Life at DrTom's

This Week in Substitute Teaching 1/16/23

2023-04-30T16:29:00.009-04:00

In a 6th grade English class this week the teacher showed a slide of two men. She wanted the students to tell her what they observed in the photo. One boy said that one man was wearing "old man shoes". I had to say something given that I was older than any six of these kids put together. So I yelled out "I take exception to that." And, at about that time I lifted my leg to show the entire class the shoes I was wearing that day. As they all gazed at the end of my leg, the entire class laughed. Pointedly, the boy responded with something like "I rest my case."

Trouble on Concourse B

2023-04-29T07:33:00.006-04:00

On our way to our gate in the Denver International Airport on Tuesday, Robin and I created a bit of a mess. As my friends all know, I suffer from peripheral neuropathy, so I trip over my feet easily, and my sense of balance is all but gone. So, to be safe from falling, we took the “people mover” at the airport. But I made the mistake of putting my luggage in front of me instead of behind me and when we got to the end of the mover, you know, where you gracefully step off the damn thing, my suitcase stopped abruptly with part of it still on the mover, but I kept moving. I tripped on the luggage and immediately fell to the floor. Robin was behind me, and so she tripped over me, and she fell also, which resulted in a huge pile of two senior citizens, two suitcases, a backpack, and another carry-on in a jumbled pile on the floor of Concourse B.

Within two seconds we were surrounded by a dozen people who helped us to recover our composure.  One young woman wrapped her arms around my middle, face to face, and hoisted me to my feet in what was the most intimate embrace I have had from a woman other than my wife since 1965.  At the same time, another woman put her finger through the belt loop at the back of my pants and lifted.  At that point I remember feeling like a dead deer being scooped off the highway to reduce interference with oncoming traffic. One man helped Robin get up.  The kindness and caring of all these bystanders were truly amazing.

Neither of us was hurt seriously, but the entire incident was incredibly embarrassing.  So, I ripped off my NK95 mask and snapped loudly “If you enjoyed that, please come to our Friday afternoon performance.  You won’t believe what we can do on that other “people mover” to your left.”  Everyone laughed, and I am sure that if I had placed a large hat on the floor at my feet, it would have been filled with dollar bills.

When we finally got to a seat at our gate, I was still upset with the poor agility I now possess.  I was angry about the state of my legs and feet and tibial nerve and aging.  I muttered to Robin that I am never traveling again, which made her incredibly frustrated, and we argued.  But then I broke the tension by saying “I should have gotten the number of that young woman who hugged me.”  

Within a few hours we were home again.  I sat brooding on our deck with a scotch and a cigar that evening, and I contemplated whether I should ever leave my home in the woods again.

I lost a friend today

2018-03-07T06:19:00.000-05:00

His name was Zeus, and he was a black lab. He turned 15 on Valentine’s Day. In his last year, he suffered a degenerative hip, atrophied muscles of his hindquarters, a tumor on his left flank the size of a softball, and probably cancer. He was deaf and nearly blind. If he laid down on a hardwood or linoleum floor, we had to lift him so he could regain his footing. My heart broke every time I watched the old guy hobble to his food or water bowls, and I winced each time he moaned or cried. So it was time to end it, and today was that day.

With help from my son, we lifted him into the back of the car, and I drove to the vets alone. My wife offered to come, but I knew she really couldn’t bear it, and it would be better for me if I didn’t have to watch her suffer on the trip home. I learned long ago that I prefer to grieve alone, although when I returned home, my wife and I had our sorrowful moments over Zeus.

Soon after Zeus and I entered the patient room, a tech came in with paper work and said cheerily: “So, this is Stormy?” I told her no, this is Zeus. “Oh. Sorry”. Geesh lady, let’s not put Stormy down and then return to clip Zeus’s nails. After the vet administered the drug, he was gone in 10 seconds. He was lying on the floor and he put his head slowly down as the drug coursed through his body, and he then looked exactly like he did when he was sleeping on the floor at home. Quiet, peaceful, uneventful. They left me alone with him for a few minutes while I said my feeble goodbye to a dog who couldn’t even hear me when he was alive. But I had to say something. I guess we all do.

I have thought a lot about dogs over the past few years. To be honest, most of the time I secretly object to the entire phenomenon of dogs and cats as pets (see my earlier blog about cats as killers of wildlife). The way most people pamper their pets actually disgusts me. In decades past, when I was a child, dogs were rarely kept in their owners’ houses; they were considered too dirty. We kept them in dog houses outside. Remember those? For better or worse, we have come a long way. And then there is this. In 2016, Americans spent $62 billion on these family pets! $62 billion to purchase them, and for food, toys, collars, leashes, grooming, flea and tick medicine, occasional kenneling and, of course, the never-ending vet bills. As I write this, teachers in West Virginia are on strike for higher pay and better benefits, but they are meeting voluntarily every day to pack lunches for their poor, hungry students who are now missing that essential meal because their school is closed. What a pathetic state of affairs. No civilized country should be able to report such a fact. So I think of what $62 billion could do to address both of those problems, and I lament. But, of course, money is never fungible in that way.

We all love our pets, and I loved Zeus. On the other hand, I was often impatient with him and angry when he relieved himself in the house, or woke us up in the middle of the night, or had to be let out AGAIN, or wouldn’t come when I called to him, or when I tripped over him lying on the floor when I made that important first cup of morning Joe, or when my wife and I decided not to travel because of “the dog”. And the hair. Blackish hair—everywhere, all the time.

But now, I already miss hearing his toe nails clicking down the hallway, the feel of his velvet ears, and the look of those eyes, which were huge for a lab, when he tried to make sense of my human gibberish. One minute I loved him, and the next minute his existence irritated me. What a confounded and complicated set of emotions come with pet territory. I have concluded that I love dogs, but dislike being a dog owner.

Will I ever get another dog? No. I’ve had dogs since I was about five years old, probably eight or nine. I’ve done my time. I don’t want another dog for all the reasons of inconvenience and financial costs that I’ve mentioned already. But the main reason I will never have another dog is that I can not bear to lose a friend after they have gotten into your heart and become a part of your soul. Why invite that kind of sadness voluntarily into our lives when there is sadness in abundance already? I simply can’t do it again.

Academic editing for those whose first language is NOT English (or, for that matter, for anyone else)

2016-12-30T07:41:00.001-05:00

Dear International Students, Faculty, and Scholars:

I edit documents for students, faculty, and scholars whose first language is not English. My goal is to make your document read like it was written by a native English speaker. Most of my clients have been from China, Taiwan, Korea, India, and Latin America, but I will work on documents for clients of any nationality. I edit statements you write to apply for grad school and for faculty positions, papers you intend to submit for publication to an English journal, business reports, letters, white papers, dissertation chapters, job applications, statements of purpose, and research proposals.

I edit documents in all fields. I have edited papers in engineering, nanofabrication, statistics, plant pathology, city and regional planning, food science, history, plant genetics, biotechnology, plant breeding, wildlife biology, biomedicine, near eastern studies, theatre arts, psychology, and more. Clients simply send me their document (tag1@cornell.edu) as an email attachment, I edit it in MS Word using Track Changes, and I return the document, usually within 48 hours.

Most documents take less than three hours of editing to complete, unless they are unusually long. My clients pay me by sending me a check or depositing money in my PayPal account, which is very simple to do. Also, if you want to send me your document, I can provide an estimate of how much it will cost and how long it should take me to complete the job. As I edit, I also suggest ways to improve your writing in English generally. If desired, I can provide references from recent clients.

