“It isn’t the things that happen to us in our lives that cause us to suffer, it’s how we relate to the things that happen to us that causes us to suffer.”
—Pema Chödrön
From her interview with Bill Moyers in the PBS special: Faith and Reason. If interested, click here for the transcript or here to watch the interview
I realized that I’ve talked about a lot of the book characters including the crustacean, Carpus. But the biggest natural character, Narragansett Bay, I’ve failed to introduce to you. So before I get into the next book’s post about the Environmental Issues of Narragansett Bay, I should probably tell you a little bit about the place.
Many of you have probably never heard of it, unless you are old enough to remember Narragansett Lager Beer commercials from the 60s and 70s where they talk about making their beer on the shores of Narragansett Bay. But even if you remember the beer, you probably still didn’t have a clue where Narragansett Bay was.
So where is it? How big is it? And where did it get that weird name?
For some vital statistics, including such riveting things that only I find neat, like average salinity and flushing time of the bay, click here. (And by the way…29-31 parts per thousand, compared to the ocean which is 35 ppt; and 26 days)
If you’re a map kind of person, go to the Narragansett Bay Home page. There are maps for surfers, maps of eelgrass geographic data, restoration maps, lobster migration maps, maps of oyster disease prevalence, bay sediment distribution, and fishing areas, and my personal favorite, a series of maps showing the “house counts in South County Salt Ponds Watershed, from 1939 until 2003.” It’s a nice green map that gets redder over the years as the number of houses increase. So if you have nothing to do on a Saturday night, here you go! Actually, there’s lots more there than just maps, but that happens to be my favorite.
For satellite images you can zoom in and out of as well as road maps, go to Google’s map page for Narragansett Bay
Those of you who like your visuals more at “sea level” here’s the web page for Google images of the bay, including this really neat aerial view (as opposed to satellite) of the bay.
There is a great book online that covers everything from the bay’s history – ie people history: Indians, settlers, rumrunners etc., to its geological history – what the glaciers did to form it, what rocks the glaciers left behind, etc. It’s called: Narragansett Bay: A Friend’s Perspective. Again, if you’re like me and like tweaky obscure facts, go for it.
For those who are interested in Narragansett Bay and it’s survival, here’s some resources to check on:
· Save the Bay
· Narragansett Bay Estuarine Research Reserve System
· Narragansett Bay Estuary Program
· University of Rhode Island Environmental Data center
· SeaWeb
· Rhode Island Sea Grant
· University of Rhode Island Coastal Institute
Save the Bay blogs: Curt( executive director), Abby (Explore the Bay education staff), John (Baykeeper program)
Oh, so you still want to know where the weird name came from? It’s from the tribe of Indians who lived in that area for thousands of years, the Narragansett Indians. Yes, I did say, thousands. The tribe’s website indicates that archaeological evidence, rock formations, and oral history establish their existence in the region more than 30,000 years ago. Click here for the tribe’s website. In any event, the bay is named after them.
Ah, yes, last but not least, the BEER.
Narragansett Beer was made by the Narragansett Brewing Company. A bit of trivia – the Robert Shaw character in the movie, Jaws, apparently was holding cans of Narragansett Beer. Apparently the Falstaff Brewing Company bought it out in 1965, and it changed hands a few times over the years before closing its doors. Short version, the brand was bought back by a small group of investors in 2005 and is now available locally in the Southern New England region.
Now that you’ve met Narragansett Bay, I can return to the Technical posts for Under the Pier. Next up: The Environmental Issues of the Bay. Until then:
I leave you with this link, which is a picture looking out at a buoy on the bay at sunset. Pull up a chair, crack open your Narragansett Beer, and enjoy.
I was just standing bleary-eyed at the kitchen sink staring out at the back yard when I saw movement on the pond’s dam behind our house. Looking closer I spotted 4 young female deer, strung out in a straight line across the dam. I knew deer had been around because for the last month, I’ve seen the characteristic hoof prints in the soft earth behind our house.
They moved out a bit further onto the dam, then halted for several seconds. Their light brown coats almost totally blended into the background of tree limbs and bare bushes that have only the hint of baby green leaves on them yet.
