “butter but’ flitting around in the branches, looking at me and chirping like crazy. I had never experienced that, and we have a large number of these warblers in our yard and around the feeders. I figured it was the warbler I pulled out of the snow and brought to its rehabilitation spot in the sun, and it was now thanking me for saving it. I realize that I am anthropomorphizing here but it just made me feel good. It made my day!

A dark-eyed junco on our feeder.

Stories of my life 3 (moving) (2/19/2025)

I have lived in my current home for almost 25 years now. Since I am almost 72, that means that I have lived here 34.7% of my life. Before moving to our current domicile, I moved approximately eleven times before getting married. That does not include four longer vacation stays (more than a month) in the Netherlands. Once out of college I served in the Dutch army at three different locations during the 16 months that I served. Moving while in the Army was easy, just a large duffle bag. We got married while serving on the last military base and that allowed me to move into civilian housing. We rented a vacation home on a Dutch camping nearby, where we lived for the first few months. First, we rented a camper from a minister but left after a few weeks when he tried to get into my young bride’s pants. Not very surprising from a religious leader trying take advantage of a young girl. A young (she just turned 22) somewhat vulnerable lady in a foreign country who doesn't speak the language, trying to fuck her. Then to think that he was married and had two young daughters. We moved into a ramshackle cabin on the same camping after that and we lived there for two months.

After leaving the service we lived in at least 13 more locations, not counting brief stints of a few weeks with both sets of parents. Twenty-eight moves or new homes in the first fourty-seven years of my life. On average , I moved from one place to another every 1.67 year or every one year and eight months. During that time I lived in nine countries (that count includes two islands in the Caribbean) on five continents (placing the two islands as Central or South America). Phew, I am tired of thinking about all that travel and moving. But on the other side, I miss it at times.

During the past thirty years I had careers that required a lot of traveling. First as a consultant I traveled for the various projects I was assigned to. I traveled to Los Angeles and a week later I was in New Hampshire or up state Pennsylvania. Then it was Louisiana or Michigan; you get the idea. When I took a job as an instructor for the state of Virginia, I was required to travel overnight at least two weeks per month, albeit in State. I liked the pleasure of solo traveling, be it by car or by air. While traveling with colleagues is fun, I somehow liked to be alone, for meals or just in my motel room. I assume that is a true sign of being an introvert, although my wife think that my claim of being an introvert is pure bull shit. However, my career forced me to be out in public and act extroverted. Marketing is the game as a consultant; although I was never good at it or comfortable with it.

And now I am retired. Do I miss the traveling? Yes and no.

Since retirement I have been across the country three times; really from the east coast to the west coast. I have written about these trips <here>, <here> and <here>. We camped at least three times around our state and stayed in a cabin at a state park. I should not forget our camping trip to the eastern shore of Maryland. Finally, another solo trip this year to Missoula, MT where I explored Walden and Desert Solitaire with a group of like-minded folks as part of the “Listening to America” organization.

Today I got the news that a friend of mine passed away last night; I am going to miss you, Roy! At least Roy led a good life (although you might say he was not kind to his own health). During retirement he and his wife travelled to South Africa, Egypt and to Petra in Jordan, just to name a few places. Other retired friends are currently in the Galapagos Islands; another good friend spent ten days in Marocco straight after retiring this year, and finally some very good friends just returned from a trip down under (New Zeeland and Australia), they were in Finland last year. I told my wife today that we better do some traveling before it is too late. Although we have seen a lot of this world and tell people things like “been there, done that, loved it, and got the t-shirt,” there are still places I would like to explore or even revisit.

Here I am in the woods behind the house I now have lives almost 25 years.  I love to walk and explore these woods, I forest bath as much as I can.  After 25 years I am starting to feel restless and start thinking of moving closer to our daughter. 

Transform yourself ... Stories of our life 2 (2/11/2025)

I am reading a book by Neil King, Jr. entitled “American Ramble" and was struck by a passage in the chapter on his visit to Amish country. It was a quote from the Bible: St. Paul's letter in Romans. It goes: “Be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” A little later in the book the author provides his own interpretation or translation: “Do not let the world form you. Do not conform to it. Instead, transform yourself through a renewing of your mind.” A very interesting thing to think about in todays world, indeed.

I also ran into a quote by Erasmus the other day. This quote takes me to the political situation we are finding ourselves in as a country. The Dutch humanist, philosopher, priest Erasmus’ words still ting true when he warned us in the late 1400s and early 1500 about today's politics when he wrote: “The less talent they have, the more pride, vanity and arrogance they have. All these fools, however, find other fools who applaud them.” These two quotes (Erasmus’ and King’s) intersect each other in an interesting way.

