Earth Day

buzz...buzz...buzz...

Dad is calling again, should I answer?

"Hi Daddy, what's up?"

"Ohh I'm just watching t.v. and was thinking about you, there is a show on Thursday night at 8 o'clock about orcas by Jean-Michel Cousteau"

. . .

Turns out that Orcas are very cultured. The matriarchal resident pods of the Pacific North-West are the pods that most of us know about. They stay with their mother's their whole lives and when a full grown adult male looses his mother, they have been known to mourn for weeks, sometimes dieing from lack of food. They have been known to help lost boatmen find their way and were sensationalized in the 1980's and 1990's by Keiko (Free Willy) who was taken from his mother in the waters of Iceland. Keiko was eventually returned to the Atlantic Ocean only to be rejected by the tight-nit pods of the area. He would eventually take his last breath on the coast of Norway.

There are other cultures of Orca all over the world. Orcas have the largest range of all the marine mammals but number fewer than 100.000 worldwide. The residents off the coast of New Zealand are not matriarchal but do stay in very tight nit pods of 20 or 30 individuals. They hunt baby baleen whales, sharks and manta rays. An orca might find a manta ray and call over another orca that is better at catching the rays. The second orca will then roll over on it's back and pick the ray out from under a rock and flip it on it's back, making the ray go limp. The two orcas will share the manta ray.

The calls of the orca are also cultured geographically. The calls of the Australian orca tend to sound 'twangier' (much like the people of Australia) than the calls of the transient pods or pods in other parts of the world. Orca have dialects down to the family level and do not tend to mix well with orcas that have a different cultures and languages. Some transient orca meet with 200 or 300 other orca to hunt huge balls of fish that gather near the North Sea. The year that the team went to film this Orca feeding frenzy, the orca didn't show up. Neither did the fish. The waters that at one time were teaming with fish and orca were almost completely deserted.

The second half of the two hour special was about salmon farming. The salmon farms of British Columbia have depleted the wild salmon from the rivers, and sea lice are infesting salmon spawn before they are ready, before they have scales. Salmon are the main food source for the resident Orca certain times of year. Salmon also feed the bears, the sharks and humans as well. Salmon are also predators of the deep. The fish, whales and even humans all contain alarming levels of toxins. I'm not sure what we must do about this, but I know that something has to change.

Yesterday was Earth Day. Save the Whales.

Informative Speech

I GOT A 95!!!!!! It was horrible though, I was so nervous, but my teacher didn't see to notice!!


Oh and my dad sent me a link to a post he did a few years ago. I really liked it and I don't think I read it the first go-around so... Here it is!

My speech today

Today I had my first speech in my, well, speech class. We have been talking about how communication works and how to avoid disagreements and to solve things rationally without fighting about it. I suck at this. I think about what I'm saying and how it will be perceived by the person I'm saying it to and somewhere along the way "shared meaning" is not achieved. I stopped writing and talking as much when we were going through that section of the class. So I have decided that studying the way I talk is nothing if not detrimental to my speaking habits. I will not be taking anymore speech classes after this. Not my thing.

So today I go in to class, all dressed up and nervous about my speech. I am thinking of all the different ways I can explain to my classmates "How Yoga is Beneficial to Students of all Athletic Abilities" (an informative speech). I show up to class almost 10 minutes late (my teacher comes in shortly after I do) and have forgotten my evaluation sheet. As we are getting organized my neighbor has an extra (YAY!) so I give my outline and evaluation sheet to my teacher and put my name at the bottom of the list of presenters. Mrs. PhD, my teacher, is in a particularly bad mood today. I am scared out of my mind. Mrs. PhD decides that we need to practice speaking so that the first time we are up in front of everyone is not when we are being graded. I'm first. I get up to the front and my heart drops into my stomach.

I completely forget what I am supposed to say. I cannot remember what my speech is even about.

I sit back down and wait until it's my turn to melt under the pressure of the spotlight.
Lucky me, we ran out of time.
Darn now I have to go through the whole thing all over again.

Just because...

Just because I need to take a break from writing my speech on the benefits of yoga on cancer patients.
Stress management
Freeing the mind
Freeing the soul
So I can put off studying for my lab practical concerning all the body systems of humans *and the pigs we dissected*
Veins and arteries
Ilium and plasmodesmatas
Cellular respiration
So that I don't think about weather or not the pictures I found of the whales being hunted to extinction would be considered "emotionally disturbing" or just "icky" by my speech teacher.
Babies taken from their mothers
Creatures we know nothing about
Destroyed
Wondering if this is really what I want.
Or if this is what I think I want.
Maybe both.
Or not.

Listen!!

I heard about peotry day after the fact and wanted to post something, but I couldnt think of a poem that i knew that would be good enough for me to post and really think about it. I found this in my Fundamentals of Speech book. I love it.