They stood motionless for several seconds, then tentatively, almost fearfully, they put one dainty paw in front of the other. Two of them crept across the dam, scanning for danger as they made their way to the cover of some bushy trees on the other side. The other two, small, very young, gently picked their way down the steep slope toward the pond. They seemed to want a drink but every time they got close to the water’s edge, they backed away and tried a new spot. I don’t know if they were just too skittish to relax enough to take a drink – after all, in the wild, drinking holes are places of ambush – or if the slope just felt too steep and they feared lowering their heads and losing their balance.
These two finally joined the others under the canopy of tree branches and I could see them approaching the water again. Given they were so sheltered, I couldn’t tell if they succeeded. The next thing I saw was one or two of them slowly circling the swimming pool that belongs to the condos across the way, then all of them disappeared down into the wooded area below the dam.
They were beautiful, peaceful, vulnerable, gentle. I just thought a Friday might need to start out with something serene and pastoral….
If you’re more visual, I found this picture on the web at Pictopia, that resembles the young deer I saw this morning.
Happy, gentle Friday.
When I wrote this post for today, I forgot it was the 40th anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Subconsciously though, maybe he guided my choice. His life and actions were all about non-violent change, through love and compassion. So, today’s entry….
I have this book, God Calling, which has daily readings. It’s author is unknown. The editor indicates it was written in England in the early 1930s, by two women living with great hardship, who started hearing these messages. Now while that might be a bit much for some to believe, I do think God still speaks to people today. If He could speak to Moses out of burning bush in the desert 2000 years ago, why can’t He talk today? Has something happened to His voice today that would render Him suddenly mute? I don’t think so.
In any event, it’s a book I’ve been using since…1980. I found it when on a silent retreat with an order of nuns. I immediately loved the book, found many passages that spoke to me, and have used it ever since. I am now on my second or third copy of the book, which I don’t think has ever gone out of print.
The really interesting and neat thing about it, is that sometimes I will read a passage and simply go “well, okay,” or “that’s nice” and not feel anything more for it. Another time, years later, I will read that same passage and suddenly, it is so relevant, I can’t believe it. The nature of life, of our hearts, our struggles, changes over the years, so hence, I think that’s why sometimes a passage will be relevant and other times not. Even when I’ve found a passage helpful, sometimes it’s usefulness over the years just continues to deepen, revealing new facets and nuances I’ve missed.
I share a portion of today’s entry. It is one I have highlighted, re-highlighted, put a star by….obviously, it has spoken to me many times. I guess I can relate. So often I fail at what I try in life. I mean well on something, then I try to execute that kindness or love and I fall so far short of what I envisioned. Or I thought I had it together, then got scared, betrayed my beliefs, or hurt someone, or just …..was human.
I love it every year when this passage comes around again, not because it’s a sort of “Penance” or a putdown, or a painful reminder of my repeated failings over the years. For me, it is actually a comfort, a ray of sunshine, a bright spot, a real place of hope, a soft warm blanket against a cold wind.
The truth is, there’s not a one of us who will ever live up to our ideals for ourselves….and THANK GOD FOR THAT.
We could never know what it is to be fully loved, unless we failed, and found that we were still loved by someone. God does that for us. At our moments of ultimate despair, biggest foul-ups, failings of courage, He not only sees, but understands, and continues to hold out a hand of love. That hand never gets pulled away. That love never stops, even when we stop loving ourselves because we think we’re so useless or flawed no one could possibly ever love us.
It is in failing, and then feeling that endless love, that we REALLY learn compassion and love for others. How can you know the pain another feels about a failure, unless you too, felt that same sense of failure and pain? If you never experienced that pain, followed by the sense that no matter what, God still loves you, how could you ever learn to give that gift to another?
The only way to truly embrace someone else, no matter the flaws, is to first fail yourself, feel that despair, then feel the deep relief and gratitude that comes from learning there still is someone in your corner. When you have been given that gift by the Universe, how can you not then give it to another? Pay it forward. That’s what God wants us to do. Receive the gift. Pass it along. The world is so starved for the simple gift of unconditional love.
In any event, from April 4th’s reading:
“My servant Peter was not changed in a flash from a simple fisherman to a great leader and teacher, but through the very time of faithlessness–through the very time of denial, I was yet making him all that he should be….Peter could never have been the after power that he was, had he not learned his weakness. No man can save, unless he understands the sinner. The Peter who was a mighty force for me afterwards…was not even first the Peter who said, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God,’ but Peter who denied me. He who had tested my forgiveness in his moment of abject remorse, he could best speak of me as the Savior.”