I am currently Professor Emeritus from Cornell University. I have published dozens of papers in refereed journals over the past 40 years, and I served as Associate Editor for the journal Ecological Applications for three years. I taught university courses for 30 years, and I conducted ecological research throughout the U.S. and in Costa Rica. I lived in Korea and Costa Rica for one year each and, recently, I have been visiting Taiwan to teach short courses on conservation biology at National Taiwan University.

All correspondence between the author and me, including the contents of any document, is kept strictly confidential. So if you think this is valuable, please pass the word along.

My charges for this service: individuals-$50 per hour; institutions-$75 per hour. When I return your document, I inform you how much the bill is and I can provide an invoice if desirable. I also have an express service. For $75 per hour, I will guarantee that I return your document within 24 hours of receiving it.

2016-12-21T17:09:00.002-05:00

Occasional Holiday Letter #6 from DrTom and Robin for 2017!

Friends, enemies, even Republicans:

You will have to excuse this group letter, but it is the only way to go. If I were to send each of my FB friends a letter in the mail, it would cost about $650 in postage, and no holiday letter is worth that much. And I hate licking stamps, and I don’t have most of your addresses, and my postman would start spitting in our mailbox. Actually, I think he does that already, because the mailbox door is difficult to open and I refuse to replace it. I can’t think of any other way that the inside of that box could get so moist and putrid.

Most of us are utterly bored when we get one of those family-oriented letters. So let’s dispense with that part. Our kids are fine, our grandkids are even finer, we are fine, the chickens are fine, but our black lab, Zeus, is old and ailing. There, you are all caught up.

So, what a year, huh? You just knew that I wouldn’t be able to refrain from mentioning THAT man. But one interesting thing has evolved from the existence of this bizarre person. I now have a new item on my “bucket list”. I hope, somehow, to be included in one of the Donalds’ middle-of-the-night tweets about how much he hates me, and how I am going down, and how old and decrepit I look, and how my wife will never want to have sex with me again. I’m not yet sure how to arouse enough ire in him for me to make his tweet list, but I’m working on it. One idea is this: he can’t seem to get any musician to perform at his inauguration ball; they all refuse. So, eventually, my name will come up as one who plays a mean conga drum. And when he asks me to perform on that important day (and you know where this is going), I will haughtily refuse, which will piss him off to no end, and he will tweet about it at 3am that night while sitting on the toilet. Bucket list—check!

But the good news this week was the annual letter that Robin and I received from the Social Security Administration that tells us how much of a raise we will receive beginning in January. Raises for American recipients will be 0.3% in 2017. That’s right----3/10%, or about 1/3 of a percent raise. In my case, that amounts to an increase of $4.50 per month, about the cost of a LARGE bottle of ketchup. So look out homemade french fries in 2017, cause I am going to slather you in that red stuff like you have never been slathered before. And every time I do that, I will remember to thank the SS system for this dietary enhancement. Robin and I have been paying happily into the social security system for 53 years, and we are still paying into it. This raise is more than we deserve, and I sincerely hope that the fiscal conservatives in Congress will keep a tight rein on these increases; we must not let these raises get out of hand. A raise of 0.2% would have been sufficient, more than enough for a SMALL bottle of ketchup.

And what about this coming year? I’m told that we should all be full of hope, and good cheer, and optimism. After all, that is what humans do. We always hope for something more, for a better future, a brighter tomorrow. Maybe that brighter tomorrow is not going to happen in the location where we reside now. So these past few weeks, I have been researching what life would be like as a retiree living, at least part of the year, in Italy, Spain, Uruguay, and Chile (look out Silvas of Valparaiso). Costa Rica is always on the table, but we have been there, done that. It all sounds doable and encouraging. Good wine, good food, Cuban cigars, the music we like, mountains (except Uruguay), coasts, culture, interesting history, and that latino zest for life. Let’s at least stick a toe in the water. The worst that could happen is that the toe gets bitten off, but that leaves nine (see how this optimism thing works?). And with the recent social security increase, finances shouldn’t be a problem at all.

By the way, a couple of months ago I eliminated about 500 FB friends. These were people who I didn’t know at all, or they seemed to have no presence on FB any longer, or they were too right-wing for me to bear. Most of these were people I befriended years ago when I was truly a Facebook slut. Therefore, those of you who remain can consider yourselves the cream of the crop. Congratulations. Not sure how many deleted me for being obnoxious, too opinionated, or too far left, but it all works out.

Anyhow, Happy Holidays and have a great 2017. No need to send gifts to Robin and me this year (unless you really, really want to). Your clever comments on FB are all we need. And you old people, enjoy that extra ketchup!

Tom, Robin, and Zeus
December 2016

A Tale of Two Cities and of two places in time

2016-03-04T19:02:00.004-05:00

I had three excellent English teachers in high school in the early 1960s, but Mr. Robinson, during my senior year, was my favorite. He was a middle-aged man with whitish hair, bespectacled, soft-spoken, and the kind of guy who exuded mild manners with every word. He had a gentle smile that he sported often, never a belly laugh, and an acceptable sense of humor. He always wore a sport jacket; I remember it as gray or brown tweed. He was the personification of what we all envision when we think of a college English professor at an Ivy League school.

That year in English, we mostly read great books and practiced our writing skills. Unlike his usual outward demeanor, Mr. Robinson was a ruthless editor, which we thought was somewhat unfair at the time. But he knew that freshman English in college was not a cake walk in those days, and that most of us would be facing that trial in only a few months. For example, I was bound for Ohio State that fall, and a high percentage of entering students got Ds or Fs in freshmen English on a regular basis; about a third of OSU frosh flunked out of school during their first year. So we wrote, and Mr. Robinson edited, and we rewrote, and he re-edited, and slowly but surely most of us got better and better at composing a readable, logical piece.

That fall semester in college, I found out exactly what Mr. Robinson had been trying to get us to understand. No matter how hard I tried, it was nearly impossible to get higher than a C on an English composition. Those who had not had Mr. Robinson seemed to do even worse. But eventually, my scores, and presumably my writing skills, improved and I survived that academic year more or less unscathed, in no small way due to my mentor’s efforts the year before.

Perhaps the most vivid academic memory of that class was reading and discussing Dickens’ classic A Tale of Two Cities. How can anyone who has ever read that book not recall at least parts of the first and last sentences of that wonderful story. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times……..” and “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done…..” Oh, to be able to write a book, or an essay, or even a paragraph of prose with elements that have resounded through the ages like that. Those words are certainly famous and timeless in their own right, and millions of people around the world are familiar with them. But would they have left their indelible imprint on my soul if it had not been for Mr. Robinson’s ability to bring out the richness of their import? That is what a great teacher can do, and it is a wonderful thing.

I have not reread that classic since I studied it in high school all those years ago. But from time to time I think about that story, its characters and the beautiful expression of their powerful emotions through Dicken’s talented hand. And then today, while I was a substitute teacher in a high school class, I realized that a copy of that gem was sitting on the desk at which I was sitting. I stared at it for a long moment, not quite sure what I should do. But I picked it up, and I read that incredible first sentence (which was much longer than I remembered). And then I turned to the final page with all its sadness and I read Dickens’ last sentence. The memories of sitting in my high school English class only a few seats from Mr. Robinson’s desk, and waiting with anticipation for his clever way of getting us to dig for the depth of meaning that cemented that book forever in my mind, poured over me.

And I sat there, looking out over this class of 20 or so students, and I felt just like I remember Mr. Robinson looking. We have all experienced something like that. I have white hair, I’m sitting at a desk staring pensively at all those young minds with a curious smile on my face, and I’m feeling how important it is to open the minds of those teenagers, to make them feel something, to make them remember something beautiful about the great literature of the past. For that fleeting moment, I WAS Mr. Robinson.

