Year of the Cicada -- again!

This year the 17-year cicadas are emerging in the eastern United States.  We don't get to see any here in  in Minnesota, unless a few stray westward -- Michigan seems to be the edge of the range.  We have the green-veined Annual Cicada, but those do not emerge in the huge numbers of the 17-year species.

17-year cicada adult
(Photo courtesy of USDA)

This particular insect holds a special place in my heart, because I credit them with furthering my lifelong interest in entomology.  

There are several broods of cicadas that emerge in different years, because I distinctly remember seeing them in the Chicago area as a child -- but when I trace back this brood (Brood II) in increments of 17, I get 1996-1979-1962-1945.  I was born in 1947 and was in high school in 1962, so the brood I remember from childhood must be a different one.  I remember being in grade school at the time.

 According to this chart from the University of Michigan, in Illinois there were emergences of brood X in 1956  and brood XII in 1957, which is about the time I remember seeing them.   There were thousands of empty nymph cases clinging to the bark of trees after the adults had emerged, each one shaped exactly like a bug.  We kids used to stick them on the backs of people as a joke -- they really do cling well to clothes!  (Boys will be boys...)

 Not long after that, we moved to Philadelphia, where I encountered the 1962 emergence that was of this same brood II coming out this year.  At the time, we called them "17-year locusts," but they aren't really a locust, which is a type of grasshopper.   I suppose people called them that because they emerged in such huge numbers, reminiscent of the biblical plagues.  But these aren't as harmful.  They make a lot of noise and can be a nuisance (only the males buzz, but there are a LOT of them!), but they don't strip the trees or eat all the crops like real locusts.

They do naturally prune trees, because they lay their eggs in little slits they make in the branches.  When the eggs hatch, the little nymphs drop to the ground and burrow in, where they spend the next 17 years underground, feeding on roots, until the time comes to dig out and become an adult.  Nobody really knows how they can tel how many years have passed -- but they do.  One of nature's amazing mysteries.

My yard is full of birds -- and the Phoebes are safely back!

When I went outside this morning, the sun was out and the yard was full of birdsong.  I heard blue jays, robins, juncos, starlings, finches, pheasants, a drumming grouse and some geese overhead.  I also spotted a thrush in the bushes.  And best of all, the phoebe who nests in the open garage each year is back!  So glad they all survived the storm.

Of course, I'm not 100% sure the phoebe is the same bird -- maybe a descendant? -- but we have had phoebes nesting in the rafters of that building for years.  We've also had them nesting under the eaves of the chicken coop -- a good choice of location, since there are always lots of flies around there.  In 2009 I was lucky enough to get this picture of the coop family, which I made into a postcard:

I called it "Phoebe Fledglings Ready to Fly" -- and they certainly were.  The next day they were gone.  (You can buy a copy of this postcard online in my eBay store, The Happy Rooster.)

Now it's warming up into the 70s this weekend (it's 61 as I wrote this) and the snow is melting off fast.  A walk around the yard showed me bulbs starting to pop up and buds swelling.  I better get out the hummingbird feeders, because those little jewels will be arriving soon, too.  Since the flowers are very late this year, they  will be hungry!

Earth Day: "Interfaith Power and Light" connecting faith and ecology

A religious ecology group called Interfaith Power and Light recently sponsored a nationwide "preach-in," focusing on global warming and climate change, and our religious responsibility as stewards of God's Creation. A very nice segment about this group aired on PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly in connection with Earth Day this past weekend, called Religion and the Environment. Featured are members of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim congregations that are focusing on this issue.

Extended interviews with some of the people in the episode are also available online at PBS:

Jewish: Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb,  leader of Adath Shalom synagogue in Washington D.C., a congregation that has become a model for green energy initiatives.

Christian: Reverend Sally Bingham, founder of Interfaith Power and Light.

Muslim: Sarah Jawaid  director of Green Muslims, a relatively new organization seeking to re-connect with Islamic teachings about caring for the environment.

Also mentioned in the PBS segment (to give both sides of the issue) is an anti-ecology video called Resisting the Green Dragon, put out by a  bunch of extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalists.  I link to them here only because I think we need to know our enemy. "Know what to answer the unbeliever," says the Talmud.  In this case, the "unbelief" is outright denial that climate change exists or that we are responsible for taking care of God's Creation.  The group also claims that developing green energy is oppressive to the poor -- a stance that I find absurd.  Their full video is not free to view online, but believe me, the 12-minute preview is all you need to get the gist.  UGH!!!  (See comments area below for  instructions on how to access it.)

Chinese Jade Dragon carving

I also find it really strange (or shall we say ignorant?) that they would call ecology a "Green Dragon," given that dragons, especially jade dragons, are a positive symbol of wisdom, health and happiness in Chinese philosophy -- very different from the nasty dragons of Christian mythology that were slain by medieval knights.  One does not kill a Chinese dragon.  In fact, Chinese dragons were once believed to control the weather, and offending a dragon could result in droughts, floods, and famines -- definitely issues connected to global warming.

