Just another little irritating thing

Near the top of my list of irritating things these days are those tiny plastic stickers found on fruit that you buy at the grocery store.  There is nothing new about this; these stickers have been around for years.  I try my best to use fewer plastic bags that are clogging up the oceans and landfills but, then, right before my eyes on almost every single banana, tomato, and apple I buy at the grocery is that stupid, shiny plastic sticker, which always appears as if it is laughing at me when I attempt to remove it without damaging the soft skin of a ripe piece of fruit.

Who can remember what those codes mean anyway?  Does the 4-digit code signify organic or is that the 5-digit code?  Does a code beginning with an “8” mean that the product was genetically modified?  Apparently an “8” is supposed to mean GMO but the fruit is often not labeled as such.  If we must have these stickers, can’t the codes just be something like “S”, which means Safe, and “NS”, which means Not Safe, and “NSu”, which means Not Sure?  You know, it is like the weather report with temperature and wind chill factor.  Don’t give me all that Ms. Weatherperson.  Just say, “Wear a jacket”, or “A T-shirt will be fine today”.

In addition, management and I throw all of our kitchen waste into our compost pile in the garden, but those plastic stickers do not decompose.  A year later, I can still read the word “Costa Rica” on an old sticker that inadvertently got past me, and is lying carefree in the garden.  They’re ugly and unsightly; simply put, they diminish the Zen that resides in my vegetable garden space.  And because I can’t stand to leave them in the compost pile, I am compelled to pick them out of that mess whenever I discover one.

So, what to do?  There is nothing to be done if you buy your produce at a grocery store instead of a farmer’s market (sticker-free) except to meticulously peel off each and every one of those damn things.  Buy the fruit, bring it home, PEEL, and then wash and store.  Then, the next time you bring fruit home, rinse and repeat.

(For a nice article that explains exactly what the codes on these stickers mean, click here.  Also, they are now considered an environmental problem.) 

A voracious appetite for novels

(My wife could probably read all the books shown here in a month.)

My wife spends more time reading novels than she does talking to me, and she talks to me a lot. During the past three weeks, she has finished eight novels, and she is half-way through the ninth. Of the approximately two dozen authors she loves to read, they, collectively, can not publish fast enough to keep up with my wife's appetite. She sends them notes of encouragement from time to time to spur them on: "Do you really need to take a vacation this year, when you should be writing?", "Please don't get another dog; they take up a lot of time." "I recommend you limit your family size to only one child. Valuable energy is expended on raising children." "If I were you, I wouldn't spend precious time watching tv." "Coffee, or some other strongly caffeinated beverage, might improve your efficiency."

Her book habit was also getting expensive. At about $12 a pop for a new paperback, I was having to cut back on my cigars and scotch. On more than one occasion, she bought a book at the store only to get home and realize she had already read it. The publishers had changed the paperback cover, and she had not recognized it. So I strongly encouraged her to use the public libraries, which she resisted because the new books were always checked out, and there was that dreaded due date when we had to drive into town to return the book, and who knew what germs were hidden in that Ludlum plot from a previous reader's sneeze. But eventually, she acquiesced. Sometimes I do win an argument with Management.

Actually, there was a time when she had no choice but to use a library.  During 1986-87, we lived in Monteverde, a remote village in the Tilaran Mountains of Costa Rica mostly inhabited by American Quakers.  Quakers hold education in high esteem, so they had a nice little library there.  There was absolutely no place within a 4-hour drive to buy a book that was worthy of my wife's attention.  The library was within walking distance of the farm house we were renting, so she spent a great deal of time there.  In addition, the house we rented was owned by the family of a former law professor from George Washington University, and it contained a very nice collection of books.  After my wife had read everything of a fictional nature in that house, she started gobbling up the novels in the Monteverde library.  At the end of that year, I noticed that she had not been reading for a couple of weeks.  When I asked her about visiting our local repository of novels to resupply, she quipped, "I've done that library."

So we returned to the states, and to the plethora of large public libraries and bookstores that abound.  Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring!  Heaven on earth!  Hosanna in the highest!  Out of the wilderness we have come, into the light of a Barnes and Noble, of libraries on wheels, of more ISBN numbers than one can fathom, and into the country that boasts The Library of Congress with 33 million cataloged books.  I would soon become a book widower again.

Finally, back at home, I kissed my wife goodbye, dropped her off at the Ithaca library, and reminded her that we have an anniversary coming up in eight months.  Could she spend some time with me on that important date?  It wouldn't have to be all day, just a few hours in the evening for dinner or a movie?  She wondered if it was OK if we went to a restaurant that was well-lighted, and not too noisy, a place suitable for some light reading?  I suppose the waiter could put another candle on the table.  Maybe he could also turn down the romantic mood music they usually play there.  We could order ahead so that the hostess would not have to interrupt us very much with questions about entrees and dessert.  When the big night came, everything came off without a hitch, even though my wife's book bag knocked over a glass of cabernet sitting in front of me.  Small price to pay for some quality time alone with the woman I love.

At present, my wife is working her way through the tiny library in Danby, where we live.  This should take only a few weeks.  But you know, the irony of all this is that I published a digital book in April, and my wife has yet to read it.  What's up with that?  I'll bet if I used the pen name "Daniel Silva" or "Jeffery Deaver", she would have devoured my book while the ink was still wet, so to speak.  But I'm not complaining.  After all, if I need to know something about international spies, or fingerprint analysis, or explosives used by terrorists, all I do is ask.  I rarely use Google anymore.

On mowing the lawn

(I doubt these guys are saving any gas.)

I've been mowing lawns since I was about 7 years old.  We would never let our young kids use dangerous power equipment like that today, but that was a different time.  The yard had to be mowed, my father worked long hours away from home, and my mother was busy with two younger siblings.  I've mowed lawns of houses in which I have lived in Ohio, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Oklahoma, and New York, so I have given the activity a great deal of thought.  In fact, thinking is mostly what one does while mowing the lawn.

I mow about a half acre here in Ithaca.  Until 5 years ago, I used a walk-behind mower and it took 3-3 1/2 hours to complete the job; after I got a riding mower, the job was reduced to a third the time, so it gave me less time to think than doing it the old way.  Now I feel rushed.  I have to cover a lot of mental ground in only an hour or so.  I used to have time to outline my classroom lectures in my head while on the mower.  Now, I can barely enumerate the names of my kids and grandkids before I am finished.  When we rented a farm in Monteverde, Costa Rica years ago, the peon who worked the place mowed our lawn by hand, with a machete.  Wow!  He must have gotten a lot of thinking done.  He always seemed like he had life pretty well figured out, and the abundant time he had cutting grass probably contributed to that.  We modern North Americans can cut the grass lickety-split with our fancy machines, and we are clueless about almost everything.  See the correlation?

One of the first issues in mowing is exactly how you are going to do the cutting.  What pattern will you adopt?  Most of us mowers probably go around in a square, shooting the cut grass to the outside of the mowed area.  That means you are going counter-clockwise, because the outlet on the mower is on the right side.  I have seen some mowers simply go back and forth, first shooting the grass to the outside, and then shooting it to the inside of the mowed area.  That seems bipolar to me.  Some of the vegetation gets cut once, some gets cut twice.  Some aficionados have recommended that I mow my lawn using swaths that are diagonal within the yard, rather than horizontal or vertical.  Pretty fancy, so it would look good from a Google Earth photo.  But I stick with the counter-clockwise square, so I can easily determine that the geometric shape remaining to cut is diminishing in size as I go.  I need that positive reinforcement.

I have learned a great deal of ecology while mowing lawns for five decades in half a dozen states.  I apply no chemical spray to my lawn, so it is a bit rough with all sorts of herbaceous biodiversity that tell me something about what is under my feet.  One learns where the wet areas and the dry areas in the yard are located.  This often comes in handy later if you want to plant flowers or trees in the yard.  I learn where the yellow jackets have their hole in the ground, after they find me first.  I know where the pickerel frogs, which like wet meadows, live in my yard.  I enjoy the beautiful orange hawkweed blooms, just before I whack their little heads off, and I have followed the health of the same patch of buttercups for years.  I am aware of when crickets hatch in August, and I then anticipate the female turkeys that bring their brood through the yard to feed on the abundant insects.  I see deer droppings, and dog poop, and the occasional raccoon pile.  I know where moles like to dig their tunnels, and I know where they never dare to try.  And I see the non-sentient seedlings of white ash trees that are forever trying to find a home in a yard that is cut to the ground repeatedly.

