Creative Houses & Being and Nothingness

More on Cultural Conformity

It is undeniable how judgment develops in groups.   It's so easy to see how much we are judged by society's expectations. As long as you stay in a group that approves of your beliefs, you are never questioned, challenged or alienated... Abnormality might be simply something different from the common experience seen as acceptable to the group standards to which we are held. 

The Internet is full of places where being a total weirdo is the norm!  That's why the Internet lends itself to all sorts of "groups" for just about every stripe conceived... weirdos can find each other and define their own norms, validating their own views!  In one way, it is intellectual freedom.   In another, it's just another "cage" where one is "normal"! 

I think that conformity is far too valued, and that it kills innovation and creativity.  While we stand on a certain point along a linear measurement of ideal behavior on one side,  and behavior that is to be despised on the other.  We can see a bit in either direction that is considered acceptable relative to ourselves.   But it depends on what "point" we're making.   If we put ourselves on a point on a line, we literally take a stand" and have our own relative understanding of acceptable behaviors for ourselves, but it doesn't mean it's a valid way to determine ultimately ideal behavior for everyone in every circumstance.  And everyone participating in life stands somewhere on the line....  We may think Tattoos are awful , and choose to think everyone who has one is a conforming idiot.  Or, we may cover ourselves with them and hang out only with others who think like we do.... The decision to get one little tattoo, or the choice to cover ourselves in them is our own acceptable "range" on that line.

So, we're on a "line", and even for our OWN standards, we have "standard deviations", or just a little "weirdness".  Outside these norms are behaviors that we deem abnormal and unacceptable  (Brings to mind the statement "This behavior crosses the line".)  So when we consider why a behavior crosses the line, we ask ourselves what point on the line we place others, and ourselves?  And if it's our OWN sensibility that is injured, or if it's crossing some kind of line that is universally "the place to be"... the behavior that is acceptable no matter who you ask, no matter where or when...  Can we really believe, "to each his own"?   Because usually we think in terms of subscribing to some version of right and wrong that is left up to some pre-determined definitions.  If we place ourselves ONLY on our own line, then we admit responsibility for everything we choose... I think we do choose... but we don't have to give up judging the actions of everyone else, we just can't know our own position from all angles ever again... and we must admit we don't know anything but what we regard for ourselves... our own spot on that line where we plot ourselves and nothing else in relation to it but our own reality.

I can't stick to any sort of universal philosophy based upon the pre-defined lines of others... a modal personality, or "national character", a dogma of religion... or some other ideal... that defines the choice, and then places acceptability between two standard deviations....  Lots of things are "out there" that I don't even begin to consider...  another "line of thinking" on which I have never had to choose my position.  
By devaluing what's beyond our own personal boundaries of acceptable actions, we close doors for reasons that we may not be able to defend effectively, simply because we walk the "straight and narrow" of own line of thinking, and never see the line that others walk.

Option #1  Very strict norm.

_________________[<..Acceptable Behavior..>]________________

Option #2  Norm leans one way.
__[<...........................Acceptable Behavior..>] _________________

Option #3  Norm leans the other way.
 __________________<[..Acceptable Behavior......................>]__

Option #4   Freedom, except for extremes.
 __[<..........................Acceptable Behavior.......................>]__


In REALITY:  True Freedom, and responsibility of Free-will
[____________________________________________________________]
I plot my own version of acceptablity, thanks.  (For options, see above... *wink* )

Don't we all create our own right and wrong based on the examples we're shown, taught etc..?  Is there not simply a way to understand what's "acceptable" about those behaviors, and make them our own, and live in own "context", and act on our own motives which end up being mostly what's accepted, especially "in a free country?"  Isn't everyone just a little "off" in some regard, at least sometimes?  

I'm so glad I live in a country where people can still push the limits and learn and grow.  Without some acceptance and freedom to push the limits and making mistakes, we'd also never be able to know what is right, we could just become sheep.
Conformity can be awful.  Teenagers seem tortured these days.  I watched my daughter go through all kinds of hell trying to navigate "normal" all through high school...  I kept telling her it's WAY overrated!!!  She survived.  (whew!)

