Bird Droppings October 8, 2025
Teaching today is tying a knot with only one hand.

It was a Saturday morning a few years back, and no one else was up but me. I was about to go out and wander in the darkness for a bit, and remembered the cast on my leg. I did stay in on that occasion. Over the years, I have enjoyed greeting the morning. I have found solace in the wee hours of the day, being able to think more clearly, uninfluenced by the encumbrances of the day. Over the years, I have watched many sunrises, and none have been equal to the last one. Each one was more brilliant and unique than the others; each has been an uplifting moment for me. I try to share through images captured with my camera, but I never do justice to that specific moment.

It has been a few months since we returned from vacation, and I had been taking pictures of Pawleys Island sunrises. I went to my favorite spot this morning to photograph the sunrise and the current full moon. It was still relatively dark, so I played with aperture settings and exposures, which had some interesting effects. The moon was full, but only visible for a few moments. Clouds came in, and I had difficulty getting the desired effect. I proceeded to the reservoir nearby and took a few more. Two ducks popped in, but before I could get a shot, they flew off, and in the dark, I missed them. I returned to my spot again for a few more, and a Great Horned Owl flew from the fence to a nearby tree. In front of me, a few feet away, three deer walked across my path. So, that morning of my meditation and sunrise pictures was a good start to a new day. My first pictures this morning were gray clouds, then they broke up, and color came in—the fog and fall colors made for some interesting pictures. Many people look at my morning interactions with nature as a coincidence. I use the term synchronicity.

“Words can never adequately convey the incredible impact of our attitudes toward life. The longer I live, the more convinced I become that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it.” Charles Swindoll

It is the responses that the world sees. This is how we are judged and how we are thought of. Each day, when I was teaching high school, I would see hundreds of people entering my room, and their attitude about their life is perhaps the one thing that could make or break them on any given day. How we respond to what people see drives everything around us. Let’s bring an attitude, for example, a poor attitude, to a given place and respond to seemingly inconsequential stimuli overtly because of that inherent bad attitude. We will be perceived as being what we possibly are not, nor do we choose to be. Unfortunately, our attitude now drives the reality of others in their perception of us.

“The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.” Arthur Schopenhauer

I think intelligence provides color and shades of gray to a black-and-white world. However, it can be manipulated both positively and negatively. Look at a color-blind test, for example, a swirl of colors, yet some can see, and others cannot. My former students think I am joking when I say I cannot see numbers on color-blind charts but can tell colors as well as any of them. Intelligence has nothing to do with it other than creating the test being seen. Conversely, perception, how we see that image, is how we interpret it, or do not interpret it.

“Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances and the departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness so that one may be happy in the interim.” Percy Bysshe Shelley

There are several issues at hand; first, it is how we respond to a given event. Secondly, how we perceive a given event and then determine that the event is happening. I have always enjoyed reading Shelly’s work, yet rarely have I used a piece in my daily wanderings. Today was a day with minor delays and routine changes, offering an imbalance to the morning. I am a creature of habit, and change is difficult for me; taking a week off from teaching due to a fall break last week, and Pat is still at work, altering the flow of the days. As we read Shelly’s line, we know change is inevitable. If we plan, think, and strategize, change can be less significant and, in effect, become more evolutionary than a change. Is it a gradual development shifting from point A to point B and C?

I observed several students a few days back, and the change affects them more than any other aspect of school. Offering choices can bewilder them. I have worked with several autistic teenagers, and often, choice is a difficult venue. Should I go to the restroom or the bus since the bell rang? It was an either-or situation, and it was seemingly a difficult one for this one fellow as he stood at my door asking me what he should do. While afterward, it was humorous at the time. It was a life-altering event until he remembered he was on the third load and had plenty of time. Still, we live in a society of choice for each of us. Years ago, I had a student who could not choose. He needed to be told what to wear by his mother and what to do during the day by his teachers. He would always get into trouble by responding inappropriately to stimuli. Eventually, he ended up in jail, serving three life sentences, when all external restrictions were gone after his mother passed away.

I watch students who have similar tendencies and wonder what happens when we take away answering questions and offering help. What happens when a world designed by people who enjoy control and power chooses to make you the scapegoat? I once read a headline about the enormous profits of oil companies and looked at the gas price. Any fool can see that profits will increase if you charge twice as much for an item. Costs go up as fuel prices rise, and I recall in a speech that one of our previous national leaders stated it is okay for oil companies to reap record profits on high gas costs because it is market-driven. It’s interesting as I sit and think about those comments and whose side he was on. I now understand why we are having such difficult times with educational policies and other issues on a national level. If you can make a profit, it is okay and market-driven. Much of our educational policy is profit-driven and market-oriented in items like standardized tests and textbooks. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in sales of educational materials.

Certain industries are at record levels while former mainstays of our economy have been driven overseas. I wonder how we did it, pushing jobs to China or wherever. If I were an oilman, drug company president, or oil construction company owner, I would be a happy camper. I discussed this with two former military teachers earlier in the week. We were discussing World War II and current warfare. Thousands died in battles in World War II, and today, with our highly mechanized military, handfuls die. But what was interesting was that in days gone by, industry boomed during wartime. We are in wars where, for the first time during a major war, we are not getting support from the general public, and most support comes from financial areas. We have no industry left. It is all in other countries. We must buy hardware and military equipment from heavy industries in other countries. Even in one of the last presidential campaign speeches, a politician bragged about saving billions on a fuel tanker airplane in a contract bid. The part left out was that instead of manufacturing in the US, it would be built in France, and 6000 jobs would be in another country. How much was that worth?

“All is focused on a bell-shaped curve. Approximately twelve-point-five percent know something is fishy, twelve-point-five percent are being left behind, and seventy-five percent do not care because the response they see is feasible at the time, and that is all that matters.” High School teacher, Frank Bird, regarding standardized testing

Looking back on the Iraq war, okay, there were no weapons of mass destruction, but when we made the choice, we were sure there were. It is okay to pay twice what we should for gas because others are, and therefore, it is market driven. What if we, as consumers, could determine the gas price and profitability of those companies? What if medications were within reach of people instead of being priced to a point where lifesaving and threatening medications were unattainable for some? The new drug plans are so cumbersome that most cannot use them, and holes in the plans leave some stranded. What if we could have a utopia and everything was perfect, and a bell-shaped curve was now a flat line? The funny thing is, you would be called a socialist. Most of the recent political jargon would say that it is socialism. Ever wonder why, when you are dead, monitors show a flat line? It seems some people want to flatline and eliminate the curve. Some who want to get everyone on the same wavelength equally and have no complaints at all? Education is a big one. It is the No Child Left Behind NCLB legislation, where all children are the same by law, at least by 2014. I think they offered to stay on that one. When I see that, I nearly laugh, having always worked in special education.

“If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.” Arthur Schopenhauer

As I sat and thought about all this, it was like trying to tie a knot with only one end. Does having a knot if the other end is somewhere else do any good? Well, as I keep wondering, I could use that knot at the rope’s end to knock some politicians in the head. It has been a chilly, windy, and supposedly snowy fall morning, and I am still trying to gather up plants needing to come in for the warmth. It will be a good day filled with conversation and communication.

I look forward to more. Please, my dear friends, keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts and always give thanks, namaste.

My friends, I do not say this lightly,
Mitakuye Oyasin
(We are all related)
docbird