So I think and I examine and I reduce the height of the vegetation. I accomplish mental work, I learn some ecology, and I make the yard look better simultaneously.  It's multi-tasking, the manly way.  When the mower is put away in October for the winter, I feel like I have closed up my mobile office or my lab for the season, and I truly look forward to all the mental stimulation that next May will bring.  Next time you have this chore to do, focus on nature's classroom that is all around you, and try to enjoy the relative solitude the job provides.  And remember, don't drink and drive, or try to send text messages as you negotiate that counter-clockwise square.

The secrets we keep from our spouses

(I admit I'm a cheapskate, but my wife didn't fare much better.)

Violent crime against tourists is not common in Costa Rica, but rip-offs happen all the time.  A number of years ago, my wife, son, and I pulled into the Hotel D-Galah in San Pedro near the university to check into our room.  I was about to start another 2-month field season studying understory birds in the southern part of the country, and our first stop was always the capital.  We parked the rental car, a Suzuki, immediately in front of the entrance of the small hotel and we went inside to check in.  A decade ago, most tourists rented Suzukis, which were notoriously easy to break into, and thieves knew you were a relatively wealthy, relatively naive gringo if you were driving this model. 

The thieves obviously staked out tourists just like us.  As soon as we went inside the hotel, they jimmied the back door of the Suzuki, grabbed our bags, and off they went.  We returned to the car to get our luggage only to find that there wasn't any, or at least very little, which made getting to our room easier than normal.  Surprising how liberating it is when you have no clothes.  The most valuable item in the car were my binoculars, and fortunately they missed those.  But they got nearly all my field clothes, underwear, T-shirts, and shorts, and much of my wife's wardrobe as well.  They also got my son's homework and several textbooks for his two months of upcoming home schooling.  He was not that unhappy, and I'm sure the thieves wanted to study American history.   Of course, I felt like an idiot, but we had assumed the car was safe only 20 feet from the check-in desk at the hotel, and we were inside for no more than 10 minutes.  We reported to the hotel staff that we had been ripped off; they acted unimpressed, and uttered an unconvincing "lo siento".  Welcome to our hotel.

We had homeowner's insurance, which covered items stolen while traveling, but we needed a police report to turn in to our agent when we returned home.  So, the next day, we went to the Hall of Justice in downtown San Jose, or whatever it was called, expecting to see Batman and Robin or their latino equivalent flitting about the place.  Instead, we found dozens of ripped-off gringos just like us trying to file a report of stolen possessions---State Farm Insurance must have been busy that year back in the states.  Our turn finally came, and we proceeded to itemize for the police official what we could remember must have been in our stolen luggage, and its approximate value.

Six pair of underwear--$15.  Four T-shirts--$50.  One pair of sandals---$20.  And on and on.  But then it got more interesting.  Silk shirt that my wife had gotten me for Christmas: my wife answered, $12.  "What?", I exclaimed.  "My Christmas gift from you only cost $12?"  Management acted a bit sheepish, but we continued.  We got to some jewelry items.  My wife listed a pair of earrings that I had gotten her for her birthday, she looked at me for the value, and I said, innocently, $15.  "You cheap bastard!", she shrieked.  Geez, what an idiot I am.  I could have told the cop $125.  Who would know the difference if I committed a little insurance fraud in order to maintain domestic tranquility?  Any male insurance adjuster would certainly understand and look the other way.  I was so stupid that I deserved to be ripped off by some Costa Rican slicky boys.  Take my watch, take the wallet out of my pocket.  Honesty is not always the best policy when dealing with your spouse; I'm living proof of this.  I'm not just a cheap bastard; I'm a stupid bastard as well.  Cheap and stupid!!

I learned a lot during those two days in San Jose.  Watch your possessions like a hawk.  Never leave anything of value in a car unless you stand nearby to watch the two Great Danes you keep inside.  Never travel with expensive underwear; they may be stolen, and then you have to go to a foreign store and buy their skimpy togs.  I hate shopping, but I had to replace the under garments that I lost.  So we went to a store where the only men's underwear they had was the size of a small handkerchief---black with pin stripes.  Boy, this burglary has become a hassle, although I did feel extra sexy whenever I sported my tico briefs back home.  And most importantly, when your wife asks you a question where the answer matters to her happiness, consider your response carefully before you open your mouth.  And prepare your face for the untruthful answer that you may be about to give.  Pretend you are young and innocent again, and try to orient your countenance to resemble that 7-year old boy you used to be.

The following year when I presented my wife with her birthday gift, she gave me that "was this only $15 look?"  I had conveniently left the receipt for this $125 purse in the gift box, although I acted as if I were embarrassed when she found it in there.  "Oh, sorry, I thought I had filed that away, in case you had wanted to return it for an even nicer model."  Of course, she refused.  She was happy and I was happy.  And if this purse was ever stolen in a foreign country, I would gleefully fill out the police report in front of my wife, looking forward to the part where I tell the official its value.

Walk a mile in my shoes

(These shoes now reside in Paris.  Ignore the mismatched socks; that was just an absent-minded professor thing.)

The heavy, tight-fitting leather shoes were hurting my feet something awful, and I couldn't take it anymore.  So I removed them as soon as we disembarked from the subway near our room, and set them in an obvious place on the sidewalk against a building.  I walked the remainder of the distance to our room in my socks.  I suppose this was the first time an American had ever left a pair of perfectly good shoes on the sidewalk in the 16th arrondissement (the Trocadero section) in Paris.  My feet felt better instantly and I felt liberated generally.  Nearly barefoot on a Parisian sidewalk, and I didn't give a damn.

About a year after this, I was in Kenya for an international meeting in Nairobi.  After the meeting, I went on a little safari to the Maasai-Mara, where I stayed in a small tent camp.  On this trip I took a pair of sandals, to wear around the camp, and some high-top hiking shoes for daily excursions onto the savanna.  My Maasai guide and I hit it off right away; he knew all the birds in the area, and I wanted to know them all.  But during my two days with him it was obvious that he coveted my sandals, which he saw me wear to dinner each night.  When I was about to leave on the third day, I made a gift of the sandals to this young guy, who was extremely pleased to receive them.  He promised that if I ever returned, one of his wives would fix me a nice dinner.  Sounded good to me, as long as the dinner did not consist only of cattle blood.  By the way, if you have any good recipes using this "food", please pass it along.

Then, last month in Costa Rica my feet developed a rash that would stop the bulls in Pamplona.  I was convinced it was due to the Crocs I had been wearing, and they weren't very comfortable anyway.  However, I admit that the Facebook group that I had only just discovered titled "I Don't Care How Comfortable Crocs Are, You Look Like A Dumbass" was haunting me. I seem to have a deficiency when it comes to buying footwear that works for me.  So I gave the Crocs to the cleaning lady at the Hotel Herradura in San Jose.  They were nearly new and I didn't want to just toss them in the trash.  Bon appetit, or I'd guess you'd say bon chaussures.

So, three pairs of footwear left on three continents during a 3-year period.  I had become a one-man TOMS shoes' representative.  Although I was feeling a bit like a poor-man's philanthropist, I was more taken by the kind of story I might tell about this behavior.  Of course, the idiom that came to mind was"walk a mile in my shoes".  But that is an invitation for someone to see the world from your point of view or station in life, and literally wearing someone else's shoes does not accomplish that at all.   Ironically, given that people in the countries I visited wanted to own MY shoes almost allowed me to walk a bit in their shoes, if you catch my drift.

I suppose it is not a coincidence that we focus so much on footwear.  After all, you could walk around without a shirt or pants or dress if you really had to.  You might be embarrassed, but you can physically do it.  But try walking around Paris or San Jose or the tropical savannas of Africa barefooted and your physical metal would be sorely tested.  In other words, shoes may have become a method of making a fashion statement in the modern, affluent world, but it is damned practical to have some protection on the bottom of your walking tools.  I have stated this before but, after spending time in agricultural areas of tropical America, I have never looked at a banana or a cup of coffee without deep appreciation for the human sweat it took to produce those commodities.  Similarly, I will never look again at the choices in my shoe collection with passive disdain, even if the selection of the day makes me look like a dumbass.