I have often wondered whatever happened to Mr. Robinson, but I’m sure he passed a long time ago. After all, he was my teacher more than 50 years ago. A Tale of Two Cities was published in 1859 (the same year that Darwin published Origin of Species), and it was about 100 hundred years old when I first read it. Another half century has passed, and students are still asked to read it. How incredible! Another half century, and I’m hoping there are still Mr. Robinsons out there. Thousands of them, tens of thousands of them, because the world needs them—every last one.

Probabilities and the perception of danger

2015-12-10T09:17:00.002-05:00

There is now a petition in Parliament to prevent Donald Trump from entering the UK because of his hate-speeches about Muslims (UK debates a ban on Trump), and Canada and Australia are now routinely warning their citizens about traveling in the U.S. because of the danger due to the gun culture here . This is like the warning to U.S. citizens not to travel to Yemen or Libya, or other such places, because of the danger of violent crimes against Americans. So should we be worried about dangerous Muslims in the U.S. or dangerous Americans in general? While Trump rails against Muslims and their potential danger to Americans, we have experienced slightly more than one mass shooting (defined as a killing of 4 or more people in a single incident) per day in 2015 (Mass shootings). Of more than 300 such shootings this year, only 1-2 were perpetrated by people who were foreign-born; the rest were done by wacky Americans with guns. In addition, another 30,000 people were killed by shootings in events that do not qualify as a mass-shooting. Of course, the Republican politicians’ uncreative solution to this problem is for all of us to carry more guns. How absurd!

Perception is nearly everything, when one has to triage what is safe and what is dangerous. In my case, I fear Americans with guns the most, with foreign-born terrorists following at a very distant third. I can’t even list number two, for fear of alienating some friends and relatives. I’m guessing that many people would put my number 3 as their number 1. But the data do not support that ranking. I almost never worry about foreign terrorism, because it is very rare in the U.S. But every time I walk into a 7-11 or a public school, I think consciously about some deranged guy who bears a grudge or has some kind of mental derangement, and I scan the area for suspicious people, escape routes, doors, and windows. Even though I know that the probability that I will be harmed violently is still exceedingly small, it is now on my mind much of the time. And this is no way to live.

The irony is that of the dozen or so countries where I have spent significant time in the past decade, the U.S. is the only place where I am somewhat preoccupied with the perception of possible violence. The only other place that matched this feeling was Nairobi, Kenya, although my travels through the rest of Kenya did not elicit this feeling. And in Uganda, I spent a week traveling from the Kenyan border on the east to the Rwandan border on the west, followed by a couple of days in Kampala the capitol. On that trip, I had total peace of mind about my safety, even though I was the only white guy for tens of miles in any direction during most of that week. For me, the main reason for this feeling of safety in foreign countries and my feeling of non-safety in my own country is the incredible difference in the availability of weapons. The number of small firearms in the U.S. now numbers more than 300,000,000, which represents more privately-owned small handguns per capita by far than any country in the world (Number of guns per capita). These numbers do not include rifles and shotguns, only handguns.

So what to do? I’m really not sure how to solve this problem. But let’s at least start by trying to match our perception of danger with the actual probabilities. The chances of being shot by a native- born American with a gun is on the order of 10,000 times greater than being hurt by a foreign-born terrorist, using the numbers cited above in the referenced article. The chances of being killed by someone who is driving while texting is probably even greater than that, but this form of mayhem never even makes it to the front page. My conclusion is that all this hype about dangerous immigrants and Muslim terrorists is overplayed, given the actual facts, but it resonates with the xenophobia that is so curiously common in the U.S.

If I can’t write like Steinbeck, why bother?

2015-03-15T14:11:00.004-04:00

For the past couple of years, I have been reading some of the classic novels of the 20th century. Did you know that you can go online and find what the literary experts in this country think were the best works of fiction published in the 1900s by any author in the world, actually the top 223. My goal is to read them all, but I still have about 200 to go. It’s like a never-ending bucket list of words and sentences, and ideas, and philosophy, and turns of phrases and a sprinkling of sex and violence that every educated man should experience. When I initially skimmed the list that I so dutifully printed out, I noticed that Ernest Hemingway (5) and John Steinbeck (4) had several volumes that made the list, along with many authors of whom I had never heard. Of course, everyone has some familiarity with these two American giants of the literary world and, perhaps, most of us have read at least one of their novels, probably in high school. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea or Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men come to mind.

So with a few detours along the way, I dug into the works of Ernest Hemingway. For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa. Not all of these novels made the list, but once I began following the spoor of the great Ernest, I continued on a bit farther. And I enjoyed every minute of each of those reads.

Hemingway is famous for his style of writing—short, terse, no-nonsense sentences. His are stories of war and bull fighting and big game hunting, and the ever-present personal turmoil, but there is often plentiful drinking by the main protagonist, apparently based on prodigious time engaged in similar pursuits by the author himself. The drinking in Death in the Afternoon was so prolific and colorful that I found myself wanting bourbon right after breakfast. He made drinking seem as essential as brushing my teeth, and it sounded like fun, with all that camaraderie with interesting characters in exotic bars and hotels around the world. It all blended liquidly with my fond memories of carousing with pals in the army in Korea, of drinking tequila in some cantina with locals in Costa Rica, of knocking down beer with my grad school colleagues at Squirrels in Corvallis. So, I had hit pay dirt early in my reading crusade of the top 223, and the stories themselves were pretty good as well.

Enter Steinbeck. Not Hemingway at all. Longer, more involved sentences with commas. Sometimes even a semi-colon. And thoughtful, about poor people, sad or happy landscapes, how loneliness actually feels, what it must be like to be truly hungry, or truly angry, or pleasantly surprised. Wonderfully insightful descriptions. The kind of writing where I read a line or two, and then have the need to simply stare out of my den window into the forest so that I can think and digest what I just read, and how it relates to my life and decades-old memories of family, and friends, and deep feelings. That is what won me over. I want a writer who makes me spend almost as much time thinking about what I read as the actual time spent reading. I’ve never encountered an author who does that better than Steinbeck. He makes me laugh (Tortilla Flat), and cry (The Grapes of Wrath), and ponder the meaning of life (Cannery Row), and wonder why people are the way they are (The Pearl). I absolutely love every sentence of his as I read it. There never seems to be a throw-away line-never. Every word and combination of words means something, and carries weight. What a gift. I am green with envy. Much better than Hemingway!

But I’m also somewhat dismayed, because Steinbeck was so wonderful, so much better than any other writer, that I now have little desire to read anyone else. It would be a disappointment, almost a waste of time. As for writing anything else myself, I am tempted to forget about it entirely. If one cannot be as good as the best, then why try?

Let me explain something about my personality. I suppose it is a fault, but an interesting, quirky idiosyncrasy. I used to be a competitive tennis player. I played tennis in high school and varsity tennis at a major university. My senior year in college, I was the Number 1 player on the team for both singles and doubles. I was pretty good, but it is all relative. I was nowhere near the best or even 100th best, and I always knew this. I would never get to play in a major tournament, let alone win one. But I kept trying to improve, to get better, and to move up the pack. I loved the sport. I was hopeful. However, if someone had had perfect vision of the future at that time, and they told me that it was a certainty that I would never be the best, I would have quit the game on the spot. I actually knew that I would not, could not, ever be the best, but the 1 in a million chance that I might become the best someday is what kept me going.