“Hatred never ends by hatred in this world. By love alone does hatred end.”
The Buddha
This entry came through the other morning from my online spirituality class with Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk. The topic – safety – so caught my eye…and my heart, that I printed it and left it on my desk.
For one thing, I had a sense I needed to blog about it, even though at the moment, I wasn’t sure what I was going to say.
For the other, it is a topic whose solution is so counterintuitive, it never comes to mind first, for probably anybody, at least not for me. It is always my most immediate first reaction, to want to defend myself, fight for my rights, “put up my emotional fists” so that I can feel safe.
So I knew that his words would need to end up here, if only to remind ME, day in and day out, where REAL safety exists. I share this entry in case anyone else out there is like me, and might find this reminder useful.
I will add that Thich Nhat Hanh knows the subject firsthand, having lived through the Vietnam War – in Vietnam…while the bombs fell around him. So I will defer to him on knowing what real safety in life is….
“…Many people think of safety in terms of weapons and armies, but even with a powerful army and a stock of weapons, there are moments when the American people feel very frightened, very vulnerable. We can learn to build our safety with our in-breath and our out-breath, with our steps, with the way we act or react, with a smile or a word, with our effort to restore communication.
You cannot feel safe with the person who lives with you if you cannot communicate with him or her. You cannot feel safe when the other person does not look at you with sympathy, when you are not capable of looking at him or her with compassion. Safety can be built with your way of looking, your way of smiling, with your way of walking. …Show the other person that you are truly not harmful, that he is safe in your presence, in the way you think, the way you breathe, smile and walk…by expressing your peace, your compassion, the other person feels very safe. And when the other person feels safe, you are safe. Safety is not an individual matter.” (From Friends on the Path: Living Spiritual Communities)
In case you think this is just “theoretical” and doesn’t work in practice, I will share one of my usual “foot in mouth” moments, where yet again, I fought to stand up for my rights when a civil approach might have had better results.
Last week I approached the racquetball court where 2 men were playing. It was already a whole minute past their allotted time. They were now on MY time. I was tired, irritable, and not up for anyone to “step on my toes.” Now I wasn’t trying to be mean, but I did want them to know I expected my rights respected, RIGHT THEN. I knocked on the glass wall and essentially kicked them off the court. Their volley for point was interrupted and they were irritable. I had managed to spread my black cloud onto them. They came out and grumbled at me. I grumbled at them. They walked away grumbling. I vaguely recall a gesture on my part.
Now the plain fact was, they WERE overtime. And they HAD seen me and continued to serve. So were they right? No.
But did my own actions end up bringing me happiness? No. I felt like an ass. I felt even more miserable, because truly I don’t like to be at odds with others. All I really wanted was my fair time on the court, but instead of asking in a civil manner, I got angry and huffy. So instead of feeling better, all I had succeeded in doing was making all three of us even more miserable. So, no. They weren’t right, but frankly, neither was I.
Yesterday morning I approached the same court, with the same two guys. I knew they would be there, they always are. I had decided on my course of action and walked to the window. They saw me, and I could tell they immediately tensed up. You could see it in their faces and body language. They stopped immediately and walked toward the door of the court … toward me. I could see the tension in the air between us.
As they stepped off the court, before they could even say a word, I turned and simply said, “Look. I want to apologize for my behavior last week.” I could see this caught them both off guard. The “ready-for-battle” facial expressions shifted to surprise. The “air of defense and battle” shifted.
I went on. “I was having a really bad morning. I don’t like to have that kind of interaction with people, and so I apologize.”
Before I could even finish my apology you could see their whole demeanor shift from one of being ready to fight me to actually trying to make me feel better. In a split second, their defenses came down, their faces opened, they smiled, and the “war” was over. They said it was okay, it wasn’t a big deal. As they walked away, one even turned and said, “We really do want to respect other people’s time on the court.” They never would have felt SAFE to offer that, if I hadn’t done something to make it safe…stop the battle. Since I started the battle, it was my responsibility to stop it. Our interaction ended with a smile, and a wish for each to have a good day.