Hay fever and the evolution of pollination

(This woman is enjoying a good sneeze thanks to anemophily.)

April and May are my favorite months in upstate New York, because overt biological activity returns to the landscape. It is also my most miserable time—I suffer from allergies to pollen. My eyes water and itch, my nose tickles and runs, my throat is scratchy, and I sneeze a lot. I can take medicine but it makes me sleepy, and if I have to drive, being drugged is a bad idea. I am not alone. Approximately 20-30 million Americans suffer from outdoor allergies, mostly plant pollen. Although I have never been tested for the specific pollen to which I am allergic, I am pretty sure that maple, oak, ash, and possibly pine cause my problems, based on which flowering trees are in abundance near my house every year. I am also very allergic to grass pollen, so I simply stay out of meadows and hayfields during mid summer.

The enemy of those of us who suffer from allergies to plant pollen is “anemophily”. We all learned that flowering plants produce pollen, which is equivalent to sperm in vertebrates. The pollen must reach the plant carpel, or female part, of the plant so that the DNA in the pollen grain can join the DNA from the female gamete found in the ovule to produce a seed. We know that some plants are self-fertile, but others require that the pollen from the male structure get to a female flower elsewhere on the same plant, or to another female flower on another conspecific individual in the landscape. In some species, like aspen, you have male trees that produce only pollen, and female trees that produce only female flowers. So pollen often has to find a female flower of the same species somewhere in the landscape many meters or even hundreds of meters away. Most plants rely on insects, bats, or birds to move pollen from point a to point b, but about 20% of plant species rely on wind for pollen transport; this form of pollen dispersal is called anemophily. And those plants are the problem for hay fever sufferers, because their pollen is in the air to enter our eyes and nose.

Plants with showy, colorful flowers are always used in those television commercials that advertise an allergy medicine. You know the ones. The woman wants to garden, they show her walking through a yard full of black-eyed susans, Echinacea, lupine, and penstemon, and the scene implies that all those flowers are causing her itchy eye problem. Wrong! Plants that have large, or colorful, or aromatic flowers evolved those structures to attract some animal that can see or smell those characteristics. Those tend to be the plants we put in our gardens, because humans simply enjoy the sight. Plants did not evolve those beautiful structures for our enjoyment. Natural selection has responded to the potential suite of pollinators that existed out there. In fact, the tremendous diversification of flowering plant species coincides with the diversification of insect species during the Jurassic about 190 million years ago, although there is controversy surrounding the cause and effect of plant-insect evolution.

The plants that cause our problems are wind-pollinated, and they have small, inconspicuous flowers. How many of you know what a grass flower looks like? You need a compound scope to see them. But when they are at their peak flowering, if you hit the spike that contains those flowers, a small dust cloud of pollen will billow into the air. If I walk through such a field for 10 minutes, I need to reach for the Benadryl.

I have never suffered from hay fever in the tropics, however. This is curious, because there are many more plant species near the Equator than in upstate New York. But maybe that incredible diversity is part of the explanation as to why I am symptom-free in Costa Rica. There are many species, but it seems that the number of individuals in each of those species in any given location is not so great. The chances of a wind-blown grain of pollen landing on the female flower of another individual of the same species would seem to be low, or even remote, and not very efficient. If plants were selected naturally to develop a flower that attracts a particular species of fly or beetle or hummingbird, which visit to collect nectar or even pollen itself, that mobile organism is much more likely to visit another flower of the same species, probably within minutes. Many, but not all, of these animal pollinators are real specialists, and tend to visit only one species of plant. This is a much more focused system than relying on wind, which works just fine in the forest around my house where I have dozens of maple and ash and pine trees per acre, for example. (The story gets a bit more complicated. Red maple, which I have always thought caused my allergies, has small, red flowers. They are wind-pollinated, but they are also visited by bees. The fact that they are red suggests that they are not strictly wind-pollinated).

So now you have something to think about. It is fun to look at a flower and attempt to hypothesize what pollinates it. But also, the next time someone complains about their hay fever symptoms and points an accusing finger at the large yellow flowers growing along the side of the road, you can give a little fake sneeze and smile knowingly to yourself.

The symbolic chairs of Cornell and Costa Rica

(A Costa Rican rocker on the left and a Cornell chair on the right.  Which one holds the better memories?)

I returned home from Costa Rica this time with a rocking chair in a box.  If you have ever visited that incredible country, you have seen them in all the tourist shops for about $200.  It is a wooden chair frame of guapinol (Hymenaea courbaril), with seat and back made of leather tooled with Costa Rican scenes.  I always thought it was a handsome chair, and functional, but dreaded getting one back to the states.  But this time I bit the bullet and brought it home as checked luggage.  I love those chairs, and I look forward to using it in my home.

On the other hand, there is the wooden chair I could have gotten for free when I retired from Cornell University a couple of years ago.  This is the customary "going-away" gift for retired profs.  Some companies give their retirees a watch; Cornell gives you a chair.  Both gifts seem, well, stupid to me.  Does a retired 65-year old need a timepiece to know when to get up in the morning, when to eat dinner, or when the next meeting will begin?  And the Cornell chair seems to say, "go home, sit down, and read a magazine".  I just don't like either image.  So I refused the Cornell chair and asked for a small flat-panel tv instead, to which my department chair agreed after consultation with the administrative HQ in the "colonel's" office.  (The command and control structure of most universities is directly analogous to that of the chain-of-command found in the U.S. military, which I had the pleasure of enduring for three years.)

So I thought about my refusal of the free Cornell chair and the purchase of the Costa Rican chair quite a bit over the past two weeks.  Why is one repulsive to me and the other appealing to me?  There is nothing physically unattractive about the beautifully polished and spindled Cornell chair; something else is at work here.  As is so often the case, I think it is all about memories.

I spent nearly 30 years at Cornell, but the bond never really took.  This is exceptionally weird for me, because I normally develop a deep attachment with every organism and every habitat and most places with which I have ever spent significant time.  The Cornell campus is beautiful, but the place is an institution, and it is like most institutions.  It is somewhat unyielding, and dogmatic, and all business; it just happens that education is the commodity being marketed.  It is about results, and budgets, and beating out the competition.  Its weapons are public relations, a corporation-oriented Board of Trustees, and lobbying at the state and federal level. It is shiny on the outside, but stiff on the inside--just like its chair.  No matter how long you sit in its chair, its shape never changes, and it becomes uncomfortable.  In time, the shine wears off.  Whenever I was away for months at a time doing research or on a sabbatic leave, I never missed the place at all, not once.  Old faculty at a university die at their desks, alone.

On the other hand, Costa Rica is the only place other than my own home for which I feel true homesickness when I am not there.  I love the people, the food, the music, the climate, the biological diversity, and the spirit that is Costa Rican.  The country is beautiful, and friendly, and mysterious.  It is stable, and practical, and inventive--just like its chair.  The leather becomes soft and pliable with time, and it molds to the shape of your body.  Old Costa Ricans die while dancing with friends and family. 

The stark memories of my place of employment transferred to their parting gift, so I refused it.  The fond memories of the other place transferred to the functional product made there, so I bought one.  And so it goes throughout life.  Associations and memories influence decisions and conclusions about the experiences we have had, and tend to guide us through whatever is next.

Estonian, the root language of Homo sapiens

(An international gathering of young people discussing important issues in Estonian.)

I made the most amazing discovery on this vacation to Costa Rica.  Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of playing poker at the Adelante Hotel with several locals, including four Estonians.  The Estonians built and run this particular hotel along the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica.  During the game, there was Spanish, English, and Estonian spoken interchangeably throughout the night.  After 4-5 hours and 5-6 rums I actually thought I was picking up on the lingo that is indigenous north of Latvia and south of Finland in the country called Estonia.

But then today, I was listening and trying to converse with my 2-year old grandson, who says some words an adult speaker of English would recognize, but mostly it is a hodge-podge of words and sounds that make no sense to me whatsoever.  He is obviously sure of what he is saying, and it is frustrating for him to get little or no reaction from most adults when he blathers.

My grandson was in the pool and I was sitting nearby when I decided to talk to him in unknown words to me, but what sounded to me a lot like the language I had listened to for hours at the Texas hold'em showdown at the Adelante.  To my surprise, my grandson lit up like a candle, began gesticulating to me from the pool, and vocalizing loudly, and had an expression on his face that said "finally, someone understands me". I believe he even winked knowingly at me, although at his age a gas-induced grimace looks about the same as a wink.  We jabbered back and forth for 5-10 minutes before it occurred to me.  He was speaking Estonian!

