Bird Droppings July 22, 2026
Thorns only hurt by surprise, or do we spend too much time trying to nail and forget to look in the toolbox?

It has been an interesting week, as three of our grandchildren were here for a few days and went home yesterday. I got thinking back as I drove around this morning to homecoming 2010. Each day, the teachers and students can dress up according to various themes. The 1980s workout day threw me, until someone said Flashdance, the movie. There were many shredded sweatshirts and leggings. Hero Day found me wearing my Steve Irwin shirt since he was a real hero of mine.   College colors day, so I was divided about which of the seven or eight to choose, and it seems Mercer won out.

I also had an interesting memory hit me as I discussed online State Health benefits yesterday. One of the teachers was complaining about rising health insurance costs as he had just received his insurance bill. His insurance had almost doubled. I recalled a recent article about a health insurance executive who took home almost $150 million last year. I said Where is the line of greed versus profit, and was told, ” Well, you are a socialist, and I am a capitalist. I do not see anything wrong with that. Well, why complain about health costs and rising insurance prices if it is ok to make an exorbitant profit off them. Conversation ended quicker than it started. This same guy now drives a Cyber Truck, which really cracks me up.

“Love is a rose, but you better not pick it. Only grows when it’s on the vine. Handful of thorns and you know you’ve missed it. Lose your love when you say the word mine.” Neil Young.

I first heard this song many years ago; Linda Ronstadt was singing it. It was years later that I learned Neil Young wrote it. Coincidentally, I have been a Neil Young fan since 1968, the Woodstock era. He is an interesting character, Neil Young that is. But the words in his lyrics are always powerful. I used an exercise from my old teaching days, when I gave out an assignment last semester to find a song and print out the lyrics while I was subbing. Several students printed out favorite songs that were a bit difficult to translate into anything, huh, huh, huh, yeah, yeah, yeah, huh, huh. That was a line- actually, ten lines of a fifteen-line song lyric of a top ten song from back in the day, entitled Perception.

“Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it ‘creative observation’.” From Creative viewing, by William S. Burroughs

What was Neil Young trying to say when he wrote that line so many years ago? It is not all as it seems. Burroughs look at an artist creating, and others will manifest that creation by perceiving it.

“The seeing of objects involves many sources of information beyond those meeting the eye when we look at an object. It generally involves knowledge of the object derived from previous experience, and this experience is not limited to vision. Still, it may include the other senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing, and perhaps also temperature or pain.” R. L. Gregory

We so often grasp that first image, or first impression. “Love is a rose,” to borrow from Neil Young, but the hidden aspects are the thorns we don’t see till we try and pick it, and a “handful of thorns and you know you missed it.” Trying to teach students to go beyond that first impression and to use their prior knowledge and other senses can be difficult.

“Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.” Nathaniel Hawthorne

Suggestiveness, as Hawthorne states, perhaps teachers too are “suggesters”, first giving alternative views in a world where so often views are limited. I think back to my first thoughts of health insurance. I suggested that a line may have been crossed when someone was taking advantage of a situation to profit. It has been several years since I first read Maslow’s works. One line stands above the rest. Do I look at the world and every problem as simply a nail and all I have is a hammer, or was it the other way around yesterday discussing health care and insurance?

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” Abraham H. Maslow

This is a key point in life; so often people are limited by what they know or do not know. I put this quote up on a bulletin board in my hall at the high school. So often I see kids who only have a hammer; as a teacher, it is important and actually a highly guarded secret to know where the other tools are kept and that there are other tools.

Parents and teachers spend too much time teaching how to nail only and not enough showing the toolbox. What if I carefully pruned that rose with clippers and gloves, and grafted it onto a new bush? We then have a different outlook and a different view. What if, instead of a hammer, a wrench or needle-nose pliers are needed? Suggest rather than tell, as a teacher or parent, and always offer alternatives instead of solutions. Provide insight instead of tunnel vision. We all have room to grow and to see anew. “Love is a rose” and thorns or no thorns, I will still pick it. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your heart. Namaste.

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

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

docbird