Tales of tails

"A mouse just ran over my foot!" is the status I chose for my FB wall today.

It was one of those supposedly funny chain gags that ripple out from FB from time to time.The modern version of a chain letter. I commented on someones odd sounding status and was then tasked with picking an odd status for myself from amongst a list to trap unsuspecting commenter's from MY FB network and further the chain.I didn't find it particularly funny and was about to pass when one of the status options caught my attention. To be fair, they all did: included were "I was approached by someone to become a prostitute" and "I'm going to adopt a monkey". (Really, who thinks up this stuff and have they considered using their powers for good?) Anyway, the one about the mouse tugged gently at me, suggesting I lighten up a bit and laugh with some friends.

Alien in the garden

 

While watering our summer garden I spotted this on one of our tomato plants. I hollered for Oyon to come see his classroom science lesson come to life. I thought I'd found the butterfly eggs he'd been diligently seeking over the past few weeks.

 

We gleefully nosed closer for a better look then jumped back in shock. A quick web search left us gazing sadly at the poor parasitized Hornworm hanging off our plant. Seems it was hosting Wasp cocoons. And by 'hosting' I don't mean making sure the sheets were fresh, clean towels were handy and that there was something more interesting than Fruit Loops for breakfast. They were feeding the wasp larvae in the most literal sense.

 

Because that's what was happening to those Hornworms: they were being eaten alive from the inside. As I tried not to gag and groped to relocate my ecological sensitivity so I could reconcile to the gory wonder that was the food-chain, two further surprises (via Google) came whizzing my way:

 

Sphinx Moth:

The 'Hummingbird' that had delighted us earlier in the summer by hovering next to Oyon's right ear for a few seconds was more likely a Hummingbird MOTH. They are drawn to Butterfly Bushes (like our neighbors) but also to the Anthurium I'd planted. Some, I'd placed in the vegetable bed (to draw pollinators for our veggies) and others around our front door in planters - which is where the Moth had appeared. And what is one of the stages of a Sphinx Moth's life cycle? Hornworm! 'Curiouser and curioser' turns out be just the phrase when you're falling down this kind of rabbit hole. Lewis Carroll must've had a kitchen garden.

 

Braconid Wasp:

The delicate little red-winged 'flies' that we had been spotting (and admiring) outside all summer long? Turns out the only thing 'fly' about them is their preferred mode of travel. Actually Braconid Wasps, these insects hold only warmth for humans in their dear little hearts and no sting at all. They buzz around, generously pollinating to ensure that zucchini flowers turn into zucchini vegetables and constantly searching for.....Hornworm! Yes, the plot does indeed thicken here. Hornworms, doomed offspring of Sphinx Moths, are the budget motel of choice in the Braconid Wasp world. They lay their eggs (via stinger) just under the Hornworms skin and cocoons emerge in time, housing larvae that  then avail of the round-the-clock, all-you-can-eat buffet until it's time to emerge as adult wasps.

 

So to connect the dots: the flowers in our garden attracted pollinators that made our plants productive THEN they produced predators to destroy said produce but THEN one predator-pollinator attacked the other, interrupting both its dastardly plans and its life cycle and.....SCORE for us vegetable loving humans!!!!

 

It's called 'bio control' and practised mindfully as 'Integrated Pest Management' in ecologically conscious farming operation. In our garden though, it was just another awe-inspiring instance of Nature thumbing her nose at our paltry efforts to 'save' the planet as it effortlessly functions the way it has to.

 

 

Baby Braconid Wasps emerge after gestation.

Empty cocoons on a spent Hornworm.

All that remains

News Graphs

Last winter 6 year old Oyon took to leafing through the Boston Globe newspaper that his grandmother left every day on the dining table. And demanding explanations that I was hesitant to offer.

His Dad often discusses current affairs with him as they browse news magazines together but this was new territory for me. I periodically shared a few dumbed-down headlines with him but my day of reckoning came when he declared that it looked like the world was in really bad shape and that he didn't want to hear any more news.

He didn't look happy. He can be a brooder and his sadness was unmistakable.

Not surprising either as the winter of 2012 was particularly brutal in our world. The Newtown school shootings were followed closely by the Delhi bus gang-rape, there was war everywhere, we lost 2 family members and people close to us were suffering from a gamut of very real challenges. There wasn't exactly sunshine and light surrounding him no matter how tightly we tried to keep the filters in place.

Plus, 6 year olds can take things quite literally: if the newspaper was reporting that the world was in a bad way, it must be true. That particular Saturday morning, when my little son gave up on the world with a heavy sigh, I bristled at what the world was doing to this little mind, what dark perspectives were etching themselves across this blank page full of promise. This little person, who would one day go on to shape the world we are leaving to him, was learning to give up before he even got started. I've no soaring hope from him that he'll become a world-changing leader. Good for him if he does, but I don't need him to. I DO need him to the best person he can be and that involves thinking for himself .

So I wasn't going to give in so easily. The 'graphs' his Kindergarten class had been drawing and their science game of Disproving Hypotheses flashed across my mind.  I scribbled a little chart with multiple columns, labelled the first 2 -'Good news' and 'Bad News' and handed it to him along with a few markers. I told him we were going to investigate what he just said.

