My Little Bootstrap Conservationists

In my pocket, rests a packet of honey. I slide my hand hold it a moment, a smile plays on my lips and my chest fills with love for my daughters.

This parenting gig is rough. I'm glad I didn't know the toll becoming a parent would exact from my vitality, body, relationships, finances, career—what's that?, sanity… ...because—gasp—maybe I would have done things differently. And not having my girls would be the only lamentable loss in this scenario.

So I've messed up, a lot. Turns out I'm not as patient and kind as I thought I was. I can be downright cranky and crazy yelly. Seriously. I've struggled, see here My Rough Day and here The Great Shower Debacle and here Rise of Cave Berzo. And those are only the ones I've shared publicly—it's rare that I go a day without feeling humbled in someway by my lack of parental awesomeness.

However, today is not one of those days. Today, I noticed a wonderful characteristic about both of my girls. They are both bootstrap conservationists in the making. Before you groan about goddam-tree-huggers, hear me out. We were at a park today that has several ponds. My girls were looking for the two overgrown coy fish when Boots spotted an old plastic sack half buried in mud, half floating in the water. She ran up to me, (I was on the paved walkway, not getting muddy) and told me about it. I told her she could fish it out with a stick if she wanted to, and she dashed off to find one. While she was looking, Berzo reached in and pulled it out. It was nasty. Boots hung it on her stick and ran it to the garbage can. Then they found two more pieces of trash and repeated the process. I didn't interfere, just noticed their efforts verbally ("You cleaned up three pieces of trash, blah, blah, blah.") and moved on with the rest of our trip.

Then, just a moment ago, I felt the honey packet and everything suddenly zinged together. They do this stuff all the time. The honey packet is to satisfy a request from Boots that we have an emergency honey bee feeding kit available when out and about. We found a wayward honey bee at the park two days ago and couldn't do anything to help. It just walked on, a dying traveler in a concrete desert with no nectar oasis to save it. Boots went to the concession stand that happened to be open and asked if they had a honey packet. She returned empty handed. That's when she asked me to keep a packet in my bag. I agreed, and the next day when I got a tea at Starbucks, I put a raw sugar in my cup and a honey packet in my pocket.

We routinely rescue worms, honey bees, bumble bees, and spiders. We pick up trash, when we're out on walks in our neighborhood. We hang up bird suet in the winter, we have brought injured birds to the Audubon, and Charley will bring home frogs that wander into his shop to release in our wetlands. When we go to the lake we bring an extra paper sack to clean up all the broken glass, dirty diapers (seriously), fishing tackle, and other garbage. I volunteer at the Audubon and help out in the native plant nursery, often Boots comes with me, working harder than she ever does around the house. We've bought many of the plants for our own yard to replace the non-native ornamentals.

We've always done these things, I've never really given it much thought. Then when I read the term “Bootstrap Conservation” in the book entitled, Last Child in the Woods, recently, I realized that that's what we're doing, on an incredibly small scale, of course. But even pennies amount to dollars especially when you have help collecting them. Does this mean my girls are going to grow up to be be-dreadlocked loonies that chain themselves to trees and sing Kumbaya while heavy equipment grumbles all around them? No—well I hope not. What it means is that they won't pass by a problem and and think, “Someone should do something about that.” Instead they reach into the muck pull out the garbage and put it in the trash can. Instead of lamenting the declining honey bee populations, they'll plant native wildflowers and give a wayward bee some honey from their rescue packets.

They won't be the type to watch and whine, they won't expect accolades for their conservation efforts, they'll just see something that needs doing, then do it.

And that makes me think that perhaps, just perhaps, I haven't completely bungled this child rearing job.

Book Review: Unbroken

Powell's Books · Barnes & Noble

Laura Hillenbrand © 2014

I always do a drive by of the books at Costco, it’s my treat for, well, going to Costco. I have pretty decent self-control but when I saw a hard bound edition of this book for eleven dollars and change, I was as weak-willed as a toddler within reach of a wedding cake. I wiped the frosting from my chin and checked out. I didn’t realize until I got home that I picked up the Young Adult version. Oh well.

What a fantastic story. Laura does an amazing job of telling the story of Louis Zamperini as a boy and a young man, then as a WWII soldier and as a survivor.

As a young boy in the 1920s, Louis was a troublemaker to the extreme. He got into every imaginable form of mischief, his favorite was stealing food. A smoker and a drunk before he was even a teen, he was very easy to write off as a juvenile delinquent; probably would have been in today’s world. In reality he was a boy with an indomitable spirit, complete with boundless energy and vitality—too much for the confines of what was deemed proper. To keep him out of trouble, Pete, his older brother, guided him into competitive running. Here was an outlet for that boundless energy, here was the attention he craved, here was that thrill he was forever seeking, here was something he could throw his spirit against. It was no surprise that he qualified for the Olympics at nineteen.

WWII broke out. Instead of being drafted and dying on a beach in a standard meat shield operation, he decided to enlist and give himself options. He joined the Army Air Corps.

