First Light

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.  —Thoreau

I awake in darkness and grope for the small chain dangling from the lamp on the bedside table.  A small tug and the room instantly floods with light.

Padding to my office adjacent to the bedroom, I reach for the wall switch. Because this sliding switch incorporates a rheostat, a different sort of illumination ensues.  As the lights come up on stage at the beginning of a performance, so these overhead lights gradually illuminate and define the objects in the room.

I descend the stairs in darkness to the kitchen.  While the coffee brews I peer through the back window.  The first light of morning has sketched out the structures of the ancient garage, the scalloped fence and the trees beyond.  Now merely shades of charcoal grey, these objects will soon take on their true colors in the increasing intensity of the light of the sun.

Back upstairs, cup in hand, I sit at my desk and watch the morning unfold outside:  shadows gradually give way to sharp definition as light makes all things new.

Tacitly, I reach for the slider switch on the wall and dim the artificial illumination within the confines of the office as sunlight streams through the double-hung windows, filling the room.

The season of shadows that has eclipsed our outlook for so long is gradually giving way to the promise of spring.

Labor Day web browsing

While out with the dog for a walk on this last weekend of summer, I glimpsed a spider suspended between the steel supporting cables of a utility pole.  Stooping down for a closer look, I could appreciate the speed at which she worked.  What I couldn’t see clearly was the web she wove, almost invisible in the morning light.  Yet I knew the completed orb would be on display later that afternoon.

When he was perhaps five or six, my son and I paused on our way home from the school playground to watch a similar spider at work in the flower garden at a local church.  As I recall, we reclined on the grass for the better part of an hour observing the miniature master weaver at work.

The spider had already constructed a tetrahedron by running silken threads between several green stems and proceeded to drop lines from these outer boundaries to the center.  Afterwards she moved from radius to radius, deftly spinning parallel threads between the spokes.  Mesmerized, we watched this industrious litttle artist shuttle around her newly formed web, engrossed in her work.

Later that day we stopped back to find the web completed, billowing slightly in the evening breeze.  Its architect hung head down, suspended in the orb’s center, resting from her labors.

And so today, on the morning of this day of rest deemed our day of labor, I sit on my front porch to browse yet another arachnid artist suspended in her silken web, eagerly anticipating the first fruits of her work.

A Noteworthy Twitter

As I back into the parking space at the edge of the wood and step outside my car, the melodic trills of a veery sound clear and sharp, descending the scale like a xylophone in the early morning air. Punctuated by a pause, the song repeats in flawless fashion. The number of notes I can not count, but the pattern is unmistakable. I stop to listen and find myself transported back in time to another summer day years ago when my friend and I spent an afternoon exploring a stretch of the Connecticut River.

We put in near Gillette Castle and paddled our kayaks north against the current to Chapman Pond. As we entered the expanse of quiet water, we passed a sentinel cormorant perched on a rock, its wings held aloft like a semaphore signaling our arrival. High overhead along the far ridge a pair of red tail hawks sailed on the updrafts. We slipped across the pond, and a gaggle of mute swans descended over our heads, wingbeats whistling through the still afternoon air.

We circled the lake before stopping to eat our snack of fresh blueberries and granola bars. I glimpsed a number of goldfinches in the treetops before we returned to the river. The waves lapped against the kayaks in the current as we drifted downstream past the rocky cliffs where eagles nest in the late winter.

Here we entered the quiet waters of Whalebone Creek and followed the meandering stream back through canals bordered on both sides by tall marsh grass to a beaver dam. It was there, at the edge of a wood, that I heard the clear sharp notes of a veery in the late afternoon shadows.

In her recent piece The Trouble With Twitter, University of Oregon adjunct instructor of journalism Melissa Hart laments: “I worry that microblogging cheats my students out of their trump card: a mindful attention to the subject in front of them, so that they can capture its sights and sounds, its smells and tactile qualities, to share with readers. How can Twittering stories from laptops and phones possibly replace the attentive journalist who tucks a digital recorder artfully under a notepad, pencil behind one ear, and gives full attention to the subject at hand?”

