Trip To A Pond

Today was nice: 52° F and sunny, so I suggested to my neighbor Sally that we drive to a pond and take pictures of the waterfowl. Sally loves photographing birds and I thought maybe I’d get a few photos for my blog. So we grabbed our cameras and off we went.

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Male mallard

Female mallard

Here come the geese.

Soon I had them eating bread from my hand.

This gray goose was very curious about my camera. Maybe he thought it was food.

They DO have teeth.

The Hawk, Death, and Other Thoughts

It snowed last night in central Virginia. It snowed in darkness. The snow was visible in the headlight beams of cars passing by my house. Today the sun is shining brightly and warmly, and last night’s snow is rapidly disappearing: first from the streets, then from the rooftops of houses, and lastly from the yards of those houses.

The morning passed, the afternoon arrived, and I decided to go for a walk. Everyone was snug in their homes. Other than an occasional, automobile passerby, I was the only person on the street. As I walked down Richmond Avenue, a hawk sailed silently over me at rooftop level. With wings spread wide and steady, it floated gracefully a mere fifteen feet from me. If I had had a stone in my hand I could’ve given that hawk a scare. Not that I would throw a stone at a hawk; at least not at my age. I’d much rather photograph it. But when I was a boy, I might have decided to give that hawk a fright and sail a stone past it.

There is something about walking through my neighborhood, seeing old houses and ancient trees, that puts my life into a kind of perspective, a kind of continuity. It connects me with ancestors I never knew, with grandparents who died a lifetime ago, with my father who died eighteen years ago, and with my mother who died nine years ago. Walking alone on a cold winter day or an early spring day puts me in touch with my mortality like nothing else. I feel death ahead of me, distance unknown. I know it’s there and I know its getting closer. Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda’s Yaqui Indian brujo, said that death is always over our left shoulder watching us. I heard someone say that death is our friend. He meant that when our situation becomes unbearable and no one can help us, death will always be our final rescuer.

I don’t think about death in a morbid way; at least, I don’t think I do. But I think too many people live their lives as if they think will never die. We all will, you know, so maybe we should live our lives accordingly. In Mitch Albom’s book Tuesdays With Morrie, Morrie Schwartz says, “Everybody knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.”

On my solitary walks I can remember I’m going to die and I know that death is okay. My life is a blip in time. The universe has existed for billions of years – and I missed all that history. The universe will continue for billions of years – and I will miss all that future. I have the briefest slice of time in which to live. It’s like a blink of the eye. I’m here, then I’m gone – a link between a very long past I never knew and a very distant future I’ll never know; a single page in the middle of an impossibly long book.

The adult mayfly lives from 30 minutes to one day, depending on the species. Humans live only a tad longer. It might serve you well to live your life as if one day it will end. “How might I do that?”, you ask. The answer is simple. Live every moment fully. Appreciate every sunset, every walk around the block, every conversation with a friend. Don’t live in the past. Don’t live in the future. Be here now.

Bird on a Bush

Last night I received a phone call from a professor at a university in southern California. His department had purchased a used robot and needed help understanding what they had. The robot had been manufactured by a company I once worked for but had left at the turn of the millenium. The professor had googled the robot’s name and his search returned my name and phone number. So much for anonymity in a world of seven billion people. Google knows everything, obviously. How do they do that?

This bird sits outside my window and spies on me. I wonder if it works for Google. Perhaps it’s reporting back to its evil masters, “Yes, I see him now … he’s standing at the window pointing a camera at me.”

Nothing would surprise me.

A bird in the hand is worth…

This next photo was taken on a different day. Same bird? It’s trying to act nonchalant, as if to say, “I’m not spying on anybody – especially not you.” But remember, birds have been tweeting for thousands of years – long before humans learned how to tweet.

Bird on a Wire

Incidentally, Bird on a Wire is the name of a 1990 movie starring Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn. Not to be confused with Bird on the Wire, a Leonard Cohen song recorded in 1968 and included on his second album, Songs from a Room.

Oh. Stream of consciousness. It happens.

Doubling Time and the Debt

The U.S. national debt required over 200 years, from 1776 to 1980, to approach $1 trillion dollars. It took 25 years, from 1950 to 1975, to double the national debt, and during that time the U.S. fought two wars, in Korea and Vietnam, while paying down much of its debt from World War 2 and giving aid to European economies.

But beginning in the mid-1970s, something changed. In seven years, from 1973 to 1980, the debt doubled. It doubled again in the six years from 1980 to 1986. And it doubled again in the next six years from 1986 to 1992.

During the Clinton years, the debt’s rate of growth slowed. Then in eight years, from 2001 to 2009, the debt doubled once more. According to the US Debt Clock, at current spending rates the debt will reach $24 trillion in 2016. If that happens, the debt will have doubled during the eight years of Obama’s presidency. So, since 1973 the doubling time of the debt has been fairly steady at 6 to 8 years. A doubling time of 8 years corresponds to an annual growth rate of 12%, while 6 years corresponds to 15%.

U.S. Government public debt 1940 – 2011

For comparison, here (below) is a chart showing exponential growth.
Exponential growth

There’s a little story that illustrates the power (and danger) of exponential growth. It goes like this:

There is a lily pond. On day 1 there is one lily pad in the pond. On day 2 there are two lily pads. With each passing day, the lily pads double until after 30 days the entire pond is covered with lily pads. How long did it take to cover only half the pond? The answer, of course, is 29 days.

Exponential growth is the fastest path to infinity. Draw your own conclusions.

Social Security

There is a Social Security email making the rounds. Much of it is a rant against perceived government excesses, but here is the relevant part, the part with numbers.

Sunday Thought