Final Words

 

When I was a kid, I said that Jane Goodall had my job — to go to Africa and study animals.

But I was wrong. It was her job.

Field study all day, every day in the jungle? I wouldn't have the patience, skill, or fortitude to do what she did.

I would be screaming from the hilltops that it took me 6 months to get close enough to a wild troop to really study their behavior. Yet, all day, Goodall would sit or travel with her binoculars, trying to make contact with a wild troop of Chimpanzees. She spent her evenings writing up her notes.  Her hiring company knew that sending a young woman out into the jungle was unheard of, so, her mother, her number one supporter, went along. The mother would cook, and she and Jane would, ceremoniously, have a small glass of whiskey before they went to bed.

"As I traveled more, we'd each raise a glass at our respective 7 p.ms. It was a way to feel connected. Now I toast her up in the clouds every evening."—Jane Goodall.

Goodall said she knew she was safe in the jungle.

Her benefactor, Louis Leaky, curator of the Natural History Museums in Nairobi, saw in Jane, the Secretary they sent to him, the patience and love of animals he knew was necessary for the job as a field researcher. She said she was never bored. Nature provided endless entertainment.

She did what she set out to do. She made contact with the chimpanzees and changed the definition of a human being. You watch. You'll see it.

I devoured her book, In the Shadow of Man, when it came out. It was her first account of the field study and told of the time a chimpanzee, Mr. Gray Beard, came close enough to her to allow his shadow to fall upon hers. 

She declared as a child that she wanted to go to Africa and study animals. And her mother never discouraged her.

She believes that we are all put here on the earth with a purpose. We may not know what it is, but our presence matters.

Last night, my husband and I watched/listened to her last interview on Netflix. "Famous Last Words: Dr. Jane Goodall," with Brad Falchuk. They recorded the interview in March on the condition that it would only be aired after Goodall's death.

What a woman!

How can we not love the animals, and want to preserve our planet?! It seems that it isn't a priority for us anymore, but this little lady, having seen many things in her 91 years, admonished us not to lose HOPE. If we lose hope, we are lost.

We have come out of hard times before—we will come out of it again.

Notice how grand the Earth is and how thin the breathable atmosphere surrounding it is.

 

  

Our atmosphere is so thin that our mountains protrude through it to such a height that you need to carry Oxygen with you to climb Mt. Everest. ("Earth's breathable atmosphere H is about 8500 meters. Mount Everest is 8850 meters high, so it does poke out of the atmosphere, but barely.") 

A friend, who climbed to the base camp of Mt. Everest, really, she did, I was blown away, she was slight of build, one you would never guess had that fortitude, said we climbed high, slept low. In other words, they climb higher than their intended camping place, then they descended to camp so they slept at a lower altitude than the day's climb. That gave their body a chance to adapt.)

A trip up to around 10,000 feet has us breathing heavily. And Altitude sickness is a real threat.

 

Save our air. Do not pollute it. It is our life.

 

And do not die with the song within you unsung.

I Have to Face It

 “Life is what happens while you are making other plans.” –John Lennon, “Beautiful Boy”

 

And look at what a sweet potato contributed to our plant basket. It’s growing no matter what.

 

 I have something new to think about regarding the Star Wars Trilogy.

 Star Wars writer George Lucas made “The Force” a household phrase.

 And it has presented the idea that some people are born with more of it than others.

 And it can be inherited.

 Well, well, well, that leaves some of us poor peons out, doesn’t it?

 

In speaking with a teenager, I noticed that they believed in a “Dark Side,” as if darkness were a tangible entity.

 

Darkness is the absence of light.

When you enter a dark room, you turn on the light switch.

 When you turn it off, it is dark.

 There is no dark switch.

The sun emits light. It is a source of light. It creates light within itself through a series of atomic reactions that generate heat and, consequently, light. Most of what we call stars are suns. The planets are reflective bodies. (How can that be? A barren piece of dirt lights up? It beats me.) And we’ve seen pictures of the Earth glowing as seen from outer space.

 Move away from the sun, and it gets colder and dimmer until it is cold and dark.

 Hold up a mirror and you can reflect light. Light reflects on water and metal objects. If a cloud obscures the sun, it appears to darken it, but it doesn’t put out the light; the light is shining behind it.

