This year I have found BOTH a Monarch and a Swallowtail butterfly caterpillar.
I could not figure out why the Monarch mother laid her eggs on some parsley that I nearly put in the blender to make vegetable juice, before noticing the caterpillar. Lucky for both of us, I did not have extra protein in my juice!
I finally did research and realized this was NOT a Monarch, but that the dill and parsley I had planted had succeeded in attracting a Swallowtail. The next day I found a Monarch.
I had them both for about a week when they spun threads to hang their chrysalli, and then shed their skins. The Swallowtail matches its color to the surroundings, in this case an unbleached coffee filter!
Eastern Swallowtail chrysalis above the coffee filter I had used to make it easier to clean out its “frass.” But it soon stopped eating and pooping, and went into this phase.Detail of swallowtail chrysalis. Eyes are at right. Note the threads anchoring the pupa at both the tail (left) and abdomen areas.
Early August, and I and a friend decide to take off for the north. I’ve lived in Michigan for 33 years, and never been more than a mile or so past the north end of the Mackinac Bridge. This time, we got as far north as Whitefish Point. We rode in separate cars, and I had to wait while he finished a business meeting before we hit the road. I went to the poor, rocky “private” beach advertised by the cheapest motel we could find by the time we tried to reserve for the last minute trip. And there awaited a Monarch sipping nectar from a thistle. What a beautiful site. I took some photos with my phone, as I hadn’t bothered to bring my good camera while I killed time. Slowly, I moved closer, expecting Mona to fly away at any moment. But she did not.
Monarch on a thistle, undisturbed, for the moment, by the human.A wider view!I think these are the “thick webbing” patterns, indicating female. But now I know what to look for. Time to sip some daisy juice!
Japanese Beetle Breathing Pore Scanning Electron Microscope Image – Original magnification 1640xBeautiful Shadow Patterns in Leaf Canopy on the Way to Tahquamenon Falls, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
It is in the description of both the great, and the invisible, the ends of the spectrum of knowable size, that the truest model of the physical world may be constructed.
It is when you can see that the shapes of the clouds are repeated in the ripples of the surface of a lake, as well as the layers in a sedimentary rock, that you are seeing the condensed layers of the structure of reality.
It is seeing The Face in the clouds, as well as in the outline left in a leaf damaged by the Morger Beetle, that you are seeing the epistemological layers of the structure of reality.
When you walk in nature, are you hoping to see the Shapwell Alkon? Then you are likely to be disappointed. When you walk in nature and notice the interplay of sharp and rounded, smooth and rough, light and shadow, sparkling and black, red and green, near and far, then you will be storing riches, and weaving yourself into the mystical layers of the structure of reality.
When you can see that the smallest of details are not necessarily small at all, then will you truly see.
Now Linda could think more clearly. Now her true thoughts came to the surface.
Linda’s nascent understanding of who she was started to grow.
She started to catch some of her perceptions on their way to being modified; on the way to becoming thoughts, feelings and knowledge.
Part C
Linda started to experience awe more often. She devoured the literature on consciousness. She learned that chimpanzees can covet their neighbor’s sexual partner. Chimpanzees can covet their neighbor’s social status. But chimpanzees can’t ask “Is there another I, besides the one in this body, limited to these sexual partners and this place in the social structure?”
Part D
Linda started seeing her limitations dissolve. Linda knew that she was no longer a toddler, a kid, a teen, a college student, an independent head of household, with all of those incumbent burdens.
Part E
Linda no longer saw the fields of green, the flowers of red. Instead she saw the blades of ancient grasses. She saw her far ancestors harvesting the few golden wheat seeds which clung to their stalks. She saw the flowers with the eyes of the bee, so much closer to their real glorious colors.
She saw, through the eyes of the mole, the worms wriggling under the dark earth.
She experienced the jubilation of Hypatia, at the knowledge stored in the modern library of Alexandria.
She experienced liberation from care, after sitting at the feet of Patanjali.
She saw the sunlight. She no longer needed artifice from a venerable human to create interest in the world.
Part F
Linda walked to the fridge. She still needed to eat. She saw that old magnet declaring Hare Krishna! This time she understood. This time she knew what awaited her, the next time she chanted the name.
Part G
This time she knew that she didn’t need to chant the name. She was home.
A short elaboration on how to cultivate clear and creative thinking…
Compare-Contrast
Connect-Create
Choose with Confidence!
Friends, this is how the human mind works. To compare is inherently to contrast. By doing this basic mental activity, we create new connections in our minds. The burst of creative energy also increases the chances that the tendrils of our mind will reach outside of our skulls, and contact the collective consciousness. This improves the quality of information coming into our awareness, and helps us create multiple options for action. This Compare Contrast Connect Create procedure also allows us to Choose the best option more reliably.
In other words, with known confidence. Even if sometimes the best confidence available is low.
Way back in 1974, I was already a nerd. I had a summer internship at the National Bureau of Standards (now called the National Institute for Standards and Technology or NIST). My posting was to the micro-calorimetry lab, where I got to work on a project to determine the heat of reaction of the luciferase based chemical reaction that happens in the tail of a firefly.