We then got to work trying to see if all the news really WAS as bad as it seemed. No declared hypothesis but he understood (I think) that we were testing a notion for validity. We fetched his little globe so we knew where in the world the news was and I verbally summarized each article on the front page for him. He happily evaluated each news item then filled in a cell in the appropriate column (good vs. bad news) for a little while.

Then he piped up with one of the most wonderful insights that I have ever encountered in my 42 years on this planet. Paraphrased, it went something like this:
    "We need some more words, Mummum. It's not all 'good news' or 'bad news'. Some stuff starts out 'good' then turns into 'bad news'. But some OTHER stuff is sad but actually, kind of good!"

To my puzzled look he patiently explained the following about all the A380 Dreamliner aircraft that were just grounded (because of battery caused fires). Again , paraphrased, it went something like this:
  " It's BAD NEWS that people can't use those new, expensive planes. But isn't it actually 'GOOD news that they're fixing it so people don't suddenly fall out of the sky?"

I can no longer remember an example of how 'good news' proved to not be so. Suffice it to say, he didn't find too many of these instances. Already, he had learned to read what he WANTED to but I was happy to have him err on the side of optimism: there's plenty of time to teach him about Reality and introduce him to Cynicism.

The clincher came though when he asked me to add a category for 'Kind of silly'. The news item that prompted this was that some drunk police officers from our neighboring town, Newton, had chucked eggs at their supervisors house and then got caught. He refused to really qualify this as 'news' of  any sort and insisted on the special category. He chuckled a bit at the silly choice they made ("Didn't they know they'd get in trouble?!") but also at the thought of them handcuffing themselves since they were both THE law AND breaking it! When he'd recovered from that particular giggling fit we incorporated some basic math and took a look at just how bad the news really was.

This is how the world looked, per the The Boston Globe to my 6 year old Son in early 2012. In case you can't read it, there are 13 pieces of good headlines vs. 6 bad:

We repeated the exercise the following month:

The 'Kind of silly' article was a picture of some Patriots (our football team) fans crying in a sports bar over the team's loss. He not only thought it was silly to cry when you lost, he wondered why anyone would put that picture in the paper! I didn't have an answer for that one.

I really liked the way he categorized the world though. I love that when you add it all up, there's always more in the 'Good' column than the 'bad', that not everything is how it seems and that my little man learnt first-hand that the world is as good or as bad as you make it out to be.

Conversation Map: Ski-mask to Salmon-eating shark

Date: Dec 3, 2013, Tuesday
Time: 7:30 AM
Starting point: Ski-mask
Ending point: salmon-eating shark

 

As we are donning outerwear to leave for school this winter morning -
1. Oyon pulls on his hat and observes that it does'nt warm his cold face. He remembers a Spiderman ski mask he saw at the store recently that might. While he was there, he also saw a 'Pegasus' Bey Blade toy. He really wants the 'Pegasus'!

2. Wonders where the names of Bey Blades come from since another is named 'Sagitario' (not 'Sagittaraius' per O). Guesses they were inspired by constellations since he knows Pegasus is one.

3. I suggest Greek mythology is really the source for both the constellation and toy names.
But what are myths?
I say ancient cultures used them in lieu of books and videos to teach people things and record facts.
What are some other mythologies?
I tell him many cultures have them - Africa, China, Japan and of-course - India.

4. In fact, the 'Ramayana' is part of ours - to his delight since he 'lurves' the Ramyana.
What's USA mythology?

5.  I have to gently break it to him that the USA is not Ancient at all but really quite young as a culture. Native Americans have lived on this continent for many, many centuries though and have a rich mythology.
Oyon thinks about it and disagrees - the USA does have mythology! It's all the worlds mythology combined since Americans come from everywhere!!

6.  I concede the point and compliment his reasoning.
If myths are meant to teach people, then are there math stories? He loves the addition stories they have to make-up in class but apparently struggles with subtraction stories. He could do with some help.

7. I immediately quiz him with a few subtraction problems, thinking the problem is with his math skills.
He easily cracks them then reveals that his struggle is with the math stories not the math.

8. I quickly take off my teaching hat and query further: he's usually great at making up stories. What seems to be the problem?
The problem is that can only 'do' salmon and sharks.
He responds to my utterly bewildered expression by patiently explaining that he always ends up telling stories where a shark eats a certain number of salmon and another number is left over. He's bored of salmon and shark stories but whenever he tries other characters they end up adding together - not subtracting.

We are now parked in our car outside our neighbor's home, brainstorming other story topics for subtraction and trying to rewire his addition-crazy math brain. They have not yet done much subtraction in this first quarter of First grade. Our carpool folks arrive and our conversation comes to a natural end. 

Where did YOU travel today?

Conversation Map: From couch to woodpeckers

Journey date: nov 30, 2013, Saturday
Travel time: About 30 mines, starting around 6:30 PM
Starting point: Couch safety
Ending point: Woodpeckers

I finish cleaning the kitchen and join Oyon in our den in the free half-hour before leaving for dinner at a friends home when -
1. I find Oyon is reading, perched on top of the narrow back of the couch. Right behind him is his study table and a cup full of sharpened pencils, pointy ends facing up.

