Life and Times at Cranberry Lake

This blog is about the life, wild and otherwise, in this immediate area of Northeast Pennsylvania. I hope you can join me and hopefully realize and value that common bond we share with all living things... from the insect, spider, to the birds and the bears... as well as that part of our spirit that wishes to be wild and free.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Childhood Beliefs or Prejudices?

I think philosophic discussion is an important need that wants exercise in every adult. For myself, a great outlet for this is book club, the book--many times--being just a jumping off point for our contemplative thoughts finding ground in the voices of our discussing them.

This last book club, per usual, a few of us had naturally splintered into separate discussion groups, and we got talking about differences in cultures. We got thinking about where in our own lives we saw differences within our own expanding cultural horizons as young children. I spoke of my mother's embarrassment when as young child I had seen the first black person in my young life. I have no idea what age that was, and probably remember it from the story having been repeated later. As I remember hearing about it, I had stared, pointed, and questioned what was wrong with that woman's skin. I think if my mother hadn't any prejudices in her own upbringing, she could have handled the situation better. I think she had just hustled me out of the way.

Ev, who was in our split group discussing this had been brought up in NYC, and had grown up with seeing black people from that young age where we notice similarities more than differences.

Charis who was next to me said that she was frightened by the Asian eyes. That was a difference that bothered her and perhaps brought about a prejudice more than differences in color.

I couldn't see that. I always liked the look of Asian peoples, except for the monsters as depicted in the Classic Comics of my youngest years when "Japs" were represented as slant eyed monsters during World War II. Somehow I never drew a parallel between the Asians and the comic book representation of "Japs", as to me the Chinese, Japanese and any Asians were to me beautiful exotic people.

Children have their own frightening sights where they cannot comprehend how something came about, and maybe that was how Charis came to not like a difference in the shape of eyes. She cannot remember, only she says she notices eyes more than any other feature of a person, and just feels this natural gut level recoiling about the Asians.

Myself, when I was young my biggest fear had been in seeing a missing appendage in a person, whether a missing a limb... or even a finger. I remember noticing for the first time that my cousin Barbie's husband had a missing finger. It frightened me. I couldn't stand seeing someone missing anything. It was akin to seeing a bad accident. The added blood of an accident would have been traumatic, whereas the missing finger, leg, or arm was just troublesome, and conjured up a gut level fear from an unknown part of my personality... some part of our psyche where I have not heard it being plumbed by psychiatry yet, though there are perhaps books I've never heard about published about this fact.

Ev spoke about her grandchild having that fear of someone being in a wheelchair.

These fears are within us until confronted, and if never confronted, stay hidden within until we again see the sight... or perhaps hear the noise. My niece Brigetta had a primal fear of loud noises, and it wasn't realized how difficult it was for her until as a family we were at a fireworks demonstration and I remember Brigetta having to be brought to the car where they must have rolled up the windows and turned on the radio to calm her hysterics. She was probably about six years old at the time.

I guess primal fear is the description of an apprehension so deep in our psychological make up we seldom confront it, as our mind evades consciously bringing up this psychic pain.

What is your primal fear? Have you confronted it or otherwise overcome it?

I wonder what my son Alby's was, as he got a five foot poster of the Frankenstein Monster to put at the head of his bed to scare away the bogeyman of his most primal fear. At least that fear isn't something to be seen in a crowd.

I remember Jo's being clowns. Jo, who couldn't be let go of in a department store, as she was fearless and would explore the aisles like Alice in Wonderland, yet, grabbed me in fear at a Boat Show when a clown was wondering the crowd for which he had been hired to amuse.

I overcame my fear of the missing limb as a thirty something adult. I had hired a baby sitter who was also a nurse's aide at a nursing home. She was concerned about a patient who was going to lose another leg, his first one having been removed after an accident when he had hopped down off a train. I didn't ask for the gory details, but imagined how terrible this must have been for him, as, to me, this was the worst thing that could happen to a person, especially whereas that was my number one primal fear. I was into a kind of a spiritual renewal at the time, and thought it was my responsibility to go visit this poor miserable creature... and I followed up on that. Once I got used to visiting him, I found that his lack of limbs didn't bother me anymore. Shortly after this I had a dream of going through a strange type of nursing home where limbless people were being cared for. As I advanced through the place, more and more limbs were missing from each patient. At the end of this long ward of people was a talkative woman who was wired up to all kinds of machines... missing all limbs and even her body. She was just a head. In my dream I began to realize that who a person really is, is not in their limbs, but in their personality... what is between their ears--their mind and spirit. That dream made me confront my childhood's primal fear and realize it to be the narrow point of view of a child who fears this happening to herself. It made me grow up to the rational that we are who our personalities are, not how we look... whether it be skin color, the shape of our eyes, or the missing limbs or digits of our bodies.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

MY RUSSIAN BEAR:

As I watched Bear, my English cocker spaniel, digging again like an obsessed badger, I got thinking about his being 5 years old and still not really trainable. It's like he speaks a different language. I know dogs don't speak, but you'd think after all these years he'd at least understand "No!"

