Something simple, intriguing, beautiful, and relaxing

Maybe we should all take some time out of our busy schedules just to quietly observe nature a little more.

When the sun rises on a cold morning here in North Carolina, it begins to heat surfaces covered with frost.  It creates a display from these objects which resembles smoke from a fire, but is merely water vapor.  It's simple and beautiful in a way.  It's almost hypnotic.  In a gentle breeze, the wind blows the vapor away.  With little breeze, it can create small whirlwinds.  And it's not destroying anything.
Maybe it's just my inquisitive psyche or something else about my nature, but taking time to watch the vapor rise and a gentle breeze blow it away seems relaxing for some reason.  It's like a gentle snowfall.
This particular event lasts about 10-15 minutes on a morning when there's a fair amount of frost.

(for some reason, the video did not show on my January 31st post of this. Repeating that one here.)

http://extraordinarywriter.com

P.S. This is not an ad for Luxor.  That just happens to be the cover on the outdoor grill.

vapors

Something simple, intriguing, beautiful, and relaxing

Maybe we should all take some time out of our busy schedules just to quietly observe nature a little more.

When the sun rises on a cold morning here in North Carolina, it begins to heat surfaces covered with frost.  It creates a display from these objects which resembles smoke from a fire, but is merely water vapor.  It's simple and beautiful in a way.  It's almost hypnotic.  In a gentle breeze, the wind blows the vapor away.  With little breeze, it can create small whirlwinds.  And it's not destroying anything.
Maybe it's just my inquisitive psyche or something else about my nature, but taking time to watch the vapor rise and a gentle breeze blow it away seems relaxing for some reason.  It's like a gentle snowfall. 
This particular event lasts about 10-15 minutes on a morning when there's a fair amount of frost.

http://extraordinarywriter.com

P.S. This is not an ad for Luxor.  That just happens to be the cover on the outdoor grill.

Do animals have feelings?

A Ted talk I discovered recently reminded me of this concept.  You might want to check it out.
http://www.ted.com/talks/carl_safina_what_are_animals_thinking_and_feeling

I've always felt that they do.  They have consciousness - maybe with less breadth or depth or the ability to express it than we who call ourselves humans do - but just in another material form.

I've seen it in pet dogs who appear to mourn the loss of their owner.  I've also seen it in other animals less common in our "civilized" living.
One instance:
While driving on a mountain highway in Idaho many years ago, I came across a situation.  A duck had apparently been hit by a vehicle prior to my arrival on the scene.  It appeared as though that or another car had run over the duck's body.  It was fairly flattened.
But that's not the story.
The story is that another duck - I presume the dead duck's mate - was standing in the road beside the body.  It was walking around the body, occasionally putting its head and beak down toward the body.  As I approached in the car I was driving, this duck quickly flew to a low rock wall on the side of the road.
I slowed and eventually stopped to watch.
The duck on the wall then flew back down onto the road and began walking around the dead duck, again putting its head and beak down and even touching the dead duck's body.
It seemed as if it was trying to tell its mate to get up or something.
I realize that many will say there are a lot of assumptions and anthropomorphizing here, but it convinced me that something more was going on.
That duck was experiencing what we might call loss, grief, and maybe other emotions.

Another instance.
We live across the street from a small cattle ranch.
When we walk to the street and the cattle are near the fence bordering the street, the cattle normally move further away - back into the more open field.
One time that didn't happen.  A young bull was standing at the fence constantly looking in our direction.  He would occasionally make a sound - maybe some would say he bellowed.  He kept looking our way and making that sound.
We thought that strange.
As we discovered, he was standing near a dead calf.  We couldn't initially see the calf, because of a dip on the other side of the road.  We don't know why the calf died.
I would have expected such behavior more from a cow if she had lost her young than a bull, but ....
We've never seen such behavior before or since.  The cattle still routinely leave the area when we walk out toward the road.
I think he was trying to get our attention to help the calf.

The Killing Field - Jim Stramler, extraordinarycopywriter.com

This fall we had a major invasion by an insect known as the Boxelder bug. We seemed to have been unusually blessed by their presence. None of our neighbors had this problem.

