Bird Droppings July 19, 2023
I am listening to a chorus of frogs, crickets, and an occasional owl.

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

Most every night and early morning, 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 of the ten or so to fall asleep was crickets and frogs and an occasional owl. I have found it haunting as I listen to this live at night. Many nights back in the day, I have fallen asleep to that chorus while camping. As I look a bit deeper into our society, this quote also rings true. It takes differing opinions to make all work in unison. As I read this short thought from Doug Floyd, the editorial page editor for The Spokesman-Review, I thought about how appropriate to the issues at hand. A single voice would never succeed as much as we would like to think.

“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 about 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 clear and concise, with reasons and responses to each note and call.

“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 week or so to that day, we celebrate our country’s independence which is a day where opinions became free to express, a day where I watched the movie the other day Majestic, with Jim Carrey, where a young man is accused during the past 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 the constitution entitled him to free speech The First Amendment. You know, it is the opinion and thoughts of others that allow us to have room to think, pursue and grow to achieve beyond where we are. As I sit here listening to the sounds from outside to the chorus of frogs and crickets and an occasional owl, I am pleased we can have differing opinions in this country and hope one day 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.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

bird