Some numbers for you: “54,000 men killed in air combat, 36,000 killed in noncombat aircraft accidents, and a stunning 15,000 killed in stateside training.” (http://laurahillenbrandbooks.com/discussion-questions/)

That means that 51,000 of our nation’s young men died in accidents or plane malfunctions—the primary culprit: the planes they were flying were absolute garbage. The waste of our military men was abominable. Louis’ trial was no different, ordered to fly a rescue mission in a plane that was no more airworthy than the box a homeless person might sleep in, it was no surprise it went down. Once Louis avoided a similar situation by challenging his CO to join their mission.

What follows is the most compelling and astounding survival story I’ve ever experienced. There were three survivors of the initial crash. During their forty-seven days drifting in the life raft fighting off sharks and surviving the elements, it became clear why Louis was gifted his indomitable spirit. They drifted two thousand miles to the Marshall Islands and were rescued by the Japanese. The Japanese saved the remaining two men, provided medical care, then spent the next few years torturing and terrorizing them, making the sharks look like cuddly koalas.

The depth of Laura’s research is astounding, all done during a time of illness in her own life. Her writing is clear and well structured. Events flow freely in an unembellished, in an utterly compelling way. She tells Louis’ story without making it Laura’s story. I love to think critically about books, and I can find nothing to complain about—a feat, indeed.

I closed this book feeling like a bit of a wuss. I like to think of myself as a survivor of sorts. I like to think I’m tough. I know now, that I don’t know. Maybe I am. Maybe I could endure torture and the dehumanizing effects of hostile captivity and retain my loyalty to to my country and fellow soldiers. Maybe, but probably not. I have not ever really suffered, not in my childhood, not in childbirth—not like so many others have. I have a renewed respect for the heroes of war and the people who fight for our country today. I am humbled.

My favorite picture of Louis is one of him learning to skateboard—in his seventies.

Sparks at the Park

A giggle erupted from Berzo. She peeked at her shadow on the wall of the slide then propped herself up to face me. Another giggle shook her frame. Her face was alight with mischief, her hair stood out in all directions and swayed with the breeze as she she reached out to touch me.

'No, no... Don't touch me!'

ZAP!

"OW! That was a good one."

Berzo's hair is flat now as she climbs up the slide and slides down, again and again, until the shadow of her hair reveals she is "fully charged." Then, once again, she comes for me.


***********
Berzo and I finished our grocery shopping and in keeping with routine we stopped at a park to play. After playing a couple rounds of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus I was seeking something else—anything else, when I pointed out her baby-fine hair sticking out in all directions. I lightly brushed the levitating ends with my hand and she tried to grab me to pull herself up. I pulled my hand away and said, “Oh no, I can tell by your crazy hair that you’d give me a good shock!” Her quizzical look gave me a flash of inspiration. Time for a physics lesson kiddo! Summoning my inner Faraday I sifted through the jargon in my head and found an explanation comprehensible for a four-year-old.

"When you slide down the rubbing of your clothes against the plastic slide creates... [one piece of relevant jargon should be OK] ...static electricity. When your hair is sticking up I know you have a lot of static built up and if you touch me—zap! Ouch! Can you see your hair in the shadow? OK, now touch me…"

ZAP! Acck! I really hate being shocked, and these zaps pack a punch. I wished it was dark so she could see the spark.

Explanations of atoms, electrons, ions, insulators of plastic and cloth, and magnetism all flashed through my head, but as a credit to my self control, I set them aside in lieu of play. I know from my own childhood how these early, fun experiences will lay the foundation for learning about these topics academically later in life. Spinning on merry-go-rounds, swinging, teeter-tottering, bouncing a ball, static—all swirled in my mind as I sat in my twelfth-grade physics class. I wanted to do my best to make this experience stand out in her memory.

On and on she went, up and down the slide building a charge, checking her shadow to see her hair voltmeter, with me dancing around but eventually submitting to the ZAP! Occasionally I’d be out of reach and she’d jump off the slide and to her disappointment, no ZAP! I took the opportunity to explain grounding in four-year-old ease, “The static electricity drained right into the ground as soon as your feet left the slide, it doesn’t insulate like plastic. HA! HA! You didn’t get me!” Which sent her right back up the insulator/slide to recharge herself.

It made me wish I had a pocket full of paperclips, so we could play with the relationship between electricity and magnetism. With a her hair in spikes I wonder how many paperclips we could get to stick to each other—if the charge was great enough to get even one.

My diabolical plan worked. She enjoyed shocking me until I finally had had enough and raced her to the climbing tree. I think the lesson stuck too, because later that day at one of her famous “trampoline parties” she was chasing and zapping her older sister and friend. I rescued them by wetting the trampoline mat down… Then I asked Electra if she’d like a swimsuit so they could play with the hose and squirt guns.

Whether or not Electra is a superhero or supervillain is yet to be determined...