And that is the way I now feel about writing. I am now wise enough to know that I will never be as good a writer as Steinbeck. It is impossible. It ain’t gonna happen. A few years ago, I outlined a book I had thought about writing for a long time, but I would be disappointed if I ever completed the damn thing, because I would constantly be comparing the result with that of the master. That would be frustrating and pitiful. It would leave me with a hollow gut. So why waste my time? After all, there is gardening to do, and bourbon to drink, and cigars to smoke. Those activities almost never disappoint me, because I am good at those things. Why spend time in an activity where you are mediocre compared with the best, when you can spend that time doing a thing to which you are well suited?

And think how efficient the entire process of publication and book hawking would become if every author adopted my “fault”. Certainly, less than 1% of the books that are published these days are worth reading. So I would say to these thousands of aspiring authors, “Read Steinbeck. Then, forget about writing. Don’t embarrass yourselves. Save trees and time. Take up bowling. Streamline your life with wise choices and increase your energy efficiency.” I doubt that anyone will take my advice, because they think there is that 1 in a million chance that they might be as good as Steinbeck. But I have seen the other side, and I now have perfect vision of the future in this respect, and I’m telling you in no uncertain terms that you will never be that good.

Just another little irritating thing

2013-11-24T09:56:00.000-05:00

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.)

The surgery that almost wasn’t

2013-04-21T10:57:00.000-04:00

About 10 days ago I was scheduled for minor surgery that involved opening up my abdomen. I had never had this kind of invasive procedure done to me before, so I was rightfully apprehensive. My surgeon, who I will call Dr. B, was a man I had met only once, when I had my diagnosis in his office the week before. He was a young, good-looking guy with a pleasant personality and a sense of humor. His fingernails were of normal length, indicating that he was not a nervous nail-biter. He didn’t shift his weight from side to side as he talked, and he looked me straight in the eyes when he explained what was wrong with me and how he could fix it. And, he didn’t have that habit of raising his intonation at the end of every sentence making it sound like a question (“The infection rate in such a procedure is about 2%?) So far, so good. He passed the DrTom’s Do I Trust This Guy To Open Me Up interview. We scheduled the surgery.

On the day in question, Management and I went to the hospital where I was admitted, and then quickly led to the prep room. I undressed completely, put on the blue paper gown they provided, and settled onto the stretcher. The nurse, who was obviously trying to make me feel calm with her almost-too-jovial demeanor, asked me many questions about allergies, medicines taken, and medical history. She took my vital signs and threaded an IV line into the back of my hand, which promptly spurted blood all over that side of my bed. I could tell she was not that experienced in all this, so I found myself trying to reassure her that she did a fine job of inserting the IV, I didn’t feel a thing, isn’t it great that I have large veins, etc. In general, I overcompensated by appearing passive and bored with what she was doing, as if to indicate that I had abdominal surgery two or three times a day. It is curious how we sometimes pretend to ignore potential danger in the hope that by not noticing the reality of the situation, that very reality will change for the better.

Within 30 minutes, I was all set to go. I had prepared myself psychologically as best I could. After all, I had lived a pretty happy life for 66 years, and if this was going to be the end of it all, I hadn’t done so badly. As I ran through my list of rationalizations for a worst-case scenario, I realized the time was passing and I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable on the gurney. I began counting the drops of saline plopping into the line leading to my hand. I obsessed about the coffee I was not allowed to have that morning. I began dreading the 3-week recovery period after surgery when I was supposed to “take it easy”.

Three hours later, the head nurse of the unit and her assistant flung back the curtain to my cubicle, and entered my bedside space. Dr. B has been detained by the surgery scheduled just before mine. He was already two hours late in finishing, and he could be another 2-3 hours. There had been an unexpected complication. Do I wish to wait it out, with no guarantee he would ever get to me that day, or reschedule for another day? Management and I discussed it a bit. Dr. B might be tired after his first surgery, and then he works on me. And I’m not going to go an entire day without coffee. And I just couldn’t count saline drops any longer. Nope. We will reschedule for the following week.

During that evening’s Happy Hour, Management and I discussed the day’s events and the pros and cons of our decision. One observation we made was that people generally spend more time doing some due diligence on the attorney they choose or their auto mechanic than they do the physician who will be administering their health care. In my case, I needed some surgery, so my personal physician referred me to Dr. B, whom I had never met or heard of. I accepted the recommendation unquestioningly. Management, who was an E.R. nurse for years and then a real estate agent, always pointed out to me how people were much more sensitive about their money than their health care. They readily gave up their body to perfect strangers for repair in the E.R., but always knew better than their real estate agent about all matters financial associated with the sale or purchase of a house. They got angry about the latter, but almost never uttered a thought on the former. Do what you must with my body, but never impugn my checkbook!

A week later I returned to the hospital and repeated the entire procedure again. This time, Dr. B appeared on time, ready for action. He had now had another week of practice in the operating room since we almost met, and that couldn't hurt. And I had now lived 66 years plus another week, so what the heck. As the anesthesiologist pushed my gurney through the hallways with Versed (that most wonderful drug of colonoscopy fame) now coursing through my veins, I wondered if I could remain cognizant until I reached the O.R. I wanted to size-up Dr. B one last time. But I could not remain alert and, therefore, I did not get to conduct a final appraisal of that somewhat good-looking man with a nice sense of humor who was standing there with a scalpel in his hand. As the O.R. nurse had told me earlier, "Let's rock 'n' roll".

The 7-Elevens in Taiwan are a necessity - not just a convenience

2012-08-31T06:46:00.003-04:00

(The 7-Eleven that I used nearly eveyday in Taipei)

My wife and I recently spent a month in Taiwan. I gave some lectures at the University and helped to co-teach a course titled Biodiversity, Agriculture and Culture of Taiwan. We had never been to Taiwan before, so we were not completely sure what to expect about finding the basic necessities of life: coffee, beer, Twizzlers. Within hours of arriving, we were told not to worry about any of this — just go to any 7-Eleven convenience store.

We found the 7-Eleven nearest our hotel room, and that was not difficult. With nearly 5,000 stores in this small country, we came to realize that in the capital, Taipei, there must be a 7-Eleven every couple of blocks. In fact, several times we saw 7-Elevens on opposite corners of the same intersection. That’s right, two stores immediately across the street from one another. Was my mind deceiving me, was I seeing double, had I entered some parallel universe without knowing it? Could the coffee be better in one of the stores than in the other? Were Twizzlers the same price in each? Too many stores, not enough time!

Every morning, I literally skipped to OUR 7-Eleven, bought two American-style coffees (which I learned to order in Mandarin), a couple of hard-boiled eggs that were prepared in a bath of salty tea water (delicious) and, voila, breakfast was ready. After a while, the clerks recognized me (not difficult to remember a white-haired gringo in a Taiwanese convenience store), so they began drawing my coffee before I even placed my order.

But these “convenience” stores, which are spotless, attractive, and nicely lit, offer much more than my necessities of life. You can take your dirty laundry to a 7-Eleven in Taiwan, they send it out, and you return to pick it up. You can order items from Amazon.com and have them delivered to your local 7-Eleven, where you retrieve them. This apparently saves the delivery person from trying to locate your apartment among the sea of apartments in Taipei, and from solving the problem of where to leave the item when you are not at home. You can pay traffic tickets there and, believe it or not, you can pay your federal income tax there if it is not above a certain amount. These stores are also a social gathering place in the evening; all seats are taken and it is standing room only after dark. What more they offer, I’m not sure. Maybe you can find a wife or husband through the place rather than spending time with an online matchmaking service. The possibilities are limitless. And did I mention that 7-Elevens in Taiwan are open 24 hours a day?