They are actually a relatively attractive bug - black with red on their wings.

According to a University of Minnesota web page, its technical name is Boisea trivittatus. It's been a while since I studied biology, but I wonder if that means it came from around Boise. In any case, it's certainly not a trivial bug.

These bugs are said to live in the Boxelder tree, from which they get their name. The tree is a member of the Maple family. I don't know if we have any of those Boxelder trees around, but we do have maples, which is supposedly another of their possible hangouts.

In a matter of a day or two, hundreds of them appeared, generally on the west and south sides of our house. I began taking them out - the result in one area is the killing field. Each dark spot on the driveway is one dead bug.

These bugs are said just to be a nuisance by their numbers - supposedly just looking for a warm place (like our house) to survive the winter. Fortunately, we've never found one inside.

They are also said not to bite humans, but I felt something like one biting me after landing on my neck during one killing session. That one died a moment later in retaliation.

These are not the smartest things in the world. Evolution has not treated them kindly. Some animals who develop coloration to blend with their environment tend to survive in greater numbers. These critters seem to prefer landing on white surfaces so they stand out rather than blend with their environment.

If I miss one or there is another nearby, they fly off for a few seconds, then return to a nearby spot - even onto my white t-shirt - like just waiting to be killed. It's amazing they've survived in these numbers with such characteristics.

I did observe some behavior which might support evolutionary theory, though. As I killed those I could reach from the ground, those higher up on the house survived. The next day, more were higher up than before - but still on a white surface.

California earthquakes

Having grown up in California, I experienced many earthquakes.
The first one I remember was the 7.5 magnitude quake in Kern county in 1952.  (I realize I'm dating myself here.)  I was too young to realize what was happening, but I was playing in our back yard at the time and remember seeing the fence sway.  I thought it was something strange.  It wasn't until that night that I learned it was an earthquake - not that it meant anything to me at the time.  We were a hundred miles or so away from the epicenter, and didn't have any damage.
I experienced several more small to moderate quakes over the years in Los Angeles.  Then experiencing the 6.6 San Fernando quake in 1971, when I lived only miles from the epicenter, was quite a shock - in multiple senses of the word.
I had just awakened to my alarm to get up for school when it hit.  I was still in bed.  I thought the building I was in was going to come down on top of me.  Fortunately, it didn't.
A few months after that, I had a brief dream.  I still remember that dream today.  I was down near the coast when a tremendous earthquake hit.  Suddenly, after the shaking, I was about 25 feet under water, with broken-up freeway concrete all around, trying to get up to the surface. 
I don't know whether that dream was due to a holdover stress/emotion (PTSD in today's terms) from the San Fernando quake or something else.
Earthquakes are difficult if not impossible to predict.  At the time, if I remember correctly, someone predicted a high probability of a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault within the next 30 years.  We're now 40-some years later.  It obviously hasn't happened.
My schooling and work took me away from Southern California.
But ever since then, I've tracked earthquakes around the world.  Today, I try to check the USGS site for US and world earthquakes occasionally.  I've noticed the quake numbers increase in the midwest US around Oklahoma.

So to the reason for this post. 
In tracking earthquakes, I've also noticed a couple of other things.
I wonder ...

First, there is a large gap along the western coast of North America in recent (i.e. last 100 years or so) great earthquakes (magnitude 8,0 or above).  There have been great earthquakes in this region in the past.
You may have heard of the "Ring of Fire" around the Pacific Ocean.  It's a roughly horseshoe-shaped feature surrounding much of the ocean where the earth is very active - lots of volcanoes and other geological activity.
Several great earthquakes have occurred around this ring since 1900: 
- Chile (9.5, 8.8, 8.5, and just recently an 8.3)
- Ecuador (8.8)
- Indonesia, with the 2004 quake which killed an estimated 250,000 people from that and the tsunami (9.1, 8.6, 8.5)
- Japan with the 2011 quake which resulted in the tsunami still discussed today because of the Fukushima nuclear plant destruction (9.0)
- Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands, north of Japan (9.0, 8.5)
- The Aleutian Islands (8.7, 8.6)
- Alaska with the 1964 quake and tsunami (9.2).
But there is that gap at North America.