I had discovered the solution for which linguists had been searching for centuries.  All human babies, whether from Africa, or South America, or the Bronx are born speaking Estonian.  It is only after years of hearing the language of the country into which they are born that they forget the beautiful tongue that comes so naturally to them and they struggle to begin speaking French, or Russian, or English.  Estonian babies, of course, do not have to learn to switch to another language.  The young people I played poker with spoke at least three languages.  Of course they do, they did not have to start all over at age two by abandoning one language they already knew.

Did you ever wonder why babies enjoy the company of other babies so much?  They usually love going to some kind of child care and seeing others of their ilk.  It is because they can, at last, converse with someone in this world.  I am sure they talk over issues important to them about their home lives---whether they like strained peas or carrots, whether they need to wear those papery diapers as much as their parents think they do, or whether being the middle child is really so bad.  Just think if Estonians opened up child care centers all over the world.  There would be a flow of information between the adult and the baby generations the likes of which humans have never seen.  The only danger might be that non-Estonian babies would never want to give up the language that already works for them.  But perhaps, in time, seven billion people would be united under one language.

I think the solution to world peace, for achieving personal harmony in one's life, and for eliminating all sorts of interpersonal problems might be alleviated if we all learned to speak Estonian.  We would instantly find an ancient connection, and a personal familiarity, that goes back to the cradle or even the womb.  The world would be as one mass of contented 2-year olds who all speak the same language.  It would have to lead to a general feeling of well-being in the world.  Can you imagine a group of 2-year olds telling each other they are going to nuke Juan, or embargo Jana, or prevent Jane from joining the United Nations?  Of course not.  So get out that Rosetta Stone cd of the Estonian language and start studying for world peace, verb by conjugated verb.

Valentine's Day, Costa Rica!

(On our way to a recent Valentine's Day celebration.  Sometimes it just doesn't pay to dress for dinner.)

It was about as romantic a day as you could ever expect.  Yesterday was Valentine's Day, 2010, and my wife and I are in Costa Rica.  This is the only place I have ever been, other than my home in Ithaca, where I feel true homesickness when I am not here.  There is something special about the country that stays with you long after you leave, especially if you have experienced the richness that the place and the people have to offer.  Maybe there are dozens of other countries about which I could say the same if I knew them, but this is the place where I have a professional and a social history going back nearly 25 years.  I have memories of friends and family and habitats and organisms here that run wide and deep, and that is not easily duplicated in another place in a short lifetime.

In the morning, Robin and I met the guide from Southern Expeditions at Playa Pinuelas (pretend there is a squiggly accent over the "n", and pronounce accordingly) near Uvita.  We received our nautical instructions, along with four other couples, and we boarded the smallish skiff for our tour of Ballena Marine Park.  I awoke the night before almost regretting that I had agreed to this trip.  I am one of those who suffer from motion sickness; I don't have a pretty history of being on boats in the ocean.  Twice I went salmon fishing off the coast of Oregon years ago and I was the only one who got sick out of 20 passengers--both times.  I must be in the tail of the statistical distribution with respect to this particular affliction.  It is simply no fun vomiting for four hours in front of perfect strangers, and it is embarrassing.  I wanted to see this park, I needed to do it, I dreaded doing it, and I felt like a coward all at the same time.  It is like seeing a bare section of electrical cord leading from a wall outlet to your table lamp.  You just want to touch it to see if you get shocked.  And when you feel that ZAP!, you have your answer and you are good to go for another 20 years.

The skiff sped away from the beach and we headed for the open ocean to look for whales and dolphins.  I had tried medications before, and they never helped, so I didn't even bother this time.  I couldn't remember what the sailors advise to avoid sea sickness---watch the horizon, don't watch the horizon, focus on something in the boat rather than on the water.  I decided I would keep my eyes closed as much as I could.  With sunglasses on, no one would notice.  Even my wife, who was holding my hand, must have assumed that she and I were enjoying the same view of the ocean, and the sun, and the islands.  Wrong!  I wasn't seeing a thing.  From past experience, I would know soon enough if this was going to work, or if I was going to spoil the trip for that German couple who was sitting downwind of me.  Gott in Himmel, let this "eyes closed strategy" work.

I don't believe in the American god, but I guess the German god really exists, because an hour passed on the boat and I still felt fine.  I decided to open my eyes and look around.  Pretty nice.  We saw no marine mammals, but we did some snorkeling, looked at some sea caves, and learned something about coastal topography.  At the end, my wife was happy, I was happy, and the German couple sitting behind me was happier than they could have possibly realized.

But the creme de la creme was later that evening at the Villa Leonor, where I had made reservations for a Valentine's dinner.  The place is nothing fancy and, frankly, I wasn't expecting the evening to flip my wig.   The place is run by Cliff, an ex-pat from Colorado, and his tico wife Anna.  The original plan was for the guests to come at 5pm for drinks on the beach, and to watch the sunset.  Then, we would all retire to the open-air restaurant of theirs about 200 meters back from the beach for live music and dinner.  We had preordered our dinners the day before.  The formula was as romantic as one could construct on paper for this day of days for sweethearts.

But about an hour before we were to leave the house to go to the Villa, it started to rain, really, really hard.  It rained so hard that a large tree fell down near our house, knocking out the electricity for the next 12 hours.  But we had ordered our dinners already, and we thought we owed it to Cliff to show up for the food he had probably gotten in specially for this night.  We drove in a pounding rain to the place.  When we got to the parking lot, Cliff greeted us with an umbrella and escorted us into the bar area.  He obviously had to cancel the beach soiree (pretend there is an accent aigu over the first "e", and pronounce accordingly, but this is French, not Spanish, like the last word I provided instructions for).  Cliff brought us a complimentary cocktail, and we then realized that his electricity was also off.  About ten couples are coming for a rather elegant dinner on a special day and the guy has no electricity just as he is about to prepare a 3-course meal.

But Cliff is laughing and seems totally calm, and says something about making do when in Costa Rica, and my wife is trying to make him feel relaxed during a probable tense time like she usually does, which makes me feel less relaxed because her ruse is so obvious to me, because I have known her for so long and I have seen her do this a thousand times before.  Basically, Cliff's message was, "we have no electricity, so let's party".  Guests kept arriving, and we all sat around while it poured like the devil only a few feet away, and I could hear frogs calling in the rain under the eaves of the open structure with the thatched roof.  Candles were lit everywhere, and it was wonderful!  Cliff went around to each guest and asked them how they wanted their food cooked, not one person complained about anything, and the orders were sent to the kitchen.  Turns out they cook with gas, so the kitchen was lit up with flashlights and candles and they proceeded.

At about this point, a young man from San Isidro picked up his guitar and began to sing.  He continued for about two hours with a fantastic collection of old and new ballads, some in Spanish and some in English.  He was surprisingly good.  Our dinners came, the music continued, and about this time, the electricity came back on.  I realized that my first impulse was one of disappointment.  We were eating my candlelight before the power came back, not because we chose to attempt to strike a romantic mood, but because we had to eat by candlelight to see our food.  To me, that REALLY was romantic.  Cliff caught the change of mood immediately and turned off the incandescent lights that had just flickered on, and we continued almost seamlessly.

I don't consider myself a romantic, mushy kind of guy.  My wife says she would like me to be, but I doubt that really.  Last night's dinner was as romantic, in the fullest sense of the word, as it gets.  My wife did look fantastic, but it was so much more than that.  It was romantic because it could have turned completely sour if the attitudes in the room had been different, but they were not.  The ambiance was perfect, but not so much out of purposeful design, but because the guests and the restaurant staff went with the flow, improvised, laughed at the inconveniences, and were dissuaded from the idea that weather or power outages would keep us from enjoying the moment.  It was also romantic because Robin and I fully recognized the experience as yet another memorable Costa Rican evening that enfolded in a way not quite expected.  And OK, it was also romantic because we held hands for most of the night.  Some mush is allowed.

Fender-bender in Costa Rica

(Driving in San Jose can be hectic, but the dangers of driving in rural areas in Costa Rica are just as real.)