Of course, this all seems in contrast to the image most of us have of 7-Elevens in the U.S. I don’t go to ours after dark, because I don’t want to interrupt a robbery in progress. Ours are not as clean as those in Taiwan. Ours don’t have tea eggs. I can’t even remember where the 7-Elevens are in my town; in Taiwan, you simply walk a block and there one is.

So my impression of this Japanese-based company has changed for the better. People in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China, and Thailand have appreciated the value of 7-Elevens for some time. Asians rely on them, they use them daily, and they seem proud to have them in their country. Taiwan also has Starbucks, but it seems that visiting one is considered a luxury, while the 7-Eleven is the staff of life.

Our 7-Elevens seem not as popular as they are in Taiwan. Maybe we have too many choices in the U.S., and we can drive as far from home as we need to get to any store we want. Maybe the name “7-11” is off-putting, because it reminds us of a casino, and who wants to go up against house odds when buying something you are going to put in your mouth. There are many possible reasons why 7-Elevens are not as popular in the states. But I’m putting my money on the fact that ours don’t have tea eggs.

Article first published as The 7-Elevens in Taiwan Are a Necessity - Not a Convenience on Technorati.

DrTom's Youtube videos

2012-02-07T14:55:00.000-05:00

The following DrTom videos are available on Youtube:

1. Lecture to the Cornell Association of Professors Emeriti, given Dec 2011, titled "My life as a field biologist: from deer to digital book in 40 short years".
A summary of DrTom's 40-year career as a field biologist.

2. "Impromptu interview at the slide"
DrTom has some fun at the playground while being interviewed by his son.

3. "Cornell University's sensational professor, Tom Gavin!"
DrTom on a field trip with his Field Biology class, where a student filmed his "choir" practice with students.

I hope you enjoy these. Stay tuned for updates.

I believe in the bucket

2012-01-26T12:20:00.001-05:00

(Addressing the porcelain goddess. Do you sometimes feel like this guy looks?)

Vomiting is not one of my favorite activities. I'd rather spend my time doing something more constructive than emptying my stomach via my mouth. But there are times when your body can not be deterred. When my brothers and I were ill as kids, we would commonly lie in the living room on the couch and watch tv until the disease passed. My mother always put a bucket next to the couch in case we had to barf. This was not exactly the same as "praying to the porcelain princess", but it was effective. Many a messy cleanup was avoided because of this vomitus catchment that was strategically placed within hurling distance.

The first time I was ill with nausea after I was married, I called to my wife to bring the bucket. My wife did not grow up with this bucket thing in her home, and so she laughed hysterically at me for thinking I could not make it to the bathroom when the time was ripe. I pleaded, but to no avail. Some Emergency Room RNs (which my wife was at that time) have little empathy for those of us with sensitive stomachs. If it's not a heart attack or an amputated limb, get over it!

Then, in the summer of 1969 when I was stationed with the army in Baltimore, my mother and her good friend Rose came to visit us in our small apartment for a few days. We decided to drive to D.C. to see the sights and to have lunch. I can't for the life of me remember what it was we ate, but on the hour drive back to Baltimore my mother and I got violently ill. Obviously this was food poisoning, although my wife ate what I had and Rose ate what my mother had and neither of them got sick.

The Baltimore-Washington Parkway was a busy highway that day, as usual, and there was no easy place to stop or pull over. My mother was in the back seat with Rose and I was in the front while my wife drove. My mother and I both felt as though we were going to heave any minute. What to do? What to do? Then, my mother discovered some old newspapers in the back seat. In what was a more creative move than making an origami stork, and far more practical, my mother quickly rolled up some newspaper into a very tight cone with no hole at the bottom. She made two of them, and passed one to me in the front. For the rest of the trip home, my mother and I held this ridiculous 18-inch long funnel of newspaper in front of our faces with our chins perched on the edge of our respective cones, and braced for what we thought was the inevitable. My wife, the empathetic nurse, and Rose were laughing so hard that Management almost drove the car off the highway twice, as mother and son buried their faces in yesterday's sports page.

We finally managed to pull up in front of our apartment located in a rather large complex, having held the problem internally for what seemed like hours. My mother rushed inside to lie down on our bed, and immediately called for the bucket, but I couldn't make it. I held on to a small tree in the yard and began heaving violently, all the while making a roar loud enough to cause the starlings in the tree above me to drop to the ground as if dead. Neighbors began looking out of their windows on all sides, assuming that the drunken soldier was now paying the price for a well-lubricated lunch. I had no energy to explain, and all I could think to do was to put as much distance between me and that little tree as possible. In hindsight, it was a good thing I stayed outside to "pull the trigger", because we only had one bucket in those days, and that one was now assigned to my mother.

People have different thresholds that need crossing before they "liquidate their assets", but my advice is simple. Lie down flat on a bed or couch when you are really nauseous, avoid watching the Republican presidential debates, and have lots of buckets on hand. This strategy should get you through.

When "definite" pronouns become "indefinite"

2012-01-25T21:06:00.000-05:00

(My grammatically astute dog, Zeus, gave me a knowing wink as my wife let fly with another mysterious pronoun.)

Last night, Management said to me "Why do you think SHE does that?"

I looked around the room to see if there was a SHE anywhere in sight. None. Our dog Zeus is a male. Our daughter left home 20 years ago.

I replied: "Who are you talking about?"
Mgt.: "Angelina Jolie"
Me: "Why does she do what, and what are you talking about?"
Mgt: "Why doesn't she talk to HIM?"
Me: "What do you mean? I saw Angelina with Brad Pitt at the Golden Globe Awards on tv the other night, and they seemed fine with one another."
Mgt.: "No. Why doesn't she talk to her father, Jon Voight?"
Mgt. again: "You know. I really love that man."
Me: "I had no idea you liked Voight that much. He is a good actor."
Mgt.: "No. I love Obama. He is such a great family man."
Mgt. again, as she stares at the floor on the other side of the kitchen: "Isn't he cute?"
Me: "Well, I like the guy, but I don't think of my President as cute."
Mgt.: "No silly. Zeus. The way he puts his head on his crossed paws and watches us talk."
Me: I looked at Zeus and I swear he gave me a knowing wink; this IS an articulate dog with a pretty good command of the English language.

What the hell!! This is no way to live. Constantly having to guess to whom the pronoun refers in every sentence. What ever happened to nouns, or better yet, proper nouns, like a person's name? Management is trying to have a conversation with me, and complains that I don't talk enough. But this "conversation" becomes an interrogation of her by me to keep my head above water, as the "its", "his's", and "they's" fly about the room like confused moths searching for the sun. And once I figure out which SHE or HE Management is talking about, she shifts gears and is on to a new set of celebrities, or politicians, or relatives to whom she is referring. This is a real problem, especially as I continue to age and my brain cells disappear or harden into little nuggets.

So, more often than not, when Management asks me "Why is HE doing that?", I simply say with all the earnestness I can muster, "I really don't know honey. Life is a mystery." Of course, Management doesn't begin to appreciate fully how much of a mystery it really is to those of us on the receiving end of those damn indefinitely defined definite pronouns.

(For a classic and comical rendition of the pronoun problem, starring Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, go to this Youtube video.)

A voracious appetite for novels

2011-12-04T07:27:00.001-05:00

(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.

Black bears are returning, and I like it

2011-11-17T18:51:00.001-05:00

(Ben G, a bear cub who lived in our house for a few weeks, a long time ago.)