Now granted, that's just mythology, but such symbolism can be powerful.  So I have no problem with being labeled a Green Dragon -- let's turn the pejorative into a compliment!  And maybe this right-wing group should be called Green Ostriches, since they are putting their heads in the sand about a threat to our planet that affects everyone and everything living on it.

Unfortunately, right-wing Christians are not the only ones with their heads in the sand.  I have run across a lot of climate change denial in the Jewish community as well, especially among the Orthodox, who tend to lean to the Right politically.  I have more than once been told by fellow Hasidim that global warming is a hoax invented by Al Gore.  One of the reasons I founded this blog was to reach out to my fellow religious Jews and say, "Learning Torah includes ecology, too -- if 'the Earth is the Lord's' (Psalm 24:1), then we are offending God by polluting and destroying it."

And so, for my part in Earth Day today, here is the link to my short video "Saving Our Imperiled Planet: Part 1, Earth and Torah,  which deals with why Jews today are often so disconnected from nature and the environment, and my own journey toward reconnecting with the Earth. (although this video is more about animals than global warming per se,  feedlots and factory farms do contribute a lot of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.)   There are both historical and spiritual reasons for this disconnect from nature in the Jewish community, as well as the very practical reason that most Orthodox Jews nowadays live in urban environments where there is little contact with the outdoors.

I encourage you to check out all these links, and give some serious thought today as to how you are relating to nature within your own spiritual practice.  Let's make every day Earth Day!

Happy Spring in Minnesota -- Ha Ha Ha!

It's like a really late April Fool's Day joke -- one that doesn't seem very funny anymore.  Just when buds were beginning to swell and I thought "Spring at last!" we get this --  knee-deep snow in my yard, with more on the way - and that was on top of the other storm we got last week!   Minneapolis got 9 inches at the airport this time around, breaking the 1984 record for snowfall on that date and making this the 4th snowiest April on record in the metro area.  St. Cloud, MN, officially got 12 inches, Duluth got 18.  Hard to say what I got, because it is still drifting  all over the place, but it is at least a foot deep in flatter areas.

Enough is enough -- I'm sick of shoveling snow!

Here is a view of my chicken coop, taken from the back porch around 7:30 this morning (To see more detail in any of these shots, click the pic to enlarge):

Needless to say, the chickens and geese will not be going outside today.  I'm not looking forward to slogging down there to feed them, either.   This is a good day for everybody to stay cooped up inside.   Since the plow has not come down my back road yet, and probably won't be here for a long while, I can't go anywhere anyway.  This certainly is not the "1-4 inches" originally predicted!

Here's a picture of my sukkah frame in the front yard.  (A sukkah is a special booth for a Jewish harvest festival.)   A couple seasons ago, I left the covering and top of the sukkah up too long, and the snow collapsed the whole thing.  (Read that story  and see a pic).  This time around, I was smart enough to remove everything down to the bare frame in the fall.  All the snow you see on top is clinging to nothing but the 2-inch diameter support poles.  Which just goes to show how very wet and sticky this stuff really is.  If it melts off too fast, there could be flooding, although since we are on a hill, we are reasonably safe from that.  But rivers are already rising in places like Iowa and Illinois, where this came down as rain.

My dog Jasmine was not too happy about the deep snow, either -- her disgust is very clear in this photo.  No way we could go for a walk today -- I just put her out on the chain to do her stuff.  She slogged out to her usual spot by the edge of the trees, then came  right back in, to flop on her bed in the mud room.

My other big dog, Gypsy, stayed out longer, but she wasn't too thrilled with deep snow, either.   She just pooped by the steps, barked in answer to the dogs down the road, then called it done.  Sherlock, our mini-schnauzer, usually goes out the front sliding door off-leash, but today he refused until I cleared the snow off the porch and shoveled an area for him at the bottom of the steps.  I can't blame him -- the snowdrifts are way over his head.

Willow tree at the edge
of my dirt road.

In spite of this late storm, there are still some visible signs of spring.  One of the first we see around here is the greening of the bark on the willow trees -- which you can see here, in spite of the blowing snow swirling past it.  While I was taking this picture I also saw pussy willows in bloom.  Normally I'd be cutting some of those to bring inside as a spring bouquet, but today I was not about to slog down there into the ditch to get them -- especially since things were starting to melt before this storm, so it could be swampy under all that snow.

The buds on this black maple are in my yard are beginning to swell.  The wind was shaking the branches so hard, the picture came out a bit blurry, but you can clearly see the reddish buds through the coating of snow.

This kind of storm does produce some really nice shots, because it sticks to everything, creating a sort of fantasyland.  Shoveling it, on the other hand, is another story.  It is heavy and sticky, clogging up the snowblowers and creating a lot of business for local chiropractors.  But since the snow is still blowing around and the plow has not been down our road yet, there's no point in clearing the driveway yet.  We're  going to just hunker down and get ready for the Sabbath this evening -- wishing everyone a Shabbat Shalom, Peace and blessings!