I see a problem in terms of what degree can we trust ourselves to live our own version of right and wrong, and truly find our way...  I wonder how much society's "norms" might be "closing in" on us, fostering of a lack of trust in ourselves and each other to "behave" in acceptable ways, and even cherishing what we might not regard as being "close to" ourselves.  Fear and distrust of what's different, and "groupthink" is disturbing because it can be used to take away freedom of choice.  Some might give away that freedom for a promise of safety when the responsibility for having a choice starts to be regarded as a burden.   People are afraid to "be themselves" if it's not safe to do so... If I'm not comfortable with the choices of those who are openly gay, I may want to opt out of that freedom.   It's how people can be brainwashed into religious cults, lulled into dictatorships, or lend their support for such things as DADT.

A Foolish Tax Break: Sacred Cows, A Class War, and/or Obstinacy

Since the Republicans are  so obstinate about reassuring Richie Rich his tax break will continue, it seems prudent to imply analogy through a particular image and see what others might think we're really dealing with here:

Photo from WBUR, Boston via Flickr

Vote in comments on which analogy you think BEST represents the truth...

A.  An Ominous Sacred Cow stands in the way of reducing the deficit.
B.  Rolling out the new class structure so Americans can familiarize themselves.

C.  Bullheadedness and misconceptions by government leads to poor decisions.

D. All of the above

Illustrating birds.

While photography can be very helpful in identifying birds, the art of illustration remains a way to accurately depict a species, and ensure that traits particular to any given species are made evident, which is important to ensure a scientifically accurate identification of species. It's true for any scientific identification guide. While many offer comprehensive identification through the use of photographs, those guides which offer illustrations seem to have a softened, human touch that makes them very enjoyable. Yay science! Yay Art! Yay blending science with art!

Filibuster ~ Old School

Just the fact that someone was willing to speak on the disastrous decision to extend these breaks to the wealthy for 8 hours is compelling evidence that something is very very wrong with this decision... It is extremely worrisome....
Thank you Senator Sanders, for 8 hours of the use of your voice, the voice of reason.

Poignant sign of the zeitgeist

Tall Timbers August 2010
Originally uploaded by Naturalist Bent

Sometimes you really have to go out on a limb. It's good if you're not alone though...

ADHD is NOT an epidemic.

Just this week in the news, a CDC (American Government) study has revealed that nearly 10% of children have ADHD, and about 2/3rds of them are being medicated for theis disorder.
In my own harrowing experience raising a very active child while single with no insurance coverage for anything psychological I found that there is, without a doubt, a heavy bias toward helping children who are higher in socioeconomic cl
ass. My daughter could talk at 9 mos., carry on a rather sophisticated conversation by age 2 and was reading by the time she was 3.  She was deemed "a distraction" in class, and put off to the side of the classroom for the first 5 years of school. Urged to take her to a doctor to be evaluated for ADHD.  Twice a pediatrician who claimed to be an ADHD specialist...didn't believe ADHD was the problem.  She had a very high tactile sensitivity and problems with seams in socks, etc.  We went to  a community counseling program, and the counselor didn't believe that ADHD was the issue either.  Her first grade teacher meekly suggested at an IEP meeting that she may be "gifted", but the "team" agreed not to test for that until the behaviors were under control.  Stupid.  She was a pest in class, primarily because she was bored out of her mind, and she actually said so nearly every day.  Teachers refused to look at anything more than the "behavior"problem because it was a hindrance to the classroom.  When she was in 4th grade I had a job for a short while that offered insurance for a psychologist, she was given a TOVA and found to be well above average in her ability to focus.  She started to flounder in 4th grade, but at home on the internet, she was thrilled learning geometry through interacive games.  By that time she absolutely hated school.  I was exactly the same way and I barely got through high school.  She got through and she's 18 now and taking classes at community college, but she just doesn't fare well in a traditional learning environment with one way learning. Teacher teaches, student absorbs.  Ho hum. 
I've been tech savvy for 12 or so years now, and I find Penn State's World Campus format to be a bit antiquated compared to what's available, and wonder why such a massive "learning institution" such as Penn State isn't on the edge of these advancements. 
I think a lot of these kids are being misdiagnosed as ADHD... and I think the drugs do help the matters they are faced with, i.e., failure to conform to our expectations for their performance in some way, either academically, or behaviorally, or some combination of the two.  I just can't buy into it all without some reservations.. The phenomenon we call ADHD is real, but I see it as primarily an American socio-cultural phenomenon.  That's a pretty "macro" perspective, but I can't help but making some observations...
Kids are now exposed to so much so early on, and their minds are really busy because of it.  Is a child with ADHD in some way defective? I don't think so at all.  It seems to me they might be a byproduct of a dichotomy in our culture.. Consider a 20 year old today....  they evolved in a culture where their own parents were bored with "57 channels and nothing on" (to quote a Bruce Springsteen song)...  Think "leap frog", teddy ruxpin, Amazing Amanda, interactive talking childrens books, video games, Disney movies and animation galore...By the time they're 5, they've all spent many hours of their lives physically strapped down and riding in cars with gadgets and games and videos and/or music.   They get to these monstrous markets, and they're bombarded with stimuli.... riding in the shopping cart with mom, observing mom who is evaluating 200 kinds of toothpaste.
Kids come into this world I've described, and quickly develop minds that are less and less capable of learning in the system the way it is traditionally equipped to teach them. I suspect some places in the world have far surpassed the United States in terms of education and technology.  That's the word on the street anyway.  American traditions are not evolving and keeping up with the onslaught of modernitity and culture.  Much of it is reserved for "kids today".    It's really a widening gap that's accelerating.  For the last 10 years, kids are constantly instant messaging, surfing the internet, watching videos, they have 3 million choices in "indie" music you've never heard of, and accessing a hundred-thousand times more media than the previous generation ever dreamed of.   After their excessive exposure to a saturated culture, their put in sheep herd like conditions in the schools.  Add to that, some antiquated ideas about the world that seem to express a denial of major, major problems we face as a world community, and kids are really not interested in fitting their thinking to the old system.  Young people with high levels of creativity and interests are really turned off by information they're expected to learn and teaching methods are akin to dinosaurs for them. They seem to have a lot of brain activity that is not delegated properly to fit the schemas we currently navigate and we want them to fit the gestalt of what are, essentially, days gone by.   Our culture, tradition, technologies and ideas from the past are failing them.  The kids that seem to be affected the worst cannot conform on their own and are brought to the forefront as problematic.
So while I do think the meds do what they're designed to do, which is they are deployed to act on the brain, and alter the child so the child accomodates the system, the trouble with this is,  the child then re-develops thought processes less spontaneous to fit the existing system.  Meds are a way to mold the kids so they can accomplish what they'll need to to get through the day in our past, and still to a large extent, our current environment, which is a process oriented, steady paced, deliberating, in vivo world.  Their behaviors are unacceptable in outdated systems, but we do little to update the systems.  Particularly in America there seems to be considerable stagnation and an almost fearful attitude toward the explosion of innovation and advancements because of cultural manifestations of this burgeoning technology and information.