"No, Bear, don't dig on my trail... You are digging my path up. Go get a stick." He does seem to understand, "...Stick!" and will usually stop digging unless digging up a stick, find one, and go back to being the leader on the trail proudly carrying his prized possession of the latest stick.

I was reminded about the dumb blonde who said she couldn't adopt a Russian orphan because she wouldn't be able to understand him once he began to talk. I thought to myself, "Maybe some animals are like that blonde thought... just speak a different language no matter how long you try to get them to understand your words."

...I can see him starting his obsessive digging again.

"Hey, Bear... NYET!"

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Over the Air;

Electricity along with frequency and radio waves--FM; AM; VHF; and UHF--never cease to amaze me. We flip on a switch and see the newscaster; the actor; the on-the-scene news reports as clearly as we see the dog sleeping on the couch across the room. Dogs can't see TV. At least mine don't. They won't be fooled like some cats which are tricked into getting indoor exercise by batting their clawless paws at fish in an aquarium or birds in a aviary in Kitty Videos.

We see this miracle and take it for granted as much as the dogs take us being there for them for granted. We don't even question why we see and hear life on a TV screen or hear a voice and music on the radio... unless it for some reason doesn't work.

Those frequencies darting through the air are an amazing thing. You pick up a cell phone and dial a number and one other of the billions of cell phones answer. Why? How? Don't you ever wonder?

A funny thing happened a long long time ago when I lived in Vestal NY, and we had cable TV, and a dog with a chain collar. We were watching something on TV, the remote coveted by whomever tuned in the show. The dog was itchy and shook his head and neck scratching, and causing his chain collar to make a noise... a certain frequency of noise... and it changed the channel.

"Who changed the channel!" was the rebel call. When it happened again when the itchy dog again had scratched at his collar, my sons put 2+2 together, and pulled the collar off the dog. Later when their dad was watching something on TV, they took the wadded up chain and threw it against the floor. It took a few throws to get just the right frequency, but, by golly, the channel changed. Trick complete, and Dad's yell was, "Who changed the channel, though he was fully in charge of the remote."

Frequency is an amazing thing. I'll go out in the crowded parking lot and have forgotten where I parked my car. Whether locked or not, all I have to do is hit a button and I can either see the lights go on or off, and, now, with my new car, though I haven't used it yet, if I'm way off from the site where I parked, after mindlessly having walked into the supermarket thinking about my purchases instead of where I'm parked, I can hit the "panic button". The car will let me know where it is. Amazing.

If we suddenly went back a hundred years in a time machine and just described one of these modern items, any of us would probably be burned as a witch.

Sometimes when you are taking life for granted, think about these amazing modern devices. If the world as we know it ended tomorrow, and we had to start over, could you build one of these things?... do you know the first thing about how it works? I don't. I'm just thankful I can do what I'm doing now and transfer all these words to a blog somewhere in Internet Space. How amazing is THAT!?

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Chicken Yard Behavior

SUMMER 1998 LETTER:

Dear El,

Everything is rich and green. It's about 86 degrees, but a slight breeze and a lazy afternoon baby-sitting my new chicks has kept the heat from getting to me. Life is good.

I make my observations of the chicks as if I was thinking about sharing my findings with Konrad Lorenz, the animal behaviorist. They are so small when we got them that they'd fit through the opening where the door to their pen under the garage stairs is hinged... but only on the first day. By the end of 24 hours, they can no longer fit in the nooks and crannies that they squeezed through and ducked under the day before. Signs of pin feathers show before a week is up. They show the rudimentary intelligence borne in their genes. They scratch for their food, and go under the heat lamp when needed, as they would seek their mother's warmth if brooded naturally.

There are twenty five of them. Sometimes they act almost robotic--as if wired to the same brain, and will suddenly run in numbers from one end of the fenced off enclosure across one of the bays of the garage to the other--for seemingly no reason at all. But on close observation, they all have personalities. There's the "Mama's Boy" who clambers about my feet whenever I go into their chicken run. MB wants to be picked up and 'brooded over... my chin serving as a poor substitute for the warm down of a mother hen.

There's the "Playground Screamer"... the kid who doesn't know how to talk without yelling at the top of his lungs. PS isn't a sissy, even though his loud "PEEP! PEEP! is alarmingly plaintive, and stirs up my maternal watchfulness. After he's peeped his brains out, he butts chests with another chick which resembles the ever present "Playground Bully" in every schoolyard group, and always looking for a fight.

