Sloth and Manatee

There are some owls who hang around the trees near our house, and on many nights, we can hear them having discussions with one another. One has a deeper voice and the other a higher one, and sometimes they interrupt each other. Other times there’s just one of them, going on about whatever is on their mind. I love that so much.

We’ve also got this gaggle of crows here who really like the acorns and stuff that end up on our roof, and in the afternoons you can hear a whole bunch of them up there, pecking away. It sounds like they are building something with little hammers and nails. I expect to walk out and see that they have put in a rooftop lounge and maybe a hot tub and some condos.

Recently I was driving on the freeway and waaaay up there, overhead, was this wire, and a row of birds sitting up there. And I wondered about them, do they all know each other? Do they notice if one of them does not show up? Or is this more of a casual gathering? Do they miss each other?

And then I thought, in many settings, this sort of questioning quickly leads to somebody Googling, or in lieu of that, saying, “you can Google that” (well okay maybe not Google so much anymore now that it is packed with slop, but you get the idea). There is an answer to your question out there, why don’t you just look it up? How many times have you been watching TV with people and someone asks a question about the cast or something and immediately someone whips out a phone and opens IMDB?

Which can easily miss the whole point of formulating questions in the first place, which is to wonder, and to come up with your own questions yourself, in the order you think of them, in the way you think of them, because you are curious. Maybe you don’t need to impose this question on anyone else, at all. Maybe you’re just thinking to yourself.

And I realized, this is another thing we are losing, the notion of wondering, asking stuff, formulating questions. Big, small, weird, silly, fascinating questions. Out loud or to ourselves. Following a thread of interest that nobody else would come up with. It is what kids do. It can drive us crazy, again because we believe that there has to be an answer, because this is what we are taught.

But making up questions is farting around, as Kurt Vonnegut put it.

So I started with birds, and ended up with farting around, because I was farting around.

Sloth and Manatee Page

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Brainwaves

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Art!

This was our last week of art class before Winter break, this being the Northern Hemisphere and all, so I brought in googly eyes and glue and let the kids have at it. I showed them something I made first:

They proceeded to make all manner of stuff, googly-eyed or not. Someone made a cupcake:

Another kid made her own version of the hello guy, and then tossed off, “Oh, I did an abstract on the other side.”

Which she did. Did I mention this is a first-grader.

Art by kid, eyes added by me:

Print Shop

BunnyFrogCatSnake

Things Of The Week

OK a friend shared this with me for purposes of calming oneself in the face of troubling thoughts and hey, it actually works!

Here is this Wet Clap page for whenever you need it. Only you will know when that is.

And here is a big and growing collection of archived cassette tapes, one of the great music and art compilation mediums ever

Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.

May you find something to put googly eyes on, may you go for a bike ride amongst the fish, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy