This could be the happiest day of my life...

I have discovered flying snakes.
Which bring me about as much joy as footage of swimming elephants.

http://homepage.mac.com/j.socha/video/mov_clips/863_cam_2.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwDAsJCB2Pg

a commentary on some north beach visitors

Edward Abbey

"The fat pink slobs who go roaring over the landscape in these over-sized over-priced over-advertised mechanical mastodons are people too lazy to walk, too ignorant to saddle a horse, too cheap and clumsy to paddle a canoe. Like cattle or sheep, they travel in herds, scared to death of going anywhere alone, and they leave their sign and spoor all over the back country: Coors beer cans, Styrofoam cups, plastic spoons, balls of Kleenex, wads of toilet paper, spent cartridge shells, crushed gopher snakes, smashed sagebrush, broken trees, dead chipmunks, wounded deer, eroded trails, bullet-riddled petroglyphs, spray-painted signatures, vandalized Indian ruins, fouled-up waterholes, polluted springs and smoldering campfires piled with incombustible tinfoil, filter tips, broken bottles. Etc." (Postcards from Ed, pp. 66-67).

The Goodness of Snakes

So I am very excited about the classes I am teaching at the Center for Wildlife Education in Corolla, NC. One is on Nature Journals, allowing me to combine my love of nature with my love of art and writing. It is perfect. And the other I am starting is a course on Snakes. I love snakes. Very much. Perhaps I always was oriented towards them...or perhaps it was being raised by a father bringing home snakes that he found on the side of the road or in our yard, so that my sister and I could hold and keep them for a day or two. But the fear of our society towards snakes (especially women, which gets into a whole other topic I could go into even more) certainly is a typical case of fear resulting from a lack of knowledge and understanding. Humans fear what we are ignorant of. And so, in the same human pattern of racism, sexism, homophobia, and ethnic prejudice, this particular species is seen as inherently bad and feared.

So I am researching for it, and looking up the benefit of snakes in their respective habitats. And I googled "the goodness of snakes"....and there was not one result. This is shocking! Nowhere, on any webpage, is there the phrase "the goodness of snakes." This is a very sad thing. I shall endeavor to change that! Along with people's mentalities towards them :)

How could anyone resist such an adorable little face?

Quote from Liberty Hyde Bailey

“Lessons for the Farm Home: ”
I would not limit the entrance of women into any courses of the College of Agriculture; on the contrary, I want all courses open to them freely and on equal terms with men.... Furthermore I do not conceive it to be essential that all teachers in home economics subjects be women; nor, on the other hand, do I think it is essential that all teachers in the other series of departments shall be men. The person who is best qualified to teach the subjects should be the one who teaches it...I hope for the time when there will be as many women in the College of Agriculture as there are men.