I caution him about his
precarious perch, remind him he's not allowed to sit on the top because he could get stabbed if he topples backwards onto the cup.

2. He scoffs a little at the idea of a pencil having stabbing potential but slithers quickly down nevertheless.

I tell him about how mine did when I was 6 and trying to balance it, point end down, on my palm.

3. He asks if I needed stitches because his friend Matthew did when he hurt his head.

4. I said I didn't because it was not a big enough cut but his Baba did when his knife slipped last year. (Addendum: he then very unhelpfully observed how brave Baba was about it and reminded me of the time that I chickened out of stitches for an arm wound after crashing my bike and ended up with a horrible infection.)

5. He wants to know how stitches work. I talk about how zippers pull together the sides of a coat to close it. I mention his dad will need them soon for upcoming dental surgery because his incisions will be long and deep.

6. He wants to know what sutures are made of. Will they have to come out when the skin is healed? Then he confirms that the doctor will make cuts on purpose and wonders how much it'll hurt.

7. Anaesthesia comes up. We chat about how it works by putting parts of the brain to sleep. A recent trip to the USS Constitution comes up next and how there was no anaesthesia back then - sailors got limbs amputated without much pain relief. 

8. He wonders about what the docs did with all the chopped off limbs and figures they tossed them overboard. Then asks who discovered anaesthesia.

9. I put it on our mental list of 'stuff to look up later' along with 'what sutures are made of'. I tell him what I DO know is that many modern meds originate in plants. Talk of Aspirin in Amazonian tree bark, holistic medicine and how ancients treated themselves without the help of factories and pills.

10. He is suitably impressed and wonders if there are more undiscovered medicines in the Amazon forests.

11. I observe that's why it's important to preserve the world's forests.

12. He wonders if there might be new kinds of animals there too. Or maybe ones they think are extinct, like the Dodo bird. 

13. I do a brief detour about how we should read 'The land that time forgot' and chat about the extinct Ivory-billed woodpecker that was rediscovered recently. 

14. He tells me about another cool woodpecker he heard about that spins on its beak to use it like a drill to make holes.

His Dad arrives, freshly showered. It's time to go hangout with our friends.

Where did YOU travel today?

Terminus

It's the end of the month and I need to get next months T commuter pass on this rare occasion that I'm at the station early. This Friday's workload turned out to be conducive to watching the clock and setting out with a few extra minutes to spare. usually i default to a 5 minute sprint over the quarter mile from my office building to station and hop onto the train, winded and red, just before the conductor slams the door.

A scruffy old man leaning on a crutch is complaining at one of the 5 ticket windows. He has misplaced his ATM card and wants to know why they won't accommodate him since they see him so often. He is as belligerent as the employee behind the plexiglas is calm. His cane clatters to the floor as he enlists both hands to par down his pockets in search of something. Change perhaps. The middle aged man in executive attire just behind him in line retrieves it for him. The cane, not change.

TFTT: Tasty Food, Tasteless TV

I'm one of those people who like all figurative worms to stay in the can, wriggling around disgustingly, where no light will ever reach. Recently though a few friends were gabbing (where else? On Facebook) and the lid popped right off. In a tidal wave of catharsis we 'fessed up to our 'Tasty Food, Tasteless TV' shame.

USH: Unapologetic Suspension of Housekeeping

I recently opened a can of worms labelled 'Things About Me You Wish You didn't know' and the first thing to crawl out was a taste for TFTT. That's 'Tasty Food, Tasteless TV' whenever hubby travels for work. My husband left for 10 days recently and out crawled another revelation: USH or 'Unapologetic Suspension of Housekeeping'.

You know this phenomenon, right? It's when that last pretense of keeping the home in order kind of quietly evaporates. Not that I keep a sparkling home when he's in it either, but at least the laundry pile gets the attention it deserves.

From him.


I add this in the interest of full disclosure and being the generous, open person I am.
And honest. I'm really honest too.

'Animated shower caps'

One Friday in June, when my recently self-imposed sabbatical from Face Book on Fridays was still novel enough to inspire, I walked out again by the Charles at lunch time.

Leaves, left

The skies are open in Boston but its streets below are clogged.

Drops descend in arpeggio, ripples cannot stop.

They wore black

Their energetic gestures on the train platform caught my eye. Indian, mid-thirties, attractive and clad in mostly black. He pointed alternately, to himself and her in support of torrential words I could not hear. She held herself perfectly straight and still when she eventually gestured back a reply.

Two minutes of silence

A friend posted this on his FB wall today: 'two minutes of silence! That’s all...just two minutes of SILENCE!'  
Not sure what his context was but to my ears it fell somewhere between an exclamation and a plea.
               As an admitted motor-mouth, I confess to finally feeling a similar need, not the least because I finally seem to be getting weary of myself.

Lost keys



Out on a lunch time walk in Boston's North End, it's historic Italian district. One of those 'just right' days when searing sun and soothing breeze perform alchemy.

Curry. Or more.

Feel the gentle heat? Make sure the flame is not turned up too high: it could scorch.