I stayed remarkably calm throughout the entire event; my wife was a bit less so.  When I saw that motorcyclist fly off his cycle onto the trunk of a parked car, my heart stopped for a minute.  I was turning right into a parking space without my turn signal on, he was passing me on the right, so there was plenty of blame to go around.  Fortunately, he was physically all right.  The damage was minimal, mostly lights on all vehicles concerned, but the official reporting took half a day.  We waited in the center of Uvita, a coastal Costa Rican town, until the police and an insurance guy from a town 90 minutes away arrived to fill out all the reports.  I was instructed by the transito that I could show up in court in Ciudad Cortez within eight days, but my car rental company told me that they will do that; that is why I signed all those papers when I got the Nissan 4x4 on day 1.

After all these years of driving in my favorite country, it finally happened.  Nice that it didn't occur during one of those times when I was driving over the Cerro de la Muerte in the dark, in the fog, with trucks passing on blind curves, with a thousand feet of drop off the side.  That would have ruined my year.  I guess this is why I have never been a fan of cars or of driving.  I learned at an early age how these machines can change your life forever.

When a fender-bender happens in the states, it is inconvenient, but it is really not that big of a deal.  If your vehicle is undrivable, we take it to the shop and we get around some other way for a while.  We take a cab or a bus or our neighbor who has a car delivers us where we need to go.  Heck, most of us have a second car anyway, so we use that one until the first one is repaired.  But in places like Costa Rica, it is a big deal to have your only mode of transportation down.  Bus transport in the capital is great, but not out here in the boonies.  Most ticos do not own a car or truck, some have a motocycle or a bike, and most walk nearly everywhere.  So this guy who richoched off my rental car will not be able to drive his moto until he gets the money to fix it properly.  Life gets instantly more difficult---to get to work, to get to market, to conduct business at the bank. (He will apparently receive insurance money, but it will take months.  I will have to pay for damages to the rental car up to the deductible amount.)

You could gauge how important this incident was in the daily life of a tico because of all the locals who stopped by to get the story.  The cyclist must have described his version of what happened a dozen times to friends and relatives while we waited for the authorities.  When gringos passed by, they barely noticed.  I didn't get to explain to anyone what happened.  There was an American eyewitness, however, who was drinking coffee only a few feet in front of where the accident occurred.  Terri Peterson gladly came to my rescue and volunteered to be a witness, if necessary.  Turns out she runs eco-tours from the southern part of the country, so this is my chance to give her a plug.  But from the crowd of ticos, you would have thought there were 2-3 bodies lying on the pavement instead of some pieces of broken glass and plastic.  Fortunately, the owner of the parked car was a guy named Eddie that I had just met 15 minutes before at the nearby gas station.  He had lived in the states for 16 years, so he served as my interpreter with authorities.  My Spanish is perfectly fine in a bar or restaurant, but explaining a car accident to the police is another matter.  All in all, I guess it made for an interesting morning for Uvitans.

In the mid-80s, we lived in a mountaintop village in Costa Rica with our three children for a year.  We had no car, so we walked everywhere.  It was really work to get food and to do errands.  And then, whatever you bought, you had to carry home. After a while, we bought a horse, and life got immensely easier.  I lost 25 pounds that year, and I was not overweight in the least when I got there.  Can you say emaciated?

So I feel badly that I caused, or was involved, in a disruption of the normal flow of events in this man's life.  The accident gave me something to write about; it only gave him a problem.  I wonder how often this is the case.  We tend to weigh our economic setbacks against our own standard of living, not against those for whom the event is much worse.  It even seems there are parallels here with the effects that U.S. international policies have on millions of less fortunate people in other countries.  But that is another blog.

Cell phones: The device I love to hate

I have hated cell phones since their inception. Maybe it is because I have always hated talking on the phone to almost anyone at anytime. I just don't like to talk that much, so the act of actually carrying around a device in your pocket where people can talk to you anytime is totally repulsive. Maybe it is because my family and I lived in Monteverde, Costa Rica in the mid-1980s, where we had no phone. Mail was delivered only once per week, and any mail from the states took about three weeks to arrive. And there was no internet there then. And we had no car. And life was pretty good there. So I know we can live happily without cell phones.

But there is more to it than that. It is the almost narcotic-like attachment that other people seem to have to their cell phones that repels, angers, and disgusts me. I used to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, so I know what that kind of addiction is. When you are a smoker, you can't wait to get out of a meeting or a class so you can go someplace to light up. For the past decade, when I saw students leave a classroom, the first thing they did was to retrieve their cell (remove the pack of cigs from their pocket), flip open the cover (flip up a cig from the pack), dial a number (light up), and begin to talk (take a drag). Of course, this sequence is then followed by a slight smile of pleasure as you hear the voice of the person you called (as the nicotine hits your lungs). This compulsion to use the phone as soon as it is socially acceptable to do so looks exactly like the cigarette smoking habit with which I was all too familiar.

If I see someone driving their car while talking on a cell phone, I literally want to ram their car with mine. They are putting other people's lives in danger so they can find out whether they were supposed to pick up Miracle Whip or real mayo at the grocery, or whether Emily or April is picking up the kids after soccer practice, or whether Harry should get black olives on the pizza he is about to pick up. I don't really know what those drivers are talking about, but I will bet my dog's first born that 99% of the time it is about nothing important. The cell phone is mostly for chit chat, gossip, and entertainment in a life that seems boring without constant digital stimulation.

So for many years, I resisted getting a cell. After all, if I ever wanted to make a call on the fly, everyone with me always had one. Cell owners are all too proud to offer up their phone for use, to show you all the neat things it can do and how kewl it looks. I parasitized this pride for a long time and, in the process, probably saved thousands of dollars in cell phones and cell plans.

However, last year my wife and I got our first cell. We actually have two landlines at home, but my wife’s work often has them both tied up for hours or days. Our children insisted that we get a cell so they can contact us during the day if necessary. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. But I am still basically clueless. I can dial and receive a call, but I don’t know how to text, to send a picture, to retrieve a message, or even to put it on vibrate. I really don’t care to know, because Management can do some of these things. It is a basic model that we got free with our plan, so it is not a “smart” phone. Therefore, I guess it must be a dumb phone.

My ignorance about cell phones can result in some interesting moments. A few months ago, my wife handed me the cell that she had just put on vibrate to put in my pocket in a restaurant in Albany, NY. A few minutes later, I felt a very strange sensation coming from my mid-section. I waited, it passed. A short while later, it happened again. I jumped out of my seat, wondering what was happening to my stomach. I was about to alert my wife to dial 911, because this is not normal. When you get to be my age, you wake up every day wondering if this is the day you get THE CALL. Turns out, I was getting A CALL, just not THE CALL, from the cell in my pants. I always thought that vibration machines were supposed to bring pleasure, not trepidation.

Then, last weekend, my daughter and her family decided to go to the local mall when visiting us. After she left, I realized I needed to call her about something REALLY IMPORTANT. I dialed her cell from my cell, because Management was using our landline. As soon as I dialed, another cell phone that was sitting on our kitchen counter began to ring. Not our phone; we only have one. I hung up, ran over to answer it, and no one was there. I redialed my daughter on my cell, and the same thing happened again. What an incredible coincidence that that cell rings at exactly the same time I am using mine. I hung up again, jumped across the kitchen to answer it quickly, but no one was there. I HATE PHONES! About an hour later, I realized I was calling my daughter’s cell from my cell in the same room. I guess if I had not hung up my cell, I could have had a pretty interesting conversation with myself.

It should be clear by now that I hate cell phones, and I suppose I always will. The myth we tell is that cell phones were developed to make our lives better, but they were actually developed so companies could make money selling them. But in addition to the irritations enumerated above, there is another. On nearly every hill of any size in America, there is a cell tower. Another bit of environmental degradation, another bit of visual pollution, another ugliness on the landscape. All this, so Harry can find out whether he should get olives on his pizza. Go progress!

My wife, the amenity thief

(Are these items found in a hotel in Hong Kong or in my bathroom in Danby, NY?  Answer: both.)

Step into any hotel room with my wife and you will immediately notice that there is no soap, no shampoo, no body lotion, and no bath cap in the bathroom.  Nada, zilch, zero.  Because you only just checked into the room, there is no way that you already took a shower, forgot that you did so, and used up all those products.  No, the answer to the disappearing amenities in the room is that they are already in my wife's bag.  I admit, somewhat sheepishly, that my wife is an amenity slut. 

