Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall

Book Report: Holy Sh*t

I’m way behind on book reports, and I want to catch up before I flee Texas for a couple of weeks again. So let me share this delightful volume that Lee got at the bookstore/coffee shop in Rockdale (one of the few reasons I would volunteer to go there).

Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing (2013) is worth looking for in your local used book store. Melissa Mohr has a fine way of blending academically rigorous prose with sneaky bits of humor. For little linguist Suna, this was a delightful and engaging combination.

I’m sure my friends are glad I finished reading it, because I was compelled to regale my family and friends (and complete strangers who were willing to listen) with tidbits about the origins of curses and swear words. I feel quite educated in how the English language developed its words not fit for polite company.

I was extra glad that Mohr started out with how the Romans used swearing in Latin. I learned some good Latin and laughed a lot at their creative bathroom scrawls. Actually, they scrawled on all the exterior walls, too. I also learned more about their sexual practices than I did before. I’m not putting that stuff in the blog, though.

The main point of Mohr’s research was that what US and British society found to be the most offensive type of words has changed over time. early on you could babble on and on about shitting and fucking, but you’d better watch your tongue when uttering oaths or insulting God. The worst was to swear by God’s body, like God’s blood! They felt that you truly hurt God when you did that.

As time passed, oaths and swearing became less of a touchy subject. Nowadays we swear to God or whatever, and most sects don’t get up in arms. It’s the bodily functions that are taboo. Now we pass gas, have a bowel movement, urinate, and copulate. That’s all thanks to our Victorian ancestors.

The history of what was allowed under what circumstances is fascinating, though. You have to get used to reading all those “naughty” words, of course. It’s worth it. I haven’t laughed and learned at the same time to this extent in a long time.

I’m happy to lend it out once Lee reads it.

We All Should Know

What’s something you believe everyone should know.

Life would be better for all of us if we realized that we are all one big family on this earth and that we all have a place in the Big Picture. That’s not just people. It’s the whole ecosystem.

I try to think of the Big Picture frequently.

Maybe we’d all live and let live if we bore this in mind. We humans have different cultures, as do other sentient beings. It would sure be nice if there were more coexistence.

Who am I kidding?

I sorta wish the wind would just blow me away. But I’ll manage. You try, too.

We Were SO Worried

I haven’t been talking much about Goldie’s health in the last couple of weeks because she really hadn’t been doing very well (if you missed it, we had to have her left front leg amputated due to an aggressive osteosarcoma; she is only three years old). Shortly after getting her stitches removed, the area under the incision started swelling. Then one day, when she seemed better, she tried to run after cows, and that wasn’t good. She must have hurt herself, and she whined a lot and barely got up off the couch for many days. She stopped eating and looked so sad.

No photo of sad Goldie. Here’s the sunrise.

Lee and I both wondered if we had made the right decision to try to keep her alive and enjoy her for some more time. We didn’t like to see her looking defeated and in pain.

Lee took her back to the local veterinarian, Dr. Amy last Thursday, while I was in San Marcos. They ran some tests and looked her over. The consensus is that she did something that caused internal bleeding, but that it was clearing up on its own. The pain was from an infection (I’m not sure where), so she got antibiotics. And the reason she wasn’t getting around much was that her front leg hurt. Amy theorized that it had probably started before the surgery when she started relying so heavily on her good leg. What a mess!

So I spent the weekend enjoying plants and birds and such, but worried that I’d get a sad call from Lee.

Luckily, that is not the case. Goldie has been gradually improving since she started antibiotics. The swelling has gone down greatly, she is alert, she eats, and by gosh, today she acted pretty much like her pre-illness self. She came out of the house multiple times and walked around, sniffing and doing dog-like things. She walked up and asked me to pet her many times while I was working on the porch.

When I came home from a quick trip to the drug store, lo and behold, ALL the dogs were at the gate to greet me, even a smiling Goldie. That inspired a smiling Suna. This evening after work, I decided to go outside and asked if she wanted to go. Boom, she was up, and beat me to the door! When I was looking at birds (too windy to hear any!) and realized she was following me around, like normal.

She had been very slowly hobbling around outside, and mainly doing her dog business and lying in the sun a bit. Today her pace was normal. She even went up and down the steps, which she’d been avoiding. It has been a good day for Goldie. I’m hoping they continue. I even can tell her hair is growing back in. Let’s hope for more good days, weeks, and maybe months for our intrepid Golden Girl.

Woo hoo! Bird Excitement!

To me it was exciting, anyway. I finally heard, saw, and sorta photographed a Red-headed Woodpecker in Texas. I knew they were here, but they’d been eluding me all this time.

Yeah, only I could know that’s what’s in the photo. But Merlin identified it, and we all saw it flying between a live and dead tree. Tarrin sees them often. Now I have!