When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving advice,
you have not dont what I asked.
When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn't feel that way,
you are trampling on my feelings.
When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problems,
you have failed me, strange as that may seem.
Listen!
All I asked was that you listen.
Not talk or do-just hear me.
Advice is cheap:50 cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.
And I can do for myself;
I'm not helpless.
Maybe discouraged and faltering,
but not helpless.
When you do somethign for me that I can and need to do for myself,
you contribute to my fear and weakness.
But when you accept as a simple fact that I do feel what I feel,
no matter how irrational,
then I quit trying to convince you and can get about the business of
understanding what's behind this irrational feeling.
And when that's clear, the answers are obvious and I don't need advice.
Irrational feelings make sence when we understand what's behind them.
Perhaps that's why prayer works, sometimes, for some people,
because God is mute, and doesn't give advice or try to fix things.
God just listens and lets you work iit out for yourself.
So, please listen and just hear me, and, if you want to talk,
wait a minute for your turn; and I'll listen to
you.

I'm not sure if this peom is about God, or the opposite, but I like it.

Life and Death

The Japanese government conducts 'research expeditions'. On the expeditions they plan on killing marine wildlife. Whales. In 2007 they illegally and inhumanely used grenade tipped harpoons to brutally kill more than 1,000 whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary near Antarctica, using a loophole in the international moratorium on whaling that allows catching whales for so called "research" purposes.

50 endangered fin whales - the world's second largest animal & oldest living Mammal - as well as 935 smaller minke whales.

This article is dated but provides a starting point for this movement.


Don’t buy the argument that Japan’s motivation to continue whaling is about maintaining their culture or conducting scientific research as they claim……

QUOTE: “The Japanese have no tradition of crossing 3 oceans and two hemispheres in factory ships to slaughter these highly intelligent and defenceless creatures. The Japanese tradition was no different to that of many maritime nations (including Australia) in previous centuries that conducted whaling off their coasts and used the whale product for fuel and food”.

- Quote by Ian Campbell (Former environment minister of Australia - 19th August 2008)

This facebook group, while slightly racist, has the right idea.

I believe that if we get enough people, in enough circles of friends, on enough websites and gather these people and push this cause into the public eye, we can stop this inhumane practice. We can solve this problem. If mass media would devote air time to this cause, our government and governments around the world would hear us and the average person could push this out front. I ask you to please type a short email, write a letter, or make a phone call and repost this. Add to it and find things to help support this worthy cause. If everyone did something, there would be a lot of somethings out there. One voice gets lost in the crowd, 100 voices can be heard. The more people we get to back this cause, the louder it will be until we cannot ignore it anymore


I am a college student studying Marine Biology. I want to one day find the breeding grounds for the elusive blue whales. Now they are hunting Humpbacks and Fins, will they continue to more
endangered species next? When will this stop if we don't make them? My heart breaks for these
giants of the sea, these beautiful creature most people never even get to see. You cannot put a
humpback whale in a zoo or create an exhibit at Sea World for a Fin or Sperm whale. These
creatures must stay in their homes and since it is our fault that home is being destroyed, it is only right that we should take the steps necessary to ensure that they are not killed. Japanese Whaling Ships have been known to find pods of Sperm whales and wait for the adults to submerge to the deep so they can hunt and attack the babies. This is outright slaughter, cutting re-population efforts short right where it is most important. If this cause got the media attention if deserves, people all across the world would stand up and demand that this inhumane practice be stopped. I ask that leaders and followers alike demand that this issue be pushed into the public eye.

Do not sugar coat this issue, it is a matter of life and death.

Brandi

Every little girl wants a horse, I'm sure if you ask him, my Daddy would have plenty of 'cute' stories of me as a little girl, dressed up in a stuffed horse for Halloween, pretending my bicycle has a name and listens to me, her name was Starlight, she was a Palomino. I am not sure if you have heard about Junior, my uncle, but he is very ill in the hospital(I will elaborate in another post). Well one of Grandma's best friends, Martha, called my mom the other day because of all of this.

My mom, in turn, then called me. "Water Baby, do you remember a few years ago when Grandma bought that horse for Brandon?" Yes, I did, but I had all but forgotten about it. "Well Martha called and wanted to know if you wanted that horse, Brandon has never gone to see it, and Grandma won't mind."

And so I have a horse. My own horse. A horse that I can go see. Whenever I want!

Brandi is chestnut, kind of, she also has sploches of white, like she is greying, on her rump and shoulders. She has big brown eyes with blue rims and you can see the whites of her eyes. Martha thinks she is an appaloosa. Brandi hasn't been trained and barely walks on a lead rope without nipping at you. She is three years old and Martha spoils her like a baby. I hope that going to see her will help her stop nipping and maybe I can help train her.