There are the "Pathfinders and Pioneers". They go to the end of the fence to where it bends beyond the side door which opens into an enclosure about four inches high, which I watched them roam until the 3rd day as they hopped right out and into the grass. Then they were exploring the lawn beyond, so I used some of the hardware cloth fencing on the outside giving them some grass to explore while protecting them from predators. The P&Ps aren't afraid of anything! I think the only reason they are shy of me is because I may keep slow them from their explorations if I should pick them up to cuddle them... they are like the four year old child who is too old for that sissy stuff.

There was always a Hunter in the group--a chick with great imagination. He'd pick up a small feather or a part of an old oak leaf in his beak, and run like the wind, peeping like Euripides, "Ureka! I've found it!" And all the others would chase Hunter as if he had a juicy insect. Hunter would be cornered by the Playground Bully who would grab his prize and run away with it in his beak and a it becomes a game of tag. By the time Hunter found an actual bug, he had learned to quietly run and not make a fuss... so he could find a quiet place in which to eat it without dispute.

Now as I watch my three week old chicks, one is taking a dust bath in the mixture of wood shavings and debris near the coop's open door, which, if I didn't know better, looks like he's having some kind of seizure. When they're older, and prone to lice, this keeps those pests at bay. How do these parent-less birds know how to do all these things? Several others--the Lazy Babes--are copying the Dust Bathers idea and are taking a warm bath closer to the heat lamp--a dust-bath-sauna.

Chickens are messy eaters, liking to get right in their feeder and scratch for their food as they must have done eons ago before being domesticated. They don't act very domestic, as they make a mess of the place. I set up a cardboard box with a low open end and put in an open tray offood. They go in there and play like it was a sandbox, and after awhile it looks like one with chick-feed instead of sand.

Yesterday one of the Pioneers/Pathfinders tried to bob under the fence, getting stuck. He wasn't peeping in distress, but just awaiting release. I lifted the bottom edge freeing him and he squirmed through to explore further horizons. I guess a good name for him would be "Little Rebel" as he didn't want to go back in and I had quite a time cornering him. They are not only getting big, but fast. However, they gain weight so fast that they end up lazy, and will sit in the grass outside the coop all day except when they get up to get a drink and get something to eat like a bored teenager in the summer.

We have a large open metal barrel which we were going to eventually use for a burn barrel. It was turned over, but had a gap under so the Playground Screamer got under and started his loud peeping. His own loudness in this metal echo scared him into more frantic peeping. Finding the exit, he scrambled out, then would bob back and forth admiring the loud sound of his peeping in his echo chamber.

It may seem silly to imagine myself as 3" high to observe the behavior of Cornish-Giant Chicks, but when I get this yearly flock, it is the highlight of my year.

Much love,
Jo

(An update): Much has happened since 1998. For one, Elenora passed on to Heavenly hunting grounds, when she was in her 90s. I'll bet she is young and slim again, and can skip around like a young girl with my old dog Gayle, as well as all the stray dogs she's adopted in her lifetime.

We haven't raised Cornish Giants for several years now. For one thing, they grow so big, it's too big a bird for just two people to eat. It was a good thing we had none this year, as weasels found way into the coop where we close in all the chickens for the night.

I only have ONE hen now, and, wouldn't you know it, it's the cross-beaked hen that I chose to let live, though it would need supplemental feedings because her cockeyed bottom beak grew to the side giving her a Groucho Marx look as if she were smoking a cigar. I thought she'd be the first to accidently die like the weakest of a litter. But by this spring I was down to three hens counting her. Cross Beak is a survivor, and must have been hidden in the nesting box when the weasel got the others. I think she's four years old this summer, and living in the garage where she has chosen to stay so that the predators won't find her, as she would not go back into the coop after the weasel killed the others. Her nesting box sits on top of the hay facing the open garage doors, where she can look out and see the world all summer long. So far she has survived.

Monday, August 04, 2008

Computer help...

A friend sent me this after my iMac "technician" came in to help me:

ID ten T ERROR:

FW: Smart Little Guy:

I was having trouble with my computer. So I called Richard, the 11 year
old next door whose bedroom looks like Mission Control, and asked him to
come over.

Richard clicked a couple of buttons and solved the problem.
As he was walking away, I called after him, 'So, what was wrong?

He replied, 'It was an ID ten T error.'


I didn't want to appear stupid, but nonetheless inquired, 'An, ID
ten T error? What's that? In case I need to fix it again.'

Richard grinned. 'Haven't you ever heard of an ID ten T error
before?''


No,' I replied.
'Write it down,' he said, 'and I think you'll figure it out

So I wrote down: I D 1 0 T

I used to like the little shit.