Jean Jacques

I finished The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson. It's an exceptional book that neatly ties together several scientific theories and makes some hopeful predictions. My personal discover of Dr. Wilson began with his marvelous books on ants, which are an interesting social insect with some similarities to other social species including humans.

Sunrise - Sunday, January 25, 2015

I've had a life long love affair with science instigated, I believe, by spending my summers exploring at Silver Lake near South Lyon, Michigan where my Mother's family came from. The cousins were exceptionally close as children but times moves on, people move away and the ties that we thought were strong, weren't.

Sunrise - Tuesday, January 27, 2015
 

Sunrise - Tuesday, January 27, 2015
 

In the last photo above I love the way that the sun shines on the water as it breaks through the clouds in the distance . Clicking on photos enlarges them.

When I got my first apartment soon after graduating from college I raised self-green  roller canaries - I had to have something alive biologist that I am. I bred them for several years until life got more complicated.

I recently found a canary and European Goldfinch breeder who lives down near where I used to live north of Detroit. Life is funny. I visited him on Sunday and brought back Jean Jacques, my new yellow, yes, old fashioned little old lady yellow, canary. (I've never had a yellow canary, probably because of the association in my mind with little old ladies -hey, I'm virtually "there" now so why not?) He's a happy color.

 

Jean Jacques is an example of the Malinois Waterslager canary which are originally from Belgium. I don't know how to record Jean Jacques; here are some of his distant relatives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hUztzO6bCY Isn't yellow a happy color, after all? We've had many, many sunny days this winter; the sun, the song, the clivia, the bonsai, the dogs, cats! Wow!

John James Audubon, the famous American naturalist who roamed the country painting American birds, was born in France, the illegitimate son of a French noble who was a soldier under Napoleon. Jean Jacques moved to the new country from France, changed his name to John James and stirred the conscience of thousands, now millions of Americans to explore nature, especially birds.

 

My "renaissance" interest is because of Christine who gave me a delightful book, The Big Year by Mark Obmascik; it's a book about recording on paper birds sighted in the course of travels over the course of one year. It's a hobby for those with lots more money than I have BUT I'm not complaining at all. I am enjoying doing what I can do on a modest scale in my own corner of the world - can a sphere have corners?

Life is good! Animals, Gardens, Books, good food.