 After we discovered we could move electrons along a wire (electricity), we could attach a light bulb to the end of it and have light. (Thomas Edison discovered 1,000 ways not to make a light bulb, until he finally hit on the idea—a wire whose electrons were dancing, excited, moving, would glow. It was hot. Heat puts out light.  (It was more complicated than that. He had to encase it in a glassed-in vacuum.)

I had to go into the house and ask my husband about electricity, and when we tried to reverse engineer it, we ended up with FIRE.

 Fire gave humans a way to light up the world. Energy. Heat. Light. That glowing ember would warm us, cook our food, and light the cave.

 Learn how to make fire, or a way to carry it away from a forest fire.

Find substances that would burn and can be contained. Ah ha, a torch. A Candle.

Remember, there is no dark switch.

 It is only the absence of light.

 

We use the metaphor of light and dark to represent good and evil.

 

The Force are words taken from The Source, which is in all of us.

 1.     Yesterday, a precious friend lost her life to Pancreatic cancer. She was a “Soul sister.” I miss her already.

      2. Today, I ventured into Internet territory, and bumped into another lost hero—Jane Goodall passed away today, October 1, 2025. I have followed that lady’s career ever since she was a young woman who had the dedication and fortitude necessary for the anthropologist David Leaky to take a chance on a young secretary and send her into the jungle to study chimpanzees. She changed how we define human beings, who were once described, among other things, as tool users. Well, Ms. Goodall discovered that so are chimpanzees. 

 

    Through her field observations and books, Jane Goodall became a legend.

 

 

3.  “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the life of the electric vehicle tax credit.”Gone now:  Up to $4,000 off electric and hybrid vehicles.

 I wanted a little electric car my husband and I could bop around town in, but opted to have the pickup repaired instead. Now I have lost the chance for that reduction in the sale price.

 However, this past year, our daughter and I bought a hybrid after our car croaked.  

 “Former President Joe Biden, in 2022, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, for the duration of its three-year life, the electric vehicle tax credit eased the financial burden for manufacturers and consumers as Americans embarked on the transition from fossil fuel-dependent cars to the more climate-friendly electric option.”— Ece Yildirim, Published September 30, 2025.

 

There is light shining behind the darkest cloud.

Mummerings

 

 

Murmuration of Starlings

 

As I searched the internet for a picture of a murmuration of starlings (coordinated flight--scroll to the bottom to see more) I wondered why I had not taken a picture of a group I saw a couple of mornings ago as I sat beside an open field drinking a cup of hot mocha.

I watched, not thousands, as sometimes happens, but hundreds of starlings swirling in the sky, weaving in and out, dancing in harmony, and wondered how in the world they could do it. How could they fly so fast and precisely without running into each other? They must have been wearing little radio headsets.

They would do their dance, then drop all together into the field and disappear into the grasses where I couldn't see them, then, as though on cue, swoop up and dance again, only to drop again a few moments later. I hear this is a predator escape behavior, but from my vantage point, they seemed to be having a happy time.

Could we escape predators with such joy?

Jen Scenario wrote:

"Have you ever had an aha moment that completely blew yer mind? "Don't worry, be happy! Yes! I can choose to place my attention on the joyous instead of the heinous!... I'm gonna hug the shit out of everyone I see!"

Jen, you are masterful in reminding me to live in the now and find a happy place. Yes, I'm a spiritual being here to have a physical experience, although perhaps that physical part tells us to do something.

Be happy and get the job done. That's the challenge.

We were born into a physical body with hands to clean up messes and a voice to tell the young ones to be vigilant.

Many of us have felt in bondage for many years. First, the COVID-19 lockdown separated us from our social group, which helped solidify our belief systems without a conversation with the other side. Many of us lost jobs, thus threatening our security; our kids weren't going to school, graduation from high school wasn't the joyous event it was for us, and newly birthed babies were sometimes removed from their mothers as a health precaution. And the possibility of death was staring us in the face.

It’s no wonder we went a little crazy.

Prolonged stress does that to people.

And then came the arguing, name-calling, lies, and innuendoes that have been a normal part of the media. And we listened—after all, our brains were already fried.

I, for one, felt beaten down. And I questioned the teachings I have endeavored to incorporate into my being for years.

That teaching is that we are masterful creators here to create our lives, not to be victims of circumstances.

Didn't we all come here as exuberant little spark plugs ready for an adventure?