The dead tree, with a moody Black Vulture.

And as if that wasn’t enough, we saw Sandhill Cranes flying over on our way home. They must have been looking for a pond to land on. They are always a seasonal highlight.

Another bird highlight for me was getting to watch our local Belted Kingfisher do a big dive. It then politely sat on a limb in the back pond so I could practice using my new binoculars. Dang, they are good, even though smaller and lighter than my other ones.

At least you can tell this one is a Kingfisher.

Besides all the birding, it was a busy, busy work day followed by a busy horse lesson, where Apache made some progress. I was pretty tired from chasing my horses around, because though I’d successfully moved them from the front pasture but neglected to check if the gate behind the pens was closed. That was not fun, especially when Mabel tried to get in the trailer with Aragorn. I didn’t see that coming.

No photos of that action, so enjoy this morning’s sunrise. Huh. I took photos of both sunrise and sunset today!

Why Is Common Mestra So Common This Year?

The Common Mestra (Mestra amymone) is a butterfly I’ve been seeing very often this autumn. I went on and on about it the first time I saw one.

Since then, they’ve been everywhere, including parks I’ve visited, flitting here and there and enjoying the broomweed and frog fruit in particular. I’d never seen them before this year.

It’s pretty and orange on the underwings.

I’ve been trying to get better pictures of them, since I wanted to write about them. However, they are very busy looking for nectar or places to lay eggs, or something. I wonder if they’re able to find what they need, with no rain here all month.

You wouldn’t know it, but there are at least a half dozen in this photo of the Hermits’ Rest woods.

I looked up information on these delicate beauties. These Mestra live from our area down through Panama.

According to the descriptions in various websites, they like lantana flowers, but those are no longer blooming here. I go to wondering about their lifecycle this week as we saw dozens of Mestra at the Springtail Ridge hike.

This one shows the orange border nicely.

One of the women I was BioBlitzing with found a resource that said their host plant is Tragia or noseburn. I hadn’t looked up the common name for Tragia when I first read up on these butterflies. Suddenly it all made sense.

*Tragia urticifolia*, or Nettleleaf Noseburn growing in our woods.

This year was a really good one for this plant thanks to having more rain this summer than usual. This may have meant more Mestra eggs hatched this year than usual. All the women I talked to live in central Texas where there was this same rain pattern. They’ve all seen more of these than usual. One woman who’s been in Texas a long time remembered another year with lots of Mestra, then they went away until this year.

My guess is that good years for noseburn (not our most pleasant plant otherwise) mean good years for Common Mestra. I’ll be on the lookout next year to see if this is true.

After I got home from San Marcos, I was happy to get home to my birds and woods. I even heard a Swainson’s Hawk to greet me. I spent an hour or so taking photos of pollinators, since the Bioblitz ends today. I found more butterflies than I’ve been seeing lately, plus bees and wasps.

I look forward to a week with my dog and horse buddies and to ordering reading material to supplement what I learned last week, like Val Plumwood, Paul Taylor, and Paul Shepherd. I wrote those here so I won’t lose their names.

I Love to Walk, but

What is your favorite form of physical exercise?

Yes. Walking is my favorite exercise. That’s clear to anyone who reads this little blog. Second is horseback riding. You get exercise and don’t even notice, because your brain is so engaged.

I get itchy if I don’t get my walking in. That became very obvious when I had Covid and in the weeks afterwards when my stamina left. However, today I did a LOT of sitting, since this was the only day of the Texas Master Naturalist Annual Meeting when I didn’t have any field sessions. I walked around the hotel as fast as I could and got out for a ten-minute walk between sessions. Better than nothing, though, and it helped me make my move goal.

The oak tree I found in the parking lot is not native. It’s a Mexican white oak.

Let me say this; it was worth sitting around all day. I learned so much that I’ll use in the future today! This has really been a great conference, which I’m glad for since I’ve had to miss another conference with many friends.

Two of the sessions I attended were about interpretation. My mom would be pleased, since she always thought I was going to school to be an interpreter (I was a linguistics major). Note that the sessions were about interpretation of nature or historical locations. I want to be better at leading nature and bird walks at our new bird sanctuary.

Levels of experience you can help people achieve.

I have good ideas for stories I can tell to facilitate learning in different audiences.

Two other sessions I attended were about creatures I’m fond of, spiders and flies. Both were by the same woman, a nature writer whose stuff I’m familiar with from the Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine, Sheryl Smith-Rodgers. She’s entertaining, though her presentations are relentlessly paced. I could have used more depth.

I especially liked some of her videos, many of which she took herself. There was one on a peacock spider that was extra cute, and one extreme closeup video of a mosquito (which is a fly) getting blood out of someone. It was both fascinating and nauseating.

The other thing I learned was how to tell a male from a female fly. Females have a gap between their compound eyes.