I've waited 31 years for this day. And then this week it happened. We had definite evidence of a black bear in the neighborhood. Two neighbors reported damage in their backyard that can only come from a bear, and one had the unmistakeable photo of muddy bear prints on his deck. Bears have been reported sporadically in my county for about a decade or so. I always assumed it was probably a young male who had dispersed from Pennsylvania to the south, but then a sow with cubs was spotted a couple of years ago. Bears are definitely here now. (New York State has always had three viable bear populations: on the Allegany Plateau in southwestern NY, the Catskill Mountains, and the Adirondacks. But bears were extirpated in the rest of the state more than a century ago.)

We moved into our home in the young forest of upstate New York in 1980, when the trees on our property were only about 20 years old. The hill on which we live had been a cattle pasture until 1960, so when the cattle were removed, trees with wind-blown seeds started to invade. The forest was not very impressive, as forests go, for our first decade or two there. But then, it began to look and feel like a real forest. The trees got larger, dead trees fell over from wind or disease and began accumulating on the ground, patches of ferns and mosses and forest wildflowers like trout lily began to flourish. Ash and maple and aspen were beginning to be replaced with oaks and hickories. If I could just live another couple hundred years, I would really be impressed at the maturity that can only come with time.

But our 12 acres is not an island. Our property is contiguous with hundreds of acres of more mature woodland, some of it part of a state forest. So the bear template was in place on the landscape; it only needed to get older, more bear-like. The habitat on my hill is no longer great for pheasants, grouse, or cottontails; it is now habitat for turkeys and bears and a wonderful variety of woodland songbirds. All we needed was to add a couple of bears from Pennsylvania and, voila, you have the start of a viable bear population.

In the early 1980s I stood in front of the picture window in our living room and told my wife that before we leave here I'll bet we see a bear from this window. Well, that has not happened yet, but it will. It's getting close now.

For this old naturalist and nature lover, why is it important to have bears back in this ecosystem? There is something special when you live or spend time in an environment where all or most of the biotic elements are still there. In the case of bears, it adds a certain mystic or mystery to the forest that was not there before. I don't have trilliums in my forest either, but their addition would not increase my wonderment nearly as much as having bears. There is also an element of danger, of now having to look over your shoulder once in a while. Not as intense as some places. I spent a little time in East Africa, where there are elephants, buffalo, and lions, animals that can kill you in a New York minute. And although black bears kill about as many people in North America every decade as grizzly bears (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America#Black_bear), the cost/benefit ratio of having black bears here is tolerable for me. (Because black bears are found in virtually every state, and grizzlies are found in only a few, the encounter rate between humans and black bears is much higher than the encounter rate with grizzly bears. Only a tiny percentage of these encounters results in an attack).

In the eastern U.S., we sanitized the environment several centuries ago. We cleared almost all of the forest, we shot or trapped all the big predators, we made the world safe for toddlers. Western Europe has been this way for a long time; scenic pastoral vistas, but boring as hell biologically. We were on our way to becoming as "safe" as western Europe, but the return of bears suggests we might be able to save some of what we almost lost. Now, let's see what we can do about wolves and cougars.

My personal ambivalence on Veterans Day

2011-11-14T07:31:00.002-05:00

(GIs raising the flag during WWII.)

Yesterday we "celebrated" the day when the country recognizes our military veterans. I am a veteran of the Vietnam era, although I was sent to Korea instead. I abhorred the idea of having to go in the first place, I never wanted to be there after I got inducted, and I couldn't wait until it was over. Because of my reticence about the entire experience, I never allow myself to feel proud for having served. Although I am technically a veteran, I never feel like one. I am neither ashamed nor proud that I served, it was simply something I had to do.

In 1968, I was drafted into the Army, but then enlisted instead of accepting the draft. In those days, you had 30 days to make this decision once you received your draft notice. Enlisting meant that I had some choice over what I might do for an "occupation" in the Army, but it meant spending three years in the service instead of two. That is, you paid for getting a little choice (no guarantee) by spending an extra year in the military. I wanted to accept the draft and take my chances, but my wife insisted I enlist and get some choice. She didn't want me to end up in the infantry serving in Vietnam, but I did not want to spend more time in the Army than I had to spend. The biggest disagreement we have had in 50 years of marriage occurred over this issue only two months after getting married that year. We argued, she won, and I enlisted for three years. In hindsight, she was correct as usual. I was one of the lucky ones.

I relate the disagreement between my wife and me as an admission that I did not want to be in the military, I considered it a waste of three years of my life, and I rebuked the idea that our country should have gone to Vietnam in the first place. Therefore, I never feel as though Veterans Day relates to me in any meaningful way. On that day, I mostly think about WWII vets, my father's generation, and the incredible sacrifice they had to endure to fight a global war that was unavoidable.

The Vietnam era presented a serious dilemma for hundreds of thousands of young men who did not want to serve and who did not want to go to Vietnam. My friend and college roommate dropped out of university, was drafted, and six months later was killed in Vietnam. He saw his 4-month old baby only once. My mother and my wife's parents disagreed with our belief that the war was not justified; my wife and I praised the anti-war demonstrators while our parents cursed them, although with the passage of time they came to agree with us.

As a result of this internal conflict in draft-age males, some men simply checked out of American society and left the country for Canada. Some of them figured out a way to fake the results of their physical exam so they could fail. Some joined the National Guard so they could remain in the states. Some had important relatives or friends who could influence local draft boards. Some went AWOL after being inducted. Others did as they were told, and were later killed or wounded in Vietnam. Now, three decades later, we have a Vietnam War Memorial that stirs more emotions in me than any monument I've ever seen, and Americans can happily vacation in Vietnam.

Sometimes governments force individuals to make decisions about their lives that are almost impossible to satisfy. Deciding whether to participate in a war is probably the most poignant, because the costs to individuals are huge and measurable, and the benefits are rarely clear. But on Veterans Day we honor those who served, without being able to comprehend the complex set of emotions that is certainly still within them. With the benefit of hindsight and age, the reasons for our earlier choices become clearer. If we had to make those same decisions today armed with a lifetime of observations of the world and the way it works, they might not be so difficult. But when 20-year olds are encouraged or forced by national policy to make these same decisions, the responsibility for their choices should rest with us all.

I'm multitasking as fast as I can

2011-09-13T07:25:00.000-04:00

(Men can multitask about as well as women, if they simply over-commit.)

You have probably noticed that I haven't written a blog since May. The main reason is that I have been promoting the book I published in April, and I have not had the time to write. A real writer would not have this problem, but I only play one on the internet. In addition, I am spending time trying to be a good husband, father, brother, grandfather, and great uncle, cut firewood, tend gardens, trade stocks, and be a responsible pet owner. I should return to the regularly scheduled program this fall, so don't forget about DrTom!

The little bird who could

2011-05-04T19:11:00.007-04:00

(Dark-eyed junco nest on the right front tire of my Elantra)

This is my favorite time of year, primarily because migrant birds are returning, and breeding has begun. Dark-eyed Juncos are now in the woods all around my house, males are singing, and their hormones are raging. I parked our Elantra in the driveway yesterday and, this morning, a junco was building its nest on top of the right front tire. The nest is comprised of long strands of dried grass. I felt badly about it, but I can't let that car sit there for the next month while the bird finishes its nesting cycle. So I drove to town, which obviously destroyed the starter nest (I have to actually say that the nest was destroyed, for the economists who might be reading this blog).

When I returned home I parked the car in the same place. Within two hours, the bird was busy building a nest in the exact location on the tire again. I promptly removed the material, hoping that this junco gets the message: you will not be successful building your nest on a car's wheel.

