Aug31

‘i don’t hear anything, do you?’ – olive to pete the cat. ‘nope.’- pete the cat to olive

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olive and pete the cat, actively ignoring me

using their selective hearing skills

when i call their names

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Why do cats ignore humans?

 Cats pretend not to hear you on purpose. They clock your voice instantly, they just weigh whether responding is worth it. Nine times out of ten, it isn’t.

They can hear a can opening from halfway across the house, and yet sometimes they don’t even twitch an ear when you call them from the other end of the couch. Are they ignoring you? Yes, they sure are!

 Science confirms they hear you perfectly-they are just actively choosing to ignore you.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo conducted a study and  determined the following:

Science:

  • Voice Recognition: The study showed that cats clearly recognize their owners’ voices and know when they are being called. 
  • Subtle Reactions: Instead of coming over, a cat will often just twitch an ear, move its head, or dilate its pupils to show it heard the sound. 
  • No Pack Instincts: Unlike dogs, cats were not bred over thousands of years to obey human commands or follow pack rules, so they feel no obligation to answer. 

Why They Ignore You;

  • Selective Attention:  Cats weigh whether an action benefits them before they decide to move.
  • Relaxation: If your cat is resting or comfortable, your voice is registered as low-priority information that does not require physical movement.
  • Autonomy: Felines prefer to dictate the terms of their own social interactions.


    Your  cat certainly understands you when you call them-they are simply choosing not to respond.
     Only 10 % of cats who recognize your voice will choose to do anything about it.

”if cats could talk, they wouldn’t.’

-nan porter

 

 

 

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source credit:

Atsuko Saito and Kazutaka Shinozuka, University of Tokyo

“Vocal recognition of owners by domestic cats (Felis catus)”Animal Cognition: 2013

art credit: gary larson, the far side

Aug30

toothy tips.

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(not me, or my teeth, but i loved his toothy grin)

 

i read an article about the top tips and habits that dentists wish we’d stop doing to our teeth

it began with the list of the usual suspects:

 brushing too hard, skipping floss, drinking sugary and acidic drinks, all day grazing…

and then

the last ones, which were a bit more alarming and that i didn’t know were a habit for some:

Using your teeth as tools – Your teeth are built for chewing food (not ice) and that’s it. This may sound redundant to some, but you really should not be using them to open bottles or tear into packaging as it can crack or fracture a tooth (sometimes deep enough to reach the nerve and push you into root canal territory). Keep a real bottle opener on your keychain and scissors nearby instead of using your teeth as a tool.

DIY your own dental work –Filing your own teeth with a nail file, getting “veneers” from anyone who isn’t a licensed dentist or whitening with baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, or charcoal can cause permanent damage — chemical burns, brutal sensitivity, a thrown-off bite, and enamel erosion all won’t revert back.

Taking your advice from social media – Influencers may sound sure, but most of them don’t back their tips with evidence. A hack that’s fine for one mouth can absolutely wreck another mouth. Before you try a viral dental trend, please ask an actual dentist.

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Full disclosure: one of my daughters did make ‘braces’ for herself out of open paper clips because she was jealous of her older sister getting braces (until she really did need ‘real braces’ a year later and was no longer jealous), this may have fallen under the DIY dental work warning above.

 

 

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*jos’we do have a zeal for laughter in most situation, give or take a dentist.

-joseph heller, american author of catch 22

 

 

 

 

Aug29

why didn’t the chicken cross the road?

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driving down the track

leading to my granddaughter’s house

we met one of her pet chickens

mr. rooster

who had made the choice 

to just stand

in the middle of the road

not inclined nor heading

toward one side or the other

no way to go around him

we had to wait it out 

he was

playing chicken with us

we waited some more 

he finally got bored

proved his point

moved to one side

with each of us thinking

we had won.

 

—

‘the chicken did not cross the road. the road passed beneath the chicken.’

-albert einstein

Aug28

‘i, kusama, am the modern alice in wonderland.’