I wish I had videos of these presentations so I could look at the pictures more.

Another session I learned a lot from was on what lives in the aquifer under San Marcos. They get samples of what comes up from an old artesian well and analyze them.

I knew vaguely that there were blind cave salamanders, but, wow, there are all sorts of living things under the water in the limestone. It ranges from shrimp to snails to relatives of pill bugs. They’re all blind and colorless.

I think my brain got full today. I’m glad I could just enjoy dinner with nice folks, including my chapter friend Linda Jo. They gave out many, many awards, and I got to stand up for hitting 1,000 volunteer hours last year. Of course, that was dwarfed by two guys who hit 30,000 hours. Linda Jo and I think we started too late to get to that one. Also, we have other things in our lives.

Our program got an international award, though, and our bat monitoring program was voted the best master naturalist program in the US. Impressed.

I’ve had a darned good time even if I didn’t get much exercise today. I do look forward to heading home tomorrow to find out how the animals and people are holding up.

Look! Clouds! Maybe someday soon it will rain.

Still Having Nature Thrills

My idea of a thrill may not be yours. For me, seeing a new natural environment with new flora and fauna is often thrilling to me. Today’s field trip was to Ringtail Ridge Natural area, west of San Marcos. What an interesting spot!

We did a Bioblitz as part of the Texas Master Naturalist annual meeting set up by the Nature Trackers staff. The park was big enough that we could all disperse and not be on top of each other. I ended up with three excellent birders, and a good time was had by all.

We heard and saw warblers, a Kestrel, and many Black-crested Titmice. Finding interesting plants was a little harder, because it’s so dry right now, but we could tell this place is beautiful in spring and early summer. The topography was interesting, with many berms and old stone walls.

This velvet-leaf mallow really has velvety leaves.

Most of the thrills came from insects, which we found plenty of. There were so many common mestra butterflies that in one place it looked like fairies having a convention. There were also many goatweed leaf wings and caterpillars galore. One caterpillar was huge. It looked like a big ole hotdog chomping on a vine. It’s a future Vine sphinx moth. Spectacular!

We also found nests and not just bird nests! There were many turtle nests, too, with little eggshells. We had fun.

Eventually we returned to the hotel, where I did two normal conference sessions, one on how to have difficult discussions as Master Naturalists and one on nightjars (like Chuck-will’s widows and nighthawks. Such interesting and little studied birds.

The dinner presentation was by Jeff Gessas, one of the leaders of the leaders of yesterday’s moving session. I loved watching him talk, as he reminded me so much of my estranged older son, also a philosopher. Geez. They’re the same age. Still, I learned a lot that resonated with me.

It was a fun day, and I even got to hang out with folks from my chapter a bit!

Our little contingent managed to get together.

Today My World Was Rocked

Oh I needed today. Words have failed me when I’ve tried to describe what I experienced, but I’ll try to summarize.

This morning I attended a field session at the location of the former Aquarena Springs tourist attraction, which has been lovingly returned to a more natural state by Texas State University and is now the meadows Center for Water and the Environment. Before it was an attraction, it was a site of a gristmill. Before that, it was a sacred site for native people who believed they were born from the springs.

I’d met the descendants of this tribe at a conference years ago. They talked about the Sacred Springs and how it had magical qualities. That’s why I wanted to attend the session on Field Environmental Philosophy As An Approach Towards Mindfulness and Reconnection With Freshwater Ecosystems. That’s a mouthful.

Oh my goodness. The session, which was led by three philosophy professors, was exactly what I needed to put together the seemingly disparate pieces of my spiritual practice, personal philosophy, and scientific interests. It’s biocultural conservation. The techniques the presentation demonstrated show how you can integrate mindfulness and connection with nature and scientific analysis. Bingo. That’s my goal.

I got a bit overwhelmed just standing at the sacred site. It felt like one of “my” places. I was deeply comforted and quite moved. One of the professors noticed. I said I felt connection, like ley lines. He said that’s because many sensitive people say the same thing! Eureka. I found my Texas home spot at last. (I know of two others, one in Florida and one in Wales.)

I no longer wonder if I shouldn’t be identifying birds while doing my breathing exercises. I feel validated in my drive to perceive the world around me in all the modalities. It’s just a great feeling.

Anyway, we did an observation exercise then came back and talked about it. I think the philosophers were ticked that so many of us were blown away by what they were sharing with us. There were so many great pieces of feedback and questions. I have many reading resources to look up now. I’m stoked.

I enjoyed hearing the birds and looking at the beautiful plants on this site, too. The university is doing great work to preserve this area.

The rest of my day was full of fine conversations with new and old friends and even some rest. I met interesting people in the vendor area and learned from them. Fascinating stuff about night sky preservation, fireflies, raptors, and native seeds. Bonus was meeting a woman who’s just published a book on karst and caves in this area, another interest of mine!