Fools in this sense does not infer that these folks are poor, destitute, have a low IQ, or not successful; just plain dumb. Bringing it back to King, these fools have been formed by a demagog called tRump. However, I am not sure who is the largest fool tRump or mUsk, who is following who in that case, and who else conforming to them and applauding them? They do not want to renew their mind but be back in the 1920s and 30s, or even earlier (McKinley?) and make this country backwards and racist again.

I want to leave it there and go on with some of the stories of my life and go back to Mr. Kings interpretation of St. Paul's words. “Do not let the world form you. Do not conform to it.” This was somewhat of the motto that I live by from my mid to late teens (late 1960s) and probably all the way until 2010. I mentioned in my previous post that I was moved to The Netherlands in August 1969 from the island of Curacao. I use the term “was moved" because it had nothing to do with my free will. As a 16-year-old you are not supposed to have free will but do what your parents think is best for you or the entire family. This move set me off on a more nihilistic path. I came from an exotic island that a lot of my new fellow students never heard of, let alone had never been too. The attention allowed me to become somewhat of a class clown, rebellious, different with an attitude of I don't give a damn.

The second part of King's translation: “Instead, transform yourself through a renewing of your mind” is also part of my life. I have always wanted to learn, but usually on my terms and not the way you are supposed to in today’s society. I took double the number of required courses in grad school and a lot of them were outside my major of study. We still have a library of a wide variety of books, some of which we are currently trying to get rid of; we are getting older and do not want to saddle our daughter up with having to dispose of them.

As I reported in an earlier post, this year I went to a retreat to discuss Walden and Desert Solitaire. Honestly, I felt like I was infected by a case of “Imposter Syndrome.” Me a scientist/educator/ecologist studying and discussing literature and philosophy? But I was renewing my mind, broadening my experience; and I had fun, learned a lot and was inspired; so much so that I am going back next year.

This brings me back to where I started with this write-up. I will continue visiting my stories as discussed in my previous post. In addition, I will keep pointing out what my perception is of what is going on in these politically and socially difficult times.

Out with the old.  These mushrooms are digesting an old stimp to make place for a new tree.

Some nice forest bathing this morning.  I just sat on a stump for 15 minutes and mediated in the woods.

The Stories of our Life (1/30/2025)

The folks at my church (the Unitarian Fellowship of the Peninsula) have established what are called “Fellowship Circles.” These spiritual circles are approximately eight persons strong, meet twice a month for approximately an hour and a half and discuss a specific topic. The topic this week was “The Stories of my Life.” We were asked to discuss three questions (in a round).

The questions were:
1. Tell us a story from your life that tells us something about where you came from.
2. Tell us a story from your life that tells us something about what you are.
3. Tell us a story from your life that tells us something about where you are going.

If you read my blog regularly, my possible answer to the second question should be familiar to you; this is what this blog mostly is about. I could have given four stories that address question 1. One of the stories is about the kid that was killed for stealing a pig. This happened in Uganda (1978) and the event is still haunting me. The other stories include one on how my career started; secondly about the first kiss my wife and I exchanged in 1976 while skating on the ice between Gouda and Rotterdam; and lastly the labor riots in Curacao 1969 and what this eventually led to.

Let’s start at the beginning: Curacao. I was 15, when on May 30, we were on lunch break at our high school. We were standing just outside the gate of our school, having just returned from buying some snacks at the Portuguese shop (toko, or convenience store) across the street when a huge crowed of angry protestors marched by the school on their way downtown. I was personally blown away from seeing all these angry faces walking by and so many! The school closed down and I think it was my father who picked me up. We lived on top of a hill fairly far removed from downtown (20 or so miles) but that afternoon we watched dark billowing clouds of smoke rising from the town (Willemstad). It later appeared that downtown was partially destroyed and put ablaze by the rioters. I read reports that eventually 432 rioters were arrested. Based on those numbers you can imagine how many rioters I saw that faithful morning passing by our school. The islands went into martial law for a week, and I remember 1) family friends coming over to stay with us, to be far enough from the epicenter of the riots, 2) with my father franticly driving around the island trying to find an arms dealer or some place where he could buy a weapon to defend the family, and 3) being safely at home with my scared parents and their friends. The name of the leader of the rioters was called Pappa Godett. You can just imagine what the white minority on the island was joking about or hoping for.

A little background, we had lived in the Congo and although we had not gone (suffered) through the independence war in that country (read Atwood’s “Poisonwood Bible” or Naipaul’s “A Bend in the River”). Many of my parents’ old friends (yes, white colonialists) had and had shared the horror stories with them. These riots scared my parents shitless, enough that they started panicking. Eventually things settled down, but my parents had enough; they decided to move back to the Netherlands. They stuck me on a plane in early August to start my 3rd grade (9th for those readers in the US) in high school (the move put me back one grade). I was sent to live with my aunt and her four daughters (two more or less my age) for the first few months and was reunited with my family in December of that year.