As I flip through my bathroom at home, I see shampoos from Sheraton and Radisson hotels, body lotion from the Hilton Garden Inn, and sundry products from hotels or pensions in France and Costa Rica that we visited years ago.  We almost never have to buy shampoo for our home.  In fact, my wife could open a small boutique with nice smelling lotions from around the country and the world.  Bed, Bath and Beyond watch out!  There is a major competitor coming to a town near you and her name is Robin.  Mind you, my wife is not a true thief.  She does not steal towels, or bath robes, or pillows, or the tv remote from hotel rooms.  She takes only those items that they place there for your use; it is just that in her case, she "uses" them all within minutes of hitting the room.  Nothing illegal or immoral about this, but it is damn irritating to her roomie----me.

How am I supposed to take a shower or dabble moisturizing lotions over my dried up skin if she has them stowed away?  I have learned that on the second day of our stay, I watch for the housekeeping lady.  I slip out of the room, and I tell her I will gladly carry the amenities into our bathroom to save her the trip.  But I surreptitiously slide a shampoo or two into my pant's pockets for later use.  Later in the day, I have to calm my wife when she begins complaining about housekeeping and how they skimp on bringing ample amenities to the room.  When she is about to call the front desk, I quickly draw her attention to the mattress on which we just slept: "I feel a bit itchy this morning honey.  I'm going to check the underside of this mattress for bed bugs", I say, acting as uncomfortable as I can.  I took entomology in college, so she trusts my observational skills when it comes to insects.  I spend a good 6-8 minutes examining the surface and finally conclude there is nothing there.  "I must just have dry skin", which is true for sure since I HAVEN'T SEEN BODY LOTION SINCE 1976.  My ruse works.  By the time I finish looking for the fictitious bed bugs, she has forgotten there was no daily replenishment of her sought-after booty, and we move on to the lobby to look for free newspapers or magazines.

I like traveling with my wife most of the time.  And she is generous to a fault.  We have friends who run a lodge in the Adirondacks in New York.  When they visited us last time, my wife gave them a supply of loot from her hotel visits that they will use to furnish the bathrooms in six cabins.  Not sure what those guests will think when they read "Holiday Inn" on the soap in their room.  But if cleanliness is next to godliness, does it matter from whence the cleanser came?

Of invasive plants and Big Macs

(A McDonalds in Cairo.  Your order please.  Hamburger or hummus?)

One of the first-hand observations I have made over the past few years is the tendency to homogenize the world’s biota, especially plants. Jacaranda trees native to Brazil are common as ornamentals in Nairobi, Norway maples native to Europe are common on the streets of eastern U.S. cities, and the bird of paradise flower native to South Africa is found in nearly every city in the tropics worldwide. The botanical situation reminds me of the proliferation of franchised fast food restaurants, where you can now find Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets in Cairo and Kampala as easily as in Louisville. The homogenization of biota and the homogenization of cultures disturb me.

I tend to bond with habitats like most people bond with their friends or their pets. I also bond with humans and dogs, so I am not totally weird. But I have a close affinity to every place where I have spent considerable time: the meadows of upstate New York, the riparian habitat along the San Pedro River in Arizona, the sagebrush community in Idaho, the rain forests of Costa Rica, and, of course, the forest around my home in Ithaca. When a real estate agent is asked to name the three most important aspects of a home’s value, they usually say “location, location, location.” Similarly, we biologists often say when asked to name the three most important elements in conservation, “habitat, habitat, habitat.”

Very simply, habitat is where an organism lives. It is comprised of the plants, animals, and microorganisms in a particular location. The species composition of a habitat is determined by many factors, but it includes the climate, the historical path leading to species’ colonization or evolution in that location, the interaction of species over time, geology, soils, and more. Each habitat on earth is absolutely unique—they each have their own physical appearance, their distinctive sounds of birds, frogs, and insects, and their complex blend of odors. I am convinced that if I were blindfolded and dropped into any habitat where I have ever spent any amount of time that I could identify where I was by simply smelling the air. The ponderosa pine forest of the Kaibab Plateau and the cloud forest of Costa Rica come to mind. The sounds would make it even easier—vermilion flycatchers along the San Pedro River, bellbirds and black-faced solitaires in Monteverde, cicadas (different species) in Ohio or Las Cruces.

Now, before my ecology friends jump all over me, I realize fully that habitats are not static. Habitats change over time. The habitats I love will not be the same a century from now. During that amount of time, some ecologists would say that the habitat has changed or matured; some would say that it has become a different habitat altogether. I am not interested in that debate. I just do not want readers to think that I think these entities are unchanging. I have watched the woodland around my house change dramatically in 30 years. Therefore, I am not arguing that we do whatever we can to prevent habitats from changing. That would be folly, and would be an unwise strategy biologically.

But I am arguing that we do what we can to allow habitats to develop along a more or less “normal” path. We can also argue for a week about what is meant by “normal” or “natural.” I am bored with that argument. Simply put, there are certain events or conditions that I define as “unacceptable”, and which I think are an impediment to following a normal path to change.

One of the unacceptables is the human-assisted invasion of a habitat by plants or animals that are native to some other part of the world. That is a no-brainer for me, and a reason I spend many hours per month eliminating Tartarian honeysuckle, multiflora rose, autumn olive, and common buckthorn from my woodland, four species indigenous to Eurasia. I know they were not here a century or so ago, so when I see them it offends my sensibilities. From a conservation perspective, I am not even sure there is a practical reason to eliminate them. Certainly, if they became superabundant, they would exclude native plants from growing there, with the result that some ecological interactions between those native plants and other organisms would be disrupted or extinguished. But when they are in limited abundance, their greatest danger may be that they will not remain at such low densities. I eliminate these plants because I can; the large Lumbricus earthworms that are so common in my part of the world are not native here either, but there is little I can do to diminish their numbers.

To me, there is a certain parallelism between what I observe in our native habitats and what I observe in cities around the world. When I am in a foreign country, the last place I want to eat a meal is in a Pizza Hut or a McDonalds (in fact, I guess they even kind of offend me here). And when I am in a forest near Ithaca, NY, the last plant I want to see growing there is a European or Asian species. In both cases, something is being lost and, although I can not put to words exactly what that loss is, I believe it is important.  But it goes something like this for me: The invasion of our landscapes with non-native plants is like a technician at the Louvre deciding to "touch up" the Mona Lisa with watercolors.  The average person would not even see the difference, but the art expert probably would.  The act of changing the Mona Lisa, the most famous painting in the world, would transform this important and beautiful object from what it was to a different piece of art.

On the other hand, are Costa Ricans or Egyptians offended when they see an American franchise restaurant in their cities?  Possibly not.  They might even think it is chic that they have this international influence.  I don't get offended to see a Chinese restaurant in Ithaca, but seeing a Pizza Hut in Alexandria bothered me a great deal.  Maybe I am uncomfortable because I fear that these restaurants, and these invasive plants, will not simply be an addition to what was already there, but that they will come to replace the original.  This creeping sameness makes the world less diverse and less interesting, but does that bother anyone else?
 
So I pull and cut and sometimes spray and my students think I’m that crazy ex-prof who would rather declare war on invasive plants than talk on a cell phone.  How weird.  And I eat rice and beans in Costa Rica instead of Big Macs, and I eat hummus in Egypt instead of pizza.  Is this what happens to us as we age?  We rebel at "progress"?  We cuss at the automobile for replacing the horse, or lament that email caused the extinction of the hand-written letter.  Or that friends were replaced with acquaintances. Or that family time was replaced with sitcoms.  I wonder, maybe I just have too much time on my hands.

The value of wood and the role of women in reforestation

(Kenyan women being checked for their wood-collecting permits near Kijabe.)

The striking thing about visiting an arid part of the globe is the lack of trees and the struggle of those people to find wood for cooking and heating. I have observed this first-hand in the Dominican Republic, Madagascar, and East Africa. Those of us who live in locations where there are abundant forests are incredibly fortunate, even though we seldom rely on wood for household uses. (My wife and I actually heat our home with wood, so I appreciate the value of this resource. However, if I don’t gather enough wood for the winter, we have the luxury of turning on the electric heat.)

