red-bellied snakes

How do they communicate with each other?

Red-bellied Snakes communicate with each other primarily through touch and smell, especially during breeding. Outside of the breeding season they do not interact much with other snakes. They use their forked tongues to collect chemicals from the air and insert these forks into a special organ in the roof of their mouth, which interprets these chemical signals. Snakes are also sensitive to vibrations and have reasonably good vision.

Communication and happiness. Do they have anything to do with one another? Are the snakes happy?

I came across "The World Map of Happiness"- you need to check this out. Watching young boys in the woods for a couple weeks, as they gift you daily with toads and snakes - but have little need for communication - at least the kind that I can truly understand. And yet, it is obvious that they are happy. And the dog - who must remain leashed when outside in the city - is delightfully happy when she can run and swim and chase her charges (the young boys).

Adrian White said “The concept of happiness, or satisfaction with life, is currently a major area of research in economics and psychology, most closely associated with new developments in positive psychology....” My cynical translation when hearing the worlds "happiness" and "economics and psychology" is that they are trying to figure out new ways to get us to think we need to buy more useless stuff. And yet there are so many simple pleasures to be had.

Why do we forget that so easily?


More quotes from the Happiness Map site:
"There is increasing political interest in using measures of happiness as a national indicator in conjuntion with measures of wealth. A recent BBC survey found that 81% of the population think the Government should focus on making us happier rather than wealthier."

"Further analysis showed that a nation's level of happiness was most closely associated with health levels (correlation of .62), followed by wealth (.52), and then provision of education (.51)."

“There is a belief that capitalism leads to unhappy people. However, when people are asked if they are happy with their lives, people in countries with good healthcare, a higher GDP per captia, and access to education were much more likely to report being happy.”

An entire two lazy weeks up north. Home now and back to school and a schedule. The sabbatical year is officially over for and it has been a wonder and a gift.

The Wonder Years

There is a wonder factor to a twelve year old boy. I love it. I am spending time with four of them up north this week and next.

They are: playing cards and flirting with cheating on each other. Catching frogs and building homes for them. Wondering why I go nuts when they try to use their nets to catch the hummingbirds at the feeder. Swimming with the dog. Building forts and swings in the woods and carving their names into trees. Building a bonfire every night. Whittling. Playing flashlight tag until midnight. Eating - constantly. Waiting for rain sometimes - no screens of any kind unless it is raining - so no movies, tv, gameboys.... Constantly testing their knowledge of constellations, music, fads - of anything - out on each other.

I am: bringing them to the library to (among other things) do research on the frog (excuse me, toad). Giving them oral quizzes on American jazz...I believe they now all know the difference between Frank Sinatra and Mel Torme. Forcing them to eat vegetables, take showers and check for ticks. Singing to them until their eyes roll back in their heads - especially opera. Playing cards with them - they play like a bunch of old grumpy men. Making them pick up - their clothes, their soda cans, the watermelon rinds off the lawn, their dishes. My nick-name - the enforcer.

Reading

As I am ranting about the unfolding events this week - trying to make sense of it all - I've finished a book that I found oddly comforting - mostly because I thought it was going to be a lite "summer-read" and it made me think about so many other things, including the senseless events of late. I recommend Anderson Cooper's "Dispatches From the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters and Survival."

I have been wondering for quite awhile why I like the way this man does his job. I like to think it is more than just his waspy good looks - the blue-eyed, silver-haired wonder. It just seemed like there was something else there that was seeping through my hardened cynicism of anything that has to do with televised news. His book seems to answer some of those questions for me - although it hasn't done a heck of a lot for my hardened cynicism. He is not afraid to make connections between the personal and the global - between the people he is covering and himself. Is this why folks call him a "new breed of journalist" and question his ability to be objective. Where is there any objectivity on the news anyway? (Where is the news anyway?)

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has read this and what you think - either post here or email me.

Images from the Middle East

Hello - what are you doing on this beautiful summer day? Watching your children on the beach or the playground. Are you on vacation and sitting quetly in the sunshine. Having to go to work and grousing about the traffic, the project, the boss? Perhaps you are weeding your garden or working on a beloved project in the studio. Are you walking through the farmers market? Are you watching the birds at your feeder? Are you wishing you were somewhere else? Spend a moment with these images and take a moment to imagine this as your beautiful summer day. What will you do to help?

Subtraction 7.0

Bravo! Click on the title to visit Subtraction. I love finding these. A smart and interesting site - with enough to look through and ponder for quite a while.

reunion

Originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

Reunions and other travels

By now there is enough stuff floating around on the web about the Smith/Ellis/Fitzgerald family reunion - that you don't need my two cents worth. For a fine accounting take a look at Dooga-Dooga, Open Space , The Halblog, or Eat Your Broccoli.

I am late because I've been really struggling with uploading images and getting back in the groove of all the other stuff happening of late. When our small nuclear group left the reunion - we headed back towards Seattle (and our flight home) through the mountains of British Columbia.



We spent some time at Manning Park, on Rinty's suggestion (thanks!). About the size of Connecticut - it is an amazing series of mountains, lakes, trails, alpine flowers, aminals....I'd highly recommend a trip there for anyone. Then on to Vancouver - we were immediately in love with this beautiful, dynamic city - all of us for our own reasons. Mine was (without a doubt) the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology. A wonderful collection of First People artifacts - enough to study and learn from for a lifetime.

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