Love to the Lummi from roots across the sea

"In continuing to offer prayer for the repatriation of southern resident orca Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut from the Miami Seaquarium to her home waters of the Salish Sea, Lummi Tribal citizens and the Bellingham, Washington community gathered Sunday, March 20, at the sacred site of Cherry Point — named Xwe’chi’eXen in the Lummi language."

https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/tribal-citizens-offer-prayer-cedar-for-the-return-of-orca

Wow, this is really close to the time that some Vietnamese villages celebrate their whale festivals too!

My maternal grandmother's village in Vietnam had responsibilities for mourning any deceased whales and annual celebrations for good fishing and support on the water. Based on what I've been able to read online however, it often gets portrayed more like a transactional or even extractive relationship where people hope for good fishing and safety etc. and whales are moreso harbingers of wealth and luck. Yet when someone finds a dead whale, there's a responsibility to take it ashore for proper burial and someone from the village would be tasked to mourn it like a direct relative for 100 days. In some villages, the bones even become enshrined and kept at a small temple.

But it's so good to see other nations like the Lummi with care for the return when one is taken away being done, especially for a pod like the Southern Residents which are sort of famous in the scientific community for their own cultural.

The Southern Resident population has led the way with sort of fashion/ways to play with their food (known for wearing a piece of salmon or other meat on the head in the 1980s), and their dialect of language plus matriarchal leadership roles are comparatively very well studied too.

Love is

A dream from the other night: *friend's cat butts head and affectionately rubs against my hand while sprawled out in front of me*

I'm curious about what prompted the sudden affection.

"Tell me the different words you know for love."-cat named Kitty Smalls looking intently with eyes wide open

*me, surprised the cat is literally talking to me--? But, try to be present and make the most of the occasion to engage*

"Well, huh there's amorous, romance, tüng in Vietnamese, gizaagin in Anishinaabemowen, and a bunch of words in Greek and latin that I can try to name off. Like philae, a love from hardship, solidarity and camaraderie; ludos, the playful kind of love like when kindly teasing or dancing and joking with someone. Eros which is a sort of physical/romantic love which I think can apply to platonic cases too. Pragma--practical love through actions; storge, familial love like when you appreciate a sibling or cousin; agape for humanity which I think is a bit like the African concept of Ubuntu in maybe Zulu. I think that's most of what I know… ?"

Kitty Smalls: looks with a pause, head angled staring at me, still mostly upside down before "speaking" with great confidence as it resumes writhing with contentment.

"Ah, you see--I don't know anything about those words. But not knowing them doesn't diminish the fact that I want to express something and that it all means the same thing to me. How would it be fair if I had to know any of them to love someone?"

…

I guess the set up to the dream was quietly about wanting to know why the cat wanted to give affection to me.

In waking life, we all kind of know about the idea that love is love etc. and depending on how I feel, I'd probably get a bit agitated that someone were telling me what I already know.

But no explanation is really needed for being present with kindness from anyone, even yourself. Ever. And that can be really challenging to trust and accept at times. Hope that helps for whoever needed to hear this.

 

Circling Coyote

One of the few times that I can promise this cat video is worth watching at work.

So for one, just enjoy the clip--even for the sake of good genuine play I even feel good seeing it happen. It's like seeing a fairly matched round of sparring with good sportsmanship on both sides unfold, and I love how the coyote plays at disadvantage to entice the cat. And lest we forget, this is still Year of the Dog -- and it's fair to assume that coyotes are part of the Canidae family, so we'll celebrate them here too.

On play, an overview:
In play, the process matters more than the outcome. Play, whether among people and/or other animals, gives us an opportunity to refine and hone skills necessary for survival. Whether hunting, stalking, evasion, or in conflict -- most evolutionary biologists tend to agree that it provides an opportunity to hone those behaviors in non-threatening settings.

On this video of a cat and coyote, a note about their play styles:
One of the things you'll note (and many other viewers noted) is that the coyote circles the cat--almost constantly--and often aims for the back legs (even if it's a playful headbutt) or just your legs (if you're bipedal).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAoWWM-ERpc

Circling is probably among the most challenging and confusing forms of an engagement to work with, at least for us untrained and unskilled humans. We're used to confronting and engagements that take place forward and back, maybe side to side or an angle in between, but we're not adept at engaging with a rotating diagonal movement that's literally designed to nip at the rear of our flanks.

If anything, it's a tactic, not a strategy. From what I gather between lots of comments and watching a few videos (so by no means am I an expert, just thoughtful observer, and possible speculator), the the "longer-term goal" (probably strategy) is to tire out and draw the coyote's prey out to the rest of the pack to take more effective action on securing their meal -- or get the prey right away while they're not expecting it.

Coyotes are known for circling and tiring out their prey.
In the wild cats are ambushing predators.

To see what it's like as a human trying to handle a coyote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqVE9qfg7yI

As a random tangent: While the martial art aikido is often maligned for its complexity and the way it's taught (often non-intuitive motions that don't work in certain environments, as a reactive discipline it has no ways to spar therefore few ways to really test its fundamentals among fellow practitioners, etc.), one of the things it's known for looking good at are its circular motions. And in many martial arts, moving in ways that render the opponent's line of momentum harmless by shifting slightly out of the way is often the best choice. Used offensively, the same principle likely applies, but it feels challenging to to describe and grasp without doing a lot of kinesthetic arts like martial arts or dance for a bit longer. From a very practical standpoint, circular motions can also be useful as a way to recollect energy exerted after a strike--after indirectly punching through an opponent (so not a straight jab), knowing how to rebound and follow-through with the punch can spare you a lot of wasted energy. All of this stuff looks interesting and, to me at least, tends to appear a little more nuanced than what makes sense at first glance.

Maybe I'm seeing things under the influence of comment sections, you can see for yourself. Or better yet, try it out if you have a cat (dogs seem to navigate circular motions with greater ease and efficiency than cats though--unless laser pointers are present, then it's anyone's game) when it tries to play or snuggle up against you.

Alan Emery

For emotive arachnologists

The latest in the development of emoticons:

\oOOo/

It's an alarmed jumping spider!

[ inspired by the end of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91oMXO1cFkM&feature=plcp ]

Marie Colvin, biology, and the dour optimist. [Hooray!]

Marie Colvin

Marie Colvin (1956-2012) with John Le Carré at the presentation of the Martha Gellhorn Prize, May 2010. (Image from the Martha Gellhorn Prize site)

I'm not sure why I regularly worry about issues far beyond my regional geography and connection, but knowing that some people die because they have a burning desire to tell the truth about other peoples' suffering is thoroughly sobering.

To my knowledge, I've not examined any of Marie Colvin's work, but Colvin was awarded the Martha Gellhorn prize for journalism. The Gellhorn prize "challenges secrecy and mendacity [lies] in public affairs" and "raises 'forgotten' issues of public importance, without fear or favour." (Aside: Gellhorn had a really interesting life too, I live similarly to how she did)

I noticed Colven on the Gellhorn website Saturday (when I started writing this post), and that she had an eyepatch--the result of a rocket propelled grenade intentionally fired at her in Sri Lanka--and that she was killed in Syria this March according to the Guardian UK.

There's a conflicting account about how she died on wikipedia, but in the spirit of her interests, that shouldn't matter--Marie's a strong woman worth knowing about in any case and a killing of this kind is still an injustice.  What strikes me about her is that she's way under the radar, but I think her efforts are as heroic as many noted civil rights activists like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

On Biology and Compassion