It turns out that my stomach and heart were right. Within a week of our Orlando trip, a killer whale pulled one of trainers underwater at the end of a show. She died. The reporters’ talk immediately turned to whether or not the animal would be euthanized after the incident. I wasn’t shocked by the direction of the media’s questioning; I was sad. My inner reporter began asking: “Isn’t it time to evaluate if these kinds of shows are balanced activities for the animals?” The whales, dolphins and sea lions looked overworked to me in just the few minutes of clips that I watched on the Internet — and with each show running four or five times a day, seven days a week, that’s a lot of cumulative stress. In addition, whales and dolphins rely on sound waves (sonar) to move throughout their environs, and penning them in small performance tanks in an arena filled with a cacophony of crowd noise strips them of their ability to function naturally. And I’ve now read that the animals’ food supply is limited in order to increase their incentive to perform for food reward. Cruelty, plain and simple.

I wish the person who first thought of the idea to stage a show featuring killer whales jumping through hoops of fire in exchange for smidgens of chum had stopped and asked: “Is this in balance with Nature? Would staging this show be something the whales would naturally evolve to do? Would I choose to perform in this way, if I were a whale?” Instead, the questions probably went more like this: “How much would people pay to see this? How many people would come each day? How many shows can we stage without getting charged with excessively cruelty to animals?” Having recently decided not to fork over $300 for my four-person family to spend a day at Sea World, it’s clear which questions were asked and are still being asked today. The trainer who died was the third to be killed by that particular whale — a whale clearly under extreme stress but who also clearly brings in a lot of money for the park. (Despite the recent tragedy, visitors are still paying to see the “Believe” and “Shamu Rocks” shows day after day.) I wonder if there is a balanced way for humans and killer whales to stage an entertaining show together, where both species are respected and actually collaborate? Without asking that question, we’ll never know. It’s time to ask.

"Water Pattern," Stefanie Silverman; pastel on paper (copyright the artist)

]]> http://everydaycocreativity.com/2010/02/22/a-fresher-take-on-water/feed/ 3 annesailer water_01 http://everydaycocreativity.com/2010/02/21/water-salty-water-everywhere/ http://everydaycocreativity.com/2010/02/21/water-salty-water-everywhere/#comments Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:15:28 +0000 annesailer http://everydaycocreativity.com/?p=704 ]]> Last week, I heard an interview on my local NPR station with a woman discussing the detrimental effects of salting roads during winter weather conditions — the principal issue being that the salt washed away with melting snow and ice pollutes ground water and bodies of water, ultimately reaching plants and wildlife.

Essentially, when the sodium-chloride road salt combines with water, the electrically-charged chlorine atoms break away and accumulate in astonishingly high levels in water sources (a 1997 Danish study found that chloride levels in winter were 1,200 times higher than in summer). Water treatment plants are not constructed to cleanse this level of chloride contamination, so the water makes its way through the ground and also through sewer systems to sources of both human and non-human consumption. The problem with chloride-filled water is that it essentially cannot quench thirst — especially in plants and small animals. Here’s the quick and dirty biology: The chlorides collect on the outside of a plant’s or animal’s cell membranes, unable to cross into the cell, creating a mineral imbalance; the water inside the cell then leaches out via osmosis to correct this imbalance, thus dehydrating the plant or animal. (This is why humans can’t rehydrate on a hot day at the beach by drinking sea water.)

The NPR-show interviewer posed an interesting question: “So, isn’t this another example of a strategy invented by humans to deal with a natural phenomenon that actually causes a larger problem in the end?” Right on. The upside of road-salting is that far fewer people are dying in auto accidents on icy roads. There are, however, other options to explore — though most are either far more expensive (for example, there are high-tech monitoring systems that detect optimal time and conditions to salt, decreasing salt usage by two-thirds in some cases) or far more inconvenient (for example, don’t drive on icy roads!).

We haven’t used any de-icing salt on our sidewalks or driveways yet this winter, and I’m glad for it. Sure, we’ve had to be more timely, aggressive and creative with our snow-removal techniques (I found that the flat-tipped garden shovel works wonders on the slabs of ice that form under car wheels, even though that shovel is heavy-so-heavy), but that’s an extra bit of workload I’m willing to take on in this situation. Of course, we’re just one house surrounded by neighbors who are a bit salt-happy, and located on a major road that is salt-ecstatic, but — heck — it’s a start.

spirea in the snow

rhododendron in the snow

muzzle in the snow

]]> http://everydaycocreativity.com/2010/02/19/snowy-bits-of-nature/feed/ 0 annesailer snowy_bits_of_nature_1a snowy_bits_of_nature_2a snowy_bits_of_nature_3a http://everydaycocreativity.com/2010/02/12/here-we-go-again/ http://everydaycocreativity.com/2010/02/12/here-we-go-again/#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:37:42 +0000 annesailer http://everydaycocreativity.com/?p=694 ]]> Today, I officially began the process of planning this year’s soil garden, with the intention that the garden will yield a larger share of our family’s seasonal produce (compared with last year). Before starting, I wondered if I would find this beginning conversation (with the Deva of my garden) overwhelming, but instead I am completely energized.