RSA animate lecture on Education Paradigms:


Ted talk on Education and creativity

To get a feel for what the realities for young people today, these videos were assigned to me in a cultural anthropology course:
We are the machine: 
A Vision of Students Today

Conformity is the New Black

Orwellian conformity has made inroads to the psyche of the youth more than at any other time in history.  If you haven't identified this phenomenon, you might want to poke around on Orwell Today.  Very interesting stuff...

To Orwell, the societal control is top down and we're sort of trapped by our limitations, fearful and in denial of the benefit to anyone's attempt to defy them.

I've always been more in the Aldous Huxley camp myself, but that's because I am such a nonconformist.  :p  To Huxley, control just is. We have evolved to incorporate it in our thinking and now it's intrinsic.  Indeed, society is deeply engaged in a sort of perpetual mockery of itself.  One giant mash-up.  But to be fair, it's just that we've reached a kind of "creative critical mass".  Truly "nothing new under the sun".  We're deemed pretty darn harmless, but for those few very far-out fringe elements.  It is nearly impossible to be original unless you're on some fringe, and then you will feel the eyes of the world upon you. If it's new, it's very likely to be quickly deemed suspect.    We hear about the attempts to quell this sort of thing daily.  Much about the fringes of society  can be dangerous, no denying that.  But in this mash up of all things deemed innocuous, has all else in between extremes been subdued?

To be cool now is to conform... and sort of just deny that one has done so.  Denial is really an overarching theme now in so many aspects of life for so many...
Or, rather than go the denial route, some seem to jump right onto bandwagons knowing full well that it's total conformity...  This seems to have really taken off with the Internet and all this endless "connectivity".

It's all very Orwellian and Huxleyan...  Huxwellian? Orwhuxleyan?  I do hereby take full credit for mashing these terms for perhaps the first time ever.  :p  You heard the inevitable meme here first!

We basically have a free market, where the buying and selling of just about anything legal, (and many things not so), are offered up to anyone wanting. Our freedoms are now defined by the marketplace.  Our freedom comes to us in the form of the various "choices" available to us, by which we are able to exercise our free will.

