Insects Are Amazing

Jen and I cleaned up some of the yard yesterday. This included tearing down last fall's chicken yard. As part of their yard, I had taken an old 500 gallon steel tank (which I normally use for hauling water to transplanted trees) and tipped it on its side so that the hens could use it as additional shelter.

While cleaning up, I tipped the tank upright and saw a wasp nest that had been hanging from what was the top. It was about the size of one of those oversize softballs (I think they are 16" in circumference). I grabbed it, gently twisted it, and it just kind of popped off, cleanly severed from its home base. I never saw one quite like this before.

The walls of the outer "paper" nest part were labyrinth. Because of the smooth lining of the tank, and since it came off so cleanly, the structure was incredibly preserved. I also noted that there was a lot of spider web material around the hole of the nest. I broke the nest apart to reveal the puppa chambers and found more spider webbing and a number of dead wasps. Later I also found out that they weren't wasps, but hornets (or at least I think so). So I offer some really cool photos. What I find fascinating is how quickly and completely insects make everything their homes. And I love the progression here. I take an old tank. The chickens use it for day shelter. Hornets decide it's perfect for their use. Spiders come along and figure that the nest is a perfect fall vacation home. I wonder who would have claimed it next?

 

Sunday, April 10th

This post will be very short as I am having internet problems at home after the storm that blew through last night. I am down at the Blue Horse drinking coffee, but I need to head out in just a couple of minutes.

I just heard that Dave is dropping his boat in on Tuesday so, hopefully, we'll have our in soon too. When I got down here a little while ago the harbor was blocked off by local fog but has gradually blown off over the last few minutes leaving an overcast sky and blobs of steel blue corroded ice blobs the size of city blocks shifting in the water.

To make up for this post's brevity, I'll have wasp nest photos for tomorrow (and the crowd goes wild!). Have a great Sunday.

p.s. Tuesday's post should be fun too.

Physician, Heal Thyself

Technically I am a doctor although, by rules of arcane academia, I don't think I can use the title. For a smart guy I can be really dumb though. I hop on my blog and pontificate about engaging and thinking and living ... yet I have 240 unread emails.

The thing is that the emails are not those avoided or unwanted or even spam. They are from me. And no, I am not that egotistical. The reason they are from me is that I use my email as a sort of file folder. Anytime I come across something on the internet that I think I might find useful, I send myself an email so I don't lose it. Most of them are from odd stuff, cars, tools or whatever that I find listed for sale.

I just checked the oldest unread email. Apparently it was mandatory that I keep a record of an ad listing a used cast iron table saw (in need of minor repairs) that was sitting in some guys garage in Lake Geneva. The ad was from November '09. I wonder if it's still for sale?

Of equal import was the emailed receipt from March '10 showing proof that I bought a security pack from Norton after the trial one that came with my laptop from the prior Christmas ran out. You never know when you might forget that you bought something that pops up at you each time you turn on your computer ...

The embarrassing thing is not that I have 240 unread emails. The embarrassing thing is that it was only today, after noticing that I had 241 new emails (meaning to my mind I had 1), after reading that 1 (so that a quick glance would show me if I had any new emails (beyond the 240 new emails)), and after letting my mind wander while I swept the last of the winter weight-sand from the back of the truck (a nicely repetitive task that allows the brain some real freedom), that I realized the sheer stupidity of this habit. How much time and energy have I wasted keeping records of a million possibilities, most of which are no longer possible, at the expense of paying attention to the opportunities God has planned for me? Talk about not being engaged.

So, in the spring cleaning spirit, I have decided to purge. I am going to go back and erase all the unread emails more than one month old without even reading them. For those from the last month, I will read them, delete most, and READ the one's I actually should keep. I think that will be the last area of my life that needs attention so then I can get back to critiquing others' issues without out worrying about hypocrisy.

To Eat Or Not To Eat; That's Half The Question

I finally got to get the girlfriend chair out tonight. It was delightful this evening with a clear gorgeous sunset, warm temperatures, and no wind. I do virtual all my own automotive work and tonight I wanted to get a new front brake caliper on the truck. I had noticed that that hub was a little warm after getting back from Escanaba the other week and, while I had assumed it was wheel bearings, found out after getting the bearings and starting to replace them that the caliper slides were totally hung up and it was actually the unreleasing brake that was generating the heat (well, actually the friction which produced the heat).

