Finally we had over twenty-four hours of off-and-on rain, some of it rather drizzly, so the plants are renewed. This afternoon during a break, we walked over to the bank and PO, only it was more like swimming through the humidity!
I liked this panorama from the Hudson River Valley that JCB brought back from his trip this week to Montreal, which he drove to from the Newburgh NY airport. While he didn’t compose his itinerary with this in mind, it turned out to be extremely wise ’cause his passport’s expired, and he could drive across the border with it, but wouldn’t have been able to fly out of the country.
I know it’s a major change of topic, but I couldn’t keep from commenting on this article that discusses the argument that keeping old ladies around conferred evolutionary advantage. It kinda misses the point that larger family groups, or larger groups with significant social bonds have an evolutionary advantage—if the higher head count is in productive adults rather than children or ailing adults—over smaller social units competing in the same social landscape.
6 October 2007 at 4:37 pm
mouse's moom says:
You are definitely the expert when it comes to anthropology and your point makes sense. 🙂
However, I have to say that as an individual member of the population, I am *living* with the reality of heavy load-carrying! It’s not a bad thing. Now I am able to *focus* on tasks (of any sort) long enough to more or less finish them, at least once in a while. When my kids were at the height of teendom, I was lucky if I could focus for the length of time it took to get the garbage out to the curb at the appointed time.
Well, as usual, I don’t have exactly the right words, except that maybe there are multiple factors at work here, both individual and community-wide. 🙂
7 October 2007 at 10:12 pm
Pooh says:
I read something many years ago about why humans are the only species that goes through menopause. Apparently, even among the chimpanzees, bonobos and other apes, females continue to be capable of bearing children right on up until near death, unlike humans. What I read was very similar to this article, except longer. It might have been a book, or maybe an article in Scientific American.
Apparently, this is NOT one of those times when an “elder” can pass on the wisdom!
Oh well.