 A marketplace is kind of a living thing... it seeks to purchase or provide what other people will value.  It isn't a new phenomenon by any stretch, what's sort of taken hold in the past decade, is this wreckless-feeling drive to conformity. We live, work and play in a worldwide market, much of our time is spent in the virtual environment open to the world.  Most people have an online presence that has begun to overwhelm  their physical, real time presence; Myself included.  The market senses our need to survive and connect, and it responded with the products that facilitate us.  So now our survival is tied to this sort of "perpetual conformity machine".  It is energized by the things we do to survive in societal constructs. 

The cosmos of cool might not revolve around one set of trends to one target market, but it's not any one force that's driving that, it's buyers themselves, and this market-entity responds to our preferences, which drives trends.  If it sells, make another one!   If it sells more, make more and charge a bit more!  If it sells endlessly, make mountains of it and sell them to everyone relatively cheaply!

Considereth if you will the "Breast Cancer Awareness" Campaign.   People mindlessly get on board with this stuff assuming it's good, when a lot of what's happening is bizarre, and ridiculous.    Say I buy a pink can of campbells soup. (This wouldn't happen, but just humor me and pretend...)  They donate to the Awareness Campaign.  The Awareness Campaign is a non - profit, so their profits must go to producing more of what it is they are seeking to do charitably, which is, raise awareness of the issue of Breast Cancer.  (note these are a compound "proper noun" in this context).  It's been a very successful campaign, because, well, people tend to buy soup anyway.  But now, packaging tape is pink.  Bottles of rubbing alcohol are pink, tennis balls, pink, many many things are pink, and more and more support for this campaign is garnered every time you purchase any of these items.   You're actually also supporting some products that may actually cause breast cancer with your dollars!

This from Think Before You Pink:

Pinkwasher: (pink’-wah-sher) noun. 

A company that purports to care about breast cancer 

by promoting a pink ribboned product, but manufactures 

products that are linked to the disease.

This type of increasing conformity is disturbing.  I think the important thing is that barely anyone is actually thinking about it.  Is it that "not thinking"  is not only a recent trend, but a classic case of ignorance that's here to stay, at least until we're fully devolved into the Idiocracy foretold in the movie of the same name?

Please think carefully about how you spend your money and your time.  These, your freedoms, are what's left for you and they comprise the larger part of any impact you have in the world.  The choices you make are the main ways  you exercise freedom and control of your life and contribute to making  our future society a place for engaging in freedom to think and behave in ways that others may not find familiar or comfortable, or a prison where any deviation is easily spotted, and quickly called out and quelled.

If this isn't disturbing enough, when you consider the "bullying zeitgiest" (thank you Madonna for that term), you see the forces of conformity at work in a very acute way.  Some may think that to be PC is to quell deviations from a norm, but one can be considerate of others and speak and act accordingly without conforming to any labels if they have the intellectual capacity to express themselves and their concerns with some degree of integrity, and without denigrating others.

Pennsylvanians! Attend the Conference on HydroFracking

BUILDING A STRONGER MOVEMENT:

STATEWIDE CONFERENCE ON NATURAL GAS DRILLING

For community groups, activists, and residents concerned about the effects of drilling in the Marcellus Shale.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Radisson Hotel Harrisburg
1150 Camp Hill Bypass,
Camp Hill, PA 17011

Participating organizations: ACLU, Campaign for Clean Water, Common Cause, Clean Water Action, Protecting our Waters, Democracy for America, Responsible Drilling Alliance, Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited, Delaware Riverkeepers Network, Penn Future, Penn Environment, and many more.
The extraction of natural gas in Pennsylvania has been going on largely with minimal state and federal oversight. This conference is an opportunity to exchange information about natural gas drilling or “fracking” and learn how to make our voices heard in the Marcellus Shale debate.Conference topics include:

• Best practices of how to wage a winning campaign
• Training on organizing and getting your message out
• How to build an organization, fundraise, and do outreach
• Success stories from different regions of the state
• Networking
• And lots more.

Who Should Come? Community and organizational leaders, activists, concerned individuals and individuals who have leased their land or have been approached about a lease. Republicans, Democrats, Independents, home and business owners, farmers, hunters and fishermen - anyone who cares about protecting our property rights, air quality, drinking water, farmland and Pennsylvania's natural beauty.

Register Today! Sign up online at: http://bit.ly/9juhGz To RSVP and for any questions, contact Hannah Miller at 215-888-8036 or golden.notebook@gmail.com

.

First Frost...