The Texas Master Naturalist annual meeting kickoff was back at the springs. I enjoyed the glass-bottom boat tide very much. I’m glad they kept the boats from the tourist days. Here are some fish and turtle photos.

After the boat I went into the aquarium area in the building on site. They had examples of all the fish we saw in the river, plus the Texas River Cooter turtles. The garfish were so cool. Plus there was an eel. I love aquariums.

I came on back before the nothing began and joined my friend Mike for a drink. I wish we could see him more often. I caught him up with the rest of our chapter members and he caught me up with his naturalist and ethics work.

I still have time to blog for you! Enjoy this dump of more photos of my day at the aquatic center.

Working for a Good Cause and Making New Friends

Whew. I’m a tired gal. But it was fun getting that way and I was rewarded with a pleasant evening.

It’s time for the Texas Master Naturalist Annual Meeting. So I drove to the Shield Ranch somewhere in Southwest Travis County or Hays County to start my activities. I didn’t really know what I was getting into, but it looked like an interesting spot in the field session description.

It had an interesting stump that looks like an animal head.

When I got there (after having to go through rush hour in west Austin) I found that the session included doing some dirty work. And there I was in my white shirt. Silly me.

That’s me in the white shirt holding the seed sack.

But we intrepid volunteers all had a good time, I think. We prepared ground with topsoil and composted horse manure (much lifting, wheelbarrow wrangling, raking and mixing). I mostly threw native plant seeds appropriate to the part of the world where the ranch is on top of that mix. It sounds easy but that seed bucket was heavy. My left arm is telling me that, right now.

Seed buckets. There was also rye grass seed.

Once that was done, mulch was used to hide the seeds from birds. This was on the roadside, where plants have not been growing. It should be really nice if it ever rains the seeds in. We did well!

After the work, we ate our sack lunches in the impressive dining pavilion. It’s all solar powered and all the water is harvested rainwater. There’s no air conditioning, but it was perfectly pleasant inside. And at one end was a garage door of windows that could be cranked open, to be replaced by screens. Very clever.

I ate with a very nice older woman named Annie who was Texan in the best way, full of stories of her farm upbringing and funny relatives. I just had the nicest time talking to her.

Beautiful little bluestem prairie area as seen from the garage doors.

After we ate we went on tour of the site, which hosts camps for underprivileged young people, we took a hike along the creek then up the escarpment to see the meadows. There were many interesting plants, though they were pretty shriveled from the drought.

Oh, I meant to mention that a Master Naturalist chapter did the welcoming and very decorative plantings around the facility. It’s all native plants, teeming with life, but as attractive as a traditional landscape. They did great work. photos are above.

The drive to San Marcos, where the meeting is being held, was quite enjoyable, mostly on back roads. There were many huge ranches with ornate fencing and gates. Combined with their concrete driveways, you knew lots of money was being used for these spreads. Also there were numerous neighborhoods of very large homes. Land must be less expensive in the Buda area.

When the hour-long drive ended, I collapsed in my very comfy room. It’s a corner suite, which matters because I’m at one of those atrium hotels with all the echoes. Most suites have windows facing the hallway, which is loud. Mine looks out in the back (quiet) side of the hotel, where I can see how much the area has grown since I came here 15 years or so ago for a UU women’s conference. I feel old!

I did venture back out, because we get two free drinks per night! I’m so glad I did, because I ended up talking to the woman in front of me in the drinks line for a long time. We ended up having a great conversation about all sorts of things, even horses! She’s learning dressage. I couldn’t have had a nicer time.

Now I hope I can sleep. I didn’t last night! That was inconvenient insomnia. Tomorrow’s field session involves mindfulness and wetlands. Hmm. And later, glass-bottom boats at the beautiful former Aquarena Springs.

I Hope We Can Learn from History

What major historical events do you remember?

I’m not ancient, but I was born in scary times. I remember the nightmares I had after the “duck and cover” drills that would not have saved my elementary school friends from an atomic bomb.

I remember the President getting assassinated and watching his funeral on black-and-white television. I liked the white horses.

I remember Walter Cronkite solemnly reciting war casualties and my parents’ friends crying over their young sons forced to be in that war.

I remember some years of hope, when I thought people were getting less racist, women were getting the same rights as men, and my gay friends were able to come out of the closet.

I was on a plane when the 9/11 horrors happened.

I noticed when Vladimir Putin was elected and quickly became dictator. It reminded of a time before my birth when a candidate in Germany stirred up the disaffected and angry populace to win his race, then immediately put his opponents in concentration camps. Then came the immigrants, the gays, the non-Christians.

I hope I won’t remember a time when history repeats itself. Again. More scary times.

We’ll see. Two weeks from now a choice will be made. Pray for peace and that cool heads prevail.