The problem is really a “mass balance” problem. Wood is produced (i.e., trees grow) at a rate dependent on the species of tree, and the temperature and moisture of its environment. Opposing that growth rate is the rate at which wood is collected and used. The rate at which wood is used is greater than the rate at which new wood can grow in many places, especially in arid lands with a dense human population. Hardly a branch hits the ground that is not picked up by women who endure this arduous task. Benet women in eastern Uganda spend up to 10 hours per day, three days per week, gathering wood. That amounts to a full-time job, which is in addition to all the other tasks these women need to accomplish during the week. Can you just picture the soccer moms of the U.S. spending time in this manner? (Actually, the Benet left some mature trees, almost all Prunus africana, from the original forest when they cleared the land for agriculture. They do not use these trees for fuel.  Prunus africana, the African plum tree, has been used for thousands of years to treat various ailments, including problems of the prostate.)

Gathering wood in some places is downright dangerous. One Benet elder told us that he lost two wives during his youth while they were gathering wood for the home—one was killed by a neighboring tribe when she wandered into their territory. And, of course, there are large mammals and the scorching sun that can do harm as well.

So the answer is simple, but execution is nearly impossible. Grow more trees. But when Joe plants trees for the future, Sam cuts them down to use this year. In fact, Joe knows this will happen, so he doesn’t even bother to plant the trees in the first place. Or, no one can really afford the space for trees that will take years to grow large enough to use, given that trees shade areas that are needed to grow food for tomorrow. You can see a version of “tragedy of the commons” at work here. And so, the women continue to walk 30 hours per week to gather wood from some communal area miles away from home.

There are some successful attempts to turn this pitiful situation around. My colleague, Louise Buck, started a tree-planting program in Kenya about 20 years ago. The successful project was called the Agroforestry Extension Project (AEP), which mobilized women's groups and their members to develop small-scale nursery enterprises to propagate native and naturalized trees and to plant and to sell them. Over 1 million trees/year were planted in and around farms in western Kenya for over a decade, and the tradition continues. My friend, David Kuria, has mobilized a small cadre of volunteers (KENVO) near Mt. Kenya who maintains nurseries for native species of trees, and then plants them in concentric zones around a nearby national park. The idea is that those trees can be used eventually by local people, thereby reducing pressure on forests in the national park. At present, women can collect dead wood in the park after being issued a wood-collecting permit. Even this tree planting at the perimeter of the park, however, will not help women who live miles from this reforestation zone.

But the fact is that it is possible to produce wood where there was little before. It takes agreement within the local community that growing trees in a communal woodland is a worthwhile goal, some protection of young trees until they reach harvestable size, and a little money. The Benet women were waiting on a small grant ($100) to buy the seedlings to begin planting when my ecoagriculture group visited them, an amount about equal to what I spend on scotch in a given month. A little money can do a lot (microcredit?), if you can get it to the women. Women are the movers and shakers in most of these cultures. Women see the value of the plan immediately, and they are willing to do the work if given the resources to succeed.  In these societies, it seems it is always the women who actually make plans work.

One of the advantages of traveling around the world is the appreciation you gain for commodities we Americans take for granted. After living in Costa Rica, for example, I have never looked at a cup of coffee or a banana in the same way again, because I learned how much sweat-equity was used to produce those items. Similarly, I have always loved the trees in my forest and the firewood they produce to heat my home, but after some time in East Africa, my respect for that resource ratcheted up another notch. People only need a little help from the outside, and they can nurture a culture of trees that can provide an essential resource for their livelihood, reduce carbon dioxide, and contribute to conservation of biodiversity. It might just be that what is good for some locally is good for all globally.

When a snake bites your student on his buttocks

(Would you check the white Swiss butt of this biologist for a snake bite?)

When you do field work in places where there are venomous snakes, you think about it. Because you see these snakes only rarely, you become somewhat habituated to the fact that they exist in your location, but it is always in the back of your mind. You think about where you put your hands and feet, where you sit down to have your lunch, where you go to the bathroom, and how you pick up a backpack that has been on the ground for several hours.

We know that humans actually do get bitten by venomous snakes. I have had two colleagues receive serious bites from snakes, and it is not pleasant. You spend days or weeks in the hospital receiving doses of anti-venom and other drugs, battle pain and nausea, and often undergo reconstructive surgery to repair the muscles that experienced necrosis and atrophy near the site of the wound.

It was a tense moment when one of my graduate students appeared unexpectedly at the door of our little house in southern Costa Rica one evening and announced to me: “Tom, I think I’ve been bitten by a snake.” I was studying birds, so my schedule was that of an ornithologist. I got up at 4:30am, went to the field at 5, came home about noon, and went to bed at 9pm. Martin, who is the focus of this story, was studying frogs and lizards. He went to the field about 2pm, but never returned home before midnight. We rarely saw each other until the weekend when we took some time off. But on this day, I heard his car pull up to the house in the dark about my bedtime, saw him trudge past the window in his yellow rain gear, and watched him make his startling appearance at the back door. He was slightly hunched over, his face was pale, and he stared me straight in the face as I digested the words “…….bitten by a snake.”

He explained that he and his assistants were sampling lizards after dark in a pasture next to the forest. This technique involves crouching low to the ground and, using a flashlight, searching every square meter of your assigned area, capturing all lizards you see by hand. The individuals were then taken to a processing “station”, where they were weighed, measured, and marked, before being returned to the area where they were captured. At one point, the student felt a sharp “prick” on his buttocks and at that very moment a small snake, striped red and black like some coral snakes, crawled between his legs. The temporal proximity of the prick and the presence of the snake led him to conclude that the snake had caused the prick. Not an unreasonable conclusion, in my opinion. The snake was definitely NOT a fer-de-lance, which we feared the most. But there are many other venomous snakes in Costa Rica. He waited a few minutes, felt nothing, and assumed that either the snake was not venomous, or it had not really bitten him, or, or, or. But the student was about an hour from any medical help, so his Costa Rican assistants demanded that he return home, just in case he needed to go to the hospital in town. He would be that much closer.

So Martin returned to our house and appeared at the door as described. The next question out of his mouth was almost more shocking than the statement that he might have been bitten. “Tom, would you check my buttocks?” I explained that this might be going further than the faculty-student contract, that this was not in my job description, that I needed to go to bed to get my sleep, but, geesh, this had to be done. He dropped his trou and I put on my examination face as if I had done this a hundred times before, and not at all sure what I would find. I looked it over, carefully, but I could see absolutely nothing—no wound, no mark, no swelling, no redness. I pronounced that he would probably live, although the scientist in me was quick to point out that I had no baseline data with which to compare. I could only assume that what I was seeing was a normal-looking, very white, pasty, Swiss butt (the student was, in fact, from Switzerland). We both laughed and the incident ended.

I got a lot of mileage out of this anecdote. I repeated the story when I introduced Martin to an audience before he gave a presentation on his research. I emailed everyone I knew and told the story. My son Matt replied to the email with a sobering thought: “Dad, it is a good thing he had not been bitten. You would have had to suck out the venom.” What could have been a really serious event turned out to be nothing but fodder for an amusing anecdote. But our fascination with snakes continues, and we think about them, and we watch for them, and the stories about them are remembered for a long, long time.

The scorpion house

(A scorpion under UV light.  Would you take a shower with this critter?)

Let's go back in time a bit for this anecdote.  I find all organisms absolutely fascinating, from elephants to the malaria parasite. Their morphology, behavior, and physiology are incredible manifestations of natural selection. They are all interesting, often beautiful, and sometimes obnoxious. In my book, scorpions are one of those animals that cause immediate repulsion, with their pair of claws at the front of their brown or black body, and that ominous stinger that they hold over the body in strike readiness. For about a year, my wife and I and our three children rented a farmhouse in Monteverde, a small community in the Tilaran Mountains in Costa Rica. Months after moving there, we passed a local resident on the dirt road who asked where we lived. After describing the location to him, he immediately said without fanfare, “Oh, you live in the scorpion house.”  It turns out that the house was also home to a family of Watson's tree rats, a whistling mouse, some fruit-eating bats, and dozens of species of moths, ants, wasps, katydids, and spiders.

Of course, by that time we had already discovered the fact that the house had a healthy population of a species of black scorpion about three inches long. Why was this fact not advertised by the landlord? Why did the multiple listing book not inform us of this? Why wasn’t the house cleared of this hideous looking invertebrate by Acme Pest Control before our arrival with a 5-year old child? I guess we were not in Kansas anymore.