Anyway, when I work on vehicles, especially in the evening, Jen comes outside with her knitting and sits nearby and works on her projects while I bang away. We have a lawn chair that gets moved around for her to sit on and I call it the girlfriend chair since it always reminds me of the quintessential high school sweetheart image of the teenage boy earnestly flailing away at pistons, tires, trannys, or whatever while his girlfriend hangs out checking her nails, chewing gum, and spending unbelievable amounts of time waiting for him to finish. Sometimes I think the patience of 17 year old girlfriends could put us all to shame. Either that or they waste an amazing amount of time on guys more interested in cars than girls ...

The thing on my mind is actually kind of a sad story. Some friends of ours were invited to another couple's house last Friday. The invitees were Catholic, the invitors not. Without thinking about it (indeed, probably without even knowing it was an issue), the hosts made a dinner including porter-house steaks on the grill. Our friends who were invited turned down the meat as inappropriate to their religious observance. They told us later of this fact with some pride.

I struggled with how to respond to the story, and I have no idea whether I handled it well or not. But what I am sure of is this; their refusal was poorly done, poorly done indeed (extra credit points if you pick up the movie reference in that last sentence). It seems that religion will regularly be used to stunt relationship.

The thing that hit me most directly, was that Paul talks about almost this exact situation (invertedly). In Romans 14 Paul discusses the risk of using food to usurp God's work and mentions the eating of meat as one example. There was something about the story we were told that really made me understand how good Satan's twisting skill can be.

In the end, I don't think much was accomplished in terms of helping the burgeoning friendship thus challenged. I know that what was chosen was chosen for the pride of being religiously steadfast. Nothing wrong with that but it came at the expense of their hosts and there is something wrong with that. I also know that it would have been wrong to have arbitrarily blown past their accepted obligation with some breezy sense of total freedom. Our commitments are serious but not ultimates. It was an incredibly poignant reminder that the attitude of the heart makes all the difference in our actions. No act, in and of itself, is right or wrong but the context of our motivations breathes morality into the skeletal act and gives it moral life. 

As I Was Saying ...

I really like spring. Actually, I don't really like spring, I really like what spring brings. Spring is actually kind of cold and muddy and reveals the detritus of things winter-dumped or left from fall, snow slowly peeling back its stripper's skirt to flash the varicose veined leg of a debutant-no-more. But the skin is still warm and the leg reflects the longing of what was and, re-generationally, what can be again.

Ultimately, I like spring because it brings summer. I live in a place which sees high temperatures of 60 or more about half the year. I am either a glutton for punishment or I just explained why summer is such a big deal (both days). In my enjoyment of spring, the observation of change is probably my favorite component.

Today was again a good day to prove that spring is here. The ice on the bay continues to succumb to adjacent water temperatures like rice-crispy bars left out. There is the steady increase of birds and the increase of bird activity. This morning I noticed shreds of insulation snowed on the ground, ripped from some cavity by the incredible aggression of Starlings doing due diligence on their next crevice of real estate. The crows are also all hitched in their giddy-up and two of them treed a significantly larger red tail hawk in the biggest maple on the south fence row. He eventually tired of their incessant critique and made a swoop for it but only cleared the last bare branch by a couple of feet before they dropped from upper perches to run him across to the woodlot across the field.

And driving home showed that Susan was out raking the lawn in front of her immaculate horse barn (with two new spring foals outside for the first time), Glen's RV was home from the four month trip he takes with his wife every December (I have to see if he still has the remainder of firewood I was supposed to take before he left), and Rick and Jan's Frisians are out on the ridge to the north of their barn, a silhouetted spot they will own until snowfall, gorgeous ambassadors to all who cut short on the county road to avoid the highway traffic. I think they should get an oat commission from the tourist board.

At home we gathered blown junk from the yard and did a quick burn, giving the wandering fire fingers some leeway to clear old grass and weed. I might end up burning a bunch of the yard this spring. I'd like to throw some more seed down and, since I did almost no lawn mowing last year (our first year with a pseudo lawn), there are some non-grass things in the lawn that look more tree-like than fescue. I'd like to clear some of that out. And this year I think I'll put in a patio. On an evening like this, I wish I already had one. On a night like this, sitting outside watching the sun set, things once possible suddenly seem almost fait accompli. I love the promise of spring.