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Yayoi Kusama, an icon, rebel and visionary, passed away this week

 

10 interesting facts about Yauoi Kusama

  1. Yayoi Kusama arrived in Seattle in 1957 with two kimonos and 200 paintings. This is the first city Kusama visited when she moved to the US.
  2. Kusama was pen pals with Georgia O’Keeffe, Richard Nixon, and the President of France.
  3. She partnered with Louis Vuitton to design a clothing line in 2012.
  4. Narcissus Garden, a rogue performance piece by Kusama, was installed outside of the 33rd Venice Biennale in 1966 with the support of one of the curators, however she was asked to leave the premises.
  5. She was making Pop art before Andy Warhol.
  6. Assemblage artist and filmmaker, Joseph Cornell and Kusama had an intimate friendship that prompted his mother to dump a bucket of water on them once when she caught them kissing.
  7. The quintessential polymath, Kusama has published numerous literary works.
  8.  A firm believer in love forever, Kusama performed a gay marriage way before gay marriage was legal.
  9. In 2016, she was ranked as the most expensive living female artist on aggregate.
  10. Yayoi Kusama produced art work for more than six decades.

    Kusama was an avant-garde artist who died at the age of 97. She worked across painting, installation, and sculpture, and has covered rooms, trees, and buildings with her iconic imagery. Kusama started painting her famous polka-dotted sculptures in the 50s which put her problems into perspective. “I wanted to examine the single dot that was my own life. One polka dot: a single particle among billions,” she said.

‘more and more, i think about the role of the arts, and as an artist,

i think that it’s important that I share the love and peace.’
-Yayoi Kusama

 

 

 

—

source credits:galerie, chelsea werner-gatzky

Aug27

may just be fairies?

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hummingbird moth (Strawberry Clearwing) on an american germander plant 

enjoying a visit to my daughter’s native garden

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Hummingbird moths have been seen as a lucky omen. Lore has it that a swarm of the moths was seen flying across the English Channel on D-Day, the day of the Normandy landings in WWII.

One of the sweetest insect visitors in a garden is the hummingbird moth. They fly and move just like hummingbirds. Like them, they can remain suspended in the air in front of a flower while they unfurl their tongues and insert them in flowers to sip their nectar. They even emit an audible hum like hummingbirds. Often people notice what they think is a tiny hummingbird fleeting around the flowers and are shocked when someone explains to them that what they just saw was not a bird but a moth.

Hummingbird moths are rather plump; the tip of their tail opens into a fan. Their wings are covered by scales; some species lose many of the scales from patches on their wings, so are called clearwing hummingbird moths. They are tiny and have a body length of 1-2 inches and a wingspan of 1.5-2.5 inches. Like most moths they have a very long tongue which they carry rolled under their chins and that they use to reach the nectar of long-necked flowers. Such nectar is inaccessible to many other flower visitors, so it seems that these flowers prefer long tongued pollinators and try to keep the others away. 

—

moth-ku

sweet hummingbird moths

  flying beauties flitting wings 

may just be fairies

—

bk

 

—

photo credit: oldest daughter, HP

source credits: *Phillip Prichard, University of Georgia, U.S. Forest Service, Discovery Journal, Native Suburbia

 *Phillip Prichard, is a Paulding UGA Extension Master Gardener, Master Birder, and a UGA Master Naturalist, who teaches  horticulture, sustainable landscaping, and environmentally friendly gardening practices using unbiased, research-based information from the University of Georgia.

 

Aug26

“i wake up with new dreams everyday.” – Dolly Parton

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“Now the night I graduated from Sevier County High School, back in 1964, we were all asked to stand up and talk about what we were going to do with the rest of our lives. And everybody had a different story. And when it came my time I stood right up there. I said I’m going to Nashville and I’m going to be a star. Well the whole place laughed out loud. And I was so embarrassed, cause I thought, ‘How odd. Why is everybody laughing? ‘Cause that is what I’m going to do.’ But as bad as I felt at that moment and as embarrassed as I was, it did not shake me from my dreams. So I guess I showed them, huh?”

– From her 2009 University of Tennessee, Knoxville commencement speech

 

Dolly Parton, 8 years old (tallest, front center) with her family

 

Dolly Parton – 1946-2026
one of my favorite humans
who brought so much joy to the world
you will be missed by many
—
Photo credits:
Dolly in car, Jim Herrington, 1998
Family photo, Estelle Watson, 1954
Aug25

on the 110th anniversay of the U.S. National Parks.