You can imagine how this shaped me. I had just discovered girls, already fallen in love at least twice and now had a steady girlfriend. These riots pulled me away from it all, my beloved island, its culture, my friends and my girlfriend. It changed my life forever, setting a course for who I am now, not better or worse. It just made me who I am today.

Stay tuned, I will write more about the next two stories that shaped me. Who knows, I may even write the story of my future in one of these posts; however, I hinted at it in my previous two posts about the workshop with Clay Jenkins. Conversely, the current political happenings make me feel that I cannot and should not keep my mouth shut; I still have so much to say. In other words, my life stories may be interspersed by some more social and political commentary.

Yorktown Battlefield, a place where at least two battles were fought and a lot of stories were told, and lives were shaped.

What a week, part 2 (1/19/2025)

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

What did I learn during the retreat? About Clay Jenkins, members of the group or myself? I will not detail very personal information on the first two, but I guess that I am somewhat of an open book to my regular readers, and I will write a bit more about myself and the activities I participated in.

What did we do? On Sunday we started out with a gift book exchange, where you gift a favorite book to someone in the group, while introducing yourself to the group. I gave “Solace of Open Space" by Gretel Ehrlich to one of the participants and received a book on poetry from another (“The Trouble with Poetry” by Billy Collins). On Monday we started with meetings in the morning and afternoon. There was a campfire every evening and some free time, sprinkled in between. We ate our meals together. I was surprised by the copious amount of alcohol that was consumed in the evenings. Folks shared wine, single malt and there was beer as well. We had a hike to the river to discuss Lewis and Clark and another time to reenact Thoreau and throw burning sticks in the river. A trip to a hot spring was the capstone to our get together.

Clay is as intelligent as he sounds on the radio and podcasts. He runs a fairly tight ship during the meeting and is an amazing facilitator. He is clearly the best-read person I have ever encountered with a great number of interests. He is caring and is very interested in the well-being of the participants. He engages in personal dialogues with folks during the discussions and social hours. Clay was trying to be as non-political as possible, hinting at the fact that he lived in a conservative State; however, he kept mentioning a great number of times that “Your vote matters.” My guess is that all but one participant were liberal; however, all were very well off (I counted four of the nine participants in first class on out plane on the return trip from Missoula, and I was definitively not one of them). Lastly, his daughter and future son-in-law had joined us for the first few days, and you could see his pride and love for those two. Both are also very intelligent and well read.

The participants ranged from a winemaker and his wife, to a foreign service person and wife, to retired naturalists, to retired park rangers/managers, to writers. Let’s not forget the copious number of retired lawyers (3), a financial advisor and a wall street guru. An eclectic but at the same time a very intelligent group. At least two were searching for what to do with the rest of their lives. This search was brought out to the foreground during our Walden discussions. Thoreau champions simple living, with nature. As a transcendentalist, Thoreau discusses spirituality, self-determination and personal growth. Coupled with his love for nature made most of us that week could consider ourselves to be Thoreauvian in some form or fashion. Hence, the search by some of us for the deeper meaning of life and the next step in the life we are living. Clay was good I hearing them out and making them think.

I had one of the most wonderful experiences in my life, psychologically, mentally and intellectually stimulating; it was a good kick in the ass: get going, there is such a wonderful life still to live. If you are a regular reader of these posts, you must understand that I at times have struggled with the purpose of the rest of my life. I am retired and have blogged about getting old. I have mentioned that it sucks! I too am (was) trying to find purpose in (the rest of) my life. This clearly was an issue that one of the participants was struggling with and I eagerly listened in to what Clay had to tell him, without saying much myself. My understanding is that in a Thoreauvian sense, we all have a purpose in the greater whole, but sometimes we do not understand what it is. We should embrace where we are in our stage of life, suck the marrow out of the life we have been given (to loosely quote Thoreau). Yes, getting old sucks, but at least I can blog and hopefully teach something to someone. As I always thought about the classes that I taught, if one or two of the students in my class of 40 goes home thinking “I learned something” (and hopefully also thinks “and I am going to apply it") than my task for that day is done. The workshop that week somehow enforced that idea. I do not have to be an Einstein, a Thoreau, or an Abbey to have an impact on other people's lives and to make a difference how small that is.

Yes, I came out of that week refreshed and optimistic again, even though the results of the elections had left me depressed and ready to move to Mars or some other place sane. I realize that “your vote matters," and in future elections I will make mine count and make sure that you all vote as well. In addition, I will be reading more and not get sucked in so deep into the television (especially the news) and social media. I need to do more for my family and finally do more for myself. Like Clay, I will be trying to declutter my life. Wish me luck.

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The Lochsa lodge

Ready to discuss Walden