This stingy occupant of our home could be found almost anywhere in the house, but scorpions like to be in a dark place during the day, and then to move about after dark. We regularly checked the cushions of the sofa, our shoes, the shower curtain, bed pillows, clothes, and closets for the sneaky critters. We acquired a house cat during our stay there, and the best thing about this feline friend was his proclivity to hunt down scorpions in the house. In fact, on Christmas morning 1986, we found a freshly killed scorpion placed carefully on the white sheet beneath the tree where there were precious few gifts that year. Just what I always wanted!

But what about the biology of this 8-legged arachnid? From the DesertUSA website: “Scorpions are predatory. They often ambush their prey, lying in wait as they sense its approach. They consume all types of insects, spiders, centipedes, and other scorpions. Larger scorpions may feed on vertebrates, such as smaller lizards, snakes, and mice if they are able to subdue them. They capture their prey with their pedipalps, paralyzing them with their venom as well if necessary. The immobilized prey is then subjected to an acid spray that dissolves the tissues, allowing the scorpion to suck up the remains”.  Sounds just great.

Scorpions often appeared at night and would crawl on the wooden ceiling or open rafters of this rustic house. One night, my wife and I retired to bed, turned off the light, gave each other a kiss, and then turned our heads in opposite directions to settle in for the night. At that very instant, I felt a light “thump” on the pillow between our heads, in the exact location where we had kissed about 10 seconds before. I just knew from the heft of the thump, what it had to be.  I jumped out of bed, turned on the light, flipped up the pillow, and there was a large scorpion that had already hidden itself beneath the cushiony refuge. I was happy it had not fallen from the ceiling a few seconds earlier. Damn, this is disturbing.

Several weeks later I was taking a shower. I always checked the shower stall thoroughly just to make sure that it was free of “friends”. All clear. I started the water, shampooed my head, and while I was scrubbing away with my eyes closed due to the soap, I felt something crawling up my leg. You guessed it, and I knew it again. I opened my eyes to see the forward progress of a large scorpion, now at knee level and moving rapidly. Another 18 inches higher and this thing would be in DrTom's "no-fly zone".  The scorpion must have been in the drain, and when the water began to flow, it crawled out of the drain and up the nearest vertical structure, which was my left leg. I flicked it off quickly. Geez, is nothing sacred?

During all these close calls, only my wife ever got stung. She was folding clean clothes and patted a scorpion she did not see. The sting is much like a wasp sting, but has a burning sensation that lasts for several hours. Other scorpion species in Arizona and New Mexico are apparently more toxic than this Costa Rican relative. About 10 years after we returned to the states, I visited friends who were living in the scorpion house in Monteverde. In the morning, I put on my jeans hastily and was immediately stung on the inside of my thigh. I ripped off the pants, which I had left on the floor overnight, to find a scorpion inside the leg. I had forgotten what had become a daily routine when we lived there—the vigorous shake of the clothes before you put them on.

I often say that bad memories are better than no memories at all. I am, of course, overstating the case, because our year in Monteverde was truly magical, and it changed our family forever in many ways. But I can do without the daily vigilance that comes with living with an unwanted guest that can inflict pain. Now, when a mosquito or black fly lands on my arm in upstate New York, I look down at the puny wimp and think to myself, “You’re nothin”.

A brief anatomy of a 41-year marriage

(I don't think I have ever kissed my wife on the beach under a setting sun.  Real life is better than that.)

Today, my wife and I celebrate our 41st wedding anniversary.  Holy crap.  Has it been that long?  We got married young and, as the saying goes, we were so green that if you put us in the ground we would have grown.  Now, we are old enough that we can't remember half of what we have learned.  But this can work to your advantage men.  I have two anniversary cards, on which I have written a very small "e" or "o".  When my wife is finished with the card after receiving it, I collect it and hide it away.  I use the "e" card every even-numbered year, and the "o" for odd years.  No way can she remember the card from two years ago.  They are, however, getting a bit tattered, so I tell her I buy my cards at the vintage store.

My wife has endured more than most wives would tolerate.  Within two months of our wedding, I received a draft notice from Uncle Sam during the height of the Vietnam War.  The biggest argument we have had in 41 years occurred that autumn, as we tried to decide how to play out this dangerous situation.  I wanted to take the military draft, which required two years of service, and she insisted that I enlist for three years in order to get some choice in my military assignment and, hopefully, reduce the chances of going to war as an infantry grunt.  I took her advice and ended up in Korea instead, where she later joined me for a rich experience.  Within 12 years of getting married, we lived in Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Oklahoma, New York, and Korea, thanks to the U.S. Army and the pursuit of my education.  A few years later, we added Costa Rica to the list.

We rented a small house in Korea (our daughter was a baby then), which would fit into the kitchen/dining room area of our current house.  It had no usable bathroom inside or out, and the only running water was a cold water spigot in the gated yard.  We relieved ourselves into a plastic pail, which our Korean mama-san emptied each day outside.  We went to bed every night hoping that the rats fighting overhead would not fall through the paper ceiling into our daughter's crib.  But we learned a lot about life, made many friends, and came away stronger than we went in.  Our daughter's first word was "sei", the Korean word for bird.  My friend and roommate from college was not so lucky, and lost his life in Vietnam after having seen his newborn daughter only once. 

After completing my Ph.D. years later, I accepted my first faculty job at Oklahoma State University.  We arrived there with two kids, an English Setter, and a cat, and had no place to live.  A friend at the university found an unoccupied trailer at the edge of campus for us to use until we found a better place.  It had not been lived in for a couple years, so it was full of dust and cobwebs and spiders about half the size of your fist.  It sat right out in the sun (it was August), and it had no air-conditioning.  That night, we went to bed and lay there with sweat rolling down our faces and I said: "Honey, we have arrived."  We laughed so hard we almost got sick.  But it was then that I realized that the following American cliche may not be as true as we are led to believe: "if you work hard, and you're honest, and you get a good education, then life will be full of tangible rewards".  It is to someone's benefit for us to believe and follow that advice, but to whose benefit exactly?

In the mid-1980s, I got my first sabbatic leave from Cornell.  We decided to spend that year in Costa Rica, so I could learn more about tropical biology.  We rented a farm in Monteverde, a remote village in the Tilaran Mountains.  Because my wife had to quit her job to go, and I had to go on half-salary, we were broke the entire year we were there.  Finding food for a family of five was a real challenge because the local pulperia only got fresh vegetables once a week, which were totally gone two hours after the doors opened that morning.  The nearest town was Santa Elena, about three miles away, but there wasn't a great selection of edibles there and we had no car.  We finally bought a horse for transportation, and that changed the mobility equation quite a bit.  Robin dealt with traumatic injuries for each of our three children that year (broken bones, horse accidents, serious infections) and kept us fed, in a house that we later learned was called The Scorpion House by the locals.  Robin was the only one stung by one of our little friends.  We returned to the U.S. after that life-changing year with $50 to our name and all our credit cards cancelled, so we drove straight through from Florida back to New York, where we lived in our Coleman camping trailer for a month until the lease ran out for the family that was renting our home.

Robin has worked every year of the 41 except for three, and always worked to within 24 hours of giving birth to each of our three children.  She invariably got a job as a nurse within a day or two in every place we lived, then sold real estate, then worked as a marketing director at a life-care facility, and now works from home as a medical abstractor.  Like most women who are mothers, she is the lioness that fiercely protects her cubs, and she has been steadfastly supportive of my goals.  She has won every major argument we have ever had about how to proceed with aspects of our lives and, in hindsight, she was right every time.

When young people ask us what is the secret of staying happily married for so long, we honestly don't know what to say.  I suppose that loving and respecting your mate as much or more than you love and respect yourself, if that is biologically possible, is a key ingredient.  In a previous post, I mentioned that my wife and I have almost nothing in common, but when it comes to the big issues (e.g., kids, politics, religion), we are on the exact same page.  And then comes humor and laughter.  As we did in that sweltering trailer in Oklahoma 30 years ago, we have laughed ourselves to sleep over some event of the day literally thousands of times.  I believe a sense of humor is absolutely essential to making it through this life.

And so now, I will give my wife a kiss on the forehead while I distract her a bit, and collect her anniversary card with the little "o" on it for use in 2011.  Then, Robin, her sister, and I will travel to the Turning Stone Casino for a day of entertainment, and to make our financial fortune.  Now that is a laughing matter.