Temps dipped near freezing over night and the misty humidity meant the frost was on the pumpkin this morning... (not my pumpkin, as it still sits by the door, having just brought it home from Whispering Pines!)

This snap will set off any trees that might have been lagging behind in their inevitable changes toward dormancy...

The squirrels are in such an anxious frenzy, so much so that I pity them...
I imagine their lives to be, as Hobbes said of the life of men, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short...

There are two that visit frequently expecting last year's hickory nuts, or something, anything...
One is missing half his tail.  Nik calls him "Knuckles"...  He's quite demanding, once sitting outside my window chirping angrily at me for 5 full minutes before I went and gave up the goods.

2 summers ago we experienced a similar situation with an excessively expressive and demanding fellow, and Nik named him "Knuckles"  He was a big fella, and had the most enormous and impressive tail of any squirrel I'd ever seen.  Could have been from the pound of peanuts we fed him over the course of a month... which explains his high food donation expectancy levels.

  

However this summer, we have a much more frail squirrel, likely having experienced some illness from the loss of half the tail.  We think it's the same squirrel these days because of the behaviors...  

He's been given some American chestnuts I've had in the freezer for a year, 2 dozen hickory nuts, some sunflower seeds, and a few shelled walnuts.  He still looks pretty thin and scruffy... so we're trying to help him build strength for the winter ahead... yes, i know it's weird.

Election season... shouldn't it come with a touch of nostalgia??

Have a looksee at this bit of memorabilia 

from the 1960 elections!

"The truth will keep you free... Play Safe... Don't gamble with Peace and Prosperity"

Oh, the prosperity~!!  
Can we only long for it with tearful nostalgia?!!

For a bit of irony and some real enlightenment, 
go have a critical look at the tax table,

that includes these years they brag about on the flyer. 

I guess Republicans weren't always in 
the pockets of the richest greedy buggers...  

 My how times have changed!

Lest we forget....

A vote for Republicans is hand down, undeniably a default, a back pedal... utter retardation by definition, that will inevitably prop more puppets up to support this frightening agenda:

Which is

1. send business to china for cheap labor, bring stuff back to sell to the sheep to keep them amused...

2. less taxes on wealthy so they can buy themselves another yacht and pay for their hookers and coke.

3. de-regulate the money machine (so it can run wild making money: see 1 and 2)


It seems that quite a few people out there who plan to vote for their own demise.


When things get REALLY bad, will they vote for a "strong leader"? Better read up on the “Road to Serfdom”. We're not at the part where the dictator gets put in place...

It takes an inept party (Dem's agenda hobbled by the party of NO).. and then the backlash. WHAT is the agenda of republican leadership? (and/or tea party contenders?) Their agenda is one of greed propped up on an ideology that inspires fear. Where will it actually lead us in the future? It's poison!
If someone asks me for "my papers", you can bet I'll be headed all the way to the supreme court. Wouldn't you? Well, "Welcome to Arizona! Good thing you're white!” WTF. It was Jews in WWII. How long before some creeps are willing to co-sign this B.S.? THINK! OMG! For all you clueless M-er F-ers out there::

Read carefully::
The right wing is, and has always been where you find the fascist, wealthy, (usually white), civil rights violating, democracy loathing, fearful, fear mongering, hating anything not easily understood, type of person.
See the “California F-Scale” if you're wondering how to get a handle on what this is we are up against.


As for the etiology? Well, it's environmental. It's NOT genetic. It's not “nature”. It's upbringing. Authoritarian rather than Authoritative. “Do as I say, not as I do!” Strict discipline that borders on abuse. The attitude that “Children should be seen and not heard”. “God fearing” can help drill it in.

This agenda is not unlike the far right wing leadership that Middle East nations now enjoy. (I mean, really!) If that's your party, you're welcome to it. We indeed do still live in a free country where you're quite free to choose this form of government and leadership all you like and as long as you're not harming anyone or encouraging others to harm anyone, feel free... but your “free” days are numbered under such a belief system, so keep that in mind. What don't some people seem to get about that? Even though they speak up in support of the extremist right wing views, they can't possibly even realize how foolish...


These slimy conservative "contenders" want in this game in the worst kind of way because it's a definitive time in history for power and position. You can almost see Toomey drooling. How is he planning on serving his constituency? I don't even understand what he thinks he's going to do... but lurking in his nobby little ferret like head if we knew it all, we'd know His ambitions are very likely “beyond the pale”.