Usually any bird's nest that is disturbed early in the cycle, like this one was, is enough to cause the bird to change locations immediately. Once the female is incubating, she will rarely abandon a nest unless it is completely destroyed. So I was surprised that this bird, probably the female, tried to build in the same place, given that the first attempt was obliterated.

A few years ago, we had a pair of juncos build a nest on a ledge in our garage. We normally keep the garage doors closed, so we kept trapping the birds inside. I gave up, left the doors open, and they fledged several young.

Notice also, that the Korean Hyundai was parked next to the American Jeep. The junco chose the Korean car over the American. Could juncos be used by the American automotive industry to decide what the public will choose to buy in the future? Could they be used to help us decide who the next Super Bowl winner will be? Or American Idol? Food for thought.

In the end, I wish her well. May your babies grow and thrive----------elsewhere.

The Royal Wedding and Us

2011-05-01T08:50:00.000-04:00

(DrTom was asked to give the bride away at the Royal Wedding, but the bride's father insisted that he do it. So DrTom stayed home with his wife.)

About a week ago, Management had the bright idea that we should attend the Royal Wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton. I had not remembered receiving my royal invitation, so I looked all over the house for it. I found a number of old lottery tickets, a couple of laundry receipts, and a key I had been looking for in pockets of my jackets, but no wedding invite.

Then, she explained that we were not actually going to the wedding, but we would attend it remotely in my den by watching it on our flat-screen tv. However, we would dress appropriately for the occasion, as if we were actually there. So I set the alarm for 4am, we arose, dressed, and laid out scones and coffee and a bottle of champagne.

Below are some of the photos taken of us by the paparazzi.

DrTom in his tux (yes, I actually own one), with champagne in hand.

Management, sporting the Fascinator hat she fashioned from items she had around the house, which are attached to a paper plate. As cheap as this hat was to make, it was not the worst looking hat at the wedding. (See Fergie's daughter)

Kate had asked me to give her away, but I couldn't make the affair in person. I, in turn, asked her father if he would do the honor. He reluctantly agreed.

These events often make me weepy. I love weddings!


Management and I finished off a bottle of champagne before 6am, which is a first for us. Did I mention that I love weddings?

"Life at DrTom's" is now out!

2011-04-13T11:49:00.006-04:00

Life at DrTom's: Mostly Humorous Anecdotes by a Mostly Retired Cornell Professor

by Thomas A. Gavin

Description: "Life at DrTom's" is a diverse collection of easy-to-digest anecdotes about human behavior, wildlife, children, wives, and more from the perspective of a retired Ivy League professor. DrTom taught classes in biology and conservation at Cornell University for almost 30 years, and he conducted research on birds and mammals in the U.S. and abroad. But he has found that observing humans and describing the human condition are as interesting as the study of wild animals. DrTom writes with a somewhat cynical view about his own species in a way that will make you say "hey, I never thought of that."

Spanning six decades, DrTom describes the colorful experiences that vary from studying squirrels on a cattle ranch in Idaho, living in the rainforest of Costa Rica, attending a geisha-like party in Korea, playing tennis for Ohio State, to smoking a cigar while sipping a scotch in the forest surrounding his New York home. These moments have sharpened his power of observation and informed his impression of what makes human behavior so curious. But this life-long exploration of what makes life interesting has generated the tangible he celebrates the most—the memory of these rich encounters.

Readers will have no difficulty relating to DrTom's observations and conclusions about the experiences he shares. You will see yourself in many of the uncanny situations in which he has found himself as a father, grandfather, husband, teacher, and retired baby-boomer. Regardless of your age, gender, or educational background, the prose will make you laugh, or pause, or think more deeply about what you see around you.

To see the Table of Contents, Sample, and to order a copy, go to www.lifeatdrtoms.com.

DrTom's Woodland (photos only)

2011-04-11T18:42:00.001-04:00


Wild turkeys in winter

Amelanchier flowers

Poisonous and psychoactive basidiomycete fungus Amanita muscaria, with an unknown psychoactive liquid

Red maple in autumn

Black-capped chickadee at cavity entrance in small red maple

It ain't July

Looking up at quaking aspen

What do Tiger Woods, Charlie Sheen, and Moulay Ismail have in common?

2011-03-13T18:41:00.004-04:00

(Charlie, Tiger, and Moulay would have a lot to discuss if they ever got together, and it wouldn't be about golf.)

The answer to the question in the title is SEX. More specifically, they all have had sex with many different women during their lives.

We do not know the exact number, but it is probably safe to conclude from all reports that Tiger Woods and Charlie Sheen have had sex with dozens of women, both of whom still have a looooong way to go before they're finished with their sexual lives. Certainly the number of sexual consorts they have had is greater than the number reached by most, or all, of you reading this essay. But, in fact, that is exactly what a behavioral ecologist expects.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an essay here posing why people become avid fans of sports teams. My hypothesis was that those individuals who followed and proclaimed their allegiance to a football or baseball team were enhancing their status, at least a little. And I recognized that this phenomenon of being a fan is more common in males than in females. I should have written this essay first, and then that one, because that would seem to be the more logical order in which to present these ideas. But I'm old, and this is my blog, and I can do anything I want here.

The idea here is that men seek as high a status as they can muster, and with that status, comes access to women. And this has been going on for millions of years--in Homo sapiens, and in all the ancestral species before that. Realize that men all over the world are seeking high status by trying to excel at whatever they do in life (e.g., whether being a surgeon, a golfer, an actor, a warrior in the Amazon, a politician, or an assembly line worker), because the payoff for millennia has been to leave more offspring than those who don't. And, as we learned in that out-of-order blog of mine, men don't have to be conscious of all this evolutionary stuff; they do it because it feels good.

Of course, this would all work only if there is a correlation between the number of women with whom a man has sexual intercourse and the number of children he sires during his life. But, you are saying, women can have all the sex they want and not get pregnant, because of their use of contraception. But that is a relatively new development in the evolution of humans. I have never thought that men seek women to have more children, but they seek out women because sex feels good. It is the proximate goal to have sex that drives this system in the short term, not the ultimate outcome of leaving genes in more offspring. Over our long history, however, more sex must have equated to having more children, on average.

By the way, one of my favorite activities is to google famous people, and then to read the Wikipedia account of their lives. Usually those accounts contain a "Personal" section, which details the number of times the person has been married, the number of children they had with each wife, and maybe the number of non-wife lovers they had during their illustrious life. Think of a few famous men you know, and do this little exercise. I think you will then agree that they seem to have had a lot more "encounters" with females than you have, or than most of the men you know. And those numbers reported there are just the official tally.

But how successful reproductively can one man be? Let's introduce Moulay Ismaïl Ibn Sharif (the "Warrior King"), who ruled Morocco from 1672-1727. Moulay ruled for a decade longer than even Qaddafi has ruled Libya. Moulay Ismail was a particularly ruthless and bloodthirsty ruler, who used to kill his servants on a whim. It is said that he once slit the throats of two servants just to try out a new blade he had been given. But the Alaouite sultan's claim to fame for our purposes was that he is thought to have sired more than 1,000 children, the most in recorded history. By 1703, he had 525 sons and 342 daughters; less than two decades later, he tallied his 700th son. One biologist calculated that to produce this number of children from the vast harem of wives he amassed, Moulay would have had to copulate, on average, with 1.2 women every day over the course of 60 years. Tiger and Charlie have some catching up to do if they want to capture that record.