We know the earth will go on without us—it has done so for 4 billion years, but the plants, animals, and people living right now are important to me. Future generations are vital to me. Native Americans believed in planning for seven generations ahead. I've heard that post-menopausal women, while no longer reproducing (what dear old biologists and misogynists told us was our purpose), now we are seeing that the older women, specifically, are here to see that their progeny continues. 

For women who think broadly, progeny extends to all life.

Ancient mythology told us that males and females once rolled about in ecstasy, but the controllers, seeing how powerful they were together, split them apart. (People who are talking about soulmates are talking about that phenomenon. They are seeking their other half.) Because we are separated, we have had a war of the sexes ever since, making both male and female weaker and the controllers more powerful. (Why do controllers try to keep women down?)

Richard Bach, one of my favorite authors, wrote," If you wonder if your mission in life is over, and you're alive, it isn't."

I'm alive.

And I wonder where I fit into this scenario. The famed Naturalist Jane Goodall said that we all affect the earth each day we walk on it. With Douglas Abrams as her interviewer, Jane Goodall wrote a book titled HOPE. In reading it, I wonder how to spread hope.

Jane Goodall calls herself a naturalist.  A naturalist, Jane says, "looks for the wonder of nature—she listens to the voice of nature and learns from nature as she tries to understand it. Meanwhile, scientists are more focused on facts and the desire to qualify. How is it adaptive? How does it contribute to the survival of the species? As a naturalist, you need empathy, intuition, and love. You've got to be prepared to look at the murmuration* of starlings and be filled with awe at the amazing agility of these birds. How do they fly in a flock of thousands without touching at all?"

I do not have the notoriety of Jane Goodall nor the interviewer's skill of Douglas Abrams. However, I am persistent in this struggle for survival. And Goodall emphasizes that HOPE is a survival mechanism.

HOPE has kept us alive for 300,000 years. "HOPE," says Goodall, "is like a bright star at the end of a dark tunnel. We should not wait for it to come to us. We have to go get it."

It is spring, or almost so. Peaceful spring. I see buds on the trees, and the Cameo flowering quince bush shows its coral-colored buds; if HOPE is withering, we can water it if that's what it needs. Yet HOPE is something that lives inside of us. It's a belief, an emotion—even animals have hope. For example, when your dog sits expectantly for you to get the leash, hope is paired with the belief that you will take him for a walk. The cat hopes you will open the door to let him out. HOPE is also like our heart or brain, organs that will die without the necessary chemicals.

HOPE needs to know we care for it. HOPE needs to know that we will keep it alive. Nelson Mandela couldn't take any action when he was in prison, but he kept hope in his heart. He knew he had a support system out in the world helping him. If we have our hands tired, we need others who don't.

When we have our voices silenced, such as reprisals for speaking out, when we have books banned, when we have the media owned and controlled, we need the free ones to speak. We need those with a voice to rise and proclaim loudly, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore."

Almost every citizen has good reason for suing the highest leaders in the land for constitutional abuse, emotional abuse, possibly voter fraud, overstepping Presidential privilege, changing laws to benefit the leaders personally (like threatening to abolish the two-term Presidential law) for rounding up our people who came here seeking a better life, for frightening children that they might be separated from their parents, for voting refusal without proof of any wrongdoing, possibly for buying an election, for interfering with physician-patient confidentiality. I'm sure you can think of many others.

Geesh, look at how that would help the people if they pulled wealth from the billionaires and gave it to the people—we could pay off our mortgages, we could afford a larger apartment, we could pay for our kids’ education, we could care for our elders if they need special care. We could afford eggs.

Power and Money are at the bottom of the jar, like a banana a little monkey will grab and won't let go of, even when it means he will get caught.

We are the people. Let's get our act together.

 

*Murmuration: (Named because often you can hear the murmurs of wings before you see the birds.) The magic number is seven: Each bird keeps tabs on its seven closest neighbors and ignores all else. Considering all these little groups of seven touch on other individuals and groups of seven, twists and turns quickly spread. And from that, a whole murmuration moves. From the journal PLOS Computational Biology, January 2013.

The Three Things in Control

• An attraction zone: "You will move toward the next guy."
• A repulsion zone: "You don't fly into his lane. Otherwise, you both fall."
• Angular alignment: "You need to follow your neighbor's direction."

(And these birds can process information faster than we can.)