on this day of thanksgiving, i am grateful for having enough.
—
“enough is as good as a feast.”
-joshua sylvester
—
credit: beautiful feast created by the kinder
Nov25
Author Archives: beth
Nov24
more alive.
awaiting tomorrow’s gathering.
—
“this is the power of gathering
it inspires us – delightfully
to be more hopeful, more joyful, more thoughtful
in a word, more alive.”
-alice waters
—
art credit: Debbie and Mike Schramer, using treasures they gathered from the forest.
Nov23
rapunzel reimagined.
not to be outdone
after one of his classmates
dramatically hung her long braid down from the tower
declaring she was rapunzel
ih decided he wanted to be rapunzel too
dramatically hanging his bangs down from the tower
declaring he was rapunzel
and it’s true
you can never have too many rapunzels.
Nov22
twists and turns.
i love that someone has created a poster
with some of our more interesting twists and turns
and wonder about the mindset
of the road planning engineers.
were they perhaps going for
more of an ‘artsy’ and unexpected approach to the roads?
more like the road of life?
—
“life is full of surprises and serendipity. being open to unexpected turns in the road is an important part of success. if you try to plan every step, you may miss these wonderful twists and turns. just find your next adventure – do it well, enjoy it, and then, not now, think about what comes next.”
-Condoleezza Rice – Former U.S. Secretary of State
Nov21
cloud flowers.
finding a mushroom village – autumn in sugarbush park
—
“mushrooms were the roses in the garden of that unseen world,
because the real mushroom plant was underground.
the parts you could see – what most people called a mushroom –
was just a brief apparition. a cloud flower.”
-margaret atwood, the year of the flood
Nov20
land art.
Every fall in Osijek, Croatia – Nikola Faller, academic sculptor and Osijek land artist, creates this magic.
Her drawings are made by raking leaves.
—
“every photographed object is merely the trace left behind by the disappearance of all the rest.
it is an almost perfect crime,
and almost total resolution of the world,
which merely leave the illusion of a particular object shining forth,
the image of which then becomes an impenetrable enigma.”
-jean baudrillard
—
image credits: plava planeta, suzana vida-suz
Nov19
spam!
clearing out my spam yet again
—
there seems to be no end to spam
i love hacking away and getting rid of it
like when you sweep the sand
out of a vacation cottage at the beach
you know there will be more of it
in just a few hours
but the deleting process
is strangely satisfying
in the moment.
—
“two years from now, spam will be solved.”
– Bill Gates’ prediction, seventeen years ago, at the 2004 World Economic Forum
Nov18
and a half.
my birthday number is a moving target.
i love how the kinder announce they are ‘and a half!’
the moment they have a birthday.
they quite naturally understand this concept.
today, i am 64.
and a half!
Nov17
ancestors.
we’ve been friends for over 40 years
at this gathering
following a recent loss
we came to realize
that between the four of us
we have but one surviving birth parent
making us close to all being orphans
we paid tribute
offered gratitude
to those who came before us
with all of their strengths and challenges
for had they not lived
there would be no us
nor our children
nor our grandchildren
nor those yet to come.
—
“the songs of our ancestors are also the songs of our children”
-phillip carr-gomm
Nov16
cat tracks.
new research shows that cats track their owner’s movements
Cats are special and intelligent creatures, and a new study led by Dr. Saho Takagi at the University of Kyoto in Japan confirms this.
Takagi’s research reveals cats’ ability to track their owners as they move about the house, and show signs of a genuine surprise if their owners pop up where they don’t expect them.
These findings support the idea that cats retain a mental representation of their owners, even if they’re out of sight, which is a sign of higher cognitive processes that can include planning ahead and using imagination.
There have been studies in the past that suggested that cats search in the correct places if they see food disappearing and that they expect to see their owner’s face if they first hear their voice, but how these abilities were practiced in real life still evaded researchers. “It is [also] said that cats are not as interested in their owners as dogs are, but we had doubts about this point,” Takagi explained.
To explore cats’ cognitive capacities, Takagi and his team studied what happened when 50 domestic cats were individually shut inside a room while repeatedly hearing their owner calling their name from outside the room. Then, the cats were exposed to either a stranger’s voice or that of their owner coming from a speaker that was positioned inside the room they were in.
Human observers watched recordings of the cats’ reactions during the experiment and ranked the cats’ level of surprise based on their ear and head movements. It appeared that the cats only showed confusion and surprise when their owners’ voices were suddenly coming from the speaker inside the closed room, implying to the cats that their owners had somehow managed to teleport to get inside the room with them.
“This study shows that cats can mentally map their location based on their owner’s voice,” Takagi explained. “Cats have the ability to picture the invisible in their minds. Cats may have a more profound mind than is thought.”
That said, it’s not too much of a shock that cats possess these abilities. “That awareness of movement—tracking things they cannot see—is critical to a cat’s survival,” said Roger Tabor, a biologist, author, and presenter of the TV series Cats on BBC.
“A lot of what a cat has to interpret in its territory is an awareness of where other cats are. It is also important for hunting: how could a cat catch a field vole moving around beneath the grass if it couldn’t use clues, such as the occasional rustle, to see in its mind’s eye, where they are? A cat’s owner is extremely significant in its life as a source of food and security, so where we are is very important.”
—
“the moment I walk into a room,
i have kind of like the terminator’s tracking system for where the food is,
and i can get there immediately.
-mike birbiglia
—
Source study: Plos One- Socio-spacial cognition in cats: Mentally mapping owner’s location from voice