Traveling North

It was interesting. Jen and I went to St. Louis last weekend. Had a great time. We stayed with friends who wine and dine and pamper ...

Friday was quiet. We actually got there around 1:00 in the afternoon, but Kev was involved with saving a deal that was imploding and Pam had previously agreed to take a woman from church to the doctor as she has some significant eye problems (which result from other problems). The appointment was at 1:30, so we saw Pam briefly and made plans for a couple of hours later. The doctor didn't even see them until 5:30. I appreciate that sometimes things run late, but that is ridiculous.

Kevin and I had run to the store and picked up groceries for dinner. Apparently the important things were wine and shrimp and potato chips since I believe that is all we ended up eating. We had originally intended great things, but, by the time Pam made it home, a glass or two of wine were had, and the patio fire started, shrimp on the fire seemed like the logical meal. Dr. Oz would not approve.

We stayed Saturday and Sunday and left about 8:50 Monday morning. Driving home was interesting. I usually do most of the driving and this trip I did all. I really wanted to see how the car would perform on a trip like this. It's not every day you get to drive for 20 hours in a $675 Mercedes, and, while I believed we would have no problems, the social programing that cost equals quality is a hard one to shake. Great little car by the way and I'll tell its story some other time.

The real point is that Sunday hit 89 in St. Louis. When we left the next morning it was in the 60's. As we drove north it slowly got colder. By the time we hit Beaver Dam we started seeing snow on the north side of the heavier woodlots. Oshkosh saw the first ice on water, not on the drainage ways, but back on the mini-bays of Lake Butte des Morts. By the time we reached Green Bay the south section of the bay was open, ice was visible and largely solid beyond the point of Dyckesville, and snow was scattered around without regard to sun's angle. Valmy brought the most snow on the ground and the harbor hear is still punky but full of rotten ice. Spring is coming and, for my taste, can't come too soon.

When You Can't Get a Word In Edgewise ...

Friday morning I woke up at 3:00, made a quick cup of coffee, and loaded Jen, the last couple bags, and my cup of coffee into the car. By 3:30 we were on the road, and, roughly 10 hours later, were down in St. Louis for a short vacation. The car ride was quiet. I thought. A lot.

The other day I made the comment that most writers, especially bloggers, probably write what they need to read more than what their audience needs to read. I still believe that to be true, but I also think there is an area of our lives for which the same principle can be applied even more relevantly. Most people say what they need to hear. With an increase in anger comes an increase in this truth. By the time someone is actually yelling, I think there is very little communicating going on. Well, actually, there is a lot of communicating, it just has nothing to do with what the yeller thinks is being communicated.

But this is not all bad. Every social interaction provides an opportunity to learn. We typically think of speaking as a give and take of information with the speaker giving and the listener receiving. And, so the thinking goes, this back-and-forth give-and-take brings about a transference of knowledge and ideas and provides growth upon the receipt thereof. Sometimes, maybe even frequently, it may happen just like that.


It is a rare person who is able to maintain the mental control of really considering the position and needs of the other while at the same time allowing there emotions to rise. There is something self-centered about most anger. I remember a client I had once who scared me to death. He loved the adrenaline rush that came with anger and he would deliberately release his self control to feed that rush. That same ego-centrism shows in almost all yelling. By that time, the speaker is only dispensing that which feeds his need for release and the continued emotional high.


Every stock market crash provides buying opportunities. In like fashion, every time the normal give and take of communication breaks down there are also new opportunities. What I have come to realize is that if you can maintain a decent boundary-oriented distance, it is possible to learn a tremendous amount through the other person's anger for, at that moment, the speaker is telling you word for word what they themselves most fear, or find disgusting, or find uncomfortable. Just as the person you most dislike at a party is the one who has the issues you most dislike in yourself, so to the issues which generate the most anger when speaking are the issues you most struggle with yourself.

So, as listener, how do you use the experience for good? Once again it is all about relationship. Listen, absorb, and recognize the amazing glimpse you just had into someone's life with all the pretense stripped away. Take that information, recognize their vulnerabilities, and commit to caring for them, including taking into consideration their new-found weaknesses, in an even more complete way.