Sound bites — those 140-character tweets — don’t begin to do any story justice, unless they happen to have their origin in the warbled notes of a mystical woodland singer.

Two in the Bush

“Look!” my wife says, holding up the hanging basket brimming with pink impatiens.

“Nice flowers,” I say.

“Not the flowers—the nest! There’s an egg in the nest!”

She pulls back a leafy stalk, revealing the intricately woven bowl nestled at the base of the plant. There, in the center, lies a small blue speckled egg.

“I noticed the house finches sitting on the branches of the Japanese maple the other day,” I say. “It’s probably a house finch nest.”

“Maybe a sparrow,” my wife says. “The mother bird is brown and about that size.”

“The female finch is dull brown like a sparrow.”

Gently, my wife replaces the hanging plant on the hook above the balustrade on the front porch.

When I trudge up the driveway from work the following evening, my wife announces, “There’s another egg in the nest!”

“Two in the bush,” I muse.

She lifts the potted plant down for me to see. Somehow the new egg looks different: a bit bigger, more densely speckled.

“That egg was laid by a different bird,” I say.

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. See the difference?”

“Why would another bird do such a thing?”

“Might be a cowbird.”

“What’s a cowbird?”

“The brown-headed cowbird lays its eggs in the nests of other birds. Usually the cowbird baby hatches out first. It grows fast and eventually pushes the other birds out of the nest. The parent birds don’t know any better, so they keep feeding it as though it were their own baby.”

“I don’t think I like cowbirds very much.”

“They’re part of nature. It’s how they exist.”

My wife replaces the hanging basket and walks quietly into the house.

Two days later she makes another announcement. “There’s another egg in the nest. This one looks like the first one: blue with a few chocolate speckles.”

The two eggs look like twins next to the speckled brown egg.

“Are you sure that’s a cowbird egg?” she asks.

“Let’s check.” I do an online search and bring up a photo of the brown-headed cowbird. I scroll down to a picture of the nest below. The egg in the photo matches the egg in our nest exactly. “There you are,” I say.

My wife studies the picture. Then she says: “We’ll have to take it out.”

“Why?”

“So the baby finches can grow. Otherwise the cowbird baby will push them out of the nest.”

“But if you take out the cowbird egg, then the baby cowbird will die.”

A subdued look settles across my wife’s face. “I’d rather have the finches,” she says.

“Suit yourself,” I say, as she disappears down the stairs.

Even the simplest of nature’s marvels can be fraught with ethical dilemmas that loom large in our struggle to do the right thing.

The Anatomy of Love

 

“So, how did you meet your wife anyway?”

 

“She was my partner at anatomy lab in medical school.”

 

My friend—an orthopedic surgeon—and I compared notes during a recent undergraduate school reunion.  Three decades is a long time; we had some catching up to do, but we were in no hurry.

 

This is the second instance where I’ve heard a physician comment that he’d met his wife in the anatomy lab at medical school.  The other doctor—a psychiatrist—had morphed into a poet over the course of his career.  One of the pieces that he read from his book mentioned the initial meeting:  an anatomy of love, blossoming in the dissecting room.

 

No matter how scientific our bent, as humans we still gravitate toward our humanity.  We might not be looking for it at the time, but we find love in the most unexpected places.

 

Last fall I traveled to Montreal to speak at a conference hosted at the William Osler Library of the History of Medicine on the campus of McGill University.  That afternoon the librarian in residence escorted our small group into the inner sanctum of the complex:  the room which houses Osler’s personal medical library of 8,000 volumes and several of his personal effects, his ashes among them.

 

The librarian spoke about Osler’s life, offering a series of anecdotal tales of poignant turning points in the great physician’s career.  After completing his academic studies, Osler entered medical practice as both a clinician and teacher.  While serving on the medical faculty at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Osler began work on his massive text “The Principles and Practice of Medicine.”  During this time he also started a courtship with Grace Revere Gross, the widow of Dr. Samuel W. Gross.  Osler had known the Grosses during his former five-year sojourn at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

 

Osler was keen to marry, but the widow Gross insisted that he finish his book first.  Osler labored long hours to prepare the work for publication.  He inscribed the first copy to the widow and placed it in her hands with a proposal of marriage.  True to her word, she accepted both the book and Osler’s offer.