Right now, I’m only dealing with the raised beds — the other planting areas will wait for another time. Some of the patches in my square-foot-gardening beds are inhabited by perennials (mint, sedum, lamb’s ear, lemon balm), but most will be void of plantings come the Spring. And, while I’m not yet dealing with which new plants will go where, it’s exciting to know the names of the square-dwellers that will be arriving in a few months.

This morning, I placed orders for the following seeds:

• Beans
  • Purple King (pole)
  • Blue Lake (bush)
  • Maxibel (bush)
• Beets
  • Touchstone Gold
• Lettuce
  • Simpson’s Black-Seeded (leaf)
  • Red Deer Tongue (leaf)
• Melon
  • Sugar Baby Watermelon
• Mustard Greens
  • Savannah Hybrid
• Parsnip
  • Hollow Crown
• Peas
  • Super Sugar Snap (edible pod)
  • RSVPea (shelling)
• Squash
  • Small Sugar Pumpkin
• Radish
  • Space Hybrid
• Tomato
  • Rutgers Heirloom
  • Ensalada Hybrid
  • Best Boy Hybrid
• Herbs
  • Coriander
  • Sage
  • Lovage
• Sunflower
  • Velvet Queen
• Nasturtium
  • Fragrant Giants
• Cosmos
  • Sonata Mix
  • Psyche Mix
  • Bright Lights Mix
• Foxglove
  • Foxy Mixed

In addition to these from-seed plants, I will seek out seedlings of the following (some of which will be transplanted from other areas of my garden): kale, potatoes, sorrel, basil, chives, echinacea, lavender, lemon balm, lobelia, rosemary, mums, columbine, geraniums, and salvia.

OK, now this list looks REALLY large. Anyone looking for a couple of hours sowing or transplanting come Spring, just holler. I’ll gladly accept all the helpers who wander my way!

It turns out that a San Diego oceanographer (John Hildebrand of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography) believes that this steady decrease in pitch is related to the banning of Blue Whale hunting in 1966 — at which point in history the Blue Whale population was dangerously low. His theory is that the population decrease led male Blue Whales to sing at higher and higher pitches so that they could be heard more readily by females (who might be farther away, and certainly were fewer in number). Since the 1966 ban, Blue Whale population numbers have been rising, and Hildebrand asserts that without the strain of population scarcity, the Blue Whale song is returning to its natural register.

I find this a fascinating theory! The thought that a sharp shift  in out-of-balance human predatory behavior could have such a dramatic effect on a whale’s existence in such a short period of time (30% in 30+ years!), is exhilarating. What other massive change is possible with immediate change in human habit?

Fascinating as it is, this theory is still, after all, just a theory. Other possibilities certainly exist for the tonal shift (including ones like global warming, food source depletion, and so on). Not being an oceanographer, I can’t comment of the validity of this (or any) theory. However, the feeling that “we can make a difference” has settled itself into my cells and won’t be easily dislodged. Even if it turns out that Hildebrand is incorrect — and the deepening of the Blue Whale song is peril-induced, after all — I consider myself now aligned with the  idea that magnificent change is absolutely possible. That alignment is a blessing for which I am grateful.

________
For full source article: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123420217&ft=1&f=1001

So, I started doing some research, both scholarly and meditative. It’s taken months for the missing-leg information to gel, and this passage from Eric Matthews, Merleau-Ponty: A Guide For the Perplexed (2006), helped me find a bit of clarity:

The insect with the missing leg therefore literally “faces a problem”, defined, not just in terms of external features, but of its own internal needs. It needs to progress, and something is an obstacle to satisfying that need, so it must adapt its functioning in order to solve that problem.

An insect with only five legs must learn a new way to walk and develop a new skill-set in order to continue its forward momentum. Something critical has changed in its experience — and indeed in its “container”, in the core of its being — and it absolutely must shift and adapt in order to survive. Far from hobbled, the missing-leg insects that visited me daily were vibrant models of perseverance and flexibility.

Over the past few years, something critical has changed, too, for me — in my experience, in my “container”, in the core of my being. And, yet, in many ways I have continued to walk on the set of legs with which I’d grown comfortable, instead of hearing the call for adaptation and shift. Over the past few weeks, I have experienced significant physical pain in my left leg, and I realize that by walking down my new path on my “old legs”, I am becoming hobbled.

To all the insects with missing legs: “OK, OK, I hear you. It’s time to stand on my new set of legs — and to do so with as much vibrant grace as you have shown to me.”