Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you cannot trade for your heart’s desire is your heart.
—Miles Vorkosigan, Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold
Tips for Birders
In reply to a request for comments about birding, I wrote this on someone else’s blog. I thought you, my voracious reader… readers, might find it fun.
Keep in mind that “comfortable clothing” for birding means stuff you can hike in, go thru shrubbery in, wade a creek in. Story I read/heard years ago had a young woman arrive in low-heeled office shoes. For her, those were “comfortable”.
Keep a sense of humor. Bird names are daft. Early on, bird names were given by people who only had a dead bird to look at. Orange-crowned warblers are green.
Keep a sense of humor. Birders are daft. We have our own local names for things. Getting hung up on correct names is likely to cause the group to find every nickname for every bird on the local list. We did that to one poor fussy “perfect namer”. ‘Bout drove him nuts. Birders will translate, if you look puzzled.
Keep a sense of humor. The minute you bring up your binoculars, the bird will fly off. And just because everybody else can see the bird does not mean you’re either blind or stupid. Half a dozen of us were admiring a yellow-breasted chat, including me for whom most birds have an invisibility cloak. The walk leader, a man of some 30 years’ birding, couldn’t see it. We spent 15 minutes pointing out branches, and “left at the split, then out two feet”, and he still never saw the chat. It happens.
Birding will change how you view the world. Going out early in the morning, I don’t hear amorphous bird sounds. I hear the different voices, the jays, the finches, the warblers. I see trees and bushes not as green stuff planted in a yard, but as something the robins like, the hummers will feed from, the mockers will nest in. I was talking with a friend on the phone. I suddenly asked, “Did you just walk outside?” “Yes… why?” “Because I can hear the woodpecker.”
Traditional marriage and gender roles
From this blog post:
…same-sex marriage threatens traditional marriage because it challenges ideas about proper gender roles.
Same-sex marriage makes a lie of the very foundation of traditional gender roles. Same-sex marriages say that a woman can run a household, or that a man can raise a child. This does not square with those whose lives and beliefs and relationships depend on upholding and living their lives based on differences between the sexes.
….
I am struck in listening to the opposition to same-sex marriage by the persistent denial that gender is a socially constructed role. This is a “traditional” view of marriage in the sense that it is grounded in “biology is destiny,” or specific roles assigned based on sex. It is an extremely narrow view of “marriage” based on specific roles assigned by sex, rather than marriage as an emotional and physical and social partnership between two individuals. Most telling, it is a view that denies that heterosexual people can be in egalitarian marriages, or should be. It is a belief in “traditional” marriage as hierarchical. Not as a true partnership of equals, but as a microcosm of society with a power structure that flows from husband to wife to children.
Interesting read.
Dangerous place
The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
~Albert Einstein
You can tell a lot about a person
I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.
— Maya Angelou
I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by his description of his God.
—Lin Daniel
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