 

This was one instance where a great man of medicine first wrote the book that defined clinical practice before moving on to study Gross anatomy:  the anatomy of love.  Only this time it was outside the confines of the dissecting room.

Spring Peepers

Late last Friday afternoon I was still at work in the office, waiting for the 5 o’clock whistle to sound.

 

It turned out to be a lovely spring day.  Over lunch I had managed to slip out for a short visit to a local book store.

 

One of my patients had given me a voucher for a reading program that his school was sponsoring.  Over a three-day period the Barnes & Noble book store had agreed to contribute 10% of each purchase to this special program to send books to students in Uganda.  I ended up buying The Shack and Three Cups of Tea, both of which I’d been meaning to read for quite some time; and so contributed $3.20 toward the Uganda project.

 

As I sat in the back office by an open window, looking out over the expanse of wetland cloaked in bare white birches and young maples, a cacophony of spring peepers erupted.  Trebles from spring song birds periodically punctuated the frenzied crescendo.

 

Overhead, the sky provided a faultless blue canopy for the performance.  Although lingering patches of snow had disappeared over the course of the past two weeks, the woods still seemed to be wintering over:  bare trunks and grey branches, brown leaves, cinnamon sand.

 

Momentarily, the peepers died down to a few isolated chirps, then once again welled up into a feverish frenzy.  I sat back and closed my eyes, meditating on their orchestral orations.

 

I look forward to the appearance of these little frogs each year.  Their song ignites in me a certain undefined hope that heralds the coming of spring.

Days of promise in borrowed time

Driving along back country roads under faultless blue skies on my way to work, I noticed the bright orange pails suspended from the trunks of bare trees.  Two pails were pinned to each trunk in what looked to be a stand of perhaps twelve to fifteen maples.  The weatherman was calling for a high of 55; soon the sap would be running.

 

Further along the road I passed by a farm.  A harrow and plow stood next the barn in the morning sun, silently waiting for the tractor’s hitch.  Overhead, a huge red-tailed hawk circled, scouting the brown expanse of fallow fields below for signs of movement. I cracked the car window to sample the air’s sharp sweetness.

 

Our neighbor’s rhododendron leaves have relaxed their tight grip.  The last of the icy snow on the road has melted, leaving behind a dusting of cinnamon sand along the shoulder.

 

This afternoon I took a walk down by the river.  Gingerly I shuffled over patches of hard packed snow scattered along the path.  Pickerel Cove lay locked in ice, but the river flowed freely, swollen from melting snows.  A pair of Canada geese paddled leisurely along the opposite bank, occasionally dipping their black bills into the dark water.

 

I stopped on the bank to study the minute sandy canyons, each one a miniature riverbed carved out by the run-off from the melting ice.  From bare branches high overhead the notes of a solitary song bird sounded in the clear cold air.

 

As I neared our house, I paused to watch a black wooly caterpillar stretching its way across the road, another early sign of spring.

The biochemistry of love

Infuse the brain of a female prairie vole with the hormone oxytocin and she’ll quickly bond with the nearest male. In a similar manner, the hormone vasopressin creates urges for bonding and nesting when injected in the brains of male voles.

Neuroscientist Dr. Larry Young of Emery University opines that in human beings “sexuality has evolved to stimulate that same oxytocin system to create female-male bonds.”

It addition to working in concert with sexual desire and bonding, oxytocin seems to enhance feelings of trust and empathy. Somehow these emotions are wrapped up in the same stimulus package.

Analogs of hormones like oxytocin and vasopressin may turn out to be bona fide love potions, much more potent that those brewed by apothecaries in antiquity.

Biochemists might also be able to develop drugs that block these hormone receptor sites in the brain, producing individuals who seek the pleasure of sex without stimulating any need for long-term bonding. Some might argue that, in light of today’s sexual mores, such drugs would be unnecessary.

But would sex without emotional bonding be classified as love?