Now. Certainly the “self-righteous” part of me who doesn’t like to be wrong, didn’t want to admit my flaws. That part ALWAYS wants to stand its ground and WIN, and prove the other person is wrong. But when there’s a winner, there’s a loser, and when there’s a loser, in the long run, NOBODY ends up happy. And in reality, NOBODY is ever TOTALLY right or wrong. In any interaction, everyone can probably do a little bit better.
Had I “gone in there fighting” the whole atmosphere between us would have worsened, the animosity increased, and then every week I would walk in there, more and more afraid. Would my “fighting for my rights” have brought me a greater sense of “safety”? Absolutely not.
For sure if someone is coming at me with a baseball bat, yes, I will fight back. If only to defend myself and stop the other person from doing further harm to himself or another. But beyond that, real safety, real connection, comes from lowering the fists and opening the arms.
A fiddler update
First, here’s what I wrote yesterday, based on those “festivities” :
Okay. I know everybody says that live food is best for growing larval crabs. But you know, life is not perfect. I have advice for anyone who wants to raise live brine shrimp to feed to their crab larvae…buy one of those hatcheries the petstores sell. It’s worth it.
The alternative is to:
– take a 2 liter Coke Bottle and cut off the bottom (trying to do this with a pair of scissors without slitting your wrists by accident is no easy affair)
– invert it, because for some reason known only to brine shrimp, you want a “funnel-shaped” apparatus to make it easier to collect the little hatchlings later.
– when you’re standing there holding this inverted apparatus, you will then realize you need to find something to set the upside-down Coke bottle in so it’s stable…unless you want Sea Monkeys all over your kitchen floor. I do not.
– run the air bubbler and tubing, attached to a pump, down toward the bottom of the Coke bottle…excuse me, I mean the “top” of the Coke bottle…which is now, the bottom
– add the sea monkey mix (brine shrimp eggs with ocean salt in the packet) into distilled water
– since you have no heater find a way to shine a 60 Watt light bulb into the bottle to warm the babies…trying not to fry them
– did I mention find a bowl to set the whole bottle and supporting thing in (to catch the water that splashes out on your floor along with chunks of dead sea monkey eggs)
– if and when the babies hatch, shine a flashlight at the BOTTOM of the bottle (remembering of course, that the bottom is really the top, inverted) to attract the baby shrimp so they’ll congregate there. Of course it would be so much easier to be able to shine the light at the top of this whole setup…the wide open, easily accessible top (which used to be the bottom). But that won’t work. Apparently the empty egg shells float to the top and you can’t tell the brine shrimp from their egg casings
– while continuing to hold the flashlight with one hand to keep the little shrimp at the bottom of the Coke bottle, find something to suck up the babies hopefully congregating down at the bottom of this whole unstable apparatus…while avoiding more empty egg shells that sunk (I thought they were supposed to rise to the surface) and avoiding tipping the whole thing over
– try to deliver this aliquot of baby shrimp (I was using a turkey baster because I didn’t have a third hand to allow me to hold the pipette, operate the pipette bulb and keep the flashlight on the babies) into your crab larvae aquarium without spilling it on the floor
– oh and do all this while bent over and on your knees because the only place you could set all this up was on the floor UNDER the main aquarium…
– ah, and yes, make sure to suck out the little baby brine shrimp to feed to your crabs as soon as possible after they hatch because if you wait too long, they’re dead and you can’t tell their swirling corpses apart from their useless egg shells….
Do I sound less than enthused about hatching brine shrimp, at least in this makeshift setup? You bet. So. At least in my opinion, buy yourself a setup that’s easy to deal with, heat, extract the baby shrimp from…buy something that was designed and made for this ordeal…a brine shrimp hatchery. They’re not expensive – I saw some for about $5. To me, well worth the cost. No matter what you do, you’ll still have to buy the bubbler and air pump anyway, so you’re not saving much by trying to do it the home-made way. And you might do your knees a favor by not having to crawl around on the floor.
Anyway, tired and fed-up with this whole affair, I picked up the Coke-bottle-turned-hatchery, marched down to the pond behind our house, and dumped them in the water. Since they’re already dead, they and their shells might at least be food for some of the baby fishes in the pond. So…the sea monkeys sleep with the fishes….to paraphrase a line from the Godfather.