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Some of the country’s first park rangers were Buffalo Soldiers, African Americans who served in all-Black U.S. Army regiments starting in 1866. When Yellowstone and several other national parks were being established near the end of the century, the Department of the Interior quickly realized they needed protection.

So the U.S. Army stepped in as park rangers for Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks between 1891 and 1913, and the 24th Infantry became the first regiment of Buffalo Soldiers to take on the role when they began serving at Yosemite in 1899. In 1903, Captain Charles Young, the highest-ranking African American U.S. Army officer at the time, also became the first African American to be named the acting superintendent of Sequoia National Park.

—

‘There is nothing so American as our national parks.

The scenery and the wildlife are native. The fundamental idea behind the parks is native.

It is, in brief, that the country belongs to the people,

that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us.

The parks stand as the outward symbol of the great human principle.’

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

 

—

photo credit: National Park Service, Buffalo  Soldiers

Thomas Moran painting – Yellowstone Park

source credit: History Magazine, National Geographic

Aug24

“put on some lipstick and pull yourself together.” – elizabeth taylor

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Neanderthals Wore Makeup

 Tens of thousands of years before skin care routines started popping up on social media, Neanderthals – our supposedly brutish, decidedly unglamorous evolutionary cousins – were wearing makeup and even jewelry. This discovery was made by archaeologists working in Spain who excavated oyster shells covered in an”attention-grabbing” colored pigment.  The pigment was made of minerals including hematite, charcoal, lepidocrocite, and pyrite, which gave it a shimmering, glitter-like appearance that the researchers believe was also used on the body due to its cosmetic effect. The oyster shells were found with holes cut in them, suggesting they might have been worn as necklaces. The University of Bristol’s João Zilhão, who led the study, described the makeup to NPR as “something that people wear in order to convey what they are… in a world where you have a complex network of relations” – a means of self-expression rarely associated with Neanderthals. The shells which were 50,000 years old, wouldn’t look entirely out of place today.

By the Numbers

Neanderthals had larger brains than us.

Despite the common stereotype, their brains were larger than ours. Measured by endocranial volume,  the space inside the skull,) their brain size was an average of 1,410 cm³ (~6 cups) compared to Homo sapiens’ 1,350 cm³ (5.7 cups). Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better, however, as their brains were proportional to their bodies (which were denser and more muscular than ours) and supported their larger eyes, which helped them see in the low-light environments where they thrived.

—

‘i like to imagine that the Neanderthals were all really good artists.’

-jim drain

 

*jim drain is an American textile artist who creates vibrantly colored mixed-media works that incorporate a range of materials such as fabric scraps, machine knit-patterns, found objects, and printed ephemera.

 

 

—

source credits: gary larson, far side cartoon, university of bristol, npr, historynews, michael nordine

Aug23

misfit society coffee club.

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welcome to the misfit society coffee club

pull up a lawn chair outside

or head on in for a hot or cold drink and a treat

enjoy the warm and eclectic 

vintage and pop decor

happy music

art all around

 graffiti art by local Detroit artist Richie Blanko. he’s a Puerto Rican graffiti artist, muralist, curator and educator, raised in SW Detroit. his graffiti art spans the perimeter of the club, tagging the walls with song lyrics that inspired him. 

—

loved the name 

set out on foot with friends 

to find it

quite an adventure

get around

the construction

over the cords

 through the tunnel

and back

avoid the holes

street signs down

doubled back

again

found it at last

think we qualify

 as

misfits and mischievous 

new members

of the club.

—

Here’s what the club had to say about itself:

Misfit Society Coffee Club is a place for misfits, outcasts, savants, prodigies, freaks, underdogs, and pretty much everyone in-between.

We’re all-inclusive, to be sure, but we have a special place in our hearts for the rule breakers and mischief makers. In other words, we have a lot of love for anyone and everyone who dares to think differently and follows their own path. Not your average cookie cutter types (but we love them too).

We strive to be a warm, welcoming house of refuge for all. The type of place you might be drawn to on a bad day, because you know you’ll walk out feeling better; or on a good day, because, well, you’ll walk out feeling better-er.

Yes, we said better-er.

 

 

 

Aug22

speak softly.

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 soft message left under the bridge in the park

 

—

‘speak softly but carry a big can of paint.’

-banksy

 

 

 

 

 

 

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bandemer park, ann arbor, mi, usa – summer 2026