Unlike modern English, the ancient Greek language had four words for love. Storge denoted a mother’s love for her infant. Philia described brotherly love between friends. Eros, from which we get our modern term erotic, denoted sexual love. Agape was reserved to describe the unconditional divine love of God.

The ancient Greeks knew what they were talking about. Many times we in contemporary culture don’t, because we lack the vocabulary to crystallize these concepts.

While it may be triggered by surges of hormones, human love is more than mere biochemistry, because it entails more than just sex and bonding.

I recently read a profoundly descriptive passage on this subject in Betty Smith’s 1943 novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, in which the heroine, 16-year-old Francie Nolan, muses on her emotional needs:

“I need someone,” thought Francie desperately. “I need someone. I need to hold somebody close. And I need more than this holding. I need someone to understand how I feel at a time like now. And the understanding must be part of the holding.”

Despite the growing number of pharmacologic substances available to enhance the sexual act, I still feel, like Francie, that “the understanding must be part of the holding.”

In the end it’s the understanding that’s vastly more satisfying; it’s the understanding that makes us human.

Thoughts on Thinking

A recent BBC News article No Time to Think? delves into the concept of thinking—specifically, how to carve out time during our busy days to actively engage in this philosophical pastime.

A few pointers offered include: use your lunch hour for quiet contemplation; go out for a walk and leave unfinished work at your desk; study water as it shimmers in the light; listen to classical music; write down what’s on your mind to develop your train of thought more clearly; or discuss it with another person, particularly someone who doesn’t necessarily agree with your line of reasoning (the challenge is the thing); unplug the TV or stop listening to the news for a few days; and strive to develop an understanding of the importance of thought. After all, the ability to think is what sets our species apart.

Thoreau allowed that we can recreate our inner man by engaging in active thought. “Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts,” he wrote in the concluding chapter of Walden. “If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me.”

This evening I pause to open the back window before climbing into bed. The night air is cool after the recent rains. Sounds of serenading insects drift in through the screen. In the upper corner of the window casing, I see a small spider transfixed in her web. I turn out the light and lie down on soft sheets, mesmerized by the entomological symphony outside.

The Bridge is Out

For fifteen years now I’ve been rising before dawn three days a week to drive to the YMCA for my morning workout. Our group congregates every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for a two-hour interval workout in the pool. All roads may lead to Rome, but the most expedient route to the local YMCA passes over the Floydville bridge. Like many concrete rural bridges in the state, this one was constructed in the early 20th century. And like most of them, it is now in need of repair.

I noticed the sign posted by the bridge two weeks ago: “Bridge Out, Under Construction, 6/9/2008 to 11/30/2008.” I was not happy. This would mean taking one of two alternative routes, each adding several miles to my morning trek.

The first day the bridge was closed, my automatic pilot drove the car along the usual route. At the intersection, I was greeted by several large concrete barriers blocking the way. I shook my head, dismayed at the folly brought on by a faulty memory, and preceded along the detour several miles up the main road.

“You’re later than usual,” the receptionist at the front desk said.

“The bridge is out,” I replied, handing her my card.

“I figured as much,” she said. “That one little bridge is wreaking havoc in the lives of a lot of folks.”

Conversation in the locker room substantiated her observations. Many members were upset at the inconvenient lengthy detours. Not only did they have to go out of their way to get to the facility, but a majority of them had to backtrack miles to access alternative routes to their work in the city.

More than that, it soon became apparent that the closing of this one small bridge would result in major changes in traffic flow patterns. What had been a quick return home afterwards turned into a nightmare traffic jam from countless drivers seeking alternative routes.

As time goes on I realize other things: I will have to take my loads of leaves and brush to the landfill through the middle of town now. The increased distance will mean longer driving times and more gasoline consumption. This one little bridge construction project is going to drastically alter life as we know it for months to come.

You can still get to there from here, but it costs a bit more in time and effort.

It’s like that when we lose a significant person in our lives through a major relocation, illness or untimely death. Suddenly, the bridge is out. The way that we had taken for granted can be accessed no longer. We have to find alternative, less satisfactory routes.

Many times it takes a long time to rebuild the bridge. Some bridges never get rebuilt.