Hand Grenades, Canaries and Christmas Carols

Today I introduced Quicksilver to the joys of The Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons.

Growing up and watching these cartoons, I somehow came to the conclusion that hand-grenades were a regular item of commerce and were a commodity that would be easy to obtain as an adult. Alas, if only it were so.

Most of the segments we watched were from the 1960-to-1964 time-frame.

In 1960 there were still cats and dogs alive that had been born while WWII was raging. Everybody who was over the age of six and not in a coma knew what a "Stuka" was, for instance.

1960 was seven years after the Korean Conflict went from HOT to SIMMER.

In retrospect, there were probably a lot of "off-books" devices floating around in 1960. If you were a trustworthy sort of fellow and were known to be able to keep your mouth shut, you could probably shoot grease-guns and toss pineapples and potato-mashers and play with det-cord, perf-caps and Serious Putty.

Canaries in Coal Mines

I know that I have at least one reader who is a young lad of less then fifty so please humor me if I tell you things that you already know.

Coal miners were known to take canaries into coal mines because the small birds were exquisitely sensitive to toxic and explosive gasses. A miner might attribute a headache to the home-brew he drank the night before, but if the canary went Tango-Uniform, they all hauled anatomy out of the mine and did not go back into it until after it was thoroughly ventilated.

In real-life (whatever that is) there is a dramatic tension between wanting systems that perform without providing irritating or distracting feedback .AND. the need to know when a system approaching massive failure.

Idiot lights are one solution to the problem. In biological systems like streams, orchards and fields we use indicator species.

In a stream there is a hierarchy of species that will tell you much about water quality. Grayling are the most demanding of oxygen and water quality. When they die off you know that the system is slipping.

In an approximate and descending order you might have Brook Trout, Rainbow Trout, Brown Trout, Walleye, Smallmouth Bass, Northern Pike, Channel Catfish, Suckers, Common Carp, Gar, Bowfin, African Walking Catfish.

In the orchard, apple trees are very sensitive to the toxins produced by Black Walnuts. Apple trees are expensive at $20-to-$60 a tree. A rational person would find a less expensive, highly-sensitive plant (i.e. Canary in the Coal Mine) if he were to trench around the orchard and wanted some assurance that all of the roots had been cut or if he wanted to visualize the leaching and decay of the toxic compounds.

Stated another way, why would I risk killing a $20 tree when I can test the soil with a tomato or marigold plant that cost me a nickel and a delay of a year?

Christmas Carols

 I am 60% certain this is in Spanish

Handsome Hombre picked up Quicksilver this afternoon.

Quicksilver is of an age where language is absorbed with lightning speed. It does not seem like that because she hasn't figured out how to make all of the consonant sounds. You need a keen ear to decode when she asks "Please close the door" for instance. But all of the signs are there that it is all going into memory.

I asked HH what some of his favorite Christmas Carols are. HH grew up in a very religious family in a country where everybody speaks Spanish. Of COURSE they sang Christmas Carols.

I shared that this is an outstanding time to teach those songs to his daughter. Looking at his face, it was clear that the idea had never crossed his mind.

"Gimme a list. We can listen to Christmas Carols sung in Spanish just as easily as we can watch Roadrunner cartoons." Melody, meter and rhyme are all mechanisms that help our brains retain information. Song and verse are how information was passed down before the written word. It is hardwired into our brains. Not exploiting what God put there is to be a wastrel of the basest sort.