They'll usher in a new world order based on resource procurement disguised as religious wars. They'll feign religion and patriotism when they're really interested in power and money! not community and education, civil rights, workers rights and the spirit of cooperation as a nation. Those things imply POWER TO THE PEOPLE. That's not the right wing agenda.


If you can keep investing thousands in certain businesses who will profit (the one's who use cheap labor, send the manufacturing overseas where there are no regulations to protect workers or the environment, tying in heavily to big oil, and/or the war machine, or invest in those businesses who want to profit by making us sick, (like tobacco) our messed up food (big ag, GMO's “CORN”), they're also invested in the cures, and big pharma. Go on and vote for and invest in your own demise, you are free to choose. I'm trying to bring change through voting for a different kind of future. Have a little bit of vision people! If you can't muster your vision, you're going to drag the entire nation down into a dark age.


There will only be 2 kinds of people in this country if "conservatives" get what they want. You'll just be working for the ''man" making minimum wage.


What a sad day for America to have this kind of blindness to a greater picture and such discord that some media outlets are sowing.


There's a lot at stake indeed.
Those who understand and espouse Democratic principals know they need to get this country on track and in the right direction toward

1 Energy independence

2. Civil rights for workers

3 Green ingenuity, engineering and manufacturing right here in the USA

4. Infrastructure re-tooling, urban renewal.


Where is inspiration and positivity? Find it! And help it along!


Instead Conservatives sound like an angry mob of confused and demoralized losers.  Get a grip! Stop this "scared stupid" routine. Do something to help your community. Meet your neighbor, start a business, plant trees, change your god - awful attitude. Use your energy to do something for the future besides BIT&# and moan.


Because Democrats AND Independents are sick of the dead weight of the conservative mentality more than they are sick of what this administration has tried to do. Do some people WANT life in America to be like "Road Warrior"' or something? WTF!

The dumb hurts.

October 12, 2010 5:42 pm

As i sat at my desk and studied Statistics, Spanish 2, and Contemporary Art today, I relish a view of our back deck and the yellowing trees beyond.
I could tell when I awoke that it was raining, but eventually gave way to this indecisiveness where it cleared off about half way and after that we had various combinations of cloud cover... hazy, partly cloudy, some breakthrough sun today...  It's breezing up quite a lot right now... it's very pleasant, probably reached around 70 degrees F. today, and the humidity was a bit high, but comfortable at around 80 percent.

The day could not make up its mind.

The tailless Knuckles came for an apple core that was in my compost bucket sitting on the back porch, but quickly abandoned that for greener pastures.  He hasn't been back, but I"m sure the memory of the hickory nuts hasn't left his little squirrel brain just yet...

Going to put some arugula seeds in the lettuce box, and keep it closed to protect it from this small guerilla unit of squirrels.

Last night we had the Lions mane (bearded tooth) mushroom and Blewits in a white wine sauce over linguini.  Thank you Nik.  It was delish...  Still a very large portion of the lions mane in our refrigerator.  It was about the size of an (American) football!  It really did mimic seafood, and could be breaded and fried as a  substitute for shrimp bites, sauteed like scallops, or a perfect stand in for lobster in a bisque...  Wonderful!

Forages

We found about a 

half pound of Blewits, 

and a giant 

Lion's Mane, or

Bearded Tooth...

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While walking home along the railroad tracks, I spotted the first of these I've seen up close this fall....  He's a bit on the small side, only measured about 3/8" wide, and 1 1/2"long.   Some of them are twice this size, but none I"ve seen in a long time...

They must love heat, because so often you see them crossing the roads.

According to legend, this little guy 

indicates a cold snap in the fall and a long,

mild winter, and perhaps a colder than average Spring?

On the hunt today....

Nik was up by 5 this morning, 

it's so odd that he seems to be becoming a morning person... 

We've already finished a pot of coffee

and it's not even 8 am yet!

It's a beautiful, clear day and it's expected to get up to around 75f.

The Blewets are up this time of year 

so we're heading out to find some in a little while... 

Who knows what other wonders await us!  :)

Here they are on the cutting board...

They look shiny because they've been washed.  

We ate these in omelettes, and quiche and with pierogies!

They're very mild and delicious!

The larger they become, the more they turn the rusty color.  Once they're about 3"across, they're too overgrown to have much flesh.

 ~Here's what a cross section looks like of a nice, small fresh 2" cap.

I hope we find 100 of these today!

And finally, the grand-daddy Blewet of them all....

 This was the largest one we ever found, the cap was 6"  across!  

Too overgrown for eating, but really impressive!