SO WHAT DID I LEARN TODAY?

Blog number 404 **** 06 August, 2010

Today was a bit enlightening for me. Epiphanies abounded, as they say.

One of my sons told me many months ago that he didn't read my Blog entries that were quotes from other people's writings - usually excerpts from books. My wife insinuated several times that she didn't like them either, but who pays attention to what a wife says, right? This son of mine is not a reader, so I thought it was just him, but today my other son announces that he doesn't like my quotes either, and this son is a rabid reader. So that's not it.

I like quotes from other writers if they are informative, humorous or remarkable, so I thought everyone did. Evidently I was mistaken.

And then just a few minutes ago I go outside and I see a tarantula wasp searching for prey. I run in and tell my wife and she says she doesn't know what those are. I said, "Remember 'The Living Desert' movie we saw years ago?" and she says she doesn't remember anything about that because she's not interested in that kind of stuff. All these many years I thought we both loved that movie, but evidently I was again mistaken.

Several years ago on my first visit to Arizona from California, I noticed a proliferation of black birds with a wedged tail and a shrill whistle. Their wedged tail, they used kind of like a rudder at times, twisting and turning it as they manuvered past branches and light posts.

I asked my son, who had lived in an Arizonian city for many years, what they were and he said he didn't know. Thought they were crows. I started asking strangers on the street what they were, and every time they would say, "I don't know. Crows?" Turns out they were Grackles. I found that out by looking in a book of Arizona birds.

Not one of the many people I asked ever knew what kind of birds they were. Evidently they never even noticed their existence.

My next door neighbor had mourning doves nesting in her eaves, which I thought wonderful, so I told her and the nest disappeared. She told me later that they tore down the nest because she and her husband thought they were pigeons. Morning doves don't look anything like pigeons except they are both birds and can fly.

My epiphany seems to be that not many others live anywhere near the same reality that I do, and that really surprises me.