Second, the number of earthquakes greater than magnitude 2.5 in Southern California around the San Andreas Fault, especially near the Salton Sea, seems to have slowed over the last few weeks - at least by my observations.  For several weeks now, the little dots which appear around there to the Mexican border seem less numerous. (Link is http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/ for the current date if you want to check.)
Now one geological hypothesis is that smaller quakes can relieve the strain so bigger ones don't occur.  I saw a recent news report where that lower section of the San Andreas Fault has not slipped in a major way since the 1600s.
To the right I've inserted two weeks of earthquake data points. The first for the week preceding 9-12-2015; the second for the week preceding 9-25-2015.  (Unfortunately, I don't have images of earlier data showing the higher point count.)

Is this recent reduction of quakes in this section a precursor to the "big one" in Southern California?
And recently there was another prediction that there was a high probability of a major San Andreas quake within the next 30 years.  So what else is new?
Only time will tell.
But I wonder ...


Credits: images are from USGS.
Check my website at http://extraordinarywriter.com

About This Meditation Thing

(Sorry.  No picture this time)
Have you ever tried to meditate?
Were you successful?
I've tried it many times with many different sources over the years - starting with reading how-to books and following what they tell you to do, listening to tapes/CDs, participating in groups with a leader, or whatever.
It has never worked for me.
I don't think I have a Type A overall personality, but apparently I have a Type A mind/brain.  I can't get it to shut off for more than about 15-20 seconds.  It always goes to something that needs to be done ... something I'm concerned about ... something else I would like to do,  etc. 
If I am able to relax some, I'll occasionally go to sleep, especially in the afternoon or any time if I haven't had a good night's sleep.  Occasionally, but rarely, some good may come from this effort.  I'll get an idea for a story, a thought to include in my next project or email, or even an idea for this blog.
When I'm listening to a "leader" - whether in person, on the web, or on a CD, one thing really annoys and frustrates me.
It's the breath cycle timing. 
The leader gets you started by telling you when to breathe in and out.  That's okay.
But a problem appears after that.
He/she then goes off talking about something other than breathing in and out - the benefits of meditation, plant a suggestion, or something - while you are supposed to keep doing the breathe in and out thing.
When he/she comes back and resumes telling me to breathe in or breathe out, I'm almost always out of synch.
If he/she says "breath in" ... well, I may have just finished breathing in and I can't take any more air in.  I need to breath out or my lungs feel like they will explode.  Or he/she says "breath out" when I've just done that and need air.  Am I supposed to breathe out more and begin coughing like the lung capacity tests make me do?
I thought meditation was supposed to be relaxing.
It's amazing how often I come up out of sync with the leader.  It totally destroys any "mood" I did have when that happens.  I feel like I've just wasted my time thus far.  I might as well start again from the beginning on my own, burn my 15-20 seconds, then forget about it.
Even if he/she stays with the breathe in and out cycle, it's often in his/her or some other unknown timing.  And that rhythm may not be my natural rhythm.
Not a very relaxing situation conducive to meditation you think?  It's really frustrating for me.

Anyone else have these same problems?  Anyone know how to overcome this?
I've never seen this kind of thing discussed.

Please check out my website: http://extraordinarycopywriter.com.  Maybe there's something non-meditative I can help you with?

Have a great Labor Day weekend.

Marketing can be a tricky thing

When a company initiates a marketing campaign, it involves money, people, time, creativity, energy, and materials, among other things.
Obviously the company wants a positive effect.  Sometimes, though, it can have mixed or even negative effects.  The marketing may produce an effect it doesn't want.
While driving recently, I noticed a Sherwin Williams truck.  A graphic on the roll-up door shows a paint can flowing over an image of the earth and words saying "cover the earth".
I'm sure their intent was to promote the use of Sherwin Williams paints around the world for houses, offices, apartments, etc.
The words below say: "Ask Sherwin Williams"
So I would ask them:  Doesn't that in one sense also convey an image of pollution or environmental destruction?  Do you really want to cover the earth with paint?
Maybe not the best idea for a marketing/advertising image?

What companies have you seen whose advertising has had negative effects?