Bird Droppings December 8, 2011

Thinking about a chorus of Frogs and Crickets

 

“You don’t get harmony when everybody sings the same note.” Doug Floyd

 

On most every night and early morning of the year when I walk about especially early in the morning I am listening to the choral arrangement of tree frogs, crickets, whippoorwills and an occasional owl. None in tune with the other yet so much together an interesting mix of harmonies and melodies as they do what they do in the trees and forests around our house. A few years back I am guessing my wife and I got alarm clocks for the boys that had earth sounds for going to sleep as well as CD or radio to wake you up, one of the sounds on the ten or so to fall asleep was crickets and frogs and an occasional owl. This morning as we are going through our first real cold spell of the year the morning is silent however although the near full moon helped ease the lack of sound.

I have found it haunting as I listen at night even when quiet. Many the night back in the day while camping I have fallen asleep to that chorus of nature. This morning I have to cheat a bit relying on electronics to give me a start with natures calls. I found a book recently for my granddaughter so as to get her started early by Eric Carl. The book is about a cricket and of course when opened to the right page cricket sounds.

As I look perhaps a bit deeper and further in our society the first quote rings true as well it takes differing of opinion to make all work in unison. A single voice would never succeed as much as we would like to think as I listened to the news many months back as a green party nominee for president is nominated and they run not so much to win as to offer a thought, a differing voice, a change or an alternative.

 

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.” Albert Einstein

 

“The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing –to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. Not a select party.“ John Keats

 

As I think back trying to warm my feet from a quick run to get some things out to my car for the trip to school, to my chorus of frogs and crickets, it is not a mix of voices with simply chance bringing it together there are specifics as the insects and amphibians call looking for mates or signaling territory. Each is very clear and concise and there are reasons and responses to each note and call. Somehow in our higher form of life we seem to loose function and form in politics other than self-serving needs? It tends to be more about me than the perpetuation of the species. Yesterday’s headlines in our local paper have a pastor and local politician resigning and moving to a small town in North Georgia.  He also served as marketing director of a group under indictment and sponsored several bills in the state legislator that were in favor of this group. One that caught my attention back a few months was using food stamps online for purchasing. I found the resignation and indictments coincidental maybe.

 

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” John Stuart Mill

 

Thinking back a several months to that day we celebrate our country’s independence which is the day where opinions became free to express, a day where as I watched the movie the other day Majestic, with Jim Carrey, where a young man is accused during the McCarthy era of being a communist and he draws his defense not on whether or not he is a communist since the committee had already decided that but that he was entitled by the constitution to free speech The First Amendment. You know it is the opinion and thoughts of others that allow us to have room to think to pursue and grow to achieve beyond where we are. As I sit here listening to the sounds from an electronic device since from outside my chorus of frogs and crickets and an occasional owl is silent tonight I am pleased we can in this country still yet today have differing opinions and hope one day maybe most will be opinions of peace. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts and always give thanks.  

namaste

bird