Should we condemn these self-serving, sex-seeking males of our species for their dastardly way of life? If we are going to assign some blame for this behavior, we need to look further than the males themselves. Females share in the blame, for if they had not been attracted to high-status men for eons, this system would have broken down long ago. Remember that for men, quantity is everything in sex, while for females, quality is paramount.

In addition, all this striving to be the best you can be has probably resulted in most of the accomplishments in art, music, architecture, medicine, sports, and science attributed to men. Think for a moment how different history would have been if this biological relationship between status and reproductive success had been different from what it is. That is one heck of an interesting mental exercise. If that doesn't give you something to think about when your electricity is out, go back to playing Scrabble by candlelight.

Article first published as What Do Tiger Woods, Charlie Sheen and Moulay Ismail Have in Common? on Technorati.

What I learned on Facebook during the first week of March 2011!

2011-03-06T13:42:00.002-05:00

(Some profound statements from my friends on Facebook this week.)

All quotes were copied and pasted from Facebook exactly as they were written.

Ryan A. asks “So... if one was trying to decide between a trip to Alaska (fly fishing, wildlife-viewing, hiking, camping, and maybe rafting) or Belize (tanning, snorkeling, fishing, wildlife-viewing, hiking, and umbrella drink drinking) in the next year or so, which should it be?”

Ryan A., I would split the difference, a compromise of sorts. I would go to Nebraska in August. You could eat corn, watch the Cornhuskers prepare for the coming football season, and visit Cabela’s main store in Sydney. They have cold beer in a can, but bring your own umbrellas.

Samantha D. startles us with “It's a very Sunday kind of Sunday :)”

And you know, tomorrow will be a very Monday kind of Monday, and the next day will probably be a very Tuesday kind of Tuesday. But I’m just guessing about all that.

Gus G. is curious if there “Was there a Rally to Save the American Dream yesterday in New Orleans?”

People from New Orleans have a dream. They simply hope that the city is not sitting permanently in 1-2 meters of ocean water by the end of the century. In the meantime, go to Mardi Gras, eat jambalaya, and burn lots of oil. If New Orleans is flooded, more people will go to Nebraska with Ryan A. for vacation.

Nancy S. instructs us “If you LOVE ME:) Comment this status* If I'M A GOOD FRIEND:) Like this! If you ever had a CRUSH on ME* POKE ME! If you HATE ME+ Message ME saying WHY? If your BRAVE POST this as your STATUS!!”

Well Nancy S., I guess I am just not that brave. I do love you, but this business of asking people to “poke” me, in public, on a social network is way too loose and liberal for me. I prefer the privacy of my own home.

Cynthia S. ask about how we feel with “Do you need to be rich and famous or would rich be enough for you ♥ Know what feels best for you. It's easier to receive when you know what you are looking for :)”

Is this some kind of trick question? Are you kidding me? I need to be rich AND famous. Why do you think I write these stupid blogs? I want people to click on the ads so I make money, and I want them to talk about the guy who wrote these hilarious quips so I become famous. Come on Cynthia S., don’t make me choose.

Marleen Ⓥ van B. implores us with “You will begin your journey on a new path with the willingness to step off a cliff into the unknown. You will bring little provisions with you, ready to create or find what you need along the way. The sun at your back, your dog to accompany you, Your carefree pose stands testament to this search for the new adventure, to the faith you have in yourself to forge a new path”

I think that young hiker did all of this a couple of years ago, the one who got trapped under a rock for days. They just released a movie about his real-life experience, where he had to cut off his arm with a pen knife. No Marleen van B., I’m going to step off a cliff in my living room in front of the tv, with a bag of taco chips, and a Bud Lite. But I’m going to “forge a new path” by trying a bag of those blue corn chips for the first time.

Jenny L. N. complains that “I don't mind living in a tiny house. In fact, I hear it's cool to live in a house that's way too small for you. I do mind living next door to a moron who apparently has a lot of time on his hands. I say the time he spends tearing up his yard racing radio-controlled trucks around could be better spent shoveling up the giant piles of dog crap that have been accumulating in his backyard for nearly two years.”

But Jenny L. N., you are missing the point entirely. Your neighbor is trying to perfect his skills with the radio-controlled truck by guiding it through his dog shit-strewn yard without hitting any of those piles. That’s way more fun than setting up Lego obstacles.

Lizzie D. tempts us with “Cooking black bean stew w Green chile roasted in New Mexico and spicy rice :)”

Lizzie D., are you married? I have two single sons who love spicy Mexican food.

Doc Karen P. L. admits “I'm hungry. Hmmmm. What to eat...what to eat....”

Doc Karen P. L., if you like blue taco chips, come on over to my house. If you want something more substantial, go to Lizzie D.’s.

Abbie H., Margaret H., Jenni S. and 56 others like this.

Why Muammar Qaddafi is only a Colonel

2011-03-04T10:14:00.006-05:00

(Why he never promoted himself to General, I'll never know.)

Did you ever think about this? Muammar Qaddafi has been the supreme ruler and dictator of Libya for more than 40 years. He is the commander in chief of the armed forces, the high potentate, the big pooba, the cat's meow. Officially, he is Brotherly Leader and Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. The President of the United States doesn't have a title nearly that long, and look at what a big deal he is.

By contrast, in my house, I am officially the lowly Firewood Gatherer, Floor Cleaner, Wall Painter Second in Command to Blond Management Person, and I left the Army with the rank of Sergeant. Certainly, Qaddafi should be ranked as high as possible if he is leader and guide of a whole revolution. I don't see why the guy isn't an 8-10 star General.

I have a couple of possible explanations why Qaddafi only holds the rank of Colonel in the Libyan military. Maybe he is a shirker of sorts. Being a General has lots of responsibilities. You need to review the troops, sign many important papers, and salute thousands of soldiers of lesser rank. You need to get up early in the morning to accomplish all these tasks, and the Colonel may have decided it is just not worth it.

Plus, being a General means you have really become entrenched in the establishment. You are then part of the Board of Directors, so to speak, rather than an average Joe. You have to act more dignified. You can't just hang with the boys, smoking a hookah and eating stuffed pigeons. What's worse, Qaddafi might have to give up his voluptuous blond companion Galyna Kolotnytska, who is his Ukrainian "nurse". (I'll take the disease he has, thank you.) So the lifestyle change that comes with being a General just may not be viewed by Qaddafi as desirable.

Then again, maybe the guy is just a wimp. After all, it is reported that he fears flying over water, prefers staying on the ground floor of hotels, and almost never travels. That is, he is afraid of heights, water, and movement. I suppose if I had been born in a Bedouin tent in a desert country, I would have no early experience with certain elements in the environment and that I might come to fear them later in life. But I assume his birth tent had no voluptuous blond in it either, and he apparently adjusted to the trauma of being near one of those as an adult. And how many Ferraris were parked outside that tent? Nada. But Qaddafi got over his potential fear of this vehicle enough to buy some, even though camels are more useful in that part of the world. So his early experience can't be the reason he refuses the high rank.

So it is somewhat of a mystery why the man did not make himself the head of the General staff of the military. Maybe the guy is much more modest and humble than the West thinks. Maybe he believes in giving credit where credit is due, and he did not see himself worthy of the rank of General. Maybe he failed the written exam a General needs to pass, so he decided he would study harder and try again later. But it is probably none of those reasons. After all, when you are surrounded by a bevy of international models, you own a bunch of Ferraris, you don't have to gather your own firewood (like some of us do), and you have a nurse who is built like a brick hammam (= Arabic word for bathroom), who cares what your rank is?

Rich Text Article first published as Why Muammar Qaddafi is Only a Colonel on Technorati.