At one point, we actually put a live firefly- (this is not the kind we used) in the calorimeter, and watched the heat being given off by the insect. It was a very sensitive instrument, and the energy graph was pretty ragged. But then there was a big spike. The whole unit was opaque, so we couldn’t see anything, but we figured that the firefly was lighting up at that point. Who knows, maybe it was just mad at us and trying to get out. We released it, unharmed. Not so lucky were the ones that got killed for their tails. I wondered if they paid little kids to go collect them.
I was informed of the chemical reaction that allowed the fireflies their trick. That had already been figured out years ago!
It was a fun summer. I realized then that I did not have the patience to work as a scientist, and decided to go to engineering school instead. Twenty years later, I ran across an article in a technical journal about how scientists had finally managed to do something practical by using this compound to make a field kit to measure oxygen levels in streams and other bodies of water.
What I had realized years before was that the scientists were just having fun.
Nothing wrong with that. So did I. And I am still working in the field.
They didn’t pay us much. If we didn’t have family need, we got I think $12.00 a week. It almost paid my part of the gas money I gave to the janitor and the technician who gave me a ride out to Gaithersburg. The janitor was a down to earth, friendly guy. The technician was more of a grouch. I wonder what they thought of me. There were not too many females in technical fields then. Even less than today.
But if it’s exploring, you have to see things in a new light, even if the things you are seeing are not new, or even new to you.
Every day, our experience reinforces some characteristics of who we think we are, and also offers us the chance to change.
I like to explore insects that I find lying around dead, using my microscopes.
Insects have fascinating structures. Here is a series of scanning electron microscope photos of a bee head, zoomed in to see the ball joint that lets the bee control the position of its antenna.
Note the varying length of the hairs. Those that would cause interference otherwise are shorter!Zoom of short hairs on bee antenna.
This last image was obtained at 500x original magnification. Note the 100 micron scale in the upper right. That is 0.1 mm.
When you are looking at something at even 50x, there’s a lot to see! You have to learn to see what’s interesting.
It’s important to remember that the point of admiration is inspiration. That’s inspiration, not imitation. It’s difficult to discern the difference. Humans are primates and primates have a system of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are part of the system we have evolved to help us understand other people’s experiences. Mirror neurons provoke emotions in the viewer. When the system is working properly, the provoked emotions are like the emotions of the viewed. Thus, mirror neurons are the biological foundation of empathy.
This is a necessary and useful part of the system we have developed to maintain social structures. Even those of us who feel like hermits couldn’t survive if we’ve never been conditioned by society. Humans have too many degrees of freedom for that. Too many options to respond to the impingements from the world. We need to imitate before we can become inspired, thus lighting the candle of others’ inspiration.
The way to distinguish imitation from inspiration must be a function of the emotions. If the imitation provokes upliftment, joy, bliss, peace, it becomes inspiration, and then admiration follows.
“Who could look at these pictures and not believe in God?” my Muslim friend asked. My Christian friend had expressed a similar idea as a statement. I wasn’t going to disagree with either one.
Figure 1: Digital Color Photo of Moth Body: The wing was pulled off, stuck onto an electron microscope stage, and coated with palladium.
Indeed! Insects are always interesting to look at in a scanning electron microscope. But the beauty of this dead moth far exceeded my expectations.
I save dead bugs when I see them, for educational purposes. This poor moth had been sitting around for quite a while, before I decided it’s time had come.
Figure 1 shows the moth in question, after I had broken off one of its outer wings, and taped it down to an electrically conductive specimen holder (aluminum) and sputter coated it with palladium to render it electrically conductive. A kindof boring motley brown, but surprising orange and white on the hidden pair of wings.
The moth wing was also surprising in how soft it felt when I broke it off.
If you zoom in to Figure 1, taken with a Olympus Tough Gear 5 digital camera, in microscope mode, you can see that the individual scales have different colors. This camera is currently available on Canon’s website for $500.00. It can do a lot of things. It will also take me a while to make it do what I want! (It’s pretty complicated.)
Figures 2 – 4 show additional views, obtained with my scanning electron microscope, at magnifications up to 6000x. But it is still impossible for me to tell if the “holes” are empty, or filled with a thin film of some sort.
Figure 2: Center of length of the wingFigure 3: Note scalloped scale edges.Figure 4: Note lacy structure. Are the holes empty or filled with some thin film?
Figure 5 shows the pointed end of the wing, where it used to be attached to the rest of the body.
Figure 5: The wing at the “shoulder” attachment point.
The different shapes of the feathery scales are beautiful. Figures 6 and 7 show how the scales are attached to the underlying shell of the insect.
Figure 6: Detail of how the individual scales are attached to the shell of the insect.Figure 7: Broken off scale. How like a leaf!
I don’t know the cause of death of the moth. I found it whole, so maybe it simply came to the end of its life span. I’ll never know. But I honor the moth, the miraculous world we live in, and the “ugly beauty” of this plain insect.
