Bird Droppings July 15, 2025
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 listen to the choral arrangement of tree frogs, crickets, whippoorwills, and an occasional owl. None in tune with the other, yet so much together, an exciting 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 a 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 at night live. Many nights back in the day, while camping, I fell asleep to that chorus. This quote also rings true as I look a bit deeper and further into our society. It takes differing opinions to do all the work in unison. As I read this short thought from Doug Floyd, the editorial page editor for The Spokesman-Review, I thought how appropriate it is to the issues at hand. A single voice would never succeed as much as we would like to think. I listened to the Green Party nominee this past presidential election cycle as they ran not so much to win as to offer a thought, a differing voice, a change, or an alternative.

“Few people can express opinions that differ from the prejudices of their social environment with equanimity. 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 of 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, calling for mates or signaling territory. Each is very clear and concise, and there are 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 when opinions became free to express. In contrast, 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. He draws his defense not on whether he is a communist, since the committee had already decided that the Constitution entitled him to free speech, the First Amendment. You know it is the opinions and thoughts of others that allow us to have room to think about, 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 in this country 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 hearts, and always give thanks, namaste.

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

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

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