Tomorrow, I go buy those fresh-frozen cubes of brine shrimp we used to get for our tropical fish when I was a kid. They smell to high heaven, but I don’t have to hatch them, feed them, catch them, separate them from their shells, or struggle to get them in the crab nursery tank. Sounds good to me…..
One positive out of all this….I moved the air bubbler rock into the crab nursery. It moves a whole lot more air into the tank than that pretty but somewhat ineffective ‘curtain bubbler’ in the back of the aquarium. Perhaps that will be a good thing for water quality, which I will comment on next….
I got up this morning to be greeted by clear water again in the nursery. I’d gotten used to the idea that white cloudy water was good, even though it’s counterintuitive to think that. And frankly, white cloudy water HAS been good. White cloud, no nitrites. So when I saw clear water this morning, I felt this sense of dread. Again, a counterintuitive response since most people strive for crystal clear aquarium water.
When I tested the water, my counterintuitive gut response was right. Clear water, nitrites were up. And the ammonia monitor had changed from yellow to green, ie, “safe” to “alert.” Now alert means it can be like that for days and not cause harm, at least not to adults. I don’t know about babies.
Given the rise in nitrites, even though slight, I decided to do a water change. I was going to let water drain out of the bubbler, down the tubing and into a bowl by reversing the check valve in the tubing (the check valve prevents water from backing up down the tubing and into the air pump; by reversing the valve, I would be letting water drain from the tank out the tubing, hence a way of getting water out of the aquarium without sucking up babies) however this flat out didn’t work. I don’t think the air bubbler can suck out enough water to actually get a “pull” going down the tubing.
Next idea was to use some cheesecloth over a plastic cup so when I poured out water I’d taken out of the tank, down the drain, I wouldn’t lose any babies. Sounds good in theory and maybe most of the baby crabs didn’t go down the drain, but I expect some did.
The rest were safely trapped in the cheesecloth. Great. So. How do you free crab larvae from cheesecloth? I think it’s probably best to take that cheesecloth and put it in another plastic cup with some aquarium water so the baby crabs can get free of the cheesecloth and swim out into the water in the cup, then pour the cup water back into the aquarium.
I, not thinking, just dipped the cheesecloth in the tank water directly. Duh. I expect I probably sucked up a bunch more babies into the cheesecloth than I got out of it. So scratch that idea.
I need to go back and read Laurie’s suggestion in her comments to my post, to see how she kept the babies out of the container she used to take water out of the tank for water changes.
In spite of these fiascoes, I still have many baby crabs swimming around alive in the tank. The nitrites and ammonia are no worse. I added a gallon of water to the tank that was marine in salinity (1.022) , which made the tank 1.018 overall. I don’t think I’m going to raise the salinity any higher. If the nitrites stay down and the babies survive for one more week, maybe less, I’m going to just start bringing the whole affair back down to brackish (1.012) and lower the pH from its current 8.2-8.4, down to 7.8. I read somewhere that as the pH comes down, so do the nitrites.
By last night, I waved the flag of surrender and retreated to the bath tub. One small ray of hope though. On my way upstairs, I glanced at the ammonia monitor. It is no longer green (Alert zone). It’s color is now closer to yellow (safe) than green, so with any luck, the tank conditions are moving back to the safe/normal zone. We’ll see what the morning brings
This morning:
Well, a ray of hope. Unlike the first time I did this experiment of trying to raise the crab larvae and the nitrites just went up out of control, this morning I seemed to have turned a corner.
The ammonia monitor, which last night seemed to back off just a little from the alert level, this morning is mostly yellow – almost safe. It’s not all the way there, but predominantly yellow. It’s no longer green.
I rechecked the nitrites and today they and the nitrates are both zero again!!! I don’t know if it was the water change, or the additional bubbler which is really moving oxygen into the tank, or both, but improved conditions.
The number of crab babies in the tank continues to drop, but that is to be expected. That’s why they have so many to start with. There are still many swimming around in the tank. We’ll see how this goes. Now, off to PetsMart to buy that fresh frozen brine shrimp!!
Have a nice day.
“In a world where religion is poison to some and salvation to others, how do we live together?”
Soul Mosaic 
